FanFic

When it comes to reading fanfiction we all have our own individual habits - for instance as I’ve mentioned previously I used to download my stories to my PDA - of course now I have to go back to the old way and read them online, some people do that while others print out stories etc. Then there’s those who won’t start a new fic until it has been completed, while others wait patiently, or not so patiently for each new chapter to arrive.

I’m one of those that will start a new fanfic before it’s been completed, and then constantly keep an eye out for any updates, this of course used to mean having a long list of sites bookmarked and checking each and every one of them several times a day - while I do check many of favourite archive sites on a regular basis, nowadays when it comes to updates I pretty much have them all saved in a feedreader so they are sent to me rather than me having to look for them.

There’s plenty of feedreaders available - bloglines and google reader are just a couple (I used to always use bloglines, but I just switched over to google reader to give it a go.) For those that don’t know many blogs and archive etc sites allow you to subscribe (via what is usually a little orange button in the address bar) so you can automatically receive updates (or they’ll have a subscribe now button listed somewhere on the page)

This blog for example, you can either click the little orange button in the adress bar (at least it’s there in both Firefox and Flock Browsers - I don’t use IE) or to the right of the page you can subscribe to have it sent to your feedreader or directly to your chosen email account - this means that each time this blog is updated you’ll be informed.

But it’s not just blogs like this that you can do that with - Fanfiction.net for example - say you want to know when a new Dexter Fanfic has been added - simply go to http://www.fanfiction.net/tv/Dexter/ and then click the orange button in your address bar or if you have a favourite author you can click on their name and then subscribe via the orange subscribe button, so you’ll be updated when that chosen author submits a new story or chapter etc.

Sites like Live Journal etc all work the same way - I don’t have any story submission there yet but the new Fanfiction Archive site, will also give you the opportunity to subscribe to any updates - so they can be sent directly to you eg Women’s Murder Club or the main page where all new updates will be placed etc. While you will still need to visit certain sites if you want to review stories etc at least by subscribing to them you know within minutes when a new chapter may have arrived

So how do you read your favourite fanfic? have any tips you want to share?

Filed under: fanfic