Hah that’s hilarious, especially given that the folk here have had babies who are all grown up now, since we met (!!!?!!!)

My kid writes fanfic now, that's how much time has passed.

Thankfully, not SPN.

Is there a prescribed length for something that's essentially a character study? Should I be concerned that I'm 4300 words in? I feel like I should be concerned.

Nope! Welcome to a common fanfic experience, aka "Wait, this thing is taking on a life of its own..."

Okay, no, to be more specific, is there an advisory length for what's essentially a character study and backstory-filling-in without a whole lot of what you'd normally call plot, and is definitely not a kissing story? At what point is it just self-indulgence?

All fic is self-indulgence! That's why it's so great.

More helpfully, there will be plenty of readers who will devour a character study and not care what the length is. If they are your audience, there is almost literally no chance that anyone will think "This is too much of this awesome story."

There's a whole thesis in word count expectations across genres in fic vs. published literature, but if the story you're writing is making you happy, that's the story you should write.

Well, great. 5500 words and still going (at least I have a vague idea of how to end it, which is great because I fucking suck at endings and I have way too many partial works sitting on various hard drives where the characters wouldn't shut up for 35K words and then just stopped talking and I didn't know where to go next, so it would be lovely to write something with a beginning, middle and END just once before I die), and I blame Dana.

Go forward and write! Write what your heart wants, and it's likely to strike a chord with someone regardless.

As for endings, many years ago Nutty gave me some wise words: for a lot of stories, you can just have someone say, "OK, let's go," and then they go, the end. Possibly not the most poetic ending, but sometimes you just gotta give yourself permission to stop.

As for endings, many years ago Nutty gave me some wise words: for a lot of stories, you can just have someone say, "OK, let's go," and then they go, the end. Possibly not the most poetic ending, but sometimes you just gotta give yourself permission to stop.

Mostly, yeah, and definitely for fanfic, but my unfinished stuff is all proper novels and screenplays, and those feel like they really need an actual nice clean definitive shape and all the stuff I'd set in motion needs to be resolved.

As a voracious fanfic reader, I have never ever read a fic where I thought "Oh, this is longer than originally planned? That blows!" A fic that's longer than planned is like finding a $20 in your coat pocket.