Fanfic question

[Jairus]

I've been working on a major rewrite for Lifestream, my FFVII novelization, over the past few months, and now that I've made some significant progress, I have some uncertainties about how to proceed. Namely, I haven't posted any of the new content yet because I'm not sure what the best approach would be. The rewrite is going to be significantly longer than the original because I've been adding a lot of new additional content that I didn't have in there before (much of it to expand and flesh out the characters and development of the Avalanche trio).

To give you an idea of what I mean, the original started with the first bombing mission - which is the typical starting point for these kinds of stories. But I changed that in the rewrite, and now it begins two months before that, when Tifa first meets Cloud at the train station. And there's nine chapters of content before it even gets to the first mission. Suffice it to say, the total chapter count isn't going to match up with the original version at all. At the moment, I'm up to Chapter 14 and Cloud's in the Avalanche basement about to confront Barret. In the original, that happened in Chapter 3.

This all leads to my question. I'm trying to figure out what to do when I start posting the rewrite on FF.NET and AO3. Should I just wait until I've written enough to simply overwrite all the original posted chapters, or should I post the rewrite as a separate story instead? At this rate, Book 1 will probably end up being around 30 chapters long, if not more, when in the original version it was only 21. That's more than what I've posted of the original Books 1 and 2 combined. So any thoughts about this little dilemma of mine would be appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Obsidian Fire]

If you're doing that many changes, and the chapter count is that different, I would post it as a different work. At least on Ao3 where you can put a link to the original work in the opening authors note. On Ao3 at least, any comments you got on chapters are not purged when you edit chapters. So having the comments mis-match the chapters they are in wouldn't be a good idea I'd think.

FF.net doesn't link reviews to chapters as directly, but you would still have all the old reviews "attached" to the edited work. Which just sounds like a headache to deal with. And could potentially spoil things that may or may not be different.

 

[Bouncymouse]

I've just started rewriting a fanfiction I wrote 12 years ago (thanks to lockdown) and I've just listed it as a new story. Like Obsidian Fire says, you run the risk of confusion/spoilers with any old reviews and I think if it's got that much new content it deserves to stand alone from the original. You might find some of your old readers will pop up on your new fic--one of mine did and it's nice to see people still share my obsessions after all of these years

Sidenote: I'm tempted to start branching out from FF.Net if this does become a regular thing again. I forgot how much of a headache the formatting could be.

 

[Ite]

When I redrafted Jenova Project, I ran into both of those issues. The reviews don't match the chapters, and there were people who wanted the old version (no idea why) who were pissed that I'd rewritten it.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Rather ironic, that, Ite.

 

[Ite]

Rather ironic, that, Ite.

Bahaha. Well, I’d say touché, but the second draft was much more faithful than the first. As it turns out, changing it up for creative reasons didn’t stand the test of time.

 

[Jairus]

Well, I've listed it separately and it's working out well so far, actually getting more attention than the original did at that same point, though I'm sure the release of the remake has a fair bit to do with that as well. But I've gotten no complaints about the rewrite - actually a few have said they like it better so far - so it's all good.