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fanfic rant
Jul. 9th, 2014 03:38 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
scout78I been reading Castle fanfics for a good long while now. Most of them were pretty good, other's not so much. Author's notes were sometimes rambling messes and other times informative or funny. I imagine that's the same, not matter which fandom you're into.
But lately there has been a bunch of new authors who came crawling out of the woodwork. People who use their author's notes to say 'This is my first fic, sorry if it's not very good' or 'english is my second language, please ignore the mistakes'.
You know what? I don't care. Would I write a story, I would want it to be as good as possible before I released it into the world. I'd make sure that I knew enough about the characters I was writing about to portray them, well... in character. And I'd sure as hell want as few grammatical and/or spelling errors in my fic as possible. And no, english isn't my first language either, but it bothers me to no end when people don't at least use a spellchecker or let a friend read their story to help weed out obvious mistakes.
And if you're not a native english speaker and you're not very good in english, why the fuck are you hellbent on writing in english?! A bit of great writing advice is write what you know and I think that should be extended to write in the language you know. Period.
If you still insist that writing in english is better, because you have a broader audience that way... either take the time to learn the language or try to get a native speaker to beta for you. I know, that's no guarantee for flawless grammar skills (I've seen enough natives who were so bad at writing in their own language that I was wondering what they've learned in school) but I'm sure it would be better than just posting some of the half-baked drivel I've seen lately.
There are
- glaringly obvious errors were the author simply used the wrong word (that almost sounded correct)
- run-on sentences
- confetti punctuation (didn't know that term until @snowyowlee mentioned it)
- bad sentence structure
- too many easy spelling mistakes (there, their, they're etc)
and it's starting to really piss me off that people just don't seem to care about their work anymore.
I've read author's notes where the author proudly stated that the entire story was written in half an hour in the middle of the night. Guess what? It shows. Take the fucking time to flesh out the story and the characters a bit and for god's sake, don't forget to check for mistakes.
Another bad habit that I see more and more, is holding the next chapter of a story for ransom until you get a certain amount of comments. WTF?!
First, if you think you can force me to do something I don't want just for a few lines of text... think again. Also, I probably won't ever read another one of your stories just because you annoyed me.
Second, if you do get the comments you wanted, what do you think how many honest opinions would be among them? My guess... not many, because most people will just placate you to get something more to read.
And that's another thing that I hate: gushing comments or insane amounts of kudos for stories that read like a 2nd-grader has written them (no disrespect to the 2nd-grader). Loveless scrawls without any substance getting praised to the hight heavens. Why? Somebody please explain that to me, because I just can't understand it. How is an author supposed to grow, to improve his skills, if he never gets an honest opinion on his work?
I know, people write fics for fun and they don't want to be criticized. But hey, even 'real' writers have to deal with rejection once in a while. Do you think a publisher prints any manuscript as is? If he doesn't like something, he let's the author know, so that he can make it better next time. And guess what? That's not flaming, that's called constructive criticism. So yeah, your ego will probaly smart a bit when somebody points out why he doesn't like your story. Suck it up! Put on your big-boy pants and think a bit about it. In the end an honest opinion from someone (even if it's negative) will always help you more than a hundred comments from some brown-nosers.
Alright, I think it's time to stop this rant before it reaches epic proportions.
And now for my author's notes: I've typed this up on my iPad at 3:30am, english is my 2nd (actually 3rd) language and I did neither use spellcheck nor a beta. I did however check what my fingers actually typed and corrected it along the way and I proofread the whole thing in the morning (after a decent cup of coffee).
But lately there has been a bunch of new authors who came crawling out of the woodwork. People who use their author's notes to say 'This is my first fic, sorry if it's not very good' or 'english is my second language, please ignore the mistakes'.
You know what? I don't care. Would I write a story, I would want it to be as good as possible before I released it into the world. I'd make sure that I knew enough about the characters I was writing about to portray them, well... in character. And I'd sure as hell want as few grammatical and/or spelling errors in my fic as possible. And no, english isn't my first language either, but it bothers me to no end when people don't at least use a spellchecker or let a friend read their story to help weed out obvious mistakes.
And if you're not a native english speaker and you're not very good in english, why the fuck are you hellbent on writing in english?! A bit of great writing advice is write what you know and I think that should be extended to write in the language you know. Period.
If you still insist that writing in english is better, because you have a broader audience that way... either take the time to learn the language or try to get a native speaker to beta for you. I know, that's no guarantee for flawless grammar skills (I've seen enough natives who were so bad at writing in their own language that I was wondering what they've learned in school) but I'm sure it would be better than just posting some of the half-baked drivel I've seen lately.
There are
- glaringly obvious errors were the author simply used the wrong word (that almost sounded correct)
- run-on sentences
- confetti punctuation (didn't know that term until @snowyowlee mentioned it)
- bad sentence structure
- too many easy spelling mistakes (there, their, they're etc)
and it's starting to really piss me off that people just don't seem to care about their work anymore.
I've read author's notes where the author proudly stated that the entire story was written in half an hour in the middle of the night. Guess what? It shows. Take the fucking time to flesh out the story and the characters a bit and for god's sake, don't forget to check for mistakes.
Another bad habit that I see more and more, is holding the next chapter of a story for ransom until you get a certain amount of comments. WTF?!
First, if you think you can force me to do something I don't want just for a few lines of text... think again. Also, I probably won't ever read another one of your stories just because you annoyed me.
Second, if you do get the comments you wanted, what do you think how many honest opinions would be among them? My guess... not many, because most people will just placate you to get something more to read.
And that's another thing that I hate: gushing comments or insane amounts of kudos for stories that read like a 2nd-grader has written them (no disrespect to the 2nd-grader). Loveless scrawls without any substance getting praised to the hight heavens. Why? Somebody please explain that to me, because I just can't understand it. How is an author supposed to grow, to improve his skills, if he never gets an honest opinion on his work?
I know, people write fics for fun and they don't want to be criticized. But hey, even 'real' writers have to deal with rejection once in a while. Do you think a publisher prints any manuscript as is? If he doesn't like something, he let's the author know, so that he can make it better next time. And guess what? That's not flaming, that's called constructive criticism. So yeah, your ego will probaly smart a bit when somebody points out why he doesn't like your story. Suck it up! Put on your big-boy pants and think a bit about it. In the end an honest opinion from someone (even if it's negative) will always help you more than a hundred comments from some brown-nosers.
Alright, I think it's time to stop this rant before it reaches epic proportions.
And now for my author's notes: I've typed this up on my iPad at 3:30am, english is my 2nd (actually 3rd) language and I did neither use spellcheck nor a beta. I did however check what my fingers actually typed and corrected it along the way and I proofread the whole thing in the morning (after a decent cup of coffee).
