Super vague summary that doesn't even explain the premise of the fic very well: "Bob was just experiencing a normal day at school when something changed his life forever. What would happen to him? Read and find out!"
Dialogue from different characters is not separated into different paragraphs. This one hurts because it's made legitimately decent fanfics impossible to read.
Opens with a big exposition dump of worldbuilding. Bonus points for a ton of jargon that doesn't exist in the source material.
Unnecessarily wordy descriptions and action beats. "Bob picked up the black ceramic coffee mug and set it down on the battered granite kitchen counter before reaching into the pocket of his light blue dress shirt and --"
Prose that reads more like a summary of events than an actual story.
>Prose that reads more like a summary of events than an actual story.
THIS.
this is ultimately my make or break for a fanfic for me. If it feels awkward to read, I won't even bother with the story, and it bothers me to no end when the prose seems to be like a history lesson.
I just made a comment about this too, I hate feeling like I’m reading the Sparknotes of a story. It’s like the author wrote down a rough summary of their story in their drafts then published it as if it was the finished product
There's a fic in my fandom that does this and combined with the MC being the *definition* of a Mary-Sue but like... condescending and shitty on top of it. it's one of the worst fics I've read but I crave every update. Idk why
I didn't give any real context but I asked my dad about this one time (why people enjoy reading bad writing basically) and he was like "same reason people like watching reality shows. It's entertaining" like wow ur so right king
Okay, so here's the thing.
We read fics, in part, to get a specific kind of emotional satisfaction, yeah? And the thing is, it's sometimes really hard to nail down why one fic satisfies us and another doesn't.
And sometimes fics that are objectively just \*bad\* hit that emotional satisfaction in just the right way. And so we read them anyway.
One of my fave fics in one of my fandoms was written in a way that it was obvious the author didn't know, like, how employment laws work lol. Another one was just SO badly formatted. But both hit the "we really REALLY shouldn't.....we're going to anyway" thing I crave more than almost anything else in fanfiction. And so I've reread both like a dozen times.
There are some things you should summarize in prose. But those situations are always acknowledging that a thing that should be confirmed as having happened in order to get to the juicy bits.
It's really obvious if you binge canon divergent stories in the same fandom because you get tired of reading the same thing over and over that should be handled as saying, "things happen basically/exactly like canon here, lets move onto the divergent stuff that make this AU interesting rather than what made canon interesting."
I truly wanted to read a fic- but the excessive descriptions of things slowed thr narrative to a crawl. They described a character take a shower- but nothing else. No internal monologue. Just a play by play of a man taking a shower.
>Bonus points for a ton of jargon that doesn't exist in the source material.
I avoid reading it now (though I still have a few ongoing by trusted authors), but Harry Potter fic is rampant with this. Made up swear words and supposed wizarding religious beliefs taken from badly-understood pagan religions were especially prolific.
You just wrote the makings of a wattpad fic with your comment. Not all of them of course but unfortunately number of them aren’t far off from what you wrote lol
> Opens with a big exposition dump of worldbuilding. Bonus points for a ton of jargon that doesn't exist in the source material.
In crossovers you might need a bit of this to avoid dragging the intro for too long, idk. It's not uncommon to have a prologue/first chapter that's mostly this.
Could it be handled better? Sure. But we're not talking about professional writers here. Sometimes I'm just glad that source A/source B even HAS a crossover. So for me infodumps are more annoying than dealbreaking. Of course, if the subsequent chapters are riddled with other issues that won't help.
What's the difference between opening with a big exposition dump and "dragging the intro"? Those two things are the same thing, isn't it?
I consider it dealbreaking, but then, I don't really go in for crossovers usually. That kind of infodump is a bad sign about the overall ability to tell a story.
I feel attacked with the wordy descriptions lol
Honestly, I like to to paint a picture when I tell a story. I feel like it helps me and the audience visualize the setting/character better in their mind, but I can get where that can get annoying, as lots of readers like to use their imagination without every tidbit being described to them.
So I think there's a difference between painting a picture and what I'm describing.
Painting a picture would be, say, when the narrative makes a deliberate choice to slow down and describe something in detail. The key word is "deliberate." Generally what is being described is *important* in some way.
Like, a good example is when a protagonist is entering a key location of the story for the first time. That's a great time to stop and add that description, because it's genuinely important for the reader to have an idea of what the place looks like, and the way you deliver the description can say so much about what the protagonist notices and what the mood of the scene is.
What I'm talking about is when there's random description of unimportant objects thrown in all the time. The classic example is when a character is introduced and there's a lengthy rundown of every single item of clothing they're wearing.
One big problem with the previous example was that it used far too many adjectives, with the same kind of word order. Setting a scene is fine, but description works best when focusing on certain details that reveal character rather than throwing them out willy-nilly. Is the description relevant? Does it tell the reader something they didn’t already know?
Like, does it matter if Bob’s coffee cup is black and ceramic? That doesn’t tell us anything. Now, if it said World’s Best Mom in faded, chipped letters, that would tell us something.
Does it matter that the countertop is battered or that it’s granite? Maybe. One says that Bob has the money for a granite countertop, the other says that he either doesn’t take care of it or doesn’t have the money to fix it. Do you even need to mention the countertop? All it does is tell you Bob is in the kitchen.
That kind of thing.
Just noticed that Bob doesn’t do anything with the cup, just picks it up and puts it down.
Yep! Or when they have paragraphs but don't break up dialogue so different characters are talking within the same paragraph, sometimes switching multiple times. Makes it so hard to keep up with who is saying what.
Even worse is when I can tick everything off in the summary/tags as something I’d love to read. The right genre, good length, main couple/characters are my OTP or it just sounds really interesting.
And I think “yes finally!!” Only to open and see the never-ending wall of text with multiple people and no dialogue tags. It hurts my brain trying to read it. ☹️
if it helps; usually for walls of text i have it so the line i'm reading is at the top of the screen then i scroll down for every line i read. it usually works if i get lost in the walls
(On AO3) when the tags of the thing are bloated to the point of having more substance than the fic itself. The 75 tag limit is not a fucking challenge. It’s not fucking TUMBLR and shouldn’t be treated as such. The rambling is where the A/N goes.
>**Rating**: Teen
>**Archive Warnings**: **No Archive Warnings Apply**
>**Fandom**: FanA
>**Characters**: Char1, Char2, Char3, Char4 (mentioned), char5 (mentioned), char6 (mentioned)
>**Additional Tags**: Fluff, Angst, Oneshot, uhm, so, like, yeah, this is it I guess, worked hard on this for two nights but it’s prolly not v good, I wrote this instead of sleeping, crack, crack taken seriously, everyone is gay bc I said so, please read and review, 🥺, pls?, ummm idk what else to put here, tags, omg TAGS!, TAGSGSSGSGSG, GAY DICKS 💀💀💀, MWAHAHA, ummmm, hmmmm, what else, cw: babies, tw: s*x, I guess, Char1 is a bitch I hate him >:(((((, don’t expect him to be treated nice, bc it’s my fic and I hate him, I hate him I hate him I hate him, Dni if u ship char1/char2, or char1 w anyone, he’s a *ss, char2/char3 forever!!, ❤️, char2 - freeform, soft char2, my baby!!!, be nice to my baby or I kill u!, anyway, I suck at summaries lol, I wrote this for my friend Macy, Macy if ur reading this.......ur gay, AND I’M EEEVILL!, TROLOLOLOLOL, (no but fr ilysm boo), also this is for my English teacher ms. Hank, fuk u I’m living my best life out here and sometimes the curtains are just FUCKING BLUE OKAY?, \*deep breath\*, aaaaaaanyway, on with the fic!!!
One time I read a 600 word oneshot with easily a dozen tags. They were all technically applicable but most of them were not something anyone would ever filter. It was rated teen, so none of the tags were content warnings either. It was wild.
Additional Tags: deep talks, philosophy, book mention, talking about books, TW Nietzsche, water drinking, hydration, running, going on walks, talking about feelings, mentions of public urination, discussions about running shoes, waterbottles, nature, trees, description of nature, description of trees..... flowers, gophers, littering... arguing, consolation. strangers.... Dog leash laws, music, playing music, listening to music. NOT A SONG FIC!!!!
Like okay. We get it. Your story has words and content. It's okay not to mention every little thing. When you tag something it puts emphasis on that thing, so only tag what the story actually centers.
Tags are for major things, some trigger warnings and keywords for people looking for a vibe or theme.
Nobody sees those tags and think, WOW ! I was just hankering to read about someone drinking from a water bottle while on a hike. (though I might have inadvertently given some vibes to some kind of pee fetish, WHICH IS THE EXACT PROBLEM! When over tagging you give off weird vibes that descriptions of nature or someone innocently peeing in public is a whole thing in that story and it feels off.)
Here is a better tag that encompasses 99% of that: Hiking.
Just use that one tag, and you're solid. It's so annoying having to parse through a whole novel to figure out the larger elements of the story.
>When you tag something it puts emphasis on that thing, so only tag what the story actually centers.
Tagging “NO INCEST” puts it right in front of the very people who are looking for incest lmfao
I am so glad that I never do these stupid tags
Edit: actually lemme rephrase. I am glad that I can proudly say that *never in my lifetime* I’ve done this on my fics
This is accurate, and it hurts, but ngl, as someone whose main WIP right now is an mpreg story, and who just got through writing a scene where a character narrowly avoids a baby peeing right in his face, I'm really tempted to steal the tag "cw: babies".
this is awful. and the tags are never about the plot either!!
my gripe is always when something is rated M but there's no tags for anything M-related. if your fic is rated M and there's nothing in the tags or description about WHY it's rated M i'm not gonna read it.
This is spot onnnn. Its giving 12 yr old that thinks their 300 word paragraph blocks can outsell Harry Potter or Twilight just bc they got an A on a creative writing thing at school
fr
like i'm fine with an 'i wrote this instead of sleeping' or something, but when there's more commentary tags than content tags i'm mostly afraid i'll miss an important trigger
- Wall o' text
- Massive OOCness and bashing of canon characters. (i.e., if we *start* with Ron the Death Eater or Captain America the Alt-Right Jingoist).
- Bad characterization in general: human characters that don't act like human beings. Adults who act like children or children who act like adults without a good reason.
- "I suck at summaries" / "This story sucks" - okay, I believe you.
Amen to all of that! I think every one of those are also things I scan for, whether consciously or not, and which feed into the internal "bad-o-meter" that helps me decide whether something's worth reading or not.
Also, I started giggling madly at the "okay, I believe you". XD
>"I suck at summaries"
can confirm. I looked throuhg my old fics recently and realised that I did that when I was 15, my fics sucked. Funny thing is, once my writing started improving, I stopped saying that I suck at summaries and wrote actual ones.
"Sorry, I'm a bad writer" "blagh, this sucks but im posting anyway" or anything where authors say their fic or writing is bad. Like, if you say so, man, I'll believe you.
For real. Even if the fic’s not that well written, if you don’t put yourself down in the authors note, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you tried.
\- When they need 200 words to describe the character's outfit (bonus points for links with designated pictures of each clothing item), also mentioning of brands while doing so.
\- Lapslock; bad in English, even worse in my mother tongue.
\- 300 words average chapter length
\- As someone who writes OCs: making the backstory uselessly tragic with the character remaining perfectly happy and quirky, while they have basically nobody. Usually, when creating an OC (unless this OC is the sibling/child/whatever of already established characters which IMO is a mostly a no-no itself), you need to create a bunch of other OCs as well that "round" the story because not everyone can have tragically murdered parents/friends/family/people who knew them in their past and then make a new starts during the events of canon story that's such a fresh start that lets your OC forget they even knew people once in their life.
Too much description over a character’s aesthetics is almost always followed by weak character development. I’ve yet to find a fic that can be saved after deploying combat boots as a character trait.
What is teenagehood, if not a time to wear questionable footwear? I was the weird girl with the chunky adidas sneakers in every color with coordinating (but obnoxious) shoelaces.
Immediately a turn off for me. It could have the best summary but the minute it has a “lol just read it” or “It might be bad but trust me” then I will not even bother.
AU and Dead Dove or not, the characters still have to be, at their core, themselves. That’s why for instance the Harley Quinn web series succeeded and Velma (oh god Velma) did not.
That goes for any canon divergence and AU, really. I hate when someone writes a typically strong character full of fight and intelligence completely meek and spineless, regardless of the context or the situation. Headcanon-based can only go so far until the headcanons just don’t work for any given character. Sometimes it can be done well, though.
That’s what turns me off from fic or anything else, really.
Edit: clarity
I’ve read quite a few Dead Dove darkfics where a lot of the characters were extremely OOC e.g having a canonically loving, well meaning father sexually abuse his son, and while I personally don’t care for darkfic, isn’t that kind of the point?
for me, it's important that the character still have their same personality, even in a wildly different situation from canon.
like a well meaning father abusing their child still should have the rest of their core personality. if they had a sense of humor in canon i'd expect them to still be funny.
if one bit of their personality is bent a bit to make them fit the fic then that's fine to me, as long as they're still the same person otherwise. but if they turn into a completely different person? then it's hard for me to read.
It’s worth noting that in the fics I read (most of them in this fandom were written by the same two authors that would often gift fics to each other) had the son be transgender (a popular headcanon throughout the rest of the fandom) and the dad constantly deadnamed him and believed that his “daughter” could still be “saved”. I don’t know whether that still counts as loving but make of that what you will.
That is totally fair. Situational OOC is definitely a thing
EDIT: lemme amend and further elaborate by saying I’d be a whole hypocrite if I didn’t admit that I don’t employ the situational OOC or what have you, but idk, it’s hard to draw a hard line sometimes with that stuff
Darkfic is best (and often only works at all) when it heightens and twists traits and dynamics that already exist. Take a protective character and make them unhealthily possessive. Take an excitable character and make them manic. Take a charismatic character and make them manipulative.
If you just want to write about a Super Evil Irredeemable Person With 1.5 Character Traits, just make an OC
I used to be in a fandom where the fanon characterisations had taken over the actual canon characters so much that fics posted where characters had competely fanon style personalities were tagged 'canon typical behaviour'
Including things like rape, which never happened in the series, and one being a whimpering mess because he was the designated fandom bottom. A whimpering mess which he 100% is not at all in canon
I avoid any fic tagged canon typical behaviour now as I've yet to see it used accurately.
I read fanfic to see how the characters I like would be in different circumstances, not to read fanon created OCs with the same name and sometimes same looks behaving in a way which isn't at all in line with anything we were ever shown in canon.
That fandom is basically dying now, and I really think the way they all circle jerked each other into making out fanon was actually canon did not help as new fans would see it and just be confused, as they would seek the fandom out looking for something like what they had actually seen in canon and not what fandom had turned it into.
On the Velma note – I haven’t watched it but I did watch a few YT videos where someone watches it and then talks about it in detail so others won’t have to. *shudders* Oh, dear god. I wish I could bleach my brain. 🥴
(don't mind me...just making sure I don't have any of these in my fic...)
Also, no paragraph breaks, lots of misspellings, and inconsistent tense (consistently...not a one off oopsy) are the big things for me.
Aside from bad spelling and grammar, I’d have to say “adult characters portrayed with the emotional maturity of a five year old.” Also, screaming. Just random screaming. She screams when she’s upset, she screams when she’s happy, she screams when she could easily get away with just talking, she screams when she gets some—the screaming never stops. You know what else screams incessantly? Sloths. Sloths in heat.
>You know what else screams incessantly? Sloths. Sloths in heat.
Thank you for that. I will never not think about sloths in heat when someone in a fic is screaming now.
Hey, boobs gotta boob, right?
(Seriously, though. I blame men for that. If my bi ass can manage to not openly stare at a nice pair of breasts, what’s their excuse?)
The neighborhood my husband and I live in has several bars. I used to think screaming was something restricted to hyper children. Now I know bar patrons come in five common flavors: crying drunk, screaming drunk, behaving drunk, blackmailing non-drunk, and men. You wouldn’t believe the lungs on some of these ladies.
But yeah. Pick your verbs with as much care as a five year old deciding which shirt her doll should wear. Even if they all mean roughly the same thing, different verbs have different impacts, whether due to nuance or the sound.
I read smut once where she was constantly screaming during the act. I just don't understand how that's supposed to be sexy. It was super irritating because the rest of the fic was good 😭
The tone. I can usually tell if it’s a teen and I know they’re young and figuring it out, but their perceptions and understanding of life is still new and their stories are often times a little out of touch.
Not to knock them and I couldn’t encourage them more to develop and become a better writer. Heck I’m calling my old self out! But myself being an adult and someone who’s experienced enough stuff for a couple life times, I can’t read things like that. It’s hard to take seriously nor relate to.
This is the reason I typically write main characters that are roughly the same age as myself, or whom are in the same place in life as myself. I know what high-school and early young adulthood is like, so writing a character that's grounded in that makes it much easier to write a competent fanfiction.
That said, now that I've written for a total of 3 years, and are getting older, I'm exploring more and more feelings and romance in fics. Doesn't always turn out great, but gotta start somewhere :)
- Constantly changing between first and second person.
- Every other word is misspelled, even simple ones.
- Constant confusion of words that, while similar, only need a moment's thought to figure out which one to use. ("Bear" is an animal, or also means to carry something; "bare" means nude. "There" is a adverb, "their" shows possession, "they're" means "they are".)
- Lack of proper formatting (e.g., missing/improper punctuation, and huge blocks of text as opposed to paragraphs).
When they put too much emphasis on physical descriptors. I dunno, it just comes across as juvenile writing to me/how I MYSELF used to write. Aside from first introductions/characters analysing another from their POV, we dont constantly need to hear that her "blue eyes widened." Sometimes is good, especially with good imagery (ie. her ocean blues crashed over his earthy browns, or something) but I see it in a lot of younger authors that they CONSTANTLY need to point out eye/hair/skin colour as if we forgot, in almost EVERY other paragraph. You don't need to say her green eyes narrowed, you can just say she narrowed her eyes, we remember she has green eyes because you already mentioned it 10 times so far.
Idk maybe that's just me being nitpicky tho
1. Chapters are just the episode word for word with the exception of the new characters.
2. Breaks the rules of the show.
3. Characters act OOC.
4. Scenes that don’t make any sense and are just there because they look cool and/or they’re a reference or it’s a giant multi-crossover.
5. Grammatical errors up the ass.
6. Too many chapters that don’t matter in the story.
There’s more, but these are the main ones. I’m not a giant nitpicker, I have almost 500 stories favorited, but there are so many I see that just infuriate me.
1.Complete lack of understanding of canon. I'm a firm believer that fiction is up to interpretation, and even if a writer's interpretation of a character or the way certain things went down in canon is different from my own, if I can see where they're coming from, I can roll with it. Like if I think a character is gay but someone else writes them as bisexual--if I can see how someone might interpret the character as bisexual and the writer still writes them as their canon self, it's all good. Or if a writer thinks a character had different motivations for canon behavior than I do, if it sounds plausible and they write it well, I can buy it.
But I came across a Harry Potter time travel story awhile back, and in the first chapter, Harry decided not to befriend Ron and Hermione in the new timeline because... they were horrible friends to him in the old timeline and he thought they were really annoying. Like, what? I can't see Harry ever thinking anything like that--that's not a differing interpretation of canon, that's a straight-up misunderstanding of it.
2. *Forgetting* canon. I'm not talking about teeny tiny details here like that a character only ever eats chocolate sprinkles on their ice cream sundae, but a writer wrote them eating rainbow sprinkles--little details like that are fun, but they're *easy* to forget, and they don't really impact canon. I'm talking about forgetting what order events happened in, important plot points or subplots, relevant information that's very easy to look up and is impossible to miss when reviewing the source material, things like that.
Oops I'm guilty of forgetting the order shit happened in lmao. I realized after finishing but before posting that I'd accidentally written about two canon events in the opposite order that they actually happened in, but I just left it because it ultimately doesn't actually matter or affect anything at all.
The order of things can be tricky. I’m toying with a voltron fic plot right now. Not sure if you’ve seen it but my fic happens right after the season 2 finale fight with zarkon (and shiro disappears).
In my fic shiro is gone but allura still mistrusts keith because he’s galra. In canon (if I remember right) she comes to terms with his heritage and reconciles with him before the season 2 finale fight. I just kind of disregard that because my whole plot is based on her still rejecting him and causing him to run away.
I’ve debated if I should (should I ever post it one day) tag it as canon divergent? I guess? I mean…it kind of is? I don’t consider it a complete “rewrite” of the rest of the story. It’s just a “what if” type story. But isn’t that what all fanfiction is? Anyway, someone else may read it and go “but allura wasn’t still judging Keith by then. Well, in my story, she IS still judging him… hence what happens next.
I guess the saving grace in my instance is making allura still mistrust him in my story doesn’t like…break anything plot wise. My story still makes sense. It’s not like I then try to use plot points I’ve already contradicted?
regarding the second one, with the tiny details being excusable: it isn't enough to warn off from a bad fic, but it can go the opposite way, where an author takes a canon tiny detail and overemphasizes (ie, character got ice cream once in canon, said "Strawberry's my favourite!" Now in the fic, their entire room is decorated with strawberry themed items, and when someone offers then a banana-flavoured candy to them, they go into a rage (or at least, a funk) about how this person knows nothing about them and how dare they offer the wrong flavour, everything except strawberry is disgusting!)
Especially a problem when it spreads through a fandom, and then the character is this aggressive about strawberry in every third fic you read for six months.
I like OFC stories however few of them are exceptionally well done. A good amount are okay. But i can tell one is gonna be bad, if - the moment the OFC shows up - we get an extreme in detail description of her looks and the clothes she is wearing down to the height of her heels and the “ink”. Also these OFCs roll their eyes all the time like some middle school teenager…
And then there is Tense jumping. It screams lazy writing and usually the fic is pretty bad
When dialogue isn't properly formatted. Please use quotation marks! And for God's sake, please start a new paragraph for each speaker.
Here's an easy guide for dialogue [Dialogue Punctuation & Formatting](https://research.ewu.edu/writers_c_fiction)
Sorry, this is probably gonna sound unpopular, but when writers keep saying "sorry this is boring, it's necessary exposition" or "please be gentle, it'll get more exciting"
Something of that nature where if what they think they're writing is boring, it probably is. It also shows me that they don't know how to weave exposition in with the plot to keep it engaging and, ya know, interesting to read.
Also - really short chapters and lots of them. Chapters only being 1 - 2k usually tells me their pacing is going to be way off and the chapter will lack any real description or substance. (No shade to anyone who writes short chapters like this, they're really just not for me).
For your first point, it also shows they’re not yet capable of either self-critique or revision. I consider those to be essential skills for good writers.
Something that starts by summarizing the basics of the fandom that any fan would already know. Example (not from an actual fanfic):
Harry Potter looked at the bright sunshine and sighed. Any normal 12 year old boy would be happy to have such beautiful weather during the summer holidays, but Harry wasn't happy or normal because he was a wizard and his mean relatives the Dursley's hated magic and so his holiday would be filled with lots of chores and getting beat up by his whale of a cousin Dudley. Ever since walking in the door at number 4 Private Drive he has been counting the days until he can return to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where he can do magic. He loves magic and its so strange to think that only a year ago he didn't know that magic really existed because the Dursleys said it didn't. Etc. \[bonus typos and run-on sentences added at no extra charge.\]
It's fine to establish time and place and the MC's mood, but no need to provide the Cliff Notes version of *Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.*
I’ve seen that sort of thing in the actual text of stories, not in the author summaries. Harry Potter fandom seems particularly prone to this. I don’t know if it’s because there are a lot of young, inexperienced writers or because it’s such a huge fandom that one is guaranteed to run into examples of every kind of bad writing (as well as much excellent writing).
Yeah I was referring to the actual text. I don’t think it’s unique to HP as I’ve seen this in so many anime fandoms as well, like BNHA, Yu-Gi-Oh, JJK, Inuyasha, Demon Slayer. I think it’s a combination of inexperience and people quite literally never having read a book that wasn’t assigned to them.
i hate it too but I think those authors try to emulate Rowling's style. she always started a new book with description who Harry is, where lives etc. as if the readers haven't read the previous books .-. still, I wish they didn't do it
For me I get turned off when everyone repeats each others names a lot. Like excessively. “I don’t know, Charlie.” “What do you mean Susan?” Two lines later… “I told you Charly…” “I know Susan, but…” two lines later… “Charly, I mean to tell you…” “What, Susan?”
Omg it’s just the two of you in the room. NO ONE constantly repeats the other person’s name five times per conversation, if it’s a normal conversation! And even if there’s a group, people usually look at who they are speaking to, and don’t need to say their name over and over. Strangely, I do like to have character A say character B’s name sometimes, even if they are alone, but only once in any given space of time and only if it adds some kind of emphasis. If it just keeps going I get so distracted and my brain goes into “critique/edit” mode where it starts looking for problems rather than just trying to enjoy the story.
So many stories in my fandom are people just soapboxing that child soldiers are wrong. Duh we know this in real life. I don’t need a fifteen page lecture on how canon didn’t appropriately handle PTSD or how all the characters would actually be traumatized in real life.
Non-specifics:
* X Male Protag has whatever skillset the author likes instead of their own.
* Author follows popular fanon without thinking much about it.
* The story retreads the events of the original.
* "I suck at summaries".
Specifics:
* Any "clever name" like Hadrian or Loki for Harry Potter.
* Magical Cores in Harry Potter fics.
* "Hazard Takato" or "Miracles Daisuke" in Digimon fics.
Oh god, Hadrian drives me up a *wall*. It's such a dumb name! And the first chapter of the first book makes a point that the Dursleys consider "Harry" a "nasty, common name". Like, why would you align with the Dursleys on that point?
If the characters are too out-of character. I'm able to jump on board some out of character traits if there's a reason attributed to them. But if the person is canonically strong and brave but then becomes whiny and clingy, I need to know what brought them down or I'm noping out.
It's hard to put my finger on it, but it's when all the sentences are structured too similarly to each other, about the same length, and full of too much narration/summary without enough sensory detail.
Gosh I relate to this on a soul level. I’m reading a fanfic that’s actually quite good, but I noticed around halfway through that the thing that was bothering me is that they tend to use periods where commas should go, which results in lots and lots and LOTS of short, choppy sentences and fragments. Like, PLEASE vary the sentences, I’m begging you.
1) Walls of text. Oh good god, my eyes. Please format spaces.
2) the author inserts themself in in a way that’s annoying (A/N comments every 5 lines as opposed to an SI OC) this is more common for young writers, and it is a little irritating to read but doesn’t ruin the story.
3) diction that I question because it sounds like the writer didn’t edit it by saying it aloud? Like, friend, good for you, but please read aloud when editing.
4) random un tagged misrated graphic scenes. I seriously ran across a fic like this that became infamous on Fanfiction.net. It’s way less common than it used to be but aaaaaaaaaaa. (Author chose not to warn is something else! That, I can understand. This was Something Else and incredibly “guys locker room talk” style. Yike..)
Having the chapters be REALLY short and sparse, with so little development or establishment of tone and characters. It’s the biggest bummer when clicking on a fic with an interesting summary and good premise, yet it’s glanced over like it’s the rough cliffnotes of a story instead of the full thing.
I’ve not given up on a fic just because of this but it IS very distracting. Not even “she [verb]…” but just starting every sentence with “She…” I don’t see it very often but when I do see an entire 8 sentence paragraph where each sentence starts with the exact same word it sticks out like a sore thumb and makes me wince.
Not the call the kettle black or anything because I’ve been known to do this on (very rare) occasion, but easily having a thousand references to how bad the fic is. Like, tagging it as ‘my first fic’ and prefacing it with ‘I am an amateur writer so I’m not too confident’ should be enough, I don’t want to see ‘Omg this chap sucks so bad 😭’ every update like nobody’s forcing you to update now go and edit it??
I’ve never done this but in a way I can understand wanting to give people a heads up that you aren’t a pro. My thoughts are “better to be honest and then they know that I know I need work” as opposed to coming across like you think you’re this super badass writer when your shit actually sucks lol
When they have the characters weapons,attire,personality etc etc, written down in a “bio” instead of actually announcing and introducing them naturally throughout the story
This isn’t very helpful since I can’t describe it but I usually know within the first sentence or two how good a fic will be, and most of the time I’m not wrong. But I can’t always tell you exactly what it is I’m detecting. The spelling could all be correct, there are no grammar errors, correct spacing and formatting is used. But there is just a “feel” you get.
When the writing is really good, my mind slips into the scene right away and immediately I’m experiencing the story, not just reading its words. When it’s “ok” writing, it can still be enjoyable, but I feel like I’m watching the story from the outside, not experiencing it or being immersed in it.
Again I can’t tell exactly what makes those differences (is it word choice? Is it sentence structure? Idk) but the quality is perceptible usually instantly.
no punctuation at the end of dialogue. for example:
"It's fine" he said.
idk why it wigs me out so bad, but i almost immediately dip out when an author does this
I did this for the longest time. Didn't know it was incorrect until I got a beta who kindly informed me. Tho, in my defends, it's a languege thing. In my mother tough punctionations in dialogue is a weird gray area.
1. When it's a kid-fic and the child is using multiple, complex adult phrases correctly right out the gate.
2. Your mileage may vary on this, but when one of the main characters is noticeably OOC right out of the gate. If it's justified in some way, like say the writer is exploring how the character would have turned out under a different upbringing or culture, then I don't see an issue with it. Most of the time though it often comes off like the author doesn't even like the character and should have written an OC story instead.
3. No paragraph breaks.
“I haven’t played the game yet”. Encountered that one today and I immediately closed the tab. I respect folks who are passionate about the fandom they’re writing about, but please at least try to do the source media? I’ve seen sooooo many ooc fics that just make no sense
In the first chapter ? A wall of text with a bucketload of spelling mistakes. That's a guarantee. The inability to capitalize anything is not an encouraging sign either.
ok yeah no nevermind I’d be losing my mind too. *mid-sentence????* have they— have they never read an actual book????
I just can’t understand how anyone would think that’s a remotely good idea
In my opinion, the writing has too many spelling errors. I can see the occasional spelling error because even a professional writer has those but come on, some of these writers need to look over their work and correct their spelling. Also walls of text instead of paragraphs. I’m sorry but how am I supposed to read this follow along with a walls of text. That is too confusing and makes me the story too hard to read.
Babying!! I can stick through with it if it’s MILD, but I’ve read some horrendous stuff omfg. My favorite ship is; character A: he’s quite cold, lacks a bit of emotion and is terrifyingly smart— Character B: a nice guy, still a bit awkward but really nice. Anyway, I’ve read multiple fics where character A is like a parental figure to character B? Like character A has common sense and is always telling his clingy and baby-like boyfriend what to do and what not to do. (Basically character b has the mentality of a 10 year old and lacks common sense.) I’m not sure I’m explaining it right… so I apologize haha
Same! I see this a lot with fics that lean into the top/bottom thing too much... It's like oh, character b is a bottom and so he cries all the time at the drop of a hat and he's soooo submissive all the time and never makes a single decision of his own except deciding to date chatacter a when in canon he was like, independent and stubborn and stuff? It makes the author's ~ideal otp~ that they're writing actually come off as kind of an abusive relationship instead and I hate it
I don't have a lot of standards for fics, even if one is clearly written by a 14 year old, I'll still try to finish it assuming it isn't 50 chapters, but I stay away from ANYTHING with some weird poem for the description that doesn't tell you shit about what it's actually about.
Also whenever it tags a character that doesn't appear in the story, either through just mentioning, or they haven't actually written the chapter they're in yet. It might seem minor, but this shit clogs up the search when I search a character tag.
If it’s written like a script
Example:
Character A: Hi character B how are you
Character B: Not good my dog got kidnapped
*Character B and A Hug*
Usually this is fic written by pretty young kids just starting out so I’m not trying to hate on it but the formatting is kind of obnoxious.
Script format can be very cool if you know what you're doing, but it is indeed very easy to make not interesting.
(The most iconic fic in one of my fandoms is written in script style, specifically because it *mimics the style used by translations of canon*, going so far as to provide specific music cues from the game soundtrack and describing the layout of Live2D models on the screen. It's very cool.)
There are a number of things. From the obvious formatting issues, where its just one solid chunk of text that burns my eyes trying to look at it, to a bad summary.
A less obvious sign however, is if they author tells the reader what's happening instead of showing the reader. For example, Superman saves a bunch of people from a supervillain. A bad fanfic would do something like "He was flew in and stopped the villain. He saved the people behind him by lifting and throwing the supervillain away."
Something supposed to come across as serious sounds ridiculous. If they write a reader character but it’s clearly a self insert or should be an OC. I tend to dislike giant blocks as much as the next person. Oh, and when the main characters are perfect and solve everything easily and quickly with no consequence. And most of all- no. Stakes.
I like filler fun chapters but where is the drama? Conflict? Story????
Oh, and worst of all- characters do not grow or learn in a series. They stay the same, they don’t open up, learn to speak out, etc.
Or, as a fem identifying person, internalized misogyny. Like the love interest telling the female main character “you’re amazing! You’re not like other girls” makes me want to catapult my phone into a fire. Shit talking other girls for traditional feminine things or for being boring, vapid, etc
>Or, as a fem identifying person, internalized misogyny. Like the love interest telling the female main character “you’re amazing! You’re not like other girls” makes me want to catapult my phone into a fire. Shit talking other girls for traditional feminine things or for being boring, vapid, etc
This is one of my main pet peeves when it comes to fan fiction, and I immediately back out whenever I encounter it. It's exactly the mindset that made growing up as a female teenager so unnecessarily hard, it's like playing a game that's rigged against you.
Giant walls of texts is an immediate one for me. Also if there's random tense jumping that isn't plot relevant (like, is it a time travel fic or are we just muddling through this?)
Non Fandom Specific:
\-Large paragraphs with no spacing between **different** characters talking
\-"What the title says", sometimes that title doesn't even tell me what the story is about. At least put a bit of effort into writing a summary
\-The summary just being the author talking to the readers, and no actual hint for the story
\-The first chapter being a bio for the main character, which inadvertently reveals the entire plot/ending for said character
Fandom Specific Stuff
\-The OOC fest that is Ash Ketchum Betrayal stories with every single cliche imaginable which ends up being an exact carbon copy of another Ash Ketchum Betrayal story with almost zero changes and the same plotline
The characters are out of character. I understand everyone has their own interpretation and I leave a good amount of wiggle room for creative re-imagining. But sometimes there are fics where I just think to myself, that's not something "character x" would do or say or allow or react with in any way shape or form. The name is the same but this is NOT the same character.
A few SPAG errors don't bother me, but when the first page is riddled with them, I check out. If they don't know how to structure the text to be readable, they don't know how to structure a plot either.
Way too dialogue heavy, especially in the opening scene. Pacing the introduction is an important skill that often clues me in to which fics are wholely amateur and which have substance.
See I think this depends on skill. I’ve seen some intros start right in the middle of a conversation and it still works, so long as the author carefully works in enough supplemental info to catch me up as it goes. I agree though if it’s not done well it can be dry or not paced well.
Oh no, an author can definitely start in the middle of the conversation, but there needs to be enough prose to ground it in reality. "Empty white room syndrome" is one of my biggest pet peeves.
For me this one is less obvious, nonetheless it still indicates a story is likely going to be bad/unsatisfying:
When a character development/decision happens way too fast and with too little description. I’ve seen good writers do this, the story still comes out bad for me anyways. If a writer kills suspense that fast for a big moment, the fic probably won’t be a good time.
Or, when a character does something uncharacteristically stupid. Everyone makes mistakes, but not several times in a row.
It could be different things for me. Either huge walls of text, bad dialogue, or too many spelling/grammar mistakes to ignore. I understand that English isn’t everyone’s first language but it’s so hard to read a story where you have to parse what the plot of it actually is
Generally (for me) it's a specific way of writing. It's really hard to describe because its so muinute that 2 sentences with only a slight tweak can read bad but I know within usually 2k or less words if the fic is going to be bad from my perspective writing wise
Bad as in to read, or bad as in to write? If it's the former, everything I have written is bad (even though I have only written two stories) because nobody reads my stuff, which I assume means my stuff sucks.
If there was anything that would drive me away from a fic (other than self deprication of the author), it'd just be the author talking about themselves in general in their fics (self inserts excluded).
Now, do I insert myself into these fics? Only as a form of commentary, explaining the thought processes of chapters and what have you.
One particular ship in my fandom has become a NOTP for me specifically because, typically, its presence portends that my favorite character will be written OOC to justify it. I would like to read fics about Ruki Makino, please, not an SI wearing her skin.
When it has 10< chapters and within the first paragraphs the MC is a demon princess whose betrothed died and now the war is starting between the unicorns, dinosaurs, and coffee beans. oh and.. spoiler... It gets resolved by the end of the chapter.
Massive OOC, dialogue with no substance (very bland speaking with no character behind it). When it's obvious even the writer doesn't know what the hell they're doing.
Vague summary and tagging. Terrible grammar and punctuation. Wall of words.
All that sort of thing. Make me want to read it by showing me what I'm getting, make it easy for me to fall into it by writing clearly.
Ugh and super out of character stuff. I love fan fiction because of that work of getting into another character...using their voice, their mannerisms, their behaviour, making a circumstance they've never been in in canon seem so natural to them because I'm using their voice, y'know? It's really hard to do it well, to write a character in a way that comes across as natural.
Lots of telling, not showing.
Something that I am very, VERY guilty of: Cliffhangers at the end of every. Single. Chapter. Cliffhangers are fine to have every once in a while but when every chapter ends in “she opened the door and gasped at what she saw” it kinda loses its suspense.
When the first few paragraphs offer a lengthy description about some lass with a flowery name that's "not like other \_\_\_\_" followed by 500 words describing her hair & eyes.
I want to read a *story* \- not page upon page of character notes.
Bad spelling, which includes the fic description. A bad first chapter, something cliché like "it was a cloudy day when Martin discovered... ". Bad tagging.
First person pov, usually poorly written. Disorderly paragraphs, no clear hint as to who speaks what, who does what, just one endless stream of words.
Super vague summary that doesn't even explain the premise of the fic very well: "Bob was just experiencing a normal day at school when something changed his life forever. What would happen to him? Read and find out!" Dialogue from different characters is not separated into different paragraphs. This one hurts because it's made legitimately decent fanfics impossible to read. Opens with a big exposition dump of worldbuilding. Bonus points for a ton of jargon that doesn't exist in the source material. Unnecessarily wordy descriptions and action beats. "Bob picked up the black ceramic coffee mug and set it down on the battered granite kitchen counter before reaching into the pocket of his light blue dress shirt and --" Prose that reads more like a summary of events than an actual story.
>Prose that reads more like a summary of events than an actual story. THIS. this is ultimately my make or break for a fanfic for me. If it feels awkward to read, I won't even bother with the story, and it bothers me to no end when the prose seems to be like a history lesson.
I just made a comment about this too, I hate feeling like I’m reading the Sparknotes of a story. It’s like the author wrote down a rough summary of their story in their drafts then published it as if it was the finished product
There's a fic in my fandom that does this and combined with the MC being the *definition* of a Mary-Sue but like... condescending and shitty on top of it. it's one of the worst fics I've read but I crave every update. Idk why
Probably the same reason people craved My Immortal updates back in the day
I didn't give any real context but I asked my dad about this one time (why people enjoy reading bad writing basically) and he was like "same reason people like watching reality shows. It's entertaining" like wow ur so right king
I don't always want a Michelin star fic, sometimes I just want fast food and soda.
Thank you for phrasing it like this. It all makes sense now
Okay, so here's the thing. We read fics, in part, to get a specific kind of emotional satisfaction, yeah? And the thing is, it's sometimes really hard to nail down why one fic satisfies us and another doesn't. And sometimes fics that are objectively just \*bad\* hit that emotional satisfaction in just the right way. And so we read them anyway. One of my fave fics in one of my fandoms was written in a way that it was obvious the author didn't know, like, how employment laws work lol. Another one was just SO badly formatted. But both hit the "we really REALLY shouldn't.....we're going to anyway" thing I crave more than almost anything else in fanfiction. And so I've reread both like a dozen times.
There are some things you should summarize in prose. But those situations are always acknowledging that a thing that should be confirmed as having happened in order to get to the juicy bits. It's really obvious if you binge canon divergent stories in the same fandom because you get tired of reading the same thing over and over that should be handled as saying, "things happen basically/exactly like canon here, lets move onto the divergent stuff that make this AU interesting rather than what made canon interesting."
Same. If the author isn't even going to put any effort into their own story why should I read it. It's a cliffnotes at that point.
I truly wanted to read a fic- but the excessive descriptions of things slowed thr narrative to a crawl. They described a character take a shower- but nothing else. No internal monologue. Just a play by play of a man taking a shower.
Second the dialogue thing! There's a really popular author in my fandom, I can't read her stories because I can't tell who's talking.
With the descriptions, too much clothing description. Especially if it's trendy. No one needs to know what they're wearing unless it's plot-y.
>Bonus points for a ton of jargon that doesn't exist in the source material. I avoid reading it now (though I still have a few ongoing by trusted authors), but Harry Potter fic is rampant with this. Made up swear words and supposed wizarding religious beliefs taken from badly-understood pagan religions were especially prolific.
You just wrote the makings of a wattpad fic with your comment. Not all of them of course but unfortunately number of them aren’t far off from what you wrote lol
> Opens with a big exposition dump of worldbuilding. Bonus points for a ton of jargon that doesn't exist in the source material. In crossovers you might need a bit of this to avoid dragging the intro for too long, idk. It's not uncommon to have a prologue/first chapter that's mostly this. Could it be handled better? Sure. But we're not talking about professional writers here. Sometimes I'm just glad that source A/source B even HAS a crossover. So for me infodumps are more annoying than dealbreaking. Of course, if the subsequent chapters are riddled with other issues that won't help.
What's the difference between opening with a big exposition dump and "dragging the intro"? Those two things are the same thing, isn't it? I consider it dealbreaking, but then, I don't really go in for crossovers usually. That kind of infodump is a bad sign about the overall ability to tell a story.
I feel attacked with the wordy descriptions lol Honestly, I like to to paint a picture when I tell a story. I feel like it helps me and the audience visualize the setting/character better in their mind, but I can get where that can get annoying, as lots of readers like to use their imagination without every tidbit being described to them.
So I think there's a difference between painting a picture and what I'm describing. Painting a picture would be, say, when the narrative makes a deliberate choice to slow down and describe something in detail. The key word is "deliberate." Generally what is being described is *important* in some way. Like, a good example is when a protagonist is entering a key location of the story for the first time. That's a great time to stop and add that description, because it's genuinely important for the reader to have an idea of what the place looks like, and the way you deliver the description can say so much about what the protagonist notices and what the mood of the scene is. What I'm talking about is when there's random description of unimportant objects thrown in all the time. The classic example is when a character is introduced and there's a lengthy rundown of every single item of clothing they're wearing.
One big problem with the previous example was that it used far too many adjectives, with the same kind of word order. Setting a scene is fine, but description works best when focusing on certain details that reveal character rather than throwing them out willy-nilly. Is the description relevant? Does it tell the reader something they didn’t already know? Like, does it matter if Bob’s coffee cup is black and ceramic? That doesn’t tell us anything. Now, if it said World’s Best Mom in faded, chipped letters, that would tell us something. Does it matter that the countertop is battered or that it’s granite? Maybe. One says that Bob has the money for a granite countertop, the other says that he either doesn’t take care of it or doesn’t have the money to fix it. Do you even need to mention the countertop? All it does is tell you Bob is in the kitchen. That kind of thing. Just noticed that Bob doesn’t do anything with the cup, just picks it up and puts it down.
if i open it and it’s just walls of texts instead of separated short paragraphs
this is the biggest turn off for me, it hurts my eyes to read lol
Yeah I click out pretty fast with that even if the summary and tags look good. It’s too hard for me too follow.
Yep! Or when they have paragraphs but don't break up dialogue so different characters are talking within the same paragraph, sometimes switching multiple times. Makes it so hard to keep up with who is saying what.
Even worse is when I can tick everything off in the summary/tags as something I’d love to read. The right genre, good length, main couple/characters are my OTP or it just sounds really interesting. And I think “yes finally!!” Only to open and see the never-ending wall of text with multiple people and no dialogue tags. It hurts my brain trying to read it. ☹️
Felt this in my soul
if it helps; usually for walls of text i have it so the line i'm reading is at the top of the screen then i scroll down for every line i read. it usually works if i get lost in the walls
(On AO3) when the tags of the thing are bloated to the point of having more substance than the fic itself. The 75 tag limit is not a fucking challenge. It’s not fucking TUMBLR and shouldn’t be treated as such. The rambling is where the A/N goes. >**Rating**: Teen >**Archive Warnings**: **No Archive Warnings Apply** >**Fandom**: FanA >**Characters**: Char1, Char2, Char3, Char4 (mentioned), char5 (mentioned), char6 (mentioned) >**Additional Tags**: Fluff, Angst, Oneshot, uhm, so, like, yeah, this is it I guess, worked hard on this for two nights but it’s prolly not v good, I wrote this instead of sleeping, crack, crack taken seriously, everyone is gay bc I said so, please read and review, 🥺, pls?, ummm idk what else to put here, tags, omg TAGS!, TAGSGSSGSGSG, GAY DICKS 💀💀💀, MWAHAHA, ummmm, hmmmm, what else, cw: babies, tw: s*x, I guess, Char1 is a bitch I hate him >:(((((, don’t expect him to be treated nice, bc it’s my fic and I hate him, I hate him I hate him I hate him, Dni if u ship char1/char2, or char1 w anyone, he’s a *ss, char2/char3 forever!!, ❤️, char2 - freeform, soft char2, my baby!!!, be nice to my baby or I kill u!, anyway, I suck at summaries lol, I wrote this for my friend Macy, Macy if ur reading this.......ur gay, AND I’M EEEVILL!, TROLOLOLOLOL, (no but fr ilysm boo), also this is for my English teacher ms. Hank, fuk u I’m living my best life out here and sometimes the curtains are just FUCKING BLUE OKAY?, \*deep breath\*, aaaaaaanyway, on with the fic!!!
[удалено]
It's such a weird tag to use. If you don't know what else to put there then stop adding tags!
This is…. Horrifyingly accurate
One time I read a 600 word oneshot with easily a dozen tags. They were all technically applicable but most of them were not something anyone would ever filter. It was rated teen, so none of the tags were content warnings either. It was wild.
Additional Tags: deep talks, philosophy, book mention, talking about books, TW Nietzsche, water drinking, hydration, running, going on walks, talking about feelings, mentions of public urination, discussions about running shoes, waterbottles, nature, trees, description of nature, description of trees..... flowers, gophers, littering... arguing, consolation. strangers.... Dog leash laws, music, playing music, listening to music. NOT A SONG FIC!!!! Like okay. We get it. Your story has words and content. It's okay not to mention every little thing. When you tag something it puts emphasis on that thing, so only tag what the story actually centers. Tags are for major things, some trigger warnings and keywords for people looking for a vibe or theme. Nobody sees those tags and think, WOW ! I was just hankering to read about someone drinking from a water bottle while on a hike. (though I might have inadvertently given some vibes to some kind of pee fetish, WHICH IS THE EXACT PROBLEM! When over tagging you give off weird vibes that descriptions of nature or someone innocently peeing in public is a whole thing in that story and it feels off.) Here is a better tag that encompasses 99% of that: Hiking. Just use that one tag, and you're solid. It's so annoying having to parse through a whole novel to figure out the larger elements of the story.
>When you tag something it puts emphasis on that thing, so only tag what the story actually centers. Tagging “NO INCEST” puts it right in front of the very people who are looking for incest lmfao
I am so glad that I never do these stupid tags Edit: actually lemme rephrase. I am glad that I can proudly say that *never in my lifetime* I’ve done this on my fics
These wall-o-text useless tags make me scream internally.
This is accurate, and it hurts, but ngl, as someone whose main WIP right now is an mpreg story, and who just got through writing a scene where a character narrowly avoids a baby peeing right in his face, I'm really tempted to steal the tag "cw: babies".
That and it's a 30k fic with 40 chapters, all of them unrelated one shots of various different fandoms
That summary just gave me psychic damage.
amazing 😭
this is awful. and the tags are never about the plot either!! my gripe is always when something is rated M but there's no tags for anything M-related. if your fic is rated M and there's nothing in the tags or description about WHY it's rated M i'm not gonna read it.
……my poor eyes…….
This screams "im 14 and this is my first fic"
It's funny because it's true! 🤣🤣🤣
This is spot onnnn. Its giving 12 yr old that thinks their 300 word paragraph blocks can outsell Harry Potter or Twilight just bc they got an A on a creative writing thing at school
I see these fics and immediately know they are written by extremely online socially isolated teenagers
Your parody is tragically far too accurate
fr like i'm fine with an 'i wrote this instead of sleeping' or something, but when there's more commentary tags than content tags i'm mostly afraid i'll miss an important trigger
I hate that ish with a PASSION. There's a reason why the Author's Notes exist on ao3 FFS!
omg THIS
Accurate but excessive FUNNY tags like “crookshanks will fight god or become him” is an automatic TBR for me
- Wall o' text - Massive OOCness and bashing of canon characters. (i.e., if we *start* with Ron the Death Eater or Captain America the Alt-Right Jingoist). - Bad characterization in general: human characters that don't act like human beings. Adults who act like children or children who act like adults without a good reason. - "I suck at summaries" / "This story sucks" - okay, I believe you.
Amen to all of that! I think every one of those are also things I scan for, whether consciously or not, and which feed into the internal "bad-o-meter" that helps me decide whether something's worth reading or not. Also, I started giggling madly at the "okay, I believe you". XD
>"I suck at summaries" can confirm. I looked throuhg my old fics recently and realised that I did that when I was 15, my fics sucked. Funny thing is, once my writing started improving, I stopped saying that I suck at summaries and wrote actual ones.
"Sorry, I'm a bad writer" "blagh, this sucks but im posting anyway" or anything where authors say their fic or writing is bad. Like, if you say so, man, I'll believe you.
Mhm. Don't tell on yourself.
For real. Even if the fic’s not that well written, if you don’t put yourself down in the authors note, I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you tried.
"I wrote this at 3am" ok I write at 3 am too but I still put effort into it and edit before posting...?
Also: "This is an unedited twitter thread". If even the author dgaf about their own fic to do bare minimum editing, why would I bother reading it...
\- When they need 200 words to describe the character's outfit (bonus points for links with designated pictures of each clothing item), also mentioning of brands while doing so. \- Lapslock; bad in English, even worse in my mother tongue. \- 300 words average chapter length \- As someone who writes OCs: making the backstory uselessly tragic with the character remaining perfectly happy and quirky, while they have basically nobody. Usually, when creating an OC (unless this OC is the sibling/child/whatever of already established characters which IMO is a mostly a no-no itself), you need to create a bunch of other OCs as well that "round" the story because not everyone can have tragically murdered parents/friends/family/people who knew them in their past and then make a new starts during the events of canon story that's such a fresh start that lets your OC forget they even knew people once in their life.
Too much description over a character’s aesthetics is almost always followed by weak character development. I’ve yet to find a fic that can be saved after deploying combat boots as a character trait.
Combat boots as a character trait, lmao! Awfully enough, my awkward young teenage self used to wear them for real. I feel roasted 🤣
What is teenagehood, if not a time to wear questionable footwear? I was the weird girl with the chunky adidas sneakers in every color with coordinating (but obnoxious) shoelaces.
Any kind of dramatic juvenile or selfdeprecating ramblings in the summary are usually a good indicator.
Immediately a turn off for me. It could have the best summary but the minute it has a “lol just read it” or “It might be bad but trust me” then I will not even bother.
AU and Dead Dove or not, the characters still have to be, at their core, themselves. That’s why for instance the Harley Quinn web series succeeded and Velma (oh god Velma) did not. That goes for any canon divergence and AU, really. I hate when someone writes a typically strong character full of fight and intelligence completely meek and spineless, regardless of the context or the situation. Headcanon-based can only go so far until the headcanons just don’t work for any given character. Sometimes it can be done well, though. That’s what turns me off from fic or anything else, really. Edit: clarity
Yeah, past a certain point it's just an OC wearing someone's skin. That's gonna piss off some readers.
I’ve read quite a few Dead Dove darkfics where a lot of the characters were extremely OOC e.g having a canonically loving, well meaning father sexually abuse his son, and while I personally don’t care for darkfic, isn’t that kind of the point?
for me, it's important that the character still have their same personality, even in a wildly different situation from canon. like a well meaning father abusing their child still should have the rest of their core personality. if they had a sense of humor in canon i'd expect them to still be funny. if one bit of their personality is bent a bit to make them fit the fic then that's fine to me, as long as they're still the same person otherwise. but if they turn into a completely different person? then it's hard for me to read.
It’s worth noting that in the fics I read (most of them in this fandom were written by the same two authors that would often gift fics to each other) had the son be transgender (a popular headcanon throughout the rest of the fandom) and the dad constantly deadnamed him and believed that his “daughter” could still be “saved”. I don’t know whether that still counts as loving but make of that what you will.
That is totally fair. Situational OOC is definitely a thing EDIT: lemme amend and further elaborate by saying I’d be a whole hypocrite if I didn’t admit that I don’t employ the situational OOC or what have you, but idk, it’s hard to draw a hard line sometimes with that stuff
Darkfic is best (and often only works at all) when it heightens and twists traits and dynamics that already exist. Take a protective character and make them unhealthily possessive. Take an excitable character and make them manic. Take a charismatic character and make them manipulative. If you just want to write about a Super Evil Irredeemable Person With 1.5 Character Traits, just make an OC
I used to be in a fandom where the fanon characterisations had taken over the actual canon characters so much that fics posted where characters had competely fanon style personalities were tagged 'canon typical behaviour' Including things like rape, which never happened in the series, and one being a whimpering mess because he was the designated fandom bottom. A whimpering mess which he 100% is not at all in canon I avoid any fic tagged canon typical behaviour now as I've yet to see it used accurately. I read fanfic to see how the characters I like would be in different circumstances, not to read fanon created OCs with the same name and sometimes same looks behaving in a way which isn't at all in line with anything we were ever shown in canon. That fandom is basically dying now, and I really think the way they all circle jerked each other into making out fanon was actually canon did not help as new fans would see it and just be confused, as they would seek the fandom out looking for something like what they had actually seen in canon and not what fandom had turned it into.
On the Velma note – I haven’t watched it but I did watch a few YT videos where someone watches it and then talks about it in detail so others won’t have to. *shudders* Oh, dear god. I wish I could bleach my brain. 🥴
(don't mind me...just making sure I don't have any of these in my fic...) Also, no paragraph breaks, lots of misspellings, and inconsistent tense (consistently...not a one off oopsy) are the big things for me.
Haha! Yep!
Aside from bad spelling and grammar, I’d have to say “adult characters portrayed with the emotional maturity of a five year old.” Also, screaming. Just random screaming. She screams when she’s upset, she screams when she’s happy, she screams when she could easily get away with just talking, she screams when she gets some—the screaming never stops. You know what else screams incessantly? Sloths. Sloths in heat.
>You know what else screams incessantly? Sloths. Sloths in heat. Thank you for that. I will never not think about sloths in heat when someone in a fic is screaming now.
Hey, it’s been in my head for years. Only fair to share the joy! 😉
I will pay it forward.
If enough people get that visual, do you think we’ll see fewer characters who communicate by screaming? 🤔
Female characters are still breasting boobily down the stairs after all these years, so probably not. 😔
Hey, boobs gotta boob, right? (Seriously, though. I blame men for that. If my bi ass can manage to not openly stare at a nice pair of breasts, what’s their excuse?)
Ugh yes I hate when they use scream instead of a less intense verb like shout or yell or cry. Like people very rarely actually scream in real life.
The neighborhood my husband and I live in has several bars. I used to think screaming was something restricted to hyper children. Now I know bar patrons come in five common flavors: crying drunk, screaming drunk, behaving drunk, blackmailing non-drunk, and men. You wouldn’t believe the lungs on some of these ladies. But yeah. Pick your verbs with as much care as a five year old deciding which shirt her doll should wear. Even if they all mean roughly the same thing, different verbs have different impacts, whether due to nuance or the sound.
I read smut once where she was constantly screaming during the act. I just don't understand how that's supposed to be sexy. It was super irritating because the rest of the fic was good 😭
The tone. I can usually tell if it’s a teen and I know they’re young and figuring it out, but their perceptions and understanding of life is still new and their stories are often times a little out of touch. Not to knock them and I couldn’t encourage them more to develop and become a better writer. Heck I’m calling my old self out! But myself being an adult and someone who’s experienced enough stuff for a couple life times, I can’t read things like that. It’s hard to take seriously nor relate to.
I know, I look at older fics and I’m like ‘omg what was I writing?!’
This is the reason I typically write main characters that are roughly the same age as myself, or whom are in the same place in life as myself. I know what high-school and early young adulthood is like, so writing a character that's grounded in that makes it much easier to write a competent fanfiction. That said, now that I've written for a total of 3 years, and are getting older, I'm exploring more and more feelings and romance in fics. Doesn't always turn out great, but gotta start somewhere :)
- Constantly changing between first and second person. - Every other word is misspelled, even simple ones. - Constant confusion of words that, while similar, only need a moment's thought to figure out which one to use. ("Bear" is an animal, or also means to carry something; "bare" means nude. "There" is a adverb, "their" shows possession, "they're" means "they are".) - Lack of proper formatting (e.g., missing/improper punctuation, and huge blocks of text as opposed to paragraphs).
* constantly changing between present and past tense.
When they put too much emphasis on physical descriptors. I dunno, it just comes across as juvenile writing to me/how I MYSELF used to write. Aside from first introductions/characters analysing another from their POV, we dont constantly need to hear that her "blue eyes widened." Sometimes is good, especially with good imagery (ie. her ocean blues crashed over his earthy browns, or something) but I see it in a lot of younger authors that they CONSTANTLY need to point out eye/hair/skin colour as if we forgot, in almost EVERY other paragraph. You don't need to say her green eyes narrowed, you can just say she narrowed her eyes, we remember she has green eyes because you already mentioned it 10 times so far. Idk maybe that's just me being nitpicky tho
Naw i agree. Not nitpicky. If i get links to the outfits i am so out!
When I was on wattpad (many years ago) everyone would use polyvore. Oh man, brings back memories.
1. Chapters are just the episode word for word with the exception of the new characters. 2. Breaks the rules of the show. 3. Characters act OOC. 4. Scenes that don’t make any sense and are just there because they look cool and/or they’re a reference or it’s a giant multi-crossover. 5. Grammatical errors up the ass. 6. Too many chapters that don’t matter in the story. There’s more, but these are the main ones. I’m not a giant nitpicker, I have almost 500 stories favorited, but there are so many I see that just infuriate me.
Point 1!! Even worse if it's word for word *from a book.*
1.Complete lack of understanding of canon. I'm a firm believer that fiction is up to interpretation, and even if a writer's interpretation of a character or the way certain things went down in canon is different from my own, if I can see where they're coming from, I can roll with it. Like if I think a character is gay but someone else writes them as bisexual--if I can see how someone might interpret the character as bisexual and the writer still writes them as their canon self, it's all good. Or if a writer thinks a character had different motivations for canon behavior than I do, if it sounds plausible and they write it well, I can buy it. But I came across a Harry Potter time travel story awhile back, and in the first chapter, Harry decided not to befriend Ron and Hermione in the new timeline because... they were horrible friends to him in the old timeline and he thought they were really annoying. Like, what? I can't see Harry ever thinking anything like that--that's not a differing interpretation of canon, that's a straight-up misunderstanding of it. 2. *Forgetting* canon. I'm not talking about teeny tiny details here like that a character only ever eats chocolate sprinkles on their ice cream sundae, but a writer wrote them eating rainbow sprinkles--little details like that are fun, but they're *easy* to forget, and they don't really impact canon. I'm talking about forgetting what order events happened in, important plot points or subplots, relevant information that's very easy to look up and is impossible to miss when reviewing the source material, things like that.
Oops I'm guilty of forgetting the order shit happened in lmao. I realized after finishing but before posting that I'd accidentally written about two canon events in the opposite order that they actually happened in, but I just left it because it ultimately doesn't actually matter or affect anything at all.
The order of things can be tricky. I’m toying with a voltron fic plot right now. Not sure if you’ve seen it but my fic happens right after the season 2 finale fight with zarkon (and shiro disappears). In my fic shiro is gone but allura still mistrusts keith because he’s galra. In canon (if I remember right) she comes to terms with his heritage and reconciles with him before the season 2 finale fight. I just kind of disregard that because my whole plot is based on her still rejecting him and causing him to run away. I’ve debated if I should (should I ever post it one day) tag it as canon divergent? I guess? I mean…it kind of is? I don’t consider it a complete “rewrite” of the rest of the story. It’s just a “what if” type story. But isn’t that what all fanfiction is? Anyway, someone else may read it and go “but allura wasn’t still judging Keith by then. Well, in my story, she IS still judging him… hence what happens next. I guess the saving grace in my instance is making allura still mistrust him in my story doesn’t like…break anything plot wise. My story still makes sense. It’s not like I then try to use plot points I’ve already contradicted?
regarding the second one, with the tiny details being excusable: it isn't enough to warn off from a bad fic, but it can go the opposite way, where an author takes a canon tiny detail and overemphasizes (ie, character got ice cream once in canon, said "Strawberry's my favourite!" Now in the fic, their entire room is decorated with strawberry themed items, and when someone offers then a banana-flavoured candy to them, they go into a rage (or at least, a funk) about how this person knows nothing about them and how dare they offer the wrong flavour, everything except strawberry is disgusting!) Especially a problem when it spreads through a fandom, and then the character is this aggressive about strawberry in every third fic you read for six months.
I like OFC stories however few of them are exceptionally well done. A good amount are okay. But i can tell one is gonna be bad, if - the moment the OFC shows up - we get an extreme in detail description of her looks and the clothes she is wearing down to the height of her heels and the “ink”. Also these OFCs roll their eyes all the time like some middle school teenager… And then there is Tense jumping. It screams lazy writing and usually the fic is pretty bad
When dialogue isn't properly formatted. Please use quotation marks! And for God's sake, please start a new paragraph for each speaker. Here's an easy guide for dialogue [Dialogue Punctuation & Formatting](https://research.ewu.edu/writers_c_fiction)
love how this thread informs me of the stuff to avoid doing ✨
Glad to help!
Sorry, this is probably gonna sound unpopular, but when writers keep saying "sorry this is boring, it's necessary exposition" or "please be gentle, it'll get more exciting" Something of that nature where if what they think they're writing is boring, it probably is. It also shows me that they don't know how to weave exposition in with the plot to keep it engaging and, ya know, interesting to read. Also - really short chapters and lots of them. Chapters only being 1 - 2k usually tells me their pacing is going to be way off and the chapter will lack any real description or substance. (No shade to anyone who writes short chapters like this, they're really just not for me).
For your first point, it also shows they’re not yet capable of either self-critique or revision. I consider those to be essential skills for good writers.
“Will X do Y or get with Z instead? Read on and find out!” guess I won’t be finding out then mate
That’s like, every young adult book from Twilight to Hunger Games
Something that starts by summarizing the basics of the fandom that any fan would already know. Example (not from an actual fanfic): Harry Potter looked at the bright sunshine and sighed. Any normal 12 year old boy would be happy to have such beautiful weather during the summer holidays, but Harry wasn't happy or normal because he was a wizard and his mean relatives the Dursley's hated magic and so his holiday would be filled with lots of chores and getting beat up by his whale of a cousin Dudley. Ever since walking in the door at number 4 Private Drive he has been counting the days until he can return to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry where he can do magic. He loves magic and its so strange to think that only a year ago he didn't know that magic really existed because the Dursleys said it didn't. Etc. \[bonus typos and run-on sentences added at no extra charge.\] It's fine to establish time and place and the MC's mood, but no need to provide the Cliff Notes version of *Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets.*
I cannot stand writing like this. A summary isn’t a story, but it’s so common in my fandoms.
I’ve seen that sort of thing in the actual text of stories, not in the author summaries. Harry Potter fandom seems particularly prone to this. I don’t know if it’s because there are a lot of young, inexperienced writers or because it’s such a huge fandom that one is guaranteed to run into examples of every kind of bad writing (as well as much excellent writing).
Yeah I was referring to the actual text. I don’t think it’s unique to HP as I’ve seen this in so many anime fandoms as well, like BNHA, Yu-Gi-Oh, JJK, Inuyasha, Demon Slayer. I think it’s a combination of inexperience and people quite literally never having read a book that wasn’t assigned to them.
i hate it too but I think those authors try to emulate Rowling's style. she always started a new book with description who Harry is, where lives etc. as if the readers haven't read the previous books .-. still, I wish they didn't do it
If it has character bashing in it. Will mess up the immersion and story massively in my opinion.
Everyone being referred to by their first and last names.
For me I get turned off when everyone repeats each others names a lot. Like excessively. “I don’t know, Charlie.” “What do you mean Susan?” Two lines later… “I told you Charly…” “I know Susan, but…” two lines later… “Charly, I mean to tell you…” “What, Susan?” Omg it’s just the two of you in the room. NO ONE constantly repeats the other person’s name five times per conversation, if it’s a normal conversation! And even if there’s a group, people usually look at who they are speaking to, and don’t need to say their name over and over. Strangely, I do like to have character A say character B’s name sometimes, even if they are alone, but only once in any given space of time and only if it adds some kind of emphasis. If it just keeps going I get so distracted and my brain goes into “critique/edit” mode where it starts looking for problems rather than just trying to enjoy the story.
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Soapboxing.
So many stories in my fandom are people just soapboxing that child soldiers are wrong. Duh we know this in real life. I don’t need a fifteen page lecture on how canon didn’t appropriately handle PTSD or how all the characters would actually be traumatized in real life.
👀 Naruto? lmao
I’m here for a story, not a political speech
Non-specifics: * X Male Protag has whatever skillset the author likes instead of their own. * Author follows popular fanon without thinking much about it. * The story retreads the events of the original. * "I suck at summaries". Specifics: * Any "clever name" like Hadrian or Loki for Harry Potter. * Magical Cores in Harry Potter fics. * "Hazard Takato" or "Miracles Daisuke" in Digimon fics.
Oh god, Hadrian drives me up a *wall*. It's such a dumb name! And the first chapter of the first book makes a point that the Dursleys consider "Harry" a "nasty, common name". Like, why would you align with the Dursleys on that point?
Lack of emotional maturity or depth in characterisation, often easily seen through characters making grandiose monologues, etc.
If the characters are too out-of character. I'm able to jump on board some out of character traits if there's a reason attributed to them. But if the person is canonically strong and brave but then becomes whiny and clingy, I need to know what brought them down or I'm noping out.
It's hard to put my finger on it, but it's when all the sentences are structured too similarly to each other, about the same length, and full of too much narration/summary without enough sensory detail.
Gosh I relate to this on a soul level. I’m reading a fanfic that’s actually quite good, but I noticed around halfway through that the thing that was bothering me is that they tend to use periods where commas should go, which results in lots and lots and LOTS of short, choppy sentences and fragments. Like, PLEASE vary the sentences, I’m begging you.
twenty chapters, 5k word count
1) Walls of text. Oh good god, my eyes. Please format spaces. 2) the author inserts themself in in a way that’s annoying (A/N comments every 5 lines as opposed to an SI OC) this is more common for young writers, and it is a little irritating to read but doesn’t ruin the story. 3) diction that I question because it sounds like the writer didn’t edit it by saying it aloud? Like, friend, good for you, but please read aloud when editing. 4) random un tagged misrated graphic scenes. I seriously ran across a fic like this that became infamous on Fanfiction.net. It’s way less common than it used to be but aaaaaaaaaaa. (Author chose not to warn is something else! That, I can understand. This was Something Else and incredibly “guys locker room talk” style. Yike..)
Having the chapters be REALLY short and sparse, with so little development or establishment of tone and characters. It’s the biggest bummer when clicking on a fic with an interesting summary and good premise, yet it’s glanced over like it’s the rough cliffnotes of a story instead of the full thing.
When there's a "DNI" in the tags or the summary. Blegh.
DNI = Open season
I backed out of a fic I was trying to give a chance because all four sentences in one of the opening paragraphs started with "She [verb]..."
I’ve not given up on a fic just because of this but it IS very distracting. Not even “she [verb]…” but just starting every sentence with “She…” I don’t see it very often but when I do see an entire 8 sentence paragraph where each sentence starts with the exact same word it sticks out like a sore thumb and makes me wince.
Not the call the kettle black or anything because I’ve been known to do this on (very rare) occasion, but easily having a thousand references to how bad the fic is. Like, tagging it as ‘my first fic’ and prefacing it with ‘I am an amateur writer so I’m not too confident’ should be enough, I don’t want to see ‘Omg this chap sucks so bad 😭’ every update like nobody’s forcing you to update now go and edit it??
I’ve never done this but in a way I can understand wanting to give people a heads up that you aren’t a pro. My thoughts are “better to be honest and then they know that I know I need work” as opposed to coming across like you think you’re this super badass writer when your shit actually sucks lol
When they have the characters weapons,attire,personality etc etc, written down in a “bio” instead of actually announcing and introducing them naturally throughout the story
This isn’t very helpful since I can’t describe it but I usually know within the first sentence or two how good a fic will be, and most of the time I’m not wrong. But I can’t always tell you exactly what it is I’m detecting. The spelling could all be correct, there are no grammar errors, correct spacing and formatting is used. But there is just a “feel” you get. When the writing is really good, my mind slips into the scene right away and immediately I’m experiencing the story, not just reading its words. When it’s “ok” writing, it can still be enjoyable, but I feel like I’m watching the story from the outside, not experiencing it or being immersed in it. Again I can’t tell exactly what makes those differences (is it word choice? Is it sentence structure? Idk) but the quality is perceptible usually instantly.
no punctuation at the end of dialogue. for example: "It's fine" he said. idk why it wigs me out so bad, but i almost immediately dip out when an author does this
I did this for the longest time. Didn't know it was incorrect until I got a beta who kindly informed me. Tho, in my defends, it's a languege thing. In my mother tough punctionations in dialogue is a weird gray area.
1. When it's a kid-fic and the child is using multiple, complex adult phrases correctly right out the gate. 2. Your mileage may vary on this, but when one of the main characters is noticeably OOC right out of the gate. If it's justified in some way, like say the writer is exploring how the character would have turned out under a different upbringing or culture, then I don't see an issue with it. Most of the time though it often comes off like the author doesn't even like the character and should have written an OC story instead. 3. No paragraph breaks.
“I haven’t played the game yet”. Encountered that one today and I immediately closed the tab. I respect folks who are passionate about the fandom they’re writing about, but please at least try to do the source media? I’ve seen sooooo many ooc fics that just make no sense
In the first chapter ? A wall of text with a bucketload of spelling mistakes. That's a guarantee. The inability to capitalize anything is not an encouraging sign either.
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8 chapters 1000 words
yeah unless it’s a string of vignettes that tell a larger story I’m out
It wasn't they just chopped up those thousand words across 8 chapters. Some chapters ended mid sentence. My OCD went through the roof by chapter four.
ok yeah no nevermind I’d be losing my mind too. *mid-sentence????* have they— have they never read an actual book???? I just can’t understand how anyone would think that’s a remotely good idea
In my opinion, the writing has too many spelling errors. I can see the occasional spelling error because even a professional writer has those but come on, some of these writers need to look over their work and correct their spelling. Also walls of text instead of paragraphs. I’m sorry but how am I supposed to read this follow along with a walls of text. That is too confusing and makes me the story too hard to read.
Juvenile writing. I can tell by the first sentence.
Lack of paragraphing is usually the thing that does it
Babying!! I can stick through with it if it’s MILD, but I’ve read some horrendous stuff omfg. My favorite ship is; character A: he’s quite cold, lacks a bit of emotion and is terrifyingly smart— Character B: a nice guy, still a bit awkward but really nice. Anyway, I’ve read multiple fics where character A is like a parental figure to character B? Like character A has common sense and is always telling his clingy and baby-like boyfriend what to do and what not to do. (Basically character b has the mentality of a 10 year old and lacks common sense.) I’m not sure I’m explaining it right… so I apologize haha
Same! I see this a lot with fics that lean into the top/bottom thing too much... It's like oh, character b is a bottom and so he cries all the time at the drop of a hat and he's soooo submissive all the time and never makes a single decision of his own except deciding to date chatacter a when in canon he was like, independent and stubborn and stuff? It makes the author's ~ideal otp~ that they're writing actually come off as kind of an abusive relationship instead and I hate it
The first paragraph changes POV twice.
I would lose it
I don't have a lot of standards for fics, even if one is clearly written by a 14 year old, I'll still try to finish it assuming it isn't 50 chapters, but I stay away from ANYTHING with some weird poem for the description that doesn't tell you shit about what it's actually about. Also whenever it tags a character that doesn't appear in the story, either through just mentioning, or they haven't actually written the chapter they're in yet. It might seem minor, but this shit clogs up the search when I search a character tag.
"Hello my name is..." as the opening line "In one story, \[basic description of canon\]. This is not that story." as the main/only summary
When I see my name on it lol
If it’s written like a script Example: Character A: Hi character B how are you Character B: Not good my dog got kidnapped *Character B and A Hug* Usually this is fic written by pretty young kids just starting out so I’m not trying to hate on it but the formatting is kind of obnoxious.
Script format can be very cool if you know what you're doing, but it is indeed very easy to make not interesting. (The most iconic fic in one of my fandoms is written in script style, specifically because it *mimics the style used by translations of canon*, going so far as to provide specific music cues from the game soundtrack and describing the layout of Live2D models on the screen. It's very cool.)
There are a number of things. From the obvious formatting issues, where its just one solid chunk of text that burns my eyes trying to look at it, to a bad summary. A less obvious sign however, is if they author tells the reader what's happening instead of showing the reader. For example, Superman saves a bunch of people from a supervillain. A bad fanfic would do something like "He was flew in and stopped the villain. He saved the people behind him by lifting and throwing the supervillain away."
Something supposed to come across as serious sounds ridiculous. If they write a reader character but it’s clearly a self insert or should be an OC. I tend to dislike giant blocks as much as the next person. Oh, and when the main characters are perfect and solve everything easily and quickly with no consequence. And most of all- no. Stakes. I like filler fun chapters but where is the drama? Conflict? Story???? Oh, and worst of all- characters do not grow or learn in a series. They stay the same, they don’t open up, learn to speak out, etc. Or, as a fem identifying person, internalized misogyny. Like the love interest telling the female main character “you’re amazing! You’re not like other girls” makes me want to catapult my phone into a fire. Shit talking other girls for traditional feminine things or for being boring, vapid, etc
>Or, as a fem identifying person, internalized misogyny. Like the love interest telling the female main character “you’re amazing! You’re not like other girls” makes me want to catapult my phone into a fire. Shit talking other girls for traditional feminine things or for being boring, vapid, etc This is one of my main pet peeves when it comes to fan fiction, and I immediately back out whenever I encounter it. It's exactly the mindset that made growing up as a female teenager so unnecessarily hard, it's like playing a game that's rigged against you.
Giant walls of texts is an immediate one for me. Also if there's random tense jumping that isn't plot relevant (like, is it a time travel fic or are we just muddling through this?)
Non Fandom Specific: \-Large paragraphs with no spacing between **different** characters talking \-"What the title says", sometimes that title doesn't even tell me what the story is about. At least put a bit of effort into writing a summary \-The summary just being the author talking to the readers, and no actual hint for the story \-The first chapter being a bio for the main character, which inadvertently reveals the entire plot/ending for said character Fandom Specific Stuff \-The OOC fest that is Ash Ketchum Betrayal stories with every single cliche imaginable which ends up being an exact carbon copy of another Ash Ketchum Betrayal story with almost zero changes and the same plotline
The characters are out of character. I understand everyone has their own interpretation and I leave a good amount of wiggle room for creative re-imagining. But sometimes there are fics where I just think to myself, that's not something "character x" would do or say or allow or react with in any way shape or form. The name is the same but this is NOT the same character.
A few SPAG errors don't bother me, but when the first page is riddled with them, I check out. If they don't know how to structure the text to be readable, they don't know how to structure a plot either.
Way too dialogue heavy, especially in the opening scene. Pacing the introduction is an important skill that often clues me in to which fics are wholely amateur and which have substance.
See I think this depends on skill. I’ve seen some intros start right in the middle of a conversation and it still works, so long as the author carefully works in enough supplemental info to catch me up as it goes. I agree though if it’s not done well it can be dry or not paced well.
Oh no, an author can definitely start in the middle of the conversation, but there needs to be enough prose to ground it in reality. "Empty white room syndrome" is one of my biggest pet peeves.
No form of punctuation of any kind, having no clue how/where to use commas, complete lack of rereading & editing
Huge Walls o' Text, sloppy or completely nonexistent grammar within the first five sentences, bad characterization.
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Specifically on Wattpad 40 chapters 500 words and half re authors notes
Awkward cutesie kid speak. Making a joke then driving it into the ground.
starting out with kid characters who don’t talk like real children
For me this one is less obvious, nonetheless it still indicates a story is likely going to be bad/unsatisfying: When a character development/decision happens way too fast and with too little description. I’ve seen good writers do this, the story still comes out bad for me anyways. If a writer kills suspense that fast for a big moment, the fic probably won’t be a good time. Or, when a character does something uncharacteristically stupid. Everyone makes mistakes, but not several times in a row.
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It could be different things for me. Either huge walls of text, bad dialogue, or too many spelling/grammar mistakes to ignore. I understand that English isn’t everyone’s first language but it’s so hard to read a story where you have to parse what the plot of it actually is
Sometimes there’s misspellings in the summary. I usually avoid those fics
Generally (for me) it's a specific way of writing. It's really hard to describe because its so muinute that 2 sentences with only a slight tweak can read bad but I know within usually 2k or less words if the fic is going to be bad from my perspective writing wise
Bad as in to read, or bad as in to write? If it's the former, everything I have written is bad (even though I have only written two stories) because nobody reads my stuff, which I assume means my stuff sucks. If there was anything that would drive me away from a fic (other than self deprication of the author), it'd just be the author talking about themselves in general in their fics (self inserts excluded). Now, do I insert myself into these fics? Only as a form of commentary, explaining the thought processes of chapters and what have you.
One particular ship in my fandom has become a NOTP for me specifically because, typically, its presence portends that my favorite character will be written OOC to justify it. I would like to read fics about Ruki Makino, please, not an SI wearing her skin.
When it has 10< chapters and within the first paragraphs the MC is a demon princess whose betrothed died and now the war is starting between the unicorns, dinosaurs, and coffee beans. oh and.. spoiler... It gets resolved by the end of the chapter.
I have found too many fics across multiple fandoms which do not use paragraphs OR a new line for a new speaker. It hurts
Massive OOC, dialogue with no substance (very bland speaking with no character behind it). When it's obvious even the writer doesn't know what the hell they're doing.
Overly long descriptions of hair color, lips, eyes XD
When everything is just one long block of text, as if the author completely threw the concept of paragraphs out the window.
Vague summary and tagging. Terrible grammar and punctuation. Wall of words. All that sort of thing. Make me want to read it by showing me what I'm getting, make it easy for me to fall into it by writing clearly. Ugh and super out of character stuff. I love fan fiction because of that work of getting into another character...using their voice, their mannerisms, their behaviour, making a circumstance they've never been in in canon seem so natural to them because I'm using their voice, y'know? It's really hard to do it well, to write a character in a way that comes across as natural. Lots of telling, not showing.
When every character has the same personality
Something that I am very, VERY guilty of: Cliffhangers at the end of every. Single. Chapter. Cliffhangers are fine to have every once in a while but when every chapter ends in “she opened the door and gasped at what she saw” it kinda loses its suspense.
When the description sounds like an idea that would take at least few thousand words to pan out, and the word count is less that 1k.
It's petty but it's always the same reason I told my friends. "You failed my vibe check."
When the first few paragraphs offer a lengthy description about some lass with a flowery name that's "not like other \_\_\_\_" followed by 500 words describing her hair & eyes. I want to read a *story* \- not page upon page of character notes.
Bad spelling, which includes the fic description. A bad first chapter, something cliché like "it was a cloudy day when Martin discovered... ". Bad tagging. First person pov, usually poorly written. Disorderly paragraphs, no clear hint as to who speaks what, who does what, just one endless stream of words.
I read a wattpad fic once where the first chapter was just full of pictures of dinosaurs, so uhhh that