Me? Anal-retentive?
Don't you hate it when you know a fic is going to get deleted but you can't stop yourself from leaving a huge-ass concrit anyway? Maybe it'll help someone, even if it's only me.
A Dangerous Journey by
River of Shadows
I hate to say this, but that's not a story; that's a fic summary, and having those in the place of stories is forbidden on ffnet. I'd also second everything the previous reviewer said about fic whoring and the lack of summary in the summary.
If you really are concerned with the amount of reviews, then by all means, sit on your fic and don't publish until you get them. Just don't expect them to come quickly if you don't give us any clue as to what your story is about when we're browsing, don't give us more than an info dump in the fic itself, and then publicly beg for reviews. Just think Field of Dreams: build a good fic, and the reviews will come. No begging necessary.
(Conversely, if you build the quesstenial Suefic with an underage savior with a name from British myth sent away for her own protection to someplace no one in Middle-earth is capable of reaching as the heroine, grammar and spelling mistakes from "summery" to stripping with a character's unknown posession, a note mentioning an eariler deletion and the need for reviews, and a piece of telling instead of showing barely long enough to qualify for drabble status with bonus lack of narrative logic, you tend to get very long rambling sentences from someone who should know better.)
Anyway, you can improve. We all can, with practice, but I'd like to see just what you're capable of, and this piece hardly seems like the stunning work you'd like to leave your readers so that they'd want to review and praise it with great praise.
First off, taking down the fic to check for grammar and spelling sounds like a good idea. Plurals don't need apostrophes, and you've got a few homophone issues to work through. (Bare/bear, summery/summary, etc.) A bit more liberal use of the comma wouldn't hurt, either.
If you do want to continue with the "girl falls into Middle-earth" format, that's cool, but I'd love to see some logic put into it. There aren't any languages shared between Arda and modern earth, you've got a completely different set of diseases, and that assumes that your time machine is functioning properly... There's a forum here called "A Dash of Modern in the Middle" that might help you find some ideas. To get to it quickly, just take out the spaces: http://w ww. fanfiction. net/ft/221160/6078/1/
On the flip side, all that canon Tolkien wrote gives fanfic writers a good pallette to choose from, if you're willing to do a bit of reading. You don't have to write a G.i.M.e. if you decide that cats, talking hounds and wolves, vampires, dark gods, love that transcends death, human sacrifice, incest, or elven blood feuds sound more interesting. That's what the Silmarillion is for. ;)
Info-dumps are difficult, both for the writer who has a lot of infomation that she wants to share, and for the reader, who may or may not be in the mood to get all this knowledge. Generally, though, info-dumps are all right for summaries and first drafts, but needn't be given to the reader all at once in the final story. Let the reader find out when the characters do, as the characters would figure it out, and the audience'll feel smug about picking up on your clues (and, by extension, probably find you smart, if your pacing's good). Give all the important facts before the reader has had a chance to form a bond with the character, and the reader's first reaction may very well be "Eh? And why do I care, again?" Dialouge and foreshadowing are two good ways to help avoid info-dumping. You can have a character shooting the breeze with her friends and just mention one or two little tidbits that become plot points later. The readers may not even know which ones are important at first, but hopefully, it'll get them interested and sniffing for clues.
Good luck!
A Dangerous Journey by
River of Shadows
I hate to say this, but that's not a story; that's a fic summary, and having those in the place of stories is forbidden on ffnet. I'd also second everything the previous reviewer said about fic whoring and the lack of summary in the summary.
If you really are concerned with the amount of reviews, then by all means, sit on your fic and don't publish until you get them. Just don't expect them to come quickly if you don't give us any clue as to what your story is about when we're browsing, don't give us more than an info dump in the fic itself, and then publicly beg for reviews. Just think Field of Dreams: build a good fic, and the reviews will come. No begging necessary.
(Conversely, if you build the quesstenial Suefic with an underage savior with a name from British myth sent away for her own protection to someplace no one in Middle-earth is capable of reaching as the heroine, grammar and spelling mistakes from "summery" to stripping with a character's unknown posession, a note mentioning an eariler deletion and the need for reviews, and a piece of telling instead of showing barely long enough to qualify for drabble status with bonus lack of narrative logic, you tend to get very long rambling sentences from someone who should know better.)
Anyway, you can improve. We all can, with practice, but I'd like to see just what you're capable of, and this piece hardly seems like the stunning work you'd like to leave your readers so that they'd want to review and praise it with great praise.
First off, taking down the fic to check for grammar and spelling sounds like a good idea. Plurals don't need apostrophes, and you've got a few homophone issues to work through. (Bare/bear, summery/summary, etc.) A bit more liberal use of the comma wouldn't hurt, either.
If you do want to continue with the "girl falls into Middle-earth" format, that's cool, but I'd love to see some logic put into it. There aren't any languages shared between Arda and modern earth, you've got a completely different set of diseases, and that assumes that your time machine is functioning properly... There's a forum here called "A Dash of Modern in the Middle" that might help you find some ideas. To get to it quickly, just take out the spaces: http://w ww. fanfiction. net/ft/221160/6078/1/
On the flip side, all that canon Tolkien wrote gives fanfic writers a good pallette to choose from, if you're willing to do a bit of reading. You don't have to write a G.i.M.e. if you decide that cats, talking hounds and wolves, vampires, dark gods, love that transcends death, human sacrifice, incest, or elven blood feuds sound more interesting. That's what the Silmarillion is for. ;)
Info-dumps are difficult, both for the writer who has a lot of infomation that she wants to share, and for the reader, who may or may not be in the mood to get all this knowledge. Generally, though, info-dumps are all right for summaries and first drafts, but needn't be given to the reader all at once in the final story. Let the reader find out when the characters do, as the characters would figure it out, and the audience'll feel smug about picking up on your clues (and, by extension, probably find you smart, if your pacing's good). Give all the important facts before the reader has had a chance to form a bond with the character, and the reader's first reaction may very well be "Eh? And why do I care, again?" Dialouge and foreshadowing are two good ways to help avoid info-dumping. You can have a character shooting the breeze with her friends and just mention one or two little tidbits that become plot points later. The readers may not even know which ones are important at first, but hopefully, it'll get them interested and sniffing for clues.
Good luck!