And now for troubles I have with my own fic! Oh noes!
Top....oh, crap, a lot....things I dislike about my fics. Because if I’m going to make a post about what bothers me in other people’s fics, I should treat myself the same. Any time I say ‘you’ I’m talking to myself, at least theoretically. Also, this list is far from complete, and I do welcome any concrit type comments if you notice other trends in my fics you think I could improve upon.
Mutter and snap are nice verbs, but there are others. This isn’t high school. bas_math_girl isn’t going to come up to you after class one day and ask you what frivolous means. Seriously, where did your word choice go? You're barely using any words you learned past first grade. People are going to get sick of the same words all the time. Stop it.
Just because a line sounded clever coming out of a character’s mouth once doesn’t mean it always will. After all, how many times is the phrase “That’s what she said!” actually funny? Oh, wait....
Why do you use four periods for your ellipses anyway? Well, it’s because you’re a tad OCD and by now it’s quite the habit, but if you put something in for an anonymous fic exchange, you should probably do a quick find and replace. No, really. It’s a fairly recognizable trait. Not a bad one, necessarily, just a bit quirky, but enough of one that people will figure out it’s you.
Oh, and while you’re at it, work on your paragraphing. I know, I know, you know better than to include two speakers in a paragraph, but so does everyone else who’s been past third grade (well, if they weren’t in your third grade class, anyway). Break things up a bit more. Yeah, fine, you might trigger your whole “lines don’t look right because they’re all wibbly and uneven” twitch thing, but you’ll have better writing if you pay attention to how it flows rather than how the page is done up or how uneven the lines are.
Speaking of which, you know that OCD you have about not having just one or two words on a line? Yeah, that one. Are you really getting over it? Really? Because if not, you should. You’d write a lot better if you didn’t worry about how the line looked and where it split. Heck, it’s going to look different on LJ/Teaspoon anyway, so don’t worry about it. Just write the bloody fic and concentrate on lines, not....well, lines.
You put two spaces in between all your sentences. Don’t let anyone bug you about it. (Hey, everything’s got to have a positive.)
Donna really doesn’t need to be constantly reminded that she’s not stupid. Occasionally, perhaps, but the Doctor doesn’t need to snap at her or correct her every time she makes a crack about her being dumb, especially if she’s kidding. Sometimes it works, but you sort of do it a lot. Remember the part where people always told you the same thing? Yeah, that. You don’t need constant reminding that you’re not a moron, so why should Donna? (Although if her mum is telling her she is in some shape or form, reassurance from Wilf or the Doctor or whomever at some point soon afterward is probably warranted. Situational logics, etc.)
UPDATE YOUR FRAKKING MASTERLIST! Seriously, it’s ridiculous. How are people supposed to find your newer fics if you don’t link them around properly? Likewise, redo all your posts at some point and interlink all the related stuff. Yes, it’ll be a pain with Chrome, because it removes all the formatting and you have to manually go back and redo it, but you’re not logged in on IE anyway, so you might as well use the stupid browser for a change and update everything. This list? Lovely. This one? Not so much. Like seriously, ew. You even asked people how they would prefer to see your new masterlist, yet you haven’t really worked on it. The frak?
As much fun as it may be to have Donna’s brain threaten to implode (especially in this series), it doesn’t have to happen every time. The lovely folks at doctor_donna won’t kill you if you’re continuing a series and you have one fic that doesn’t include the Doctor. Seriously, they won’t.
Find a comm for Donna and Shaun. As true as the previous point is, those same folks probably don’t want to see your endless string of (until you get to the plot points where he shows up) Doctor-less fics on a community that, well, is supposed to involve both him and Donna. You can bend the rules a teeny bit and perhaps make a post that has one fic with the Doctor and one without him actually there, but it’s really uncomfortable to feel like you’re crashing the comm. Not just for you either, I’m sure.
Eleven=/=Ten. You know this. I know it’s hard to get into Ten’s brain when you’ve been watching loads of Eleven, and that you’re a bit brained into your cute series with small children, but if you’re writing something for Ten, make sure you’re writing Ten and not David Tennant reading Eleven’s lines. Pop in a bit of Tennant era for like five minutes. You’ll find it again. Besides, it’ll save you the trouble of having to redo dialogue (and possibly actual plot if you screwed up massively enough) later on when you realize the Doctor’s speech pattern magically regenerated.
Yes, this idea is clever. No, the fic’s not very good. It was your first fic. It happens. Perhaps you should write another fic in which the same solution is used. You’d probably do it a lot better. (And why did you think fic was going to be so different from ‘real’ writing anyway? If you’d just written a story with those two characters rather than tried to write “in fic style” or whatever you were thinking at the time, it would have been a lot better. Seriously.)
Making new fics>beating yourself up over old ones. Make edits to a fic if it needs it, but then let it die.
What is this I don’t even. Did you look at how you were writing when you were doing it? I mean really. Yes, you had a plan about what his excuse really was, but it’s been ages now and you’ve not bothered to clarify it at all. Just because no one really bothered to call you on the lack of clarity (and really, why didn't anyone?) doesn't mean it's okay. And sykira's reaction in that comment right there, the one that made you blink a couple of times back in the day? Totally warranted, even if she didn’t really know what was going on (as to the Ultimate Plan). Really, woman. You can do better at working in the Ultimate Plan, and make a Princess Bride joke just for the sake of kicks and giggles and boredom, without looking like a newb. Do it. I know you’re not going to take the fic down, but you could easily tweak it a bit, edit the post, and then, when you have the follow-up ready to go, cross-post them both at once so people can see that the fic has changed (and what you had planned in the first place).
If you have a follow-up piece, do it. Don’t procrastinate or shove it to the bottom of the list.
You don’t read porn, so stop trying to justify clicking on it just because XYZ wrote it and you haven’t seen a new fic from them in ages and you think it may not be NSFK (hee!) after all. It’s still porn, and you still won’t enjoy it. Maybe you’ll be able to air your prawn icon a bit more if you read it, but you’d be squicked, and no one wants that. Likewise, if it’s rated NC-17, it’s almost certainly porn, so don’t bother to ask. Just assume. If you miss out on a fic, it'll be because someone didn't label it properly, which you have no reason to feel bad about.
If you offer to beta a fic for someone, make sure you actually e-mail them the corrected copy. Dipstick. Betaing something and then leaving the improved version on your hard drive helps no one.
Oh, and stop offering to beta a fic for which there is no hope. Otherwise you end up with the previous, and you just feel stupid. Alternatively, the person won’t take the most important of your suggestions, and they’ll credit you as a beta for a fic that is bloody awful.
Find yourself a beta. Yes, fine, your spelling and stuff is pretty decent, but you’re still not immune to errors, and given the size of this list you could still use someone to help you bounce ideas of characterization. You may get cranky at them, but you can divorce a line if they say it really sucks. time_converges and doctorsgirl26 are amazing, but friends don’t always critique things that need to be critiqued, even if they are, as previously mentioned, amazing (and adorable).
Stop reading badfic just because it makes you giggle. I know, a lot of what's in your corner of the fandom(s) is badfic, but you really can find good fic. Anonymous may be a horrible writer, but you always get exasperated at their fic, so why do you even bother to read it? You know it’s going to be terrible, yet you torture yourself anyway. Flipping stop it.
You write Dollhouse stuff really well. Why don’t you play in the sandbox more?
Conversely, you’ve written so much Who fic that it’s all starting to bleed together and you’re losing your grasp on characters. Get new material or take a break. (Granted, you’ve got new material now, and your OC for that ‘verse of yours is adorable, but you still need to diversify.)
Niska (the crazy sadist from Firefly) is amazing, and you wrote him epically. Once. That doesn’t mean you have to write more though. Seriously, who even wants to read Niska fic? Maybe you could put it up at FFN where people go to look for niche stuff, but people on LJ? Probably not going to go nuts over it, just because it’s so rare. You don’t have to not write it, but you also don’t have to be stuck in a rut because you managed to do something right one time.
Also, you can write other Firefly stuff. And type up that Zoe piece, you numpkin. It’s short, but it’s not half bad. Just because you’re primarily a Who writer doesn’t mean you can’t have proficiency in other fandoms.
Trying to write Rose never ends well. Never. You kind of hate Rose now. Don’t use her unless you have to, and if you do, please don’t butcher her. You’re not into character bashing and I’d hate for you to do it unintentionally just because you can’t seem to find an accurate voice for her.
Oh, and your Martha is generic, and her presence is often unnecessary. Just sayin’.
Yes, we know, you’re an American. Even if saying biscuits looks weird to you, Wilf is not going to say cookie. Fine, use it in the narrative, but when characters speak, they really do have to use UK vocabulary. You’re not too bad about it, but there are definitely times when you need to check if there’s a UK alternative for the item in question. If you don’t know, ask bas_math_girl or lemon_pencil (if she’s still around, anyway). They’ll be happy to tell you the correct term, because they’re sweet like that.
You really can use internal thought processes without going overboard. I know you’re paranoid you’ll turn into one of those fic writers who tells you what the character is thinking as they make breakfast, but you probably won’t, and shying away from almost all internal thought is not the solution. If anything, it makes your fic bland. At least try it. If it’s too much, you can edit or remove it.
Yes, remove it. Just because you wrote something doesn’t mean you have to use it. If you decide it’s not going to work, don’t try to fiddle with everything else just so you don’t waste the time you spent on it. Close the file, don’t save your changes, and try again. It happens. It’s not the end of the world, and you seriously have the time to waste on it anyway.
The Doctor doesn’t say bloody. Donna does. Wilf does too. But not the Doctor. Just because you catch it and remove it doesn’t make it okay to do it in the first place. Watch it(, Earth girl).
You know that fic you’ve been fiddling with for ages? The one that you’re never going to post because you’ll never be happy with it? Yeah, that one. Stop working on it and at least try to play with something different for a change. After all, that fic’s not going to go away. (It’s also never going to be fit to post, so you should probably just give up on it.)
Oh, and you also have RL writing to do. You know, the kind that makes money. You know, money, the stuff you’re always complaining about not having. I wonder how you could solve that....
Stop adding to this list and go write something. Go. Now. Fool.
P.S. I’ll never stop adding to this list. Please comment if you fancy it and help me add stuff so I can improve. Seriously. If I don’t know I’m doing something wrong, I’ll never fix it, and I want my writing to be more enjoyable. Thanks very much! :)
Mutter and snap are nice verbs, but there are others. This isn’t high school. bas_math_girl isn’t going to come up to you after class one day and ask you what frivolous means. Seriously, where did your word choice go? You're barely using any words you learned past first grade. People are going to get sick of the same words all the time. Stop it.
Just because a line sounded clever coming out of a character’s mouth once doesn’t mean it always will. After all, how many times is the phrase “That’s what she said!” actually funny? Oh, wait....
Why do you use four periods for your ellipses anyway? Well, it’s because you’re a tad OCD and by now it’s quite the habit, but if you put something in for an anonymous fic exchange, you should probably do a quick find and replace. No, really. It’s a fairly recognizable trait. Not a bad one, necessarily, just a bit quirky, but enough of one that people will figure out it’s you.
Oh, and while you’re at it, work on your paragraphing. I know, I know, you know better than to include two speakers in a paragraph, but so does everyone else who’s been past third grade (well, if they weren’t in your third grade class, anyway). Break things up a bit more. Yeah, fine, you might trigger your whole “lines don’t look right because they’re all wibbly and uneven” twitch thing, but you’ll have better writing if you pay attention to how it flows rather than how the page is done up or how uneven the lines are.
Speaking of which, you know that OCD you have about not having just one or two words on a line? Yeah, that one. Are you really getting over it? Really? Because if not, you should. You’d write a lot better if you didn’t worry about how the line looked and where it split. Heck, it’s going to look different on LJ/Teaspoon anyway, so don’t worry about it. Just write the bloody fic and concentrate on lines, not....well, lines.
You put two spaces in between all your sentences. Don’t let anyone bug you about it. (Hey, everything’s got to have a positive.)
Donna really doesn’t need to be constantly reminded that she’s not stupid. Occasionally, perhaps, but the Doctor doesn’t need to snap at her or correct her every time she makes a crack about her being dumb, especially if she’s kidding. Sometimes it works, but you sort of do it a lot. Remember the part where people always told you the same thing? Yeah, that. You don’t need constant reminding that you’re not a moron, so why should Donna? (Although if her mum is telling her she is in some shape or form, reassurance from Wilf or the Doctor or whomever at some point soon afterward is probably warranted. Situational logics, etc.)
UPDATE YOUR FRAKKING MASTERLIST! Seriously, it’s ridiculous. How are people supposed to find your newer fics if you don’t link them around properly? Likewise, redo all your posts at some point and interlink all the related stuff. Yes, it’ll be a pain with Chrome, because it removes all the formatting and you have to manually go back and redo it, but you’re not logged in on IE anyway, so you might as well use the stupid browser for a change and update everything. This list? Lovely. This one? Not so much. Like seriously, ew. You even asked people how they would prefer to see your new masterlist, yet you haven’t really worked on it. The frak?
As much fun as it may be to have Donna’s brain threaten to implode (especially in this series), it doesn’t have to happen every time. The lovely folks at doctor_donna won’t kill you if you’re continuing a series and you have one fic that doesn’t include the Doctor. Seriously, they won’t.
Find a comm for Donna and Shaun. As true as the previous point is, those same folks probably don’t want to see your endless string of (until you get to the plot points where he shows up) Doctor-less fics on a community that, well, is supposed to involve both him and Donna. You can bend the rules a teeny bit and perhaps make a post that has one fic with the Doctor and one without him actually there, but it’s really uncomfortable to feel like you’re crashing the comm. Not just for you either, I’m sure.
Eleven=/=Ten. You know this. I know it’s hard to get into Ten’s brain when you’ve been watching loads of Eleven, and that you’re a bit brained into your cute series with small children, but if you’re writing something for Ten, make sure you’re writing Ten and not David Tennant reading Eleven’s lines. Pop in a bit of Tennant era for like five minutes. You’ll find it again. Besides, it’ll save you the trouble of having to redo dialogue (and possibly actual plot if you screwed up massively enough) later on when you realize the Doctor’s speech pattern magically regenerated.
Yes, this idea is clever. No, the fic’s not very good. It was your first fic. It happens. Perhaps you should write another fic in which the same solution is used. You’d probably do it a lot better. (And why did you think fic was going to be so different from ‘real’ writing anyway? If you’d just written a story with those two characters rather than tried to write “in fic style” or whatever you were thinking at the time, it would have been a lot better. Seriously.)
Making new fics>beating yourself up over old ones. Make edits to a fic if it needs it, but then let it die.
What is this I don’t even. Did you look at how you were writing when you were doing it? I mean really. Yes, you had a plan about what his excuse really was, but it’s been ages now and you’ve not bothered to clarify it at all. Just because no one really bothered to call you on the lack of clarity (and really, why didn't anyone?) doesn't mean it's okay. And sykira's reaction in that comment right there, the one that made you blink a couple of times back in the day? Totally warranted, even if she didn’t really know what was going on (as to the Ultimate Plan). Really, woman. You can do better at working in the Ultimate Plan, and make a Princess Bride joke just for the sake of kicks and giggles and boredom, without looking like a newb. Do it. I know you’re not going to take the fic down, but you could easily tweak it a bit, edit the post, and then, when you have the follow-up ready to go, cross-post them both at once so people can see that the fic has changed (and what you had planned in the first place).
If you have a follow-up piece, do it. Don’t procrastinate or shove it to the bottom of the list.
You don’t read porn, so stop trying to justify clicking on it just because XYZ wrote it and you haven’t seen a new fic from them in ages and you think it may not be NSFK (hee!) after all. It’s still porn, and you still won’t enjoy it. Maybe you’ll be able to air your prawn icon a bit more if you read it, but you’d be squicked, and no one wants that. Likewise, if it’s rated NC-17, it’s almost certainly porn, so don’t bother to ask. Just assume. If you miss out on a fic, it'll be because someone didn't label it properly, which you have no reason to feel bad about.
If you offer to beta a fic for someone, make sure you actually e-mail them the corrected copy. Dipstick. Betaing something and then leaving the improved version on your hard drive helps no one.
Oh, and stop offering to beta a fic for which there is no hope. Otherwise you end up with the previous, and you just feel stupid. Alternatively, the person won’t take the most important of your suggestions, and they’ll credit you as a beta for a fic that is bloody awful.
Find yourself a beta. Yes, fine, your spelling and stuff is pretty decent, but you’re still not immune to errors, and given the size of this list you could still use someone to help you bounce ideas of characterization. You may get cranky at them, but you can divorce a line if they say it really sucks. time_converges and doctorsgirl26 are amazing, but friends don’t always critique things that need to be critiqued, even if they are, as previously mentioned, amazing (and adorable).
Stop reading badfic just because it makes you giggle. I know, a lot of what's in your corner of the fandom(s) is badfic, but you really can find good fic. Anonymous may be a horrible writer, but you always get exasperated at their fic, so why do you even bother to read it? You know it’s going to be terrible, yet you torture yourself anyway. Flipping stop it.
You write Dollhouse stuff really well. Why don’t you play in the sandbox more?
Conversely, you’ve written so much Who fic that it’s all starting to bleed together and you’re losing your grasp on characters. Get new material or take a break. (Granted, you’ve got new material now, and your OC for that ‘verse of yours is adorable, but you still need to diversify.)
Niska (the crazy sadist from Firefly) is amazing, and you wrote him epically. Once. That doesn’t mean you have to write more though. Seriously, who even wants to read Niska fic? Maybe you could put it up at FFN where people go to look for niche stuff, but people on LJ? Probably not going to go nuts over it, just because it’s so rare. You don’t have to not write it, but you also don’t have to be stuck in a rut because you managed to do something right one time.
Also, you can write other Firefly stuff. And type up that Zoe piece, you numpkin. It’s short, but it’s not half bad. Just because you’re primarily a Who writer doesn’t mean you can’t have proficiency in other fandoms.
Trying to write Rose never ends well. Never. You kind of hate Rose now. Don’t use her unless you have to, and if you do, please don’t butcher her. You’re not into character bashing and I’d hate for you to do it unintentionally just because you can’t seem to find an accurate voice for her.
Oh, and your Martha is generic, and her presence is often unnecessary. Just sayin’.
Yes, we know, you’re an American. Even if saying biscuits looks weird to you, Wilf is not going to say cookie. Fine, use it in the narrative, but when characters speak, they really do have to use UK vocabulary. You’re not too bad about it, but there are definitely times when you need to check if there’s a UK alternative for the item in question. If you don’t know, ask bas_math_girl or lemon_pencil (if she’s still around, anyway). They’ll be happy to tell you the correct term, because they’re sweet like that.
You really can use internal thought processes without going overboard. I know you’re paranoid you’ll turn into one of those fic writers who tells you what the character is thinking as they make breakfast, but you probably won’t, and shying away from almost all internal thought is not the solution. If anything, it makes your fic bland. At least try it. If it’s too much, you can edit or remove it.
Yes, remove it. Just because you wrote something doesn’t mean you have to use it. If you decide it’s not going to work, don’t try to fiddle with everything else just so you don’t waste the time you spent on it. Close the file, don’t save your changes, and try again. It happens. It’s not the end of the world, and you seriously have the time to waste on it anyway.
The Doctor doesn’t say bloody. Donna does. Wilf does too. But not the Doctor. Just because you catch it and remove it doesn’t make it okay to do it in the first place. Watch it(, Earth girl).
You know that fic you’ve been fiddling with for ages? The one that you’re never going to post because you’ll never be happy with it? Yeah, that one. Stop working on it and at least try to play with something different for a change. After all, that fic’s not going to go away. (It’s also never going to be fit to post, so you should probably just give up on it.)
Oh, and you also have RL writing to do. You know, the kind that makes money. You know, money, the stuff you’re always complaining about not having. I wonder how you could solve that....
Stop adding to this list and go write something. Go. Now. Fool.
P.S. I’ll never stop adding to this list. Please comment if you fancy it and help me add stuff so I can improve. Seriously. If I don’t know I’m doing something wrong, I’ll never fix it, and I want my writing to be more enjoyable. Thanks very much! :)