A letter I'd love to send...
Dear fannit fantard Author:
I believe you took my review/my friends' reviews of your fanfiction the wrong way.
What we wrote about your characterization issues, poor plot, and abysmal spelling/grammar is not, in fact, "flaming" as you have said in your extensive A/Ns.
What we have written is something called "constructive criticism", or "concrit" for short. Believe it or not, we are trying to HELP YOU, not ruin your life as you have claimed in your extensive A/Ns. The theory is that we are drawing your attention to problems in your story in the hope that you, the author, will be mature enough to fix them and become a better author by doing so. We are not trying to pick fights. YOUR STORY HAS OFFENDED US.
Clearly, we were sadly mistaken. So I will again address these issues in terms that hopefully you will understand as niether hateful nor spiteful nor hypocritical.
#1) Characterization. Your characters are okay, excepting the following:
-[A] is a backstabbing murderer in the canon, not a doe-eyed woobie. This happens a lot in fanfiction of this character, so please don't take it personally, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not as he has been written.
-[B] is a ferocious person who likes beating the tar out of people in the canon. You've kind of turned him into a stereotypical girly-girl with male anatomy. Change him back now, please.
-[C], again, is all male. Stop turning respectable male characters into "chicks with dicks".
-[D] is not retarded. Music is incredibly difficult to learn when you're playing it off of a piece of paper, and he can do it by ear and/or straight from memory. He is VERY intelligent, it's just not the same kind of intelligence as the rest of the characters have.
-[G through Z] EXIST. WRITE THEM, PLEASE.
#2) This has to do with your response to reviews calling on #1, which was not only offensive and quite uncalled for.
The definition of an "AU" or "alternate universe" fanfiction is the SAME characters in a different SITUATION from the canon. Therefore, claiming that a story with poor characterization is "an AU" does NOT excuse the poor characterization.
Nor does bashing the reviewers who are, again, TRYING TO HELP YOU.
#3) Good responses to criticism might include offering to rewrite the parts that earned the concrit and asking for elaboration on what upset the reader. If you don't want to rewrite those parts because your friends liked them, you might thank the reviewer for their commentary, but explain that your friends liked them and you don't feel they need to be changed. Or you can simply apologize that they didn't like it-- just avoid sounding condescending or snooty.
#4) Again, we are TRYING TO HELP YOU, not "ruin your life" or some such melodrama. If your life is so terrible that recieving criticism on a piece of fanfiction makes you suicidal, you need professional help, not FanFiction.net
Alternately, if you don't want criticism for your writings or think they're "shit", why the eff are you posting them on a public website like FF.net? LOGIC, PLEASE. USE IT.
#5) It says in your profile that you're in high school/college/the working populace. That means you should be able to run a spellchecker and punctuate correctly. Why aren't you doing so in your fiction? You might get better reviews if people could actually READ WHAT YOU'RE WRITING, maybe.
No, you're not exempt from the rules of the English language just because you're on the Internet, or because English is your native language. In fact, I usually find better use of the language from writers for whom it ISN'T their native tongue, because they take the time to make sure they have the words spelled, punctuated, and used correctly.
#6) A "flame" review is one that has no purpose except to wound your ego ("You suck"), usually including harsh language and/or some variant of the phrase "you're going to Hell". YOU HAVE MY EXPRESS PERMISSION TO HATE ON THESE.
Concrit reviews indicate problem areas in your story ("these people really don't act like the canon characters") and indicate how you can make the story better. HATING ON THESE ONLY MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A LOSER AND LOSES YOU POSSIBLE FRIENDS.
Please keep these things in mind and treat critical reviewers with a little more respect?
- Yui
PS: How am I supposed to leave reviews if you turn off Anonymous Reviewing?
EDIT: Realized the "know you passed middle school" line is a bit pretentious and rather rude and therefore have removed it.
Allow me to explain. This is a rant in the form of an imaginary letter to everyone I've ever read about responding terribly to concrit, not a letter I'm actually going to send to someone, particularly since the PS applies to quite a few of the badfics I've seen and I can't concrit them.
I believe you took my review/my friends' reviews of your fanfiction the wrong way.
What we wrote about your characterization issues, poor plot, and abysmal spelling/grammar is not, in fact, "flaming" as you have said in your extensive A/Ns.
What we have written is something called "constructive criticism", or "concrit" for short. Believe it or not, we are trying to HELP YOU, not ruin your life as you have claimed in your extensive A/Ns. The theory is that we are drawing your attention to problems in your story in the hope that you, the author, will be mature enough to fix them and become a better author by doing so. We are not trying to pick fights. YOUR STORY HAS OFFENDED US.
Clearly, we were sadly mistaken. So I will again address these issues in terms that hopefully you will understand as niether hateful nor spiteful nor hypocritical.
#1) Characterization. Your characters are okay, excepting the following:
-[A] is a backstabbing murderer in the canon, not a doe-eyed woobie. This happens a lot in fanfiction of this character, so please don't take it personally, but that doesn't change the fact that he is not as he has been written.
-[B] is a ferocious person who likes beating the tar out of people in the canon. You've kind of turned him into a stereotypical girly-girl with male anatomy. Change him back now, please.
-[C], again, is all male. Stop turning respectable male characters into "chicks with dicks".
-[D] is not retarded. Music is incredibly difficult to learn when you're playing it off of a piece of paper, and he can do it by ear and/or straight from memory. He is VERY intelligent, it's just not the same kind of intelligence as the rest of the characters have.
-[G through Z] EXIST. WRITE THEM, PLEASE.
#2) This has to do with your response to reviews calling on #1, which was not only offensive and quite uncalled for.
The definition of an "AU" or "alternate universe" fanfiction is the SAME characters in a different SITUATION from the canon. Therefore, claiming that a story with poor characterization is "an AU" does NOT excuse the poor characterization.
Nor does bashing the reviewers who are, again, TRYING TO HELP YOU.
#3) Good responses to criticism might include offering to rewrite the parts that earned the concrit and asking for elaboration on what upset the reader. If you don't want to rewrite those parts because your friends liked them, you might thank the reviewer for their commentary, but explain that your friends liked them and you don't feel they need to be changed. Or you can simply apologize that they didn't like it-- just avoid sounding condescending or snooty.
#4) Again, we are TRYING TO HELP YOU, not "ruin your life" or some such melodrama. If your life is so terrible that recieving criticism on a piece of fanfiction makes you suicidal, you need professional help, not FanFiction.net
Alternately, if you don't want criticism for your writings or think they're "shit", why the eff are you posting them on a public website like FF.net? LOGIC, PLEASE. USE IT.
#5) It says in your profile that you're in high school/college/the working populace. That means you should be able to run a spellchecker and punctuate correctly. Why aren't you doing so in your fiction? You might get better reviews if people could actually READ WHAT YOU'RE WRITING, maybe.
No, you're not exempt from the rules of the English language just because you're on the Internet, or because English is your native language. In fact, I usually find better use of the language from writers for whom it ISN'T their native tongue, because they take the time to make sure they have the words spelled, punctuated, and used correctly.
#6) A "flame" review is one that has no purpose except to wound your ego ("You suck"), usually including harsh language and/or some variant of the phrase "you're going to Hell". YOU HAVE MY EXPRESS PERMISSION TO HATE ON THESE.
Concrit reviews indicate problem areas in your story ("these people really don't act like the canon characters") and indicate how you can make the story better. HATING ON THESE ONLY MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A LOSER AND LOSES YOU POSSIBLE FRIENDS.
Please keep these things in mind and treat critical reviewers with a little more respect?
- Yui
PS: How am I supposed to leave reviews if you turn off Anonymous Reviewing?
EDIT: Realized the "know you passed middle school" line is a bit pretentious and rather rude and therefore have removed it.
Allow me to explain. This is a rant in the form of an imaginary letter to everyone I've ever read about responding terribly to concrit, not a letter I'm actually going to send to someone, particularly since the PS applies to quite a few of the badfics I've seen and I can't concrit them.