Write-fu Classic: Open Letter to Fanfiction.net
This was originally posted here on 8/21/2007 in doctorv. I had made the mistake of spending a day or two browsing through various categories at Fanfiction.net, also affectionately nicknamed the Pit of Voles. (I cannot verify that it is meant affectionately.)
It was a painful experience and after giving up on finding anything of worth to read, I wrote the following open letter "plea for quality" as a sort of catharsis.
It appears here unedited from its original posting.
Dear Fanfiction.net writers,
I've found that, as I get older, I develop standards. Before, I could willingly overlook a few spelling errors, some grammar snafus, even entire plotholes as long as the underlying story was decent. But times change and so do I and I now realize that even if I'm desperate for something to read, I can always look somewhere else. This means I've been turning down quite a number of fanfics lately, and that number worries me. So in the interest of helping you, the writer, as well as me, the reader, I present a few guidelines that may make your fic, if not a masterpiece, at least readable.
1. Spell the title correctly. This is the first thing a person sees of your story and you don't want to make a bad impression that soon.
2. Spell the summary correctly. Especially make sure that you spell any names correctly, as it is generally seen as a bad sign if you can't even get the characters' names right.
3. While we're on the subject of the summary, keep in mind that you have a limited amount of space for it. As such, don't waste your time saying how much you suck or begging people to "plz R&R." You have plenty of space to do that in an author's note before or after the story, the summary is where you tell the potential reader why they should read. If your full summary won't fit, trim a few things or write another one and put the full summary up with the author's note. There is no excuse for a cut off summary. A cut off summary means you didn't care enough to check that it looked okay.
4. Continuing on the lines of author's notes, try not to write one that's longer than the story itself. If there's anything vitally important you need to say, such as "this is AU after episode twelve, 'Attack Of The Space Hamsters'" or "this is third in my 'Eternal Wangst' series, I suggest you first read 'Why I Cut Myself' and 'The Darkness In My Soul Is Awesome' before this so you'll know how my original character, Princess Contessina Butterfly O'Cool, came to save the town and start dating the hero." If you don't then people might be confused, it's just common courtesy. Other than that, please try to keep the list of people you thank to a minimum of one (vertical) inch of text. If the reader has to scroll through two pages worth of names, they may very well come to hate those people, and that's not a very good "thank you" at all. (And it is generally considered bad manners to hold chapters hostage until you get a certain number of reviews. Please do not threaten this.)
5. Names are capitalized. Always. Unless it's some weird exception that canon has made clear.
6. "Your" means it belongs to you, "you're" means you are doing something. "Their" means it belongs to them, "there" is a place that's not here, and "they're" means they are doing something. Keep these straight.
7. I suggest reading "Worst Danny Phantom Fic Ever" for an example of exactly what one should not do. That is the actual name and it was written by someone probably as frustrated as me.
8. Another thing about the author's note, please don't tell me you're flunking English. I don't want to know this. I want to pretend you're at least marginally competent, so I can trick myself into reading enough that I'll be hooked by the plot and be able to overlook the fact that you sometimes write like you're flunking English.
9. Spell check.
10. Remember that spell check is a dumb machine and cannot always tell the difference between someone's name and a lewd sexual act. Spell check is not always aware of context or the tense you're writing in. It is up to you, the human with the thinking brain who knows these things, to decide whether or not to listen to spell check.
11. If you're not confident in your ability to string words together coherently, get a beta. And no, your twelve-year-old pal who is also flunking English and thinks your stories are "teh l33t lol" is not a good choice of beta. There are forums you can visit and beg for the help of someone who perhaps passed high school English. Do so.
12. FINISH YOUR GODDAMN STORY, YOU DOUCHE!!!
13. ...Try to remember that you have no right to bitch about someone else not finishing a story if you haven't finished your own. -_-
14. If you are unsure about canon, look it up. If you're too lazy to do that, declare your story AU or pick a fandom you know more about.
15. If your fandom is from multiple forms of media (TV, comics, video games), please specify which one(s) you're writing about. Your reader may be familiar with all of the forms, but odds are they'll have a preference or may have forgotten one. It is very confusing, and detracts from the story, to be told that a character has black hair when you know one hundred percent beyond a shadow of a doubt that they actually have red hair.
16. I hate you.
17. I didn't mean that. I hate the way you hurt me.
18. I'm not going to say anything about original characters except that when people go looking for fics about a certain fandom, they generally expect to read about the characters in that fandom, not your uber-special sparkle-pants OC.
19. Unless you've previously given an explanation for out of character behavior, or have other characters noticing the out of character behavior, please have the characters act at least somewhat like they do in canon. I don't care if Dr. Smartguy has a tattoo on his hiney, I do care if he suddenly acts like a book-hating idiot unless he's been hit by some sort of Stupidifier Ray or developed a split personality.
20. And let me also add that if you decide to come to LJ with that crap, there's a "Spell Check" button right above the "Post" button and a helluva lot of beta/spelling/grammar/canon/miscellaneous communities out there ready and willing to answer your stupidest, laziest, most inane of questions. There is no excuse.
I hope that these simple guidelines prove useful, or at least thought-provoking, and I look forward to your next writing attempts. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them, and be sure to maintain a safe distance as my bile can reach highly acidic levels and is painful to most organic materials and some inorganic materials. Thank you for your time, and good luck!
Sincerely,
Doc
P.S. It's constructive criticism, not flaming. Learn the difference you whiny fuck.
It was a painful experience and after giving up on finding anything of worth to read, I wrote the following open letter "plea for quality" as a sort of catharsis.
It appears here unedited from its original posting.
Dear Fanfiction.net writers,
I've found that, as I get older, I develop standards. Before, I could willingly overlook a few spelling errors, some grammar snafus, even entire plotholes as long as the underlying story was decent. But times change and so do I and I now realize that even if I'm desperate for something to read, I can always look somewhere else. This means I've been turning down quite a number of fanfics lately, and that number worries me. So in the interest of helping you, the writer, as well as me, the reader, I present a few guidelines that may make your fic, if not a masterpiece, at least readable.
1. Spell the title correctly. This is the first thing a person sees of your story and you don't want to make a bad impression that soon.
2. Spell the summary correctly. Especially make sure that you spell any names correctly, as it is generally seen as a bad sign if you can't even get the characters' names right.
3. While we're on the subject of the summary, keep in mind that you have a limited amount of space for it. As such, don't waste your time saying how much you suck or begging people to "plz R&R." You have plenty of space to do that in an author's note before or after the story, the summary is where you tell the potential reader why they should read. If your full summary won't fit, trim a few things or write another one and put the full summary up with the author's note. There is no excuse for a cut off summary. A cut off summary means you didn't care enough to check that it looked okay.
4. Continuing on the lines of author's notes, try not to write one that's longer than the story itself. If there's anything vitally important you need to say, such as "this is AU after episode twelve, 'Attack Of The Space Hamsters'" or "this is third in my 'Eternal Wangst' series, I suggest you first read 'Why I Cut Myself' and 'The Darkness In My Soul Is Awesome' before this so you'll know how my original character, Princess Contessina Butterfly O'Cool, came to save the town and start dating the hero." If you don't then people might be confused, it's just common courtesy. Other than that, please try to keep the list of people you thank to a minimum of one (vertical) inch of text. If the reader has to scroll through two pages worth of names, they may very well come to hate those people, and that's not a very good "thank you" at all. (And it is generally considered bad manners to hold chapters hostage until you get a certain number of reviews. Please do not threaten this.)
5. Names are capitalized. Always. Unless it's some weird exception that canon has made clear.
6. "Your" means it belongs to you, "you're" means you are doing something. "Their" means it belongs to them, "there" is a place that's not here, and "they're" means they are doing something. Keep these straight.
7. I suggest reading "Worst Danny Phantom Fic Ever" for an example of exactly what one should not do. That is the actual name and it was written by someone probably as frustrated as me.
8. Another thing about the author's note, please don't tell me you're flunking English. I don't want to know this. I want to pretend you're at least marginally competent, so I can trick myself into reading enough that I'll be hooked by the plot and be able to overlook the fact that you sometimes write like you're flunking English.
9. Spell check.
10. Remember that spell check is a dumb machine and cannot always tell the difference between someone's name and a lewd sexual act. Spell check is not always aware of context or the tense you're writing in. It is up to you, the human with the thinking brain who knows these things, to decide whether or not to listen to spell check.
11. If you're not confident in your ability to string words together coherently, get a beta. And no, your twelve-year-old pal who is also flunking English and thinks your stories are "teh l33t lol" is not a good choice of beta. There are forums you can visit and beg for the help of someone who perhaps passed high school English. Do so.
12. FINISH YOUR GODDAMN STORY, YOU DOUCHE!!!
13. ...Try to remember that you have no right to bitch about someone else not finishing a story if you haven't finished your own. -_-
14. If you are unsure about canon, look it up. If you're too lazy to do that, declare your story AU or pick a fandom you know more about.
15. If your fandom is from multiple forms of media (TV, comics, video games), please specify which one(s) you're writing about. Your reader may be familiar with all of the forms, but odds are they'll have a preference or may have forgotten one. It is very confusing, and detracts from the story, to be told that a character has black hair when you know one hundred percent beyond a shadow of a doubt that they actually have red hair.
16. I hate you.
17. I didn't mean that. I hate the way you hurt me.
18. I'm not going to say anything about original characters except that when people go looking for fics about a certain fandom, they generally expect to read about the characters in that fandom, not your uber-special sparkle-pants OC.
19. Unless you've previously given an explanation for out of character behavior, or have other characters noticing the out of character behavior, please have the characters act at least somewhat like they do in canon. I don't care if Dr. Smartguy has a tattoo on his hiney, I do care if he suddenly acts like a book-hating idiot unless he's been hit by some sort of Stupidifier Ray or developed a split personality.
20. And let me also add that if you decide to come to LJ with that crap, there's a "Spell Check" button right above the "Post" button and a helluva lot of beta/spelling/grammar/canon/miscellaneous communities out there ready and willing to answer your stupidest, laziest, most inane of questions. There is no excuse.
I hope that these simple guidelines prove useful, or at least thought-provoking, and I look forward to your next writing attempts. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask them, and be sure to maintain a safe distance as my bile can reach highly acidic levels and is painful to most organic materials and some inorganic materials. Thank you for your time, and good luck!
Sincerely,
Doc
P.S. It's constructive criticism, not flaming. Learn the difference you whiny fuck.