Because, apparently, there can't be too much ranting about writing
Let me begin by acknowledging that the membership of this community may well be the wrong people to be ranting at on this issue. It's likely that those of you who joined or watch this comm have a full command of the language (in this case, English) and are cognizant of the proper and effective way to express your ideas in prose.
But for every single person like that, there are countless others who think it's fine to string a bunch of words together without bothering to check that they are used properly or that they really convey what's intended. Punctuation appears to be applied with the discernment of a headless chicken wielding a salt shaker. A salt shaker with the majority of its holes plugged.
And a whole freakin' lot of those people are writing fanfic. Or rather, they are posting material to fanfic communities and labeling it fanfic.
I don't care if these "writers" are being praised by readers. I don't care how many fawning comments they get or how many fans they have garnered. Given that there seem to be quite a few folks (and no, not all of them are in this fandom, not by a long shot) who produce fic with misused or misspelled words, consecutive sentences that reuse the same simple structure and even the same words, commas misplaced or left out altogether so that the meaning of the sentence is ambiguous, and then post it unbetaed, there is a built-in audience for stories like that. If they see nothing wrong in posting that kind of slop themselves, it stands to reason they wouldn't hold others to a higher standard.
Welcome to the culture of anything goes, where you can slap together literally the first words that come to you - apparently at the instant they come to you - to serve a tired, hackneyed plot (which you blissfully approach as though it were earth-shatteringly original) and then bask in the glow of praise from the ignorant. For extra flavor, make sure the voices of the canon characters are unrecognizable to fans who actually care about such minutiae, and have them behave as OOC as possible. It won't matter to your fans, especially if there's porn involved. Even laughably badly written porn. Apparently, it's all the same to some.
You may think from reading this that I am bitter, but that's not it at all. I'm not bitter, people - I'm angry! Angry and frightened by seeing the bar continually being lowered in fanfic. Down, down, down it goes, until it's nearly resting on the ground. Soon, we will have to dig a trench for the bar. And the worst part is that there will be no shortage of folks willing to grab a shovel and put their backs into the effort.
I've seen many fandom discussions about badfic and incompetent writing, and always there is the apologist viewpoint that speaks of how fanfic can be a training ground for young writers, and if we point out their technical errors we might crush their tender egos and discourage them from writing forever, and then maybe the world will be deprived of the next Eudora Welty, and blah blah you vicious critical brute blah blah blah. And even if one avoids resorting to the obvious but politically incorrect argument that some people should indeed be discouraged from writing, there is a case to be made for holding all writers of fanfiction to certain minimum standards.
Yes, I'm angry, and you should be, as well. And I'm not even angry necessarily with the producers of these badly written stories; the apologists are correct in that many of them are young, often in their teens. It is true that many people get their first experience in fiction writing by producing fanfiction, and that is wonderful. I'm a wholehearted proponent of nurturing young people as they try something new or seek to harness their creativity. I've mentored quite a few fanfic writers over the years.
But what we all need to recognize is that no one learns from indiscriminate praise. By complimenting bad fiction without pointing out any of its grievous missteps, we are teaching the writer nothing. If we compliment a story in which the punctuation is so haphazard that there are multiple ways to interpret half the sentences, we're telling the writer that it's okay to be imprecise, that as long as she knows what she meant, it's all good. With our indifference to precision and care, we're implying that it isn't necessary to work hard or apply critical judgment or self-edit or rewrite. And in saying that, we are actually doing the writer, and society at large, a huge disservice.
In the absence of acknowledged writing standards, all writing is the same; there is no such thing as high quality. The shunning of constructive criticism effectively implies that no writing is "bad." If nothing is bad, then it's all good, whether it took five weeks or five minutes to write it. When we stop defining the minimum acceptable level, we inhibit growth and progress; where's the motivation to improve if your lamest first draft is always pronounced good enough? In a world where everything is "good," nothing will ever be great.
Now, granted, this attitude is firmly entrenched in fanfic already. Still, if you were to make a serious study of the culture in various fandoms, you would find that in some of them, there are prevailing standards that at least a substantial subset of the writers strive to meet. Tin Man is a fresh new fandom. We're all in on the ground floor here, and we have an opportunity to set some expectations for minimum writing quality. We could do it, we really could; the fandom is young enough and still small enough that we could create a large core of writers who adhere to a philosophy which required certain standards to be met. And we could instill that philosophy throughout the fandom by approaching fanfic cordially but critically.
Comment, yes, and always start by acknowledging something the writer has done well, but also point out what could be done better, and do so kindly. Offer to beta for them. Gently start letting writers know that we expect them to post only after they've done a spell-check.
We should also be more diligent about commenting to stories that are well-written. This not only gives some much-needed encouragement to those who are putting forth serious effort in their writing, but also sends a message, indirectly, to those who are posting their first drafts, un-proofread, as finished stories or chapters. That message would be, "This is the kind of writing that really inspires. This is what you should be aspiring to do in your own writing."
Further, see that you lead by example. Polish your works before you post them. Even if you have a great grasp of punctuation and grammar, enlist the advice of a beta. If possible, choose someone who writes better than you. Don't be defensive when changes are suggested; listen and give the suggestions serious consideration.
If we all did these simple things, we could collectively raise the level of writing in this fandom. More importantly, we might teach some young writers about the value of striving to improve, of trying to be the best anything that they can be. And really, aren't we all better off when that lesson is learned?
But for every single person like that, there are countless others who think it's fine to string a bunch of words together without bothering to check that they are used properly or that they really convey what's intended. Punctuation appears to be applied with the discernment of a headless chicken wielding a salt shaker. A salt shaker with the majority of its holes plugged.
And a whole freakin' lot of those people are writing fanfic. Or rather, they are posting material to fanfic communities and labeling it fanfic.
I don't care if these "writers" are being praised by readers. I don't care how many fawning comments they get or how many fans they have garnered. Given that there seem to be quite a few folks (and no, not all of them are in this fandom, not by a long shot) who produce fic with misused or misspelled words, consecutive sentences that reuse the same simple structure and even the same words, commas misplaced or left out altogether so that the meaning of the sentence is ambiguous, and then post it unbetaed, there is a built-in audience for stories like that. If they see nothing wrong in posting that kind of slop themselves, it stands to reason they wouldn't hold others to a higher standard.
Welcome to the culture of anything goes, where you can slap together literally the first words that come to you - apparently at the instant they come to you - to serve a tired, hackneyed plot (which you blissfully approach as though it were earth-shatteringly original) and then bask in the glow of praise from the ignorant. For extra flavor, make sure the voices of the canon characters are unrecognizable to fans who actually care about such minutiae, and have them behave as OOC as possible. It won't matter to your fans, especially if there's porn involved. Even laughably badly written porn. Apparently, it's all the same to some.
You may think from reading this that I am bitter, but that's not it at all. I'm not bitter, people - I'm angry! Angry and frightened by seeing the bar continually being lowered in fanfic. Down, down, down it goes, until it's nearly resting on the ground. Soon, we will have to dig a trench for the bar. And the worst part is that there will be no shortage of folks willing to grab a shovel and put their backs into the effort.
I've seen many fandom discussions about badfic and incompetent writing, and always there is the apologist viewpoint that speaks of how fanfic can be a training ground for young writers, and if we point out their technical errors we might crush their tender egos and discourage them from writing forever, and then maybe the world will be deprived of the next Eudora Welty, and blah blah you vicious critical brute blah blah blah. And even if one avoids resorting to the obvious but politically incorrect argument that some people should indeed be discouraged from writing, there is a case to be made for holding all writers of fanfiction to certain minimum standards.
Yes, I'm angry, and you should be, as well. And I'm not even angry necessarily with the producers of these badly written stories; the apologists are correct in that many of them are young, often in their teens. It is true that many people get their first experience in fiction writing by producing fanfiction, and that is wonderful. I'm a wholehearted proponent of nurturing young people as they try something new or seek to harness their creativity. I've mentored quite a few fanfic writers over the years.
But what we all need to recognize is that no one learns from indiscriminate praise. By complimenting bad fiction without pointing out any of its grievous missteps, we are teaching the writer nothing. If we compliment a story in which the punctuation is so haphazard that there are multiple ways to interpret half the sentences, we're telling the writer that it's okay to be imprecise, that as long as she knows what she meant, it's all good. With our indifference to precision and care, we're implying that it isn't necessary to work hard or apply critical judgment or self-edit or rewrite. And in saying that, we are actually doing the writer, and society at large, a huge disservice.
In the absence of acknowledged writing standards, all writing is the same; there is no such thing as high quality. The shunning of constructive criticism effectively implies that no writing is "bad." If nothing is bad, then it's all good, whether it took five weeks or five minutes to write it. When we stop defining the minimum acceptable level, we inhibit growth and progress; where's the motivation to improve if your lamest first draft is always pronounced good enough? In a world where everything is "good," nothing will ever be great.
Now, granted, this attitude is firmly entrenched in fanfic already. Still, if you were to make a serious study of the culture in various fandoms, you would find that in some of them, there are prevailing standards that at least a substantial subset of the writers strive to meet. Tin Man is a fresh new fandom. We're all in on the ground floor here, and we have an opportunity to set some expectations for minimum writing quality. We could do it, we really could; the fandom is young enough and still small enough that we could create a large core of writers who adhere to a philosophy which required certain standards to be met. And we could instill that philosophy throughout the fandom by approaching fanfic cordially but critically.
Comment, yes, and always start by acknowledging something the writer has done well, but also point out what could be done better, and do so kindly. Offer to beta for them. Gently start letting writers know that we expect them to post only after they've done a spell-check.
We should also be more diligent about commenting to stories that are well-written. This not only gives some much-needed encouragement to those who are putting forth serious effort in their writing, but also sends a message, indirectly, to those who are posting their first drafts, un-proofread, as finished stories or chapters. That message would be, "This is the kind of writing that really inspires. This is what you should be aspiring to do in your own writing."
Further, see that you lead by example. Polish your works before you post them. Even if you have a great grasp of punctuation and grammar, enlist the advice of a beta. If possible, choose someone who writes better than you. Don't be defensive when changes are suggested; listen and give the suggestions serious consideration.
If we all did these simple things, we could collectively raise the level of writing in this fandom. More importantly, we might teach some young writers about the value of striving to improve, of trying to be the best anything that they can be. And really, aren't we all better off when that lesson is learned?