awake now, and with a Due South rec

[geekwriter143]

I did go to sleep ridiculously early, but instead of sleeping straight through to morning I'm now wide awake at 2am. I've already done two loads of laundry and read a story that just ripped me open, in the really good way.

cherryice writes the way I wish I could write. Like Some Strange Shadow is spare and beautiful with amazing details. F/K, but mostly

Comments

Primer Response

[lovetheboys]

As a reader, formatting and editorial problems will make me click away faster than anything. Just plain bad writing that should've been stopped in third grade is the worst.

After editorial nit-picks, lack of familiarity with canon bugs me. It's not terribly difficult nowadays to find little details about what you're writing, even if you haven't seen all the shows, watched all the movies, read all the volumes, etc. After that, bad characterization or completely inexplicable actions make me cringe and bac away quickly.

I'm rather picky, though...and just got finished editing a story for my creative writing class that made me want to grind my teeth to powder with the misspellings and run-on-sentences.

My two cents, in any case.

[phantomminuet]

Nothing throws me out of a story faster than mpreg. After that, bad dialogue. I can forgive a multitude of plotting mishaps and AU scenarios, if the dialogue sparkles.

And I hate men who get teary and maudlin (See Weepy!Kyrcek...grrrrrrr!). A weepy man in slash fic almost invariably means that one male character has been feminized to the point that his cock is an afterthought. I hate that. Let male characters be male characters. If I want to read het fic, I know where to find it.

[verloren1983]

My two biggest pet peeves when reading fanfic are OOC and ignoring canon. I've completely written off otherwise good fics because the characterization was completely off, or the author completely fucking ignored a major canon detail (like a character death or something) so that they didn't have to deal with it. Basically, if you're going to write fan fiction, do it RIGHT. Oh, and mpreg. That will immediately make me stop reading, I don't care how good the fic might have been before that point. Other irritations include the usual: spelling, grammar, absolutely zero plot, and just bad writing in general

[quidditch_fan]

So, if you were going to writer a primer on writing fanfic, what would you include? I list of clichés that people should stay away from. I know that a lot of people read a fic and say some variant of, “This sucks… let me redo this to show off my literary prowess.” That’s okay.. as long as they’re not making the same goofy mistakes

[sheryden]

Well, I won't touch mpreg at all. Ick. But in general, there are three things that turn me off:

1) Bad dialogue: I'm funny about dialogue. I think it should be true to life, and it should be true to character. If it's stilted or sounds...off, I'll lose interest in a hurry.

2) Wonky formatting: It bugs me when I see a story written all in one looooong paragraph. This is something I see quite often, and it makes the story nearly impossible to read. I like to see stories written in either the traditional paragraph format, or with white space in between paragraphs.

3) Spelling and Grammar Nightmares: I know I make some glaring errors, but when I see a story absolutely riddled with mistakes, that makes it difficult for me to read. Along with that, it drives me crazy when people spell Sara's name, "Sarah." But that's just me