Discussion Fan Fic Pet Peeves?

Cool tool - and how does one insert it?

 

According to Wikipedia, it's Alt and 8253. I tried that, though, and I got an equals sign. :/

 

Ah, that's it exactly...
I was confused by the "get it right next time" comment, because it seemed like it was addressing a mistake in the article. I kept thinking, whatever mistake the sock puppet made must be one I'm guilty of, because I don't see anything different from how I use punctuation.

 

Here's a pet peeve that I have forgotten about; insane run-on sentences that seem to just keep going and before you know it, you've read an entire paragraph that was a run-on sentence, and it just drove you nuts because there were no breaks or pauses whatsoever; the sentence just kept going and simply would not end, like the author didn't know when to stop, and to make matters worse, there aren't any commas or semicolons used, so it just kept going. Unlike the previous sentence, which, while it read like a stream of consciousness, is not a run-on.

 

Or when all the sentences are short. The author didn't use any variation. So it reads like it's for first graders. Or like it's a grocery list. Luke Skywalker walked over to the window. Luke looked outside. He saw stars. Roast beef. Bacon. Cheese. Eggs. Cauliflower. That's what it feels like.

 

mmm, food...hungry.

 

Short, declarative sentences have their place; they're better for action sequences when you want to have quick, punchy pacing. It helps to speed things up and keep the scene moving. But, if you want to slow things down, you don't write everything like the aforementioned grocery list.

Another peeve of mine is inconsistent dialogue spacing. I've seen this recently, where one speaker will start a line of dialogue, and then another speaker will say something within that same paragraph. Or, the paragraph focuses on one speaker, but when the dialogue comes in, it's said by the other speaker. It's confusing and it halts the flow, as the reader needs to stop and reread the passage to understand who said what.

 

I see that a lot. Or else a paragraph will start with dialogue, and then carry on for like six lines as completely unrelated stuff happens. Or there just won't be any paragraph breaks to accomodate dialogue--it'll be embedded inside regular paragraphs, sometimes to the point of having three or four people talking inside this big block where other stuff is also going on.

Dialogue spacing was always easy for me to remember because it's so clear-cut... so it's always weird to see someone who gets that wrong, but otherwise seems to use paragraphs just fine. When I was younger I might spend ten minutes agonizing over whether I had broken a new paragraph off at the right location, but I never had trouble spacing out dialogue.

 

It drives me crazy when I see typos and grammatical errors in published material. I get out my pen and I correct them.

 

New Pet Peeve alert!

When someone 'holds their story hostage' for reviews. We get it...you like reviews, we all do. But seriously? Refusing to update until you get a certain amount of the things? Oi...

 

Yeah, I've never personally had it happen to me, but I've seen it done on older fics on FFn. We all want more reviews, and that is a good way to leech out lurkers, but sometimes your story just ain't that popular for one reason or another - we've all been there.

 

Sometimes its not even that. A story can be plenty popular but still not get a swarm of reviews since some people (I'm guilty myself) just don't have the time to review. That's whats nice about here and the FF.N system...you can check how many views it gets. If your story is getting only a few reviews, but several hundred views, then its popular...people just might not have time to review.


EDIT: Or they prefer to only review when needed...like pointing out things that can be improved on. I'd rather get a couple reviews that are like that, than a dozen 'Good story, update soon' reviews.

 

Me, I'd be elated just to get any reviews/responses at all at this point! Even the views count on my fanfic thread is substantially lower in ratio than most other threads around it, I've noticed--and probably half those views are me, going back and tweaking things here and there.

Regarding the peeve about withholding updates until there are enough reviews, I say fine and let the author never be able to post again.

 

Which I do

 

I'm tempted to post a review along the lines of "Hell, no, I'm not going to be held hostage to your story, so you just lost one reader" except - that gives them a review.

 

Ugh... I too can't stand it when people hold chapters hostage. It usually makes me stop reading all together (unless it's already finished and posted ) and I certainly won't review. Everyone wants more reviews but having to drag them out of people just isn't the way to go about it.

 

Sometimes I get the feeling my readers over on FF.N think I do that since my updates are so slow and I always ask for reviews. But that's just me being a slow writer

EDIT: Then again, I can't complain when my stories typically get 100 plus reviews by the 10th chapter...

 

Do they actually come out and say, "I am not posting until I get more reviews." Wow that seems tacky if they do. If they just stop posting without explanation then Darth Real Life may have hit them hard. Or maybe the lack of reviews killed their muse.

I sometimes don't review on a story that I am reading. That is because it is one of those stories that is like a trainwreck. For some reason I can't look away....but I hate what is happening. LOL! That usually occurs with a L/M romance, but Mara is still a Hand and is forced to do horrible things for Palpatine that Luke doesn't approve of, but there is nothing that can be done until they can kill Palpatine.

So I am waiting for the killing of Palpatine and the L/M happily ever after...but until then I have to read about Mara having to do very un-Mara like stuff.

In that case I don't want to review only to say, "Gross! How can you write that! Please kill Palpatine and get on with the Luke Mara smut!"

 

No, if they just stop posting without explaining (and I'm VERY guilty of this ) then I know its DRL, not them being jerks. Its when they actually directly say 'I'm not updating this until I get *insert review number here*' that annoys me.

 

Back in the "good old days" when I moderated a fanfiction archive, I took great pleasure in the fact that I wasn't just allowed, but expected to reject "hostage fics". A lot of the stories I rejected were on par with the worst FF.Net examples... a chapter would be two or three sentences long, occasionally a whole half-page, followed by a reminder begging/threatening people to review. If they didn't meet the minimum character count, the author would just stuff it with excess periods at the end.

It got so out of hand (and I don't even know why so many people were trying, when none of those stories were ever approved) that the owner ended up forbidding authors from asking for reviews. Most of the guilty parties ended up ragequitting from her archive and migrating to FF.Net.

 

I might get some flack for this, but this is a peeves thread, so here goes.

I hate it when fanfic authors build up this large fanbase of users with a steadily moving story, which is then abandoned (without explanation or announcement). Or when there are really long breaks (i.e. many weeks or even months) between posts while the fans clamor for updates--and again, without any sort of warning or announcement of hiatus.

(And of course I'm not singling anyone out in this thread--I'm sure you all have perfectly reasonable explanations if you have to be away from your stories for any length of time. )

Sure, I don't like it because I'll get invested in a story, which then sits without continuation or conclusion.

But the main reason why it irks me so much is that these authors have so many readers, their own fanbase, and then just disappear. Meanwhile, authors like me post reliably every single week and I don't have a single reader. I keep very consistently to my own schedule, and my thread continues collecting dust, down in views with almost no replies and no likes.

Okay, so maybe I'm not so much upset with authors who build up large followings then leave--it's more like I'm insanely jealous of them. I almost want to say, "Since you're not writing anymore, can you just transfer all your fans over to me? I'd love to have actual discussions going on about my story!"

Moral of the post: If you have people who actually read what you write and follow you as an author, BE GRATEFUL! Appreciate them, and don't leave them hanging.

Must be nice, man, must be nice. Tell me what that's like.

 

That reminds me... I need to type some things...

I guess that could be a pet peeve of mine. I need to be in a certain mood to sit down and type up a lot of stuff in one sitting. One of the drawbacks of writing by hand is then I need to sit down and type it all up. It's a bit tedious, particularly when I am not just typing a new draft, but typing up what I had already written, thereby writing the same thing twice. I need to be in a certain mood to sit down and commit myself to a tedious task.

 

[Looks around to see if RedGold is looking] I sort of did that...stole RedGold's readers. It was with her permission though. She started a story, a lot of people were interested in it, but then DRL struck and that story got stalled after two chapters. Five years later I asked her if I could adopt it and I ended up with my most popular story to date. Which tells me that I am better at finishing a story than starting one. She has some awesome plot bunnies.

What do you write Rew? I think a fan base is hard to get if you are writing OCs. With somebody like Luke/Mara there is already a built in fan base that will at least read a chapter or two to give it a go. Unfortunately, people are usually stuck in their fan base and don't wander around much. I may read Jag/Jaina but that is about it. So don't get frustrated if you are writing about characters that are not main characters in the EU or the movies.

 

100? One hundred! 'er, no, nothing there to complain about, I'd say.

Rew: Certain types of stories/characters tend to garner the reviews more than others (and certain authors as well, ONCE they've achieved a fan base). I've seen some "ok" stories (IMHO) that are hugely popular and readers gush over how fantastic the story is when it's fairly pedestrian, while some fantastic stories just don't gather the attention.

While I tend not to get many response posts nowadays, either, at least now I can see if I'm being read - of course, that then begs the question if I'm so fantastic they're speechless (yeah, right ) or so bad they're speechless.

 

You got them speechless and dumbstruck Valairy Scot. It is true though about a fan base. I know a few of my stories are only getting read because my friends are the ones reading them.

So don't get frustrated Rew