Discussion Fan Fic Pet Peeves?

I was thinking this would make a good Crackfic challenge. Make an OC that makes all the canon characters look like blithering idiots. Like a super awesome looking woman who makes Mara look ugly in comparison and who is so strong in the Force Luke is impressed. She has a photographic memory like Winter which makes her the top slicer in the GA. Her lightning like reflexes allows her to out-pilot Wedge and she can turn any man's head because she is a near human that exudes sex pheromones making her irresistible to all species. Whoever could make the most over the top Gary Stu or Mary Sue is the winner.

 

...I think I would melt some of my brain cells doing a fic like that...

 

I think I lost some brain cells when reading that.

 

It would make for a hilarious challenge though, assuming we all didn't end up putting ourselves into writing comas doing it.

 

It would, but why stop at just the most over the top Mary Sue, why not make it, who can write the most pet peeve filled fic?

Here the beginning to mine:

my story
summary: this is my story about a girl beng transported to the star wars universe. I really suck at summaries, please, please read.

I woke up one morning and I instantly knew something was wrong. My domesticated wolf, Esmerelda, was not at my side. My head hurt awefully. I looked around. I was in a small room. The door suddenly opened and in walked a very hansom man with blond hair and blue eyes. "Who are you? Where am I??" I scream. "I was going to ask you the same question. I am Luke Skywalker." he replies. "You were found in a hangar. No one knows who you are or where you came from?" "Where am I?" I snap. "Coruscant." he then explain to me that Corucant was a planet. Dun Dun Dun!


I think I just pulled a brain muscle.

 

I like it! The most pet peeve crackfic challenge!

 

*grips head*

That hurt to read...I can't imagine writing it...

Back on the character bashing peeve I brought up earlier...writing a Harry Potter fic, and got the first flame I've had in a while. Namely since I dared to keep the people in character and not just start throwing stuff out the window. Some kriffing people...

 

That person needs to read more profic.

My brother and I were discussing prose, namely passive and active voice and how having the characters act on objects or the objects act on characters can vary depending on mood. I brought up something that is a bit of a peeve of mine; how the switching between passive and active voice can be misconstrued as switching tense. Tense and voice are not the same. Just because I determine voice based on setting and mood, doesn't mean that I absolutely have to use one single voice throughout the piece. Back in the day, Lovecraft's usage of passive voice and purple prose was considered horrendous writing. Nowadays, when people emulate his style, it's considered literature.

Learn the difference between voice and tense before jumping to such conclusions, and know that many professional authors do this; switch voice depending on mood and setting, and use a plu-perfect tense. If it's good enough for those who get paid to write, it's good enough for you. And thus, you should not be forced to adhere to a rigid style because your creative writing teacher hammers it into your skull. Learn the rules, yes. Always learn the rules. But remember that once you learn them, you can also learn how to bend them to your whim.

 

It always surprises me to see how so many young writers seem to think that complete, nonsensical randomness is the epitome of good/funny writing. But I turned the TV on yesterday and was struck with the realization of where it was coming from. Look at all these weird, new cartoons like Gumball or Annoying Orange. That's exactly what these fics remind me of.

Anybody else notice this? Is it just me? I'm tempted to dig back through FF.Net's older stories, just to see if this "RANDOMLOLZ" thing was as prevalent in the past as it is now... or if it really did spawn about the same time as this newer generation of cartoons.

 

I've come across a few, but I haven't read them in their entirety. Once the nonsensical randomness shows up, I quickly page away. It bugs me that many think that that's how to write a comedy. It's not. It's how to write something inane. Visual humor works for a visual medium. Literary humor is an entirely different thing and process, and one's prose had better be comedic, to boot.

In books, what are the funniest parts that you can remember? How were they written? Was the prose comedic? I've read some funny passages in otherwise very serious books and laughed out loud because the prose said something amusing. For example, this passage from Red Harvest was one that I found to be quite amusing, for the sake of the prose:

"Every so often, the universe must just get bored and decide to really cut loose. Like the corpses that had come after them from the tower, most of them had already started to rot. Others were missing whole pieces of their faces and outer musculature, turning them into walking pathology lessons without the common courtesy to lie down and die."

If you are writing a comedy, you would do well to have your prose follow suit. Serious prose in a light-hearted story can be jarring and detract from the comedic scenario.

 

Comedy is one of my strong points, or so my readers tell me. Thankfully, when I write comedy, it tends to be Stargate, which is easy enough since it already has some darn good comedy.

 

In Star Wars, Aaron Allston is definitely the epitome of humor.

I've written several crack!fics. They were fun.

 

Humor can be very tricky to write at times, especially if it's an entire comedic fic and not just a scene within a work of another drama. Random stuff is not funny, random things happening to characters that drive the plot line can be funny, but it must be done right.

Author notes and smilies in the middle of a chapter annoy me. Save it for the beginning of the post, or at the end. No one cares what you think when they are in the middle of reading a scene.

 

When I need to do something like that (the AN) I just put a * next to whatever is important.

So for instance:

blah *

Blah blah**


AN: And here is the notes:

* blah
**blah blah

Much easier that way.

 

That's what I've done for some Dear Diary entries. Star what needs to be starred, then clarify it later. I've seen it done in books, too. Items would be starred, and then a tiny reference at the bottom of the page.

 

Footnotes save lives.

I have a quick question going back to the psychologist/psychiatrist thing a few pages back. A psychologist would perform an IQ test for a school, correct? Or would it be someone else entirely. I know this doesn't really belong here,but we were talking about it.

 

I don't really know. Looking it up right now, I see that IQ tests are standardized, so technically, the educator can administer them. However, it appears that the tests were designed by psychologists, so the school psychologist could also administer the test. Psychologists would be the ones determining a score from the tests, and if I recall correctly, any psychological evaluation I had was conducted by a psychologist.

 

Alright. Thanks. I looked it up too and didn't exactly get a definitive answer. It is always good to get a second opinion when researching something you aren't familiar with. I wish profic authors would do that.

 

Me too. I wrote up obnoxious citations for a Behind-the-scenes section for the Wook's article on schizophrenia and quoted not only one of my writing books that says that profic authors get it wrong all the time, but also the DSM! And sources still screw it up! Let's put this out there right now and get this over and done with, before I see another mistake in a published work:

Schizophrenia and Multiple Personality Disorder are NOT the same thing!

Please write this down on a piece of paper in large letters and paste it on the wall above your writing desk! Then, do yourself a favor and either get a book on abnormal psychology, or print out the diagnostic criteria and symptoms of each disorder and keep them nearby so that way you can reference to them! Yes, you can have a character with both conditions, as while it's not necessarily common, it's not exceedingly rare, either. However, make sure that you know what symptoms pertain to what disorder!

 

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to use Wikipedia or webMB. Somehow I wonder how profic authors get published with big companies while the rest of us are SOL (other than self-publishing). If something is going to play a big role in a story - profic or fanfic - research it.

 

Hehehe, now I'm picturing something that is totally against TOS.

 

I'm in...

 

Slang in sci fi and fantasy is dumb and ignorant. Who agrees?

 

Not me, as I like to develop some of my own. Now, if it's groaningly stupid slang, then yes, it's annoying. Otherwise, different cultures have different slang, and thus stories should reflect on it. Zuckuss has different slang than Bossk, likewise Bossk has different slang than Dengar. Granted, they will share similar slang vocabularies from working together, but they've all three grown up learning different slang to start; slang that was unique to their separate cultures.

That said, while your Human Corellian character may say "Let's kriff them up the ass!" your Gand character may not understand this concept of "ass", but they will gladly fertilize their opponents up the ovipore.

 

I personally enjoy coming up with SW slang and swear words, though when I reread some of my stuff, I sometimes cringe at some of it. One of my favorite creations is 'Bewt' for a mean woman. I think if you use earth slang, it can sound 'off'.