grumpy old bear

[roxy]

You know, young fandom, we have perfectly good ways to indicate that in the featured story, there will be no sex of the boy-on-boy kind. No need to explain that your story doesn't contain slash, no need to make it part of the title. When you have a pairing you use the /. No need to spell it out. Just, Sam/Dean will do. Or Sam & Dean. The & lets us know that this is not an AU of the sexin' brothers kind. (Because if the Winchesters are having sex of any kind with each other, that automatically throws your story into an alternate universe, no matter how close you stick to canon outside of that.) Also, believe it or not, SpN has a *very* healthy gen component, with very well respected and ass-kicking writers. Not writing slash is not a bold move into areas heretofore uncovered, little ones.

While I'm bitching, here's another thing what pisses me off--learn to correctly use cuts, use headers for god's sake--word count would be nice--and stop telling us how shitty your story is, do you really think I want to read it if it's that much a pile of crap? Save the chatty intros for your LJ. Also for cryin' out loud, being new to a fandom is no excuse for misspellings and gross murder of grammar. I'm not on top of it all the time either but I try to listen and remember when I get corrected. My god, make your damn story readable! It's not enough to have a great idea if it sounds like it was written by your 12 year old sister under the influence of too many Skittles.

I'm going to crawl back in my cave now, and just for fun I'm going to kick Boo-Boo's ass. GROWL!!!

*snatches your pik-i-nick basket*

Comments

[altimeterrise.livejournal.com]

Lol, the shoddy fanfic rant - how I have been there, let me count the ways. I used to get really cut up about this kind of stuff and do my "Godzilla-Tokyo-Smash!!" impression...but. The only thing I'm really still militant about is the warnings. Fanfic contains all the glaring eyesores of poor writing/organization/labeling that you mentioned and more, no doubt about it. And while these things look like obvious, easy fixes when you're reading them, they cumulatively add up to a large amount of base writing knowledge and added effort for the writer.

I have a huge leg up when it comes to writing polished, coherent stories in English: I've been haunting libraries since preschool, I've taken college English courses, and I'm a native speaker. But despite all the times I've been disappointed by the lack of polish in someone else's story, I've come to realize from my own struggles with cobbling together fanfic in my spare time that fandom is neither a credited class nor a professional writing forum. What distinguishes fanfic as a creative community is the emphasis on collaboration and sharing over professionalism.

When you're coming off the proverbial fic "written by a thirteen-year-old on a sugar high" this seems like a really suck-ass quality for fandom to have. But then I look back at my own work, and see all the crap I *KNOW* is wrong, rushed, awkward, illogical, that I would like to fix, but probably never will because hey, this isn't my day job, and I realize that if I waited until it was polished up to a pro-level, I'd probably never write or post it in the first place. As painful as it can be for the reader, I think fanfic does a better job of just encouraging people to *WRITE*, to participate in the worldwide (well, internet-wide, anyway) creative commons.

That said, as reader I only have so much time, energy, and patience to devote to reading other people's flawed writing - hence my still being a warnings nazi. That way, if I'm feeling generous I can give writer X's unbetaed, grammar-addled, OOC, soap opera wannabe a try, and if I don't, I only wasted 10 seconds reading the warnings.

As a final note, my intention here is not to make you feel bad about wanting to claw your eyes out from the fanfic eyesores - just sharing a different perspective, is all. So next time you want reach through the internet and stab the author in the face (not that I've *ever* wanted to do that - *coughs*), you can take a deep breath and repeat to yourself, "I'm encouraging the growth of the creative commons, I'm encouraging the growth of the creative commons." ;D

[bt-kady.livejournal.com]

You have a very good point, and it's one I need to remind myself of whenever I read something that is riddled with mistakes: At least the writer wrote something. A lot of people have the desire to, but never do, because they don't think they're good enough. Maybe they aren't, but one never knows unless you try.

Writing takes practice. When I look back at what I wrote years ago and compare it to what I'm able to produce now, there's a huge difference. Some of that comes from maturity, some comes from continued work at it, and some comes from good betas who catch what you're weak at. Becoming a good writer takes time and effort, and being willing to share your work with others who can give you honest critiques. It also takes willingness to listen to those critiques and learn from them, all the while maintaining your own voice and originality.