“The first draft of anything is shit.” ~ Ernest Hemingway
Ok, time for a rant from “The Dictionary.”
Today’s subject – fan fiction. I love reading it. I wish I could spend more time writing it. Most of my stories are sitting unfinished on my hard drive; some of them are so unfinished they haven’t been started yet. So I totally respect the people out there who get the job done and share their stuff with the addicts among us. Some of them are so good they make the professionals look like infant school children. But fanfic writers can really tick me off sometimes. All the “PLEASE REVIEW!!!” and “review my story or I won’t write any more!” crap. Especially when said story is so full of spelling and grammar errors it’s barely readable. And I don’t just mean the your/you’re variety (although that is one of my pet peeves). “Inivitble”? Not a word. I’m sorry, but if you can’t be bothered to use a spellchecker, I can’t be bothered to review your ’story’.
I realise that not everyone is a great speller and we all make mistakes and typos sometimes, but come on. One of the useful things about computers is that with a few mouse clicks you can correct them. Fanfiction.net even has a dictionary built into the site. “Athoritive”? Also not a word. A spellchecker would’ve told you that. Of course it might not offer an alternative and it won’t necessarily pick up on the grammar stuff, like sight/site/cite, but it’s a start. And I can handle a few errors. I know I’m really anal about this stuff and it’s my problem. But every other sentence? You obviously didn’t read it over before posting. And if you can’t even do that, why should I take the time to read your fic and send you a review? Dude, the story has so much wrong with it I’d be there all night and most of the next day. “Agnolaged”? That’s not a word either. If you don’t know how to spell big words and can’t be bothered to look them up, then don’t use them. Just a suggestion.
Actually what bugs me even more than the spelling mistakes is the jumping between tenses. Either write it all in the present tense (if you must) or all in the past. Please don’t use both. “She is sitting in the chair when she heard a noise.” No. If she *is* sitting in the chair she *hears* a noise. But she *was* sitting in the chair, so she *heard* a noise. Do it once and I’ll pass it off as a typo. When it’s all the way through I’ll hit the back button. If you read the story aloud you’ll notice that stuff. You’ll also notice that you just switched from the third person to the first for like five paragraphs. If you’re writing what the character is thinking then show me that you are. Use quote marks, italics, stars, slashes, I don’t care, just make it clear. You might know what you mean, but I can only see what’s on the screen. So help me out a little.
I’m not claiming to be perfect. I make grammar errors and I write in sentence fragments, just like a lot of people. It’s just that I’ve seen some really great story ideas that I couldn’t stand to finish because the writing was so painful. Hemingway knew what he was talking about; the first draft usually is shit. I wrote an article for uni the other day that fit that description quite well. It was overdue and I started it at 2am. But I rewrote it and now it really works. That’s why they invented editing. If you care enough to write a story in the first place, surely you can go over it before posting. Better yet, get someone else to look over it; they’ll notice stuff that you don’t. But like I said if you don’t want to do it, then don’t demand reviews. That’s all I ask.
, because according to ladyvivien, “Bev Crusher is described in the casting call as having ‘the natural walk of a striptease queen.’” That so needs to find its way into fanfic. The mind boggles, LOL.
