174 replies to this topic

[Beastbomb]

That might have been possible before FF.net decided to include a rule that said your story (if reported) could be removed if you posted a chapter that was just an author's note.  Admittedly, like almost every other FF.net rule that only infrequently gets enforced (but when it does, it's in huge sweeps where hundreds, if not thousands, of fics are removed without notice or explanation), it's very frequently ignored, but some of us try to stick to the rules.

Have never taken time to read the rules. Never had to worry about them because I don't write. May be a good idea for me to do so. Would probably help me understand a ff.net writer predictaments ( I think that's spelled wrong).

I kinda see it like I would a job or meeting. Your not going to make it, it's nice to give a client or boss a warning. Not saying that writing fanfiction should be thought of as a job, but it's just nice to have a warning about what your planning. Shows that a writer cares about their readers and are willing to show their appreciation for a reader sticking with their story even if it's not something that should be taken severely like a writers person life.

[Konohakitten]

Have never taken time to read the rules. Never had to worry about them because I don't write. May be a good idea for me to do so. Would probably help me understand a ff.net writer predictaments ( I think that's spelled wrong).

I kinda see it like I would a job or meeting. Your not going to make it, it's nice to give a client or boss a warning. Not saying that writing fanfiction should be thought of as a job, but it's just nice to have a warning about what your planning. Shows that a writer cares about their readers and are willing to show their appreciation for a reader sticking with their story even if it's not something that should be taken severely like a writers person life.

 

 

This is why I give my readers my DA account and Tumblr where I post updates on the status of my writing. My readers know that I'm a mother, but I still give updates on both those sites frequently so that readers always know where I stand. This way I avoid the whole uploading a chapter that is an author note. 

[deviouslyChaotic]

You know what annoys me? When fanfiction writers refer to the characters by their hair color. I don't know why, but it irritates me like you cannot believe. "The rosette stood up." "The blonde laughed." Like, it's ok to refer to the character by their hair color once or twice, but not continuously throughout the story.

Also, I can't stand it when the fanfiction writer is not clarifying which character is speaking. For example, "Wow that's cool." "Yeah so cool." "I can't believe it." "Yeah." ...Who is saying what!? Ugh, it just makes me confused while reading the story.

[BakeNeko-Chan]

It really annoys me the way the site keeps changing, it seems like every time I go to FF.net something is different. I wish they would just stop trying to make 'improvements' all the time, it was fine just leave it be already. The new filters are especially annoying.

Edited by BakeNeko-Chan, 25 November 2013 - 08:39 PM.

[BakeNeko-Chan]

I really can't stand when I'm reading a story and the author keeps inserting AN's throughout and putting a bunch of stuff in parentheses, I find it very distracting and it makes the narrative choppy and just really makes the writer look like they have no idea what they're doing. It's a huge turn off for any story.

[Angel]

I really can't stand when I'm reading a story and the author keeps inserting AN's throughout and putting a bunch of stuff in parentheses, I find it very distracting and it makes the narrative choppy and just really makes the writer look like they have no idea what they're doing. It's a huge turn off for any story.

 

Yes I understand that feel.

 

How about when you read an amazing story with alot of potensial and then there is never an update ever again? Then after a few months or a year there is an update. Your happy and you check it out and it's just a notice that its been abandoned and they are sorry.

[KameoDash]

I have quite a few gripes with some fanfictions. My pet peeves are usually the writing style and grammar, also the story comes to play with this. I don't like it when there's a constant change in P.O.V. for just the same scene. Also when there's no sentence structure or poor description with only dialogue, I become uninterested. Also I try to keep an eye on the word count, and I try to avoid long chapter stories with 1000 words a chapter. I find it like the author didn't put as much effort as he/she could have done. I have gripes with the story if it's uninteresting (though that's my own opinion) but if it's full of cliches and has a repetitive story, I leave immediately.

[sushi.]

Whenever Sakura calls Naruto 'Naruto-kun'.

Edited by sushi., 01 February 2014 - 02:23 PM.

[TheFirstEvil100]

Whenever Sakura calls Naruto 'Naruto-kun'.

oh I hate that as well I mean what wrong with just calling him Naruto?

[sushi.]

oh I hate that as well I mean what wrong with just calling him Naruto?

In a lot of fanfics it is a sign of flirting, but Japanese would never adress their lovers with 'kun'. Kishi agrees, he used his favourite messenger - Sai, to explain how that suffix blocks the emotional bond between two people.

[KnS]

This isn't a pet peeve, exactly, but this is as good a thread to post this as any. 

 

What do you guys think / feel / do about requests to translate your stories into other languages?  

 

Have you had good experiences?  Bad experiences?

[tricksie]

hmmm.... Haven't had that, but have had reviews and pms in other languages. I answer as best as I can, but I always wonder if I'm providing a good translation. 

 

I'm curious to hear how it goes. I think it would be okay if you strip out odd language, turns of phrase, etc, basically anything that could trip up a translation service. I think it could work. But it would be nice to have a bilingual set of eyes (lol) look it over too.

[vblm]

I'm not a professional writer or anything, but I do know a few rules of thumb that are commonly broken on ff.net:

Avoid said bookisms. You can't cough, laugh, or growl a sentence, and readers notice.

Also don't overuse character tags "The blond ninja said" or "the pink-haired girl jumped the fence". It usually flows better to just say Naruto or Sakura. Character tags do have their uses, but I don't know the nuances here.

Don't use nonstandard formatting for dialog. There are grammar rules for handling dialog that people recognize and just work.

In general, long stories written without a proper outline are going to fall apart. I know this one from personal experience, but I've heard it from pros, too.

This is just my own personal opinion, but a lot of summaries on ff.net really turn me away. Firstly, don't talk to me in the summary, especially to tell me you are bad at writing summaries. Secondly, if your summary asks a question, it should be limited to just one. This question should define the overarching conflict of the story. Jim Butcher calls this the "Story Question".

It shouldn't be in the format of several unrelated "what if" questions. All fan fiction diverges at some point from canon, otherwise it wouldn't be fan fiction; it would be plagiarism. You should be showing me in the story rather than telling me about it in the summary.

I'm in favor of using the Japanese form of family name first in Naruto fics, but actual Japanese words should be used sparingly. It can add character and context to the story, though. A general rule of thumb that I like is that anyone who watches the show would know the meaning of the word, it's fine. If naruto walks into his empty house and ironically yells out "tadaima!", most of us get the context of that. If you have to put a translation somewhere, what you are doing is taking the reader out of the story so they can look up the footnote.

That's all I can say on a technical level. My knowledge and experience is pretty spotty. I recommend looking up Jim Butcher. He's got a few posts about the technical part of writing a novelthat I think are really valuable, and his Dresden Files series is awesome.

As far as story tropes go, I could probably talk all day. Flandarization and bashing is horrible, and it's everywhere. Any character can be an antagonist, but if villainy is a character's only defining trait, or if a character exists to satisfy some revenge fantasy, nobody is going to care about them, and any impact they have on the story is going to feel artificial. A lot of the time I read an AN explaining that the author doesn't actually like Naruto and hasn't read or watched it in years. I think what ends up happening is these fics are derived from other fics, and a lot of context is completely lost. If you don't have a basic respect for and familiarity towards the source material, you should probably he asking yourself why you are writing fan fiction for it.

[redrose3443]

I dislike when FF.net deletes stories with no warning. There was this one shot, that I loved, but I could not remember the name, so it took a long time to find it again. However, not even a month after I marked it as a favorite, so that I would never lose it again, the story is gone. I go looking for it, remembering the name this time, but when I click on the link it says error. What I hate is the fact that the story didn't even break any rules! So that just irked me.

 

Another is when Sakura is labled as a main character, but she gets bashed. It's happened twice and is annoying as hell, plus the stories are narusasu and sasuhina. I don't even care for both pairings, period. However that just gets on my nerves and when  people try to correct the author or ask them to take off her name nicely, she/he later updates with an authors note complaining about it.( Or at least that's what the reviews say, I don't click on the links to those stories.)

 

I also dislike a story full of OCs. I don't really like OCs in general, but they are necesarry at some point to move the story along.( Unless the main charater is an OC, but I never read those.) The author has so many OCs running around and I can't remember all their names or what they look like, so I would have to go back and forth between chapter two and chapter ten, until I finally get fed up and leave.

 

Finally, I don't like people coming onto my stories and telling me to change the pairing cause it's "impossible" or "wrong". Everyone has a guilty pleasure and it's not like I'm writing some sick twisted story where all the mom's of Sakura's peers are ploting to use her as some sex toy. It's FANfiction and does not need to be a carbon copy of canon, just have the characters close to canon, unless you present a believable reason why they're not. Not everybody likes the pairing options presented in canon. I don't want to write a sasusaku story, nor do I want to write a saisaku story, because I don't like the first pairing and the second is not really high on my love list.

 

Other than that most people before me already said the other things I dislike. Although, I am guilty of a few of the peeves I'm still a new writer and try to improve as I go along.

[Sedna]

Honestly I REALLY hate love triangles in fanfiction.

[Iwantbuns]

Honestly I REALLY hate love triangles in fanfiction.

 

Love triangles are everywhere..

[Nate River]

I don't mind the per se, I just see too many bail outs that bail a character out of having to make a decision. Someone, inevitably does something awful that makes the choice easy.

[questdrivencollie]

Here's another one: the author doesnt update in 2 years.

Yeah, I get that. I've found some awesome fics, only to see they haven't been updated in forever. One was 40 chapters long and totally awesome, but then I found out it's not even remotely finished.

 

Still, as someone who wrote a multi-chapter fanfiction several years ago that I never updated and probably never will again, I can understand why it happens. I did leave a notice about it, though, and offered the fic up for adoption. All this time there have been no takers.

[questdrivencollie]

Things that make me hit the back button on fanfictions:

 

-HUGE wall of text with no use of paragraphs

 

-no grammar or punctuation to speak of

 

-characters horribly OOC

 

-self-insert/the main character is an OC (Sorry, but when I read FAN fictions I expect to see mostly canon characters. Please go to fiction press to do original stories.)

 

-yaoi (Most of the time. One of my favorite authors writes yaoi, and I still love their stories. They're a brilliant writer.)

 

-AU, set in high school or some other generically boring place

 

-Harry Potter crossover--honestly, it's been done way too often to be interesting (I know of one exception, and it was well done.)

 

-harem (as in character literally has sex with multiple women/men)

 

-stories involving Naruto making Ninetails a sex slave/sex slave stories in general

 

-song fics (Not that they're necessarily bad, but they don't interest me and most of the time they're not at all done well.)

Edited by questdrivencollie, 25 June 2014 - 02:41 AM.

[vblm]

Yeah, I get that. I've found some awesome fics, only to see they haven't been updated in forever. One was 40 chapters long and totally awesome, but then I found out it's not even remotely finished.

Still, as someone who wrote a multi-chapter fanfiction several years ago that I never updated and probably never will again, I can understand why it happens. I did leave a notice about it, though, and offered the fic up for adoption. All this time there have been no takers.

On a related note, if you abandon your story, please don't mark it as complete! ಠ_ಠ

Edited by vblm, 25 June 2014 - 03:41 AM.