What are your fan fiction gripes?

I feel it can also help to create a sense of chaos and confusion, even (especially) if the characters don't necessarily find out exactly how things happened.
The key is the author should probably have an idea of it went down, at least.

I could accept this if the character in question was emotionally deadened for some reason or another. Doesn't apply to Steve, but, theoretically. Or the 'somehow' if they don't understand why they're having this kind of reaction.

 

I think that's the point. These constructions have actual meanings, and should be used only when you're trying to mean what they mean, not just whenever.

 

I've noticed this with more inexperienced writers. They don't seem comfortable with using short sentences with definitive statements. Everything is kind of, sort of, almost, a bit. It's okay to let your characters experience a full emotion, kiddos.

 

I think its like. Writing advice going hard on "you can't just tell us what your character is feeling!" so they are trying to create some distance and ambiguity to the emotion. Like "It's not sad sad it's almost sad, its like a wierd sort of melancholy, its artistic!" its like they're saying he's feeling blood orange and the rest of us are like he's fucking sad

 

that's a reason i hate so much writing advice. a lot of it just breeds different bad habits because the shit never seems to come with like explanations as to why the thing works or treats it as A Thing That Is Always True and Which Everyone Who Is A Good Writer Must Use. it's part of why i've ended up with my chief advice being 'don't seek out advice. just write A Whole Lot and begin to read your stuff and think about it. read other peoples' stuff and think about it. see what people think of your stuff and think about it'.

 

"Never do [x], do [y] instead."
"Never do [y], do [z] instead."
"Never do [z], do [x] instead."

AND SO THE SNAKE CONSUMES ITS OWN TAIL

 

tbh i think a lot of it is that a lot of ppl start fic writing adjacent activities with roleplaying, and there's this stigma towards short replies in rp so ppl learn how to stretch out a single action into an entire paragraph and ugh

 

Yeah, I've definitely seen fic that has... obvious hallmarks of the author being used to RP with minimum wordcounts per post. Usually, lots of unnecessary detailing of mundane actions, characters stopping to internal-monologue about their feelings at almost everything, and stuff like passive voice and odd viewpoint shifts because the writer is used to trying not to godmode other people's characters' reactions and hasn't quite gotten the hang of the fact that they don't need to do that any more.

 

So its basically the new "paid by the word"

 

Some fic are even just RP sessions that have been repurposed into prose. I know this because of. Reasons.

 

Conversely, there are RP sessions with so much behind-the-scenes coordination they might as well just be fanfic collabs.

 

Off topic-ish, but this is particularly true when describing a dream.

In dreams, things are not somehow something else. The “how” is that it’s a dream. Leave out “somehow.” The frog is your mother and also sometimes a heart. It lived through your hand seizing up and crushing it like silly putty because physics don’t actually work when your brain is running the universe. You know its glare was reproachful because you felt super guilty for squishing it.

Object permanence goes wonky when there are no actual permanent objects. Roll with it and tell the damn story.

 

I've encountered multiple ficcers who seem to use autocorrect as a spellcheck, because random words are replaced by totally unconnected ones. See the guy losing his memory in a card game, the people of a town being very mice, or the disembowelled finger.

 

I mean, are you reading yugioh fanfic?

 

No, the writer meant "money".

 

Oh yeah, I figured! (although it honestly took me a second of "what's weird about that?" ;p) I was just making a joke :)

 

I got super confused and thought the writer meant that he was losing AT memory.

 

Heh, sadly not.