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You know what really dills my pickle?
Fanfiction writing guides.
What is it that possesses people to write these exercises in futility and uselessness? I swear, every single fic archive I've visited (with the exception of very large, multi-fan archives like ff.net and AO3) feels the need to provide a 'Fanfiction tips' page, usually written by the archive admin or one of its mods, usually with a focus on ideas that just don't work and some simple grammatical guidelines.
This bothers me to no end.
For one thing, nearly all of the grammar rules are listed are limited to the good ol' "Using the wrong your/you're" or "Using the the wrong they're/their/there" which, while helpful, is certainly not the end all of common grammatical errors commonly found in fanfic. I almost never see sections about proper subject/object pronoun use, even though it's just as common an error as the your/you're/they're/their/there confusion. Or there will be a part where the guide writer complains about comma abuse, but will only offer 'don't be afraid of using periods! :Db' as advice. Why not discuss other forms of punctuation, like semi-colons, colons, dashes, and so on? Or the different ways in which a sentence can be structured?
I suspect many of the guide writers don't have a particularly deep grasp on grammar rules in the first place, and harp on the obvious, easy to pick out and easy to correct mistakes because they are not confident about their own knowledge of other rules - or they are not aware of other rules in the first place, so they do not discuss them.
Most annoying of all, sometimes guide writers don't even mention how to correct a mistake. I have read at least two 'guides' that essentially said "Make sure you're using the right form of your/you're/they're/their/there" and THAT WAS IT. No follow up on methods writers can use to determine if they are using the correct word or not. HOW VERY HELPFUL.
Grammar fail aside, what really bothers me about these guides is the oh-so-useful 'how and what to write' sections. Oh, they're never titled 'How and What to Write,' and any guide of this sort is littered with "...but anything can be great if it's written well!" caveats, but let's be honest: for the most part, guide writers aren't writing a guide so much as an extended rant about genres or ideas they don't like.
(Kind of like this post. GO HYPOCRISY!)
Nearly every guide of this sort will 'warn' ficcers away from certain genres, namely crossovers and Mary Sues/Gary Stus/whatthefuckever they're calling poorly written original characters these days. This will be followed by an exhaustive list of why crossover suck (too absurd! confusing! nonsensical! too many plots at once!) and how to tell if your character is a Mary Sue. (purple-hued body parts that have no business being purple! names that sound like a bunch of gemstones scrambled together with fairy dust! can slice, dice and make julienne fries!)
Which...misses the point, somewhat. Knowing what aspects of a genre/character type people find most annoying can be useful, but a 'list of annoying things' is not particularly enlightening. Yes, crossovers are often absurd, confusing, and have too much going on at once, but so do a lot of other fics, in all genres - saying you should avoid the crossover genre completely isn't encouraging or helpful to someone who really, really wants to write a crossover.
As for original characters - frankly, making a list of superficial character traits and declaring that, if your character has none of these traits they are 'good' and some/all of these traits they are 'bad' is not helpful either. PROTIP: people don't like Mary Sues because they're boring and they make the characters around them boring - it's not because they are usually sparkly and lovely. It's not the purple eyes that are the problem, it's the fact that purple eyes are used as the equivalent of painting I'M SPECIAL!!! on your character's forehead. The Mary Sue guides treat the symptoms and not the causes, to make a clumsy metaphor.
These guides end up being counterproductive - they're generally too vague to be helpful, and their tendency to focus on what goes wrong with little attention to what one can do to improve leads people to second-guess themselves without giving them a way to fix their problems. It encourages people to stop writing what they want and what interests them, or to write fearfully. NOT COOL, INTERNETS.
TL;DR: If you are going to write a guide, people of the internets, take the time to write something truly useful, encouraging, and helpful, instead of writing a rant about common fanfic/amateur writing mistakes and labeling it a guide.
Fanfiction writing guides.
What is it that possesses people to write these exercises in futility and uselessness? I swear, every single fic archive I've visited (with the exception of very large, multi-fan archives like ff.net and AO3) feels the need to provide a 'Fanfiction tips' page, usually written by the archive admin or one of its mods, usually with a focus on ideas that just don't work and some simple grammatical guidelines.
This bothers me to no end.
For one thing, nearly all of the grammar rules are listed are limited to the good ol' "Using the wrong your/you're" or "Using the the wrong they're/their/there" which, while helpful, is certainly not the end all of common grammatical errors commonly found in fanfic. I almost never see sections about proper subject/object pronoun use, even though it's just as common an error as the your/you're/they're/their/there confusion. Or there will be a part where the guide writer complains about comma abuse, but will only offer 'don't be afraid of using periods! :Db' as advice. Why not discuss other forms of punctuation, like semi-colons, colons, dashes, and so on? Or the different ways in which a sentence can be structured?
I suspect many of the guide writers don't have a particularly deep grasp on grammar rules in the first place, and harp on the obvious, easy to pick out and easy to correct mistakes because they are not confident about their own knowledge of other rules - or they are not aware of other rules in the first place, so they do not discuss them.
Most annoying of all, sometimes guide writers don't even mention how to correct a mistake. I have read at least two 'guides' that essentially said "Make sure you're using the right form of your/you're/they're/their/there" and THAT WAS IT. No follow up on methods writers can use to determine if they are using the correct word or not. HOW VERY HELPFUL.
Grammar fail aside, what really bothers me about these guides is the oh-so-useful 'how and what to write' sections. Oh, they're never titled 'How and What to Write,' and any guide of this sort is littered with "...but anything can be great if it's written well!" caveats, but let's be honest: for the most part, guide writers aren't writing a guide so much as an extended rant about genres or ideas they don't like.
(Kind of like this post. GO HYPOCRISY!)
Nearly every guide of this sort will 'warn' ficcers away from certain genres, namely crossovers and Mary Sues/Gary Stus/whatthefuckever they're calling poorly written original characters these days. This will be followed by an exhaustive list of why crossover suck (too absurd! confusing! nonsensical! too many plots at once!) and how to tell if your character is a Mary Sue. (purple-hued body parts that have no business being purple! names that sound like a bunch of gemstones scrambled together with fairy dust! can slice, dice and make julienne fries!)
Which...misses the point, somewhat. Knowing what aspects of a genre/character type people find most annoying can be useful, but a 'list of annoying things' is not particularly enlightening. Yes, crossovers are often absurd, confusing, and have too much going on at once, but so do a lot of other fics, in all genres - saying you should avoid the crossover genre completely isn't encouraging or helpful to someone who really, really wants to write a crossover.
As for original characters - frankly, making a list of superficial character traits and declaring that, if your character has none of these traits they are 'good' and some/all of these traits they are 'bad' is not helpful either. PROTIP: people don't like Mary Sues because they're boring and they make the characters around them boring - it's not because they are usually sparkly and lovely. It's not the purple eyes that are the problem, it's the fact that purple eyes are used as the equivalent of painting I'M SPECIAL!!! on your character's forehead. The Mary Sue guides treat the symptoms and not the causes, to make a clumsy metaphor.
These guides end up being counterproductive - they're generally too vague to be helpful, and their tendency to focus on what goes wrong with little attention to what one can do to improve leads people to second-guess themselves without giving them a way to fix their problems. It encourages people to stop writing what they want and what interests them, or to write fearfully. NOT COOL, INTERNETS.
TL;DR: If you are going to write a guide, people of the internets, take the time to write something truly useful, encouraging, and helpful, instead of writing a rant about common fanfic/amateur writing mistakes and labeling it a guide.
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no subject
Date: 2010-11-16 02:51 pm (UTC)From:Man, thiiiiiiiis. :( I have problems with grammar so hard and I just wish someone would write something useful so I could fucking learn how to use things and when I should use them. DX
Back in the day when I thought I might actually write (lol I've long since been terrified to try to - or I'll start writing something and then delete the entire thing in fear) I used to read those guides and pretty much get scared off because I thought if I used too many commas my stuff automatically = shit. I was pretty young, though. XD You're totally right, it would be nice to have someone write up something encouraging and useful. :(
no subject
Date: 2010-11-21 10:00 pm (UTC)From:That the guides are very heavy on the "Don't do this!" front bothers me a lot. Creative writing is one of those things where you NEED to make lots of public, embarrassing mistakes to get better, so being hypercritical and targeting new writers for a list of NEVER DO THESE THINGS strikes me as unhelpful and a bit mean-spirited.
no subject
Date: 2010-11-17 06:27 pm (UTC)From:I'm sure you've heard of the saying "Those who can't do, teach." If I were add anything additional to that thought, it would be "Those who can't teach, criticize." When someone criticizes another person's work, more often than not they have no idea what they're talking about. 'How to write fanfic' guides blend the lines between teaching and criticism, but the ones I've read tend to do more of the latter than the former.
That is not however, my biggest problem with the guides...
My biggest problem with the 'how to write fanfic' guides are they paint with an exceptionally broad brush. I don't want to reiterate what you're saying above, but sometimes characters with traits which one would call 'generic' are some of the best characters I've come across. Not every idea needs to be creative to be successful, as a matter of fact, some of the most interesting characters are severely lacking in creativity. Why is this? Because they appeal to a person's familiarities. Sometimes staying within a comfort zone is a good thing, and it depends on what the author of the work is trying to accomplish.
This is the internets, but some of the criticism I've seen could lead a person toward dropping writing altogether. Either there is no appreciation for the work and it simply isn't worth it, or they lack the self-confidence to continue. Not everyone is going to be an excellent writer, and not everything an author creates is going to be great, but writing is something which gets easier the more you do it. The best word of advice I would give people looking to write fanfiction would not be to avoid purple-haired characters with large breasts, but rather to practice, practice, practice.
Anyway, I should get back to studying computer graphics... I have an exam today and must know the intricacies of phong and gourand shading (http://www.nbb.cornell.edu/neurobio/land/oldstudentprojects/cs490-95to96/guo/report.html), among other things... See you later. -.-;;
no subject
Date: 2010-11-21 10:19 pm (UTC)From:Sometimes staying within a comfort zone is a good thing, and it depends on what the author of the work is trying to accomplish.
This, so much! I remember reading an article that said that literary criticism is pretty much the only field where people will say "I don't understand what's going on here" proudly - where ignorance of the creator's intent is seen as a valid criticism, not a failing on the viewer's part. Too often in criticism you see people commenting on what a work isn't and not what it is actually trying to be.
Not everyone is going to be an excellent writer, and not everything an author creates is going to be great, but writing is something which gets easier the more you do it.
This is true, as well, which makes it even more frustrating that so many people are eager to make sure others are at a certain level right out of the gate. The best way to get better at writing is to do lots of it and to get feedback on it - feedback that isn't distorted by snarky commentary.