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catscradle's survey
Jul. 24th, 2002 09:28 pmthebratqueenWhen you read fanfic:
What are you looking for in a story initially?
Fandom, pairing and author do a bit of a dance to see which will get top billing with me. It's sort of my own version of "Fast, cheap, good". Obviously all three are ideal, but if I can't have all three give me some variation of two or a very strong one to make up for it. (eg I'll read a pairing I don't like if the fandom and author are my favs, or I'll read an author I don't know if the fandom and pairing are okay, etc)
My familiarity with the big 3 elements also plays into it. If it's an author I love I'll read stories that take place in fandoms I don't know, but OTOH some fandoms are too obscure for me to care about. The good writing of the author gets me far, but not necessarily far enough to care about a strange (to me) fandom.
Part of the problem for me too is time. I don't have a lot of time to read fic, so I tend to be very bitchy and selective.
Put a story in front of me, will I read it? Depends.
All three elements? Then yes.
Fandom and pairing that I like? I'll give it a skim.
Good author? Also a skim.
Beyond that - probably not. Not unless it's recced by someone who knows my tastes very well or I'm very very very bored. (And if I'm skimming, your story needs to hook me in. How? GOOD WRITING)
What helps you enjoy a story?
GOOD WRITING. Can't say that enough. Show don't tell. Nail the characters. Don't put in useless info. Great dialogue. Have a connection to the canon. This is fanfic, people. If I can't recognize the canon anywhere in your story I'm outta there.
Characterization. It doesn't have to be my POV on the characters but it has to be a recognizable POV on the characters. I like Angel with a mix of stupid dork amidst all that nasty darkness. You may like all darkness with no dork. That's okay. If I can see how you got to your conclusion from the canon then we're good.
Remember TBQ's two-step rule of fanfic.
What will turn you off to a fic?
The opposite of all the good stuff, for a start. But beyond that -
Trying Too Hard Tarot. In both fanfic and original stories I hate when the writer feels this need to "write like a writer" and suddenly we've got all this crap like "The hot summer sun beat down like the drums of a Mardi Gras parade while Betty Lou walked barefoot - the kind of barefoot only kids could pull off but somehow Betty Lou managed with the ease of a young gazelle during grazing season - and sipped an ice tea that was as refreshing as the glaciers in the North Pole that the ice reminded you of on that hot summer day and - " GET ON WITH IT.
I'm giving a bad example here but basically calm down and don't try too hard. Don't make all the writer's tricks that you're using obvious, don't think you have to use all the tricks at once - just let the narrative go.
Let things happen naturally. Trust your gut instincts. If I'm seeing obvious chemistry in one direction and you jam the characters into another it's obvious (David Greenwalt and Marti Noxon - we're looking at you).
Drop the fanon. I mean it. Put it down right now. Some fanon is okay but for the love of God don't use it just because everyone else does. Jim and Blair can take hot showers, vamps don't purr and if I hear Angelus recite his so-called family tree one more time I'm taking a hostage.
Do you like to be surprised by a story? (this can mean anything from a pairing to a plot twist).
I've got no preference in this area as far as reading goes. As a writer I try to keep my readers on their toes (as I think anyone reading the current Epiphany arc knows) and I love hide-in-plain-sight spoilers, but as a reader I'm fine for domestic stories that have no twists, or dramatic stories that do.
How long do you give a story before you give up on it?
Two pages, tops. And you can lose me in the header if you're overexplaning it, misspelling the character names or getting a little too twee with your disclaimers ("I don't own them but if I did Angelus would be making me chocolate chip muffins right now while Spike fed my goldfish!")
I've gotten a slightly higher tolerance for the "e" in "child" - this due to the fact that there are writers out there who are good in spite of that FUCKING vowel (I still don't like it, can you tell?) but use it and you've already got one strike against you. The rest of the story had better be damn well written for me to keep going.
Usually by two pages I've seen all I need to see in order to know if I should keep going or not.
Do you read fics that you know aren't written very well, but you like the idea enough to keep reading till the end?
Sometimes yes if it's a good plot concept. I may force myself to read through just to see what the author did with it - and then I end up with a plot bunny about how to do a similar idea but with a twist.
Case in point, I read a Buffy/Wesley (yes, you read that right) story once which I thought was badly written but interesting in concept, so I muddled through the crappy writing just to see where it went. I'm now tempted to try my own version of that story but since I don't have the time I've never bothered to track the original author down to ask her if she'd mind.
But the "idea" has to be an idea. It can't just be "one hot guy and another hot guy have sex". That's not an idea, that's a PWP and there are plenty of well-written ones I can be spending my time with. Give me an actual story idea with plot and an interesting take on the canon and I might stick with you.
What are you looking for in a story initially?
Fandom, pairing and author do a bit of a dance to see which will get top billing with me. It's sort of my own version of "Fast, cheap, good". Obviously all three are ideal, but if I can't have all three give me some variation of two or a very strong one to make up for it. (eg I'll read a pairing I don't like if the fandom and author are my favs, or I'll read an author I don't know if the fandom and pairing are okay, etc)
My familiarity with the big 3 elements also plays into it. If it's an author I love I'll read stories that take place in fandoms I don't know, but OTOH some fandoms are too obscure for me to care about. The good writing of the author gets me far, but not necessarily far enough to care about a strange (to me) fandom.
Part of the problem for me too is time. I don't have a lot of time to read fic, so I tend to be very bitchy and selective.
Put a story in front of me, will I read it? Depends.
All three elements? Then yes.
Fandom and pairing that I like? I'll give it a skim.
Good author? Also a skim.
Beyond that - probably not. Not unless it's recced by someone who knows my tastes very well or I'm very very very bored. (And if I'm skimming, your story needs to hook me in. How? GOOD WRITING)
What helps you enjoy a story?
GOOD WRITING. Can't say that enough. Show don't tell. Nail the characters. Don't put in useless info. Great dialogue. Have a connection to the canon. This is fanfic, people. If I can't recognize the canon anywhere in your story I'm outta there.
Characterization. It doesn't have to be my POV on the characters but it has to be a recognizable POV on the characters. I like Angel with a mix of stupid dork amidst all that nasty darkness. You may like all darkness with no dork. That's okay. If I can see how you got to your conclusion from the canon then we're good.
Remember TBQ's two-step rule of fanfic.
What will turn you off to a fic?
The opposite of all the good stuff, for a start. But beyond that -
Trying Too Hard Tarot. In both fanfic and original stories I hate when the writer feels this need to "write like a writer" and suddenly we've got all this crap like "The hot summer sun beat down like the drums of a Mardi Gras parade while Betty Lou walked barefoot - the kind of barefoot only kids could pull off but somehow Betty Lou managed with the ease of a young gazelle during grazing season - and sipped an ice tea that was as refreshing as the glaciers in the North Pole that the ice reminded you of on that hot summer day and - " GET ON WITH IT.
I'm giving a bad example here but basically calm down and don't try too hard. Don't make all the writer's tricks that you're using obvious, don't think you have to use all the tricks at once - just let the narrative go.
Let things happen naturally. Trust your gut instincts. If I'm seeing obvious chemistry in one direction and you jam the characters into another it's obvious (David Greenwalt and Marti Noxon - we're looking at you).
Drop the fanon. I mean it. Put it down right now. Some fanon is okay but for the love of God don't use it just because everyone else does. Jim and Blair can take hot showers, vamps don't purr and if I hear Angelus recite his so-called family tree one more time I'm taking a hostage.
Do you like to be surprised by a story? (this can mean anything from a pairing to a plot twist).
I've got no preference in this area as far as reading goes. As a writer I try to keep my readers on their toes (as I think anyone reading the current Epiphany arc knows) and I love hide-in-plain-sight spoilers, but as a reader I'm fine for domestic stories that have no twists, or dramatic stories that do.
How long do you give a story before you give up on it?
Two pages, tops. And you can lose me in the header if you're overexplaning it, misspelling the character names or getting a little too twee with your disclaimers ("I don't own them but if I did Angelus would be making me chocolate chip muffins right now while Spike fed my goldfish!")
I've gotten a slightly higher tolerance for the "e" in "child" - this due to the fact that there are writers out there who are good in spite of that FUCKING vowel (I still don't like it, can you tell?) but use it and you've already got one strike against you. The rest of the story had better be damn well written for me to keep going.
Usually by two pages I've seen all I need to see in order to know if I should keep going or not.
Do you read fics that you know aren't written very well, but you like the idea enough to keep reading till the end?
Sometimes yes if it's a good plot concept. I may force myself to read through just to see what the author did with it - and then I end up with a plot bunny about how to do a similar idea but with a twist.
Case in point, I read a Buffy/Wesley (yes, you read that right) story once which I thought was badly written but interesting in concept, so I muddled through the crappy writing just to see where it went. I'm now tempted to try my own version of that story but since I don't have the time I've never bothered to track the original author down to ask her if she'd mind.
But the "idea" has to be an idea. It can't just be "one hot guy and another hot guy have sex". That's not an idea, that's a PWP and there are plenty of well-written ones I can be spending my time with. Give me an actual story idea with plot and an interesting take on the canon and I might stick with you.
