Fanfiction Pet Peeves

So, here they are, in no particular order....

1 - Proper Use of Spelling and Grammar.

This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Granted, there shouldn't be "exceptions" to the rule, but some people take it upon themselves to excuse their own fictions from this.

Would it really kill you all to press F7 on your word document? That's the code for the spellcheck on most word programs. Even if you don't want to do that, there are websites like thesaurus.com or dictionary.com that can help you out with this.

2 - Separation Of Descriptive Sentences/Paragraphs From Dialogue Sentences/Paragraphs.

Why people can't do this properly is something even I don't get. What is so hard about separating paragraphs and/or sentences where a character is speaking from a paragraph and/or sentence where a character is being descriptive or is not talking about something?

Quite frankly, it looks much better and more professional when you separate them, from where as if you don't, then it all looks meshed together, and can be quite sloppy.

3 - Using The Correct Verbage Of A Contraction.

This is just simple basic stuff. I know that we all learned about the differences in contractions when we were in elementary. Especially when it's very obvious contractions like "your".

There are a couple of different ways to remember this particular one. The first "your" being labeled as when you have possession of something. This "your" is the correct verbage of a contraction to use.

Whereas "you're" is a shortened term for the two words "you are". If the "your" is not a possession of some kind, you should be using the other contraction "you're".

Is this making sense to anyone?

4 - Feedback And/Or Constructive Criticism.

I must admit that I have been guilty of the former, feedback. We authors tend to demand feedback from our readers at times, even though we have no right to.

Did Hemingway demand feedback? Or Emily Dickenson, for that matter? No. I don't think they even cared whether people liked them or not, so why should we?

And when we do recieve feedback, why is it that it's practically two lines that say the same thing, "I love your fic. Please update soon!"

Whatever happened to constructive criticism? I miss the old days when a reader would give you valid points and offer advice on what you could do to make your fic better.

Now it's all demand this, and make your characters do this, or please update soon because I really love your fic.

Personally, I'd rather have less people send me feedback if they would just send constructive criticism. This "I-Praise-You-So-You'll-Update-Soon" is really getting on my nerves. Just send some constructive criticism every now and then, and I guarantee you, authors will love you all the more for it.

5 - Betas.

Oh, what to say about betas?

I have nothing bad to say about betas. I'm a beta, so I know what the responsibilities entail.

However, what I cannot stand, is when an author has no beta, makes lots of obvious mistakes, and then calls their fic a masterpiece and demands lots of praise for it.

In my opinion, that's like saying we should praise terrorists for killing all those people on September 11th, even though they are cold blooded murderers.

Get a beta, hell get more than one to look it over, re-read it, and then post it. Most likely if more than one person is reading it, they will be able to catch obvious mistakes, and therefore, it will make your fic easier to read and will make the reader actually want to read your fic.

6-Plagiarism.

This has got to be the main priority, and quite frankly, it's no laughing matter. Plagiarism is a federal offense and people should be punished if they commit it.

And when you write fanfiction, it's so easy to do, anyway. Most authors don't even have their fics copyrighted, and a lot of plagiarisms will just change character names, or even change the wording of a sentence, but you can still tell it's plagiarize.

And yet, people still get away with it, every single day. A lot of high school and college students are even guilty of doing it now. The pressure is high to pass, and rather than jotting your own work down, they will merely copy and paste from different sites on the Internet.

But...teachers have caught on. There are many teacher/professor based search engines they can go on, type in a few lines of their student's "paper", and most likely, if it's plagiarize, it'll come up.

Then the teacher would get the police involved, confront the student, and it's a whole big drama from there.

So, basically, now you've heard my new commenting for the day. All I have to say is, do your own work, write your own fics, stories, papers, etc., and most importantly, DON'T. EVER .PLAGIARIZE.

More than likely, you'll get caught, and then it'll be prison time with the matching garb for ya.