cruiscin_lan | The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I've been doing a fair bit of meta-ing with

tiptoe39 and some capslock crack at

speccygeekgrrl's lj, but mostly the secret in question has made me genuinely curious - what makes a fic stand out as good? A lot of people are throwing around random comments in the forum (i.e. "97% of fic is crap") which makes me wonder what standards by which people judge what they read.

Here's a few that factor into my own personal enjoyment:

Readability (format, grammar, spelling) - No matter how compelling the fic might otherwise be, if it makes my head go all hurty, I'm going to close the window. It's one thing to have a few typos. It's another to have light text on a white background, or to italicize every other word, or to completely forget what a shift key is for.
Creativity - It's easy to get to a "been there, done that" point with fanfiction. There's countless fics out there that resurrect dead characters, or invent happy endings for ships - but I like to see something that stands out because it's different.
Ship/Pairing - So I'm not so much of a shipper, but there are a few that I choose over others. I don't like Tracy, for example, so I tend to skip fics she's in. Yeah, I'm probably going to miss a few gems that way, but it doesn't make a difference if something is technically brilliant but about characters I don't particularly like.
Characterization - Speaking of characters, I like them as they are. That's why I like them. Please to not be changing that.
Style - Yeah, so this one's really vague. It's like porn - you'll know it when you see it.
Author - I know who writes what I like to read, so I'm more likely to read something by an author whose work I'm familiar with.
Recs - Again, I know what I like. My friends often share these likes. If they liked something, I'll probably like it too. That's the transitive property, I think.

A few other things that I thought of but that aren't that relevant to me are these: genre; rating; instant gratification (i.e. seeing your prompt fulfilled); being nominated or awarded recognition; quality of summary (more often I'm turned off by it than drawn in, but I'm glad it's there); and netiquette in posting (it's not cool to spam flists by cross-posting to every fic comm out there).

So what are your thoughts? What are your standards? Sharing time!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Generally I try to write stuff that I would want to read. I'll read a fic all the way through to the end, whether I think it sucks or not. The thing about the "character descriptors", I wanted to say, it's sometimes necessary to do it. I did it in one of my stories only because there were three men in it, and it was easier than confusing the shit out of myself with "him" and "him" and "him". I absolutely hate incorrect tense shifts, too. Pick one and stick with it, present or past tense. Bad grammar makes my eyes scan to the next sentence I can understand. Summaries aren't hugely important to me, but I do like ones that let me know sort of the ride I'm in for. I only read certain pairings, yes that is true, but if I see a fic with a pairing I don't normally read by an author I like, I may try it out. I haven't come across many "wall of text" fics, so hmm on that. I agree on the crying. Crying is not usually pretty, and I try to keep that in mind. Too many uses of the same adjectives and verbs in a fic piss me off, too. Get a damn thesaurus! And characterization...that's one of the reasons I have mostly stuck with the Petrellis. I know what it's like to be a)the older protective sibling b)the idealistic bleeding heart and c)a sixteen year old girl who felt like a freak. lol. The characterization has to at least be believable. If Sylar wants a piece of Peter for example, it's not gonna be all rainbows and butterflies, you know? (Aside from the fluff! and crack!fic in which it is allowed.) In canon they are not the best of friends. I don't know.

It's admirable that you'll read a fic all the way to the end. I sometimes click and close based on length, or the first two or three paragraphs, or because my boss just came into the office...

Yeah, when writing slash and relying on the same pronoun over and over, the descriptors can be used to help distinguish the characters from one another. It's when they're incredibly vague, or when they're used out of control, that they get really bothersome.

I think "wall of text" occurs less often on lj, where it's really easy to format as you type.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly - What makes a fic "good"?

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