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

[cruiscin_lan]

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:

1. 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.
   
2. 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.
   
3. 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.
   
4. Characterization - Speaking of characters, I like them as they are. That's why I like them. Please to not be changing that.
   
5. Style - Yeah, so this one's really vague. It's like porn - you'll know it when you see it.
   
6. 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.
   
7. 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!

Comments

[ladyanne525.livejournal.com]

Just because fic is bad doesn't mean I won't love it, lol. But yeah, I certainly wouldn't put much stock in anything I have to say about "good" or "bad" fic. :p

But (just because I couldn't keep my mouth shut if my life depended on it) I think that judging fic is just like judging any other form of literature. Is it compelling? Does it tell a good story? Can I empathize with the characters? Is it easy to read (format/grammar/content/etc)?

[cruiscin-lan.livejournal.com]

Exactly. This is why I'm confused as to what people mean when they generalize. There's just too much out there to try to sum it up in broad strokes.