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

[faded-facade.livejournal.com]

italicize every other word. THIS.

I honestly don't understand why authors do that because to me, it renders the fic pointless. Anything that was supposed to be emphasized is totally lost and the fic itself suffers.

As for creativity, it's sometimes more about the execution than the idea. Because if two people have the same idea but Person A is better at writing it than Person B, then I'm more likely to read Person A's story.

[cruiscin-lan.livejournal.com]

The only thing about Person A and Person B writing similar fics is that if I see them posting their fics around the same time to the same comm, I'm more likely to skip them both because they're too alike (barring the fact I'm not familiar with one or both of their writing).