How to avoid writing irritating fan fictions?

Negative comments that are not backed by actual criticism of your story are just trolling and should be ignored. I know it's hard, but try to focus on the positive comments you're probably also getting.

If you're still worried about the quality of your story, see if you can get a beta reader (possibly from the same fanfiction community) to catch the worst mistakes before you publish them online.

A lot of fanfiction sites also offer a variety of tags to categorize any story, so that people who don't like a specific character, pairing or plot point know to skip it if it really bothers them. Some of them will still read and still complain but like the others have said, you can't please everyone.

posted over 6 years ago

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Llewellyn‭

130 reputation 6 7 17 0

What my experience from several read fanfictions is: Most of the writers and readers only like the bad guys, and especialy, if they are gay and sleep with their siblings or the good guy.

I don't see anything wrong in homosexual stuff, but incest is some other thing. The general problem in FanFictions is also, the lack of writing style. Many authors don't put any effort in the story and don't want to develop it any further. They lack the common sense.

What makes a bad story out of a FanFiction? Thats in pretty every case the ignorance about good willed advice and critique. I often commented on promising FanFictions with good advise and helpful tips to improve the writing style, only to get turned down, insulted or even threatend to get sued for insulting

Poorly most of the FanFiction Community is not very kind. So I would suggest you to ignore these comments and concentrate on the comments that tell you plotholes, story errors, styling helps and so on. Constructive critique is the keyword. Ignore everyone who just have to say that your story is shit, but don't explain why. You can only improve, if they say whats wrong.

posted over 6 years ago

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Pawana‭

95 reputation 4 12 18 0

I agree with the other answers, though I think it can be put a little more concise: As a rule of thumb, if it's a negative comment and it's not constructive, you can safely ignore it.

The comments you quoted don't even tell what they didn't like, much less how it could be improved. And since whoever wrote it didn't even put in the seconds of effort to tell you what you could improve, why would you bother puting in effort to please them? Just ignore such comments (especially don't take them to heart in any way), and either delete or flag them if possible (this depends on where you post your stuff and how well it is moderated).

posted over 6 years ago

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Namnodorel‭

5 reputation 0 1 1 0

Depending on the forum you post your fanfiction you will get those comments no matter what you do. It's a sad fact, but there are many people out there who just want to make others feel miserable and growing a thick skin when posting on the internet is a skill that you might need.

Other than that it depends on the specifics of your fanfiction. For example quite often fanfiction involves different love stories than the original story had. Many people will not like that and this kind of comments are basically standard phrases for "This is not my style. I prefer to read something different." Maybe they didn't like that you changed the typical boy-meets-girl story to a boy-meets-boy story or a girl-meets-girl story or something like that. But this is just one topic that is often chosen, it really comes up with every topic though. Maybe you changed the villain to the hero for your perspective or made the favourite character of some reader to a supporting character with a minor role and now they don't like the story. Maybe you changed the scenery in a way they don't like or you added a story-arc that they find to be too cliché. Or they didn't like your wording. There are lots and lots of different topics that could invite such comments.

The closer you are to the original the less likely such posts are. The more original you are in your writing the more such comments you will receive.

The best advice I can give you is to ignore them. It's hard and it probably hurts quite a lot but these poor folks have nothing better to do than trying to make your life miserable. They are the ones that need to be consoled and you should mentally filter their "feedback" out as it doesn't involve anything useful and is only trying to hurt you.

Ideally you would find a place where you can for example flag something with such vulgar language, but humans are not perfect and the internet tends to bring out the worst in some people, so be prepared for something like this - and be prepared to completely ignore it. Though, I guess, not going to a place where something like this occurs would probably be a better idea if you can find such a place.

Fanfictions are often a starting point for people who want to start writing, meaning that there will be quite a few mistakes, making it thereby quite easy to pick on the weak people, which is why trolls love such places. But there will always be people who think similar things about your fanfiction and sometimes they will voice their opinions in such a drastic manner.

You can't please everyone.

posted over 6 years ago

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Secespitus‭

550 reputation 9 193 104 11

No matter how good your fanfiction is, no matter how good your fiction is, no matter how good anything you do is, there will be trolls using vile language to put you down. There's not much you can do about them except ignore them.

That said, the question of what things to avoid like the plague when writing fanfic is a valid one.

The Mary Sue is, I believe the most reviled fanfic trope. Mary Sue is the perfectly perfect character, who has all the answers to all the questions, finds a way to defeat all the monsters, is the strongest, smartest, most beautiful, and of course the sexiest character of the original work falls for her. She then solves whatever troubled issues he had, and they live in perfect saccharine happiness forever and ever. Eww. Note that giving a character one flaw wouldn't necessarily save them from being a Mary Sue. (While the link is to TV Tropes, which is a rabbit hole that eats up your time without you noticing, that page is really useful, detailing sub-species of the Mary Sue.)

Another issue that can occur is you making characters act "out of character" - you've changed them so much that they're no longer who they used to be in the original work. The extremes are turning a good character evil, or vice versa. People love the original work with its original characters because of the way they have been written. If you change it, they might not be happy.

And, of course, some criticism might be addressed not at particular things you do, but at the general quality of your writing. With that, the way to get better is to write more, read more, and work at it. Don't get discouraged by foul-mouthed schmucks.

posted over 6 years ago

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Galastel‭

1885 reputation 81 551 319 3

Do not post online as you write it; even most professional writers do not like their first drafts, and IMO a beginner should never like their first draft, so you are just inviting criticism of something you would never actually try to call a finished product. I hope that is the case.

Next, review the other fan fiction in your same fictional universe, and see what is received well. What are people responding to?

Is it good writing? Classify it. For example,

Is it wish fulfillment (e.g. consummation of some implied relationship, explicit sexual content, resolution of some crisis not yet resolved in the fictional universe)?

Is it an actual new adventure that does NOT change the characters?

Perhaps the most important skill you can develop as a writer is being able to read your own writing as if it were written by a stranger. You absolutely cannot depend on other people to critique what is wrong with your writing, you must learn to do it yourself.

The easiest way to do that is to use such fan-sites the opposite of the way nearly everyone uses them! Use them to train yourself to find specific, exact things you do and do not like in other people's fiction. Narrow it down, to a "formula" you can generalize and copy when you do like it, and also to something you can generalize so you can recognize something you don't like if you should do it in your own fiction.

Some of those generalized problems you can find here on this site, with some advice on how to overcome them. How to show don't tell, or avoid walls of text, or avoid world-builder's disease, or purple prose, or avoid deus ex machina problems. Others can be your own; based on just writing you don't like when you realize they are bad in the same way in some sense, so figure out what that same way is!

It is important to become a diagnostician in this endeavor, so you can diagnose your own failures and not rely on strangers to do it for free. Be happy when you read something awful, it is a chance to find something obviously wrong. Don't just discard it, read it as many times as it takes to say "THIS is the big problem with this, THIS is why it makes no sense!" Or why the characters sound stupid, or like the author is forcing them into unrealistic actions (for those characters), or whatever.

It is much harder to pinpoint exactly why good writing is good (although you can begin by finding the line with the most impact and seeing how the author set that up to HAVE impact). It may be good just because there is nothing wrong with it! More likely, it has some poetry or imagery that appeals to you, and it is good to try and figure that out, too.

There are many other things to learn. How long sentences are in prose, versus how long they are in dialogue. How many details to provide in a description of a person / room / scene / landscape. How to effectively (or ineffectively) show various emotions; love, lust, anger, hatred, sexual excitement, joy, melancholy, relief, fear, terror, worry, etc. You may find 10 bad ways for every good one, but you will learn something.

The best approach for a beginner is to read analytically enough that you can refine away everything wrong with your writing, and leave something that at least doesn't inspire hatred, and if you are imaginative in the bargain, people may like it a lot.

posted over 6 years ago

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Amadeus‭

3156 reputation 2 1399 613 37