Cuzosu

VERY good post! I completely agree, and as a non writer, if I do actually read something, I leave a review. I sure as hell won't tell the writer that he or she needs to "write this way because I say so". That drives me batty when I see it. It's INSULTING.
I think much of what you're looking at is a HUGE sense of entitlement being played out.

I've noticed a really weird trend in the fan fiction world, and it's utterly baffling to me. I'm talking about the fan fiction reader who doesn't write, themselves, but seems to think that all fan fiction should be tailored specifically to their tastes. They go on public forums and post things like, "Here are the things I hate about fan fiction stories!" and then proceed to make a long list of things they dislike seeing in fan fiction, implying that these things should never be "allowed" in any fan fiction publication. These are the same people who will write reviews saying, "Ew, gross! This is disgusting, why would you even write this?" even when the story was clearly tagged.
I don't get this mindset at all. It's such a weird sort of entitlement.
"How dare these authors spend their valuable time creating stories that they don't get paid for, and then post them online for me to read absolutely for free! They should magically know what I want and write only that! It's such a waste of my time to have to scroll through stories that don't interest me! All these authors I don't like should gtfo because I DESERVE BETTER!"
Here's what I have to say to these readers:
Why do you think you deserve better? Even if the story is the stupidest thing ever written.... It's free. What are you offering in exchange for the author's hard work that's supposed to be so valuable that it will motivate them to want to write something you personally will like? Obviously it's not money, because in most cases, fan fiction readers don't make the "leap" to purchasing original fiction by their favorite authors. They're hard-core freebie-seekers. And it's sure as hell not attention, because fan fiction authors just don't really get much of that either (have you ever calculated the average review per hit ratio? It's abysmal.).
What exactly do these readers think authors get out of writing fan fiction? Are we supposed to magically know that they're reading and enjoying it, and be spiritually fulfilled by the knowledge that some schmuck in Idaho thinks we "write good smut"? Why do they suppose we are doing this, if it's not for attention or money?
Reality check: Most authors are just writing stories to entertain themselves, because anything else would be an exercise in constant disappointment. We share our stories online out of the goodness of our heart because what the hell? It's already written and maybe someone, somewhere will derive some enjoyment from it... Some of us listen to feedback if it's given, but by the time the story gets posted, we've already received our main "payment," because the fun of writing the story was the whole point for us.
Ultimately, we're writing for ourselves, not for the readers. If the readers happen to like it, that's just a nice bonus.
What some people don't seem to realize is that learning to write well is a HUGELY time-consuming endeavor that is very unlikely to ever "pay off." It's a labor of love. The very fact that anyone ever even tries to do it at all is pretty damn impressive, no matter how bad their attempts are.
Let's talk about what it REALLY takes to learn to write well, shall we? Because realistically, this is what you're expecting writers to do FOR FREE when you demand high quality fan fiction.
First, you have to spend literally years learning the nuts and bolts of your language (grammar, spelling, punctuation, etc). And just knowing what's correct isn't enough for fiction. You have to understand WHY it's considered correct, keep track of how the language is changing over time to be sure that your knowledge isn't out of date, and learn how to break the rules intelligently for artistic effect (to achieve effects such as unique voice, character dialects, etc.) Even things such as whether words are Germanic or Latin in origin is important (because Germanic words sound 'casual' and Latin words sound 'academic' and 'smart' and that makes a difference for how your work is perceived by the reader).
At the same time, you have to spend years reading and studying anything you can get your hands on. Being well-read from an author's perspective does not mean having read 100 books within your favorite genre. It means having read AND ANALYZED thousands of books, across all genres, both in fiction and nonfiction. It means reading books you don't like to try to figure out why other people like them. It means reading in genres you hate so that you can understand the perspectives of the types of people who may be the villains in your novels someday. You need to have not only read for enjoyment, but studied the structure, voice, use of dialogue, description, etc... Reading as a writer is hard work, and it takes a special kind of person to think of it as 'fun'.
And that's still not the end of it. Even a barely passable writer who has done none of this will at the very least have spent countless hours writing stories that will never see the light of day (expect perhaps in an online forum or critique group, since feedback can help writers get better...) And all of this is just the bare minimum of what is required to write basic commercial-style fiction. If you want to write something more "artistic" you have to go back and study the classics, and also keep track of what's being done in the lit fic world, so that you understand what has already been done and why it was unique or groundbreaking. Getting an MFA doesn't hurt, if this is the route you want to go (though it's by no means mandatory).
Now think about all that for a second. Knowing what is required for "good" writing, what does bitching about bad fan fiction contribute to this process? How does it help authors to write better stories (or even make them WANT to!)? It doesn't.
So let's talk about action steps.
Let's say that you really deeply do want to actually help promote good fan fiction. There are two main ways you can do it:
1) Provide substantive critiques for authors who want them.
Reviews help writers know that someone is enjoying their work, and even bad reviews can help a writer who is actively trying to get better. Hits don't count. Votes don't count. Reviews that say, "I like this, it's great!" don't count. All of these things are nice and will definitely give the writer the warm fuzzies (which is a very nice thing to do!), but it won't help them write better stories.
Here are some examples of what is helpful to a writer who is actively trying to improve:
"Chapter X made me feel ______. I liked it/didn't like it."
"I really liked the way you described _______. It was really beautiful, and did a great job evoking the atmosphere of the scene!"
"Man, that foreshadowing in Chapter 1 was really cool."
"I generally liked it, but this word wasn't used correctly. A better word might be ______."
"The way you wrote Character X's dialogue was really true to the source material. You captured his voice wonderfully."
"I was really interested in _____, but you never followed up on that. I was a little disappointed, because it was a neat idea and I was really looking forward to seeing where you went with that!"
"This line was hilarious/sexy/heart-breaking: _______. Good job!"
2) Support fan fiction authors whose work you enjoy.
Follow their work and read/review when they post something new. Let them know you like their work and want to see more of it. Subscribe to their stories if that's an option. Pay attention to whether they have published original fiction, and if they have... buy it, if you can scrape together the money! And then, tell your friends about their work.
In the end, the only truly reliable way to ensure that good artists continue to create their art is to support their career.

Must...resist...grammar...spelling...rampage...
Okay, calmer now. On the off chance that there is an AFF member alive who hasn't seen this yet, here is a timely and relevant music video: Weird Al Yankovic's "Word Crimes."

Grammar: a lost art.

Don't let that stuff get you down. There are a great many factors that affect how many reviews a story gets, most of which have little or nothing to do with how well it's written. To name just one, FFN has no age restrictions, which means that compared to AFF, it has an audience that is much bigger, far less discriminating, and more prone to gushing or flaming (either of which ups the review numbers).



I have two stories posted on AFF that I consider to be the best I have ever written. I literally sweated over them and (less literally) poured my heart and soul into them. And of all the stories I have posted here, they are the least reviewed and the lowest rated. Why? Probably because, unlike most of my other stories, they aren't porn. But the relative lack of attention to those stories doesn't mean that I think any less of them; I just know that they can't be measured with the same yardstick as my other stuff.

Well, that, and the fact that everything she owned was bright pink.

I would disagree that his personal style makes Stephen King a poor writer. By adhering to an overly rigid structure for literature, you run the risk of sacrificing creativity for form. While form has a place in things like sonnets and waka, one of my absolute favorite writers, Samuel R Delany, tossed the style book out the window when he wrote some of his most amazing works. "Dhalgren" can still leave me breathless, and "Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand" is sheer gorgeousness.
On the other hand, the relentless predictability of Barbara Cartlandt is what gave romance writing such a bad name.

Fox, lioness... aaand I'm out.

A lot of the PWP authors would need specialist software, to learn to touch type one handed

Readers make no sense, lol. Often the ones who take the time to review, aren't in the majority. It struck me today: frequently what repulses us in reality does indeed attract us in fantasy, i.e. incest. At its root, incest is just - so wrong. But when reading fanfiction, without the "realness" of the characters, even I will openly admit that Wincest or Twincest is quite adequate for heating up a frigid day amid this despicable polar vortex thing.
Write for yourself; what you enjoy. Screw the rest.

Being female myself (though I'll admit that my username doesn't necessarily convey that), I will say that I agree with the points BW, DG and PW noted.
I can and do read rape; that tag is not going to turn me away from a good story. This doesn't mean that I like it, but I'm not utterly revolted by stories that didn't happen to real people. For actual people, I tend to muster more empathy; my own mother has been raped and traumatized by it, so I learned a number of methods to help with what I could.
Personally, what I find most off-setting is fluff. Yes, that's right: fluff. I have never once in my life had a moment that could qualify as fluff, and I have an aversion to reading it. I don't mind angst as long as it's not overdone, supernatural creatures are usually successful lure on me, and a good action/adventure/fantasy gets me every time. SciFi is great, steampunk is awesome if done right, and romance is okay. Comedy is perfect if the author can use it right; I don't care if the story is dark or light or tense with action/drama. But sheer drama? If I want drama, I will go see my family before I read it or watch it on television. And dark stories tend to get looked at two out of three times.
I'm not into F/F; just not my thing. I like males too much. Sometimes I read het, but I don't generally go out of my way to look for it. Slash is much more to my tastes.
I agree, too--tags are as much ads as they are warning labels.
And part of the issue with readers/reviewers is probably that most of the people who come here appear to be looking either in specific fandoms or for PWPs. Frankly, I'm not much into original PWP stories; I want time to get to know the character. In fandoms, I don't have to, so PWP is fine there. Still not my favorite, but acceptable.

While I might argue the "socially conditioned" portion of the above, I do agree. And it is very true that we insist on trigger tags specifically so that people CAN avoid rape fics and other things they find objectionable. (Like scat, thankyouverymuch.)

I put it to you that if a female does dislike rape content in your stories, she has been socially conditioned not to state it in a review and to instead just abandon reading it without confrontation. This may be why it has not occurred yet - although I'm sure if you exposed it to a large enough number of females it would be inevitable that would would comment against it, but don't forget that all stories on this site are very clearly tagged and if a woman doesn't want to read rape, she won't.

I like a good plot. Pairing honestly doesn't make as much of a difference as a good plotline. Non-con stuff is definitely not my cup of tea.

Not surprisingly, Bronxwench and I share a lot of the same tastes. Oddly, it seems, for a woman, I like a strong female lead. She doesn't necessarily have to be the dominant partner but I certainly avoid the wishy washy women. I do not do rape stories. If it is essential to the plot of the story, well, I can tolerate it but I find nothing even remotely erotic in rape. There are those who do though. I like strong male characters as well. But the most important part of what I like is the actual story, whether it's multi-chaptered or a PWP - it should be well-written, planned out and at least plausible.

The first thing I look for (unsurprisingly) is the summary. I don't read a huge number of fandoms, and those I do read tend to lend themselves to serious amounts of plot mixed in with the erotica. I like plot as opposed to PWP.
I both read and write slash and het. I'm not overly fond of femmeslash, but I will read it if it's well done, and not just an excuse to parade girls in strap-ons or futanari. And at the first sign of one female calling another her "ass-bitch" or "anal slut," i'm gone. Sorry, but I don't care for women who emulate the worse of male behavior.
I don't like rape when it's presented as enjoyable, or an excuse for a character to decide to fall for their rapist. Really? I'd be much more likely to want to see the son of a bitch dead in a dozen really creative and hideously painful ways. I can accept rape as a plot device, I prefer it to be presented as the bad thing it is, and I certainly don't squeal with happiness when I encounter gang rape.
Same thing with incest, for the most part, although I will happily make an exception for Elladan and Elrohir because that is just too delicious a bit of twincest to ignore.
So what DO I like? I like characters that have flaws, characters that are complex and interesting, and plot. Lots of plot. I like women who aren't always beautiful, who don't have every man lapping at their feet, and who can take care of themselves for the most part. I like men who can look a woman in the eye, or who can have a relationship with another man without turning into a queen who cries during sex. (There is NO crying during sex.)
That's a bit, anyway, of what I like.

In the time that I've been posting (mostly erotic) fiction on various sites (AFF, Hentai Foundry, and Inkbunny), my experience with male and female readers has been, to me, extremely counterintuitive:
--I've written several stories that, at the time I wrote them, I considered "woman-friendly." That is, the female characters have strong roles and are equal partners in sexual activity. Female readers never review these.
--Of the first dozen stories I posted on AFF, the only one that any openly female reader (ie, a reader whose username or profile makes her gender obvious) has reviewed was one in which the female protagonist is repeatedly gang-raped. Her comment was "Very good fic."
--Only male readers express dislike for my non-con stories. A male reader who reviewed one such story yesterday told me that it was well written but made him want to vomit.
--In contrast, the only stories I've written on which women seem interested enough to comment (always positively) are stories that involve rape, incest, or both.
Now, I generally don't talk to my female friends about their tastes in erotica, so my only RL source of info about what women want to read is my wife. So when I think "woman-friendly," I'm thinking "something that won't make my wife smash the computer screen and run away screaming." But then, I can't imagine my wife visiting AFF, so maybe she's not a good representative of what women who like erotic fiction enjoy.
Anyway, I've blathered long enough. I'd love to hear what other AFF users--male and female--have to say on this subject.

So, you’ve come across the word ‘tag’ on AFF or other story sites, in situations such as, ‘Always ensure your story includes the appropriate tags’. If your first response is, “What the hell is a tag, and how does it relate to my story?” then this is the FAQ for you!

A ‘tag’, or ‘story code’, will look like these examples: “M/F, M/M, Oral, Anal.” You can find a more complete list of the tags used on AFF here.

If your next response is something like, “Yeah but I wrote a story with a serious plot, and not just mindless sex, so including information like that might give away an important plot point!” I sympathise with you, since it’s a situation that I myself have encountered. There are good reasons for it, though, and not just because it’s AFF policy that you must include all the appropriate tags or risk having your story hidden until you fix it.

You see, everybody has likes and dislikes. If we’re talking non sexual content, some people only read fantasy stories, while others won’t bother with anything other than horror, for example. Sexual content is just the same, perhaps even more rigidly so for many people. A great many will only read stories that have male/male sex, for example, or only female/female sex, and really have no interest whatsoever in reading a story with any other types of sex in it. In fact, they might even be offended by reading about other types of sex. Some people are positively repelled by rape stories, so that’s a tag that people like that will definitely want to see listed before they think about reading it.

If you don’t list your story with the appropriate tags, then, aside from everything else, you risk getting nasty reviews from people that felt tricked into reading your story, or feel angry that they invested time and effort into reading a part of a story they never would have started if they had known what to expect in advance.

So while you might feel that including the tags compromises your story in some way, they are important. Besides, a well written story is still a well written story, and tags will never change that.

Goodness, I really don't have any OTPs, whether slash, femslash or het. I mean, there are pairings I'm more fond of or less fond of than others, but true pairings... Give me two characters from any of my fandoms and I can probably write it, so yeah. (Then again, my title should be Queen of the Ultra-rare Pairings, I think, considering I manage to write stuff like Basilisk/Hogwarts' plumbing )

I adore my reviews, especially if they point out specifics that I should either keep doing or fix. A number of my fan fics have no reviews, but honestly, I get the feedback that I want for those from other people, generally people I met in the specific fandom and for whom I write the fics.
My original work has been a blessing and very much fun for me. Within the first 50 views, I had a review. I call that a miracle; personally, I think I posted it at just the right time, because I started getting more in very short order, and I've looked around enough to know that that's rare, in any category. And I must be doing something right, because I had a total of nine reviews on a then two-chapter story by the end of the first month. Now it's up to five chapters, has a rating of 62, and 2,900-some hits. It has 15 reviews, which isn't all that much spread out (3 reviews per chapter), but I'm really delighted to read them because the reviewers are actually leaving opinions--so I know what keeps drawing them in.
If I'm posting a work and looking for reviews, I know that it's my responsibility to make that connection with the readers, that intangible link that makes them want to review. If I'm not getting reviews on a story that I'm trying to get feedback on, then either I haven't asked in the right way or my story was lacking. And if that's the case, it's on me. (Well, either that or I posted in the wrong place, because popularity matters, too, but that would also be my fault.)

I'd say a fair number of us have been insulted in that manner. Yes, it is an insult. If a reader goes out of his or her way to give you what you ask for, and because you dislike hearing truth you delete the review, that makes reviewers who used to be willing to give that kind of review reluctant to do so.

On a side note: I hate the phrase "grammar Nazi" - it marginalizes a series of events that cost over 10 million people their lives, and nearly destroyed several nations as well as introducing a terrifying amount of power into play that shaped the formation of politics and world events for the next sixty years (and continues to do so). I'm not a fascist because I think someone should respect the language in which they write and attempt to communicate effectively in it in order to tell their story.
I know that's off topic for the thread, but semantics generate reviews, accuracy generates reviews, and the ability to effectively communicate generates reviews.
And now, back to your regularly scheduled discussion.

Are any animal terms that are actually flattering to women? For men, being compared to a bull, an ox, or a horse is often a positive thing, but not so much for women. Gazelle, maybe?
And while I realize that "cow" is generally considered an insult, I definitely favor women with characteristics that could be considered...um...bovine.

As a gamer, I was going to write a C.O.D. C.O. O.C. with O.C.D but my eyes crossed.

I push myself away from writing down the ideas I get until it gets to the point where it's literally physically hurting me to not let these ideas out. That is when I consider an idea ripe to write.
Once the idea has been unleashed, I write incessantly, non-stop, without thinking. It is only when the idea begins to tamper out, that all the days and weeks of thoughts begin to run sparse and the highly-detailed points become thin, do I sit back and look through what I had written.
It is at this point that I begin to flesh the story out. The world it takes place in, its history, political inclinations, culture and creed. Then I flesh out the main characters in the same way - personal history, social status, base personality traits, defining characteristics (physically, emotionally, personally), opinions and beliefs, things like that. After the main characters comes the secondary characters (those who are not the protagonist but are prominent characters) with the same development, and then finally the support throw-away characters who are given little more than a name, general build, and general personality type.
I do not really outline things; I have a basic idea of main events, and discuss them with some confidants to solidify them. I do, however, outline all of the background information - it's not uncommon for me to create appendices with all of the history of people and places and mythos that are around 10 pages long.
I am a world-builder. The most enjoyment I get is from building complex, fleshed-out worlds. The next level of enjoyment comes from creating unique characters. Then comes fitting those characters into the world and defining the symbiotic relationship between world and characters, and characters to other characters. The least enjoyable part for me is describing present-tense motion, or the actual linear story. That's the hardest part for me.
So do I just sit down and write, without much of a plan? Sort of. I often write without an outline or a draft or anything like that to steer my path, but I sit down with general ideas in my mind that I want to strive toward.
Of course, I am also a proponent of the concept of "surrender yourself to your writing," where you effectively take a back seat once the seed has been planted, and allow the story to progress in whichever way it wants to go. I can sit back and sort of trim it when it starts to wander too far off the path I had planned for it, but I give the story plenty of wiggle-room. It is my belief that if you want a story to feel organic, then you have to let it be organic; you have to let it grow and find its own path through the rings and hurdles you, as the author, set up for it. That's my personal belief.