NEW POLL: What do you think the role of original characters in fan fiction should be?

The poll on flames is now closed. You can read my analysis of the results on my blog.

Veritas Sapientes Juvat

If you're reading this, you're probably here because I criticized someone's story, most likely yours. If it was yours, the chances are good you don't like me right now. That's okay, I don't mind. If I did, I'd post comfortable lies instead of cold, hard truths. But since you are here, read what I've written. No, it won't tell you my favorite band or my favorite movie. It will, however, tell you how to write better. Much better. If you care about your writing - if you care about writing - you'll grit your teeth and read the rest of this. It may not be for the fragile of ego or the "speshul snowflakes" of the world, but if you are neither, and if you want to write, it was written for you.

If I've given you grief about your grammar, scorned your spelling, or pontificated about your punctuation, drop by my website (newly upgraded from the former single page). You'll find some useful information on proper punctuation, how to write dialog, some common spelling problems, and so on, and a slowly growing collection of links to helpful websites. I also have a blog now. That's your Critic, a few years behind every trend. Go check it out.

(note: the Mark Twain excerpt has been moved to the bottom of this section)

Nothing correlates as strongly with bad writing as an author's profile which lists her (and it is almost always a her) favorite singers, music, TV shows, movies, celebrities, even favorite foods, but makes no mention of her favorite books. It is simply not possible to be a good writer unless you are also a reader. Trying to do otherwise is like trying to sing when you have never heard music (I don't know who said that first, but they are totally right). It is only through reading, and reading of good writing, that one learns how words are used by an expert wordsmith.

Another clue that tells me I'm heading into godawful fan fiction territory is any sign that the author does not take her (and again, it is almost always a her) own work seriously. Using baby talk like calling a chapter a "chappie" or a story a "ficcie" is a dead giveaway. I don't care if you still sleep with your "blankie" and suck on your "binkie" but please, for the love of literature and my sanity, try to pretend that you are older than 7 even if you aren't. Author's notes declaring how "hawt" you think some actor is are right up there, too. That is not the way people who want to be taken seriously write. I don't know you; I do know your writing. So by your writing I will judge you.

Keep in mind, whenever you start to write, what your story is about. Not the events of the story; that's just what happens, not what it's about. Rather, I mean the theme of the story. Is it the real meaning of friendship? Failure and redemption? The price of revenge? If you can't pin it down in a few words like that, what you have isn't a story; it's a daydream. The whole point of the movie "Ice Age" can be summed up in Manny's phrase "it's what you do in a herd." What is the point of your story?

To paraphrase Eleanor Roosevelt: "Small minds write about people. Ordinary minds write about events. Great minds write about ideas." Is your story only about people (yes, shippers, I mean you)? Is your story about the events those people are involved in (like most canon material)? Or is your story about greater themes entirely, illustrated by the people and the events? Greatness of mind, like greatness of most things, is primarily a matter of practice. If you're writing stories about people, try a plot-centered story for a change. If you've got events down okay, start working in broader themes.

The following is excerpted and slightly edited from a delightfully snarky essay written over 100 years ago by none other than Mark Twain. He claims there exist 19 rules for fiction writing and lists 18 of those, as follows. If you find that the positive responses to your writing efforts are things like "gr8 chappie rite more" and "SQUEEE!" while the negative ones are long and elaborate recitations of your literary failings, you might wish to consult this list of 18 rules and determine which ones you have broken. Correct those failings and you will be much closer to, in Pliny's words, "writing what deserves to be read."

Mark Twain's Rules:

1. A tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.

2. The episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

3. The personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.

4. The personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there.

5. When the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.

6. When the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.

7. When a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship’s Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it.

8. Crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by either the author or the people in the tale.

9. The personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable.

10. The author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.

11. The characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.

12. The author shall say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. The author shall use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. The author shall eschew surplusage.

15. The author shall not omit necessary details.

16. The author shall avoid slovenliness of form.

17. The author shall use good grammar.

18. The author shall employ a simple and straightforward style.