What Makes a Bad Fanfiction?

[Anneal 2,197]

A lot suffer from following what is "popular" or what is a "safe" territory for easy views. Like that's partially why smut gets so popular because the expectations for it are not that high, just for it to be smutty a lot of the time. And why we see so many Fallout Equestria "spin off"s because people would rather follow something that is popular so they have an "easy" path to views rather than take a chance at something original.

There's nothing wrong with writing FoE spinoffs, but if you are going to write it you have to be very careful that you're not falling into common "dark adventure" traps and continue to follow fic-writing rules. And don't write for popularity; you should write because you want to write. And with that, bad aspects of a fanfic:

 

Using references indiscriminately. There is nothing wrong with putting in a few references in your story, and yes, nothing is original in the realm of fiction. But it is really up to you, the author, to unify those ideas and turn it into something different, which means if you're going to place a reference it better be a meaningful one and not useless filler.

 

Unsympathetic characters. Readers want the main character(s) to be relatable in some way, hero, villain, or anywhere in between, or at least like them. They, as your main character(s), should be round and have distinct and unique backgrounds and personalities. That does not mean special snowflaking. They just need to be different.

 

Filled with cliches. Your themes should be simple but they can't be overused and boring (and your stories should have a theme, that's the main part of the story). That goes to characters and plots as well; make it distinguished and interesting.

[deathpioupiou 103]

As I said with the OC section, like what you're writing because it represent a part of you, and if you like it, it's a good fanfiction, be proud of it. After it's  my opinion

[captainborgue 343]

I've got a few Red Flags for fanfics. Though having a red flag doesn't always been the fic is bad, there is enough of a correlation there that I consider it reliable.

 

1) Crossover fics where you have to know all the various fandoms inside and out to make sense of any of it- this is usually because the fic author never bothers to "set the scene" or do any world building or establishing a setting whatsoever, under the assumption that the reader is as much of a rabid fan as the author. Ever read Lord of the Rings? Or hell, even seen the movie? You don't NEED to know Elrond's entire backstory or Gimli's family tree to enjoy it. I don't want to have to have encyclopedic knowledge of every single skill and perk and trait and easter egg across six effing games to understand what the hell is going on.

 

2) First person. The reason third person past tense is the most common form of literature is because it allows the author to serve as an omniscient narrator, describing the scene from every perspective and establishing conflicts that the characters themselves are unaware of, so that when something happens, the characters are not already aware of it and have to react accordingly. This also lets the author delve into much more detail about the setting, and is the most effective means of world building. Most of the great works of literature over the ages use third person past tense for this reason. Tolkien, Lewis, Poe, Bradbury, Aasimov, Rowling, Tolstoy, even scriptures like the Bible, Bhagavad Gita, Talmud, and epic ancient poems like The Iliad and Odyssey. There is a REASON this form has persisted so consistently, and it's the same reason first-person like Dante's Divine Comedy is so rare- building an immersive world is much easier when you can see it all at once as Narrator. When your scope is limited to a single perspective, much is lost.

 

3) Addiction. I have never in my entire LIFE read a single fanfic that even touched on any kind of addiction in any sort of believable way. You want to make your characters flawed? By all means- but having them be a pill popper when you have no experience whatsoever with how addiction affects the way the mind processes things actually DECREASES suspension of disbelief. Better to have a character without any addictions at all than to have one that's utterly wrong.

 

4) all of a sudden GAY SEX. Protagonist meets Love Interest or antagonist or Sexy Anti-Hero and they fuck like bunnies. I've NEVER seen straight characters do this, which that right there is very telling. Again, it's about suspension of disbelief- if you can believe this would happen outside of the story, it's easier to relate to the story itself. And I've never seen two people bump into each other at the grocery store then get down and freaky. Gratuitous sex without any dramatic tension or buildup or banter is just stupid.

 

5) Gratuitous violence. Character is exploring an abandoned looking town and then SUDDENLY A BILLIONTY BADGUYS SHOW UP AND VAPORIZE THE PREGNANT LADY THAT WASN'T THERE A SECOND AGO RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE PROTAGONIST OMG THE FEELS! No. Just... no. Violence is the simplest way to add conflict to a story, but come the buck on. Have you ever read a book where out of NOWHERE there's a millionty badguys and they kill off all the innocent civvies who weren't there a second ago only because the protagonist HAPPENS to be nearby right that second? No. Because that's shit writing. Conflict, even violent conflict, needs a sense of scale, a purpose. Badguys have to have motivation beyond "I'm a badguy, so I do bad things durr hurr hurr". And the more ambiguous the motivation, the better- if you can make it seem like the bad guy maybe isn't so bad after all, the more RELATABLE they are and the easier it is to suspend disbelief. They have to have a REASON, and it has to be a reason that isn't rock stupid.

 

6) Writing yourself into a fanfic. Ugh, I can't even go a page into any of these without facepalming at the mind numbing stupidity of it all. It's like these people have never gone and read ACTUAL BOOKS before. It doesn't help that the author is somehow an expert at goddamn EVERYTHING and super charismatic and everyone loves them and is impressed by them. Just... it hurts my brain. So, so stupid.

 

7) Every character is some super ancient all powerful wondermensch. This one especially bothers me. Your 500-year-old vampire hacker broke into the starship's main computer, did he? Ok, answer me this: ever tried to explain using Windows 8 to your grampa? If technology TODAY is beyond the grasp of someone born after electricity was a thing, just TRY to imagine someone raised in a world where if you wanted water, you had to trek down to the river and avoid the wolves and snakes. The mere CONCEPT of a cell phone, let alone a smart phone, would have made people's heads explode in world war one, and that was barely a century ago. So unless your vampy has been working as an electronic engineer or IT guy for the last hundred years, there's no way he'd be so flippantly familiar with technology.

 

8) Unflappable. Characters who are NEVER flustered or scared or confused or in doubt or angry or lose their cool in any way whatsoever. No matter what happens, they always have an answer, they always know what to do, they always handle everything all the time, like MacGuyver only instead of a paperclip, chewing gum, and a coffee can, these characters just so HAPPEN to have the Badguy Killenator 3000 from the planet Quagnar, which is the Big Bad's ONLY WEAKNESS YOU GUYS. Just... ugh. You know how BORING it is when your main character always wins? There's never any real challenge, there's never any risk, there's never any threat. It's like Superman if Krypton and Earth were the only planets in the entire universe. there's no sense of urgency because there's no challenge.

 

9) Goddamn Mary Sue bullshit characters that can do everything and know everything and everyone loves them and nothing ever goes wrong EVER. In other words, "the single most boring piece of dreck to ever be put to page".

 

Like I said, these aren't hard and fast rules- Dante's Divine Comedy breaks the third person rule and is amazing, Johannes Cabal breaks the unflappable rule and is amazing, Hermione is pretty much a Mary Sue and yet is amazing as a character. So yeah, it's POSSIBLE to have a red flag and still be a decent story. It's just extremely unlikely.

Edited March 21, 2016 by captainborgue

[Guest]

There's nothing wrong with writing FoE spinoffs, but if you are going to write it you have to be very careful that you're not falling into common "dark adventure" traps and continue to follow fic-writing rules. And don't write for popularity; you should write because you want to write. And with that, bad aspects of a fanfic:Using references indiscriminately. There is nothing wrong with putting in a few references in your story, and yes, nothing is original in the realm of fiction. But it is really up to you, the author, to unify those ideas and turn it into something different, which means if you're going to place a reference it better be a meaningful one and not useless filler.Unsympathetic characters. Readers want the main character(s) to be relatable in some way, hero, villain, or anywhere in between, or at least like them. They, as your main character(s), should be round and have distinct and unique backgrounds and personalities. That does not mean special snowflaking. They just need to be different.Filled with cliches. Your themes should be simple but they can't be overused and boring (and your stories should have a theme, that's the main part of the story). That goes to characters and plots as well; make it distinguished and interesting.

Problem is a lot of them are more or less only writing them because it's easy attention. Fallout Equestria is a brand that is known for generating attention just from the name so a lot of people fall for that trap.

[Knightgem 158]

What makes one hate a Fanfiction? What makes a badfic? What's the difference between a good and bad fanfic?

 

What makes one hate a fanfic, it can be a lot of things that have indeed previously been mentioned. Which will then make it bad.

 

​I personally, like many' a pony to see that the characters are not only relatable, but also have everything that makes us humans, well human, pet peeves, strengths, weaknesses, flaws, maybe their hobbies, their dreams and then later on seeing those dreams come true, like it did for the CMC. All in all it can come down to taste and how fussy you are or not.

[AzureNightLight 122]

What makes a bad fanfic?

• Grammar and spelling errors.
• Massive plot-holes.
• Repetitive use of words.
• Unstable sentence structure.
• Gary/Mary Sues
• Problems that happen and are resolved in a paragraph.
• Reading such a fanfic makes you cringe.

Some more points that you should check after you have dealt with the ones above.

• Plot Holes
• Showing not telling.
• "He did this then he did that. Then she decided to go out for a walk, meeting him on the way." (Don't do this.)
• Writing existing characters out of personality. Of course, this can be excused if they're all changelings or something.
• Events that has literally nothing to do with the story unless said story is a SoL.
• Cliché events.

[Lonk Chase 255]

1. Common mistakes such as grammar and spelling can detract from a story unless it's intended (like Flowers for Algernon, where the main character is mentally handicapped for the first half of the story).

2. Characters make a world of difference. Bad characters include:

• Ones with no or few flaws or weaknesses (Mary Sues)
• Ones with only cliches or anti-cliches defining them (for example, make Pinkie Pie the only one out of the Mane 6 that is "normal" [cough cough Friendship is Witchcraft cough cough])
• Ones that are one-dimentional (very simple personality and abilities)
• Ones with OP abilites (Again a Mary Sue; no or few flaws or weaknesses)
• Ones with cliche backstories or very simple backstories

Make sure to give your characters somewhat-complex personalities and unique abilities (if they have abilities), a good amount of weaknesses and flaws, and make sure everything else is unique and not too cliched.

3. Cliche'd plot elements detract from the story because usually there is a better way to tell a scene than to put in well-known cliches.

And yeah that's all I can think of.

[Ziggy + Angel + Rain 11,302]

The fact that it IS a fanfiction?  Okay, that's perhaps unfair; I'm sure there are talented writers out there who engage in fanfiction here and there (and hopefully have original-er works to speak of).  But I tend to think of the genre (just lumpin' it all together) itself as being inherently BAD.  I feel this way because fanfiction is fundamentally and unavoidably reliant upon a preexisting work.  The people who stay within the confines of the original work aren't doing anything new, and the people who veer far outside that realm either introduce elements that are blatantly incongruous or might as well have written something unrelated to the source material.  That's why I tend to feel, for lack of a better word, "weird" after writing a fanfic of my own; I could have simply come up with my own world and characters.  I don't feel comfortable with the genre; it's potentially very limiting and / or invites intense scrutiny.  That's why, should I write any fanfics in the future, I'll be "taking up a pen" with the expectation of writing something bad.

[Mingan Muon 16]

The fact that it IS a fanfiction?  Okay, that's perhaps unfair; I'm sure there are talented writers out there who engage in fanfiction here and there (and hopefully have original-er works to speak of).  But I tend to think of the genre (just lumpin' it all together) itself as being inherently BAD.  I feel this way because fanfiction is fundamentally and unavoidably reliant upon a preexisting work.  The people who stay within the confines of the original work aren't doing anything new, and the people who veer far outside that realm either introduce elements that are blatantly incongruous or might as well have written something unrelated to the source material.  That's why I tend to feel, for lack of a better word, "weird" after writing a fanfic of my own; I could have simply come up with my own world and characters.  I don't feel comfortable with the genre; it's potentially very limiting and / or invites intense scrutiny.  That's why, should I write any fanfics in the future, I'll be "taking up a pen" with the expectation of writing something bad.

I agree to some extent. If you take a look at fimfiction, you're going to find more bad fics than good ones, purely because there isn't a publisher to weed out bad ones. Even in the fics that are good in the writing sense, there are few that I would consider "good" overall. Many are poorly designed plot-wise. Others...I don't know, I just know a bad fic when I see it and stay away from them. However, there are fanfics that I would consider more than an usual fanfiction. Those few good fics don't piggyback on the show itself, but they take the universe established in the show and give it vibrancy and immersiveness. I'll take Growing Pains (can't link cause of gore tag, but can be found on fimfiction) for an example. The author takes Equestria as laid out in the show and expands the history in a lore-friendly way, leading up to a war between Equestria and another pony nation. It takes the universe of MLP:FiM and expands it; if a little bit more character development and explanation of setting and past history were added in, it could pass as a piece of true fiction, not fanfic.

 

I guess what I'm trying to communicate here is that fanfic, as a whole, is quite like you said. There are alternate universe fanfic that aren't really MLP based and there are fanfic that are constrained too close to canon. But there are also fictions that surpass mere fanfic status that I would consider fictions in their own right; they took the universe of Equestria and took it beyond the cartoon medium and gave it a different, more expansive, life. Spellbound Fireflies by bats, A Bluebird's Song, and some story that I can't remember the name of are three of the best fiction I've ever read, and they are fanfiction technically.

[simba86 1,541]

I know as far as pony fanfictions go, I hate the ones that are a non pony fanfic with a tiny bit of pony added to make it on fimfiction, and the ones that are filled full of rape and ponies getting butchered are terrible to

[idunnomaybe 344]

descriptions that read like "will he find love? will he be able to stop (generic evil bad guy)? find out on the next episode of Digipon Digital ponies"

stories about ponies interacting with Humans and Human culture but the only people the ponies talk to is American collage students and usually the ponies are made to think that US ultra left values reflect the rest of the world 

Stories like "Steve Man was an orphan he had such a grim dark life but suddenly he is transported to Equestria where he becomes the element of awesomeness and bla bla bla don't care" 

same sex couples.... i want to point out that i'm not homophobic but at the same time i don't like gay shit for the sake of gay shit within FIM its been shown pretty much everyone is straight and ones that are 100% super confirmed straight should not be gay shipped (I.E Rarity or Celestia and Twilight) it just shits me off Homosexuality is not a common thing i hate it being over represented in EVERYTHING these days 

crossovers... i really don't like it i don't mind if the author says "loosely inspired by the STALKER movie" but i hate really dumb nonsensical things like "Super spartan 114 from the ship UNSC Awesome is stuck in Equestria..... what do?" like how do you even write a story about that!? where does it go? 


there's more but cbf and now i leave you with a line within the paragraph of the worst Fimfiction i ever read 

"Luna's first thought when seeing the stallion was 'i want to fuck the shit out of him i just want him so badly' the stallion could see it in her eyes"  
the story was a self insert not meant to be a comedy and not meant to be a clopfic

 

Edited July 24, 2016 by idunnomaybe

[balancedblujay 34]

One thing that drives me insane in Fanfiction is usually obvious ideas. Like, an all-powerful pony with little backstory who suddenly is the chosen one or something. x.x

[CT-1138 3,182]

-Frequent grammar/spelling mistakes 

-poor pacing

-poor characterization (dialogue is a huge part of this)

-lazy story 

-lazily written OCs (or Anons, for that matter)

-abrupt/sudden endings or conclusions

-Second person. There's a reason this is usually left as commands in many languages. It forcibly inserts the reader into the story, whether said reader wishes to be there or not. It's overly niche, and usually not well aware of that fact. It wouldn't be such a problem if the author was more aware of the various common faults of the average human being, but most authors lazily write the reader's character, or worse, doesn't write any character of the reader at all. 

[Denim&Venöm 19,001]

Something of a pain for me is poor payoff. The end result isn't what's expected or is underwhelming. Where an author is presented an opritunity to tell something more engaging and complex, but drops the ball.

 

Two stories come to mind. One highly liked by everypony else. One disliked. The disliked one was a Conversion Bureau(*) fic (a contentious sub genre, I know) but this one screwed up on it's premise.  

 

(*)

(For those not in the know, TCB fics are usually about Equestria appearing on earth, magic is starting to kill everything, and ponies try to help by offering potions to turn humans into ponies before they die. I think it's pretty engaging & thought provoking, a look at what makes one human, what makes them pony and how a species  acts in the face extinction.

But most people hate it for how poorly it portrays humanity. Or how it falls into "Celestia forcibly converts the world and America Humanity saves the day by introducing the girlish pastel invaders to enough testosterone, lead and air strikes to make Rambo blush." Basically Battleship meets Starship Troopers, but w/ ponies.)

 

 

Anyways, this one was about a guy who gets drugged by his converted friends and forcibly turned into a pony. A dramatic premise right? How will he react to his lost humanity? What venomous words will he have to his supposed friends? Turns out, none! Aside from mild annoyance. Turn out he's alright with it after a little pep talk. What was the freakin point? 

 

 

The second fic I disliked was a popular one. Might have read it. It's one where Twilight finds out that Dashie is actually a super genius, and tries to push her towards academic pursuits. Will we get Dash fighting for her dreams of being a wonderbolt instead of a professor? Will she actually find soemthign to like about being an egg head? Will Twi & Dash have a falling out due to one not understanding the others dreams? 

 

Nope. We get a sequence of comedic events that looks like it takes place in a dream sequence. Then we rush to a flash forward ending which looks like it's supposed to be funny, and a lot of people thought it was, but I found it kind of sad from the story's perspective, and was disappointed that that was the payoff.

 

Storytelling potential unfulfilled. A surefire sign of a bad fic in my book. 

Edited August 7, 2016 by Denim&Venom

[El Duderino 879]

The thing that throws me off the most is bad writing, not a specific theme. There are certain themes I don't personally like, but it's all about if the author is a good writer or not. I don't love alicorn OCs, but a good author can pull it off. Nothing throws me off more than a poorly written story. My advice for any authors: learn writing techniques. Pay attention in English class, read lots of books to pick up on techniques, use a dictionary, spell things correctly, pay attention to your grammar, don't be afraid to use fancy vocabulary, vary your sentence lengths, and DON'T CONFUSE THE READER.

[weesh 690]

The fact that it IS a fanfiction? 

 

I've never read a good one, and currently this is my view as well.

I got a few recommendations from people after I asked "what would you recommend to someone ho hasn't read many, and hasn't enjoyed hat they've read so far", and the suggestions I got back were all trash.  

 

There is so much good stuff in the world to read that I can't imagine wasting my time on fanfiction.  Even if some of them are worth reading, trying to find those gems is far more difficult than finding a fantastic novel.  

 

Since my life doesn't revolve around the MLP fandom, I'm happy to read stuff that is unrelated.

[AmbientBeat 27]

 

stories about ponies interacting with Humans and Human culture but the only people the ponies talk to is American collage students and usually the ponies are made to think that US ultra left values reflect the rest of the world 

 

What do you mean by this? Could you elaborate?

[Steve Piranha 29,424]

Making characters look bad or shitting on them out of personal bias against them

Or, Ron the Death Eater trope

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RonTheDeathEater

 

Poor Flashy is often victim of this