Fanfiction Pet Peeves

[The Coffee Pony 1,390]

Alright so I'm pretty sure that some of us read fanfiction and of course we're bound to run into somethings that annoy us whether it be rushed pacing, frequent spelling/grammar mistake, etc. and I, personally, will never understand the praise some of these stories get. So ladies, gentlemen discuss your pet peeves in fanfiction.

 

Starting off, here's a big one that I have: Characters constantly and excessively crying in a serious story. I can understand it happening in a Comedy story as it's played for laughs but in a serious story it's just annoying when it happens frequently. For example, a character story gets badly injured, he'll recover but his friends (most of the time his female friends) just let out the waterworks...even characters known for keeping their composure (in MLP fanfiction for example: Celestia and Luna). Understandable the first time around (except for those ones who are known for keeping their composure) but then afterwards they're easily triggered. Character is recovering and is having trouble walking, his friends cry. They know he's feeling bad, they cry. They feel concerned, they cry. His friends have memories of this party or other event they didn't invite him to, they cry. People, there are other ways to portray grief, guilt or concern without having the characters letting the waterworks go off every five seconds! If you have your characters constantly crying it doesn't look realistic, it doesn't make your story look good, it only looks cheesy and melodramatic.

[Castle Bleck 19,386]

"Herd" fics, especially whenever one claims polygamy isn't uncommon in Equestria, but then turns around and shows the protagonist's "herd" only, thus making the whole thing just look like a lazy wish-fulfillment excuse.

[Honeysuckle 135]

Alright so I'm pretty sure that some of us read fanfiction and of course we're bound to run into somethings that annoy us whether it be rushed pacing, frequent spelling/grammar mistake, etc. and I, personally, will never understand the praise some of these stories get. So ladies, gentlemen discuss your pet peeves in fanfiction.

 

Starting off, here's a big one that I have: Characters constantly and excessively crying in a serious story. I can understand it happening in a Comedy story as it's played for laughs but in a serious story it's just annoying when it happens frequently. For example, a character story gets badly injured, he'll recover but his friends (most of the time his female friends) just let out the waterworks...even characters known for keeping their composure (in MLP fanfiction for example: Celestia and Luna). Understandable the first time around (except for those ones who are known for keeping their composure) but then afterwards they're easily triggered. Character is recovering and is having trouble walking, his friends cry. They know he's feeling bad, they cry. They feel concerned, they cry. His friends have memories of this party or other event they didn't invite him to, they cry. People, there are other ways to portray grief, guilt or concern without having the characters letting the waterworks go off every five seconds! If you have your characters constantly crying it doesn't look realistic, it doesn't make your story look good, it only looks cheesy and melodramatic.

 

i think it's just a lazy writing technique amateurs use to show emotion in their characters when they don't know other ways like small facial cues or inflection in voice or behavior and body language, they think crying is the only way to show emotions. 

happy cry sad cry mad cry its all they know.

[AzureNightLight 122]

This is a massive one for me. Basically HiE in general. I know there are some good ones out there but this is a popular topic and is bound to draw in some more of the edgier stories which all seem to follow the format of:

1. Woah, a magical portal! I wonder where that leads?
2. Oh shit. I'm in Equestria.
3. Time to meet the mane 6.
4. Pinkie Pie's welcome party.
5. "That, Twilight, is what you call a smartphone."
6. "What? How are you levitating that?"
7. *Insert problem that gets fixed because the human is in Equestria at that exact time.*
8. Intense study session.
9. Some climax.
10. Human goes back to Earth.

Or... maybe its just me.

[Truffles 2,033]

Stories whose point is to do nothing other than humiliate/torture/maim a character simply because the author hates that character.

[firephantom 30]

This is a massive one for me. Basically HiE in general. I know there are some good ones out there but this is a popular topic and is bound to draw in some more of the edgier stories which all seem to follow the format of:

1. Woah, a magical portal! I wonder where that leads?
2. Oh shit. I'm in Equestria.
3. Time to meet the mane 6.
4. Pinkie Pie's welcome party.
5. "That, Twilight, is what you call a smartphone."
6. "What? How are you levitating that?"
7. *Insert problem that gets fixed because the human is in Equestria at that exact time.*
8. Intense study session.
9. Some climax.
10. Human goes back to Earth.

Or... maybe its just me.

 

Aw, man, I've read too many of those! What bothers me that sometimes the human isn't translated into pony form, or if they are, they're the lost alicorn princess of Nightmare Moon and Sombra. :/ Also, I hate grammar/punctation errors.

[cmarston1 5,959]

The format the story is written in.

If it is a gigantic mess, instead of using decently indented paragraphs, than I am not reading it

The same goes for if each chapter has less than 1000 words.

[KatonRyu 1,033]

There are several things that piss me off in fanfics, but the most prevalent ones are:

 

- Bad grammar/spelling. Seriously, if you're not that good at English (or whatever language you write in), have someone beta-read your story for you. Typos happen to everyone, but I've seen fics that literally misspell every other word. (Although at least one of those was a great troll-fic.)

 

- Bad formatting. Walls of text and horrible punctuation have made otherwise good stories painful to read. If looking at a page makes my eyes bleed you've gone wrong somewhere. Again, a beta could fix things if you're bad at formatting.

 

- OOC characters. This is the quickest way to kill a fic for me. If a character acts nothing like they should, I have no reason to read the fic anymore. Alternatively, misinterpreting a character's personality pisses me off. Granted, though, what exactly is misinterpreting a character is up for debate, so I generally just don't argue about it.

 

- Related to the above, AU fics that change so much it's hardly a fanfic anymore. If you're going to write an all-original story with different characterizations than the source, just do away with the canon names and make up your own.

[Thuja 3,659]

In terms of writing fanfic, for me anyways, is writing dialogue, surrounding enviornment details and emotions.  My characters seem to ramble on and on and I tend to note every little action they take while talking which makes things longer.  I think it's just me trying to practice writing dialogue but all my characters seem to talk in one way or another.  It's like all they are doing is standing around and talking without much emotion.

[Concerned Bystander 2,904]

Everything I would say has already been said, but I'll chime in anyway.  The single biggest sin you can commit in a fan fiction is just plain old bad writing.  By bad writing I mean poor spelling, incorrect grammar and lack of paragraphing.

 

If I open up something to be faced with a text wall, I'm almost certainly not going to read it.  If the first paragraph is riddled with spelling and grammatical errors, then I'm unlikely to read any further.

 

If you know your English isn't quite up to scratch, then get someone to proofread your story for you before you make it accessible to the public.

 

As for content, my personal bugbear would be excessive violence, gore, torture and things of that nature.  There's nothing wrong with a story having darker elements within it, but if your story has more edge than a Sabatier warehouse purely for the sake of being grimdark then it's just going to make you look like a basement dwelling wannabe edgelord.  Violence within a story should be powerful, and in order to be so it must be used sparingly.

[SquipyCheetah 449]

-Out of character canon characters without a real reason. 

-Bad grammar and formatting. 

-Rushed plotlines/too clustered.

-Canon characters shipped with ocs.

-Humanization of non human-characters

-Most alternate universes.