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Topic : Re: How to avoid writing irritating fan fictions? I have recently started writing a fanfiction and I am posting it online as I write it. However, I often see in comments sayings 'This fanfiction - selfpublishingguru.com

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As someone who also occasionally writes fanfiction, my suggestion is to take a look at Sturgeon's Law. In short, it says that 90% of everything is crap. Consequently, 90% of all fanfiction is crap. That said, as someone who just started writing fanfiction, odds are that whatever you write falls into the 90% that is crap. You need to admit this if you want to improve.

As a general rule, the better your writing gets, the less insulting comments you will receive. However, no matter how good your writing is, there will always be people who want to leave comments like that behind.

So how do you deal with this? There are really three main approaches:

Do not post anywhere people can comment on your work. This has the downside of you not being to receive constructive criticism either, and never improving
Ignore all comments on your work. Once again, without constructive criticism you can't improve. Also, why bother posting online if you aren't going to look at people praising your work?
Spend time finding the right place to post. As a general rule of thumb, the more anonymous people get to be, the more they are going to be assholes for the sake of being assholes. There are some forums (I'm not sure how appropriate it is to advertise here so I won't link any) where they have a subsection for posting your writing, but they also have other subsections.

This is good, because usually forums have rules about what sort of behavior is allowed. So people saying "you should kill yourself" would simply be banned from the forum and you won't have to deal with them. On the other hand, since people are generally invested in their accounts to one level or another, they won't risk a ban just to insult you. Instead, if they hate your writing and can't say anything else, they will leave.

This will result in two things. Either your writing is good and you would receive only positive reviews, or it actually has flaws, in which case people will tell you what those are. Of course how willing they are to tell you the flaws in your writing will depend on how willing you are to listen to criticism, but if you are, you can use this to get better.

Of course, one thing you should keep in mind is that you can't please everyone. I have had cases where I make a decision to include something in the plot and I got half a dozen people telling me it was a great idea and they loved it, and the same number of people explaining to me why they absolutely hated it. So don't try to please everyone. If everyone hates what you are doing that is a sign that you are doing something wrong, but if it is split half and half then just accept it and move on.

That said, if you really are a new writer, there are a few things I suggest you watch out for:

Grammar - enough spelling and sentence structure mistakes could make a great story unreadable. Always work on you have decent grammar
Adversity - there are story styles - crack pics, power fantasies, etc. - where the entire point is that the Main Character is an invincible, unchallenged juggernaut. If that is what you want, you should label this at the beginning of your story. If that isn't it, adversity is mandatory. Your character should face challenges. There should be people who oppose your character. Not all of them should necessarily be the bad guys
Flaws - tied into the above, your character shouldn't be perfect. They could have something they are perfect at, but they shouldn't be perfect at everything. Also, "they can do everything flawlessly, except can't socialize worth a damn" is generally considered bad writing, so don't pick that as a flaw. The point is, sometimes your character should fail. Sometimes, they should be wrong.
Idiot Balls - an idiot ball is when someone does something stupid - usually out of character for them, generally enough to break suspension of disbelief - to advance the plot. Or make the main character look good. Be very careful with these. The occasional comic relief character being an idiot might make sense. Beyond that though, each use of these is a flaw in your writing. You could have a few and still have a good story, but the more you have, the greater the rest of the story needs to be to make up for it


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