check in day 7

[lilly_c]

How is the writing going today? What about yesterday?

Poll #22485

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

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Today I

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wrote
2 (25.0%)

edited
2 (25.0%)

posted
2 (25.0%)

sent to beta
0 (0.0%)

researched
0 (0.0%)

planned
1 (12.5%)

had a cheeky break
2 (25.0%)

dealt with life
4 (50.0%)

Discussion: Reading fic. What kind of things will stop you from finishing reading a fic?

Comments

[lilly_c]

I wanted to work on fic today but I ended up spending a few hours editing my business plan and then prodding at a stalled meta that I'd like to get back to working on.

For me it's little silly things like *childish nicknames, constantly identifying characters by their hair colour (there are other physical features!), begging for reviews in notes.
*One SVU fic I came across and stopped reading had Alex and Olivia constantly calling each other Livvy and Lexi and I thought I was reading a primary school AU.

[frogfarm]

Finally broke through my logjam and finished another section of the WIP. Should have it posted tomorrow.

Rather than mention any specific detail, the kind of things that stop me from finishing a fic usually stop me from starting it in the first place.

[justanorthernlight]

Dealt with life, tried to edit. I'm in one of those funks where I absolutely hate my prose style. It's waaaaaay overdone. Also the scene I'm editing is already 2.2k, it hits all the emotional beats I want it to have but it hits them way too fast. I need to slow it down in the rewrite, but it's a conversation between two characters, I don't know how long I can make it before it's too slow. Obviously a scene should take as long as it takes, but I don't want the readers to find it too long.

As for reading fic, the main thing that gets me is OOC-ness, even if it's a character I hate. The worst is when it happens slowly over the course of an epic length fic, I'm halfway through and realize that the characters (or one or two characters in particular) are completely unrecognizable from the source material and I wind up quitting in disgust, but I was invested in the actual plot.

Also historical anachronisms/inattention to worldbuilding/very specific modern aus that get research dead wrong. For example, stovetops didn't exist in the early 1700s, countertops, or screen porches. Someone wrote a string of reality tv aus in one fandom but had no idea how editing and behind the scenes stuff worked.

[doranwen]

This sounds like it was a fun discussion post - but I spent the 7th packing and moving stuff from one classroom to a new little space in the school that is all my own (yay! but tons of work, ugh). So writing never happened; life took over everything. (I spent today *un*packing it all, lol.)

I'll second the commenter mentioning childish nicknames - and the one mentioning really obvious bad details (poor research or anachronisms). Like, I was reading someone's fic once, and the way they described the plane crash that they had in it was just all wrong, felt like they'd watched some terrible B-grade disaster film. (I've seen tons of Air Crash Investigation documentaries and read quite a few books about air crashes; one of my side interests.) And usually people who can't write worth beans also don't spell-check properly or whatnot, so I can avoid their fics just by reading the summaries, but occasionally I find one that they managed to make look good - until I read partway into it, and found it was so terrible - OOCness, as another one mentioned, is a *huge* factor for me.