WIP Challenge Checkin, Day 7, Wednesday

[jagnikjen]

Tell us about your writing endeavors for the day. Have you...

~ written
~ edited
~ researched
~ beta'd someone else's work
~ taken the day off to refresh the muse


Discussion question...PET PEEVES...what are some of your fic reading peeves??

Let's have a bit of lesson, shall we? I'm feeling a bit ranty today, so don't take offense at my tone, K??

Just a few things that have come across my radar recently...

A) "If you think that {insert whatever here}, then you've got another THINK coming." It's THINK people, not THING. Get it > > if you think something, but it's incorrect then you must THINK again. Hence you've got another THINK coming.

B) Over use of canon fodder. And to explain that I'm going to give you an example...in Harry Potter, the character of Draco Malfoy was sorted into Slytherin House at Hogwarts. The house colors are green and silver. Of late, practically every fic I've read has Draco's personal home bedroom decorated in--you guessed it--silver and green. You know, maybe Draco's favorite color is actually blue or orange or purple.

C) Summery vs. Summary > > the first means to have something to with summer, the second is that short write up of what a fic is about

and last, but not least

D) All or most of the words in a fic's title should be capitalized. The only words not capped (unless it is the first word, of course) are: the, a, an, of, for, by, to, on, as, and, & are.

So what are your PEEVES?

Comments

[jagnikjen]

Peeves aside, I did get some writing done this morning. A new scene came out of nowhere and I really liked it. Hopefully it'll make the final cut.

Another couple peeves I have are misuse of apostrophes and capitalization of random words.

[soc_puppet]

I haven't signed up for this month, but apparently I find griping about my pet peeves irresistible.

1) Sceptical vs. Skeptical. I know that the former is the legitimate everywhere-but-the-US spelling, but every time I read it I think of septic tanks. Because it's a legit spelling, though, I don't feel right complaining about it.

2) You can't spell "masturbate" without "U"! I have seriously clicked the back button more than once because people spelled it with an E instead.

[rebecca2525]

masterbate sounds like a portmanteau of master and debate...

[mekare]

Sounds like something evil masterminds would do, talking to themselves about the relative merits of their evil world domination plans or next serial killings... it might even be something they enjoy... yeah I'm tired and my brain is going strange places...

[sharpiefan]

*snickers*

It does, doesn't it?!

[soc_puppet]

There is a convention I go to where an event is held parallel to the cosplay masquerade called the Great Debate. People are pulled from the audience and challenged with questions to which they must offer their own (funny as possible) answers while following silly guidelines (answer while eating something, answer in the form of a question, etc). At the end of the contest, the audience is asked to vote via applause for their favorite, who is crowned the winner.

They are then awarded a certificate and the title Master Debater. While I have only ever been to the one, I would not be at all surprised if that same joke is repeated each time.

(Alternately, one of my younger brother's friends is a young man of the Bates family. Oh Master Bate(s), your tea is ready!)

[mekare]

Lol!

[iosonochesono]

One of my pet peeves is actually people getting frustrated by what you've listed as A, because A was sort of a reasonable change assuming someone was thinking of it as threatening. ("You've got another thing coming to you" has been used plenty of times in a physically/verbally aggressive context. Taking it toward a ridiculous thought isn't all that much of a stretch to me.)

E.g., If my mother and I are arguing about abortion over the phone and I say, "If you think that, you've got another thing coming" I don't mean she's going to get a new thought. Because she's not, her opinion's never changed. I'm threatening to hang up the phone and stop speaking to her. I'm giving her a new thing to deal with.

But incidentally, "I could care less" bugs the FUCK out of me. And people have tried to argue it as "It's so insignificant I could care less than I already do" but that's not how caring works! At all.

It's here to stay like many phrase changes. I accept that legitimacy as languages and phrases are always changing as they move from different regions and different generations. But that one just irks me, and it's probably the only one that does. Or at least, the only one that I consistently remember because I hear it everywhere.

I tend to only use two word titles, as that is my fandom's tradition, but I do have this and some other stuff bookmarked about titles.

[elistaire]

There has been a serious trend lately in one of my fandoms to make all the words in the title lowercase. I'm not sure if it is supposed to be reflective of poetry or song lyrics or what, but I thought it was lovely for quite a few stories, and then when it got to be typical and not special, I thought it was trendy and slightly annoying. But, then, doing it the correct way is "trendy", too, isn't it?

Or the other trend appears to be to make titles complete, entire sentences with only the first word capitalized. Odd?

[jagnikjen]

no capitalization just bugs me. :)

there is only one e.e. cummings.

[iosonochesono]

Eh, sometimes I just make my title a sentence for journal posts, or do odd punctuation, but I think a lot of people just don't know the rules.

[jagnikjen]

I hear what your saying and some of it IS context. But the from what I can find, the original expression was THINK & THINK.

But language and the rules of language evolve so I think this is a losing battle for me. :)

[iosonochesono]

Yeah, but language is always changing, generation to generation, region to region.

That's why I surrender 'I could care less' to common usage though it bugs the hell out of me. At least 'You've got another thing coming' can make sense to me. Trying to say you don't care by saying you... care... Just never will.

[devilc]

A) "If you think that {insert whatever here}, then you've got another THINK coming." It's THINK people, not THING. Get it > > if you think something, but it's incorrect then you must THINK again. Hence you've got another THINK coming.

Nope.

Think is the verb.

Thought is the noun.

To hold by the flawed logic then it should be: If you think that, then you've got another thought coming.

Personally, I hold with the logic of the poster above. What might be coming might not be another idea/thought, it might be a flying fist. Also, a new thought or idea is a new thing, so ....

[jagnikjen]

I don't think it's really a question of grammar. In the case of the original, it was a matter of tweaking the language to be witty and/or make a point.

[jagnikjen]

THINK vs. THING

http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/thing.html

I guess this is one of those things that can go either way.

[jagnikjen]

Although most of the official sites I've found do support THINK as the original/correct word in this sentence.

A dictionary:

http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/You%27ve+got+another+think+coming

The Boston Globe says so too:

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/05/04/the_think_thing/

Some random sites:

http://alt-usage-english.org/excerpts/fxyouhav.html
http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=87385

And Wikitionary:

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/have_another_think_coming

And a grammarist:

http://www.grammarist.com/usage/another-think-coming/

[katzenjamming]

Hahah, sorry -- I'm a language geek and have never heard of this confusion so I just had to look at all those links and babble about it. This seems like one of those things that could be attributed to language change? To get technical, it seems like there are two things going on here:

- One is that (particularly in that phrase) it's easy to hear "think" as "thing", because of the way people talk. Someone at the WordReference source breaks down why that is.

- The other is that I'm a native English speaker from the American Southeast, and I never hear "think" used as a noun -- I'm assuming other people fall in this category, too. Because "think" is always a verb in my head, like devilc says it pings as ungrammatical. Some sources say that the phrase was supposed to be ungrammatical, though it wouldn't be if "think" is a noun. A few other sources say that "think" did used to be a noun (or suggests that it still is, though it might be rare usage?) so it might be language change on the part of the word's part of speech.

Put it together and since people tend to hear what they want to hear, substituting "thing" is super-easy, and it gets used like that again and again. Also, I follow previous posters' logic in their semantic breakdown of the phrase, so "thing" just makes more sense to me.

Either way, I've learned something. Thanks for bringing this up! *tosses linguist hat into the wind*

[jagnikjen]

I don't know that "think" was ever a noun per se, (I mean it could have been, I really don't know), but used as one for witty effect in the original context.

[mekare]

I only stared longingly at my planned Sherlock crack ficlet tonight as I was busy with academic writing all day... argh!

Concerning pet peeves:
In August I wrote a mini rant about a recent one of mine, the phrase "like a teenage girl" being used to describe behaviours or emotions of grown men which I've been encountering all summer in different slash fiction.
I'm still not sure if I'm overreacting, I'd appreciate any thoughts you might want to share about this.

[jagnikjen]

Well, do grown men really act like teenage girls? There *has* to be a better way of describing a man's behavior. Lazy writers...?

I don't know about over-reacting. You see something once and it irks you, but you don't worry about it, but when you see something over and over and over and over, well, it does get pretty irritating to where you want to hit something. :)

[mekare]

Describes my feelings exactly! The first time I dismissed it as an odd simile which didn't make sense to me. Then the second or third time I was wondering about the writer's view of men... Fourth and fifth time I was angry at slash writers in general. This sort of thing gives slash a bad name I think.

[katzenjamming]

Only a bit of adding things here or there. My 750words today will probably be something that's not prose. :/

As for peeves: To be completely honest, my spelling is atrocious so I tend to be more forgiving on those kinds of errors. :P

A lot of my fandoms come from Japanese source material, I could probably write an essay on my distaste for "fangirl" Japanese showing up in fics. It's usually really jarring or awkward, and a fair amount of time the writer isn't using the given term correctly. I get that some words are hard to translate, and I use the occasional word for flavor or emphasis every now and then, but I'm generally of the school of "I'm writing in English, so I'll use English so it flows better". I wonder if this happens in other fandoms with other non-English source material?

Something else that tends to happen in my fandoms is exaggerating certain characters' characteristics, even fic that's not meant to be humorous. I get the "alternative character interpretation" thing, but just because character 'A' is far from a genius, seeing everyone write him as "too dumb to live" annoys the heck out of me.

Re: exaggeration

[mekare]

I've seen this, too. A sort of oversimplification of characters which I think might have to do with the writer's inexperience in presenting rounded characters and/or the writer's inexperience in life (we do tend to think in black and white when we are younger).

[jagnikjen]

but just because character 'A' is far from a genius, seeing everyone write him as "too dumb to live" annoys the heck out of me.

I agree. Average intelligence is average, not stupid. :)

[sharpiefan]

"He/she/it/one must of..."

It's must HAVE, people. Via the contraction 'must've'.

Honestly.

[elistaire]

I like your icon.

[jagnikjen]

Oh, thanks for mentioning this one. YES YES YES

That drives me bonkers too!

[jagnikjen]

ICON is made of WIN!

[elistaire]

Worked a little bit on a prompt today, that was good.

I like your pet peeves. Good points. I am egregiously bad at getting my homophones mixed up.

[sylvaine]

Oh my god, I agree with pretty much ALL of the pet peeves mentioned here. And would like to add: defiantly instead of definitely. ARGH. Don't trust autocorrect, people! *tears at hair*

... in other news, I wrote 938 words today and have thus finished my first fanfic in months. \o/ It still needs a lot of editing, but still! Actual fic! :D

[jagnikjen]

Yay for finishing fic!!

On the defiantly vs. definitely--that's just a bad beta reader or no beta reader etc...

barely vs. barley

quite vs. quiet

There's all kinds of those.

You really just have to know your own weakness and make sure you have a beta reader with a really good eye for those. :)

[lacerta]

Yay, congrats on finishing!

[lullabymoon]

I managed about 1600 words for my big bang today! Pleased and crossing my fingers that I can keep it up.

My biggest pet peeve, especially on lj/dw, is incomplete headers. Specifically not having the word count. I know it's not essential but I want a general idea of how long something will take me to read, ie should I start it now before bed or work or leave it for later? and sometimes I'm not in the mood for long fic, or other times I just want to curl up and lose myself in long fic.

[jagnikjen]

Yay for 1600 words good job!

And I agree with fic headers. Also stupid summarys... "This is my first fic." is not a summary and I *defiantly* won't be reading it.

[jagnikjen]

I forgot disdain vs. distain.

I've come across that one several times this past week.

[ficwriter1966]

Started a new one-shot this afternoon - don't think I can finish it up tonight, but I'm hoping for completion and posting tomorrow.

Pet peeves? Let's see. Not just in fic but the world at large - the insertion of an apostrophe every time the guilty party sees an "s." There's a shop down the street advertising "ice cream cone's." No. Just NO. Plus the other rampant mistakes: "your" for "you're," "their" for "they're," and so on.

And yes, I agree with you: overuse of "canon fodder." Our seeing a little bit of something ONE TIME doesn't mean it's always true. A character ordering a salad one time doesn't mean he eats nothing but salads.

But I think my all-time peeve with fic is authors who do this:
"It's not true." Sam said.
If I click into a story and see that particular mistake 3 or 4 times in the first few paragraphs, I won't read any further. Guaranteed. It could be the best story on the planet, and I won't know that, because I can't get past the wall that that particular mistake throws up.

[jagnikjen]

Commas are another irritant for me as well, though I'm not to the back page stage just yet. (Unless there bunches of other things to go with the comma issues.)

[lacerta]

Especially because a physique like Sam's is just plain impossible to build of maintain on salads.

Heh, I've got a "leather bag's" shop in the neighbourhood, too. I never know whether to laugh or facepalm when I walk past.

[bay_alexison]

Managed to do 400 words of my Big Bang this afternoon. I'm going to go do some evening grocery shopping with my mom for tonight's dinner in a few minutes, but I'm hoping after I come back and make/eat dinner I'll write a couple hundred more words before bed.

I actually don't have too many pet peeves, although canon fodder is one of them. ficwriter1966's rant of using a period instead of a comma like that in dialogue is another pet peeve of mine. While we're on that subject, every time I see "I love you," He said that irks me too.

[linaewen]

What a day! It was totally impossible to write anything today, ugh and double ugh!

Two things that truly bug me are:

1) when someone announces in their summary that their summary sucks, but they expect me to move right on in and still be interested in reading their story. As soon as I see "this summary sucks" or "I suck at summaries" I'm moving on to something else, thank you.

2) people referring to canon as cannon.

3) characters being referred to by their hair color in place of their name. This is interesting once in awhile for variety, but to have whole paragraphs (even whole stories) where all the characters are spoken of only by their hair color and we hardly ever see their name seems very odd to me. It's currently not something that causes me to stop reading, but it takes me out of the story big time.

[linaewen]

Another thing that bugs me is when I press "post comment" too soon before properly editing my reply. ;-) That's supposed to be THREE things above. Guess I started with two and couldn't stop....

[mekare]

Number 1 and 3! The brunette did this....the blonde did that....Horrible! It even bugs me when it's only done a few times because it just doesn't feel right to me. Same goes for " the older man" and "the younger man" if you've got two male characters in the same scene. It's not as bad as the hair colour, though. Use their names!

[jagnikjen]

Oh, yes, the hair color thing. Drives one barmy after a very short while.

The thing of that one is, very rarely do people think of themselves (1st person POV) or people they know well or love by hair color (3rd person POV).

I don't go around thinking of my husband as the guy with the salt & pepper hair. So why would Harry constantly refer to Ginny as the red-haired girl? He wouldn't. It's one thing to spot a flash of red in the crowd, hoping it's that person, but to belabor the point is tiring.

[lacerta]

I got a little more editing done yesterday.

As for pet peeves, random pov changes will throw me out of a story. I can overlook spelling mistakes or strange comma usage, but pov changes put the whole head cinema to a stop and leave me very confused as to what is going on.

[jagnikjen]

Head hopping is another good (bad?) one.

I don't recommend it, but sometimes it can be pulled off well enough that I'll push through a fic, but if it's really awful, I'm gone.