Finally someone who gets it!
But I must admit, I have done some of these things. Mostly when I was younger and less experienced, but I'm still guilty.

You've got some pretty good points here. I don't necessarily agree with all of them( I love obscure words; it's best if context clues indicate their meaning, but I for one will go run and get a dictionary while I'm reading if I have to), but I can see what you mean. My favorite rule would be the last one. "there are no absolute rules" is so true; writing is an art, not a science and rules are made to be broken.

Genre: General/ tragedy.

Why tragedy?

Good points made. I agree with you, especially on publishing and what makes a good story to a lot of readers.

Bravo! I agree with every single point. A friend of mine got duped by PublishAmerica, but still refuses to believe they're shady. It's frustrating. Anyway, I mostly write on fictionpress to blow off steam (My "serious" writing will never see the light of day on the internet for hopeful publication reasons... I'm living on a prayer on that one), but I do really try to make my stories GOOD. I think a place like fp is great for young writers to learn, find out what people like, etc., but it shouldn't be the end all beat all source. I'm pretty sure you understand what I mean.

In any case, I'm done rambling. Good job on the list!

Fantastic.

loved it. witty and straight to the point.

i loved that. i agree with you 100%. great idea for posting this. i had a good couple of laughs also.

I like how you wrote this in a very open-minded way, and I had to laugh at the trilogy point because it's very true (and irritating).

- Rebekah

You know what? I really liked this. I've read so many pages like this, and all I can find is criticism that ends up making me feel bad and look at other people's work horribly. The points you give are...well, I can't exactly think of the word right now, but I liked them. I admit, I'm not a perfect writer (in fact, I LOVE writing Mary-Sues even if I get flamed a million times over for it), but I totally agree with most of what you said (I even agree with both of your opinions on Mary-Sues). I'm glad you wrote this and I think that everybody needs to read this, whether they'll like it or not.

wow this let me shocked because everything in this is real... honestly... even i have comitted some of these erros and i admit it was pretty stupid... very good advice for future storys... thank you so much.

Lol, i loved this, it was hilarious and pretty darn true. To be honest i spotted some of these things that i do do time to time but mostly its accidental.

i'm probably the epitome of everything you were warning us against, but i like how you don't really accuse anyone. :D

i also though of another point while reading:
authors shouldn't write "how to" guides unless they've actually had experience!

seriously, i would've up and written one of these myself if i had any credibility. but sadly, my writing skills suck, so i didn't because that would make me a big fat hypocrite. goshdarnit. :P

I was really bored and looking through essays and random authors and found this. I like it. This is actually quite dead-on.
I think a lot of the stuff you said here are true. Yes, I agree Mary-Sues are evil, but sometimes some Mary-Sues actually work well for a story.
Anyway, I like this.

konnichi wa

I could not agree more. Sorry, I know this is a cheap way of returning the favor of your excellent reviews. I am trying not to invest myself in long stories because I don't think I will have time to read new chapters that may come up, which is why I try to avoid chapter stories. (Please don't take it personally.) Plus, I am not a fantasy person (for the most part) and DEFINITELY not a romance person. From the summaries, most of your stories are both. I probably would not enjoy them that much.

Anyway, what kind of review is this turning out to be, hm? How about I get back to your essay.

"You are not a published author."

Check out the penname "I" and read the profile. It gave me a good laugh. This person is either quite the comic or UNBELIEVABLY deluded. My desperate hope is for the latter - for the sake of the person himself. *shakes head*

"Your tenth grade English teacher does not necessarily know anything about writing fiction."

While I completely agree with this point, I had to laugh when I read this. Currently, I am in eleventh grade. Last year, my English teacher was... just about the most brilliant English teacher on the face of the earth. And no, she was not the type to suggest looking up billions of synonyms for the word "said" and have the audacity to call it good writing. She was the type to say, "Looking up billions of synonyms for the word 'said' is NOT good writing."

I have to say - purely and honestly - the woman taught me how to write. I owe everything to her. Without her devotion to me (even now when she is no longer officially my teacher), I would still be in the metaphorical diapers of writing. Before she sat me down and knocked some sense into me, I did not even know the meaning of the word syntax. It almost makes me want to cry nowadays. Thanks to her, though, I learned so much in under a year.

“Fictionpress reviewers are not the best place to get honest advice. - If you are serious about improving your stories, don't rely on fictionpress.”

An unfortunate truth. :( I am one hundred percent serious about improving. If I were to have relied on fictionpress to improve, I would still be at stage one. Rhyming. Ugh. (For the record, I don’t think anything is wrong with rhyming in certain instances. I just think that many times people rhyme when it is completely uncalled for. Poems about death and cutting RARELY work when they rhyme. I used to rhyme everything, and now – thankfully – I almost never do.) I do rely on fictionpress for some things, though. For instance, I rely on it to find people who DO know how to give proper criticism. After all, on fictionpress is where I found reviewers like you and others from the RM. On fanfiction is where I found one of my closest friends who now edits everything I write, as I do for her. Without these websites I would never have found people like that. Still, I do not expect the majority of the readers to give me anything helpful. The best they can do is give you a boost in your self-esteem, which is pathetic. I don’t need that. I need help with writing. *rolls eyes*

“You are not Miss Snark.”

In the past I have had a couple of very good reviewers that, unfortunately, disagreed with this sentiment. Personally, I have no problem hearing the nasty, brutal honesty because I – thank G-d – am able to tune out the rude parts and take the advice as it comes. I know plenty of people, however, who will turn a deaf ear if potential advice is offered with insults and other discouraging comments. It’s true: how can anyone improve if you yell at him? All he will get is a sour taste in his mouth and may very well be discouraged and quite writing altogether. Definitely not something anyone wants to encourage. (I should hope, anyway.)

“Five characters having random adventures is not a plot.”

*laughs* Do you know how long it took me to figure this out? Pathetic. I used to come up with one of those miniature plot bunnies. You know – something that will give you enough for one chapter’s worth of material but then leaves you dangling uselessly from a branch about fifty feet up? Yeah, one of those. I have one story in specific that I comes to mind that was just… atrocious. Naturally, the people of fanfiction praised it to no end so I actually thought I knew what I was doing when I would add chapters with random scenes. These things would just happen to my characters as I thought of them. It was a good start to the story, but it just rolled downhill from the start. Thank goodness I caught it before it snowballed into a monster I could not control. I have since begun to rewrite it. Now I have a FULL plot for it and I know exactly what will happen as the story moves along. It is a great feeling to have an organized story in your hands. =) Makes me want to smile.

I think what I hate most in a writer is when he bases himself on how many reviews he gets. Within some stories I have read, I have seen addendums that say, “I won’t post the next chapter until I get ten reviews.” Something that made me want to gag was when I actually saw a post fully dedicated to that single sentence. It wasn’t even a story. It was: “I am going to write a story about such-and-such. If anyone wants me to include your own made-up character post it in a review with a description of the character so that I will include it.” That was chapter one of the story. Chapter two was: “If I don’t get more reviews, I won’t write the story.” Chapter three was, verbatim, the exact same words as chapter two.

I so desperately wanted to let loose in a full-blown tirade at the author. “Are you an idiot?! First of all, what is anyone supposed to say in a review when you have not even written a chapter yet? ‘Yay, I can’t wait to see the first chapter’? What a useless thing to do! Second of all, you are not supposed to post based on reviewers. You would actually just give up on an entire story idea just because not enough people have praised you to the high heavens?”

Don’t worry, I didn’t do it – as much as I wanted to. I didn’t write anything because I knew if I tried, I would end up writing something along those lines. Other times, when it is not as stupid as it was in that so-called story, I have mentioned it to the author. For example, if an author writes, “I won’t post the next chapter until I get ten reviews,” I do review. I give my thoughts on the chapter and then sort of just stick in there before my signature, “By the way, you should write for you, not for ‘ten plus reviews.’”

“Just because it’s been done before doesn’t make it bad.”

Agreed – but at the same time one does have to be wary of plagiarism. There is such thing as a similar idea or plot, and then there is same plot, same types of characters, same everything except author’s name.

“Mary-Sues are evil. . . . Mary-Sues are not always evil.”

*chuckles* Well put. =)

“Just because a published author did it doesn’t mean it’s good writing.”

Oh, how I wish people could understand that. It makes me cry to read some books. How in the WORLD do some of these people get published? Understandably there are people who have good plots and just horrible writing skills. (I find this most often in autobiographies.) If you cannot write, DON’T WRITE. Find someone who can and tell that person your story; let that person put your great story into great words. To see fifty typos in a book (I HAVE seen that, to my dismay) ruins whatever good story there may have been.

Ah, thank you for letting me vent. =P More people should read this and actually understand the truth in it. Kudos to you for writing it. I hope more people listen.

Ha det
-Shan-