4/30/2013

Hey, all. Jimmy here. I first constructed this profile about four years ago, when I was 24. It's time for an overhaul, I suppose.

I'm 28 years old now, going on 29 in August. I live on the West Coast, where I'm attending a fairly large state university as I get my MA. One thing that hasn't changed since I first constructed this profile four years ago is my love of FanFiction. In fact, I've recently started to consider that I might enjoy it *too* much, and as a result I've tried to reduce my reading time drastically. I intend to remain involved in the community as a writer, and hopefully now that I spend less time reading the stuff, I'll have more time to devote to writing it.

Preferred Fandoms:

Final Fantasy 7
Final Fantasy 8
Naruto
Harry Potter
Buffy: The Vampire Slayer
Firefly
Mass Effect
Chuck
Fate Stay/Night
Bleach
Legend of Zelda

Fanfiction Likes

It's difficult for me to describe what I like in certain fanfictions. It varies from story to story, and from fandom to fandom. If there's one thing that stands out, though, and that has stood out since I first started reading fiction in general, it's this; I love it when authors are able to convince me, through clever words and stories, that there is a hidden world and history behind the story being told. Tolkien was incredible about this; the first time I read Lord of the Rings, I was utterly convinced that the world had a history and depth to it which was only hinted at in the story proper. (As it turns out, of course, there was; I discovered The Silmarillion only after reading the trilogy). Harry Potter was also great about this, and so is the book Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell. As an author, if you can convince me that your world is a living, breathing thing that has secrets which it hasn't told your characters yet, and probably never will, you have my readership for life.

Outside of that, there are other, simple things I like; Good writing, mostly free from errors, vibrant and complex characters, well written action scenes, epic-length (100k) fics, and so on. More on my philosophy of writing below, for those of you who are actually interested in reading about it.

Fanfiction Dislikes

This is much easier for me to describe.

Horrible Synonyms - Seriously, who refers to eyes as orbs? Why did this become a thing? Would you tell your lover that their orbs looked beautiful? If so, which set are you referring to? This is an extension of an impulse that, I'm convinced, is common to most writers; we all feel that if we use a word like "eyes" too many times in a paragraph, it becomes redundant and takes away from the writing. This is a natural and true impulse, and should be paid attention to. However, attempting to solve the problem by switching out the word "eyes" for a word so patently ridiculous that it makes your readers want to gouge their orbs out just makes things worse.

Sex Scenes - I'm torn on this. I'm a guy, and like sex as much as the next guy. But I have yet to read a single fanfiction sex scene in 10 years that was even remotely decent. Try reading American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, or, if you're looking for one of the books that did it first and did it right, read Lady Chatterley's Lover. So few writers are capable of meeting those standards, though, that I generally consider sex scenes worthless and simply skip right over them when reading a fic. To that end, I thank all of you authors who take the time to post tags in your fanfics which tell us when the scenes start and end.

Yaoi/Slash - No. Just no. I actively avoid reading sex scenes that contain the type of sex that I do like, so you can imagine how far I try to stay away from fics that contain the type of sex that I don't like.

Leet/Text Speak - OMG! LOL! ROTFLMAO! RMEOPIDWRTS! (Rip my eyes out please, I don't wanna read this s--t!)

Badly Written Summaries - If your story summary on FFnet reads something like "I'm not really that good at summaries but you should read my story, because it's pretty awesome!", then odds are that your story isn't really that awesome and you're just deluding yourself. Congratulations; you've just announced to the entirety of the web that when you have to actually sit down and put thought into a well crafted sentence or two, you can only come up with a plea for others to ignore your ineptitude. Apologies for my rudeness, but a summary is one of the most basic cues as to what type of a writer you are; if your summary announces to me that you have no interest in thinking about your story long enough to condense it into a sentence or write an acceptable hook for it, then I have no interest in reading the rest of what you write.

Songfics - Interposing the lyrics of a Linkin Park song in between paragraphs of your writing does not make it profound. This is not to say that including the lyrics of a song in your fic is a bad thing; a lot of my favorite fics open each chapter with a passage from various songs, and I do so as an intro to my own fics. However, weaving the lyrics of the song, line by line, into the narrative using italics just doesn't capture the emotion the way you think it does. Any attempt to do this will be an epic fail for three reasons: First, you're assuming that we care, which we usually don't; Second, you're assuming we've heard the song, which 75 percent of the time will be incorrect; Third, you're assuming that, by themselves, the lyrics of the song will somehow convey the tearful and profound feelings that the tune of the song does while you're playing it in your room as you write the fic, which they won't. Give me the chord progression to the song and I'll play it on my guitar while reading your chapter.

Bad Titles - Case in point; I stumbled across a fanfic online once called "Azure Crimson." Why not just call it "Blue Red" and be done with it?

Japanenglish Translations - The Japanese word for 'black' is 'kuroi'. 'Burakku' is the Japanese pronunciation of the English word for black. The 'u' is silent, and the 'r' is an approximation of the 'l' sound in the English language. Simliarly, 'Kurodo' is the Japanese pronunciation of the English word 'cloud'. So if you're saying 'burakku kurodo', you have not successfully translated 'black cloud' into Japanese. You have translated it into the language of Japanese tourists who have taken a remedial ESL course.

It's true that languages do, in fact, import words from other languages and make them their own. But if you're trying to create a convincing fanfic based off of a manga or anime, taking the extra time to find a word in the language that isn't simply snatched from English goes a long way towards impressing me.

On Becoming a Better Writer

Thoughts to come on this at a later date.