High quality fanfic...

POSTED BY: SuzFromOz
UPDATED: Monday, June 12, 2006 20:20
VIEWED: 3685
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DEEPGIRL187

Monday, June 12, 2006 12:45 PM

Not sure if anyone's mentioned this, but in the Blue Sun Room forum, there is a thread that links to the 2005 Strawberry awards. I haven't read everything yet, but the stories I have read are really excellent.

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It's just an object. It doesn't mean what you think.

ELOISA

Monday, June 12, 2006 6:53 PM

Yeah, like Deepgirl said, generally sites that have contests (in any fandom or sub-scene like slash) will feature good authors in its shortlisted, honourable mentions or winners categories. You can use that to find more by the same author - for instance I recently found out that a story that I'd admired for several years, having found it as a competition entry, was actually part of a ten-story series. That was a very good and very long night.

There are actually some decent things on FFN but they can take a devilishly long time to find. If you hit one person who writes well - in any fandom, but including Blue Sun Room cross-posters - navigate by their favourite stories or favourite authors lists, and on from there in the same way, as generally the people who write well on FFN will only flag other good authors by their lists. Bizzarely enough, I have been introduced to not only new authors but two entire new fandoms by this method.

Out of interest, what are your other fandoms, Suzfromoz?

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http://forums.ffonline.com/forumdisplay.php?f=19
Creative Writing

MORWEN112

Monday, June 12, 2006 7:48 PM

I, too, have found the fanfics here to be better than most I've seen in other places.

But please, don't think that all teenagers write as badly as some. True, a lot of the stuff I see is ridiculous, not only in the Firefly fandom but in the Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings fandoms as well (don't even get me started on some of that HP stuff ) But as a teenage writer myself, I can say that we aren't all bad...even if some of us could use a couple of lessons in spelling and punctuation.

Happy Reading!

Mine is an evil sugar high laugh! Bwahahahaha!

Morwen

SAMEERTIA

Monday, June 12, 2006 8:01 PM

And honestly, I would hope that we would all ENCOURAGE the teen writers in our midst, helping them become better writers, rather than tearing them down and mocking them.

I make it a goal to read one thing a month that I normally wouldn't, and leave a review.

Funny note here- Has anyone else read William Souder's "Under A Wild Sky"? It's a brilliantly researched and engaging story of John James Audubon, and early natural science in the Americas.

IF I had clicked on it online, I would never have read past the first line! The first line is a hopelessly entangled run-on sentence!!!!
I read it and thought "How did this get published????" - and then I read the next line, and the next paragraph, and a half hour later realized that it almost time to go home and I had't actually entered it into the computer. (oops)

They say don't judge a book by it's cover, but I also think judging a story by an opening paragraph can be a terrible mistake.

ELOISA

Monday, June 12, 2006 8:19 PM

However, as most publishers judge books by their opening paragraphs, that's very rare.... It's nice you found an exception, though. (Not read it.)

Regarding the teenager comments, aside from the fact that *ahem* I started writing before I was a teen (OK, I was dreadful till I was sixteen or so), one of the best authors I've ever met online was a thirteen-year-old girl in the FFVIII fandom (now seventeenish and getting better and better; in ten or twenty years' time, watch out for a Liz or Elizabeth Tan down your bookstores). I don't think readers should give teenagers the excuse that they are writing badly because they are teens when there are so many counterexamples (I know of a lot of good teen fanfic authors). This is especially true in the matter of spelling and grammar. Generally, in my experience, teens who have grammar problems turn into adults who have grammar problems - it's too late for them to learn otherwise.

SameErtia, that's a wonderful resolution that I have made and broken several times in the past. I admire you for leaving your fanfic comfort zone.

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http://forums.ffonline.com/forumdisplay.php?f=19
Creative Writing

SPACEANJL

Monday, June 12, 2006 8:20 PM

I'd like to put in a little prop for ff.net, actually. Mainly 'cos that's where I started out. Thing is, it is a completely open site, and world-wide. Anyone can put something out. And yes, a lot of it is juvenalia and fanwank. But there are a few gems. You have to practise discrimination, as in all things. It is a lot easier to sort by pairing etc, too, so you can avoid nasty surprises. I've been attracted by more than one title over here, and then been confronted by Rayne or Jaylee when I wasn't expecting it, which I find truly distressing. And the crossover?...I mean, I found a LoTR/Discworld crossover that made me hysterical. And John Constantine as the Dark Arts teacher? Sweet. And where else would you find Spike, Lex Luthor and Constantine getting pissed in a bar together?

SpaceAnJL

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