Masochistic Reading

When I'm feeling down and think I suck as a writer, I read some of the tripe on fanfiction.net and realize "at least I'm not like them."

For their credit, some of the short stories are amusing. Some are epic! Some would make amazing stories if only the writer had invented original characters instead of borrowing others (of course, then it wouldn't be "fan fiction"). And some really do get published. Have you seen how many shelves of Star Trek paperbacks are in Barnes and Noble?

Writing as a way to obsess over your favorite story can be a healthy way to experiment with styles without the pressure of deadlines. I've written fan fiction for Star Trek and Quantum Leap, usually as collaborations with my husband. It's not publish-quality, but it was fun.

Today was not a day to marvel at talented storytelling, but to convince myself "at least I'm not that bad." And I found my salvation. I will give the "writer" - and I use the term lightly - the grace of not linking to her story or mentioning her name. She is, sadly, one of many who post sordid excuses of fiction onto the internet every day. Her short story was so bad, I had to write about it so I would not obsess over it all day and let it ruin my own writing time.

Now, for truly wretched scrawling, no one can't get any worse than Tara Gilesbie's classic "My Immortal." Simply google "worst fanfiction" and you'll find it. It was deemed so bad that fanfiction.net, home of so much crap it makes dung beetles have aneurysms, finally pulled the story down from their server. Yet its utterly horrendous legacy lives on.
http://myimmortalrehost.webs.com/

[Warning: reading one paragraph will lower your IQ by ten points. You automatically forfeit your high school diploma and all university degrees if you finish all 40 chapters (and her definition of a "chapter" is one paragraph and a dozen lines of dialog). I once managed to read up to seven of those putrescent chapters before I got a huge headache and had to read some Dostoevsky to assure myself I was not in Purgatory. You have been warned.]

The story I read was not that bad. Still, it was quite awful. It was painfully apparent that this writer was maybe 13 with no understanding of even basic social skills. She must have received "inspiration" in what constitutes literature via text messaging her fellow 8th graders and by reading the aforementioned "My Immortal." She had a minimal grasp of the English language (I hope she was from another country... I really, really hope), and no sense of grammar at all, let alone spelling. I mean, seriously, spell-check exists even in this Note I'm writing. Use it!

It was also obvious that the writer used a thesaurus to sound intelligent while picking totally wrong words for the situation. "But dey is the loooongest words I find, so dey make me look more smart, so I dont care wat u says." I use thesauruses all the time when I just can't recall the word I need, but I at least have an idea of what I'm trying to say. Using unknown "heavy" words will likely make you sound less educated than keeping to one-to-two syllables.

To get your ideas across use small words, big ideas, and short sentences.
- John Henry Patterson

Let's not forget one of my favorite pet peeves: using twenty exclamation points does not mean the character screamed twenty times louder than a single exclamation point. Use up to three in emails and IM'ing if you think pounding Shift-1 helps to relieve stress, or use caps for shouting emphasis, but not in a story meant to be taken seriously.

Also, people do not literally say "LOL." They laugh. So type "She cackled viciously as she insulted him," and we all know what you mean, not "LOL... u is soooo stoopid." Honestly!

Language aside, the writer included a "flashback" repeating two lines of dialog that just occurred. I'm assuming she imagined that would be the commercial break, although it was in no way a climax or cliffhanger, nor a place where the studio would logically cut to show the writer's favorite Lucky Charms commercial.

One character wore a purple bikini, then suddenly had on a blue dress, then it was red in the next sentence, then she magically switched to tan pants. The male character also had polychromatic superpowers, as his eyes changed color too many times to decide which shade she intended.

Now, I've written stories where I accidentally changed a character's eyes from green to blue simply because I did not make a character profile, but this is "fan fiction." These are established characters. This particular story was about an anime, so it's drawn in color for the fan to observe and describe. Despite many magical things that happen in Japanese animation, this character does not have color-shifting eyes. They are blue. Not green, not brown, not purple, not golden. Blue.

My favorite lines:
1) Nothing pounds home a person's intent like emphasis, right? "She looked deeply into his deep green eyes that is as deep as the sea and so deeply intense it was like looking deep into a human soul's deepest heart." Now that's deep!
2) Just as confusing: "She blushed a deeper dimness of scarlet red." Dimness?
3) But nothing quite proves one is a talented writer as inventing unique ways of describing simple actions. "She vomited tears like crocodiles." That's certainly a revoltingly visual if I've ever read one.

The torment of reading this short fan fiction in no way inspired me out of my writer's block, but it did cheer me up. I now realize I am at least a fluent and well-trained writer. I can read the classics without resorting the Cliff Notes. I have assisted many other aspiring writers, using my grammar-nazi'ing obsession for good.

And I don't vomit tears!