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jadesfireI may well regret making this private rant public, but I've tidied up the typing (although at least one typo will remain, I guarantee it), but it's this or cataloguing. Plus ranting is good for the spleen. Or something.
This isn't very me. Or, at least, it's the me I don't usually let out in public. But the volume of fic is going up, and I've just started reading seriously again. And I'm already getting cross.
I'm adding a caveat or disclaimer or explanation or 'Jades is a chicken, albeit an angry one' (*squawk*) to this, just to say that this is not aimed at any particular author(s). Much of the below works in the right context, but context is everything. Cliches in the hands of good writers can be remarkable and unique. But too often, something gets written in a good story, someone else picks it up, then someone else does and, well. I don't mind when things start to snowball. Avalanches are more of a problem.
None of these things are enough to make me stop reading a story, but they do make me wish that people would use the shows as their sources, rather than what other people have written. I should also add that I'm sure at least one, maybe two or (probably) all of these have come up in my own writing. I promise to cringe when I find them again.
I've used SGA and Torchwood for most of my examples, since that's most of what I'm reading right now, but I'm sure people can add to the list from other fandoms…
#1. Please, if you are writing about a TV show, watch said TV show. Please form your descriptions of the characters from what you see on the shiny screen in front of you, not from what you've read in several dozen fanfics. Current pet peeves are:
Torchwood: Thin Ianto. *squints* Not so much. I mean, he's not going to break any scales, but he's not that little either. His shoulders are pretty broad, and, alright, under the suit it's kind of hard to tell more than that, but he's kind of...man shaped. I'll grant you that it's possible that he has a "swimmer's build" (which I take to mean broad shouldered and slim waisted) but he's not thin.
SGA: Sheppard's face moves. Seriously. It moves lots and lots and lots. Try this picspam if you don't believe me. Yes, he can do impassive, but he doesn't do it most of the time. His eyebrows have almost as much life in them as his hair.
Torchwood: Ianto's height. More or less the same as Jack's.
SGA [shamelessly gakked from![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
nightdog_barks]: Rodney's creamy skin. Say what? Pale, possibly. Creamy? Seriously? Maybe he has secret longings to be Cleopatra and bathes in milk as well, although how he ships it in is anyone's guess… (okay, I'm going to stop there because I feel crack!fic coming and need to lie down until it goes away)
Torchwood: Jack's broad shoulders. Now, I'm not one to criticise appreciation of JB's appearance. Not at all. But this goes hand in hand (so to speak) with stick-thin Ianto. The two of them are pretty well matched, but Jack wears a big coat and boots, which makes him look bigger. And yes, the coat's distracting, but still…
Also, when was the last time you noticed, really noticed the colour of someone's eyes? I don't have any problem with this in the right context, but in general, you have to be looking pretty closely. In the House fandom, there's good excuses for mentioning eye colour, given how often the directors highlight it, but most of the time in most fandoms, give your characters a good excuse for noticing the colour. Make something of it. Don't just throw it in because everyone else does.
#2. Once you have watched the characters, please try listening to them. Dialect, use of language, even choice of words all tell you something about the characters. This is helpful when you come to write them.
Torchwood: Jack has an American accent, but we know he's not American. Gwen and Ianto have Welsh accents, Tosh has pretty much an RP accent, while Owen has a London accent. Most of the time, there's not need to indicate this in the text, since we know what they sound like. The dialect might be different, but you don't need to drop 'h's or 't's off everything. Now and again to give flavour, perhaps, but please be careful. We need to be able to read it as well.
I should probably add that my first ever fandom was Gambit (oh, and the rest of the X-men as well), so I know what I'm talking about when it comes to reading accents that are written so strongly they become unintelligible. Torchwood's not that bad, but I do get frustrated with constant mention of Ianto's 'beautiful Welsh vowels'. One reference, people. One! We already know he's Welsh. Please find something else to say about his voice.
Out of interest, SGA people, how do you feel about seeing 'ZPM' written as 'ZedPM' for Rodney? I read the right one automatically for the person speaking, but there's a case for writing it out. I just know that it makes me blink, which can interrupt the flow.
#3. In and out of characterness is a trickier one, but I generally think that if you can back it up from canon, you're fine. I might disagree with you, but that's okay, as long as you're doing it from a sensible starting place.
Please stop making Jack and Ianto cry. Yes, I know we've seen them both crying in extreme situations, but for goodness sake stop it! Speaking as someone who has been known to burst into tears during adverts (and no, not just for the horror that is the Cilip Bang ad), even I don't cry as much as these two seem to in fic. If you're going to make them cry, give them a good reason.
People are really, really rubbish at talking about what they're feeling. Unless they've had really good therapy, but even then, if they're talking to someone who hasn't, they're going to mess it up. There's going to be lots of pauses, lots of significant looks and - if they're genuinely trying to talk about their feelings - lots of hand waving and 'you know?' If both the characters are men, this is probably going to be doubled.
If one of these men is John Sheppard, who looks like he's going to have a panic attack when someone hugs him, triple the number you first thought of. And add a couple of thousand. If one of these men is Ianto Jones, he's going to make sarcastic comments and look awkward. If one of them is Rodney McKay, he's going to keep talking until you shut him up out of pity. If one of them is Jack Harkness, you're going to think he's given you an answer until you walk away and realise he hasn't, not really. If one of these men is Gregory House…actually, even I can't imagine that one, so I'll stop there.
#4. Epithets. The OED defines this as: "An adjective indicating some quality or attribute which the speaker or writer regards as characteristic of the person or thing described." I vividly remember reading the novelisation of 'The Empire Strikes Back' at the age of thirteen, and wanting to throw it across the room because they kept describing Luke as 'the young commander'. Every. Other. Sentence. So this is a long standing personal gripe more than anything else, but hey, my journal, my rant.
Now, I know this is a personal dislike, and that it doesn't bother others so much, but please think when you're using epithets. Who's the point of view character? How are they going to think about the person they're talking to/watching? Are the Torchwood team really going to think of Jack as 'the Captain'? Does Sheppard think of Rodney as 'the astrophysicist'? Would Wilson think of House as 'the diagnostician'? (that one baffles me, I have to say…)
I'm aware that this is the one that people are going to disagree on, and I want to emphasise that in the right context, they work fine. But too often they're used because the writer thinks they need to introduce variety for the sake of variety. Descriptions like 'the other man' (and the phrase 'he said', while we're on this subject) don't really get 'read' by readers. They're registered as denoting the non-POV character (or speech) and kind of skipped over. Again, they can get awkward, but choice of words matters and is worth thinking about.
Actually, maybe that's what I'm trying to say: writers, please engage your brain before you open a Word document. Everyone will thank you in the long run.
This isn't very me. Or, at least, it's the me I don't usually let out in public. But the volume of fic is going up, and I've just started reading seriously again. And I'm already getting cross.
I'm adding a caveat or disclaimer or explanation or 'Jades is a chicken, albeit an angry one' (*squawk*) to this, just to say that this is not aimed at any particular author(s). Much of the below works in the right context, but context is everything. Cliches in the hands of good writers can be remarkable and unique. But too often, something gets written in a good story, someone else picks it up, then someone else does and, well. I don't mind when things start to snowball. Avalanches are more of a problem.
None of these things are enough to make me stop reading a story, but they do make me wish that people would use the shows as their sources, rather than what other people have written. I should also add that I'm sure at least one, maybe two or (probably) all of these have come up in my own writing. I promise to cringe when I find them again.
I've used SGA and Torchwood for most of my examples, since that's most of what I'm reading right now, but I'm sure people can add to the list from other fandoms…
#1. Please, if you are writing about a TV show, watch said TV show. Please form your descriptions of the characters from what you see on the shiny screen in front of you, not from what you've read in several dozen fanfics. Current pet peeves are:
Torchwood: Thin Ianto. *squints* Not so much. I mean, he's not going to break any scales, but he's not that little either. His shoulders are pretty broad, and, alright, under the suit it's kind of hard to tell more than that, but he's kind of...man shaped. I'll grant you that it's possible that he has a "swimmer's build" (which I take to mean broad shouldered and slim waisted) but he's not thin.
SGA: Sheppard's face moves. Seriously. It moves lots and lots and lots. Try this picspam if you don't believe me. Yes, he can do impassive, but he doesn't do it most of the time. His eyebrows have almost as much life in them as his hair.
Torchwood: Ianto's height. More or less the same as Jack's.
SGA [shamelessly gakked from
nightdog_barks]: Rodney's creamy skin. Say what? Pale, possibly. Creamy? Seriously? Maybe he has secret longings to be Cleopatra and bathes in milk as well, although how he ships it in is anyone's guess… (okay, I'm going to stop there because I feel crack!fic coming and need to lie down until it goes away)Torchwood: Jack's broad shoulders. Now, I'm not one to criticise appreciation of JB's appearance. Not at all. But this goes hand in hand (so to speak) with stick-thin Ianto. The two of them are pretty well matched, but Jack wears a big coat and boots, which makes him look bigger. And yes, the coat's distracting, but still…
Also, when was the last time you noticed, really noticed the colour of someone's eyes? I don't have any problem with this in the right context, but in general, you have to be looking pretty closely. In the House fandom, there's good excuses for mentioning eye colour, given how often the directors highlight it, but most of the time in most fandoms, give your characters a good excuse for noticing the colour. Make something of it. Don't just throw it in because everyone else does.
#2. Once you have watched the characters, please try listening to them. Dialect, use of language, even choice of words all tell you something about the characters. This is helpful when you come to write them.
Torchwood: Jack has an American accent, but we know he's not American. Gwen and Ianto have Welsh accents, Tosh has pretty much an RP accent, while Owen has a London accent. Most of the time, there's not need to indicate this in the text, since we know what they sound like. The dialect might be different, but you don't need to drop 'h's or 't's off everything. Now and again to give flavour, perhaps, but please be careful. We need to be able to read it as well.
I should probably add that my first ever fandom was Gambit (oh, and the rest of the X-men as well), so I know what I'm talking about when it comes to reading accents that are written so strongly they become unintelligible. Torchwood's not that bad, but I do get frustrated with constant mention of Ianto's 'beautiful Welsh vowels'. One reference, people. One! We already know he's Welsh. Please find something else to say about his voice.
Out of interest, SGA people, how do you feel about seeing 'ZPM' written as 'ZedPM' for Rodney? I read the right one automatically for the person speaking, but there's a case for writing it out. I just know that it makes me blink, which can interrupt the flow.
#3. In and out of characterness is a trickier one, but I generally think that if you can back it up from canon, you're fine. I might disagree with you, but that's okay, as long as you're doing it from a sensible starting place.
Please stop making Jack and Ianto cry. Yes, I know we've seen them both crying in extreme situations, but for goodness sake stop it! Speaking as someone who has been known to burst into tears during adverts (and no, not just for the horror that is the Cilip Bang ad), even I don't cry as much as these two seem to in fic. If you're going to make them cry, give them a good reason.
People are really, really rubbish at talking about what they're feeling. Unless they've had really good therapy, but even then, if they're talking to someone who hasn't, they're going to mess it up. There's going to be lots of pauses, lots of significant looks and - if they're genuinely trying to talk about their feelings - lots of hand waving and 'you know?' If both the characters are men, this is probably going to be doubled.
If one of these men is John Sheppard, who looks like he's going to have a panic attack when someone hugs him, triple the number you first thought of. And add a couple of thousand. If one of these men is Ianto Jones, he's going to make sarcastic comments and look awkward. If one of them is Rodney McKay, he's going to keep talking until you shut him up out of pity. If one of them is Jack Harkness, you're going to think he's given you an answer until you walk away and realise he hasn't, not really. If one of these men is Gregory House…actually, even I can't imagine that one, so I'll stop there.
#4. Epithets. The OED defines this as: "An adjective indicating some quality or attribute which the speaker or writer regards as characteristic of the person or thing described." I vividly remember reading the novelisation of 'The Empire Strikes Back' at the age of thirteen, and wanting to throw it across the room because they kept describing Luke as 'the young commander'. Every. Other. Sentence. So this is a long standing personal gripe more than anything else, but hey, my journal, my rant.
Now, I know this is a personal dislike, and that it doesn't bother others so much, but please think when you're using epithets. Who's the point of view character? How are they going to think about the person they're talking to/watching? Are the Torchwood team really going to think of Jack as 'the Captain'? Does Sheppard think of Rodney as 'the astrophysicist'? Would Wilson think of House as 'the diagnostician'? (that one baffles me, I have to say…)
I'm aware that this is the one that people are going to disagree on, and I want to emphasise that in the right context, they work fine. But too often they're used because the writer thinks they need to introduce variety for the sake of variety. Descriptions like 'the other man' (and the phrase 'he said', while we're on this subject) don't really get 'read' by readers. They're registered as denoting the non-POV character (or speech) and kind of skipped over. Again, they can get awkward, but choice of words matters and is worth thinking about.
Actually, maybe that's what I'm trying to say: writers, please engage your brain before you open a Word document. Everyone will thank you in the long run.
