Book/Reading Pet Peeves

[Lace Neil Singer]

Lemons. You expect them to a certain extent in fanfiction; for example, someone who did not do the research on how sex is, especially gay sex; or someone who thinks that virgins always have multiple orgasms their first time. However, when seen in the published word, it's ten times as annoying.

[Dasota]

Lemons. You expect them to a certain extent in fanfiction; for example, someone who did not do the research on how sex is, especially gay sex; or someone who thinks that virgins always have multiple orgasms their first time. However, when seen in the published word, it's ten times as annoying.

The best advice I got about writing fan fiction that had gay sex:

"Blood and/or spit make horrid lube. The penis does bend, it is not a steel pole!"

[KatherineB]

I highly recommend the following to anyone who reads sex scenes (from a piece entitled "On the subject of penises" which is visible here.

For the edification of all, though, I shall post it here in white. I highly recommend you not to be eating, drinking or doing anything else that could contravene rule #1 while readying this:

Sailor Jim pauses in his latest endeavor and frowns. After a moments contemplation, he saves his work and firmly closes his new fantasy G4 titanium PowerBook. After a meditative sip of his drink, he addresses those around him.

"There are some literary subjects that have become total clichés and attempting to describe an erect penis is one.

"I am writing a sex scene and my hero is now crossing the room while fully erect. So, basically, his stiff dick is bobbing like a demented conductors baton as he crosses the room ... however, one cannot simply write, 'He crossed the room, his stiff dick bobbing like ... ' and so forth. Well, one could if one was writing that sort of scene (and one was half plastered), but this one cannot.

"To write anything referring to his 'turgid manhood' is also somewhat tacky. Hell, just the term 'manhood' to describe the penis strikes me as idiotic. A dick is no more one's 'manhood' than a hymen is one's 'maidenhood.' 'He strutted across the bedroom, his hard manhood pointing the way' sounds somewhat he owns a badly named seeing-eye dog. 'Sit, Hard Manhood ... good boy.'

"Just describing the state of erection is tough. It is a simple matter of erectile flesh and hydraulics, but damnably difficult to put into terms romantic. 'His penis, reacting to his viewing her naked flesh, achieved satisfactory erection, proving good vascular response and socio/psychological adjustment." Oh, yeah ... baby, baby.

"Terms like 'throbbing,' 'pulsing' and all other variations of this nature make it sound as if the silly thing had a blood pressure cuff wrapped around it. 'His fleshy organ quickly surged into full alertness, throbbing and pulsing and otherwise scaring the shit out of him.' When I envision something throbbing, I imagine an action somewhat akin to a bullfrogs throat sack as it croaks. THROB! Frankly, with
this in mind, if my dick ever took to throbbing, I'd call a doctor. Matter of fact, I would think that any woman, faced with an actively throbbing and pulsing penis, would be somewhat concerned as well. (I don't know this for a fact, though ... Dian says that in certain situations, the sight is somewhat excited, but the first time she experienced this situation, she looked for a stick to kill it with.)

"And then there is the matter of size, shape, color and texture. Well, he's the hero ... I suppose it should be heroic, but somewhat shy of practical joke size. Shape, now, there's another difficulty ... as well as color and texture. Hell, let's face it ... a dick is a fairly funny looking, if not downright ugly, piece of equipment. Veins, bumps, ridges and all that; a color that never matches the sheets, much less the surrounding flesh (or any flesh, for that matter); an overall look of a plum precariously balanced on a badly whittled rod. Let's not even mention it and simply stick to the concept of a literary description of my hero approaching the heroine.

"Okay, he's naked and fully aroused ... does he stride? Stalk? Strut? Strikes me as a situation that calls for something more than 'walk,' but something less than 'bound.' I could have the silly sod moonwalk across the floor, but the resulting mental image ... damn, too late! Oh, well .. another round of therapy. And what does the erect penis actually do while he crosses the floor? Does it bounce against his belly, producing it's own applause? Does it wave about in some sort of vague response to his stride? Would it be feasible if I simply had him hang a towel from the damn thing and skip the entire description?

"And what about the heroine? She is languidly reclining on the bed ... and doing her level best to not bust a gut laughing, I suspect. Should she stare? Gasp? Giggle? Ogle? Chant 'boingy, boingy, boingy' as he approaches or whistle the 'Elephant Walk' in time to the swaying? This is suppose to be a moment of strong passion and deep emotions ... but a bouncing, throbbing, column of manhood slowly moonwalking forward ... damn, gotta stop that image ... strutting towards her cannot be what every woman dreams of in her fevered imagination. I want this scene to be equally stirring to both men and women, but fear that this is impossible."

Sailor Jim stares into the fire for a moment, then opens his PowerBook once more. "Screw it ... or, rather, let's not. I'll simply segue from her starting to slip out of her clothes to the morning after. Y'know, the standard story cop-out. Thanks for letting me talk this one through."

Boingy, boingy, boingy...

[Ezio]

The best advice I got about writing fan fiction that had gay sex:

"Blood and/or spit make horrid lube. The penis does bend, it is not a steel pole!"

I read a ton of Assassin's Creed slash right now, and mary mother of god, the number of times someones spit soaked fingers are used to "speed things along" is insane. Only a few times do they mention "oil".

[AccountingDrone]

I highly recommend the following to anyone who reads sex scenes (from a piece entitled "On the subject of penises" which is visible here.
<snip>

Boingy, boingy, boingy...

<hysterical laughter>

I just scared the cat and woke up the husband with my laughing. Sweet jumping Jebus that was funny!

[dawnfire]

<hysterical laughter>

I just scared the cat and woke up the husband with my laughing. Sweet jumping Jebus that was funny!

I'm still with tears coming out my eyes.

boing boing boing there i go again

[Lace Neil Singer]

Sailor Jim stares into the fire for a moment, then opens his PowerBook once more. "Screw it ... or, rather, let's not. I'll simply segue from her starting to slip out of her clothes to the morning after. Y'know, the standard story cop-out. Thanks for letting me talk this one through."

XD That's how I work it in fanfiction, too.

The absolute worst ever slash I ever read was this fanfic that put Tom Riddle with Indiana Jones, and they did it in a desert... oh god, the SAND!

[PepperElf]

o yeah, i wasn't getting into fanfic pet peeves before but... those are more numerous of course.

1) Authors with ego issues. I found one who opened the original chapter with "flames welcome". Turns out she was lying. Any criticism, no matter how politely voiced was met with rage and declarations of how she knew more about the topic than anyone else, while misspelling key names from the story. Think "Harry Potter" and not being able to spell "Gryffindor".

2) Authors who go so AU they might as well just ditch everything and try writing their own true story. No, I don't really want to read about Wolverine and Rogue as if he was a pirate on the high seas and she was a princess he captured, oh and without mutations. Um. Ok, so you're writing a pirate romance and ... yeah it has nothing to do with xmen other than Wolvie's hair peaks and Rogue's white streak.

(ok that one I made up but there's stories out there like that. Sadly the Harry Potter one from above wasn't made up)

3) No attempt to spell even common words properly, or use of the wrong punctuation, or completely removing punctuation altogether. I don't remember which stories, only that I've seen some that were in bad need of a spellchecker, some that used words like "you,re" because they couldn't find the ' key, and some that ... yeah, nothing at all.

I mean at least "The Road" was readable, even though the author didn't bother using any quotation marks for speech. It still had periods and commas in the right place though.

The absolute worst ever slash I ever read was this fanfic that put Tom Riddle with Indiana Jones, and they did it in a desert... oh god, the SAND!

I read a thankfully short one-shot where someone decided to pair Wormtongue and Wormtail. I mean sure Brad Dourif did have a bit of creepy charm in LOTR, especially since they shaved those caterpillars off of his face, but ... the entirety of the plot was that somehow they ran into each other, exchanged names, and started having sex right then and there. um.... okaaaay.

[Gizmo]

KatherineB that was awesome! I'm glad I mostly read the type of fiction that does skip over it and move on!

[Kisa]

Overly descriptive writing. If you walk into a room and there are multiple shelves of dolls, don't take 4 1/2 pages to describe each doll in great detail. If it isn't relevent to the story, don't write it.

Under descriptive writing. Mary had blonde hair, blue eyes, and white skin. Plain, simple, boring. I like when the writer pains a picture for me. I want to be able to picture Mary in my head. Mary was a beautiful woman with strawberry blonde hair that just barely reached the small of her back. Her blue eyes were the exact color of the cloudless sky on a warm summer day. What could be considered near a near albino skin tone to some suited her well, flattering her feminine frame.

Repetitive sentence leads. The dog liked to run. The dog ran a lot. The dog ran today. The dog was happy. The dog was tired from running. The dog took a nap. Unless it's My First Book, use your imagination.

Poor spelling and/or grammer. A typo here and there doesn't bother me too much, but when there are misspelled words and improper punctuation and grammer in every paragraph, it distracts from the story.

The Great Wall-o-Text. Enter key, Tab key; They exist. Enough said.

Half-assed endings. I hate when you read an entire, well-written, addicting book with questions popping up left and right, hoping to get answers soon, only to have the whole story ended in a few pages with loose ends left untied. If you lose interest in writing a book, take a break, scrap it, something. Don't sum it up with some generic, "the bad guy died, the hero wins, and they live hapily ever after;The End," crap where Suzy is still tied up on the train tracks, Timmy is still in the well, Aunt Martha is still on her deathbed, and no one knows who killed Ol' Man Jenkins.

[Lace Neil Singer]

Under descriptive writing. Mary had blonde hair, blue eyes, and white skin. Plain, simple, boring. I like when the writer pains a picture for me. I want to be able to picture Mary in my head. Mary was a beautiful woman with strawberry blonde hair that just barely reached the small of her back. Her blue eyes were the exact color of the cloudless sky on a warm summer day. What could be considered near a near albino skin tone to some suited her well, flattering her feminine frame.

Shame a lot of Suethors can't learn that. Yes, under descriptive writing is bad, but there's a happy medium between going overboard and under describing. For example, compare what you wrote with this:

Mary was a stunning girl who had breathtaking beauty that made men faint at her feet. She was the most beautiful girl in the entire world, and every other girl was jealous of her. She had long blonde hair which was the colour of the summer sun on ripening wheat, with just a tinge of strawberries which only made it more gorgeous. Her eyes were pure sapphire, just like limpid pools in the forest and which also changed colour with her mood. She had curves in all the right places, and her skin was as pale as fresh cream. She was thin, but her boobs were huge.

Ugh. Even writing that made me feel sick. XD Sadly, I've seen that in the published word, too.

Another thing is what I term "My Immortal Syndrome." Basically, describing a character every thirty seconds. Twilight suffers from this, terribly; there must be about a zillion descriptions of Edward in the series. XD

[Dave1982]

Tom Clancy, I'm looking at you here.

Speaking of Tom Clancy, one thing that always annoyed me was "Caroline 'Cathy' Ryan."

In what universe is "Cathy" short for "Caroline???" And to the best of my knowledge there's never any explanation for it.

[Aethian]

I've know two people with that shortening. One was because there was a carol in the family, don't know about the other.

[PepperElf]

Speaking of Tom Clancy, one thing that always annoyed me was "Caroline 'Cathy' Ryan."

In what universe is "Cathy" short for "Caroline???" And to the best of my knowledge there's never any explanation for it.

Well I can't exactly fault Clancy for that. If anything Victor Hugo was worse. In what universe is "Cosette" short for "Euphrasie"?

[Kisa]

Mary was a stunning girl ......thin, but her boobs were huge.

Ugh. Even writing that made me feel sick. XD Sadly, I've seen that in the published word, too.

Another thing is what I term "My Immortal Syndrome." Basically, describing a character every thirty seconds. Twilight suffers from this, terribly; there must be about a zillion descriptions of Edward in the series. XD

Ugh I hate that! My English teacher once said, "A perfect character is a boring character". This is true. Perfection exists no where. As for the boob issue, a pencil thin woman with M-cup boobs , and perfect curves is not possible. Unless that woman had years of plastic surgery, there is no way she could maintain that figure and keep a steady metabolism. Her body would either pile fat onto her belly and hips to balance fat distribution as she ate more, or burn fat from her boobs as she ate less.

As far a descriptions go, I feel one good one when the character is introduced is fine. Maybe add to it as the character develops, or restate some facts in a short summary periodically if the book turns into a series. One every other page is serious overkill.