alright, calling myself out as a noob a little bit...

what's text speak? is that like LOL, PLZ, and all dat? (<-- joke)
But seriously, is text speak like how some people write in text messages?

EDIT: Thanks r0o!

as an admin, I'm going to ask you all to watch it, this seems to be getting on a borderline "things i don't like" and we have all been new authors and done some of those things. So just don't go there. You may offend someone, even if you don't mean to and that's not what we want.

Please attempt to stay positive and to the point of the tread, which i would say is more or less if you can make it past things like grammar mistakes, like punctuation, spelling, RandomCapsLocksOnEveryWord... stuff like that, to read the fiction. Not want you don't like about what some people do.

*u* no ranting.

edit/ps: yus, i would think text typing is when you'd read something like:

' Kagome said, 'OMG!'' or
'Inuyasha saw Sesshomaru trip over his ridiculously long pretty siver hair and he was totally LMAO, even if hew was jealous of the pretty hair.'

Or my personal favoite seriously bc sometiems it's rather hilarious:

'The shock was written all over his face( An: like this (*o*);;;;; )

Depends on how severe the grammar issue are, sometimes it just makes a story harder to read.

Actually, it pretty much depends on my mood when I'm reading.

Sometimes I can read a 'horrible' fic with practically no commas, interpunctions, awful grammar and spelling that I have to decipher for half an hour and still manage to read it to the end (there were even a couple that I loved)

And sometimes, two minutes in, I give up saying 'Sorry dude/tte, I tried, but right now I can't deal with this. Maybe later.'

~lily

Hmm, good question. But as Phishy said, it depends on how poor it is.

There are necessities such as quotations and ending a sentence when you should. It may also be what mood the read is in. If they feel like deciphering a code, then you may keep them interested until the end. But, if they just want a flowing story, you may lose them.

To me, a few mistakes are okay, but if it's almost every sentence, then I may be tempted to quit.

But like I said, it depends

-MissKatt

Its okay to have grammer or even spelling mistakes.
I've read some fanfics that have alot of both but they were relly good stories.

An dif its a good a story it wont matter we'll just read it and continue reading!

All I will say is 'it depends.'

Really, if the story is so riddled with horrible spelling or grammar mistakes that truly pull away from the story... then it may be just too hard to read.

Granted, there are many authors that are not English speaking and are practicing. I give them HUGE credit for even try to write a story. However, if the grammar, spelling, word usage is so horribly misplaced, I would rather not read the story. I wont even review, because there are many that are not as sensitive.

I know this might seem a little mean, but if your grammar or word usage is really in question, then find someone to beta for you. There are a lot of them. I don't use them often, though before I started on my break I started looking for them.

As for stories that are older, or already posted. It depends on how large the mistakes are, if it's something small, then I can ignore it. If it's constant then I'll drop the story because I can't focus on it.

It depends, honestly. If the story has great potential and the story isn't a total grammatical train wreck, I'll give it a chance if it really draws me in within the first few paragraphs.

Stories with constant errors will turn me off almost immediately, regardless of how amazing the summary is. The errors are distractions, in my opinion. I find it hard to concentrate on the story when I'm constantly picking things out.

While they are a turnoff, they have to be extreme to make me navigate away from the story. Like I said, it's got to be a total train wreck to turn me away.

Honestly?

A few mistakes are a given especially if you have just started writing that's why I believe authors need to just take the time and read through their stories as if they are reviewer instead of an author or field it out to friends to get their opinions on the grammar and so on.

I do find it hard to read through a story with a ton of mistakes. Some misspelling here and there, maybe some missed punctuation, sure, that's ok. But huge gaps in the story, a lack of cohesiveness, and mistakes almost every sentence really bothers me. There's this one story that I love the summary for, it's amazing and sounds so interesting and the first chapter is ok, but then it just really just goes downhill so quickly. I know the story has so much potential, but I just can't read it. so new writers just need to take the time to sit down, read it out loud, and ask yourself, How did that sound? But we readers need to make sure that we leave reviews or message those writing with constructive feedback. Not, keep it comings or yes, but specific things you liked and didn't like. It helps.

I think like most people it depends on the severity of the grammatical/spelling issues. Most fanfic authors are writing as a hobby in their spare time (as segmented as that may be), so expecting flawless grammar is ridiculous. Not to mention grammar on its own is a fickle thing, the rules are constantly changing.

Now my friend that has me proofread and edit the works he self-publishes... yeah, I rip those to shreds and send the tattered remains back to him. That's what he wants me to do with his works, so he can offer up the best story he can craft out to the mass market.

Reading fanfic? That's fans sharing in being fans. No one should be looking for perfection. We're all hobbyists on here. Take any criticism you receive constructively and use it to grow your craft, or ignore it. Hobbies are meant to be fun.

Though, I have noticed that on the fics I've found to have downright incomprehensibly bad grammar, the story was also lacking to my tastes. So, I chalked it up to the author not having the experience in creative writing to effectively get their ideas on the page. Several times I've even revisited an author and noticed a remarkable growth in their storytelling in the later fics.

For me it depends on how the mistakes are. I'm not 100% perfect myself, but there are those times when reading I have to pull away and think wait who's talking and who did what. I have stopped reading a fic because I could not take the mistakes or even follow the story.

I've tried to stay away from this topic as much as possible, but it seems we are having increasing problems with people totally forgetting the most basic rule of writing dialogue:

You start a new paragraph with each new person that speaks!!!

In the past couple of nights, I've glanced at several stories and found, to my intense chagrin, massive 'wall 'o text' paragraphs. Many times, there is dialogue buried in those massive paragraphs that really should have been broken out into their own, stand-alone paragraphs.

We have a rule regarding content here at Dokuga... and, many times, the Admin staff is too overworked or busy in RL to warn people of these errors. I am hoping that some of those authors might see this and take it upon themselves to clean up some of these huge, horribly confusing paragraphs before the Admins find them and issue warnings.

Please, take the time to check out the rules page, which can be found here:

http://dokuga.com/rules

Or, check out the tutorials here:

http://www.dokuga.com/forum/34-authors-tools

You will find many suggestions and guidelines that will keep you from getting one of my famous "It has come to my attention" warnings.

Just an Admins two cents' worth... pretty please, take the few minutes to glance at these guidelines and save us all some work??

~~Wiccan~~

I'm with Wiccan on this one.
I can over look almost everything except the big wall o' text.
It's so difficult to read. :/
Though I will mostly likely leave a comment when I see it, I tend to surround with things I did like about the story that way it doesnt seem like I'm "trolling"

I'm pretty new to writing myself so I know how hard it is to receive any sort of criticism

I think that this little piece by Mlmonty goes along with this topic rather nicely (and the overused plot conversation as well)

Note it is rated M:
www.fanfiction.net/s/5106192/1/Author-s-Parody

Discussing areas in this topic is one thing, but to post stories for negative criticism goes against the best part of Dokuga- the support.
Can we keep this topic general without calling people out?

EDIT: My mistake and apologies.

cakeiton wrote:
Discussing areas in this topic is one thing, but to post stories for negative criticism goes against the best part of Dokuga- the support.
Can we keep this topic general without calling people out?

Cake, that link was to MLMonty's "Author's Parody" fic... a parody of what MLMonty considered some of the most egregious plot devices, etc, that she'd seen in fanfic. By no means was that "calling people out," but more to illustrate how one author viewed some of the 'pet peeves' that she had about fanfiction.

I agree wholeheartedly that this thread is not for calling people out or posting links to fics that we feel might illustrate our pet peeves... but that's not what the prior reference was doing.

~~Wiccan~~