What are your personal "red flags" before reading any fanfic?

Especially since it seems that a lot of accents rely on speech cadence (Southern drawl being a famous one) as well as the words. Honestly, just picking a vocab type for a character is much more helpful.

Oh, here's a red flag; if it is incomplete and hasn't been updated for years. Not because it's guaranteed to be bad, but because if it's good you'll want to scream because you're forever left hanging.

Yeah, I get a lot of Commitment Anxiety from fics that look interesting, but are incomplete. I tend to look at the update schedule to see if I can expect it to be finished before committing.

Of course, I once found a fic that updated almost every day while I was reading it, then went on hiatus right when I caught up, so it's not a perfect system.

edited 1st Jul '15 6:18:27 PM by Berserker88

I've made the mistake of reading a few like that, when I get into older fandoms. One had such a terrible cliffhanger, and I left a really detailed review about all my feelings and theories because why not, it was worth it.

it had been 4 years since the update and a week later there was a new chapter because of my review inspiring the writer. ~shrug~

still, yeah, that's a flag for me, and I usually avoid anything that looks remotely dead-fic.

one of the first fics I ever read hasn't updated since 2008. :/

Sometimes I think it can be better if a story is unfinished, because honestly sometimes authors just give up and wrap things up really unsatisfactorily.

@Elloween: I know that I personally feel much more enthused to write if others are enthused about my writing, so that does make sense.

Fics that have a slow update timetable, but do update, are fine (Bringing Out The Blue is an example; the author has severe medical problems which delays chapters, but since she's made it clear that she's dedicated to finishing it and the story is so wonderful, it's not a big issue). But sometimes an author looses interest (I'm guilty of this) and then you have all this build up with no climax or conclusion.

yeah. There's one digimon fic I follow that updates around once a year. I just like to know that there will be an end eventually. I mean, I waited 10 years between Unicorn Chronicles books 2 and 3, and three was all filler with no resolution to the massive cliffhanger, and 4 didn't show up for another 2/3 years. I can handle any wait, so long as I get resolution in the end.

Whenever I lose interest in a story, my solution is to simply take a break from it until I get the motivation back. It can take a while, but better than leaving it forever unfinished or rushing it out. At least then I can be sure it comes out the way I wanted it.

This is why I decided to not publish a fanfic until I've finished it. Of course, that means that none of my fanfics are published...

Fanfics not updated since a year and not completed are red flag for me as well. I also try to complete my fics before publishing them (it helps that I've only written short fics so far).

This is also why I rarely write any chapter above 3,000 words. I find it a lot easier to knock out short and sweet chapters than to find the motivation for longer ones.

Yeah, that is a good idea.

I'm actually guilty of this. I was pumping out a fanfic with chapters averaging in about 11,000 words per chapter...and I only lasted 8. XP

Eh. I can't talk. I write as the fancy strikes me, and I can go years between updates just because the fancy has carried me elsewhere in the interim.

I have fics that are unfinished because I changed fandoms. I decided to just publish oneshots until I get a longer fic completed.

I do the "wait until you're finished" thing myself, but I still haven't figured out a good way to space out updates.

Usually I try to complete the whole story, proofread it as a whole once or twice to check for any plot holes, then split into chapters and polish each chapter before publishing it. This allows me to publish chapters rougly once a week, depending on my other commitments and how much time the polishing actually takes. I also like to leave some time before writing a chapter or performing a major update on it and the next time I proofread it.

On the topic of red flags, I'm becoming less and less tolerant toward bad summaries. These include summaries with poor grammar or syntax, those that are peppered with exclamation marks, and of course the usual "better summary inside" or "check it out it's better than it sounds". Summaries are like cover blurbs for books (those that are well done anyway and don't give away 75% of the plot), they should make you interested in reading, not try to coerce you into reading under some vague promise.

Another yellowish flag is people asking for reviews in their summaries. I'm the first to admit that getting reviews (or favs, or follows) is very encourageing, but asking for it seems a bit too much like begging for attention. I mind it a bit less when it's in author's notes, but it depends on how it's phrased ("plz review" turns me off much more than something on the lines of "any comments welcome").

edited 3rd Jul '15 2:24:44 AM by C105

Jumping on the guilt train: I've got one measly fanfic on FF.net, and I haven't updated it in about 3-4 years. It's given me plenty of time to worldbuild, and I've got another 5 chapters sitting in my laptop, but a combination of life getting in the way and my own laziness has made me slow.

If one thing has given me a bit of a push to get it back going, it's seeing the charts on my profile. I've got to be doing something right if I'm still getting traffic.

I have a couple of old fanfics floating around I never finished, mainly because back when I started them I didn't really have any idea what I was doing and as such had no clear plan, and also because the scale was hilariously large to the point where I was never going to finish it unless it was literally my job to do so.

I actually have a number of finished stories....a lot of One-shots, but also a few longer fics. But I have also a couple of WIP which haven's been updated for ages. But I am also not ready to give up on them just yet. I still have the ideas. Just not really the energy. I spend so much writing other stuff, that those simply are not priority anymore.

Thing is, I always know exactly where I want to take the stories...the steps on the way might change, but not the goal.

I generally try not to write more than one story at a time. I'll occasionally do two at once though when I want to keep things fresh and not just be writing the same thing for who know's how long.

edited 5th Jul '15 1:28:25 AM by Berserker88

I'm also on the bandwagon of wanting to finish the fanfic (or at least a majority of it) first before starting the posting process and revealing it to the public. Gives me a lot of time to proofread it, look it over, and cover any grammatical mistakes or plotholes.

Hehe, I find that I end up panicking and redoing big chunks of it as I start posting, anyway.

Same here. No matter how much I proofread, I keep finding mistakes that I only notice after I post it.

Ugh, I hate that. I sort of have an unofficial policy of not rereading stuff after it's been published because I just know I'll find a bunch of stuff to fix.

Recently (within the last two years) I wrote a fic I reread many times and then eventually discovered a misplaced comma. I figured that no one else would notice since it took me so long to see it myself. I've been rereading my old material lately and realize I used to be really bad about forgetting to close quotes, doing it at least once every three or four (one-shot) stories.

That's about where Winding the Clock is at the moment. I'd intended to do a chapter a month, but when it got longer and I started thinking more about how far I wanted to go with it, it started expanding. It may have expanded past my ability to finish it, I"m not sure yet. I'm going to try and push through and at least get some of it done. I have hints to future chapters in it already, after all... (the Hawaii trip and the babysitting job, mainly) I need to reread the source again though, been too long and I'm losing inspiration. So another long update drought. I'm hoping it won't be 11 months this time though. :(

edited 7th Jul '15 10:46:52 AM by CarrieTheTroper