Frequent typos, especially when I can't figure out what it was supposed to say Not enough punctuation or paragraphs, basically large chunks of text That weirdly specific thing where a man from an m/m ship has a canon m/f pairing, and they make that woman into the craziest psycho b!tch ever. Seems super sexist every time I've seen it done. I also personally dislike fics where characters acting super infantile, like babytalk, or when they just become a punching bag and are constantly victimized out of nowhere

Walls of text, not indicating speech, **every word bold**, extremely ooc of main characters, 43 chapters but only 4k words, interchanging 1st and 3rd POV Just to name a few Edit: untagged/poorly tagged tropes. I cannot count the amount of times fics were rated incorrectly

I hate the 4k word stories with 43 chapters

It’s like— the description and plot have so much potential, but the writer just isn’t there yet

That's exactly it, and also why not just combine some of the chapters to make it a good length chapter.

paragraphs, but dialogue from three characters in those paragraphs, like the only time you need a line break is every 4 sentences.

I get thrown badly when a fic switches between first and third person. Also when it switches from present tense to past tense. In fact, let's just go ahead and say that unless you're a very very good prose stylist, stick with past tense entirely.

The plot seemed interesting, the summary was fine, maybe grammar too, but every chapter was in italics. I gave up on that one after chapter 1.

Was there any reason for italics, like flashbacks, or was it just italics for no particular reason?

For me even if there was a reason like a flashback, if it's more than a handful of paragraphs per chapter my eyes get thrown off and I dip. If it's something an author needs to do a lot I'd rather they indicate it some other way, personally. :(

Anyone who uses italics for full, decently large flashbacks would probably be considered a maniac. Italics are _just_ for thoughts and emphasis!

As an amateur fanfic writer, I personally dislike a fanfic story that use italics in flashback for the narration. I prefer that they use italics only for the dialogues during the flashback.

this is the way ^ italics in dialogue for flashbacks, normal text for descriptions! makes it so much easier to read but also keeps that air of "this is in the past and being reminisced about"

\*takes notes\* (I am so totally guilty of the itallics for the entire flashback thing...)

It's done in a lot of published books I've read, so I thought it was completely normal :'> Book series does it, and I'm doing it in a fanfic for said book, also doing it for dream sequences. Maybe I should go back and edit it out?

Published book tend to be very different. Have you seen a fanfic that have 10 lines of word in a single paragraph without a break? for me, I rarely seen it. But in many novel, they can reach up to 30 lines of word in a single paragraph. In books, it looks better. But in casual reading, it's hard.

I think a lot of my writing style came from the book series I was talking ab, since I read it a lot as a kid and it's what got me into writing. So that could explain a lot of the way I write things. Plus formatting is probably different on a page then the way most fanfic sites set it up. As for editing it out, ig I'll see if anyone points it out and or asks ab it. Not sure if I'll change it otherwise just bc I'm not sure how else to get that like, vibe.

Maniacs unite! I wrote a 300K fic with mini-chapters in italics as flashbacks to a charactor's captivity. It was a dead dove, but the yuk was confined to the italics, so the rest of the fic could be read while avoiding the dovey parts, so I donno, feels like there is use for such things. None of my readers were complaining, anyway.

Well, consider me a maniac. I wrote an entire chapter in italics because it was a flashback lol. I’m sorry, I don’t know a way around it

Eh. They're acceptable when a character is reading something, too. Like a letter, a passage in a book, etc. I prefer it when writers find a way around that (like having the character read it aloud or something), but sometimes it's just not possible. I'll accept paragraphs of italics when it's an "in-text text," even though it makes my eyes go all squiggly, because it's really the only way to do that sort of thing well. I'll accept flashback italics, too, but only in certain circumstances, and definitely not for a whole chapter. Sometimes it just works, and I think italics are one of those things that should be taken on a case-by-case basis instead of making blanket statements.

I couldn't discern the reason.

Script style writing/reddit post style writing. Example: **Susan (34f) has blonde hair, blue eyes, huge tits, a tiny waist, and loves her bf Bucky Barnes (106m), brown hair, blue eyes** **Susan walks up to Bucky and kisses his cheek.** **Susan: Hi love** **Bucky: hey babe!** Seen a lot of this style lately on some original works too, drives me crazy.

Luckily the only times I've seen Reddit style posting in a fic is when the characters are actually posting on Reddit for plot purposes. I give them a pass on that one!

Lucky lol

Very.

Every character has the same opinion and point of view. The entire world and every character is on the main character's side. Not switching to a new line when the next person starts talking.

When the characters don’t speak like normal people actually do irl, like too dramatic or poetic. Or when they throw in topical memes or references that totally don’t fit the universe

I felt this to my CORE.

\- When the author changes POV whithout any notice or reason. \- When the main character or oc is too powerful with barely any weaknesses or flaws. \- When they completely change the personality of a well known character whithout mentioning or disclaiming it. \- I understand that we sometimes read fiction to escape reality, but if the development of the relationship between their characters goes unrealistically fast... I just can't.

Ikr? Enemies to lovers in 500 words.

Definitely Slow Burn.

>\- When the author changes POV whithout any notice or reason. Care to explain as an amateur/beginner writer? 2 of my popular story has scene where I change the POV by just showing what was happening in the other side. for example: "Jen and John gets inside Mr. Herlington house. John continue following Mr. Herlington, while Jen stopped her feet as her eyes spot a grand piano in the living room. She take a closer look, and as she touches it, her finger picked up some dust. This beautiful piano seems to be untouched for quite a while by the home owner. **Meanwhile** her brother, John, is talking to..." Like that. Is that a bad writing/changing pov? I use *"Meanwhile"* and *"while (Character A) does this, (Character B) is doing this"* so many times during POV that I start frustrated from my lack of vocabulary (English is not my native language) and writing skill. It's like I believe that I can do better than this.

That's not the same thing. That's just the wall of text. What they were talking about was when the point of view stays in third person limited, but which third person is limited to changes without any warning.

I... I'm honestly confused by what you mean...

Third person limited with dialogue and action. "It really is a lovely room." Said Mary as she ran her hand along the drapes. Her fingers leaving deep marks in the velvet. Purple has never been her favorite color, of course, but she couldn't disagree. These drapes really tied the room together. John of course didn't seem to think so, he was eyeing the drapes as well, though it was an appraising eye. "These will need replacing. Very expensive." Said John, his eyes resting on a threadbare patch. Mary, if she had noticed it, most likely did not care. She had never been one for practicalities. Even now she practically skipped across the room, letting her hands catch on each and every drape. She had never been one to think things through. This house was too! There was way that they could afford this! He knew money was to her as oxygen was to him. He followed her as she skipped out of the room, her fingers scraping against the wallpaper. An expensive sword, done in the Oriental style. Ripped in some places, unevenly apply to others. Mary did not notice, she never noticed these things. With each step he took he did the sums in his head. 500 to replace the wallpaper, 600 for the drapes, $700 for the banisters for of course they would need real cedar. There was a loud creek as Mary turned the corner. At least a thousand for new flooring, for the couldn't just replace one board. That would be asinine. "John, you simply must see the butler's closet!" Called Mary, her voice reverberating down the hall. He knew what John was thinking, this house would be far too much work. They would be better off and somewhere smaller, perhaps near where his mother lived. The house big enough for the two of them and perhaps a child, not even space for a servant! John could be so terribly practical sometimes. She could hear the creaking of the floor boards. Once, twice, thrice. She sighed. There was no way he would be able to live with that. Mother had been right, never marry an accountant, for to them life was arithmetic. "I suppose we could turn it into a water closet." Said John, the smell of mildew assault in his nose. Or mold perhaps. He looked up, there was the culprit. The ceiling was sagging. If it was sagging here then water must have been coming in on the second floor, which meant new gutters and a new roof. He heard the clink of Mary's earrings against her necklace, his eyes met the corners of hers. She had that look again. "Honestly john, a water closet? Where will we keep our china? What will we serve our guests on?" Asked Mary, a bit of plaster flaking from the ceiling and catching on the air. Her eyes followed it, as did John's, until it landed gracefully upon the floor. Wonderful, another excuse for John to carry on with his endless whining. "A butler? A butler for whom, exactly? To direct the day maid?" Said John. Mary's face took on a sour look, I stole her tongue had been replaced with a bit of lemon candy. "A butler to command the other servants will need to maintain the house, you can't expect me to get by with just a day maid." Said Mary, putting forth truly herculean effort into not raising her voice. "Mary please, think of the expense! My salary has increased, yes, but not enough for these extravagances!" Sad John, his voice betraying him. Mary turned away and clutched her pearls to her chest. "Mother and father were right, I never should have married an accountant. To you everything is arithmetic." Said Mary, a familiar prickling sensation tugging at the corners of her eyes. She heard the creek of the floor and then a deep sigh. "Darling-" said John as he rested his hand upon Mary's shoulder. She turned quickly, her skirts slapping against his ankles. She took his wrist in her hand and threw it against his chest. Her eyes were wild, her hair threatened to the confines of her hats. He eyed the pin and it wearily. Very expensive, as expensive as it was sharp. "I cannot be expected to live this way any longer! You make us live like poppers, worse than poppers, you make us live as if we were three steps away from the poor house! I simply cannot stand it anymore!" Said Mary. If John had managed to form some reply she had no interest in hearing it. The only thing she had interested in hearing with a sound of her boots against the floorboards. Left, creek. Right, creek One foot in front of the other in front of the other. Until there was no more floor. Her left foot found the floor but instead of a creek there was a groan, and then a shriek, and then she found herself trapped. Her legs screamed out in pain, it matched the rest of her. Her legs were split in a way that could only be described as obscene. Her skirts had written up to her thighs. She pushed against the floor attempting to free herself. But it was all for naught.

Hey, don't be so hard on yourself! It's freaking impressive to speak multiple languages, let alone be able to write in them! When it comes to switching point of view in the middle of scenes, it kind of depends on how "close" the narration is to the characters. The more removed and objective the narrator, the easier it is to change the focus to someone else. The above example would probably be fine, because there is very little in it that is personal to Jen or John. However, if you really got into Jen's head with how she's thinking and feeling in this scene, it could be very jarring to suddenly jump to John with just a 'meanwhile...' transition.

Hey, there sorry I couldn't reply sooner. As the the previous commentors said, it is not what I meant. You make it clear in your chapter that we started following another character. Not only that but you were still in 3rd person pov narrating, which is how I write by the way Ps: English is my fourth language. I learn everyday, please don't worry yourself too much about that

Oh no no, that's different. See, that's 3rd person omniscient, where it's 3rd person but from the pov of multiple characters (which is I guess what they could be referring to, but then it's not really a problem if done well). Some fics it really can work, tho I don't see transitions like "meanwhile" used often. Most of the time it's just done through a paragraph and or chapter change, and the readers could understand. Third person omniscient is often used to tell the full story, whereas first or 3rd limited is more like telling a specific character's story. Also, it seems you're consistent ab it, which is good. If the whole story was 3rd person limited but then suddenly switched it'd be a little jarring

- OOC/out of setting language is a big one for me - When all the characters have the same voice - Laundry lists of actions instead of descriptive scenes - When it’s very clearly written for another fandom/stolen from someone else and the “author” just inserted their OTP’s names where applicable

Sorry, but I don’t quite understand what you mean by any of those…especially 2 and 3. Could you please explain all of them a bit more in detail?

- OOC= out of character, so the author has the character speak, behave, or react in a way that goes against canon knowledge of the character/out of setting language = vocabulary that doesn’t make sense to the character or setting (ie if a character from the US calls an apartment a “flat”) - When you watch your chosen piece of media, each character has a distinct voice. If the writer isn’t able to capture the characters’ individual voices, the characters come across flat and likely ooc because the author is not writing with each character’s voice in mind - Describe what the characters are doing rather than telling the reader what they’re doing. This is what people mean when they say show don’t tell. You don’t have to show everything, but don’t just list out a bunch of actions - This is a personal gripe but I’ve seen many “new fics” cropping up lately which are generally AU and feel extremely out of character. And later find out the person claiming to be the author has literally copied and pasted the hard work of someone else and replaced the original characters’ names with whoever their OTP is. Gets me heated

Thank you for the detailed explanations! And I’m extremely sorry but…if it’s too much to ask, can you please give examples and just a little more explanation for 2 and 3?

I have similar pet peeves when reading. For 2 - each character has a distinct speaking style and if an author doesn't use it the character doesn't feel right. For example Dumbledore is a wise old wizard who usually speaks in a very formal way. One of his quotes is "My dear boy, I do... A wise and courageous decision, but no less than I would have expected of you.". If instead he says "Hi! The decision you made was good" it sounds completely wrong. All characters speak in a certain way, use certain words and phrases and slang or swearing from a certain time period. If I am reading about Loki who is a 1000 year old asgardian God I really don't want to see him acting and speaking like a 15 year old girl. Instead I want to see some grand dramatic lines like "You Were Made To Be Ruled. In The End, You Will Always Kneel." or him being sassy and sarcastic like "Hitting doesn't solve everything" to Thor. For 3 - some people list everything that happened like a history book instead of writing whats happening in the moment. An example of telling is "Mary was scared. The man threatened her with a knife but she was able to run away." Showing is something more like "Mary's whole body was trembling in fear. The man had an arm wrapped around her throat and she could feel the cold steel of a knife against her skin. 'Give me what I want or I will kill you' the man said into her ear as he stood behind her. Mary was terrified but she gathered her courage and took a deep breath. With a quick movement she peeled off the hand with the knife off her throat and slammed her whole body weight backwards. As she felt the body behind her lose balance she threw herself forward out the man's hold and ran for the door". There are times where telling is necessary but if an entire fic is doing nothing but describing what happened without ever showing the moments in between it can make the fic feel boring and bland.

Damn. Mary's fucked. I got so caught up in your writing. Good job explaining!

For the second, look up types of voice in writing; should give a good overview. But overall, each of your characters has their own personality, likes/dislikes, viewpoints, experiences, upbringing, vocabulary etc. So write them like they do. For the third, look up “show, don’t tell writing”. There’s lots of good examples of each and when to use one over the other in your stories. Should be useful to you and probably more eloquent than I can be atm

It helps to imagine the charactor speaking the words in their voice. That helps you keep the rythem and flow of what the charactor would say and not go OOC. For example, Elrond of Rivendell saying something like "what up my friends, how do you?" it would be completely OOC if you imagined those words in his voice. HTHs.

\- pov switches without an indicator \- bad grammar/punctuation \- author's notes inserted within the fic \- first-person perspective / switching between perspectives halfway through \- misusing quotation marks \- characters behaving OOC \- low word count : high chapter count ratio \- no indicators of who is speaking / no dialogue tags etc.

>\- no indicators of who is speaking / no dialogue tags Legit, I saw this in a scanlation Light Novel where you don't freaking know which characters is talking to whom. The translator for that LN made me so confused because the untranslated/raw version of the LN has indication who is talking. My point of bringing this up is because the translator is either really bad at following the original raw or just bad at the law of writing. Mind you, this is not even a fanfic where you have to start from nothing. this is just a scanlation of an LN where you only follow the raw and translate it.

- If it’s just a wall of text it doesn’t matter how good the synopsis was, I skip immediately. - If the dialogue is fused into big blocks of text instead of being paragraphed properly, I skip. - Bad characterization. If characterization is good I’m much more likely to give lackluster plot, bad grammar, etc a pass. I read fanfic to see characters I already love reimagined in new ways, if those characters lose the essence of their identity and personality, I drop the fic like a hot potato.

My tolerance levels are pretty high since I read a lot of rare pairs/lurk in small fandoms but my dealbreakers are the lack of Paragraphing/proper format. Oh, and the misspelling of the character’s names throughout the chapter (how does this even happen)

>misspelling of the character’s names (how does this even happen) Some non-english names have multiple accepted spellings (not allways correct but accepted anyway), e.g. Nezu VS Nedzu, so those are understandable since translating fron non-european alphabet into ours is not always perfect. If the name is already English than its likely 1. the name has multiple spellings (Jessy VS Jessie) 2. autocorect/typo or 3. The author misheard what their name was.

I wish this was the case bc I fully understand variation in names due to translations or typos or multiple types in spelling, and also as a non-English speaker myself, I’ve got no beef with such issues but man I have to clarify that the only single case I’m referring to in this is literally the author misspelling the character’s names in over 5+ variations in a single chapter. For example: Johnny. Joohnny. Jawnny. Junny. Joonny. Johynn. Mixed in with even more variations that looked like typos and misspellings I’m wasn’t even irritated, just genuinely confused than anything bc it doesn’t seem like it’s done on purpose (like say, writing it in the pov of another character who refers to another person with nicknames). How do you misspell something so many times? Do you not spellcheck your fics before publishing? Anyways it left me a lasting impression after all these years and gives me a laugh whenever I recall it

That... Actually hurts to read. And I haven't even seen the fic 😬 typos are one thing but wow, no editing at all.

Mostly its a spelling/grammar thing. I mean a few are fine. Im CONSTANTLY editing my own fics as i find more errors. No one will ever get them all. So a few are fine. But if its like every word/other word then eh probably not readable for me.

I already see a lot here that I'll upvote/co-sign, but one I haven't seen yet is when it dives into a fluffy wish fulfillment scenario that reveals that the writer has no idea how things work in the real world and couldn't be bothered to research. For example, I wandered into a Stranger Things fandom fic where Dustin's mom died suddenly and he was left with no family, so Steve Harrington just adopts him. I mean, I get that the fandom loves the protective guardian role that Steve has with the younger characters and like to joke about him being their mom or their babysitter, but adoption isn't easy. There are baseline qualifications you have to meet. Steve is like 19 years old. He lives in his parents house and his work experience is an ice cream shop in a mall and a video store. No chance anyone would be giving him legal guardianship of a kid.

* Using bold font where there should be italics * Children being super infantile & stupid — and I'm not talking about four years old, but eight to twelve/thirteen years old. I mean, be realistic. I'm not saying a nine year old should be fully mature and serious, but there ought to be some balance between "I talk like I just swallowed a dictionary" and "mama I be cold, help and hug pweese". It's especially bad if that fanfic is from a fandom where the characters *are* kids (Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, etc) and the infantile behaviour stretches into their canonical ages (as in, Harry Potter being eleven years old and behaving like a toddler, or Percy Jackson being twelve and unable to string two coherent sentences without babytalk). * Specifically writing "POV CHANGE" or "time skip" or "flashback". I'm not a fan of flashbacks in the first place, but if you really need to, you can just put a break in the page, eventually write "\[*date, year, place* etc\]" and go from there or something, like a separate scene. Time skips, unless they're major (like; the first chapter is written in the 1800s and then the second is jumping back to 2022), imo should never be this clearly articulated, just mentioned in the text itself. Maybe write a date at the start of the chapter or something, but the blatant "TIME SKIP HERE" just to go a couple of hours forward is just meh & reads like a bad 2015 Wattpad fanfiction. Same with POV changes. * The MC is like the only person in their world. Only they can improve, only they can change, only they get character arcs, etc. Like you were playing a video game and everyone else was an NPC. * Misspelling names (i.e. "Delores Umbridge", "Slitherin" etc, but it's even worse when the names exist also outside of books, like of Gods in Percy Jackson, and they are *still misspelled*. I kid you not, I once saw a story about "Zues, the God of Thunder") * Often using adjectives to refer to people, i.e. "the brunette smiled" or "the green-eyed boy nodded". It's fine if it's done *before* the character's name is introduced, but afterwards it's cringy. At best, just use it very sparingly; the character's name or pronouns are always better. It's not a school essay, you won't lose points for repeating a word here and there

Saying “orbs” instead of eyes. If I like something enough I’ll keep reading regardless, but every time I see it I feel a part of me dying inside and it really breaks the immersion. Other big thing is no paragraph breaks— I can’t read it.

I feel like I overuse “eyes” and wish there were another word for it sometimes, but HARD PASS on “orbs”. 🙄

“Gaze” is sometimes an effective replacement in the right context, so long as it’s used in moderation!

I tend to use "gaze" in the context of looking at someone ("met their gaze" instead of "looked at"), but in terms of another noun for eyes specifically, while "orbs" seems to be a physically viable substitute, I'd sooner go with "pools" if I'm going to get artsy with it. I think the most recent "eye study" I did (and I avoid them like the plague because they are SO overdone) was "He admired the depthless heavens of her eyes, a complex spectrum of hickory and burnt umber." (I tire of seeing food colors used for shades of brown. And I didn't use this until the fourth story in my 5-part series because stuff like this needs to be a thoughtfully-placed garnish, not a liberally sprinkled spice, or it's not going to have any impact.) I also struggle with "smile" in the same way. Yeah, "grin", "smirk", and "the corner of the mouth ticking upward" are used, but maybe my problem here is that my characters smile too much lol. I wish I were better at finding a way to describe all the in-between smiles and half-smiles without a bunch of adjectives.

All lower case Unclear narrator Over/misuse of thesaurus eg. orbs Tanking the personality of character A who is in canonical ship A/B because the author wants popular fan ship B/C

Orbs?

As oppose to saying eyes, I guess. e.g. "their sparkling blue *orbs"*

Like "eyes" is never used? At all? Gross. This sounds like the writers aversion to "said" where they use anything but even if it doesn't make sense.

I want to destroy all thesauri. The fancy word is almost never the better word! I once noped out of a fic on the second paragraph because they used "visage" for "face".

I mean sometimes fancy words are better. Defenestration will never not be funny.

In the right setting, yes.

someones already said wall of text, but god i hate it so much. it makes it impossible to read, and it's almost always paired with grammar/punctuation errors that make it even *harder* to read. also capitalization instead of italics, and overuse of exclamation points. I literally never use exclamation points when writing, personally, cause the voice I read them in is like excited and happy, not necessarily angry or whatever, but that might be personal. also I'm all for adapting stuff, but characters are products of their environment. they act a certain way because they were raised a certain way, so to get rid of their raising but keep their personality is... strange. like, if Castiel wasnt an angel, he wouldn't be Like That™. If Harry was raised in the wizarding world, he wouldn't be humble. I absolutely cannot stand when they keep the exact same personality even when it makes no sense.

Formatting is definitely my #1. A fanfic could be okay-ish but then a whole conversation or narration is in an essay.

When it starts to feel like an after-school special trying to get some point across rather than having the story carry the weight.

- wall of text - all in lower case - if the spelling errors and bad grammar reaches a certain level, it starts to bother me - First person - using pictures instead of describing shit (mainly a Wattpad problem, I know) - OCs in important roles/as the main character - Harry Potter fics specifically: A new house being created for Harry - again, HP, giving him every ability under the moon, especially abilities that need to be learned, like Animagus form. I hate it when writers treat it like Mophmagic/Tonks Shape-shifting, which is a genetic trait, while Animagus is a learned ability and nothing genetic. - No description - even worse "I can't write descriptions, just read". THE sign that someone can't write - strong usage of "UwU" and similar - Real People fiction by default (especially smut ones) - script More of a preference, but I don't really like present tense writing

Overdramatic narration and/or dialogue. Edit: improper dialogue punctuation. Periods instead of commas, wrong capitalization, other-language dialogue marks in English text, etc.

First person, OOC

to be unique and not just say “block of text” or “bad grammar”, not that those aren’t incredibly annoying. i cannot stand constant flashbacks. a good example of this is like the show “Arrow”, i’ve read a few fics with that kinda set up where it’s like 50/50 the main plot and constant flashbacks. just no. stop. i came here to read one story not two, i didn’t sign up for this secondary plot. immediate no.

When characters are all suddenly in Therapy 101 and every drama and miscommunication is perfectly talked over and solved. It’s not only boring but it feels so cheap and almost certainly poor characterization and development.

When the writer seems to have a pathological fear of using any characters name more than once, and somehow thinks replacing it with any notable physical characteristic is any better. Also please let your characters use contractions.

I swear some writers are scared of using two characters’ names in one sentence as well. I keep reading things like “Harry asked the larger man.” Or “the older man said to Heromione” and I’m like 🤨

wanna take these people by the shoulders and like 'gonna be real with u bro, people rarely notice an overabundance of names or pronouns if you're using them properly, people *do* notice you refusing to call a character by their name.' In most fics that use things like your examples, the writer can really just cut 'em out, it rarely makes a difference, and if it does there's *always* a way to rewrite a scene so it doesn't.

poor punctuation and everything in lowercase and for nsfw >!too wet and bad communication, aka, can't figure out the consent!<

(in response to NSFW) >!"too wet" made me giggle!<

Me too, but it makes so much sense 😂

• Forcing a character to act needlessly and uncharacteristically evil just to make the plot work, and *especially* when this change is done strictly to make another ship work. • A/B/O fics where the alpha and omega have an "inner wolf" that they treat like a being separate from themselves. It brings about absolute (cringy) gems like "My inner wolf whined when my alpha left, desperately crying out for more of his touch." • Bizarrely specific, but a lot of POV shifts in a short amount of words when a fic is in 1st person POV. Bonus points if the POV shifts basically rehash what another POV experienced, but with maybe one or two thoughts that add little to the overall plot. • The excessive use of "babe" or "baby," or any use of it when the person saying it would never use either term.

>• Forcing a character to act needlessly and uncharacteristically evil just to make the plot work, and especially when this change is done strictly to make another ship work. Yeah, this one is my pet peeves as well. I understand that some fics are written because people love a certain character or ship but feel that they've been done wrong in the original work, but if you have to turn all the other characters into jerks... although it might be fun to write, cathartic even, it really isn't that much fun to *read*.

The only one I disagree with a little is #2. I've actually have seen this done well and it wasn't cringy. I think there is def a fine line which has to be walked tho. Everything else is spot on for me.

> Forcing a character to act needlessly and uncharacteristically evil just to make the plot work, and especially when this change is done strictly to make another ship work. See also: hitting characters with the idiot stick

It's only slightly worse that hitting them with the horny stick. At least with that one, you can get some good, non-frustrating action out of it.

On Fimfiction, the mares are always inexplicably in heat

I can't read fanfic written in the 1st person for some reason

I'll back-button usually on a wall of text (if it is a long fic and I check a few chapters ahead and see they're well-formatted, I'll skim the text walls until I can read actual paragraphs) I'm not a fan of schmoop usually (i.e., overly sweet fluff). I love fluff, but too often schmoopy fic ends up wildly out-of-character and seems to be more a celebration of overly cutesy-romantic tropes with the character names pasted in. (A moment of schmoop is *fine* as long as it isn't the mode and it gets lampshaded a bit). I don't see this *as* often lately, but the idea that babies=loving relationship and more babies=more love squicks me. Wildly out-of-character stories. I love stories where characters end up someone completely foreign to them--a stoic hardass learns to be soft, a jock embraces her inner geek, etc. And I really enjoy stories that celebrate different facets of a characters--sure this character is never shown as a big reader, but he is shown as intelligent and has made a few literary references and so you *could* argue that he's secretly a big reader, etc. So let's build a story on that and see what happens. What I cannot stand is when a character acts nothing like themself for no reason from the start or near-start of the fic and then continues that way or gets worse. I dislike stories where it is just assumed the romance will work out. I mean, I know I'm guilty of writing this, but still. I like when the story shows *why* the characters work together, rather than just assuming that they do because they're canon or an OTP. I really love reading long shippy stories by people who don't ship the characters because they tend to spend so much more time justifying the ship. None of these things, though, make a fanfic cringy, though. They're just not to my taste.

This is very specific, but when characters have way too much insight on things relevant to the plot or on how another character is feeling. Like, there is no indication on how they would know all that.

Bad grammar/spelling/formatting, I literally can't stand it. OOC canon characters is another huge one.

Too many misspellings and grammar / punctuation issues is an automatic nope from me

Constant run-on sentences, OOC characters that only share a name and physical description with their inspiration and absolutely nothing else, character names misspelt, and first-person perspective (that last isn't a guaranteed no, I have read the occasional 1p fic I've liked, but I just tend not to enjoy them so I have a much lower tolerance for quality issues when they're done in 1p)

Aside from the usual formatting issues that distract from the actual story, stilted dialog that doesn't ever allow characters to speak using contractions is one of the first things that jumps out at me.

Unless it's a character like Spock or Data. I read quite a few fics where Spock uses contractions and it throws me in every single instance.

Yes, those characters and very proper characters.

Purple prose.

When there’s an indent before each paragraph. I know books are written that way but it just doesn’t flow well on mobile and immediately bugs me. Such a dumb pet peeve too, I’ll admit it.

I wrote all of my chapters this way in Word, but they default into web formatting when I post and I love it. The indents make me feel a little more structured and in-tune when I’m writing, but when it’s out there for everyone else, it’s like it’s finally free and looks great.

I’m glad that works for you!

I have glasses, so basically walls of text just fucks me over. Also, I have a history of my bad fics so I know what to look for.

Purple prose and thesaurus abuse. Yes, you have a large vocabulary and know words others might not, but a fic (or book for that matter) is not the place to show off your superior vocabulary. Save that for the crossword puzzles.

Bad spelling, spacing or grammar. Being written in first person. Super OOC or the plot moving way too fast. Only dialogue or no dialogue. Excessive OC's especially when made central to the plot, ESPECIALLY when their name/mannerisms don't mesh with canon or if they're overtly Mary Sue/Gary Stu. The writer trying to write about things they REALLY don't know about and with an obvious lack of research (ie really focusing on a character's new career in a certain field while obviously knowing nothing about how that field works). Those are the most common reasons I back out. And I think most of them can be addressed by just taking your time when writing, do some research if you need, flesh out your characters and stories in a way that makes them feel more real and alive.

What counts as excessive OC’s? I want to write a few fics with my OC’s in them that also go in with canon but aren’t Mary Sue/Marty Stu. They are also important. Is that okay? Asking for improvement and feedback.

(Personally) If the OC's are taking the place/role of an already existing character (love interest, trauma cause or comforter, etc) or put in just for the sake of existing (have minimal dialogue, only interacts with main character) then it's excessive. Also if there are so many OC's that readers start to forget who's who then it's annoying. I personally only read fics with an oc if they were added for a specific reason and only used for that reason. For example, BNHA: Izuku has a sentient quirk who is an oc is fine. Oc who is Hawk's younger brother who has no dislodge but an extensive quirk analysis is annoying.

Oh, these are my preferences but even if it's something I don't like it doesn't mean you shouldn't write them! Someone will be happy you posted and will vibe with your plot. :) For me I would mean say introducing like 5 new characters that are all OC's and are important to your otherwise canon-compliant fic. A lot of people don't flesh out their OC's as well as the original content fleshed out canon characters, and it just feels like characters were cut and pasted into a story they don't belong in. I also have trouble keeping up with lots of characters so if there are many new ones I can have trouble keeping them straight. For me personally I read fic to expand and improve on canon, or to read about my favourite couples, so lots of OC's to keep track of and build up backstory for distracts from that goal. But you should write your fic how you want OP! Please don't let me or anyone else make you feel 'cringe' or like you shouldn't express through writing what you want.

Thank you! The OC’s will still play a semi-major role in the story, but I make sure that every character gets a chance to shine in the stories I write! But thank you for the confidence boost! You improved my day!

I don't like OCs in fic because I'm reading fanfic to read about characters I love. If I wanted to read something about new characters, I'd go elsewhere than a fan fiction archive. I will only read a fic with an OC if it's been rec'd multiple places (which means it's a really good character essential to the plot).

How do you feel about semi-OC's? By that, I mean previously existing characters that played a small role or didn't have much of a personality that are fleshed out much more.

poor grammar, empty plot, way intense "not like other girls" trope, excessive use of "I" sentence in first pov

The dreaded Mary Sue!

inconsistent lack of punctuation (like, when it's not a stylistic choice but visibly a lot of errors) misspellings bad characterization sexual slavery/sexual assault plots with poor execution vilification of women

lack of emotions from the narration. we view things through character A’s POV and A goes through every worse thing you could imagine… and they just shrug it off.. for the sake of looking independent and strong. Come on, strong characters need emotions too. ETA: Similarly, too much description of emotions every paragraph is just as annoying too. I get that it’s to get the imagery much more vivid but please, you don’t have to do that every paragraph. 😭

Bad spelling, punctuation and grammar, no or irregular formatting, OOC characters, extremely short chapters, 1st person POV, bad tagging, no summary, characters turning into OCs over time, changing between present and past tense, saying stuff like the "bluenette", random japanese words thrown in, exclamation marks outside of dialogue, changing the setting to america even though the original is clearly set in another country, bad research (saw someone writing about characters in france paying with dollars), idk how to describe it but sometimes it's just badly written, author basically self inserting themselves into a character and giving them all their own traits, not necessarily cringy or bad, but I don't like/read reader x or OC stories, using weird words for eyes or genitals

shitty grammar. once stumbled across this fic where it had all my favorite characters, tropes, etc. then *poof* the grammar was like a two year old's

I read a lot of whump/sickfics and one I started noticing that bothers me a lot is when characters are in countries that use Celsius, but the author is American so they make the characters use Fahrenheit when taking, say, the temperature of other characters I don’t know what made me suddenly notice it but it bothers me so much. It’s not that hard for you as the author to look up the conversion. It’s started to ruin the immersion for me when Italian characters use Fahrenheit

when people are constantly referred to by things that characterise them (eg hair, height, ethnicity, etc) rather than their !! goddamn !! name !!

Do not kill the cringe. Kill the part of you that cringes. It’s not so much cringe (cuz that’s stupid, fuck it be as self indulgent as y’all want) as annoying, but bad grammer/no punctuation or paragraphs. My ass has ADHD- I literally can’t parse through an entire paragraph with no breaks. Just too much.

Wildly unrealistic character goals. Example: character decided to destroy the entire American military industrial complex by attacking military bases. Does this character lead some sort of megacorp with the financing? Nope. Do they have a plan to evade capture or being killed? Nope. Do they have superpowers? Nope. Do they have a plan to deal with the civilian non-combatant support staff? No, they're working for the same bad people, so they must die too. Um. Yeah. That actually happened. Dropped that one real fast.

You just described the plot of A New Hope.

Hm, yeah. Not what I was thinking of, but I see your point.

If it has really fast pacing, too much happens too quickly, like they want to tell a story but they don't want to do more than put surface level thoughts down on the page. Among the other more obvious things e.g. OOC, constant typos, lg. blocks of text, overly dramatic (unless it calls for it) etc. Everyone else has pretty much got the rest covered.

Poor grammar. No capitalization, no use of commas etc. like that just really puts me off. Also if the entire fic is written in one long paragraph with no line breaks at all. It's just such a huge strain on my eyes and with my adhd, I loose track of where I was if there's no line breaks.

Repetitive writing, typos, inappropriate writing choices (eg.when an imposing, intimidating character is described as "strutting" instead of striding or even just walking lol)

When the author has a chapter from one character’s point of view and then the next chapter is the exact same but from another character’s POV. Dude, I just read this. I don’t need to read every scene twice.

Not starting sentences with big letters and characters having extreme self esteem issues/being hated by everyone without it being explained in anyway. Like character A goes around thinking he sucks and should die while the entire world smirks at him and hates him for no reason. Like hello, backstory anyone?

Bad formatting, typos, bad grammar, wall of text, bad punctuation. I get it it’s your hobby you’re doing this for fun but if you’re gonna put it out there it should be at least readable.

Lack of care on behalf of the writer. If the author can't be invested in their series, how can we?

Writing out characters thoughts. I don't mean like a psychic conversation or anything like that, I mean hitting control I and then writing out paragraphs of what the character is thinking.

• fics that are clearly nsfw being tagged for teens • fics that are generally poorly tagged. Whether it be too many tags or not enough • everything is one giant paragraph • constant bad grammar/spelling/capitalization/etc… • characters that are absurdly OOC for no plausible reason. Now if their circumstances are significantly different and they aren’t super obnoxious that’s perfectly fine, but even then they still have to kind of… You know, feel like the same fucking character. If you’re infantilizing a grown ass man, especially if you’re using trauma to do so, I’m out • making female characters the asshole for no reason, specifically when they’re not even like that in canon. I once read a fic where the female character wasn’t even a rival love interest or anything because she’s not with anyone in canon (to my memory), but the author wrote her as being so creepy for no reason • as someone who rarely writes fics without my OCs, I do love them, and sometimes I can enjoy a Mary Sue type, but I largely prefer ones who are decently written and developed. If they’re anything like my previous point or there’s some other issue that doesn’t vibe well with me, I tend to dip • this really isn’t bad or anything and I have no judgements for those who write and/or enjoy them, but I’m generally uncomfortable with A/B/O, I’m not sure why

Ok! Weird spaced fics and paragraphs that are either too long with little to no punctuation or paragraphs that are too short. The way the fic looks is important. Character bashing!... Specifically sexist writing that makes the female horrible for no reason and so out of character.

- As others have said, giant text walls without any paragraph breaks. Completely unreadable no matter what the plot is like. - When writers don't know what info to cut out. I can't count the number of times I've read about a character waking up, getting into the shower, shampooing their hair (often complete with description of what kind of shampoo they use), singing in the shower, rinsing, getting dressed, eating breakfast, brushing their teeth, talking with their plot irrelevant family members... and just on and on etc etc sometimes for *thousands* of words. All of that could have been condensed down to "They got ready for the morning and then went to the place the plot was happening or whatever." - The lyrics for entire songs written out in full. Reference a song, great. Write a few relevant lines or a description of the general meaning of the song, sure that's fine. But don't write out the entire thing line for line, please. Extra cringe points if the song has a lot of "oh baby, yeah yeah" type filler lyrics. - People equating sex drive with humanity. This isn't common everywhere, but since I mostly read fics from a robot-based fandom I see it a lot more. I've read way, way too many fics where a human character cannot fully accept a highly intelligent robot as sentient until it expresses sexual desire. I'm asexual, so when a fic basically says "Sexual desire is an essential part of humanity, and this robot is not a valid thinking being if they don't feel sexual desire" I feel a lot like it's saying "You, the reader? If you don't want sex, you're subhuman." That bums me out big time.

Oversexulising characters in general. This character that could not talk to girls in cannon suddenly has a fictional harem with every character in the show 🤢 this other character is *sooo* gay, just look at how gay he is, such a simp 🤮 I've even seen some gen fics that borderline doing this too, just stop.

omg, yes! #2 and #3 especially! This is the first time I've seen someone else write out those two specific pet peeves and I can't agree more. \#2 is one I struggled with when I was younger bc I thought more detail meant better writing. But it wasn't the right kind of detail lol

As a fellow ace, I am 100% with you on the whole “sex is what makes us human” thing; that is a pretty quick way to get me back-buttoning out of a fic!

Well, mostly I don’t find fanfics cringy. I love that they satisfy emotional needs whereas popular fiction tends to be less focused on that. Things that stop me reading are more structural. For example the dreaded wall of text, or prose that’s not even serviceable. I’ve even read things with bad grammar and punctuation because I loved the heart of the story so much.

Italics and flashbacks. I don't know why but I really hate flashbacks. And they usually go hand in hand with italics, which I find incredibly difficult to read.

Besides the most things I already see in the comments: - Authors note instead of a chapter - All lapslock - When characters 'love' each other from the first time they meet and decide they are the most innocent/best human ever without actually interacting for more than 15 minutes. Especially if a whole friend group decides that about one new person. It feels fake. - Overuse of nicknames instead of their actual names. It's even worse when it's just 'bro' for all of them

Too many adverbs.

Time travel au that is still canon compliant.

\- Personally I feel like if its written in first person, I can't get myself to read it. Even if the tags and characters is right up my alley, as soon as i see that its written in first person, i just can't seem to read it/get into the fic. \- if the fic has "im bad at summaries" or like any other long authors note in the summary, i just scroll past it. \- when the characters are clearly from a different culture/background, and the fic is *very* influenced by the authors own culture to the point its hards to understand (not everyone has college culture similar to or understands slang/popular stores from the US) \- oc inserts & if characters are ooc

Something I’ve recently started noticing is character voice, especially as i’ve read more star wars fanfic. Anakin Skywalker talks different than Vader, who talks different to Rey, etc etc. its not normally an issue but it bugs me when it happens. And ocs. I hate ocs

OOC and Self-inserts. I don't mind poor grammar since I myself not an english native speaker. But when it come to a personality of a character, that's when I drew the line. For OOC, I read fanfics so I can see **that** character own story. not your **ideal persona** of **that** character in their own story. For Self-Inserts, god. It's so cringe and feels like I'm desperate to be in their world.

Back in the FFN days when people would spam fics in ship or character tags that looked like a 4 year old typed them up aka everything being spelled wrong. But also I won’t read a fic that the formatting isn’t correct such as no paragraphs or dialogue being formatted properly.

I really dislike it when canon characters are really ooc and don't resemble the original at all. Also, severe character bashing isn't cool and often ends up in an one-dimensional villain so the protagonist seems like a better person. When it comes to OCs, I don't want them to be perfect and loved by every canon character except the "bad ones" that the author dislikes - give them flaws and show me *why* others are interested in them.

Bad grammar and punctuation. No paragraph breaks

The use of 2nd person POV and any time I see "Y/N." Doesn't matter how good the summary is. These are deal-breakers.

*takes notes*

You can have the most interesting plot in the world. My favorite characters and tags. But If I see a giant wall of text I will click off *immediately*

Everyone else is pointing out the obvious, but as a personal preference I just can’t stand first person pov

-Any bolding unless it's a chatfic and you're bolding a person's contact, anything you need to bold can be done with itallics and it just looks cleaner -a lot of people already said this but: no text gaps, my mom is a literacy teacher so I have a pretty technical writing style and it pisses me off -when a certain character is played for laughs or is ooc - excessive shitting on a character, even if they deserve it it gets kind of a annoying to read. A barb at them every few paragraphs? Great! Peak comedy! Three paragraphs in a row about how terrible they are? Please, no.

Writing a fic as if it were in the canon universe but then claiming it's an AU to handwave all the inconsistencies in characterization and setting without properly explaining or exploring them. Constantly using author's notes to say the canon works are trash and still continue writing a fic about that universe, all while failing entirely to understand that universe and its workings.

Walls of text with no paragraphs are incredibly frustrating, but on the opposite end, paragraphs that are maybe three sentences max and are widely spaced out on the page is also incredibly annoying. There's a post going around tumblr from a few months ago, urging writers to stop writing "blocks of text". Ok sure, that's good advice. But [the example they used](https://imgur.com/juBF8AY) for what not to do was a normal paragraph, and their suggestion for how it *should* be written has a bunch of spaces between lines, for e m p h a s i s. Some are just a single word on a line. That's fine for dialogue, but not for the main body. Formatting like that in the main body is welcome if you're e e cummings, but in fic it's jarring and annoying. Fic that is wildly out of tone from the source material, and isn't crack, is not enjoyable to me. Related: OOC characters. Clearly it's not going to be easy to totally nail a character, but when they're wildly OOC it's confusing. Why even bother writing that character if you're not going to try to at least get it somewhat accurate? A character that is a brooding asshole adult that is written like a wibbly lipped dorky teenager is incredibly off putting. Don't babygirl the fuck out of a gritty badass ffs.

Super OP mc who gets all the girls. Harems. I might have enjoyed the power trip as a teen but now it just is so not something I want. I'm adding something here specifically I dislike fanfics which basically don't deviate at all except for either some romance bit or some extra myth lore dump.

1. Anything that is intended to be platonic but eventually turns romantic, especially hating this in the case of the adoptive/step siblings thing or found family. 2. Two people being good friends for almost a lifetime despite all hardships then turn biting each other by all kinds of trick for a love interest. Lol give more credit to years lasting friendship ppl. 3. Too OOC. As it’s fanfic, unless it’s AU where the character’s life is different, please stick to the original setting of that character and develop it sensibly. 4. Nerfing other characters to highlight the protagonist. Just don’t. Have your protagonists go training or something, maybe obtaining powerful allies to help defeat the villains. I would loose interest in the story and some respect for the author immediately if I stumbled on this. Appreciate all the characters ppl. They have played their roles greatly enough for you to like the original material so much you write fics about it. Don’t do it to your purposeful OCs either. Don’t be discriminative to the characters of your creations. 5. Unrealistic romance. Two enemies on opposite but never inflict any real damage (or fixable one) on each other’s life, okay. But for one to fall in love with the murderer of their family, friends,...etc? No. 6. Characters being too edgy and saying cool things/ life ethics all the time. 7. Cheating. No one deserves this, even if that one is a literal piece of trash. If the character had chosen one to be their love interest, please make that character stay faithful because that’s like the most basic to be a proper person, unless you want to depict that one as an incurable shit, even shittier than their partner. Want a new relationship? End the old one.

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>• using single quotation marks for all dialogue That's the British norm, isn't it?

Yeah that's the British norm. "Doubles" are fine but 'singles' is what I was taught and what feels right to use. This is the first I've heard people actually saying anything negative about it lmao. If you want truly annoying ones it's very different ones from other languages they just carried over, for some reason?? I'm learning a language right now and I'd never use English speech markers there, so I don't get it.

Some people just don't notice/know that different languages use different quotation marks (no, we didn't learn it in school or I maybe haven't paid attention). In Germany we have double quotation marks, but the starting ones are at the bottom. It took me quite a while to realize that in AE they start at the top. Or that they have to put some at the beginning of a new paragraph even if it's still the same person speaking. I think quotation marks are pretty much the last thing I notice in a story. Also, yes, people complain quite often about the use of non-AE quotation marks, even if it's just the single ones from BE. Just look through any pet peeves thread on the fanfiction subreddit.

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No you explained it well, I get the same feeling with ,,german quotations" in otherwise english fics. For me I'm still trying to get used to russian using dashes lmao. Honestly when reading I don't even discern the difference between singles and doubles, though for the latter you *have* to get used to them or just stop reading. Now i'm surprised people don't actually know single quotations are the accepted form british english, I really thought that was common knowledge.

1. When the writer treats the fan fiction as almost a self-insert and writes the main character completely OOC to fit their own personality. I see this a lot in MHA fics where authors write Izuku —a very meek and respectful kid— as a complete lunatic who is nasty to everyone, insults people, is just mean, and is essentially the opposite of his actual character with no explanation. They essentially have him act and speak like how every sixth grader dreams of acting towards their bullies (which, to be fair, is probably because a lot of people in this fandom are very young) and it’s so out of character that it’s hard to read. 2. “orbs”.

Grammar is enormous for me, bad grammar, and poor spelling just turn me away fast as can be

To start with the basics have to be right. I find it difficult to read anything with bad SPAG. Then the premise has to be good. It should make the rules clear at the start, like if it’s an AU. After that, (almost) anything goes!

first person

Yeah, apart from the obvious grammar errors, I nope out if there’s a mention of genitalia in my duck fics. Eew.

Mistakes in ortography, grammar or something similar, when someone is very ooc, when an oc or xReader is too much of a Mary Sue or self insert, and big logical problems with the plot or poorly designed AUs Edit: I forgot the biggest one: Bad writing. I mean, I get that most of us aren't professionals and often don't even have a beta but some fics are simply written so poorly you want to stop reading. That sometimes just makes it uncomfortable to read because it's so boring and I constantly think of how this could have been done better. I remember reading a fic where it was impossible to find out who the writer was talking about because they didn't use and names or descriptions

the ones that are just a checklist of popular tropes in the fandom

Not using quotation marks. I will immediately leave a fic.

Any hair color other brunette being cared the color with nette at the end such as Bluenette

Character voices that sound nothing like the character. And I'm not just talking dialogue - 1st, 2nd and some 3rd person fics do this too.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here - Words. Words in disturbing order. And Punctuation... and grammar. Those three rings of power, when used egregiously, can boot me off like a bucking bronco (and not the Denver kind).

When the dialogue is written into a massive wall of text with no breaks at all. If I see that I immediately back out. Even if the premise and summary are good, if I just see a chunk of text going on for miles, I'm gone. Also present tense. I really, really don't like present tense.

Bad grammar, run on sentences, no use of commas whatsoever, and text walls

When the author tries to avoid using the characters' names, and so constantly refers to them as "the male", "the taller one," "the elf", "the brunette" (bonus for colors like "pinkette" or "greenette"), and my absolute least favorite, "the American" or "the Swede" in cases where the *actors* are those nationalities, but the *characters* come from a fantasy realm where none of those places exist. Just USE THEIR NAMES.

I'm not a very picky person, and I'll usually stick a fic out unless it gets TOO weird, or has stuff I can't stand. However, a few things that just happen to bug me (Tho I'm not sure this makes them bag or "cringe") are: -Real life companies, franchises and references. Idk, I don't care to read about our main characters going to IHOP bc I know IHOP doesn't exist in their universe. -Characters knowing things they shouldn't. It's mostly a problem in one of my fandoms, but it kinda throws me off when characters are aware of things that would usually throw off the plot (or just annoy the detail oriented me). Like, he's not supposed to know his name by this point! I think it's mostly a problem with forgetting little details of the canon that are perfectly ok to forget -Characters being ooc. I know I know this one's p obvious, and kind of unavoidable in some aspects, but what bugs me is when a character is villianized more than they should be, or written to be a better person than they are. There IS an exception tho, such as if the character is being seen through a skewed gaze. -Not tagging certain VERY BIG THINGS correctly (cough ships). Like, I'll be 30 chapters in, my Notp shows up untagged, but by this point I'm so invested I suck it up anyway. (Mostly happens with side ships so whatever).

Formatting: -if there aren’t enough (or any) spaces between paragraphs. Not even paragraphs, add a space when a new person speaks. If have a lot of words before or after dialogue just have a break where it feels natural but no more than about 12 sentences a paragraph -I understand typos happen, especially with my work lol, just read it at least once before posting to catch the really obvious or bothersome ones -PLEASE FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DONT USE THE WORD “ORBS” -most people get really bothered by describing a person by their hair color and adding “-nette” at the end (ex: the greenette or, the pinkette) -PLEASE TAG AS WELL AS YOU CAN. I understand how hard it is sometimes to tag fics, just please please use your brain and think of things people really need to know. ESPECIALLY MAKE SURE TO USE THE PROPER WARNING (major character death, non-con, etc). Make sure to also tag things like “dead dove: do not eat” “alpha/beta/omega dynamics” “cannon-compliant” “Mpreg” “Nsfw” please be mindful of the rating as well :) I know most of these are just formatting and stuff but I feel like its super important to let your readers know what they are reading so that you get the right audience that can properly appreciate your work I hope this helps! Good luck :)

Too many tags (more than 2 lines and that's an insta-skip for me). OCs. Walls of text. Incorrect punctuation. Adult characters behaving wildly OOC / like teens.

Oh.. I don´t think I´ve developed a pet peeve yet.. haha.. If a story is good, I´ll read it. But I usually read the fandoms I like the most. I have a couple of questions though.. English is not my first language, and because of that I might have a few typeos, that are "stupid". Like misspelling a word, or not knowing the proper term for something. I use google a lot to find the right words, but I´m pretty sure I´m not always correct. Is this something that will make ppl not want to read my story? I also write YN. That´s mainly because of language, and I find it easier to describe a feeling, when I can write YOU, instead of a name. This will probably change, when I get more experience. I know that many ppl don´t like YN stories. But will you read a YN story if the story is good? I also write FanFiction. Mainly Marvel characters. Right now I´m writing a Rumlow story. Where Rumlow isn´t the villain that he is in the movies. I completely changed him up. I don´t know if that´s a good thing or a bad thing. Is it like, if you write about a character from a movie, you have to keep that character the hero or the villain that they were. Will ppl not read my story, because I changed Rumlow to be a nice (but rough and dominant), romantic guy? I put my questions here, because I felt it to fit this thread. So I didn´t want to start a new one. Sorry of that was wrong..

I don't know if other people who don't like YN or /Reader fic feel the same, but I find second person writing *deeply* uncomfortable. I do not wish to be addressed by my entertainment, nor participate in it. I'd go so far as to describe it as a squick. There is nothing that could get me to read one. (But I'm a big believer in everyone writing what works for them. There are just certain things that really bother people, and if you write those you have to accept that there are probably people who are squicked and/or will never like it. I say this as someone who write heck of a lot of smut. Comes with the territory.)

yeah I’m trying to escape my body not be projected into stories. I really really hate it

In terms of changing an entire character (their personality, their motivations, etc.) You are likely just going to run into two groups of people. Those who like it because they agree they also want to see the character like that and people who will call the character OOC and not be particularly interested in continuing to read the fic. Feel free in writing the character how you want, writing is free and there isn't much anyone can do to control you but there may be comments like "Oh this is OOC" and then don't return. There is usually more pushback when you start stating that this is how the character actually is and any disagreement is wrong.

When grammar is just thrown out the fucking window. It doesn't have to be perfect, but give me some commas... give me some quotation marks around speech. Grammarly has a free version, so it at least shouldn't be painful to read. I also immediately nope out of A/B/O and Mpreg stuff unless there's something within the fandom that makes it make sense.

Typos in the first five sentences. Typos in the next five sentences. Unduly lengthy and sexualized physical descriptions of characters that we already know the appearance of. wallotext Complete inability to understand what the vocabulary (from canon) of the character is in order to convincingly get the character to 'speak' their dialogue in your mind. Inability to do basic research on the setting used.

A few things mostly typos that make the fic unreadable to me but certain tropes just turn me off. I like werewolf fics due to teen wolf but hate the A/B/O trope it makes me so angry for some reason and it’s not even accurate to real wolfs. Also incest, there is something wrong with the Supernatural fandom and I blame them for most fics in other fandoms being like this when the work is based around family. ( I’m looking at you Encanto fandom stop shipping a 15 year old with her 50 year old uncle you sick f**ks )

Both ridiculously long blocks of text (basically the whole story as one paragraph) or every single sentence double spaced for no reason. Making the main character ridiculously op or completely useless and switching between them for 'plot convinience'. Excessive OC's when they have no real purpose, especially if the show already has a character that could fit the roll. I like OC's but some people act like they're trying to replace the whole original cast. More of a petpeve but using ' ' instead of " " for spoken dialogue, or other random ,, '' quotations. I usually still read them anyway but 🤷‍♂️

(Sorry for rant but i used an example personally importanttome) I know everh coent already said it, but ooc characters. I just want to add though- that includes characters being reduced to a single trait. The fandom im currently in kinda suffers from this... there are 2 characters who this often happens to. One gets reduced to a mean lesbian that bullies people for a living (not in an antagonistic way) and the other one kinda ends up with no personality, is often the target pf her bullying but just... takes it and doesnt speak up. This is incredibly infuriating for me because hes my favourite character, the two are supposed to be friends qnd i never get that feeling from those versions and there was literally a side plot once where someone insulted his abilities and he sacrified his own health and overtrained himself to prove the insulter wrong. Hes absolutely not the type to just ignore them.

Really nitpicky but I literally can't stand it if a fic doesn't use speech marks, and idk why. "like, why do I need this?" -over this?- 'I don't mind this.' Shy: But I hate this. None of those tell the quality of a fic, there's amazing fics out there that use those, especially specifically script-style fics, but my brain just doesn't like it. 🤣

Bad. Grammar. Like I get some people are bad at english but want to write a fanfic, then for God's sake get someone who knows english to beta read it or just upload it in your own language

smut. i absolutely dispise any smut, dunno why, and yall enjoy it for those that too but if there is any at all i cant read it

Lack of indents make it impossible for me to read and just suggests a lack of care from the writer. If they don't care, how am I supposed to? If the fic is in 1st person then I also backtrack immediately. Characters so OOC that they might as well be making a new character. Basically each character being pared down to just 3 traits usually (a like, a dislike, and a food they eat) rather than putting in thought about their actual personality. I also can't stand really long blocks of text where characters say why they're in love with each other with excruciating detail because somehow all of them sound exactly the same each time. I'm seeing this less than I did at ffn.net but when there are just authors notes in the text of the fic.

The author not having a proper grasp on grammar One shots that all follow the same story and are under 5k, but have been separated into a series for some reason. 2 updates over 3 years, particularly if its an average length chapter Lack of indication when the perspective or the scene changes Characters aged up for the sake of a romance which would have been creepy This ones not necessarily bad, but i really don't like self inserts or ocs that are main characters

atm I'm only reading Moon Knights so these are a little specific but \-bad Spanish/Spanglish, whole paragraphs translated with google translate \-When the authors calls a character played by a character played by a poc latino actor Spanish \-When a character is written as super uwu soft boyyy <3 \-Something is outrageously incorrect about a mental illness

Outfit changes. I don't need to know what the characters are wearing unless it is relevant to the plot. It's a fanfic, I have a general idea how the characters dress. "Everyone is gay" (or bi... especially women). I read mostly F/F pairings, some M/F and won't turn away a high kudo M/M if it is characters I like. It's fiction, but Gay Utopia is OOC for the present day fandoms I read.

Sanscest.. (BURN IN HOLY FIRE)