Mindless rambling...

[ostarella]

Just taking a little break from my rewrites, and I was thinking about Forest, and I looked over at the ten stories I have over at ff.net. So strange. Forest is one of my personal favorites, along with the Randy set, but that doesn't seem to be the case over there. The hands down favorite is Neverness. Forest comes in at number 8; Changeling is dead last (and by a *huge* margin), and Mon Bell Ami is 6th. Covenant, thank goodness, has been coming in 2nd for some time now; I'm almost having a competition in my head between that and Neverness  :D

It's just odd, I guess. Thinking about what my favorites are, versus what readers (at least on ff.net) seem to prefer. And why they prefer the ones they do.

Makes one have a little more sympathy for publishers.  ;-)

Comments

[beckyblack]

it's more that there are more readers who want cheesy crap with their particular favorite "element" rather than a well-written story that doesn't have it.

That's a good point. I'm not keen on romantic fics, and like a bit of hurt/comfort. So if faced with a really well written romance and a not so well written hurt/comfort story, which would I read? Or read first at least! :D

It might depend on what kind of badly written it was. Bad characterisation and I wouldn't bother with it (it's Face I wanna see suffering, not what's effectively someone else played by the same actor. Well, unless it's Starbuck.) But if it's just some bad spelling and grammar I might get past it.

So if even good, professional writers can't make a living at it, why should we worry *that much* about pleasing the readers?

That's at least one fun thing about doing fanfic, or indeed original that you just post up online, you can write whatever you like! If you were writing for an actual show and turned in a script where the male leads suddenly discover they fancy the pants off each other, you'd be out on your ear. If nobody is paying you, you can do what you like and write anything. (Actually pulling it off and making it work is another thing!)

[ostarella.livejournal.com]

If nobody is paying you, you can do what you like and write anything.

Ah, the double-edged sword of the internet. We can write what we want, good or bad - but the haters of fanfic in general will always pull the bad stuff out as examples of why we're not "legit" :p