Yes, I am a huge fic snob. I don’t mean to be - there are times when I’d like to know how a story turns out, but for reasons of quality I just have to close the window. For Jerie’s sake (since she can’t figure out what to recommend to me), I’m trying to figure out my exact fic-snob requirements.
The biggest component is raw quality of composition. I wasn’t always a writing snob, but once I started writing myself (three and a half years ago) my pleasure in badfic was ended. Whenever bad writing is getting in my way I close the window - I don’t care how good the concept is. By bad writing I don’t mean bad plot, bad style, or bad characterization - those are all mistakes that can be made in a well-written story. It’s not necessarily the simple technical mistakes, either: if I know how a word should be spelled or where a comma is supposed to go, I can overlook the error. I enjoy the occasional said-bookism and I’m slipping back into third person omniscient in my own writing.
I was looking for a good example of bad writing from The Slash Fiction Hall of Shame (since I figured few to none of my readers read slash in those particular fandoms so no one would be offended) but it turns out that bad writing is more than any particular paragraph I could find to typify it. Bad writing isn’t any specific problem, but the overall result that the reader cannot tell what’s going on in the story. If there’s an AU Sam around and I can’t tell which of the two Sams is talking at any particular point, that’s bad writing. If the team visits a new planet and I get no sense of space or time in their explorations, that’s bad writing. If there are fits, starts, and jumps that lose the reader, that’s bad writing.
The next requirement on my list used to be, and possibly still is, quality of plot. I won’t read a story with good writing but an AWOL or all-angst plot. All-angst plots are the sort that don’t have any external events or action driving the story - characters Have Talks and Meditate Upon Their Pain, but nothing happens. I’m not asking for gen here - I don’t care how much kissyface there is in the story as long as there’s also a story. Here’s a hint - if your characters never fire up the stargate, your story may lack plot.
I’m pretty forgiving of small plot problems, though - for example, there was an unnecessary bit of whipping in Until the End of the World by Ruth M. King, which was part of an evil-general-up-to-something-mysterious plot thread that was overdone and never resolved, but I persevered and enjoyed the story. It wasn’t a groundbreaking work of literature, but the plot kept rolling along steadily with actual external events, so I kept reading. (That’s practically the entirety of the craft, right there.)
In third place but gaining fast is quality of characterization. I don’t mind if the events of the story lead to Wedded Bliss, but at the beginning I need to see everyone acting more or less like themselves. Now back in my Trek days, I didn’t mind bad or superficial characterization because I didn’t have a real feel for the characters as broadcast (with the exceptions of Tom and Seven). I know other people have set ideas about Janeway, especially, but to me most of the crew were kind of hazy to begin with and TPTB didn’t help by neglecting several of them. My Voyager experience could be the adverse effect of having a large ensemble cast (as opposed to 4 major and 2 minor characters in SG), or it could just be that I didn’t get to see the show all that often so I couldn’t tell if the dialogue was off. Nowadays, mischaracterization of the Big Four will turn me off a fic pretty quickly, although the superficial approach may slip past me.
Last on my list is style. Though I like to see different styles, plain, clean prose is so much to ask for that I’m not going to make demands in this area. If the fic experiment is making my head hurt, the window gets closed. On the other hand, if I get some good style for free, I’m willing to overlook flaws of plot - for example, Once in a Lifetime by Michelle V. had such a lovely style that I didn’t realize until the end that I was never going to find out what the plot was. I’ve seen a lot of that sort of figure-out-your-own-ending writing in Fantasy & Science Fiction. It’s surprising to see it in fandom; I know from personal experience how readers will get on your case for sequels if you leave them hanging at the end.
I think my fic standards are reflected in my writing. I try to write well, which is, clearly. I’m torn between creating a nice plot in which (non-canon) things happen and keeping the characters somewhat in character. Style is the least of my concerns and I almost never experiment with it - at least, not successfully. If that makes me a snob, then I’m a snob with a heart of schmoop.
