Hi there, fellow Dokugans! With all the new stories being posted on this wonderful site, I've decided to make a humble post listing the various slips in writing that grate on everyone's nerves. Please do not be offended by this thread, versions of which I am sure are out there. I mean this only as constructive criticism and seek to help aspiring authors, as well as save time from posting a review to every single story repeating the same thing. Let's get started!

The first one, especially on this adult site, would be bare vs. bear. More often than not, authors will incorrectly write that Kagome will bare Sesshomaru a heir. This one is confusing, but yes, it is in fact 'bear' in that context, not 'bare.' But you don't have to take my word for it; a quick Google search will do. You don't know how many amazing stories I find make this very common mistake.

Next: Important Mistakes. I hate to be a grammar Nazi, but I confess that I do not click on stories on the homepage if the title and/or summary have any spelling or grammatical mistakes. I take this as an omen that the story itself, while it may be quite good, will be riddled with mistakes as well. So if one desires more readers, it takes a simple spell check or peer edit to make sure your title and summary are good representatives of your great story.

Third: odd switches in tense. These are really tricky, and often you have to feel them out with your gut.
Sesshomaru smirked at the sight of the Miko nuzzling her kit. She will be a good mother for his pups.
The problem is with the word 'will.' It sounds completely natural, and would be the first choice of many. However, the right word in that context is 'would.'


Lastly, punctuation marks within quotations. Normally, these are taken care of quite well, but it can be off-putting to the reader when the author misses one. Please remember to put punctuation marks inside every pair of quotation marks, such as:
"Go away" cried Kagome.
A comma or an exclamation point would work well. And in the same category; if the dialogue is not ending a sentence, please do not punctuate it with a period.
"Go away." cried Kagome. It breaks the flow of the sentence.

Of course, these are only a fraction of all the mistakes made by authors--a fair percentage of which I am guilty myself. Please remember, I am not trying to act as if I know better than anyone. I hope this has helped some of you, and if any of you have any other burning pet peeves, feel free to add on to this thread! The goal is to help authors on this site achieve the best of their abilities with their work.

Cheers!

Philosophy Blue

That's not criticism. It's all good advice.

I think the most common errors are a lack of full stops ending sentences. Lack of proper capitalisation for the start of sentences, names, and place names. Spelling isn't too bad, but misuse of words in terms of meanings is common.

Like the Bear.vs Bare or Its vs. It's, or Bemused vs. Amused, and Discreet vs. Discrete.

Other errors include run-on sentences without fullstops, excessive use of commas, lack of speech marks to indicate dialouge (which can also indicate a lack of proper paragraphing too), and a lack of apostrophe's to show posessives or plurals.

The incorrect use of direct address, especially for the use of commas, is another error, especially when one character is talking to another. I've too often seen this:

"Hey Inuyasha". When it should be this - "Hey, Inuyasha". A comma should come before the name or word identifying the person a character is talking too. Which could also be like this: "Hey, Dude", or "Hey, Babe!"

These are the ones I've mostly seen, even in my own writing, when I take off real fast and write like crazy without seeing what I've written until later when I proofread.

~ Pyre

Here's one that always irritates me. Does It bother anybody else when they read in the summary of a story that the author themselves have said not to read it because it is terrible? I mean, why would anyone write a story and then tell people not to read it? Kinda dumb if you ask me. Sorry grammar people, I'm sure I made some grammar mistakes here. Lol!

cassandra wrote:
Here's one that always irritates me. Does It bother anybody else when they read in the summary of a story that the author themselves have said not to read it because it is terrible? I mean, why would anyone write a story and then tell people not to read it? Kinda dumb if you ask me. Sorry grammar people, I'm sure I made some grammar mistakes here. Lol!

Oh yeah. T___T. It's probably the saddest thing that. 'Don't read my story 'cause its terrible'. Been there, and skipped the summaries that have something negative about the story inside it. If the author thinks their work is terrible, it must be terrible, so I don't bother reading it.

That can happen in Author's Notes too at the beginning of chapters.

~ Pyre

My bug bear as a reader, is tense, and spelling, and sometimes, shorthand
1) he drug his claws through the rock?
he DRAGGED his claws through the rock
2) then instead of than

3) shorthand m8, or text talk. i just wont read it

and before any one bites, I am aware that some writers have english as a second, or third language, sometimes that makes it more interesting
Rosemarie

The most cringeworthy grammatical error for me is when the author fails to separate dialogue between characters into different paragraphs. It can make the conversation very confusing and muddled. It's also an easy fix.

Keeping continuity consistent, refraining from over explaining each characters thoughts, feelings, and conjectures. As too much internalized conjecture disrupts the overall flow of the narrative. There's been times (and I'm also referring to published novels with all of this), where I've actually lost track of a storyline because the author was too busy explaining everyone's feelings after nearly every line of dialogue. Which just leads to info-dumps, in general, as they can come across as overwhelming. All of which can be avoided with pre-writing prep work, and proofreading after.

I try to give most stories that have such errors a fair chance. It's interesting to see how many stories with extremely poor grammar and lack of formatting are very popular among readers despite their faults. However, I do believe that sometimes plot triumphs over formatting/grammar. Sadly, I haven't seen many such cases. Usually, I give up because I just can't follow the story if it has too many mistakes of this nature.

My favorite (and most amusing) errors to see are:
-"Waste" instead of "waist"
-Two or even three people speaking in the same paragraph
-Writers who use a thesaurus but clearly don't understand the proper usage of the words they pick out

I say "amusing" here not as an insult, but as truth. I get a good chuckle out of seeing things like this because none of us are perfect, and I'm 200% certain that I've made many errors myself while growing as a writer. I still make errors sometimes with sentence structure or other things that make me facepalm after several proofreads. I'm also notorious for typing way too fast, and now that I have a MacBook, the autocorrect messes with my words without my knowledge sometimes.

If I had to give my own advice to other writers, I would say:
-Proofread: It makes a huge difference. I personally don't post until my fourth or fifth draft, and even then I still find little typos here or there.
-Give it a day or two: Clear your mind and come back to your chapter after taking some time away from it. You'll get a surprisingly fresh perspective of your work.
-Read your story out loud: Whether it's for yourself or someone else, reading out loud can help pinpoint typos and errors. Doing so can also help you "hear" the rhythms and flows of your work.
-Create an outline: I can't encourage this enough. Creating an outline for your entire story (along with each chapter) will help you structure your work and stick to your guns rather than running off on tangents.
-Read and review other writers' works: This will be seen as controversial by many. However, just like any art, writing requires practice and guidance. Studying the works of published authors and authors you respect or admire will help you grow. Reviewing things you read helps you notice elements you may not have seen before in your own writing, and it will definitely help you pay more attention to what you are doing right and what you might need more practice with.
-Take it scene by scene: Some writers believe that there should be only one scene per chapter. I've seen as many as three in some novels I've read. The most important thing to remember is to write scene by scene, considering the beginning, middle, and end of each of them. It doesn't matter how many you choose to have in a chapter as long as they are well-structured and concise, fitting together with the other scenes in your chapter to enhance its themes and momentum.

And something else that does bother some people, although others like it, is over-embellishing. Imagery is excellent and vital to a good story; however, there is a point where one must say that enough is enough. For example:

The curvy miko sat down slowly on the weathered rock, her shapely limbs bending easily. Her onyx tresses flowed heavily down her back in rippling waves, glinting with sapphire tints, and her porcelain skin accentuated the darkness of her hair. Her traditional miko fluttered slightly in the wind, like the sails of a virgin ship catching the first breeze. Her cerulean orbs flashed in the dusk, framed with long, heavy lashes that batted like butterfly wings. Her lips were flushed and pink, glistening slightly like rose petals with the morning dew. Eventually, she spoke, and her teeth flashed like bright pearls as words slid like silk from between those cupid lips.

I mean, nice vocabulary and all, and wow, nice description, but... I mean, we're here for the story. More dialogue is always a good thing, and honestly, just a 'dark hair' and 'blue eyes' would do. None of this 'flashing orbs of azure blue' stuff. I admit, I get detailed in my own works, but what I wrote above is just... It's like being choked under a mountain of flowers.

I agree with the wordiness and over-description. Although I think it's less over-exaggeration with details and more a lack of practise writing with conciseness.

Sometimes it's really hard to knock a paragraph down to its bare bones and still have enough description in it to show what's going on.

It can help thicken your skin though if you do this with your own writing.

Self-proofing is a good way before you get a beta in to read the edit over and make more changes if neccessary. Heck you can debate over the cut stuff that should go back in too.

~ Pyre

Philosophy Blue wrote:
And something else that does bother some people, although others like it, is over-embellishing. Imagery is excellent and vital to a good story; however, there is a point where one must say that enough is enough.

The curvy miko sat down slowly on the weathered rock, her shapely limbs bending easily. Her onyx tresses flowed heavily down her back in rippling waves, glinting with sapphire tints, and her porcelain skin accentuated the darkness of her hair. Her traditional miko fluttered slightly in the wind, like the sails of a virgin ship catching the first breeze. Her cerulean orbs flashed in the dusk, framed with long, heavy lashes that batted like butterfly wings. Her lips were flushed and pink, glistening slightly like rose petals with the morning dew. Eventually, she spoke, and her teeth flashed like bright pearls as words slid like silk from between those cupid lips.

I mean, nice vocabulary and all, and wow, nice description, but... I mean, we're here for the story. More dialogue is always a good thing, and honestly, just a 'dark hair' and 'blue eyes' would do. None of this 'flashing orbs of azure blue' stuff. I admit, I get detailed in my own works, but what I wrote above is just... It's like being choked under a mountain of flowers.

I agree with what you've stated above, to a degree. The passage you've described/written/quoted indeed has quite of a bit of "imagery", though the mistake there specifically isn't overuse of said imagery so much as what some of what us editors label "abstraction" (using five words where one would do). This is the mistake many writers make when trying to sound "fancy". They seek to give their writing flare and "style" when really all they do is muddle the meaning of their message.

I believe what many writers label "imagery" is a misinterpretation of the word. Imagery itself is, as you've mentioned Pyreite, essential to a story. But it isn't just descriptions we are going for when using it. In fact, the above (passage) is only guilty of using too many adjectives and adverbs, a sort of "gluttony" for words. These descriptions do lend to greater detail, but it's empty detail. None of the words help me (as the reader) feel anything.

Imagery itself is much more than description. It is a tool authors can use to solidify the major and minor themes of their work. If a scene deals with a character caught up in a rush of powerful negative emotion, the writer can (and should) use some imagery to help set the mood and perhaps (dare we editors hope?) foreshadow further events and set up symbolic meaning.

In conclusion, though I agree with the message you were making in your post, I wanted to clarify that "imagery" has more than one meaning and certainly many different uses. Saying that overusing "imagery" is bad felt a little bit vague to me, personally, because I felt you might be putting "overuse of description" under the same category as the element of imagery itself.

I believe the essence of imagery is more than adjectives, adverbs, and nouns. It's something that takes writers quite some time to master, and it isn't just novices or fairly experienced writers who struggle with the concept. I've seen manuscripts from published authors sent my way that have made me scratch my head in bewilderment.

Good luck, fellow writers! Thank you for allowing me to add a bit of my personal feelings on the matter to this topic. Always a pleasure reading these sorts of forum topics (though I do apologize for being so wordy in my replies).

-Thief

Hello, everyone! I'm new to Dokuga. I saw this thread on the home page and ended up spending some time reading it.
Thank you for all the great tips!

Tip for the MA writers: past tense of "thrust" is still "thrust," not "thrusted." LOL.

English isn't my mother tongue so I usually am more laid back so to say, because I myself am learning, but for me it gets annoying when one doesn't use "you" "you're" "your" and "yours" correctly. when I see something like: "your" right! or "you're" dad is inutaisho! it ruins the pleasure of reading, and no I am not saying it just to be evil, it's just an observation.
also the use of "waste" and "waist". his hand hugged her "waste".

one more thing when someone use major historical inaccuracies, like kagome will dance waltz at a ball and eat bread and cheese in the morning in Sesshouamru's castle. again this is just an observation not meant as disrespect for those who wrote this, everyone is ensured to his own ideas and interpretations, but even in England that time they didn't dance waltz, and i read a special edition of an article how French people missed the cheese when they were in Japan in 19 century. their breakfast is more like miso soup rice and that fish.
hope that helps and again I assure you this is just advice and observations! take care everyone!

Dunkelgelb wrote:
Tip for the MA writers: past tense of "thrust" is still "thrust," not "thrusted." LOL.

Been reading something naughty and bad grammar made you burst out laughing?

Few of my pet hates to share:

Sometimes I can see at the beginning of a fic a list depicting 'thoughts, speach, demon talk (demon thoughts), telepathic speech, etc...' It is variably in normal font, italics, bold, combination of i+b, and worst of all, underscored. Seeing this makes me automatically label the fic as rubbish. Why? Because by doing this, the author is proclaiming that they're unable to express the difference between speech and thoughts of a character that would be apparent to the reader without being confused. Meaning? Their writing sucks, plain and simple - they just dug themselves a grave and erected a tombstone with a chiselled epitaph that spells failure.
On the rare occasion that such a fic actually is worth reading, it is an insult to the readers' intelligence (or maybe they just saw it so many times they thought it an obligatory disclaimer).
This is more commonly seen on ff.net, and many times in Naruto fanfics. But I've seen it here as well.

Another one: this is pretty old and I have not seen it in ages (and once again, more common on ff.net). In the summary the author proclaims 'I suck at summeries'
Now, if you can't describe what you're writing about, there is little hope the fic is worth bothering with. Especially if you suck at spelling to this degree.

I think I would like to point out a very common mistake that spans all of fanfiction, everywhere. 'The coppery scent/taste of blood'
I have no idea where it came from, or who came up with it, but almost everybody seems to accept it as a fact.
If anybody seems confused: The red blood cells in human (and most animal) bodies contain haemoglobin. Google it. It has iron for the metal element.
If you want copper in your blood, the protein-structure you are looking for is haemocyanin. Commonly found in snails. And their blood is blue.



To natalia:
Yeah, I totally agree with you. My English teachers would have failed us if we didn't get the 'your' and 'you're' straight. We even had to repeat pronouncing words like thumb and hotel until they were satisfied.
And on the pain of sounding like an annoying nitpicker : there are a few grammar mistakes in your post. The most serious one would be a vocabulary mistake. Tongue is the muscle that keeps moving around in your mouth. The correct phrase is mother language.

If anybody spots a grammar mistake in my post, feel free to beat my head in with a hammer. [file/]

Another one: this is pretty old and I have not seen it in ages (and once again, more common on ff.net). In the summary the author proclaims 'I suck at summeries'
Now, if you can't describe what you're writing about, there is little hope the fic is worth bothering with. Especially if you suck at spelling to this degree.

I definitely agree with this. I've seen it a few times myself and I thought: if a person admits that they aren't good at writing summaries, is this a tacit admission of not being good at writing in general?

And on the pain of sounding like an annoying nitpicker : there are a few grammar mistakes in your post. The most serious one would be a vocabulary mistake. Tongue is the muscle that keeps moving around in your mouth. The correct phrase is mother language.

Here, for Natalia to say "English isn't my mother tongue" is idiomatically correct. "Tongue" can refer to the muscle in a person's mouth and it can be used as a synonym for "language."

I think I first heard "tongue" used in this way in a Halloween episode of the Simpsons in which Groundskeeper Willie died and began to haunt the dreams of Springfield's children like Freddy Krueger. He enters the nerd kid Martin's dream and finds him reciting Latin in a playful, foppish manner, to which Willie says, with his extremely thick Scottish accent: "So, you've mastered a dead tongue. Can ya handle a LIVE one?"

Willie's tongue extends to a freakish length and wraps around Martin, crushing him in his dream and killing him in real life in the middle of class at school, horrifying all of the other children.

Well i said my first language isn't English and i acknowledge that my grammar isn't perfect, i always acknowledge that and ask to be corrected as means to improve! I learned English myself, i had french Russian and Spanish in school so i apologise for my mistakes. but the mother tongue it is used this way as well, i know that tongue is an organ/muscle, at least my teachers used it like this mother tongue, and in certain circles translators and interpreters for example it is used tongue not language, since it is the organ used to do the talking so to say so i respectfully have to disagree with this. In a way it's sort of like a term that implies that you learned to move your tongue for another language since learning to speak a new language isn't always easy and the phonetic aspect and sounds are different, i apologise if it is long and sounds like i am blabbering but now i even regret posting in the thread at all... Sorry again for my mistakes... I won't bother anyone anymore with my bad grammar. Take care everyone!

Natalia: We're not meaning to criticize you personally. You type/write in English as a second language better than most people do with English as their first.

Just a caution to not get too heated in this thread. Remember that the aim of the site is for fellow Sess/Kag 'shippers to get together and share their love for the pairing. Some of our writers truly want the critique so they can improve, others write for the enjoyment of writing their ideas out.

It's fine to share one's likes & dislikes as far as plot devices, grammar and spelling errors, etc., but we need to keep it in perspective so that those who just write for the sheer enjoyment of it aren't put off, 'k?

Having delivered my friendly reminder, back to zapping the 100+ spammers that tried to register accounts just today (and some who succeeded).

~~Wiccan~~

"The first one, especially on this adult site, would be bare vs. bear. More often than not, authors will incorrectly write that Kagome will bare Sesshomaru a heir. This one is confusing, but yes, it is in fact 'bear' in that context, not 'bare.' But you don't have to take my word for it; a quick Google search will do. You don't know how many amazing stories I find make this very common mistake."

RIP I did that one today like that exact sentence, but man bare just looks so much better in the sentence than bear.

As far as the complaint about 'don't read this story' I'd never put that in the summary of a fic especially one that is being currently updated, because why are you writing something you aren't proud of and don't enjoy, but I understand it for old projects. I'm very bitter at the moment of one of my old fics that continues to get reviews, and mostly negative reviews now as the story I wrote when I was a young girl no longer holds up today's standards of good characters and plot, but I can't bring myself to delete it for though I am disgusted by it now I was proud of it at the time and it almost feels like removing a tattoo.

I know what one of my biggest flaws in writing lately though is:

Taking away Sesshoumaru's arm or writing a canon story where his arm is gone and forgetting. Kind of like the question we all ask ourselves when we do public speaking 'what do I do with my hands' people always be doing things with their hands in my stories, and when it comes to Sesshoumaru it's way too easy to forget he only has one hand. This is why I always gotta go back and do a 'hand check' for all his paragraphs making sure what he is doing with his appendages makes sense.

And there is that hammer to the head...
Should have checked first before pointing fingers, just imagine me kowtowing in apology for the tongue/language mistake. Nobody is infallible, least of all me.

What nobody seems to have noticed (maybe because I was too busy spewing hate), was a very subtle misspelling I wished to point out. So I will just write it plainly: A Fic might still be alright if the author socks at summAries. But not if the duck at SummEries.
Why?

A summary is a brief statement or account of the main points of something (ask google), also, a noun

Summery is characteristic of or suitable for summer - an adjective (once again, Google definition)
Therefore, I believe, that summeries isn't even a word.

To be throughout, I did a quick check on ff.net to search for the word 'summeries'
And what turned out wants me to scrape my brains out, preferably with a fork.
There are, currently, 11,125 fits having in their description the words summery or summeries. Just in case one of those actually is correct in another language, you are still left with 11,076 for English.
I wonder how many of those use the adjective summery in the correct manner. (I have seen people trying to use that end, but instead writing manor- that is a rather big house, sort of mansion)

Well, there are still thousands of wonderful fics out there and even with mistakes, quite a pleasant read.


And that's another one to point out - quite/quiet
Also breath and breathe
And so on...

And of course everyone is at liberty to write their stories as they like, but for those with a penchant for the darker ones: please try to think realistically and have enough self-respect to give your character self-respect.

I personally am a fan of dark stories, but when Kagome can't seem to make up her mind whether she is consenting or not, this gets frustrating. Especially if she suddenly becomes consenting for no reason at all.

To paraphrase a wonderful Tweet, "Anyone laughs when they are tickled. It doesn't mean they like it. You could be yelling at them to stop but still be wracked with laughter."

So it would be normal to portray "laughter," if you get my gist, but not the unexplained consent.

I hope this post wasn't explicit, as all forum posts must remain innocent.

You're good, Philosophy Blue... totally innocent!

~~Wiccan~~

l'-'jj wrote:

I think I would like to point out a very common mistake that spans all of fanfiction, everywhere. 'The coppery scent/taste of blood'
I have no idea where it came from, or who came up with it, but almost everybody seems to accept it as a fact.
If anybody seems confused: The red blood cells in human (and most animal) bodies contain haemoglobin. Google it. It has iron for the metal element.
If you want copper in your blood, the protein-structure you are looking for is haemocyanin. Commonly found in snails. And their blood is blue.


I'm not sure if the author of the post will see it, but I have a question about this. I myself make this "mistake," and I am now iffy on whether I should continue doing so. I am very well aware that there is no copper in blood, but I myself refer to the taste of the blood, not the actual components. If you've tasted blood, you'll notice it tastes like pennies, if you've tasted those as well. It's the distinct taste of copper.

So knowing this, can I ask people viewing this topic to pitch in their opinions on 'coppery taste'?

Thanks!

Aaaand a quick confession from me. I am 500% guilty of this mistake:

Traipse: to walk or move wearily or reluctantly. (from Google search)

I don't know how many times I've written 'traipse' as in 'to skip around cheerfully,' or something to that effect. When I was bored and happened to look the exact meaning of this word up, I was very embarrassed. I've seen this in other people's work as well, and I can only advise you its proper definition.

Still slapping myself over this...

Cheers!

Maybe it's safer to go with metallic taste? Since blood Does contain iron, the blood contains I think almost 70 percents of the iron in our body? I usually never used the coppery taste but went with metallic heavy taste.