fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3120 ]

[ SECRET POST #3120 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3120 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 047 secrets from Secret Submission Post #446.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 1 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Research. Little things, like appropriate colloquialisms. Accuracies in AUs. That kind of thing.

Yes. Also appropriate words for the fandom. Admittedly it is sometimes hard to figure out when you are writing things that never happened in canon (like writing Middle Earth porn). But it still bugs me when there are words that are anachronistic or not appropriate in the setting.

Ugh, yes. I'm not even that picky, I know some details are difficult to get right. But I've seen mistakes that could've been avoided if someone just looked something up on Wikipedia, and that's plain lazy.

So have you read a story by an Australian author who completely forgot Americans speak a different dialect.

AYRT

Probably - I assume most of the time that I run across that particular issue the author is either English or Australian.

I find that it is usually an american writer who forgets that other countries have other ways of speaking and doing things.

That could just be perspective - as an American reader, I'm constantly noticing little Britishisms that totally don't matter but do take me out of the moment a bit.

If I ever have to read another Supernatural fic that has characters making cross-country drives in unrealistic time spans just because the author couldn't be bothered to open Google Maps....well, I'll probably be fine. But peeved. (In fairness, the show makes the same mistake.)

Oh come on, in television everyone moves at the speed the plot requires them to. You can bet if the canon needed them to travel 1000miles in two hours, they'd still manage it. That is one peeve that really needs to die.

In television, sure. Whatever, it's plot, it's lazy writing, whatever. But I'm talking about fanfiction, and I like to read without suspension of disbelief. Supernatural's a weird fandom, where you can fudge a lot of stuff by just saying "ahh it was a curse" "A WITCH DID IT" "DEMONSssss," but what makes really good fic (and what made the early show good, imo) is the base of real life that magical fuckery is built on. If you tell me a demon zapped our heroes from Maine to New Mexico in 24 hours because it's essential to the plot, I'll stay with you. If you just write that they drove that distance in 24 hours, I'm frustrated, because they literally couldn't and it feels lazy and cheap.

Got lucky with the rush hour traffic.

Just because people handle it one way in TV doesn't mean it ought to be handled the exact same way in writing. If you need a scene where characters are doing something boring, like researching at the library for hours then sure, you'd do it in montage form. But if you're writing a story, you wouldn't simply insert [musical montage] instead of writing out the actual scene, because that'd be both silly and incredibly lazy. You do what's appropriate for the medium.

Whenever I write a drive in a SPN fic, I just don't say where they're starting out from, lol. Just that they heard about a case in named town and they made it in 18 hours, or two days of nearly solid driving, etc.

I'm always afraid I don't research enough.

Like maybe I'll spend two months learning the ins and outs and mannerisms and everything about another country right down to what they eat and when they eat and what rules are allowed in what park in what season during what holiday that exists only there, and do the children get to go by themselves and enjoy x activity, or is it a no-no due to curfews imposed only there...

...and I'll end up forgetting some basic thing that I'll get screamed at over.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #3120 ]

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