FicWad

I was lurking around the groups again, mainly the Writing or Help group on QuoteV, and I saw a complaint. Basically, people click on a story and then click out. I do this, so I understand those people that do the same, but the rebuttal from the complainer is usually, "Just give my story a chance." Sometimes there's an explicative, or is added on to with, "The plot is good, I promise." Well, guess what? First impressions really are everything, so if I don't like something in the first paragraph, let alone the first chapter, I'm not going to read it. It doesn't matter how good your plot is if the syntax, spelling, grammar, formatting, or other stuff keeps annoying me. And, honestly, when has a good plot or good characters ever been accompanied by a multitude of errors or several of whatever's in the list below?

So if you want a read after the first chapter from me or even a comment, you better make a good first impression, or else I'm out and I won't even think to look at what else you have.

Sure, you may call me picky, but I have to be when there are a million stories on this website alone and I'm trying to find something to take the time and enjoy instead of wasting time reading something, giving it a chance like you want me to, and end up hating it anyway. Do you think actual publishers take the time to read every story from cover to cover to determine which stories are good to publish? No! According to Ian Irvine, a marine scientist who had over twenty novels published:

"Publishing is a competitive and low profit business, and no publisher can afford to pay people to read manuscripts. Some publishers no longer look at unsolicited manuscripts – they simply return them if postage is provided, or shred them if it isn't. Where they do look at manuscripts, it will only be the professionally presented ones – perhaps half the total. Of that 2,500, say, 90% will be rejected on the first page and 98% by the end of the first chapter. That leaves 30-50 manuscripts, and they're the only ones which will get any kind of serious consideration. In a good year, ten of those might be published. In a bad year, less than five."

I am the same way. I don't have time to sit down and read your story through and through to see if I like it. I want something I can enjoy now from start to finish, which is why I go through this weeding out process, and I don't have time to point out my exact thoughts and wait for you to edit if you decide to at all. Not that I'd expect anyone to appreciate it even a little (it wouldn't be the first time I was chewed out over this).

If I can't find anything to enjoy reading immediately, I'll work on one of my projects.

"But this is the internet! You can't expect this to be a professional manuscript!"

I don't expect anyone's stories to be professional-looking and follow the writing rules 100%, because publishers may think that something is too "out there," but I may still personally enjoy it the way it is, such as in Who Would You Fall For stories; however I do have standards and I follow it to get to the stories I would most probably like with little to no annoyances that get in the way of my enjoyment of your story. It's not as if I force these standards on people and hound them until they change them. That would be ruining other people's experience, and I'm not out to do that. I just want to find these stories to enjoy, so if I don't give your story a chance, do not blame me or other people like me because you didn't make a good first impression on your story and I don't want to continue reading it. There are too many stories for me to have time to give your story a chance.

Let's begin this list, shall we?