Before You Submit: Advice
This page will give you some tips on finishing
off your fan fic, in the final stages before
submission to the archive. By pausing to pay attention to detail, your fic will be better received.
Invest a couple of minutes in running your fic
through a spellchecker. Not to do so shows an extreme lack of care. Mistakes you
may not have noticed may be relatively simple, even typos. And there is nothing
more annoying than a spelling error at a dramatic moment; see this example from
a Buffy fic:
“The seal must be in the basement – HURRY!” yeled Files.”
Now, I may be able to
work out that “Files” is Giles, but having already been thrown by the “yeled” for “yelled”, the reader completely misses the point
of the sentence. NEVER submit a piece of fan fiction without at least reading
it over yourself, if possible by a friend,
spellchecking and finding a beta reader. More about betas
later. Understandable but no less irritating errors repeatedly occur in
proper nouns of the Angelverse. Following are a number of words you may come
across when writing Frangel; a good idea would be to paste unusual spellings
into Word, or your usual writing programme, and add them to your spellchecker. This
will reduce the “red-line blindness” which occurs after your computer has
registered “Lilah” as a spelling error four hundred times! So here are the
official versions (email me to suggest others):
Angel; Angelus; Liam; Fred;
Winifred; Burkle; Hyperion Hotel; Pylea; Krevlorneswath; Lorne; Cordelia
Chase; Geraldo; Charles Gunn; Allen Francis Doyle; Lindsey McDonald; Lilah
Morgan; Drusilla; Linwood; Holland Manners; Wolfram and Hart; David Nabbit; Deathwok clan; Groo; Groosalugg; Landok; Numfar; Orb of Thesulah; Janna of the Kalderash clan; Buffy Summers; Wesley
Wyndham-Pryce; Darla; Spike; William; Angel Investigations; Sunnydale; Kate Lockley; Professor Sidel; Connor
A simple rule – if you’re
even a little unsure, look it up. See writer’s resources for online
dictionaries and script archives. It’s unfortunate but true that a reader will
be put off by obvious errors at the start of a fic
and may not even read beyond the first paragraph. Your spelling constitutes a
major part of a first impression and poor spelling reflects badly on your
storytelling.
Grammar. Punctuation.
Clarity. Pacing. Even
spelling errors you may have missed. These are all things which a beta reader
can help with. Even trying to read your story as if you had
never read it before pales in comparison to a good beta reading. A beta
reader is an independent and very lovely person who, out of the goodness of
their heart and dedication to the improvement of fan fiction, agrees to take on
the momentous task of reading your fan fiction and offering advice. But don’t
let me romanticise them. A good beta reader will tell you where the
flaws are in your fan fiction, however if you can’t take constructive criticism
you probably wouldn’t want to expose your fic to the
world yet. Attention to detail and plot are essential.
If your fic returns with no comments but “wonderful!
Perfection personified!” then you need a second opinion. You can find beta
readers in the writers’ resource centre on the site.
Are you happy? That’s not a major psychological question which
requires an answer, but it does bear relevance on your submission. Not all fanfic has to be posted. If you are not completely
satisfied with the result, DO NOT submit it. If you
don’t want to spend all night trawling through substandard fiction, give the
same consideration to others. Work on your fic
further. Keep submitting redrafts to your beta readers until you are happy. If
your fan fiction is beyond salvage, at least you have learned something. You
may be inspired to return to it in the future. If you are writing a series, on
no account submit anything until you are far enough along to be absolutely
positive that you will finish. There is nothing more infuriating than investing
reading time into a fic to discover that the author
has completely evaporated from the internet! Even if you lose interest, please at
least give your readers satisfactory closure.
I’ve done all this, ya doofus. Lemme submit my fic!