fan-meta: picking up stories for review
Apr. 25th, 2008 05:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
boogieshoes
So, I've enjoyed my time at the helm of the Crack_van for Mag7 fandom, and thought I'd write some related meta. BMP, one of the authors I recommended, asked me how I chose stories for recommendations. My answer was somewhat off the cuff and boiled down to 'after I get past the 90% of stories that are dreck, I look for things I'd pay for in a bookstore.' I'd like to expand on that answer here.
There have been a metric ton of posts on story writing and story mechanics from the writer's point of view. What to think about, what to look for, what to do and not to do. I haven't come across as many from the reader's point of view, although I'm sure they exist. But that's what I'm going to be looking at here. When I look through stories with an eye towards recommendation, I look at visual presentations, story mechanics, story flow, factual realism, characterization, and lastly, OOMPH-factor. All of these things are important, necessary to even get on my consideration list, and worth discussing.
Visual Presentation
Visual Presentation is the first cut-factor for any piece of fiction. If your fic is not in a readable format, people are going to click the back button forthwith. The primary list of Dos And Don'ts reads like this:
1) Do make the text constrast enough with the background so that it's readable. Most people will tell you that they like to read black text on a white background. For myself, my eyes have problems with the frequency of 'white' on a monitor after a while, so for long stretches of text, I prefer black text on a light grey or other pale color.
Contrast the readability of 'Beautiful Dreamer' by Aislynn Carmichael to 'I Fought the Law' by Andi and Charli Charleville.
The first link goes to darker brown text on a lighter brown background. The contrast is enough to read, but not for long stretches, and it's easier for words to blur together in this setting than in a black-and-white medium. Readers with headaches or vision that's already having trouble for some reason are not going to want to deal with 'not enough contrast' at all. And I can say this with confidence, because I'm in the middle of tree pollen sex season in Louisiana, and I've been getting allergy headaches so bad the eyes start throbbing sometimes. Like most people, when I'm sick, I read comfort fic. And if I can't read it when I'm sick, I'm not likely to remember it very well.
2) Do maintain a clean website. If you want to put graphics on the same page as your fiction, that's fine, but be sure the text does not run over it, or disappear under it. 'I Fought the Law' has a strip of graphics down the left-hand side of the ATF shield. It's enough to lend tone to the story, but doesn't interfere with the story itself. This is important. For an example of what not to do, see Anger Issues by Anita. She has a strip of graphics going down the middle of the page, and the story text runs right over it. Your eyes see different colors in terms of 'brightness' levels, and will re-focus to compensate for variations in color in a text medium. This is one reason why people don't like rainbow fonts or flashing icons on a page they're expected to look at for a long time. It's the same reason you shouldn't slip pictures in under your text. The eye will have to continuously refocus over the pictures, and sometimes the text will just 'disappear' into the background picture. This causes unnecessary eye strain.
3) Don't put in cutesy things. Don't use blinking or rotating graphics on your page, or anything else that spontaneously changes without the reader clicking on it. It's annoying, it's distracting, and some people are still on dial-up. Things that blink, rotate, do fade-ins will slow their download times to the point they may just not bother. One of my personal biggest pet peeves is mouse-pointer changes. I like my little white arrow, thank you very much. I do not need or want to see the pointer changed to streaming butterflies or little 'x's or whatever.
4) Do whatever it takes to get the formatting right. Which is to say, when you write your story, it may be the best thing since sliced bread, but if, when you post it, all the formatting disappears, it's going to be completely unreadable. One of the best examples of this is Sui Generis, by Birgit Macx Stabler. This story has been given many recommendations, and I'd surely like to read it - but I'm not going to sort my way through the one long paragraph format. When you scroll down to the text, the first thing you notice is a distinct lack of white space. This makes it difficult for the reader to follow paragraph breaks and dialog switches. At that, this story is much better formatted than when I first came across it: The first time I saw Sui Generis, it was light text on dark background, no scene breaks, and every single line looked like it was supposed to be a new paragraph... maybe. Needless to say, I'm not going to be reading this any time soon.
5) Don't forget that white space is your friend. It sets off paragraphs, and extra white space can be used to indicate scene breaks if you don't want to use asterisks or a line.
6) Don't center-justify or right-justify the text of the narrative. The appropriate uses for centered text are as follows: Titles/ headings, ending 'finis', and poems or lyrics that are being quoted as scene breaks. Some people like to put in letters or stories within the main story and want to set them off somehow. The appropriate method is to INDENT the set-off text, and have it be left-justified within the indented portion. An example of this is shown in The Letter Home, by JK (scroll down about half a page to find the formatting I'm talking about). You should only right-justify the text if you're presenting specific information: You're presenting the text of a letter, and the letter has a header that's right-justified.
A wrap-up for this section: The internet is a great place for visuals and visual experimentation. I'm not above experimenting with background colors and visuals myself, to see what sort of impact they have on the story and the reader. I am probably in a minority, but for truly long pieces of text on the computer, I actually prefer to have white, lemon yellow, or lime green text on a black background. If you decide on light text on a dark background, make your text font larger, and consider bolding the whole thing. I've found that in terms of reading experience, Courier is possibly the best font to use there. All these things will make the text more accessible. Also consider offering a 'no-frills' version of a standard black text on white background. Keep in mind that you want people to read your story, so you need to make the story text accessible to the average reader.
Visual Presentation is the first cut-factor for any piece of fiction. If your fic is not in a readable format, people are going to click the back button forthwith. The primary list of Dos And Don'ts reads like this:
1) Do make the text constrast enough with the background so that it's readable. Most people will tell you that they like to read black text on a white background. For myself, my eyes have problems with the frequency of 'white' on a monitor after a while, so for long stretches of text, I prefer black text on a light grey or other pale color.
Contrast the readability of 'Beautiful Dreamer' by Aislynn Carmichael to 'I Fought the Law' by Andi and Charli Charleville.
The first link goes to darker brown text on a lighter brown background. The contrast is enough to read, but not for long stretches, and it's easier for words to blur together in this setting than in a black-and-white medium. Readers with headaches or vision that's already having trouble for some reason are not going to want to deal with 'not enough contrast' at all. And I can say this with confidence, because I'm in the middle of tree pollen sex season in Louisiana, and I've been getting allergy headaches so bad the eyes start throbbing sometimes. Like most people, when I'm sick, I read comfort fic. And if I can't read it when I'm sick, I'm not likely to remember it very well.
2) Do maintain a clean website. If you want to put graphics on the same page as your fiction, that's fine, but be sure the text does not run over it, or disappear under it. 'I Fought the Law' has a strip of graphics down the left-hand side of the ATF shield. It's enough to lend tone to the story, but doesn't interfere with the story itself. This is important. For an example of what not to do, see Anger Issues by Anita. She has a strip of graphics going down the middle of the page, and the story text runs right over it. Your eyes see different colors in terms of 'brightness' levels, and will re-focus to compensate for variations in color in a text medium. This is one reason why people don't like rainbow fonts or flashing icons on a page they're expected to look at for a long time. It's the same reason you shouldn't slip pictures in under your text. The eye will have to continuously refocus over the pictures, and sometimes the text will just 'disappear' into the background picture. This causes unnecessary eye strain.
3) Don't put in cutesy things. Don't use blinking or rotating graphics on your page, or anything else that spontaneously changes without the reader clicking on it. It's annoying, it's distracting, and some people are still on dial-up. Things that blink, rotate, do fade-ins will slow their download times to the point they may just not bother. One of my personal biggest pet peeves is mouse-pointer changes. I like my little white arrow, thank you very much. I do not need or want to see the pointer changed to streaming butterflies or little 'x's or whatever.
4) Do whatever it takes to get the formatting right. Which is to say, when you write your story, it may be the best thing since sliced bread, but if, when you post it, all the formatting disappears, it's going to be completely unreadable. One of the best examples of this is Sui Generis, by Birgit Macx Stabler. This story has been given many recommendations, and I'd surely like to read it - but I'm not going to sort my way through the one long paragraph format. When you scroll down to the text, the first thing you notice is a distinct lack of white space. This makes it difficult for the reader to follow paragraph breaks and dialog switches. At that, this story is much better formatted than when I first came across it: The first time I saw Sui Generis, it was light text on dark background, no scene breaks, and every single line looked like it was supposed to be a new paragraph... maybe. Needless to say, I'm not going to be reading this any time soon.
5) Don't forget that white space is your friend. It sets off paragraphs, and extra white space can be used to indicate scene breaks if you don't want to use asterisks or a line.
6) Don't center-justify or right-justify the text of the narrative. The appropriate uses for centered text are as follows: Titles/ headings, ending 'finis', and poems or lyrics that are being quoted as scene breaks. Some people like to put in letters or stories within the main story and want to set them off somehow. The appropriate method is to INDENT the set-off text, and have it be left-justified within the indented portion. An example of this is shown in The Letter Home, by JK (scroll down about half a page to find the formatting I'm talking about). You should only right-justify the text if you're presenting specific information: You're presenting the text of a letter, and the letter has a header that's right-justified.
A wrap-up for this section: The internet is a great place for visuals and visual experimentation. I'm not above experimenting with background colors and visuals myself, to see what sort of impact they have on the story and the reader. I am probably in a minority, but for truly long pieces of text on the computer, I actually prefer to have white, lemon yellow, or lime green text on a black background. If you decide on light text on a dark background, make your text font larger, and consider bolding the whole thing. I've found that in terms of reading experience, Courier is possibly the best font to use there. All these things will make the text more accessible. Also consider offering a 'no-frills' version of a standard black text on white background. Keep in mind that you want people to read your story, so you need to make the story text accessible to the average reader.
This is longer than I thought it would be, so I'm going to make this into a series, going through each of the factors I use to decide if a story is worth a recommendation. Next part: Story Mechanics.
-bs
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 02:12 pm (UTC)I'm looking forward to reading what else you have to say :)
no subject
Date: 2008-04-25 02:17 pm (UTC)and thanks for the good review! sometimes when i write what i think of as meta... no one says anything, and i don't know why, heh. drives me bonkers sometimes, but that is the law of the internet.
-bs