Story Trigger Warnings (or: things you might not want to do your first time out) · 9:00pm Jul 24th, 2015
When it comes to the newest of writing arrivals in the community, you can't prejudge a story based on lack of local experience. And completely reviewing a work based on the short and long descriptions plus cover art is an act of cruelty.
Once you get into the story... Everyone's style is different. What works for one author doesn't function at all for another writer -- or reader. In that sense, trying to put together a basic creation guide can be pointless, in large part because as soon as you try dictating rules for possessing imagination, you've pretty much forfeited your humanity and should dive off a cliff. Or just stand next to one and what, in the name of deniability, we'll call "pure coincidence" will do the rest. And nothing is going to work for everyone. Ever.
So to a degree, you could say that beyond a few basic grammar/punctuation tricks and spelling requirements, there are no true hard and fast rules for good writing. (Some writers can even discard aspects of the prior without missing a beat.) Although a lot of English teachers would scream at you for doing so, which is one of the best reasons for saying it.
But at least for FIMFic, there seem to be... signs. Hints that suggest what lies ahead may not be good at all. Indicators which say that when a writer's first story is being approached, the initial path is laced with caution. And the ground is filled with landmines. Sometimes you can't risk taking a single step without something blowing up. Other times, you want to hit a trigger because there might be one moment of really intense pain, but at least then it'll be over.
For this blog post, I'd like people to post their own triggers in the Comments sections. Things they've noticed which send them into retreat mode, or at least brings out the metal detector and a full-body set of armor before they venture into the story proper -- if they risk the story at all. Little anti-tricks which new writers may not want to do on their first-ever try, just because it sends people off to their Groups. Groups with names like Absolutely Disgusting.
(On a side note: do those Groups run shifts? Is someone assigned to scan the New column every hour, with enough people working to make sure no story ever gets past them? A fresh work can be up for five minutes and have eight anti-quality Groups added to it, seemingly within those first sixty seconds of existence. So not only are they organized, they're speed readers.)
In other words, I'm looking for the things which often make you decide you don't want to read the main work before ever getting there. Sales pitch epic fails. Warning: Compost Pile Ahead. Anti-marketing strategies. Things new writers should probably avoid on their first time out.
Here are some of my trigger warnings.
1. Author's chosen name is the same as their OC.
There is nothing fundamentally wrong with original characters. Or rather, there's nothing wrong with creating and using them, the same as with every other story element: it can be done well, or it can be rendered... less than well. But somehow, when writer and creation share a title... it usually means something's about to go horribly wrong.
1a. As above, but with direct self-inserts.
1b. As per 1a, but with Sex tag.
2. Short and long descriptions were not spellchecked. Again, this isn't a perpetual tripwire: just about everyone has eye-slide issues where your brain automatically substitutes the proper word, and we just about all typo in ways which programs won't catch because the mistake formed another word. I'm guilty of putting up initial errors. But when the entire short and long pieces are filled with mistake after mistake, and it starts to look like the writer couldn't even be bothered to care about that much...
3. Open mention of character suicide. It's a subject which can very easily go horribly wrong. It doesn't necessary repel me from a story, but I'll approach with extreme caution.
4. Fad Of The Week. Not an automatic disqualifier, as some FOTWs are fun, and for those which aren't -- a new author might be just the person to skewer it. But there's something about someone who's starting with a "Hey, me too!" which can bring on cold sweat, especially if the story also includes #1-3.
(For the record: this is why I don't read many LOHAV and convention costume stories. Plus a lot of them seem to have #1-3. With subheaders included. It also kept me out of just about every single night at Freddie's, let alone five.)
5. Special interests I don't personally possess.
And by special interests, I generally mean "Oh, look, there's that Sex tag again." This can be still be well-written and interesting to go through, but I'm acknowledging a chance of discomfort through repulsion. And that's if #1-4 aren't included.
(This is an extreme Your Mileage May Vary category -- while at the same time, possibly being near-universal. Still, everything will work for someone, and there's something to be said for establishing your audience right out of the gate. Additionally, some special interest writers are perfectly skilled, while others add a capacity for generalist function. You can find some great work in the small ranges -- but for some categories, you might never bring yourself to look.)
6. Outright diatribes.
It doesn't happen often, but sometimes, a new writer just uses their description space to -- vent. A lot. There are active volcanoes which don't have that level of venting. And somehow, nary a story detail escapes the lava...
7. The following tags appearing on the same story: Tragedy/Dark/Romance/Human. With a Sex tag.
...that one may just be me.
Until you add in #1-6.
Your turn. If you have the courage. Or can get past the flashbacks.
Five or more non-character tags on a single story. Occasionally it turns out alright, but it's usually a sign of things.
Diapers. I don't know why this genre is popular enough to spawn so many stories, but eww.
3266282 That's one of mine, too.
Mainly because, like you, I just don't get it.
3266282
3266315
That's a subcategory for #5, as it's definitely a special interest -- and in this case, you can substitute "fetish". I'm sure there are some quality, well-written Diaper Stories With Plot. But unless that's your interest, you're probably never going to risk finding out.
I generally assume that a story's quality is inversely proportional to the number of tags it has.
Here we go. Have an example. It's Mature, but... it has no text associated with it yet. So really there's nothing to judge except the description and the cover image.
Perhaps this will be the one that proves us wrong.
Edit: I found another indicator. When an author's number of stories is greater than their number of followers.
Anything in the description which is not a description of the story. Not just the classic "don't be too harsh, this is my first story"; anything at all (I might overlook a "featured on Equestria Daily", but that's quite uncommon for first-time writers). The description is supposed to draw you in, not remind you that it is just a story.
3266339
Gardez's Theory Of Inverse Tagging
Hmm.
(Yes, I know DJThomp beat you to it in the column, but you used 'inversely'.)
3266342
I am totally, completely, no-plea-bargain-possible guilty of this with the trope page links. But I try to cordon them off, and I didn't start out that way. Still...
Someone who has a trope page waiting on their first-ever story has a lot more confidence than most.
Someone who got featured on EQD before coming here may have justified it.
Along with all of your triggers, I'd add Epic Long Descriptions. I'm a firm believer in the Story telling the story, and allowing the description to do the job of grabbing your interest without killing the story with a wall of Telling.
3266349 It's a different situation. When a new story pops up in my personal feed, I already know I probably want to read it since I made the conscious decision to follow the author after reading their previous works. I probably already read more pony words than I should given everything else I have to do, so a new author will have to make a very, very good impression within the first five seconds to stand a chance.
3266339
I first replied while you were still seeking out your example, so I initially missed the find. Let's see...
Tenth story by this author. So not a total rookie.
I have to turn Mature on for a minute. Fine.
Red-and-black-red-and-black-red-and-black...
*blink*
...one of Twilight's... reshelvings?
There's nine other stories in that catalog. Maybe this is just a --
Bordering Vault 98?
...I have no choice but to follow this author.
But in this case, how can the story ever possibly live up to the description?
(And how did you find a story with no chapters to begin with?)
ETA:
That needs a little bit more of a qualifier on it, because every last one of us entered this website alone, afraid, and, optionally, naked.
3266355
What do you personally consider to be Epically Long? (I'm guessing this is a standard I've violated at least once.)
Overly long chapters I suppose, once is gets past 24,000 it's in the danger-zone, but this is also coming from a guy that read a story that was one chapter and 56,000 words in one sitting. Oh and also foalcon, but that's more of a genre trigger than a general story trigger I think.
For me, 1 and 2 are definitely issues, though I often read 1 just to see how bad it is this time.
Other of my red flags are:
Author using all the genre tags they can without running into the conflicting ones.
Anything with the words "my OC" anywhere in the description. Generally, I don't get the concept of "my OC" – a character we created and care so much that we pay money to comission pics of them, create their character sheets, and other stuff. This point often overlaps with self-insert, or Mary Sue thing.
Well, maybe I'm bad for my OCs. Like, they live short, work hard, and die a cruel and messy death.
Diapers/age regression. I don't get the appeal.
If the author of the story appears to be 9/clinically insane/retarded/all of the above, I only read the story for guilty pleasure.
May be my quirk, but if a story uses a coverart that I recall being used on some more popular fic, I usually skip it. Bonus points if the stories vary wildly in genre. Like, recently I chuckled at some E-rated story that accidentally used the same coverart as Rarity's Garden (for those unfamiliar with it: the fact that Silver Spoon becomes Rarity's sex slave is one of the least disturbing moments).
I should mention that this particular blog post was in fact inspired by an actual story. I've had that tale open in a separate window the whole time, occasionally reloading it just to see if things were getting any better.
static.fimfiction.net/images/missing_story.png
Define "better".
I hate seeing that happen. Sometimes the flight urge wins...
Blatantly incorrect use of title case is enough to make me disregard the story. Pony Creator art usually raises a red flag, though it isn't necessarily a dealbreaker. Aside from that, you pretty much covered it.
I think my list looks very much like this one. I would also add "posts stories in very short chapters", as in a few hundred words each. I've seen journal-style stories that do this and make it work, but bad young first-time writers who have a hard time writing a proper chapter do this quite often. Which also applies to a certain story currently on the front page that I suspect may have inspired this blog... but which is now gone, because I wrote too slowly
3266282 3266315
I'm not sure it's very popular at all. From what I see the bulk of those stories on this site are written by just one extremely prolific author
3266425
If we were both looking at the same candy/flavor, guilty.
(I'm not supposed to mention specific authors unless it's to praise them. I think this is as close as I can get.)
3266433
There was indeed a refreshing and mechanical aspect to it, yes.
3266446
Ratchette would be appropriately jealous if she were the type for it.
For everyone else: the story in question was primarily an example of #1 (without subcategories). It didn't so much get my attention as focus it: I've seen a few #1 stories going through the New column this week and... well, one over the line.
"Hilarity Ensues [exclamation mark]"
Maybe I'm being a knob here, but in my experience, the kind of author who can make really good hilarity ensue, as it were, is not the kind of author who will put an explicit declaration of such in the description. It's like the canned studio audience laugh track in a mediocre sitcom, like the creators aren't confident in either the audience or the joke, and thus have to put up a big metaphorical "this bit's the funny bit, laugh now" sign. Doesn't help that this often applies to stories built entirely around some form of meme or meta joke.
There are exceptions, I'm sure. But usually if your story description yells "Hilarity Ensues!", it probably doesn't.
For me personally I'd agree with all of your rules. I also tend not to read stories that have less than 1000 words, simply because unless it's an author I really liked anyway, there's not gonna be enough there for me to be invested.
I recently broke one of my rules, actually, for a fic that had me dreading it at first because of the character tags and rating, but turned out to be really good in practice. It was an aged up CMC ship fic, for anyone wondering.
3266339
That's a bit subjective isn't it?
I mean, it could take them awhile to hit on an idea which makes them popular then they get followers. Besides, that is not an eye catching statistic. There are plenty of authors on the site that have lots of followers and I've not clicked on any of their stories because they didn't interest me.
What's odd is that these kind of warning signs exist in other fandom.
Well, the warning signs themselves are different but they tell you that a fic is dreck all the same; to give an example, in the Worm fandom*, if it follows the canon plot slavishly, changing only the power of the main character? Generally not worth the trouble.
If it has CYOA in the title? RUN
*it's an online book, by Wildbow; it's basically a superhero settings, taken semi-realistically (super villains engage in drug and sex trade, a gang of Nazis takes its cues from actual neo-nazis) written from the perspective of a girl who goes out to become a superhero and becomes a super villain instead. It's become fantastically successful, so people who want to try their hands at writing their own stories might be interested in what it does and learning from it.
One of the things that sends me backpedaling in a rather hurried manner is the human tag (as pursuant to #7) along with a little teal 'crossover' alongside it. Other than that, maybe the Mature/Sex combo. Granted, I almost always keep the mature filter on but it is tedious when you want to read a fun war story or cosmic horror tale and one has to wade through so many M/Sex fics. Other than that, you covered all of the bases that we should look out for on the site
8. HiE
Not that all HiE fics are bad, in fact, some are in my favorites folder, but in general, these tend to be along very similar story lines. Self-insert human character works with ponies on the problem that they are in Equestria (or they go on an adventure and, just as unrealistically, hardly worry about the fact that they are no longer in a human world). I'd have to say it's mostly the fics where a human arrives in Equestria more than anything else, but the others still fall under this danger category.
9. Author-posted "don't judge me" phrases.
Things like "This is my first fic so go easy on me", or "Don't dislike this just because you don't like X type story", or anything of that species. Not that it means the story is going to be bad, but it usually does. And I don't think it's bad that an author warns about his/her first foray into the fanfic world, but I generally don't read those fics for enjoyment due to my... well, massive urges to correct things. And so for the authors' sakes, I don't usually read those.
10. Mature
95% of the time, this tag is used because the author spent too much time writing graphic descriptions and not enough time writing actual story content. And no, these graphics descriptions, most of the time, are NOT necessary to the story no matter what one may say. If they had sex, one can imply it without going into too much detail. If someone got gored to death, then implications can sometimes be much more effective than the explicit description itself. Now I understand that there are many readers here that thrive on this nonsense, but I am here for the story, not the author's ability to waste my time by limiting my imagination with verbose and unnecessary descriptions of sex or violence. In the extremely rare occasion that the mature tag is required and the things included are indeed important to the story (eg: a court case story about a rape where the details decide the case), I greatly appreciate skillful and tasteful writing.
11. ____ ensues
Yeah... overused phrased that means the story is probably filled with overused tropes. Unless it's a comedy fic designed to make fun of the tropes (crack/troll), or is written by an author whose style I know and trust with such a phrase (Estee, Shortskirtsandexplosions, etc.), I will almost always avoid reading these.
12. Shipping
And by that, I mean the story is purely about the ship. In most cases, the relationship has no base, no buildup, and seems to come out of nowhere. These usually appear to spawn from situations like "Well, just the two of us spent some time together and enjoyed it. Must be love." or "I accidentally saw you bathing naked" (They're freaking horses! They're always naked!). Again, unless it's comedy or by an author that I trust, I'm not likely to read that sucker.
And of course, a combination of these things is almost always worse than just one of these warning signs on their own.
The Human tag. I have found... maybe three stories in literally the entire site that use the human tag and don't make me immediately want to vomit?
Anything in the description that references a current fad or someone else's idea, i.e. LOHAV. If you're straight up admitting this is not an original idea and is just for the lulz, why would I want to read your shitty story? Of course, that doesn't stop them from being popular anyway because fads and all that.
Contradictory tags just for the sake of the tags, like "comedy/sad/dark/adventure/slice of life." Basically Cold in Gardez said it best. A story that doesn't know what it's supposed to be is not a good story.
If I have to hit the "Read More" button to see your whole description, then I'm out. If I can't trust you to hook me within a reasonable amount of words, then why should I trust you to be able to hold my attention for an entire novel-length fanfic?
General rule of thumb—the more concise the description, the more likely I am to read it.
Also if stories have really short chapters, that's not a good sign. Not a deal breaker, but it's definitely a red flag.
3266538
One argument I'm going to keep on making while everyone ignores it is that with the right story, Comedy/Sad are not contradictory tags.
Case in point: Charlie Chaplin.
3266492 good point.
Another trigger for me is "the missing element of harmony" although those seem to have died out once everybody realized the impracticality of such a scenario.
A light perusal of the comments and the ratio of like/dislike is (for me) a good indicator. If I see someone that I've seen on other stories I usually will go in with a fairly good idea of what's in store (e.g. seeing FanOfMostEverything, Georg, Seether00 and Cerulean Voice in the comments with them writing positively about it I most likely will read it too. if I don't see their avatars, I usually look for the most familiar ones and if I can't find any I'll read it and judge for myself.
Anthro to me is more of a "flee, flee for your lives" tag than human because, to me, human means...well human (if you don't know what that is, hi, welcome to earth and the odd subculture we humans have created). Anthro means you have to figure out where you are going to sit on the sliding scale.
Usually, it's really poor grammar that makes me flee, along with "this is my first story, don't judge me." I sometimes feel bad about those two, the first one because the writer may not be a native English speaker, and the second because somebody has to read those first stories and give constructive feedback, or how does anyone improve?
But I guess braver readers than I can slog through poor grammar and give helpful feedback to rookie writers, those readers are unsung heroes to me.
Oh, any story that has romance & dark & adventure tag is a red flag as well.
My personal red flag is any description that has every sentence begin with the phrase "What if." Something about that makes yours truly assume that what's being described is proof of Sturgeon's Law.
Also, speaking as someone who took part in a collaborative fanfiction about something else years ago, it might feel really good to deconstruct characters up the wazoo but I speak from experience when I say that it can alienate people who might not want to be hit over the head with a placard just because an author does something you might not agree with.
My biggest trigger? The word "you."
Second person sorta, kinda, worked on those "Choose Your Own Adventure" books of thirty years ago (yes, I am that old). I'd guess that no one here knows me well enough to accurately depict me in fiction. Either write the story as first person, or create a character and write as third person. Second person almost universally sucks.
I know I broke this rule for "FIM Fic Authors Are In Your Bed" but that was the whole point of that story...
As a rule, I assume that the people good enough to get away with writing second person fiction aren't cranking out MLP fanfics.
Stories that cast Spike as the tobacco-chewing, diamond dog slaying, had-enough-of-my-friends'-crap tough-guy who has none of the warmth or sarcastic wit of the canon dragon. Then they have to go and be stone-cold serious about it.
I guess you could unite that under an umbrella of taking any character and turning them into a cold-hearted power-fantasy. It ends up giving us a character that doesn't care about anything, who doesn't show any emotion save for the occasional steely-eyed stare or smirk. Even the grittiest action movie heroes have a kidnapped daughter or so, just to give us something to empathize with.
Plus, if you're going to have a story where Spike rampages through everybody who's "wronged" him, the least you can do is give him cheesy one-liners. Can you imagine Spike the Action Hero without cheesy one-liners? I can't, and I don't wanna.
So there's my numbero uno: cold-hearted power fantasies with not a drop of love.
I am not sure I'm willing to use the term "trigger" or "trigger warning," even ironically, but for me, when I glance at a story and I see, singly or in combination:
poor grammar and spelling, including homophones and spoonerisms created by lazy use of autocorrect. Writing is like any other art. If you want to create something beautiful you have to work at it.
the "Gore" tag (98% of the time it pertains to poorly written material intended to shock, which normally fails to shock and causes a disappointed reader to click that BACK button)
excessive use of exclamation points (you have to do more than that to make your story exciting)
ditto for all capital letters (despite what they told you at 4chan, it is not "cruise control for cool")
self-censorship (If you mean "shit," say "shit." Don't say "and then we did cool sh!t." It makes you sound thirteen years old.)
story exposition/background material/great big knobby infodump in the description (show, don't tell)
"my OC"
ridiculous hyperbole in description ("u will see a mazing adventure like never b4!!!!!111one" o rly?)
saying "u" when you mean "you," ever, under any circumstances
fewer than around 95% likes (sorry guys)
crossovers generally, though I have found a small number amusing
speaking of crossovers, S*nic the H*dgeh*g. Even as a joke. No. Just no.
also Poke*mon. No, I don't care if you think you're being "ironic." Go learn what "ironic" means, then write.
also Homestuck. Also Minecraft. Also--you know what? Just don't. 99% of crossovers are horrible. There are writers who have the skill to make a My Little Pony/Fist of the North Star/nuWho/Scooby Doo Adventures/Dark Souls/Cthulhu Mythos/Star Wars mashup entertaining and accessible and comprehensible to persons not familiar with all the different properties. But not many, and not many of them would ever even consider trying to cobble something together out of so many mismatched tones and contradictory assumptions in the first place.
stories that are a guided tour of someone else's peculiar fetishes (diapers? vore? age regression? I'm sure I don't have to list them all here. Anyway, ewwwwwwwwwww)
stories that are very, very, very obviously and unsubtly someone else's wish-fulfillment fantasy (these tend to combine the Human tag, the Human in Equestria tag, the Adventure tag, the Sex tag, and the Romance tag, and are one of the fastest ways to make me roll my eyes and hit the BACK button, even if diapers and vore don't show up)
did I mention the Gore tag?
bizarre out-of-character behavior that appears to be required by authorial fiat in order to create a contrived and artificial conflict about which to have a story
did I mention Son*c, which fandom is a weirdo magnet exceeding even ponies in its power to induce flights of fancy in people whose flights of fancy I really don't want to read?
stories over around 40,000 words in length. I've climbed too many half-million-word walls-o-text to find nothing justifying the time invested in it.
...then I am unlikely to read any further. My free time is limited. There are a LOT of stories here, and some of them are worth reading. I'll spend my time on those.
Any story labelled mature by an author I've never heard of before.
Any story labelled mature-sex by an author I've never heard of before.
Any story written by someone who I have downvoted at least three other stories of theirs previously without upvoting at least one of their stories.
Any grimdark story.
Any dark story written by someone with less than 200 followers.
Any non-comedy story involving a terribly-named OC (though there are exceptions).
Human-tagged stories that aren't about the Equestria Girls verse.
Human-tagged stories that are about the Equestria Girls verse.
Any story with more than 15,000 words not written by an established author.
Any story with grammatical or spelling errors in the description or the first paragraph of the story.
Any story whose title is not in Title Case.
Stories with the human and sex tags.
Stories whining about some aspect of the show.
Anything with fetish tags in the story description.
Second-person perspective.
Stories with five or more tags that weren't written by Magello.
Stories with the crossover tag.
Anything suggesting that the audience be nice/haters going to hate/ect. in the description.
"Featured on D/M/YY"
Anything with the Anthro tag.
3266379
Amusingly, I actually had six followers before I posted my first story: AcreuBall, Midnight Herald, Blagdaross, Bribri, Abecedarian, and Bookplayer.
3266554
It is a pretty rare combination (or probably would be if the site allowed it), but it can be an amazing story if it's well-done.
Or maybe the author is just like me and nearly unable to not write funny stories. So when I try to write a Sad premise it gets confusing with the Tags.
Anyway, I can't really think of many particular triggers that just reading the description would set off. Bad grammar, obviously, and "long" descriptions that still tell me nothing about the story itself. Prime example is a series of five stories I once found, with well over 100k words each and the combined description of "Rainbow Dash flies west". I still have no real idea what those stories were actually about.
What gets me more often, though, is an author that keeps outright telling me everything that's happening, bluntly. Basically, the exact opposite of 'Show, not tell'. It doesn't even have to be the whole story, and there might be some parts that are actually subtle and deep... But if other parts just read like blunt exposition, I sometimes have a hard time reading through them.
- Any reference of "anon" either on the description or the cover image.
- Anthro tag - I don't even. A far as I can tell this is just a tag for a specific fetish, which I find bizarre (both the fetish and that there's a tag for it).
- "You" - I only read these if they are recommended by or coming from an author I like.
- "x and y have been a couple", "x likes y" in the description - author is outright admitting that no effort is going to go into explaining this ship and expects me to just accept it as part of the character's canon. Might as well write about Twilight Sparkle the pegasus apple farmer with zero setup for all I care. Only exceptions are canon pairings.
3266785
Order from Chaos by TwilightSnarkle
Justice by TwilightSnarkle
Hope by TwilightSnarkle
Fine Steps by TwilightSnarkle
Provided the author is good enough, even a Sonic crossover can be made to work.
As for warning signs, I only really have a few.
- Spelling and grammar mistakes in the synopsis. It's like advertisement or a movie trailer. This is the thing that's going to drag people in to read your story. It should be checked over and over again to make sure it's perfect, and if you can't get this right?
- "This is my first story about my OC Starmelt and how the dimonddogs attacked and he beat them back and won the day -" Again, advertisement. This doesn't intrigue anyone.
- Played out tropes. There's some tropes that are just absolutely beaten to death at this point. One of the ones that really gets me is the HiE trope of "Human first appears, wanders around, rescues a pony from a life threatening threat". This is often mixed with the trope of "CMC wander into the Everfree Forrest and nearly gets themselves killed." These can flat out get me to stop reading.
- "The idiot ball". It's important that the story feels like it's evolving naturally, and not sticking to a predetermined script. If your story requires characters playing soccer with the idiot ball to get the story in the direction you want, rather than it feeling like it's a byproduct of the characters actions and personalities, I'll stop reading.
Other than these few, I'd give just about anything a shot. Doesn't mean that I'll finish it, but I'll give it a try.
Your #3 doesn't really bug me, but otherwise I share your red flags. Additionally:
Dark+Sad, Dark+Tragedy, Sad+Tragedy: If the story's really so awful it needs two of these tags I probably won't care for it.
Anthro: its not my fetish, and otherwise I can't see any point.
Lots of tags: especially contradicting tags like comedy/sad or adventure/slice of life. Either the author doesn't know what kind of story they're trying to tell or they hope to appeal to the maximum number of tastes. Either way not a good sign.
Second person: unless it's a choose your own adventure.
"Anon": I read stories for characterization, not a blank slate to project onto.
"This is my first story": This comes off as trying to preemptively deflect legitimate criticism. That doesn't fill me with desire to read the story.
Any [crossover] where I'm unfamiliar with whatever is being crossed over: I find most authors assume familiarity with the material and don't explain themselves. Pony authors do this too, but at least here assuming familiarly with MLP is reasonable.
I'm an unrepentant furry, and I'm with 3266561 3266879 3267074 that "Anthro" is a red flag (probably my biggest). Whether it's part of the 95% of that tag that's porn or the 5% that's just inexplicable, it's a signal that someone wants to write a pony story but they're squicked by the idea of ponies. Usually, the authors who have a legitimate reason to need hands shift straight to [Human], jumping the uncanny valley.
Also, posting a Prologue without a Chapter 1. Especially if it's within 100 words of the 1000 minimum.
3266379
That was the sentence that sold it for me.
I just started searching through the recent stories until I found one with eight tags. It turns out they're very rare -- seven tags is common, but because a lot of tags are restrictive in what other tags they allow, it's actually difficult to hit upon a combination that allows for eight. I'm not sure nine tags is possible.
Warning signs for me:
Chapter word counts that are 5 digits, which say to me "I suck at being concise!"
Stories which instruct me to "Post Negative Comments Only" ;)
Member since: ___Today's Date____
I'm a huge LGBTQIA ally, but Mane 6 lesbian shipping stories are so ridiculously overdone!
This monster of destruction which breaks almost every rule of good writing: https://www.fimfiction.net/story/268197/the-long-lost-7th-element-super-trampoline-professional-waifu-stealer-the-best-story-on-fimfiction-feature-box-here-i-come-please-vote
3266862
East, and I'll have you know that the Austraeoh series is fucking fantastic and my favorite thing on this site.
3266388 I actually don't mind long descriptions as such, and have never had a problem with yours, mostly because even with a long description, you tend to increase the mystery or suspense over what's coming in the actual story. And sometimes a long description is very beneficial for adding info about a collection of short stories, such as with CiG's pony short collection.
The kind of story descriptions I'm referring to are like the worst movie trailers I've seen in theaters: They give us 2-5 minutes of a comprehensive summary of the movie, with all of the pertinent details start to finish, effectively destroying my will to bother seeing something that inevitably just fills in the empty spaces.
For me, one of the most critical aspects of a good story is the discovery that I'm allowed by the author, after they've hooked me with just enough on the story's front page.
3267189
While on the topic of lesbian horses, though almost all of my favorite ship fics are lesbian (not surprising giving the setting) there is a point where my suspension of disbelief breaks if it turns out 95% of the population is gay simply because it means Equestria will collapse and become a desolate wasteland within a few generations because of lack of offspring. That's turned me off of several fics. Only gets worse when the author goes out of his way to point it out by introducing magical lesbian babies or something, because at that point why even have different genders.
Let's see...
- Blatant spelling/grammar errors
- Fad of the week
- LOHAV/Displaced, because this is like fad of the year and its still going and just ugh ugh ugh
- Stories that feature pony x human sex
- Anything second person
- Anything with Anon in it in any fashion
- Self-inserts
- Overly increased grimdarkness like any story that's about mass zombie/alien/whatever outbreaks
And I am sure there are way more, but...generally, the only real hard rule is 'If I read a page of this, is the prose competent?' for 'Is this good/bad?'
3267189
That may be, but the fact remains that it's a series that's currently over two million words long, in total (and still not finished, apparently) with a description that tells me absolutely nothing about why I, as a potential new reader who's going to have to start way back at the beginning, should invest the considerable amount of time and effort that will be required to get through all of that.
3266815
Some of the heavy bloggers are big exceptions here. I wouldn't be surprised if TheJediMasterEd was closer to 100 than 50 followers before posting his first story.
As for things that will generally have me hitting the "Eject!" button immediately:
» The title and/or description are riddled with blatant and egregious spelling/grammar errors
» The story is about an OC coming to Ponyville, and the author's name is the same as the OC
» The comments area is a graveyard of deletions
» Hunger Games crossovers
» Pokemon crossovers
» Sonic the Hedgehog crossovers – especially ones where the author is bringing their Sonic the Hedgehog OC into the MLP universe.
» ...in fact, let's just say crossovers in general, especially ones where the author just assumes everyone is familiar with the source material and doesn't bother to explain anything. (You can usually tell this as soon as the first crossed-over character shows up; if the author just drops them right into the scene without any description of who they are, what they look like, or how the other characters in the story already know their name, that's a pretty sure indicator that if you keep reading. you're gonna have a bad time.)
troll.me/images2/bad-time/youre-gonna-have-a-bad-time.jpg
Now, that being said, I have read a couple of crossovers which were done well, but they generally worked because the author (a) used a crossover which hadn't already been done to death, and (b) did not assume everyone already knew the source material, and actually took the time to properly introduce the crossed-over concepts and characters so the reader would at least have some chance of understanding what was going on.
» Anything written in 2nd person. Unless it's a role-playing game or a "choose your own adventure" book, this is just lazy writing by someone who can't be bothered to come up with a compelling original character as their protagonist.
» "This is a comment-driven story." Sorry, but The X-Files and the Battlestar Galactica reboot long ago cured me of getting involved in stories written by committee where even the author(s) have no idea where the hell they're going with any of it.
» Stories where every chapter is less than 500 words. They're called "chapters", not "scene breaks."
» Mentions of suicide in the story description, especially if accompanied by the "dark" or "gore" tags. Generally, this means it's either a troll-fic, or a cheap attempt to go for "teh feelz!" without actually having to bother with, y'know, having to actually write realistic feelings or emotions.
» Pretty much 99.9% of anything with the "Random" tag on it. "Random" nearly always means either "'stupid humor' that's only funny when you're drunk, high, or sleep-deprived", or "I'm too lazy to and/or have no idea how to actually write a coherent narrative, so I'm just gonna throw as much crap against the wall as I can and hope some of it sticks."