I'm of two minds on the experience question. Individual works should stand on their own, but expectations aren't so high with a newbie. If Stephen King produced something full of typos and grammatical errors and glaring mistakes, I'd think he'd handed over his first draft and his editor was out on strike and the typesetters were all blind, though I might also wonder if he was backsliding on the recreational substances issue. A new person would get a bit more forgiveness from me, especially if their plot or characterization showed the sparks of greatness.

But assuming critics center their comments on the work, not the author, I think even the most delicate flower of a writer *should* be able to take being told that their Spike voice is off or they need to work on their grammar.

Ah, but they're not. And they don't agree (a) that they should be able to; (b) that you have the right to say so; (c) that their Spike voice is off; or (d) that their grammar is important.

Do you think readers should find out how much someone has published before giving negative feedback

Hmm. I think that I can sometimes tell from the care invested in a story whether a writer is receptive to critical comments. But usually I don't get picky in feedback except in a general way. That said, I've been known to make semi-critical comments on my blog or recs pages from time to time.

In the most purist sense, I don't think it's incumbent on the reader to know whether a writer is experienced or not. The conflict arises from the two separate ... paradigms, I guess, at work in ficdom.

The first is the paradigm of Writing, where the focus is on quality and workmanship. Writers use fic as practice ground, as ways to develop their skills and their techniques. Readers who operate within this paradigm look at the stories from that perspective, and respond to quality of technique and prose, as well as the actual content of the story.

The second paradigm is that of Community. The focus is on friendships and shared experiences and interests. People write for each other, and read each other's work and give encouraging feedback. Someone says, "I want to read a Spike/Riley PWP," and her friend writes her one.

There's certainly a lot of overlap between these two perspectives (Venn diagrams, anyone?) -- the Buffista fic community is an excellent example of both. But there are people for whom the second perspective is certainly primary: they don't care if the pov slips in the second chapter or if there's no way in hell Spike would ever sleep with Riley. And if you come all Writerly on them, they're going to react poorly.

Just a few thoughts on the issue. All IMHO, and YBMV.

And they don't agree (a) that they should be able to; (b) that you have the right to say so; (c) that their Spike voice is off; or (d) that their grammar is important.

"Why are you taking this so seriously? It's only fanfic."

Consuela's right, there are too many people who don't give a damn about running their stories through a spell checker. And there's someone on livejournal (don't remember who) that made the claim that for some people puncuation, etc was so difficult that these writers would have to look up the rules every time and this would negate the fun of writing. Also that spell check often offers a variety of words for certain mispellings and that's asking too much.

I have no idea if that entry was supposed to be sarcastic. Because hello! I have terrible puncuation and spelling. Hell there are times when spell check can't even figure out what word I'm trying to spell but I work at it. I'm sure when Elena and Fay and the others first saw my stories they tore their hair out "My god how can she be this bad." But hell I learned.

I don't get it this non spell check "it's too hard some of the words are the same" or if it looks like the person wrote the story, ran it through spell and grammar check once and then posted it.

I mean, your name is now associated with your stories. People know you for what you write. Throw out the names of writers--fic or pro and what do you think of? This is what these writers are now being known for---not caring enough to take time on their writing.

And if they don't care to take that time to treat it seriously then I don't either.

Wrod, Dana.

OTOH, I've rarely had that response to anything I say, because I've gotten pretty good at spotting the "written in chem lab" stories from the first three lines.

Generally anything with "please SEND FEdBack!" in the subject line is a dead giveaway.

I don't get it this non spell check "it's too hard some of the words are the same" or if it looks like the person wrote the story, ran it through spell and grammar check once and then posted it.

I was always of hte opinion that you write because you love words. If you just want to have a record of a really cool daydream, fair enough, but the level of chutzpah in assuming others are eager to read a transcript of your daydreams is mindboggling.

Ah, the homonym/other-nym giveaway of foolish trust in the spellchecker. I love pointing out to people who have had something professionally produced that there's a glaring error that a human being would have caught as opposed to the computer.

Spell-check is wonderful for catching typos, such as "adn" for "and" or "teh" for "the," which are all too common for me. It's things such as "and" when I meant to type "an" that a beta-reader comes in handy.

In one of my anime fandoms, there's a writer who is notorious for flipping out whenever she gets anything resembling negative criticism. Even worse, she farms out her stories to a variety of editors, then posts them with none of the corrections made. She now only posts her stories to her private mailing list, and has furthermore taken all of her stories off of ff.net. She's been trying to get them taken out of another archive, but she'd made the mistake of flaming the archivist who is leaving the stories up out of spite. Good times, good times...

(BTW, this is the writer whose "challenge" message prompted the creation of the unhappyendings list.)

Ah! That writer. Snerk.

OTOH, I've rarely had that response to anything I say, because I've gotten pretty good at spotting the "written in chem lab" stories from the first three lines.

FWIW, my series that popped up at Te's recs blog was written in the WC in a notepad.

I wrote the first part of "Career Change" plus a lot of smut in my D&D game. Yes, I eventually dropped that game, since it wasn't much of a diversion.

my series that popped up at Te's recs blog was written in the WC in a notepad.

Ah, but I expect you also edited it and revised it and treated it as something worthy of your time.

And yes, I'm snarking a bit. For every sixteen crappy "written in chem lab" stories, there's one tossed-off piece of fluff that's lovely. However those lovely ones tend to come from the hand of writers who take writing seriously, and their skill and talent show through even on sudden!fic.

Maayan's newest story would be a case in point. No one questions her commitment to her writing, and that skill, developed over years of practice, is apparent in 16K of something that she wrote very very quickly and revised only a little.