2) 'You made the following typos:...'

PROS: hey, it's always good to repair some glitches like this.
CONS: leaves the author feeling insecure.  He just got mailed
     an e-mail telling him everything he did wrong, but there
     was no feedback at all on what was being done right.  Leaves
     a guy feeling... well... insecure, ya know? n.n;

Actually, as far as I'm concerned, this type of C&C is useless to me.  
Typos, minor grammer problems, etc. get missed even in bestselling 
novels and stuff.  Carefull proofreading can get rid of a lot of this, 
but most often, the stories that come up on the ML are in some form of 
"rough draft" stage anyway.

The only kind of C&C I'm interested in (positive or negative) besides 
your #1 category (everyone likes that :)  ), is questions of style and 
characterisation.  For example, do the characters work?  Do they hold 
your interest, or do they annoy you (regardless of whether or not you 
see them as IC), does the plot seem to be moving?  Is the pacing done 
correctly to give the fic the kind of feel it needs? etc. etc.  

I wrote a very lengthy fanfic based on the Street Fighter video game, 
which is very anime-like in syle, before I heard of this ML (blatant 
plug, come check it out at http://geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/1958/  
!!) and I got, over time, a pretty good group of internet editors who 
commented on the chapters as they came out.  I got lots of C&C of the #1 
variety :)!, and I got a lot of people who said it didn't follow the 
anime close enough (I didn't even see it until I was about 3/4 through 
with my fic anyway) and I got lots of people saying that my characters 
didn't exactly fit with their preconcieved notions of how the characters 
should be.  I also got a few consistency mistakes pointed out to me, and 
that about sums up the C&C.

Through all this noise, I got very little of the kind of C&C I really 
wanted.  For example, one guy (my best editor) pointed out that the 
sentence length and use of a few repetitive words screwed up the pacing 
in what was supposed to be one of the more exciting scenes.  People who 
are really serious about writing good fics want this kind of C&C most.  
Pointing out typos etc. don't help me much at all.

Anyway, enough ranting, I guess.




Joshua Dyal
j-dyal@geocities.com
http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Arcade/1958/


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