To expand on the deal breaker concept: The one that can kill a fic for me has to do with conversation and the lack of a thesaurus...Too often fics, especially ones written in the present tense, use the following phrasing, Dean says, ".." Sam says, ".." Dean says, ".." Sam says, ".." over and over. That word, 'says', kills me in a fic.
That is so interesting because I know that most of us who were trained to write in a college setting were taught to use only says or said, depending on tense. LOL The idea is that says is a word that your eye will just skip over that doesn't stick out or detract from dialogue.
I find myself endorsing the concept; I can't remember the last time I wrote anything other than says for dialogue attribution, and yet most of the published fic I read does use a variety of attribution tags.
Interesting. To clarify, I guess for me 'says' irritates me because I convert a lot of fics to audio (found a neat program called Ghost Reader). It's a little flat, not the same as a real live person reading it, but it lets me listen to fic during my hour long drive to work. Words that are used over and over jump right out at you when you can hear it all! For some reason 'said' doesn't seem to bother me!
I think you're right that it's a word your eye will skip over and I never noticed in in the fics even after rereading them. It was only once it became audio that I noticed.
I think it makes a difference whether the substitute for "says" adds any new information, or is only the writer's desperate attempt to add "elegant variation."
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I find myself endorsing the concept; I can't remember the last time I wrote anything other than says for dialogue attribution, and yet most of the published fic I read does use a variety of attribution tags.
I wonder how other people feel about this.
I might make a top level post about this.
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I think you're right that it's a word your eye will skip over and I never noticed in in the fics even after rereading them. It was only once it became audio that I noticed.
"Shut Up," He Explained
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That makes a lot of sense.
I haven't really gotten into the whole podfic craze so I have no idea how I'd react to the same fic in written and verbal format.