Thoughts while reading

[macklingirl]

Did you ever have the feeling of betrayal while reading a Pros-story? I mean the feeling you have when you realise that the summary of the very long story has unfortunately been the best part of the story.

The story has more than 43000 words and the summary says "A man from Bodie's past seeks revenge, he wants Bodie dead but first he wants him to suffer like he as. Can CI5 save him before John Morgan get his wish and kills him",  so I thought "Wonderful. That could be a good h/c Bodie story." And I wanted to know why this John Morgan wants to kill Bodie. So I started reading.

But after the second chapter I had to stop for a while. I couldn't find out if the author is a native speaker or not, but I really, really wish she would have had a beta reader for her story. It seems as if the whole story was translated via google translator. There are never-ending sentences without any comma, some seem like three sentences in one. And there are lots and lots of missing letters and sometimes, for me, the whole sentence doesn't make sense.

And then I've read the reviews and they all say "Wow, what a great story." or "Very well written" and so on. So I think, maybe it is only me who has the problems and maybe it is because I'm not a native speaker. Or am I too spoiled by our authors? I mean, we have really very good authors writing the Big Bang stories or stories for the DIALJ challenges.

I'm curious how the story will end (at the moment Bodie is alive and six feet under in a coffin), but I must admit I'm happy when I reach the end and can read something better written.

For all who are interested, the link is under the cut.


For all who are interested: R-for-Revenge

Comments

[gilda-elise.livejournal.com]

I don't read on FF.net, partly because of its reputation for stories like you mentioned, but also, and this may have been cleared up, because there was talk of the site having issues with privacy and other matters relating to software.

Anyway, yes, I've certainly run into stories like this, where you think it's going to be great and then turns out to not be. At this point, I pretty much stay with writers whose work I know is good. That may keep me from reading some great stories by new writers, at least for a time, but eventually I tend to hear about what's good and what's bad from other readers. Like now. :-) Because you can't really go by comments because I've read some glowing comments for some not very good stories. I happens all the time. I don't know if the readers just aren't aware of works by better writers, or if they just don't notice the problems. (!)

[macklingirl.livejournal.com]

Oh, I didn't know about the problems with FF.net. I'm only a reader there and didn't have an account.

I stumbled over this story because I try to save as much Pros-Fanfiction as possible. And so I saved the FF.net stories and I started reading because the summary was interesting. I never read the comments before I start reading a story. That would affect my openness to the story. I've read some of this comments just before I made this post because I thought that maybe some others thought the same.

[tinturtle]

I try to save as much Pros-Fanfiction as possible.

Hooray!