Consistency in lengths of chapters is good though. Some readers get annoyed if they're used to chapters of say 3000 words and you post one of 1500 words instead. Personally, I think it's more important that a chapter has a sensible beginning and ending than just making it longer for the sake of reaching a certain length. And, Jen, I feel your pain about seeing that you have x amount of people who have "favorite'd" your story or asked for an alert and then you get a tenth of that number in reviews--if you're lucky. It can be disheartening.

Man. KayGreg. That's gotta be one of my favourite fics on earth - it's so unbelievably bad it's just... words cannot explain my utterly perverse love for that fic. The author should probably be taken out and shot at some point (how much discrimination can one fic hold?), but it's one of those fics so brilliantly horrific that it doesn't even need an MST. Love. I'm twisted. I know.

Huge chapters do tend to annoy me, I'm an old fuddy duddy & its tough to read that length some time without some type of break. What annoys me even more are folks with pretty looking ljs that have tiny, tiny fonts in weird pale colors on a pale background & no contrast & I'm sorry, I have enough problems with my eye sight, I ain't wasting my time (seriously folks, there are authors I avoid because of this issue). Re the alert system, it doesn't mean the person has read the fic. I've got alerts set for folks so I can see what they are writing - sometimes the fic summary catches my attention, sometimes it doesn't. With all the fic I get alerts for (though the rss system on lj is a godsend) I read a tiny fraction of the House fic out there (cough:too busy reading John/Rodney slash:cough), but that doesn't mean I don't want to see an overview of what's being written. I tend to have pretty eclectic tastes & I'll maybe catch one fic by an author because the summary entices me & then just want to keep them on my radar.

If that's good in a chapter, I don't really care about legnth. The BigBang challenges have a minimum requirement of 40,000 words per fic, and yes I've seen some that post essentially one chapt of that length. it can be tough going, but a good fic will keep you engaged (& you can always copy the file into word & page break it if necessary).

I think my brain had a bleed from the KayGreg thing. The Wilson with eyeliner thing exacerbated the bleed considerably. God, the KayGreg thing was so bad, it was awesome. (Was it for real, though? Not like, some troll or something? It almost seemed TOO perfectly horrible, if you know what I mean.) To completely change the subject: You know really ticks me the hell off in a fic? Enough to make me hit the back button, definitely: when a writer turns a dialogue tag into a sentence fragment. Example: "Blah blah blah." He said. arrrgh my GOD that annoys the hell out of me. Why do people do this? Have these people ever read a book? Because I've never come across a book that uses that kind of technique, if you could even call it a technique. Epithets, too. They have a point and a purpose, but people who use them in fics usually don't know how to use them properly. House wouldn't think of Wilson as "the oncologist" or "the younger man" any more than Wilson would think of his best friend as "the diagnostician", especially if they're, ya know, having sex. "Oh my god, the oncologist really turns me on" or "Oh christ, I love it when the older man goes down on me". WHUT.

I actually didn't know that "blah blah blah" He said. was improper grammar, I was never taught that in school

Thanks Ticcy misusing "the diagnostician" or "the oncologist" is a real irritant for me in a story. It's like the bad itch you can't scratch. I somehow always think of them as House and Wilson or in the right circumstances James and Greg. The baby names that are used sometimes are a complete mistake for me. I don't remember the fic, actually I've made a conscious effort not to but the one that made me back out and never return to the story was when Wilson called House "Greggy". This wasn't even in private. The writer had him doing it in a meeting. Very bad call.

Dru, thank you! Oh, and the blonde! Chase is guy, you know. That ones worse than wombat for me. :wink:

The names used for the characters in a story are something I use an an indicator of how the writer sees the characters. In a story where they are portrayed as children it might be acceptable to use more childlike names but House and Wilson are both adults and in a story where they are portrayed that way the use of childlike names does not fit except possibly in a private setting. Even then though in a lot of stories it sets a very false tone.

For me, even worse than: "Blah blah blah." He said. is: "Blah blah blah," she blinked in surprise. "Blinked" is not a speech tag! (Unless you can blink in morse code. Which would be awesome. ) The correct form for those two examples are: "Blah blah blah," he said. "Blah blah blah." She blinked in surprise.

Blonde doesn't have an E on it? Crap, now I feel like a bad!fic writer *headdesks*

Well I already fixed it in my chapters, but when you just hear all these pet peeves of people and you find that you've done them on accident (even if you're more than willing to go back and fix it) it always tends to leave somebody with a worried sense. Or at least it does in me. But I worry easily. Really easily. See, any fan-brat at the pit can tell me "OMG ur story rox! Plz write more!" But there are some people I actually really look to when it comes to pleasing, people that I know aren't fanbrats, and when I start hearing of mistakes I made that annoys any non-fan-brat fanfic reader, I worry. I just want to make sure what I put out there isn't crap and any minor infraction on that throws me. But then again, like I said, I'm just a natural worry wart.