Cheryl Dyson

Fic preference survey.

 I’ve seen a few posts here and there over the past few months and it makes me wonder how nitpicky some of you readers are.  What do you love and hate when reading fics?  Here are three examples that have stuck with me and my take on them.

 One reader hates all mention of the boys’ eye color.  Personally, I never get tired of that.  Yeah, sometimes it can be taken too far, but I really don’t mind Harry’s eyes being compared to emeralds, leaves, absinthe, and green flame, and Draco’s to slate, mercury, silver-coins, and storm-clouds.  Since I’m partial to them drowning in each other’s eyes, I haven’t changed my tendencies even though it bothers some people.

 Fonts and spacing.  I’m a bit obsessed with Times New Roman.  Gimme some serifs, baby.  One of my lovely readers has a bloody fit when I don’t use Arial.  If I happen to use Arial, it’s because LJ had taken my lovely Times New Roman and converted it without my permission.  I never pay much attention to font when I’m reading unless it’s too small or the fic is in red type on a black background or something equally impossible to read.  That doesn’t stop me, of course.  I’ll either view the journal in “my style” or I’ll copy and paste the fic into a Word doc.  Not sure how big a deal font is, but I do admit to getting notifications from fanfiction.net of a new chapter and immediately opening the author’s LJ just because I like the way the fic looks better on LJ than ff.net.

 Spacing and indents.  I recently saw someone rant about indentation.  I recently started writing a fic using no indents and double-spacing between paragraphs.  I still find myself hitting that tab key, however, because it’s become second-nature.  Most of the time converting the fic to HTML deletes the tabs, anyway, so I figure it’s probably easier to do away with them.  Do indents matter?

 There aren’t many things that annoy me when I read.  Lack of beta can be annoying because even a simple misspelling can jar you out of a great scene.  Other than that it all boils down to characterization, plot, and plain old ability.  You guys have any nitpicks?

 Oh and don’t forget: