Thinky- what makes fic well written?

[slashxmistress]

How do you decide that a fic is "well-written"?

I see this all the time in seek comms and elsewhere- asking for "well-written" fics and well - that just seems so generic and unspecific to me. (and actually kind of pretentious too tbqh)

Is it 'well-written' because you like it? If you don't like it does that make it not well -written?

What quantifies something as well- written? Good grammar? no typos? Long, pretentious, character studies?

I judge a fic by if I enjoy it , if it makes me think , or feel (and yes horny is a feeling :P if it's hot that totally counts), but some of my very, very favorites are probably not that "well-written" in the English major kind of way. Does that matter? Not to me.

Comments

[redorchids.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with you on the well-written/well-edited distinction. :-) Well-written is in the execution of the story, not the amount of typos. Syntax plays a part for "well-written" for me, though, because syntax affects the story flow in a whole other way. Like, I read this one fic that was pretty made up of short sentences piled on top of each other.

Illustration of this: "Brendon walked on a road. There was a cat on the road. "Hi, kitty," said Brendon. The cat purred. Brendon petted the cat. The cat walked away. Brendon continued to walk on the road. His shoes were white." (And so on and on and on for five pages without ANYTHING interesting happening.)

That's a good example of badly-written for me. And there were NO grammar mistakes or typos in that one.