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

[bluejbird.livejournal.com]

I know you've had a zillion comments on this already but I thought I'd wade in with my opinion. Well-written to me simply means that the story sucks me in, that I get lost in the story, that I feel what the characters are feeling. While I prefer not to have to read typos and whatnot, that doesn't decide whether a story is well-written or not, to me at least. I guess I take 'written' to mean content, rather than technical aspects of writing (spelling, grammar etc).

Personally, I hate when people ask for 'well-written' fic recs, or if they say 'these are the only well-written fics I've read in x fandom' because it's so subjective- what you consider well-written I may not and vice versa.

I'm not sure if that makes sense- it's late here, but I thought it was interesting so many people seemed to focus on technical errors stopping something from being well-written and thought I'd ramble about my completely differing opinion. :)