Why do people have the constant need to describe how people look exactly? Like paragraphs worth of stuff only on what 3 girls are wearing. Totally breaks the immersion if I'm reading and the MC is meting love interest #54986312 and then just she was wearing Jupiter brown skirt which clashed with her blue skin, but offset her nice deep abyss colored hair. Shit is not cool guys.

 

Depends on the fic or POV. If it's a girl, I could understand her paying attention to such things, but not really when it comes to the average guy, wizard or not.

 

yeah but story gets to the point where MC and his/her new friend go to for example to the new school and his/her new friend introduces his/her other friend. So they meet three new girls and a guy then 4 paragraphs of description of what they are wearing. Not any way relevant to the plot.

 

Muh word count.

 

I think it's the author not taking into account what is and isn't relevant to the plot. Such fics generally aren't limited to describing just people, but also places, and a lot of other things in way too much detail which is unnecessary.

 

Indeed. That's why I hated Lotr no action just places,places,places, some people, some bad voodoo,places....


EDIT:

So I had to share this:

First paragraph:

Spoiler

"( wow, we verily beat kaguya and now this dumb ass, wanna be GOD wants to rule the world with a iron fist)", were the thoughts of our blonde hero, a.k.a Naruto Uzumaki. "(Like for real sasuke, your just doing this because you knows I'm exhausted after I went to war before you, none stop vs. zombies, zetsus, 7 tailed beast, obito, ten-tails, madara, and kaguya and now you want to fight!)" , Naruto said screaming in his own "(Well the good thing is I'm doing this for my good.)" keeping a close eye on his suppose brother/friend.

why?

 

Hahaha, ok.

 

I find it extremely distracting when there are too many places (and sometimes too many people) in a story. With every new name, it gets harder and harder to remember them all, and I end up losing the track of the plot, especially when all those names don't really add anything to the plot.

EDIT: I am especially referring to LOTR style names here, ones that are hard to remember, hard to pronounce, very similar to each other.

 

It has it's place. For example you might have a guy admiring a girls figure, or you might have someone who is sophisticated and they might describe the expensive Italian suit their wearing.

But, yea, it has to be relevant.

 

On the bright side, if you took all the unneeded commas out of that paragraph, you could fashion them into a noose to put the whole thing out of its misery.

 

Why do I insist on reading stories written by people who would write things like this. I know it's just going to end in pain.

All he had to do was write "I will do as you ask and consider you as an unofficial advisor".

EDIT: Should have just quit while I was ahead...

 

You mean you don't remember that Anórien, which lies on the banks of the Anduin, was gifted to Anárion who originally came from Andúnië? For shame!


As a thing, why do some writers use things other than normal quotation marks? And I don't mean people doing stuff like „this.” (which is still annoying as an English speaker but I'm aware it's standard in many languages).

I mean when people use -this.- to indicate speech. I've also seen +this.+ and even =this.=

Just why?

 

Ok - is stupid but I can see people using it. They're wrong, but all the same...

But + and = ? What the fuck?

 

I like to think that I'm open-minded enough not to automatically click out of a story for one bad thing, but this one's almost an auto-fail. Just, why? Why do some people think this is a good idea.

"Normal speech."

"Hey look I'm speaking French now."

§HSSSS HSSSSSSS I'm a SNNNAAAAAAAAAAKE.§

⌲ Why do ghosts have their own language? I don't know. But it's pretty boooo-ring.⌲ ⌲ Shut up, Fred, that's not funny. ⌲
✡Hi, I'm Anthony Goldstein ✡

"Neville, what kind of potion did you say that was, again?"
⚥ Don't worry about it, Harry. Just try it. ⚥

 

That reminds me, unnecessary SSSSs while speaking Parseltongue in English, like for instance Harry speaking in Parseltongue, but not realizing it. How do you not realize all those unnecessary hisses?

 

I think it's a "special snowflake/I just discovered the power of Character Map" phase.

Still, I do find it useful to separate different kinds of speech using special characters:

 

Try reading the Wheel of Time series.

Looool! I see what you did there. :mrgreen:

 

I think I prefer it to just be italicized.

 

Personally I prefer the translation convention where anything understood by the POV character is in straight English and anything not understood is either described or, if you can do the translation without completely butchering it, in the actual language.

But it should still stay in normal speech marks. There are two exceptions to this.

"Dᴇᴀᴛʜ ᴄᴀɴ sᴘᴇᴀᴋ ɪɴ sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘs."
"Parseltongue can be in italics as it looks more sinuous."

Too few HP fics use sᴍᴀʟʟ ᴄᴀᴘs.

 

You forgot the obligatory (AN: Like character X in movie Y) being thrown in each paragraph.