The Stats to the Fanfic Quiz

[catscradle]

Okay - first off - folks, the quiz was meant to be a harmless humorous little thing. I thought by the phrasing of the questions and answers that it was obvious. Guess not. I've seen a lot of LJs that are complaining how subjective the test was. Uh, yeah. The quiz was based on my own personal preferences - and since I posted it in my own little LJ to friends with like-minded thoughts on fanfic and/or a sense of humor, I thought it would be okay (and for the record, everyone on my LJ list of friends were great about it and took for what it was worth - thanks guys *smooooch* =)) So for the rest of you, can we take things a little less seriously, maybe?

Second - no, no one got a perfect score because of the way I set the quiz. My error. Not the end of the world, folks. So omit the 5th question if you got it wrong - and move on with life.




1. The material from the fandom that comes solely from the main source is called?

Boring - 0
Canon - 41 (correct)
Fanon - 3
The Bible - 1
Cindy - 0

2. When writing fan fiction, one should always . . .

Include a disclaimer - 43 (correct)
Include several paragraphs of notes explaining the text in the header... - 0
include every character and favorite sexual position in the header... - 1
include long pointless expedition - 1

3. When writing a slash sex scene, one should always remember. . .

that they will burn in hell - 0
it goes against canon, stop in the name of heterosexuality! - 0
the lube - 36 (correct)
the laws of aerodynamics (0 points) 9

(note: I can see where people would answer the laws of aerodynmics here - my error, sorry)

4. Material that is not part of the canon but has worked it's way into the mainstream writing is called:

Huh? - 0
What God intended - 2
Trash - 0
Fanon - 43 (correct)

5. To denote the thoughts of a character, the only acceptable method is:

Disqualified Question

Asterisks 4
Italics 29
Forward slashes 12
squiggly lines of various sorts 0

6. When writing fanfic, characters should always be written . . .

as caricatures of the canon - 2
as close to the fanon as you can get - 0
as in character to the canon as you can get - 32 (correct)
with love or not at all. - 11

Note: It is my personal opinion that when writing fanfic, as a fan of the show and characters, it makes sense that the writer would want to get as close to the canon characterizations as they can, or what's the point of writing fanfic - write original fiction instead. If I can sub any name I want to Heero or Lestat or Mulder, what's the point of using them at all? This is my opinion, of course - but it's also my quiz.

7. In technical writing aspects, one should be mindful of:

Point of view of the narration - 1
Verb tense (past, present, future)- 1
What person their fic is written in - 0
Grammar, spelling and punctuation - 0
all of the above - 43 (correct)

8. When using descriptive terms for characters. . .

find a physical trait that best describes them and pepper it through the story - 5
refrain from over using physical traits and stick to pronouns and character names. - 38 (correct)
refer to them only by ethnicity - 0
refer to them as "my bitch" - 2

Note: peppering physical traits throughout a fic as descriptive terms for a character is plain bad writing. The braided boy (don't get me started here), the blond boy, the violet eyed boy, the elvish looking boy, the spandex wearing boy, et cetera - it's bad - just plain bad.

9. For Readers: When you choose to reply to a fic remember to . . .

tell the authors to write a hundred more just like it. - 2
tell the author that you hate the pairing in the fic and don\'t do it again. - 0
be courteous - 42 (correct)
flame baby, flame! - 1

Note: People who write the author either telling them to write a hundred more just like it or to never write that pairing again, both need to be shot. Thanks to the 42 that understand that.

10. Writing Fanfic should be . . .

The only thing in life worth while. - 5
banned - 0
punishable by death - 0
what all up standing nationalists are engaged in. - 1
a fun hobby. 39 (correct)

Note: I understand that fanfic is important to some and it might very well be the only thing in life worthwhile to them. I guess that surpasses things like friendship and family and not tossing off real life obligations to get the fanfic fix 24/7 ;) Okay, I know some answered the question tongue-in-cheek here - I'm hoping that the majority of the people didn't take the questions so seriously. =)

Comments

Re: Folks shouldn't take this so seriously

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Heh. Arbitrary profs suck. I had a creative writing class in college called Fiction and Nonfiction, where the nonfiction was, well, fictional, and the only kind of story the teacher liked was what I like to call painful realism -- as in dysfunctional families set in claustrophobic American cul de sacs, heavy on the metaphor. There are some geniuses working in this genre, no doubt, but I write escapist crap *ahem* science fiction, so you can imagine how well we got along.

To make it worse, the class was "holistically graded", meaning the only criteria on which your grades were based was that the teacher overall felt you deserved a fill-in-the-blank. Supposedly this was supposed to encourage us to take risks with our stories, god knows why since she hated when we did so. I got a B -- not the end of the world, you may think, but by far the lowest grade I'd ever recieved in my major. And how do you argue with that? How do you go in and insist you deserved at least a holistic B+?

However I got a tiny bit of revenge at least. I wrote a kid's story called The Art Lesson about a kid showing up a stubbornly realist teacher, and the rest of the class really liked it. :) And I bitched all over the student evaluations about truth in advertising. The next year that class was called "Fiction and Personal Narrative."

Mer