I guess you‘ve noticed that the quality of asianfanfics‘s stories have been heading downhill for some time now. I myself only read SHINee, usually Jonghyun, and DBSK, usually Jaejoong, (edit--- mostly only EXO now) centered fiction, but it doesn‘t take a genius to outline some basic mistakes most writers make. Let‘s go over them, shall we? (have in mind that I am not going over grammar or spelling, or anything like that. English isn’t my first language to begin with, so I am most certainly not going anywhere near the hell called English grammar).

So, here' it is.

LIST OF MOST FREQUENT MISTAKES:

1. The absence of a plot line.

Basically, this means that before you write a story, you have to know what it’s going to be about. Unfortunately, many fanfic writers choose to ignore this, thinking that they’ll just “go with the flow”. That usually means a fic made of filer chapters entirely. This brings us to another problem:

2. A massive number of filler-chapters.

When used in small amounts and far in between, filler chapters can be a fun twist to enlighten a story and give its readers a break. But many fiction writers abuse filer chapters frequently, and then the stories turn into a flow of meaningless dialogue and fan-service. The plot gets left behind, and the readers find themselves drowned in a lake of endless chapters with no ending in prospect.

3. Not ending the story when it has to end.

I know that for most writers their stories are like babies to them. But while you don’t kill your babies when they grow up, you must end your story when the time comes. If you have reached your goal, if the hero of your story has done what he or she was supposed to do, then that’s it. The story has to end. If you really want to write more, make a sequel, that is an entirely new story (new goal, new plot line) featuring the same character/s.

4. Trashy characterization.

Ah, don’t even get me started here. After years of fan fiction reading experience (I went from anime to k-pop and HP fiction), I can honesty say most fan fic writers at characterizing people. Clichés and empty characters rule the fan fiction world. I mean, how many stories you’ve read where Taemin doesn’t act like a whiny chocolate-milk-obsessed six-years-old (or more lately- a -perived playboy?)?

Typically, poor characterization comes with a bunch of other problems: unrealistic dialogues, unmasculine male characters, and many more…

5. All the other mistakes

While the four points listed above makes the story fall below the line of quality, not using those things does not ensure you that the reader will enjoy your story to the fullest. A lot more mistakes are lurking out there in the world of writing, and it's up to you and only you to avoid them. This list by no means is complete. There are lots more stuff that takes away from a good story, and I am going to highlight some of these things in future chapters. Now, the upcoming chapters will cover topics, such as plotting(basic plotting, the middle writing, ending, etc), characterization (clichés, Mary-Sues, masculine males, ect), dialogues (emotions, expressions, etc) and some other areas.

Have in mind, that this is just a basic highlight of the most common mistakes.

Feel free to leave questions and suggestions.