A kind friend who apparently Has Issues and enjoys watching my I.Q. drop has been sharing a few excerpts from stories with me. Also, I gathered a couple of ghastly entries of my own during my recent and incredibly brief foray unaccompanied into fandom's archives.

He knew every spot in Daniel's mouth - especially that spot by the left incisor that made him moan."

Actually, that one makes me kind of jealous. None of my teeth have their own erogenous zones.

"The voice of the hated potions master was up and above the three Gryffindors who broke from each other like under the attack of something wild."

When did The Hepster start writing Harry Potter fiction?

Harry had decided that he needed to prove to people that he didn’t care, that he could be risqué and down with the kids, not just another messiah.

Ummm…yeah.

Who writes like that? Who thinks like that?

And, saving the best of the worst for last:

"…when the first fist of diarrhea hit him...."

That's a second cousin to the Fist of Death, which I feel approaching even now.

I'd be crying, but my despair is too deep.

My current sig line says, "[I wonder] about people who insist on being known as writers, but refuse to actually learn how to write." (Thank you, Christy)

I may keep it forever.

What I think we need is to coin a new word for those people who insist upon churning out and sharing reams and reams of this kind of stuff. Calling them "writers" or "authors" is an insult to people who can actually write.

We should call them, 'scribblers.'

That's what they're doing. Scribbling something down and shoving it out for public consumption with careless unconcern for the tens of millions of brain cells that will just give up and die when those words hit them.

I’m not even going to apologize for being rude when I say that I sure hope these folks are diddling themselves as they write, because if they aren't personally getting a thrill out of their stories, I can't think of any reason for them to continue to go to the trouble of writing that stuff down.

Of course, with the really bad train wreck writing, like the examples quotes above, there’s the amusement value of, Ohmygod, look what (s)he did here!”

With something mediocre, which includes 75% of all fanfic since most of it doesn't even aspire to be groundbreakingly awful, all you get is boredom.

Sex scenes are the worst. I've noticed an increasing tendency for sex scenes in stories to put me to sleep. At best.

At worst, I'm squirming with embarrassment as I realize I've become privy, not to an author's story idea, but to some scribbler's personal, bedtime fantasy. (I don't really care to know what stories you tell yourself to put yourself to sleep at night, okay? It's TMI and it's just gross.)

Is the gap between what constitutes a story and what constitutes a personal fantasy, erotic or otherwise, really that hard to comprehend? Are people really that unclear on the difference?

You should at least consider the possibility that the process of writing a story is not something you should undertake purely to illustrate to the world the sad lack of education you received in the public schools.

Dictionary.com tells us that a story is:

"A usually fictional prose or verse narrative intended to interest or amuse the hearer or reader; a tale."

How about Merriam-Webster? (They have their unabridged dictionary on-line these days. Unfortunately it costs money and I'm not wasting my 14-day free trial on information I could get by walking across the room.)

2 c : ANECDOTE; especially : an amusing one

3 a : a fictional narrative shorter than a novel; b : the intrigue or plot of a narrative or dramatic work

Of course, "plot" is defined as, "the plan or main story of a literary work" which takes us neatly back into a circle and who the hell writes these dictionaries, anyhow?

Forget them.

Lemme think for a minute…. How about, "The intrigue of a fictional narrative work intended to interest or amuse."

How's that?

Pretentious?

Okay, I'll think some more, but while my brain is working on the problem, I want to call your attention to the word, "intrigue." Consider that word.

It's interesting. It implies action. Events. Things That Happen.

Movement.

A story needs movement. Something, ideally the characters, has to change between the first page and the ending line. A narrative that sets up the potential for change without fulfilling it is nothing more than a scene, even if it's 200 pages long. A narrative that does neither is a fragment. Possibly even a writing exercise, but not a story.

Neither a scene nor a fragment are the same thing as a story. That's why "first time" stories are so popular in fandom. Whether or not the writer/author/scribbler understands this basic rule, it's almost impossible to write a first-time story without one or more of the characters changing in some way.

A story is…. Damn. I almost had it there.

To put it more simply, a story should be about something. Someone should learn something new or have an old belief reaffirmed. Someone should experience events and/or have an epiphany and change. Or elect not to change, which is a change in itself.

Note: A PWP, by definition, lacks this feature but it usually gets away with it in fandom because it's usually about sex and there are plenty of readers who will read anything with an explicit sex scene involving one or more of the characters that moistens their personal niblets.

Still, even a PWP has to offer some basic structure, illustrate some familiarity with grammar and writing skills, and explore some aspect of the character(')s(') personality or it will fail even as a PWP.

It would be sad to fail at something that required as little effort as a PWP but I've seen it done. Frequently.

A story is a coherent sequence of events (not necessarily linear) exploring some aspect of humanity.

Heh. I like that one. It's even more pretentious than the last one, but I don't care, okay?

Like I'm going to lower myself to the level of the kind of person who would inflict, "the first fist of diarrhea " on the world?

Not.