Especially the ones that anyone can access. Why does bad music happen? Why does bad drawing happen? Why does bad dance happen?

The answer is gonna be pretty much the same. There have been plenty of good answers so far, but I wanna touch on a couple aspects that haven't been discussed so much:

1. Everyone has strengths and weaknesses. Not everyone can be strong at writing/singing/underwater basket-weaving. This does not make those people stupid or lazy, it just means their talents lie elsewhere.

2. Not everyone has access to the same level of encouragement or instruction in their art. To use a personal example, my parents read to me every night as a kid—specifically, they would read to me from books that were more advanced than I could yet read myself, so I was exposed to things "above my grade." Naturally, when I started writing, I based my stories on the stories I knew and impressed everyone by making a chapter book in third grade. The books I knew had chapters, so obviously my story should have them, too. Each chapter was about a paragraph or two, of course, but OMG, this little third-grader is so advanced! I was praised and encouraged and given every opportunity to succeed, I have smart parents who speak and write well, I went to good schools, and I'm naturally a perfectionist, so I try to do things right just for the sake of being right. (And I can get a little pissy when challenged about my rightness.)

I had every advantage. Not everyone does. Some people aren't read to from chapter books at a young age. Some people aren't told by their families that writing well is valuable and praiseworthy. Some people don't get to go to great schools. Some people's parents didn't receive a college-level education and therefore can't set a college-educated example. Some people don't go out of their way to learn how to use semi-colons just for the sake of being right. If they find out they're passionate about writing anyway, even if they're naturally talented, they're gonna have a much harder time getting really good at it.

This is one reason we don't attack authors. It is quite possible that they are intelligent, wonderful people who just happen to have written a bad story because, for whatever reason, writing is more of a struggle for them.

THAT SAID... if you're dedicated enough to read/watch/play the canon five times, write a story based on it, and get access to the Internet to post it... you have all the resources you need to at least get the canon details right, not to mention spellcheck. I think there's a noticeable difference between a story by someone who's trying but just doesn't know what they're doing and a story by someone who's chucking canon and logic out the window for the sake of forcing their "original" ideas on the world and expecting to be lauded for it. The former don't make good missions and don't deserve to be sporked anyway. The latter do.

~Neshomeh

...if making high self-esteem all-important plays a role. How many here have read Screwtape Proposes a Toast?

Another factor might simply be late bloomers. I was in my early twenties when I learned about Mary Sues, and I was still in denial about Rheim son of Sirrus' urpleness for a few months after.

And bad writing and faulty observation are nothing new. Look up Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses some time.

They both intertwine, but can also work independently. (I also won't be offering any comments on SPG stuff, because I've always been good at that, so I don't know where it comes from.)

1/ Well... they're teenagers. Virtually all teenagers, whether they be 14 or 18, see themselves (mostly unconsciously) as the centre of the world. They think that their troubles are unique in all of history, that everything which upsets them was deliberately designed to do so, that everyone is thinking about them all the time, when in fact, the people around them are just as self-centred.

And what does that produce in stories? Main characters for who that is literally true. I came to writing fairly late; the first story I class as a 'real' story was written when I was 14 (and was, I think, the only lengthy bit of fiction I ever had to write for school). And it was... pretty bad. A teenager (because another component of this is that you tend to write characters your own age, because you know you're competent and can do stuff!) discovered that the world was going to be destroyed, and singlehandedly came up with and implemented a solution. Because of course he did.

And the next one was... well, not quite as bad, but still the same. It's actually available online for the sole purpose of showing what teenaged writing looks like; it was written in about 2002, when I was 16 - the age you claim I should have 'grasped the concepts of plot, conflict, and character development'. Want to reconsider that? XD

The thing is, it's hard. All protagonists are the centre of their story; no matter how much you read (and believe me, I read a lot), it's hard to spot how that differs from being the centre of their world. Jacob Ethrax solves everything singlehanded - well, so does Sam Vimes, so what're you complaining about? Spotting the difference - that Vimes has to work within the system, rather than remaking it in his own image - is... well, see point 2.

2/ Practice. I talked about this last week; I'll quote a section of that post here:

They write badly because they don't know how to write well. Look at Rings of Power, a mission I did into a story I wrote. I have a whole bunch of writing from about that time which consists of:

-Group of people encounter situation.
-Every single thing which happens in the area affects them.
-No-one can solve anything without their help.
-They get all the good stuff.

I did the research. I knew the layout of Lothlorien, and the timeline of the books. I didn't make up nonsensical, non-canonical stuff. But I hadn't learnt enough to let the protagonists operate in the world, rather than warping it around them. If they ran into trouble, it was specifically aimed at them - because that makes for added tension, right? R...right?

The vast majority of badfic writers are young, and still learning to write - heck, I was probably sixteen or seventeen when I wrote that, not even that 'young'! But it's very rare that people can write really well without lots and lots of practice. No, reading a lot doesn't help: it takes practice to realise that you are doing it differently to Terry Pratchett, or J.K. Rowling, or what have you. And you won't notice by reading back your own story, either.

And to add to that: the fact that you can't see the difference also means that you won't have a problem putting it online. Why should you? You can't see anything wrong with your story! And experience has shown that your reviews will consist in large part of people saying 'gud story i want to kno what happens neckst' - so it must be good! - and the occasional person who says 'your a tebirrle writer you should kill yourself and ***** your ***** with a *****' - or even just 'this is a terrible story your character sucks stop writing', which feels exactly the same. Actual constructive criticism is really really rare.

3/ Wait, didn't I say there were only two points?

4/ Hang on, stop

5/ making ne

6/ w po

7/ i

8/ n

9/ ts will you cut that out?

... thank you. As I was saying: I think the PPC is really good for young writers. I don't mean the writers whose stories we go into - I mean us, the community. My logic is this:

Young writers have a hard time making their characters not be the centre of the world. But the PPC is a soulless bureaucracy. However fabulous your agent is, the boss won't like her; Intelligence won't give her better missions; Makes-Things won't make new tech for her; and she will never actually fix the problem of bad writing. I'm not saying it's impossible, but it is very hard for a PPC agent to be written as the centre of the world; the world she inhabits just doesn't care enough about her. And that's what writers really need to learn.

hS

Seeing as I am one of those people who wrote a badfic and was over the age of 16. From my personal experience English teachers aren't teaching enough SPaG stuff, sure they cover the basics but then they move on to studying Shakespeare or Lord of the Flies and expect essays on that instead, there's very little creative writing done in schools, at least that I'm aware of, only one piece of coursework out of the ten or so I did during GCSE English was creative writing (it's also the one of the two things I got an A* in in GCSE), and even before GCSE there seemed to be very little stuff done on creative writing at all. The other problem I had was my handwriting, it was and still is horrible and the English department at my school were SO focused on getting it legible that I missed a huge amount of lesson time in favour of trying to get my fingers into a position they couldn't physically bend themselves into, thus I still don't know how to use things like semi colons correctly.

I guess what I'm theorizing is that English teachers aren't necessarily teaching us enough about creative writing for people to write things like fan and original fiction, well with decent SPaG and good grasps of plot, character development etc. And without studying further, or with friends more well versed in using the English language to help, Suethors could just not be aware that what they're doing is wrong, especially seeing as most reviews on fanfiction go along the lines of "Great work, please keep it up" and only a very few people actually take their time to stop and point out what is going wrong, and even then it may not necessarily be done in the most friendly fashion.

Storme Hawk

For your point about maturing by 16, I'd say not necessarily. It really depends on your education and your interests. If you start writing at 12 or 13 sheer practice will make you improve over time, but if you start later you'll take longer to get good. There's a difference between grasping a concept and being able to execute it.

When it comes to repeat offenders, or just bad writing in general, my theory would be that Suethors view the act of writing differently than we do.

Most of us are, more or less, serious about writing. Even if we're not shooting for a professional career in it we want to tell compelling stories and create or interpret characters in engaging ways. When it comes to fanfics we want to tell more stories in the worlds we've come to love. When people write badly it's at best a waste of potential.

But look at the excuses Suethors throw out when they're criticized. "It's just fanfiction!" "Get a life!" For them, fanfiction is a tool for their own entertainment, mostly escapism and wish fulfillment. It's a hobby and it just has to hit the right buttons for the author and maybe people with her tastes. To them we're taking everything too seriously. And if it was their private space instead of the internet, they'd have a point. The wiki covers the issues with criticism pretty well.

Basically my guess is that Suethors, in most cases, probably could write better, but they don't see a need to because "it's just for fun."

Neither Stephanie Meyer, Frank Miller, M. Night Shamayalan, and a very long list of other known Creators that cannot grasp at least one of those concepts. And they have made a career of that!

So, no, you cannot blame the English teachers about that. School in general is more to blame, because of the lack of encouragement for creativity in traditional education for children, leaving the world with a deluge of bad fiction, written by uncreative teens and adults, that do it just because they can, or for a paycheck, or for being crazy.

And to answer your question, I guess some people never really learn how to take criticism. I wouldn't know, I'm not a psychology major. *shrugs sadly*