So I've been around Fanfiction.net a little while now, not long enough to consider myself a Veteran because seriously pros to you hardcore ladies and gents that have been doing that since the early 2000's you guys... You guys deserve some respect and yes those doing fanfics that weren't crap before the Harry Potter series was finished... I'm looking at you.

So in Hindsight I'm somewhere between an adult and a kid and when I did turn of age there wasn't suddenly a rule book... However in the last 2 years on this sight I've comprised a sort of rulebook for what I think In my personal opinion makes a good fanfic. Admittedly some of these rules have been pinched so to you the singular person reading this (unless I suddenly get some methods of rationality level reviews) sod off and remember it's a personal rulebook.

1: I'm more of a sucker for a love story than I'd previously been led to believe but with the following rules; no one dimensional characters, minimal bullshit (I.e kissing in the rain nice sentiment but ever tried? Yeah no) and some sort of actual progression and reasoning behind the romance other than his fucking emerald orbs, or to those of us not drowning in tumblr: green eyes.

2: This next little rule segment should be taken with a pinch of salt. I have only ever tried any form of creative writing once; it crashed and burned simple because of a person lack of imaginative creativity in the description of the setting; a flaw that seriously reduced the quality of the work to a point it became simply intolerable. So with that in mind... Vocabulary. There are many fanfics of genuine high quality in the world, there are also a lot of bad. In my personal opinion and I could probably find quantitative evidence of this two , you will never find repeated use of the word "smirk" in a high quality FanFiction. Anything using such vocabulary should be immediately dropped. Seriously come on guys really? Maybe one day I will write a fanfic that is promptly ignored, but there is more than one damn way of expressing self satisfaction in the English vocabulary than bloody "smirk". It devalues the quality of the work and more cases than not is immature self/character based gratification. To use the cliche if I read a fanfic in which Harry Potter lords it over Dumbledore and Snape at the age of 11; first off I need a damn good reason for how he's getting away with it than just "because goblins" and if that is the case I need a few word alternatives.

3: Power levels . I love progression it's the comparison of the character they are at the start and the end that I enjoy. That means I enjoy everything that comes with it. Equivalent exchange , every reaction has an equal and opposite reaction. If you make Ichigo transcendent with his timey wimey mumbo jumbo , then Aizen needs to be able to throw around Suns. Be prepared to allow you characters to lose for the fun of making your fiction unpredictable and also a little bit more rewarding when they finally do win.

4: This goes back to the romance point but , bashing. Now I love a good bash me every now and then usually it's when I'm in the same mood to watch fail videos on YouTube. In a nutshell when I'm not in that mood the other 90% of the time your bashing needs to be reasonable, not overly extremist and also a tiny bit realistic. It doesn't matter how "OC" the character is, watching ginny try to love potion harry gets old real quick.

Those are what I would call my "four laws" of FanFiction , they are the criteria I use when reading a Fic , oh that and spelling naturally (doesn't matter if you have to use a beta make sure the first three chapters are spelling free because if not you just lost half your readers). I hope if I was ever to create a fic I would apply this policy , and if that ever does come about it will most likely be a Bleach crossover with something obscure , a One Piece General fic and the most likely due to ease a one shot on Tsuna and Pals (BRING BACK THE MANGA) going to hogwarts which there seems to be rather a gap for unusually. Who knows depending on results I might even continue it. Stick around see ya.