One of the many high-points of the Fan Fiction world is that rare, blissful moment when one crosses paths with a decent story. Now, the fact that my opinions of a good story can be completely opposite of yours or your sixth grade English teacher's may be obvious. But I am here for the sole purpose of making your Fan Fiction browsing one thousand times more pleasant. Or at least keeping your brain fully functional for the rest of the day.

A/N: All comments are strictly speculative and do not apply to EVERY story or person out there. Stop e-mailing me.

I don't know about you, but most of my browsing starts in the 'Just In' section of Fanfiction. Here, we can find a grab bag of newly published stories and poems from your Harry Potter 'songfics' to your Labyrinth 'Jareth's POVs'. But there is a more 'advanced' way to find specific stories you would like to read, or 'Specific Search' (Search, Advanced Search…whatever you want to call it). I've found that most stories nowadays are in the 'Harry Potter' category, so I'll use this story in my examples hereafter. That, and that's pretty much my area of expertise. I'm going to stop talking about that before I get all nerdy on you.

Browsing

1. Just In

There are several different 'Just In' browsers, but two really stick out in my mind: The clickers and the pickies.

Clickers- The person who automatically picks the first Harry Potter they see and read it, regardless of the summary or title.

Pickies- The person who looks through every Harry Potter posted and picks the one that to them seems most likely to not waste their precious time.

Me? I'm a picky to the core. And coming from experience, these seem to be the people who get frustrated quickly- all because of the poor writers out there. There have been days when I cannot find a single, solitary, truly decent story on this website.

Clickers (think Rudy) generally tend to read the worst stories on the Internet at times. That's about all I have to say about you guys.

A/N to all you out there who get offended over silly things- I'm not saying either species is superior to the other; I am only bringing to light two points of view Fan Fiction readers may choose to read stories.

2. Specific Search

This is an easy way to find exactly what you want to read. Well, not exactly- sometimes you could type in 'Hermione/Ron' and get a summary stating the following-

'hermione gose teh skool fohr hur ayth yeer at Hawgwartz nd git uh maykovurr nd ron fallz ni luv wit hur!'

…You get the idea.

However, I find this is the best way to scope out a good story. The trick here is to type in a more specific search. Instead of 'Draco/Ginny' ('i theenk draco iz rilly sexxxy nd he theenks ginny iz rilly hawt nd thay mayk owt fer uh owr in da poshons rewm!'), try 'Draco/ Ginny/ Quidditch Cup/ Gryffindor v. Slytherin' (I doubt this would make that interesting of a story, but it's just an example, eh?)(EDIT: I tried this one... doesn't work, anyway). The key here is limitations to your search… and, the more words you type in that are spelled correctly, the more chance of finding an intelligible story.

Stay tuned for part two: Titles and Summaries. Ooh. Aah.

-Kyle, the SFG