Why I Don't Read Fanfic: A Bad, Mean, Cruel Person Speaks Out

Here are the first few lines of the first story in a series by a TrekBBS poster:

She was so full of energy and had been sleeping less. Now this!

At first it was nothing more than an accident in sick bay. Kes had been asked by the doctor to get an instrument from the tray by the door and it flew into her hand. At first it was an accident in sickbay Kes has been asked by the doctor to get an instrument from the tray, by the door of his office and it flew into her hand. She hand only glanced in the direction of the tray.

The doctor's tone was almost accusing "have you been practising using your powers again?"

"No! I just looked at the instrument tray and it came to me, but I have lots of energy and I've been sleeping less.

As much as this new found ability was useful it was also frightening.

You've heard the old line about never getting a second chance to make a first impression, right? This author is not likely to get that second chance.

There are two attempts at establishing that this is the beginning of the story: the first line and the "At first..." scene-setting sentence. The use of "At first" is kind of a mental reboot, taking you back to the beginning a mere one sentence after the story starts.

Let's look at the second paragraph:

At first it was nothing more than an accident in sick bay. Kes had been asked by the doctor to get an instrument from the tray by the door and it flew into her hand. At first it was an accident in sickbay Kes has been asked by the doctor to get an instrument from the tray, by the door of his office and it flew into her hand. She hand only glanced in the direction of the tray.

Getting a little déjà lu there? (No, that's not a typo.) The third sentence essentially repeats the first two sentences with a little extra bad grammar. Lack of punctuation, shaky awareness of tense, and unnecessary punctuation suggest that this was supposed to be overwritten by the first two sentences. Then we have a typo in the last sentence. The word "hand" was probably supposed to be "had." A spellcheck wouldn't catch that, but a human reader would.

Next paragraph:

The doctor's tone was almost accusing "have you been practising using your powers again?"

First, there should be a period after "accusing" and "have" should be capitalized. Second, though this may be more a matter of taste, that's a pretty verb-heavy question. The same meaning could be conveyed with either "practising" or "using" instead of both.

Next paragraph:

"No! I just looked at the instrument tray and it came to me, but I have lots of energy and I've been sleeping less.

Besides the lack of closing quotation marks, there's another case of déjà lu there. Remember the very first line of the story? "She was so full of energy and had been sleeping less." I'm also not certain that the independent clause after the comma is part of the same thought. Should it really be part of the same sentence? The first clause describes what just happened, whereas the second describes the character's health.

Finally:

As much as this new found ability was useful it was also frightening.

The prose doesn't flow as smoothly as it could. "New found" should probably be either newfound or new-found. I'd also use a comma between clauses.

I've considered how I might rewrite these few lines, and I'm not sure where to start. The use of "At first" and "had been asked" distance the reader from the action, as though we're seeing this in retrospect and we're going to switch to the viewpoint character's current situation, but that's not how the story plays out. I think it might be best to drop that and jump straight into the action.

Maybe something more like this...

The clatter of falling surgical instruments broke the silence of Voyager's sickbay. The Doctor turned and looked at Kes, and saw a surprised expression on her face. The instrument tray he'd just asked her for was in her hand, though she hadn't had time to walk across sickbay for it, and several of the instruments that had been on it were now scattered across the floor.

"It just... flew into my hand," Kes said.

"Well, at least you caught the tray," the Doctor said drily. "Can you help me pick these up?"

Before either could bend down, the instruments rose and arrayed themselves perfectly on the tray.

"I see we've been practising our powers recently." The Doctor's expression shifted from exasperation to concern. "How have you been feeling lately?"

"Fine. I'm just full of energy these days. I haven't been sleeping as much as usual, but otherwise, I feel normal. But I'm worried. I didn't do this consciously, it just... happened. The tray just flew into my hand."

"Yes, you mentioned that. But I don't think the tray is the one with the telekinetic power."

Okay, that could still use some polishing, but it conveys the same information (albeit from the Doctor's POV rather than Kes's this time around) with a little more clarity and less repetition.

Another approach:

It started in sickbay. The Doctor had asked Kes for a tray of surgical instruments. Turning to reach for it, she found it in her hand as if it had suddenly materialized there.

Kes had been feeling almost unusually energetic and she'd been sleeping less than usual. That was why she'd been in Sickbay in the middle of the ship's night shift helping the Doctor.

"Been practising your powers?" the Doctor had asked her. She hadn't, really; she was more surprised than he was.

But before long the surprise had melted away, replaced by a sense of unease... and, later, fear. Wandering through Voyager's eerily deserted corridors three days later, Kes wondered if she could somehow have prevented everything that followed that incident in Sickbay.

This is why I'm not a writer. There are so many ways you can start a story, so many ways to tell it, so many perspectives to choose from, that I've never had a clear enough vision to get me to the point of sitting down and writing. So this fanfic writer is one up on me there. But some of the most blatant problems with the story can be spotted just by reading it. If the author can't be bothered to read the story, neither can I.

(Now playing: Brian Eno and J. Peter Schwalm, "Rising Dust," Drawn From Life.)