Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

We already have a thread about things we don't like in TFs and I don;t want to hijack it. SO I thought I would start this one dedicated to writing style mistakes. Some can really take a good TF story turn it into a mediocre one.

Here's some of my style pet peeves, (a lot of which I'm guilty of but trying to fix):

1. Using adverbs instead of a stronger verb.

2. Overuse of words like "suddenly," "that," and "meanwhile." I used these words a ton in the past and you know what? 99% of the time you can remove them without changing the meaning and feel of the sentence.(And yes, I'm well aware I used on of those in the thread title).

3. Cliches: "oh my God, what's happening to me?" Every time you see that in a TF story, take a drink!

What are some of yours?

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

The ones mentioned above, for sure.

The one that often gets me is when the person transforming is narrating their own TF. Eg. "What's this, claws? Ow, my teeth! Oh my god, I'm growing a tail!" The monologue just seems kind of unnatural to me and I see this pop up often in both written stories and in comics.

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

1 & 2 are style pet peeves for stories in general, not just TF stories.

As for #3, I won't disagree with you. However, we only feel that way because of the sheer volume of TF stories (and I'm counting SW, GTS, and so forth along with this) we read. If any of these transformations suddenly happened to someone in reality, it's a somewhat reasonable reaction. Now take a drink! ;-)

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

TFs written in 2nd person, for starters.

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

Easy wrap-ups. You put people through something, now they're just satisfied and happy with their new life. It's one thing if that was the tone of the entire thing, but if you want to keep it short, keep it all short.

No formatting. If you show me a wall of text, I'm done without reading.

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

I write profiles for my characters I tf, I do lists of things that I could change them into and what would suit each person best and how they would go about changing. some would grow to love being something new while others who would hate it and see it as a curse.

maybe some can control it. but I like the idea of it being something that effects someones life in big way and they are just trying to be normal. its like being given an out of control animal as a pet they dont want. but they cant just give it away since they themself are the animal.

I like the concept of were-creatures.but thats a bit lazy I feel.

I like the idea of long drawn out changes like someone slowly transitioning into an animal over something like a year or more. maybe living in an apartment trying to hide the changes from other tenants.

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

Second person is tricky though. It's just first person addressing the reader. I usually use it in first person past-tense... telling the story to the reader. Care to elaborate on why that is a bad thing? I would find it enormously helpful and illuminating.

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

I think my biggest pet peeves with some stories is the total lack of description. Some people just don't know how to describe a transformation, which is alright if your just starting off! BUT I've seen some experienced multiple story TF writers have a complete lack of ability to describe a transformation in inventive ways. It's always, "my boobs are growing", never really any description of what's happening and just having the character state it.

For example, breast expansion. Characters are going to feeeel their breasts growing, stretching, and weight changing and pulling and just all sorts of feelings you can describe as it's happening in the 1st person. They'll have inner thoughts and reactions, if they're wearing clothes, theirs even more options. It just drives me batty when the author isn't inventive and just uses the easy route.

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

"Your hand stretches into a paw. Your bones shift into a new shape."

That's 2nd person TF, the narrator is telling the reader that they are transforming. I've never liked it, and when I see the story starting out like that I Just immediately close the page and find something else to read. Not everyone with a TF fetish wants to be the subject of the TF themselves.

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

OH! yes yes! totally agree with this. This is a huge turn off for me on a story, as soon as I see it happening like that in a story, I'm done. Immediate close or refund of product.

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

In a TF text-based game, 2nd person is perfectly valid. In a story, it's much more difficult to pull off. Unless the story is a Choose-Your-Own-Adventure style of story, 2nd person doesn't really work.

Two mistakes that wreck a story for me:

1) Typos, grammatical mistakes, and the like. It doesn't matter how much I'm into a story, the instant I see a typo or a badly written sentence, all I can focus on is the mistake. If the author doesn't care enough to proofread, why should I care about reading it?

Exception: Dialogue. People don't always speak in complete sentences, so imperfect sentence structure is fine there. It actually helps to keep dialogue from sounding stilted.

2) A lack of synonyms for "transform": Shift, alter, change, mutate, become, and so forth. Not using the exact same one over and over goes a long way.

Re: Style Mistakes that Weaken TF stories
 

I normally hate it when there are a lot of grammatical mistakes or spelling errors. A few are okay, I normally forgive about five errors per page but no more than that.

And speaking of tenses, I hate it when the tense changes in the story. Also, I stay away from giant one paragraphs stories. That seems to be everyone's first mistake, though.