I role-play in casual a lot, so I think it is safe to presume I have a level of tolerance for genuine mistakes regarding grammar, fluidity, spelling, and formatting. I think for a user, you would have to be a very special type of English Major elitist if some genuine mistakes bother you so much you cannot participate in a story.
It is more common for me to have the opposite problem of this. I often see where a sentence could be elaborated on for greater introspection or description in general for the benefit of the reader. Minimalism is not exclusively nor objectively better than Maximalism.
Thanks. Just for clarity sake, I don't even mean sentences that have a typo, misspelling or a missing comma in them. Just sentences that work perfectly well as sentences, or at least don't have blatant mistakes. But just strike a certain nitpick line with you. I'd give examples of what I'm talking about, but I fear making it more personal than necessary. So I'll use one of my own sentences as a possible example.
Like some people can't handle anything with edge or angst, the very idea makes them cringe, like when I ever read any line that's even vaguely smutty. So if I gave you lines like this-
Life was like flowers laid beside a gravestone. The surface level smile you put on daily, embellishing bleakness that eventually withers without support and dies.(Second question because I want to share the embarrassment. Anyone write a line that you liked and hated at the same time? How many people have self awareness, but just keep lines like that in their story anyway? :3)
As my own worst/honest critic. That's some angst-ridden sounding bullshit ain't it? It doesn't have any real mistakes, the analogy works fine and leaves enough visual stimulation to the reader's imagination. But without reading the rest, could you handle an entire story filled with nothing but slam poetry? (
Please, don't dwell on the line. I think I was critical enough. XD)
That's kind of what I mean. Yes, I know length can help in certain circumstances for sure. But for instance, a certain thing I often see, maybe it's how people are supposed to write and I'm doing it wrong. But, it feels like you aren't doing solving any problems by doing so.
The ongoing list thing, where you just keep repeating the word like a Dr.Seuss novel. For a made-up example.
"Time passed, Time went, Time goes, Time slowed, time stopped, but time dwelled on. One fish, two fish, red fish..." You get me right?
Does
"Time passed, went, goes, slowed, stopped but dwelled on." Change literally anything about the cohesive structure of that sentence? Did adding that one word over and over again help the reader understand what they meant? That's the kind of word padding that drives me nuts. I never usually bitch directly at people for nebulous stuff like this, so it's not about elitism or at least not the "I'm better than you, let me (and more than likely my entire posse) remind you." mentality. At least I don't think it is. <.<
