Maybe I'm just entirely too picky, and a tad shallow, but there are a few things I look for when I'm reading a new story, and it's the main reason that I don't really read on here anymore. I feel horrid when I tell people that I won't read their stories, but it comes down to these main points.
Title; If the title isn't properly capitalized, I won't even bother opening it.
Short summary; (I only read fan-fiction.) If it doesn't say who is featured in it.
Cover photo; If it is a picture of the main female character and not the love interest of the story, I won't even look at any of the rest of it.
Summary; If the summary page lacks a decent eye-catching picture, I'm immediately turned off the thought of reading it. If there's no summary and just a "I suck at writing summaries, you'll just have to read it to find out" note, I won't bother to read it, I just close it and move on.
Layout; This is sadly one of the biggest things for me, but if the font is so small that I can't read it without zooming in, I won't zoom in, I just won't read it. A lack of a layout in general is the biggest turn off, but even worse is a badly constructed layout. If it's too plain, or too plain with a bad contrast of colors, I run. Black with lime green or hot pink lettering may have been cool when I was fourteen, but it's not nice on the eyes to read a twenty chapter story with that much contrast. Even worse are stories that don't have enough contrast, to the point you have to highlight the content to even read it.
Content; It mostly comes down to a Mary-Jane Sue. A "perfect" female lead. I can deal with crappy grammar and punctuation, but I cannot stand a main character that lacks flaws. I don't mean flaws like her parents are dead, divorced, or abusive, etc. I mean real flaws, like... being bad at a certain activity, having a form of anxiety, mood swings or as simple as trust issues. I'm sick of the "my parents are rich but hate me and just use their money to keep me out of their way" or the "my mom abandoned our family/died and my dad abuses me" even worse, I hate characters that are scene/emo, with porn star names and parents that do love them, and give them everything they want. In fan-fictions, I hate the whole love at first sight where they fall in love over a weekend and the band member asks them to come on tour and eventually move in with them. I know I'm being hypocritical, because I have stories that are similar, but I honestly fucking hate some of my own stories. When it comes down to it, even though it's all fantasy, my biggest pet peeve is that it's not realistic, because like fine wine, all good things come with time.
I know that I seem like a bitch for this, and to an extent, I am, but a person likes and dislikes the stuff that they do. You can't force yourself to like something.
Oh, and I am fully aware that the layout is the default, I just could not be assed to waste time on a blog layout.
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