By Belle and Kenzie, with help from Trudi and probably anyone else who felt like throwing in a comment.

Trust us, the following things drive most readers insane (even if you did get SPF for it): Note: there will always be exceptions to a rule, and you'll find that there are many people who don't have a problem with these things. If you're writing purely for your own entertainment, by all means go ahead, and good luck to you! However, if you enjoy the thrill of positive feedback on something you've worked hard on, it might be an idea to take some of this advice on board.)

- Mary Sues (though these can be very entertaining when parodied, and I'm not at all biased by the fact that I sent one up in my Beauty and the Beast parody. Heh. Biased, schmiased - Belle)

- Run-on sentences: A run-on sentence is one a bit like this - though obviously this is only an example, they appear in many forms, but on the other hand, they're pretty easy to identify - where a writer goes on and on and on indefinitely making a sentence ridiculously long until you're gasping...for...air...and...collapse...on...the...carpet.....

- Original characters acting completely out of character (OOC - see glossary). The key thing to grasp here is that fans know things. Even if you've only skim-read the book (or whatever) and vaguely liked it, the likelihood is that your readers will know it inside out and probably be able to quote the opening sentence. If you try to change the established attributes of a character, they will notice. And chances are, they won't be amused. (This is, however, yet another of the things that can be funny when it crops up in a parody - Belle again)

- Badly-written pairings - That is, characters that appear to be completely incompatible being thrown together for no good reason (and usually pretty painful dialogue, too). This is usually a major case of characters being OOC. In fact, as TrudiRose, author of Picture This (a Gaston/Belle pairing from the Beauty and the Beast category), says, "If you want to write an unlikely pairing, then you have to work extra hard to make it believable. You have to really THINK, and come up with a plausible way these two people could get together, and make the reader believe it. Otherwise, the story won't work and the characters will be OOC."

- A rehash of scenes from the original movie/book/whatever with few or no original embellishments. This is often seen as pointless, since anyone wanting to read FanFic about a movie will probably already have seen it. Readers quickly lose interest in fics like this.

- Grammar/spelling errors. Occasional typos are acceptable, particularly if it's something a spell checker won't pick up, like 'fried' instead of 'friend' (or, Belle's particular favourite which she has seen several times, 'breast' instead of 'beast'). However, something with no punctuation, capital letters or apparent sentence structure can be very painful to struggle through, and with attention spans being pretty short on the internet, you'll find most people won't bother. For examples of common mistakes and tips on avoiding them, see Trudi's Article.