Talk:Fangirl (novel)

Far too long
The page may be longer than the book itself. Someone who has read the book please try and cut down on the excessive plot info and super-long character descriptions. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.99.201.202 (talk) 03:25, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Multiple issues within the article
The information in this article is good, but I've added a 'multiple issues' template for copy editing and long plot.

The tone, in places, falls short of wiki standards, and strays into 'unreferenced seriously where are you getting these quotes from' territory. It needs a once-over and a re-write.

The character descriptions are long, really, really long, just way too long. This is where the 'where are you getting these quotes from' bit comes in - it's unclear in sections whether it's the author's opinion on the characters, or genuine description quoted from the novel. Here's one example:

"Cath prefers to dress in clothes that say 'up all night writing,' rather than, 'party at a boy's place.'"

Is this taken from the novel? I don't know. I don't think anyone visiting this page for the first time would either, lest they had the book to hand. An example of re-writing this, and I'm assuming these quotes are from the book, would be:

"Cath is described as '[preferring to dress in] clothes that say 'up all night writing'', rather than party clothing."

Notice the "prefer" is moved inside the quote - I'm assuming it was actually written something like this in the book, but I can't be sure, so it's in paraphrased block parentheses. It's not our opinion whether or not she prefers these clothes; the book should tell us, otherwise it's unreferenced and shimmying closer to author's opinion.

It's also not quite proper to cover the multiple plot points the characters face, in detail, in the character descriptions. Here's an example issue, and how it could be fixed:

"Another plot point is Cath's low self-esteem, which causes her to constantly berate herself and compare herself to Wren. Because of this, Cath has trouble believing that Levi actually likes her romantically."

Aside from Cath's character description being a plot run-down, the issue is that "another" just makes it sound anecdotal. It could just be way more concise. Here's an example fix:

"Throughout the novel, Cath compares herself to her twin sister, Wren, who is more outgoing. This affects her low self-esteem, and Cath finds it difficult to believe that Levi likes her romantically as a result."

It's not necessarily a shorter re-write, but it's more concise on the plot points. The addition of the extra 'Cath' in the second sentence means we avoid playing the pronouns game, too.

This article needs a re-write, but luckily, it seems whoever authored this page originally left it with all the information on this book, possibly throughout the entirety of the Internet, so it should not be hard.

One thing I would note: the 'reception' section probably needs a cleanup with some more viewpoints. The sources are good, but some parts have issues - 'A Kirkus reviewer', for example, is a bit too anecdotal in tone. Details from pages like goodreads would really boost this section, alongside a little copyediting for tone and structure.

I haven't got the time to re-write this article right now, but at the risk of drive-by tagging, wanted to add a good section on the talk page on issues I noticed within the article itself.--Ineffablebookkeeper (talk) 15:56, 10 June 2019 (UTC)