Five good reasons the best stories in fandom are (probably) not on EqD. · 7:06pm Apr 13th, 2013
First, let me say (and I will say this several more times in this essay) there is nothing wrong with EqD. Nothing. I totally respect the way they do business, I see their reasons for all of it, I think that the pre-readers are probably nice, intelligent folks who are just trying to post the best stories they can find.
But the best stories they can find are unlikely to be the best stories out there at any given time. If a reader is only reading EqD posted things, they're missing out. Here are five reasons why:
EqD acceptance is based on individual opinions
Everything published on EqD is based on the opinions of one to three people on the quality of the fic.
I think every author I know who submits to EqD has a silly story of getting conflicting reasons for rejection of the same story, where the first prereader says there's too much X, and the second says that the story could really use more X. Once again, I'm not complaining about this, I'm just using it to illustrate that this is a subjective process. There is literally nothing you can do to make sure a story can go up on EqD.
How is this different from the publishing industry? Simple. Publishers get paid, and they get paid more if they publish something that a lot of people buy. That means that, while it's still subjective, publishers have a financial incentive to look past things they don't like if they know that the reading public in general likes these things, or even just doesn't mind them. And, as the quality of the feature box shows, the reading public is willing to overlook a LOT more than EqD in the name of a good story.
I'm not just talking about grammar here. Professional publishers have editors, and it's valid for EqD to point out that they expect you to be presenting publication ready stories. But in terms of style, sentence length and structure, showing vs. telling, vocabulary, story content and characterization, there is no way that EqD can argue that they are speaking for the entire fandom when they declare a story good enough to pass.
Because of this, many authors are going to think their stories are just fine as they are, and have no interest in changing them. And sometimes, those authors will be totally, one hundred percent correct.
Grammar limitations vs. Author time and effort
So, EqD requests that a story be publication quality before they will post it. This makes sense, they aren't making money, they don't have the time or staff to offer editors to every person who wants their story posted. Grammar is fairly objective- if they tell you that you need to clean up the grammar, there is probably something wrong with it. But very few people who write fanfics actually have good enough grammar to pass on the first try. So EqD is almost certainly striking some good stories because of grammar.
The problem is that most readers don't have great grammar either. No one loves Dickens or Austen or Rowling because of their awesome grammar. Good stories are good stories, and they're still good stories even if the grammar isn't perfect, as long as it doesn't distract from the story.
So you can post a story on FiMfiction with decent grammar and no obvious errors, get good ratings, comments, and maybe make the feature box or get blogged about, or you can find someone and fix all of the expert-level stuff for EqD. Since this is a hobby, and no one is getting paid, even if they do get posted on EqD, there are going to be a lot of authors who aren't going to go through the trouble of pulling out the magnifying glass and hunting down misplaced commas. And some of those authors wrote a damn good story.
Cold feet
Along with not being willing to spend the time and effort in correcting things that don't need to be corrected for a story to be successful, some people are afraid. Getting a list of problems with a fic that everyone who's read it has loved can be scary, and the idea of trying to find someone out there who will try to explain something to you can be intimidating.
If you knew a person who could fix it, you probably would have asked them already. So fixing it probably means going into some group you've never been in before with your poor little story and begging someone you've never met for help.
This isn't something anyone likes to do. It's totally understandable for a writer to consider this option and decide that EqD isn't really the place for them. Even if they actually think their story is really good. Especially if they think their story is really good.
And some of them are right; their story is really good. But EqD just lost them.
Rating limitations
EqD has to keep out the clop. This is totally understandable, the site as a whole has a kinda-sorta relationship with Hasbro, and to maintain that they have to try to keep themselves shiny and clean. The problem is that, as a source of fanfic recs, they have to toss the good out with the bad.
This means that stories that deal with sex are right out. It doesn't matter if the sex is important to the plot. It doesn't matter if the sex isn't meant to titillate. Heck, I was told that Best Young Flyer was skating the allowable ratings on EqD, because of Dash walking in on Scoot pleasuring herself in the first scene (which is totally and purposely not descriptive.)
And you know what? There are going to be good stories that deal with sex. Some of the best, even. When used correctly, sex is one of the most emotionally raw subjects one can write about, and in the hands of a good author it can make a masterpiece. Which will never be on EqD.
The stories are never submitted
Given all of these things, a lot of authors just don't submit their stories. The stories might be awesome and perfect in every regard, but the author has no interest in playing this game. Maybe they submitted a previous story; maybe they know someone who submitted a story; maybe they read the rules and though that looked like a bunch of hoop jumping they weren't interested in. Maybe they were just happy to focus on writing stories, and never even looked for someplace else to post them.
Whatever the reason, there are tons of stories on this site that were never submitted to EqD, even though they could have been. And some of those are by amazing authors. And some of those might have passed. And a few of those might be among the best stories out there.
So, in conclusion, of course there are good stories on EqD. And stories on EqD are likely to be better than average. But in making sure of that, they've actually stacked the deck against some of the best stories out there. The chances are, given the number of fics on here and the issues I described above, that the best stories in fandom never make EqD.
I'll finish up with an idea: On userpages, one can put up to three boxes for recommending fics from other users. I would love to see a statistic for which stories are most recommended in these boxes, site wide. That is more likely than EqD to find the best fanfic out there- stories that are in the top 15 of hundreds or thousands of users are likely to have decent grammar, good characterization, and a great story. The selective votes (as opposed to likes, which can be given to hundreds of stories) of lots of people, able to be cast on any fic published here, would make for a much more interesting reading list than EqD. That would be a way to find the best fics in fandom.
I thought about submitting some of my stuff to EqD but I've heard some horror stories from other authors, including a friend of mine who writes professionally getting chewed apart by prereaders and not getting any feedback on what they'd done wrong. Of course, I never visit EqD that often anyway and got the overall feeling that the kinds of stories that would be posted would be by authors the mods knew. Sort of an elitist circle.
I hate EQD because I find them pretentious, but to each their own.
That, and no matter how expansive, intricate, and well-designed my universe becomes, it'll never be on EQD because of "hurr, human, lel," and that sort of instant denial grinds me gears, while something lame, like, I dunno, the Winningverse, gets all the likes, favorites, and 10 outta 10 reviews.
1004939
More than feedback or anything, getting a fic on EQD is mainly for one reason:
gyazo.com/a1d7184a0d243a471c5f002e224b413e.png?1365880893
The views. This admittedly doesn't take into account how many views we get from fimfic itself in comparison. But I'd say that EQD would be a large chunk regardless.
(that is from Felt Heart, for example)
Amusing timing; I just heard back that one of my stories was accepted to appear on EQD. I agree with all of your points and would like to add that in addition to pure subjectivity problems between prereaders, there is a heavy, heavy level of pretension present in some of them. I've come to the personal decision that there is no harm or cost in submitting a story to EQD (or EQAD for that matter). If they accept what I've written, great, more exposure, more views, etc. If they do not and it goes beyond simple fixes to the point where it requires heavy revision, I don't feel it's worth my time.
This is my personal stance on things.
I am not disagreeing here, but what good stories out there aren't on EQD, aside from ones that wouldn't make it on due to rating.
This is my blatant fishing for new stories to read.
1004952
While this is true, that's not always a good thing.
Wet Feathers and No Foals are both AppleDash romance, around the same length, and both made the feature box within a week of each other.
Wet Feathers was not on EqD: 4194 views, 721 likes, 24 dislikes
No Foals was on EqD: 3919 views, 251 likes, 48 dislikes.
I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, just that these two stories have so many of the same things going for them, except for one being EqD featured and the other not.
(I do, admittedly, have more watchers than the author of No Foals, and a large network of friends. But one would think that wouldn't compare with being on EqD.)
Thanks for posting this.
I personally have no issues with EqD, except for the Trixie obsession, but their process of accepting stories has always irritated me. This blog post was exactly what I needed to read today after getting my story rejected. 
1004968
True enough. I'm just saying that the main reason for eqd is getting MORE viewers that, for some reason, rely on it and not fimfic proper to get updates to story, or to snag more people who don't know of fimfic yet :)
I guess I'm just set in my "a story should stand on it's own and not be hammered into the ground due to very nitpicking ideals" ways. Working with a publisher taught me that it's never going to be what you write, just how you write it and if the idea you convey holds up. True, I've had stuff sent back by editors that were riddled with grammatical mistakes, but even after those have been corrected, nothing is perfect.
Honestly, it's not like we're trying to write "The Count of Monte Cristo" or something here.
This would be the core of my dismissal of EQD, and I have a blog in my archives with plenty of drama detailing that, so I'll not go into it.
But it's not just EQD; it's an issue with publishing gatekeepers just about everywhere, especially in academia. The problem is simple: aspiring to publish the "best works" of a group is mutually exclusive to any sort of subjective evaluation, let alone what seems to be EQD's primary focus on subjective evaluation.
It's all just the same circle-jerk "write what the old boys' club wants to read if you want in" conservatism crap that holds back novel thought all over. Granted, I'm a vicious progressive with libertarian bent, so mileage may vary.
1005010
To be fair, the Count was a pretty bad book. Show was good, though.
1004961
A perfectly valid way of doing it. I should probably try that sometime (except that I know that everything I write is going to get shot down for grammar- it is truly my Achilles's heel.)
1005010
This is also a perfectly valid way of doing it.
Really, there isn't an invalid way of doing it. I do wish there weren't so many readers who, as 1004977 points out, only look at things posted on EqD.
1004963
I'll get back to you on that. Off the top of my head, I know that xjuggernaughtx's story A Door Jam just got its third strike, that the collab Fool's Gold isn't on there (it's also rated mature, but not for sex.) Also, nothing I've ever written has been on there, though I'm not claiming my stuff is the best. But some of it is better than some of the stuff that is on there. (Except for grammar-wise.)
1005026
We should make our own website that's better than EqD. With blackjack and hookers!
1005017
Yes, but the publishing industry has capitalism on its side. Less so in academia, but in general, they want to publish what they think will sell. It's why romance publishers are starting to publish male/male romance novels, for example. They noticed from the popularity of internet slash stories that their audience likes them. They don't give a shit about telling new stories, they may or may not tolerate gay people, but if it's what people will pay money for. . .
EqD has no such pressure. What the audience likes is irrelevant when compared to "prestige"- that is, stories have to look like what the prereaders like, or what they think people should be reading, rather than what they're actually reading.
Sometimes these things will overlap, but clearly not all of the time.
1005042
Mhmm, exactly this. They've become an old boys' club, and the only external pressure bearing on them is, as you've mentioned, the Hasbro-related content filter.
It comes down, in my eyes, to how they'll only aspire to a higher standard when something forces them to do so. They're hardly the only ones--this tends to be a common response throughout society--but it still rather grates on me, which is why I've put a moratorium on EQD as far as my stories are concerned (which in the end means more or less nothing, I know).
twisting behind the sheets, a story with lots of sexual issues (it was essentially a story about rarity seeing a hooker) made it to eqd. Im pretty annoyed that makes it, and also clop it, but not minor stuff like your aforementioned examples.
I've been told before that I should submit to EQD for all of my stories that aren't clop, and I've never had a desire to. I take criticism very hard, and it just doesn't seem worth it to go through that much trouble with pre-readers just to have the eventual audience on EQD say, "oh, great. Another slash fiction." or some other similar complaint.
I also don't like too much exposure... I know that sounds strange considering how I want to have a book published some day... But I'm still trying to learn how to take critique without it crushing my soul everytime.
And finally, on this account, I post mainly clop. So for any non clop stories on here, I don't want to deal with the people who will skim my other stories without realizing what it's about, then making a big deal about it. You'd be surprised how many people told me they read my story and didn't realize it was clop until after they started reading... I would just be awaiting backlash.
Eeeeeyup.
I have a brony friend of mine who wanted to submit a fic to EqD to get some atention.
He have so far gotten 2 strieks, and he decided to ask me to look at it. The story was very good, the grammar wasn't perfect, but the rest was.
First time they pointed out ONE SINGLE THING that they said prevented him from posting. He FIXED this, and now they found A NEW "ONE SINGLE THING". With this info i'm intrigued to say to him "dude, just forget it. it's not worth spending a bunch of hours just to make them throw shit at you. and besides, they expect evey author to be JK rowling, JRR tolkien or something. Post it on fimifction istead, add it to groups, and make friends blogg about it."
Personally I don't bother to even go near it. If i ends up with a masterpiece I'm going to post it at EqD, then bring it down for the reason of how they treats the writers. I don't care how they responds. They deserves it.
1005069
That sounds good in theory, but I think they passed a milestone when they became less trusted for deciding quality than the robot running the featured box. At this point I don't think there is any outside force that could put pressure on them.
Okay, I'm going to have to disagree with you on this. See, when it comes to free entertainment like fanfiction, my standard for what I will give up my time to is "Don't bore me." To do this, one must have a deep understanding of pacing and story structure. And if you don't even know how to properly use a comma, then how can I expect you to know about all that other stuff?
A (Partially) Dissenting View
Y'know, at this point, I feel like perhaps it's becoming my job to offer up the other side of the EqD coin. Not as a pre-reader or anything – I have no direct affiliation with EqD – but as a writer. Let me do that.
Before I get started, though, let me state that while I disagree with some of the particulars of the points you're making, I agree with your overall thesis. It's decently likely that the best stories in the fandom don't have a huge probability of being on EqD. I think this is largely because of the sheer volume of stories out there. I personally suspect some of the best stories in the fandom may be little things that never get read by more than a couple hundred people. But there are a number of other ways to look for quality stuff, and I'll get to that later.
Now, to your five reasons.
(1) EqD acceptance is based on individual opinions
This is obviously a true statement, but there's an unspoken assumption here that those opinions are largely independent of one another. Things like uneven reasons for rejection certainly boost that perception.
I, on the other hand, find their acceptance standards somewhat spotty. A few weeks back, they published a story I consider downright vile. They certainly publish stories I've read (or at least browsed – they weren't interesting enough to read) and consider mediocre at best.
But personally, I don't view their process as anything like random. I've published three stories on Fimfiction. I've submitted three stories to Equestria Daily. I've had three stories posted on Equestria Daily, without ever receiving a strike. In fact, the most critical message I've gotten from them was probably, "Please resubmit your story through the fanfiction box so that we're sure we have any changes to character and story tags up to date when we post to the site".
I'm aware that this is a very different experience than what other people seem to have had. That's precisely why I think it's worth bringing up – because it seems like all you ever hear about is the capriciousness of rejection.
Now mind you, I'm not even close to claiming I'm one of the best authors on this site. Like I said above, I find some of what EqD publishes positively repellant. I prefer to think that it's more that I know how to write for EqD. I have good grammar, I try to avoid overburdening my sentences, and I think I'm generally good at adhering to the (grossly overhyped) show vs. tell mentality. That doesn't mean that my stories are better than other people's, just that I write in a way that some readers find favorable. But I do see it as some evidence (perhaps not a whole lot, since I've only written three stories to submit) that EqD isn't really all that capricious in their decisions. They have certain things they're looking for, and if you give them those things, it's not really all that hard to get published.
(2) Grammar limitations vs. author time and effort
I think you're dead on the money when you say:
But I think that different readers probably have different tolerances for this stuff. For my part, bad grammar is basically a story-killer; and I don't consider good grammar to be a big ask. Sure, correct use of em-dashes and en-dashes is some esoteric stuff – and I had to learn it for the first time shortly after joining Fimfiction – but basics of tense and plurality agreement are not. And I suspect that most outright grammar rejections come more for the latter than the former. Most of us can forgive incorrectly used hyphens - even if they look a little wrong.
My issue with the question of grammar vs. time and effort is that grammar is basically the single easiest part of a story to get right. It doesn't require detailed thinking about story progression or themes. It doesn't require knowing your characters so well that you can keep them distinct in rapid-fire dialogue and plot characterization arcs to give them believable growth and development. Basically, it just requires using sentences that aren't way outside your skill range, and I feel like that's a good rule for all authors to follow. If you couldn't write the first paragraph to Paradise Lost, you shouldn't be trying to do something similar in fanfiction.
Yes, there are probably plenty of authors who try to put their time into deeper issues like plot and characterization instead of readability, but from a readership perspective, I believe this is objectively a mistake. There are plenty of stories I simply stop reading because the author demonstrates in the first 500-1000 words that they don't understand the basics of how to tell a story. I'm not going to care how engaging their plot or characters are if it feels like a chore trying to read what they've written.
(3) Cold feet
I think you're dead-on with this one.
(4) Rating limitations
In theory I agree with this, and I'm sure it does play a part. Certainly, EqD isn't going to publish full-on clop, however good it is as literature. But I don't think they're quite as prudish as others seem to. On the one hand, they're willing to print some situationally violent stuff that, while not explicit, is deeply disturbing. On the other, one of those three stories I mentioned is openly tagged as [Sex], has "clop" in the title, and is basically all about masturbation (without getting explicit).
Now, here's an interesting point of comparison. I don't know that I think "Purple Prose, or a Night at the Clopera" is more explicit than "Best Young Flyer", but I'd say it depends on sexuality to a much greater degree. I also wouldn't say it's a better story. It's dicey judging your own work against other people's anyway, but I'm a really big fan of "Best Young Flyer" and now that I know EqD rejected it, it joins a pretty elite list of "EqD, wat r u doin, EqD, stahp" stories for me. So perhaps there's more subjectivity in EqD decisions than I earlier credited.
Then again, given that when "Purple Prose" was published on EqD, it drew a number of heavily upvoted "What the hell are you posting!?" comments and some outright statements that EqD readers were switching to no-fanfiction mode, so I think it was past a lot of people's tolerance levels even so.
...and by the way, I want to apologize to everyone here for getting people to click into no-fanfiction mode and further ghettoizing our community. I felt pretty awful when I saw those comments.
(5) ...
Actually, your reason five seems to be kind of a rehash of the four preceding reasons, so I'll cleverly take this opportunity to discuss a point of my own.
(5a) On appropriate measures of story quality
I think we'd be wrong to limit ourselves to what EqD chooses. They do have guidelines, and they're picking for a community that doesn't seem quite as broad-minded as many of us on Fimfiction. But, at the same time, I think the Fimfiction Feature Box is a pretty crap system. From what I can see, it depends almost entirely on instantaneous views and likes after a new story or chapter is published, and it seems like this basically means it winds up with three things: (i) works by highly-followed authors with large fanbases who get notified as soon as a new story goes up, (ii) works with popular character pairings, and (iii) pure clop content. I've seen some truly dreadful stuff hit the Feature Box, and that's where a lot of my "stop reading in the first 500-1000 words" experiences come from. I don't know if I legitimately trust EqD more than the Feature Box, though. The Pony Fiction Vault has served me pretty well, I think. I'm pretty sure I haven't read anything in there that hasn't subsequently wound up on my favorites list.
The top rated stories list on Fimfiction seems to be a decent barometer of quality, though it's still a bit spotty, especially on stories with fewer downvotes. I'm finally starting to get in the habit of downvoting stories simply to help make that barometer better.
inb4 everyone rushes over to my stories to downvote them and "make the barometer better".
But increasingly – as unhelpful as this is – I find that what I really trust is my watchlist. I like the authors on there, and I listen to their recommendations, and I'm almost always pleased with the results. There are people on my watchlist who are there for no reason except that I've learned to trust their taste in other writers' stories.
It's an approach that I think is even likelier to miss out on great stories than watching EqD or the Feature Box, but it doesn't waste my time, and frankly that's probably a bigger deal to me.
My only real problem with the idea of looking at what stories get recommended on userpages is that I don't trust the feature box a lot, and so I don't know how much I trust the perspectives of the community at large. (Bookplayer's readers are obviously an exception to this rule, since they're already wise enough to be following bookplayer!) And I think this sort of solution would underrepresent the really good stories that just never manage to find readers because of low author exposure or, *shudder* use of OCs. That's why the only favorites I put up on my userpage are stories with less than 100 upvotes that I think are really worth people's attention. I'm sure there are oodles of high-quality stories out there I'll never see, but it's nice to try to bring some attention to great stuff that gets overlooked by the big quality gatekeepers.
Okay, I think I've said my piece.
1005075
To be totally, one hundred percent fair, that wasn't the reason it was rejected, it was just noted by the prereader that it was skating the line.
It was rejected on grammar, and too much "telling."
1005137
Because I don't know how to use a comma, and some people seem to find me pretty entertaining? In fact, the blog post I just made was full of grammar errors. As is every blog post I've ever made.
The grammar required by EqD is not "capital letters go at the front of sentences." It's actual understanding of what makes dependent and independent clauses. Which it's wonderful to know! But the difference between:
Rainbow Dash came crashing down from the sky and landed at Applejack's hooves.
and
Rainbow Dash came crashing down from the sky, and landed at Applejack's hooves.
Is not going to change the quality of the story.
1005017
(NB: I am not trying to suck you in on my EqD posting. Consider this entirely separate from that. Also, yes, "Lavender Letter" heads up that "EqD, wat r u... stahp" list of mine)
God. Publishing in academia.
Just shoot me now. Talk about poor incentivization structures. I will not do it here, but I could go on for hours about how idiotic that racket is. I have very limited experience with it so far, but it should be obvious to even the most casual observer that it's out-and-out cancerous. I firmly believe the academic publishing structure actively works against scientific progress at this point, and I don't really know what it's going to take to get things fixed.
1005169 Understandings of grammar that are by and large, from what I've seen, drawn more from pulpit-worship of the Chicago Manual of Style than any actual linguistic knowledge. Which is a problem, because any salt-worthy linguist will tell you that styleguides are nigh-hopelessly anachronistic - for precisely the prestige / boys' club reasons previously raised.
1005174 Not just cancerous, the word I would use is incestuous. They're bred into themselves so far that they now actively harm progress, obsessively favoring preservation of the establishment. As for fixing it...well, the democratization of information via digital media is working wonders, but that's because it's letting us sidestep that establishment rather than pressuring any reform.
But I'm getting into political opinion, with time arguably better spent ponying pony. Sorry 'bout that, books
1005227
Ah, it's my bad anyway.
I really want to have this conversation, because I suspect we're seeing very different things wrong with it and I'm curious about that, but I've already done enough malfeasance here with my 1678-word on-topic comment, so I think I'd better just shut up about academia.
1005026
That's what editors/prereaders are for. I've got pretty solid grammar mechanics on my own, but having three sets of eyes look at it tends to catch a lot of errors. The story that was just accepted (Fluttershy Kicks a Puppy) was self-edited by me about four times (not counting flow-check stuff during drafting) and went through two other editors before going online. It was rejected without a strike due to a stupid I-should-know-better homonym problem and two instances where I had semi-colons when I meant colons, so even with all that extra looking it needed fixes. Minor fixes, but still.
From what I can see, their grammar focus goes more towards actual important stuff. Things like the difference between:
"That's what I said," she sighed.
"That's what I said." She sighed.
Which, to be honest, I find rather important in legibility.
As I said, I see no harm or cost in submitting something to them, but when/if they ask me to change important aspects of the story because they don't think it's in character or something I fundamentally disagree with, I'm not going to change it for them.
I think something worth noting is that EQD (and EQAD) doesn't seem to do much of anything for fimfiction ratings tracking, just traffic. It brings in readers, which is really the goal of all this so there's nothing negative about that at all, but doesn't really bring in faves/likes/comments that I've seen. I'm also not sure how much actual traffic it brings in. My two EQAD stories did see some traffic and ratings boosts; Cinnamon and Sugar has gotten around ~400 referrals (although only about 250 actual story views; those referrals track people that clicked the link, doesn't mean they actually read it), eight new upvotes, a new downvote, and seven faves since the time it went up there. And there's no way to know that any of those likes/faves came from EQAD readers and not from fimfiction readers that would have found it anyway.
I've seen some other similar-fic comparisons made between EQD/non-EQD stories, and this seems to hold true. Sometimes without even the higher traffic. Without naming names, there is an EQD featured Twidash fic that is a long-form dark adventure with a similar sort of 'feel' to one of my stories that is not on EQD. Mine has roughly double the ratings and faves as that featured one, and has more single-chapter views (the other one has more total views by about 3000, despite having nearly twice the total number of chapters).
Granted, 'dark adventure romance' stories aren't exactly reader-catnip a lot of the time, but it doesn't exactly speak wonders regarding what EQD ACTUALLY brings to the table.
1004963 Green is not on EQD... yet. 1382 likes 2022 favs and 11980 reads without their views. In fairness though, I am "batting fouls" with them till I get it right,
1005169
The second sentence seems wrong to me. I know from school that the second sentence is correct, but my sense of grammar is more instinctive than intellectual. People generally don't write like in the second sentence; they write the former and I'm used to it now.
Also there's always also the argument against strict standards of grammar: People use language as a means of analogue telepathy, and if I can use letters+words more efficiently and/or with more precise/powerful results, then why should I adhere to ironclad laws? Grammar should be my tool, not my jailer. Also, because I have to go in a few seconds: <Natural evolution of languages> vs. <Stuffy academics>
1005145
That might be the case if you naturally write in that way. But I do think that, for most people out there who don't, understanding what those things are becomes impossible. This seems to be a balancing act (given a lot of the "not enough/too much" responses I've seen people get) and it does start to make one wonder if they just don't like that story. I'm sure that they try to be fair with a story they just don't like, but I suspect in those cases they go into it was an attitude of "what's wrong with this story?" rather than "Is this story okay to publish?"
And yet, you enjoyed BYF which was technically rejected on grammar and "telling." I think that grammar is one of those things that melts into a story as long as it's being used in a way that allows the flow of a story. I'm not arguing against the value of good grammar, just saying that the perfection of it is not required for a good story.
That's where EqD and I have issues: I don't know how to use commas, or semi-colons, so I put them where it sounds right to me. I know what they're for, I just don't know the rules for where they go. I'm often wrong, but it doesn't tend to hurt my storytelling because when you're reading the story the pauses and stops are coming in places that make sense, even if they aren't technically correct.
You will get no argument here on this. Though I will say that compared to last year, when I joined, it's practically perfect. But that's just because last year it was a total joke. I want to make a blog post about that some day, because I feel like people have forgotten those godawful days of "five stories; all new releases; better pray AbolsuteAnon or TAW aren't publishing something today."
There really isn't a possible way of making a good system for finding stories by new authors: Every available system depends on either the opinions of some group of elite, or the opinions of the public. Those are the only options.
The key is to value each for what they are. EqD, Pony Fiction Vault, Seattle's Angles, groups, blog recs; these are all the opinions of one or more select people. They should be taken that way, as a recommendation list by respected readers, who never-the-less will have their biases and preferences. The feature box, and top rated stories are selected by open voting by a chunk of fandom, and aside from the other issues that make that measurement not exactly accurate, they're going to reflect lowest common denominator tastes. A sampling from all of those places is the key to finding the best stuff out there.
1005333
First, I find it interesting that the example you choose is one of those things writers disagree on. "Sighed," along with "chuckled," "laughed," and "sobbed," to name a few, is something that can be argued either way. It's possible to sigh a phrase, and there's a difference between sighing while saying something, and saying something and then sighing (try it!). So it's actually a perfect example of what I'm saying.
But in general, I agree with you, with the proper tools and patience grammar is an easy fix. However, that's the point of the second and third points there: Not everyone has access to prereaders who know grammar well enough themselves, or the patience to go through and fix it if it requires working more on a basically finished story.
For example, out of the twenty-some prereaders I've had, I know three people who had that ability, and all three of them require some amount of time to get to me, which I don't always have the patience for. And I know a lot of prereaders, other authors aren't as lucky. If it was between posting something with no prereading, and looking for prereaders on a forum I'm unfamiliar with, nothing I posted would have seen a prereader at all. As it is, it's just a matter of me figuring that nothing is grammatically bad enough for me to be slammed in the comments, so I'd rather not wait an extra week to post it.
And I've seen a lot of EqD fics that don't get the attention I would think they would, especially lately. I'm wondering if EqD is a diminishing returns thing. . . it was most useful when the fandom was growing rapidly, but as the fandom stabilized the people who read fanfic migrated here, and the people who weren't interested turned on the fanfic filter.
EqAD is another matter entirely. It's interesting for two reasons: 1) There's far less quality control there than EqD (I've never heard of someone getting rejected by EqAD), but 2) it serves an additional purpose in its adult tagging. Given these two things, I almost regard it as less a recommendation and more an organized archive of clop fics. EqAD makes no pretenses of having "good" stories, they have the stuff people send in, and it's organized so you can find it.
1005490
No, you're right. The second sentence is wrong (both the first and second clauses use "Rainbow Dash" as the subject, they shouldn't be separated.) But since you thought it was right, you probably wouldn't have blinked if it was in a story.
I also agree with the other stuff you said.
1005507
Ha, you misunderstood my choice in using 'sighed,' I went with it specifically due to the versatility. Both of those examples work, where one is someone saying something followed by a sigh, while the other is someone saying something as a sigh. Knowing the difference isn't going to make or break the story, but it changes how a reader perceives the statement, which is the important part.
1005145 (this is just to notify, because I edited in the reply tag, and I want Bradel to get a notification.)
1005517
Ahh, got it. I thought you were saying you found that the second negatively affected legibility. Sorry.
1005507
Thanks for the tagging! I'm interested enough in the conversation that I would have been back, but I'd gotten caught up doing a couple other things and had missed quite a few posts.
Like I said in my huge comment, I feel like someone should speak up to defend EqD on these matters from time to time, because I do think their requirements are decently intelligible. In putting together my earlier comment, though, I did wind up skipping over a couple things I kind of wanted to say for the sake of brevity. Yes, brevity. (I am an Ogier. Or an Ent. Take your pick.)
I think EqD has requirements that are intelligible, but from what I've heard and seen of other people's responses, I have the impression that the pre-readers can be very poor at communicating those requirements. I feel like, in many cases, one may be better off just reading the EqD Omnibus and Ezn's Writing Guide, and effectively ignoring the pre-reader comments.
If I weren't interested in brevity, here is where I'd spend 2000 words recounting my friend's experiences writing a masters thesis in philosophy. The short of it is, when I heard how much trouble he was having and how frustrated he was getting, I recommended just sublimating his own desires for the thing and following his advisor's comments to the letter to get the thing in a shape that would make her happy. Then I read his paper, and her comments. The paper had definite problems. The comments basically failed to identify, acknowledge, or address any of those problems. Then I gave him much better advice: find a new advisor.
I get the feeling that EqD is remarkably persnickety about esoteric grammar, too, but I'm not sure if I can really evaluate this one as well. Certainly, there are stories I've read that I think EqD should be ashamed that they rejected. But given that I have a very prior probability for EqD pre-readers giving feedback that's going to legitimately help fix a story's problems, I don't know how much to credit their stated reasons for rejection. To my mind, things like commas in compound sentences like the Rainbow Dash one flying around, those aren't legitimate reasons for rejecting a story unless they're very prevalent. They are, however, good exemplars of a sort of systematic pattern of errors that might cause someone to have problems with a story, and that's harder to describe effectively in a response.
Now, I think it is perhaps worth pointing out the following (although I'm a bit reluctant to do so). You've been saying yourself, bookplayer, that grammar is a weakness of yours, and you mentioned that apparently I didn't find it to be a barrier in enjoying "Best Young Flyer". This is true, but like I was saying earlier, I suspect different people have different tolerances, and it's kind of hard for me to judge my tolerance against those of other people. I figure it must be on the higher end of the spectrum, given how easily some stories turn me off, but maybe it's low enough to be fine with BYF while other readers just find the writing there too problematic to deal with. So my judgments in all this may be quite skewed. (Then again, I'm an egotist and an elitist, and while I recognize this all intellectually, I figure I probably am pretty hard to please, and if other people don't like something I like, then they're probably just wrong, and maybe even morally suspect)
Something you said gave me a rather interesting idea, though. What might be really cool and useful is some sort of combined ratings system, where you take a base like-dislike score and adjust it for things like Pony Fiction Vault archiving, EqD appearance, feature-boxing, author effect, tagging effect, etc. Bad Horse did some nice work putting together a multiple regression model for story likes, I believe it was. It would probably be possible (however difficult) to adapt that further into an actual multi-dimensional quality metric.
I don't want to toy with this idea much beyond what I've just said right now, because it seems quite interesting and quite likely to suck up a lot of time I don't have to spare right now.
You got a "huh?" out of me when you started talking about Featured fics like that means they're good. Popularity =/= quality.
I would kill for the sitewide stats you mention at the end. One of the ways I look for new reading material is scavenging through those recommended boxes from users I respect.
Oh, another thing.
1005507
All my yes, though I don't really know a good way around this issue. I thank my lucky stars all the time that I had the good fortune to stick myself in the middle of a conversation between PoweredByTea and GhostOfHeraclitus on the day "The Wrong Fork" got published. Getting stuff on EqD meant I was never going to languish entirely, but I only have pre-readers on Fimfiction because of that conversation. I don't think I'd ever go looking for a pre-reader in the groups on Fimfiction. I'm very glad they're there, and I hope other people do go use them. Same with /fic/. But... that's really not my style. I like working with people I consider friends, and when you're a newcomer to a community, you usually don't start off with a whole lot of friends to look to.
I hate being patient when I have something I want to post. I just get so excited that dealing with pre-readers feels like an enormous hassle. I'm trying to train myself out of that attitude (and it helps that Powered and Ghost are fantastic and useful)
...wait, what? Bookplayer's profile is outside my usual PoweredByTea- and GhostOfHeraclitus-circumscribed part of Fimfic?
<Fluttershy-mode, activate!>
Eep. Hello, everyone. How are you today?
I'll just be going, now.
1005630
Oh, believe me, I wasn't trying to insinuate that featured fics are good. Just the opposite. They often show exactly how bad a fic can be and have a large number of people still be interested in reading it, which brings into question a lot of the more stringent measures EqD employs. A fic doesn't need perfect grammar (or construction in general) to be read and loved, it doesn't even need tolerable construction, going by the feature box.
So however good the EqD prereaders think the stories they post are, they seem to be out of touch with the things average readers find important.
EqD serves one valuable purpose: they occasionally send me to a worthy story that I hadn't seen. Then again, the reviewing team here does that much, and I'm pretty sure they don't consult EqD before making their selections.
I did look over EqD's submission guidelines early on, and inasmuch as I was persuaded at the time that everything I wrote was complete and utter [your choice of pejorative], I didn't bother to submit anything. I might have been wrong about that, or I might not have. On the other hand, I've somehow wangled 1200 views on a story that's never been within a day's trotting distance of the Featured Box, let alone EqD, so I figure I might not be doing everything wrong.
1005665
That's true. I ended up going back and reading most of the comments here; interesting to read that BYF got rejected from EqD for grammar. Do you care? At some point I will have a fully copyedited version for you; you could resumbit and see what happens, if you want and if you haven't been three-strikes-and-you're-out-ed.
1005145
Cheers!
1005701
Probably not. . . I also got knocked for "telling" in the first chapter (and it's probably pretty bad in the second chapter as well.) Unless I got lucky with a prereader, I'd probably have to rewrite the first two chapters. And I have so many other projects going on, I'm not sure that part is worth it to me.
But I really, truly appreciate the offer!
1005145 Who were your pre-readers?
I don't know how many EqD rejections I've gotten. Twenty? I started a thread in EQD Rejects for people to post their rejection letters.
Their rejections are better than any critiques of your story that you will get from any readers. But they're usually one part right to one part wrong. I've had 5 occasions where the pre-reader rolled a 1 in their attempt to understand the story. I've had 4 occasions when the pre-reader pointed out a serious flaw that led to a rewrite. They are great critiques that I'd be happy to have, if they weren't also at the same time a list of required changed.
I think their critiques are too detailed. They don't understand the story the way the author does, so they shouldn't request minor changes that often as not are due to their not thinking of something that I'd already thought of.
They sometimes correlated due to the habit some pre-readers have of using the Omnibus as a checklist. The pre-readers often ask experienced writers to change their stories to conform to the generic stylistic advice the Omnibus gives new authors.
>No one loves Dickens or Austen or Rowling because of their awesome grammar.
Heh. I recently read Ursula LeGuin's Steering the Craft, and she spent a lot of time trying to convince writers that stilted, semicolon-laden sentences are beautiful.
>Since this is a hobby, and no one is getting paid, even if they do get posted on EqD,
Now hold on there. Somebody is getting paid. worthofweb.com estimates Equestria Daily's value is currently $1,544,800, and fimfiction's is $1,573,600. That's because of ad revenue. I would guess these figures correspond to about $200,000/yr in ad revenue. So who gets that money?
1006118
Well, the fimfiction money goes to Knighty- isn't this his primary job now, I think? Did I read that somewhere?
I'm not sure who's getting paid on EqD, but I don't think it's the fanfic crew.
Anyway, none of us authors are getting paid. We're just the
slave laborcontent providers. So the quality of content we care to provide them is totally up to us.1006118 (also indirectly 1005520 and 1005069)
GhostOfHeraclitus and PoweredByTea, though primarily for "Bell, Book and Candle", and they've been a huge help there. Though I'm slow about going through it. They both looked at the initial draft on "Purple Prose" and signed off on it, but it was cloppy enough that I wound up doing the expanded draft (3x length) all on my own (since neither seemed especially comfortable handling it) and the expanded version was what EqD and EqAD saw and posted. "Amazingly Awesome Adventures" was completed before I started looking for pre-readers.
TBH, I don't really know what the deal is. I like to think they (EqD) are looking for something in particular, and that I'm showing it, but then again there's the whole fundamental attribution error, which I'm very conscious of. What I've read from Sunchaser and what (little) I've read from you and bookplayer I've thought was really good. I like to think that I might have some talent at this stuff, but the overwhelming feeling I've had since starting an account here on Fimfiction is, "Oh crap, these people I'm reading are really f*cking good. I need to step up my game if I want anyone to take me seriously here," and you three are definitely a big part of that. That's not to say I think everything you guys do is beyond reproach, but I feel like the stuff I've read has been... nuanced. The type of stuff I want to be able to do myself. I got into fanfiction through fanfic.net and a close friend who sucked me in to writing for anime half a decade ago, and so my skills are much more geared for crack pairings, zany madcap antics, and mawkish emotion. But I love writing, and I'd love to be able to do it professionally, and so I really want to get better.
So on the one hand, I feel like EqD is providing a good filtering service for fanfiction. They're certainly sorting out a lot of crap I'm not going to be interested in. But at the same time, they post some stuff that really bothers me (yes, I saw your comment while in the middle of trawling through your old diaries), and they seem to pass on stuff that I think is fantastic for what sometimes appear to be largely niggly technical details. Thus me trusting my watch list more than any other source of information. I'm less interested in technical perfection than technical competence, but I have a strong interest in reading people who put together good stories. I know I can handle the technical and stylistic side in my own writing. What I want more exposure to, that's the hard work of character, setting, and plot, especially when someone makes interesting narrative decisions like Scootaloo's job in BYF and Pony Joe's role in "Moving On".
I think EqD gets more crap than it deserves, but then again it occasionally mystifies me. Like I said, I'm elitist and egotistical, and assume everyone must think like me. I don't quite understand how someone can be rejecting Bad Horse stories, bookplayer stories, and Sunchaser stories (especially when they're accepting mine). I do think they've got some sort of decently predictable system that is winding up with some sort of quality product, and I think someone needs to speak up for the fact. But... yes, mystified.
Okay, fine, I gave up on brevity.
Also.
We do not speak of this. Repeat the mantra. "Fandom is a not-for-profit endeavor. We are not taking away any potential revenues from the owners of these IPs. Please ignore us. There is nothing to see here."
1006220
I totally and one hundred percent agree that EqD is a valuable service, I just feel the need to remind people of what, exactly, that service is. It's a highly publicized rec list. So highly publicized that the maintainers can make demands of authors in exchange for placing them on it, and some authors will listen to them.
But not listening to them doesn't make an author or story bad, and listening to them doesn't make a story enjoyable. Some authors need a reality check in both of those departments occasionally, and there are readers I've encountered in other parts of fandom, who claim to only read fic from EqD, who need one as well.
Maybe, but some of the best stories in the fandom are probably on EQD. Almost certainly. I'm hesitant to comment much on the quality of EQD approved stories because it would feel conceited. But the purpose EQD's rigorous screening process is to find good stories, and that's exactly what it does.
Not every good story makes it past the EQD pre readers. But I can guarantee that every story that does pass is good. Some of them are great. A select few are among the best this fandom has to offer.
The EQD pre readers don't ask authors to do anything particularly strenuous or ridiculous. If a good fic doesn't pass, I believe much of the fault, if not all, lies with the author.
1006382
I agree that the fault lies with the author, but the question is why the author should care. My argument here is that they shouldn't.
To this I will call bullshit, or "in your personal opinion." Take your pick. I can find at least ten stories on EqD that I found boring, wordy, out of character, unfunny (in the case of comedies), and generally not-good, in my own opinion.
But they had good grammar, and lots (and lots and lots) of showing!
(This list is only available by PM. I will not publicly list stories I didn't like, because I don't want to be seen as mean to authors.)
1006407
Well, that's the problem, just as you wrote before, it's all subjective. This is entertainment, and there's no objectivity in enjoyment. I've read a quite a few EQD fics that I thought were 'meh', but I'm not going to claim that they were objectively poor, only that I didn't enjoy them.
I care what the EQD pre readers have to say, just as I care what every reader who leaves me feedback says. Admittedly, I'm different. I take nearly every criticism, even the misinformed, the unhelpful, and the downright acidic, as fact, and I treat them as such.
But every story I've made revisions to per EQD pre readers suggestions has been better for it. They've all improved, and I always learn something in the process. So I care what they say, and I care if a fic is on EQD.
There was a time when I thought EQD was the end-all of fanfiction, the top bar. Now that I think about it, maybe it isn't. I'll say that ever since my first submission made it past them without a single strike (a feat I've yet to repeat and one I never expect to) I've been utterly confused by their standards. Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with quality. Maybe it is entirely determined by the pre readers' eclectic standards. I don't know, but the vast majority of fics I've read on EQD I've enjoyed. So I care.
I know their view of show vs tell is simplistic, warped, and vague. Show vs tell always shows up in every response I receive from them, but they never specify if they mean necessary vs unnecessary, interesting vs uninteresting, or sympathizing vs empathizing. And I could argue with all of their criticisms, but that's the nature of writing.
Can I just say, this blog post and comments section is the most entertaining thing I've read in a week, and you, bookplayer, have more than earned a watch just on your arguments alone. Also, that said, I totally agree with the points you've made. Especially regarding content and who gets to take a look at your story deciding if it gets posted or not. I've had 2 stories posted on EQD; one good and one just sort of meh. But the story most people know me for and my best work was perma-rejected by an error list that grew the more I edited it.
It's just nice to see some other people who really "get it."