V 1.2.12 (6/15/2017)

RB's Advice in Regards the Production of Horsewords:
Useful Knowledge for New Writers.

This is built out of good advice I've received, good advice I've given, good advice I've seen given to others, and things I've learned in my own writing. I've put this together in the hopes that it will be of some use to somebody out there. Writing is a learning process, after all.

This is not a guide to the technical side of writing. This is not a guide on how to write MLP fanfics. Because lord knows I'm not qualified to write either of those.

This is a guide on getting through your first story.

(There's probably a thousand of these things on the site already, but if there are, I haven't seen 'em.)
(Additionally, If there's anything in here that you think should be added, removed, or changed, please tell me. I really hate giving bad advice.)

Table of contents

• Ideas, Where to Find Them, and What to do With Them

• Beginning Writing: Putting the Metaphorical Pencil to Your Metaphorical Paper

  • Starting
  • Continuing
• Prereading, Editing, and Not Being a Twat

• Story Things Not Related to the Story

  • Titles
  • Descriptions
  • Coverart
  • Tags
• Publishing, and What Comes After
• Helpful Resources and Other Neat Things

Ideas, Where to Find Them, and What to do With Them

Let's talk ideas for a moment. Now, I'm not going to tell you what not to write. That would be stupid, unhelpful, and hypocritical of me. Write what you want, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise!

For some people (you know who you are), coming up with ideas is as easy as breathing. These are the sort of people who can maintain a consistent, and to be quite honest, awe-inspiring output of stories. If you're this kind of person, then congratulations! Consider keeping a list of all the ideas you come up with. You may find ways to combine weaker ideas into a stronger whole.

For the rest of us who aren't literary ninjas, coming up with ideas is one of the hardest parts of writing. Here's my advice: don't try and force it. Inspiration can be manufactured, but it's a long and frustrating process. It's much easier to let it come naturally.

Consuming other media generally works for me. Read a book, watch some movies, etc. See what other people are doing, and think about how you can apply those themes to a potential pony fic. Read other people's horsewords. Long showers help, too. Of course, that's just me personally; your mileage may vary.

Now, once you do have an idea, there are a few important things you need to consider.

Firstly, the golden question: 'Am I writing a pony fanfic?'

"Of course!" is probably your answer, but think about it for a moment. For one thing, any fics you submit for moderation will not pass if they are not pony-related at the time of submitting. But beyond that, you need to ask yourself if the story needs to be a ponyfic at all. Is it a story that can only be told through the medium of tiny equines? Does the story directly benefit from being set in Equestria, or on Equus/Ungula/Urohringer/whatever you want to call it? Does the story depend upon being about characters from the show?

If your answers to these questions are all negative, then you need to take a step back and consider what you're doing. It's possible you've started writing something that is, in fact, original fiction masquerading as a ponyfic. In which case, you should seriously start considering why you aren't just writing it as original fiction. It may be a better direction to go in.

The other thing you should consider is who you're writing for. If you're writing a story that only you will enjoy, then you need to acknowledge that. You can still write it, of course, but seriously think about whether there's any point to publishing it on the site. Same goes for stories written expressly for someone else as an in-joke. Write it, and then send it to them directly.

Also, make sure to read through the site rules about stories.

Anyway, back to ponyfics. It's what we're here for, after all.

Now that you have your idea, you need to flesh it out. An idea, a premise, is like the foundation of a story: the rest of the story is built on top of it, and relies upon it to stand, but it's not the part that people see. Even the best laid foundation means nothing if the building it supports is shoddily built. Make a plot outline, in whatever format works best to you. It can be something as simple as a few words to something as complex as a timeline of events, depending on how long and how complex your story is. At the very least, come up with a beginning, an ending, and a few major points in between. If your idea requires a detailed history or backstory, then outline that too.

Once you're satisfied with your plan, it's time to start writing.

Beginning Writing: Putting the Metaphorical Pencil to Your Metaphorical Paper

Starting

First things first. If you have not already done so, read Ezn's Writing Guide. If you have read it, read it again. It covers just about everything you could ever need to know about writing horsewords from a technical standpoint, and should honestly be required reading for everyone on the site.

Secondly, something to keep in mind: at the end of the day, you are writing horsefiction. Don't take things too seriously. Relax, and have fun!

Now, if you're just starting a fic, you may find yourself struggling to put words on the page. Do not be discouraged! This is a form of writer's block, and it happens to everyone. What's important is getting past it.

Unfortunately, there's no perfect cure for writer's block. The best advice I can give you is this: just write something. Anything. Even if it's terrible. Especially if it's terrible. The important thing is just to start writing, because it gets easier once you get going, and because the most likely reason you're having this problem is that you're trying to make your words perfect as you write them. Stop doing that. That's what the second draft is for, and the third, and so on. The first draft is all about getting your ideas onto the paper. Turn your filters off, and just write.

Abandon the concept of 'perfection'. It's an impossible goal, and it's stopping you from writing.

On that note, be prepared to do multiple drafts. Your story will be greatly improved if you do.

Continuing

So, now you've started writing. Congratulations! I knew you could do it.

You may soon find yourself stuck once again, where you've written a bit, but suddenly the words stop coming. This, once again, is normal! You've just reached you word limit for the moment. This means it's time to take a break, or perhaps to stop for the day. Don't get frustrated if you feel you're not writing enough at a time. If you need to write your story in hundred-word bursts, then do so without regret. Writing is like exercise: the more you write, the easier it becomes, and the longer you can do it for. Keep at it, and don't let yourself get discouraged. You will get better over time.

If you're having trouble concentrating on your writing, you may want to consider listening to music while you work. Now, this doesn't work for everyone, but I find it helps me personally, so I figured I'd mention it. Try it and see if it works for you. Otherwise, attempt to eliminate distractions. Some people turn off their internet while they write, for instance.

Once you've completed your first draft (either of the entire story, or just the current chapter), it's time to take a break. You need to give your brain some time away from the story, so you can come back with a fresh perspective. Going back immediately won't help as much, because your mind is still in the same place it was when you started writing, so you're going to make the same mistakes as you did before. Take some time off from working on that story.

When you come back to it, it's now time to go through and fix everything. Think of this like polishing: There's something shiny in there, you just have to clean off all the dirt and tarnish. In this case, that means fixing imperfections. You may come across a paragraph that just doesn't make sense how you've written it, or you may think of a better way to word a sentence here and there. You may add new details, or decide to take out unnecessary information. Consider reading it aloud, or recording yourself reading it aloud, as there's no better way to catch awkward wording.

Keep going through it until you stop finding things to fix.

That being said, however, you don't want to over-polish. Otherwise, you'll never actually finish anything. There comes a point when you're just changing things for the sake of some imagined form of 'progress', and not actually improving the story.

When you hit this point, it's time to move on to the next step: getting someone else's opinion.

Prereading, Editing, and Not Being a Twat

So, you're now a couple drafts in, and you've picked out and polished up everything you can find.

It's now time to show it to someone else.

Now, this can be a frighting prospect for a lot of people, myself included. But by all accounts, it's worth it. Remember, you're writing something for other people to read; seek their input.

There are people out there who want to help you get better, and are willing to lend their time to improving your storytelling. These people are called prereaders. They want to help. It makes them feel good inside.

There are also people out there who want to help you get better, and are willing to devote their time to ruthlessly pointing out every little mistake you've made, with little remorse or regard for excuses. These people are called editors. They want to rip your story apart, for its own good. It makes them feel better about themselves. I know this because I have been one.

Go to the prereaders first. Go to the editors last. Good prereaders can be almost anyone with decent writing experience; good editors can be found by searching groups. Ideally, they can be the same people.

"Bah," you may be thinking, "I don't need an editor! I've read and reread my story dozens of times! There's no way I've missed anything!"

You are wrong. There's always at least one grammatical error or typo, and that's the absolute best case. You may be like me, and discover you've been using a specific punctuation mark wrong for years (em-dashes have always—and will forever be—my greatest nemesis). Or, you may just be confusing the meaning of a word, because you didn't know any better. Maybe you've got a sentence or two that would work better if you tweaked it just a little. This is what editing is for.

Now, I'm going to tell you something important. Listen close.

Don't be a dick to your prereaders and editors.

They will make suggestions you don't like. They will tell you to change things. They will make you feel like you had no idea what you were doing. But, odds are, they are right. And you need to respect that, because they are only trying to help. If you don't agree with what you are saying, then ask them about it. Work together to find a solution that satisfies both of you. Do not yell at them, or outright ignore their suggestions. It's rude and unhelpful.

On the flip side, if an editor or a prereader is yelling at you for no reason, then you may want to consider going elsewhere. But only if they don't have a reason, and usually they do.

Story Things not Related to the Story

Let's talk advertising.

You've put a lot of effort into your story, but now you have to get people to actually read it. And that's not as easy as you might think. You need to make your story look and sound appealing, and this is done primarily through your story's information. These are the things that people look at while deciding whether to give your story a go or not.

Titles

A good title is more important than you might think. Why? Consider this:

Go to the homepage, right now. Wait, no, open it in a new tab; it'll be more convenient that way. Take a gander at the New Stories list. What's the first thing your eyes are drawn to when you look at those story cards?

More often than not, it's the title.

The title is literally the first thing anyone sees of your story (on the homepage, anyway; more on that in a minute). Thus, it is very important to make sure it's good, because it's going to be making the first impression, and that first impression is key.

So for Pete's sake, spell your title correctly! Seriously, it pisses me off so much when people do this. Take your time, and make sure it's right. Correctly formatted, too. It isn't hard.

Now, selecting a good title can be tricky. I'm not very good at this myself, but here's my advice: think about how much you would want to read a fic with that title. If there's any doubt, run it by someone else and get their opinion. Naming a story 'My OC's adventures in Pnnyville [Rarity is wrost Pony]' is not going to make people want to read it. Except to laugh at you.

And we will.

Coverart

Unlike on the main page, when someone scrolls through a site search or a bookshelf, the first things their eyes go to is the coverart. Your coverart should be an accurate representation of what the fic is about. Make sure it's relevant. And, obviously, it should look good.

Now, there are a number of options when it comes to acquiring coverart. Possibly the simplest is to use an episode screenshot. If you have any talent with Photoshop, you can go the extra mile and throw something together pretty easily.

You can also use fanart. If you do this, it's courteous to ask the artist first. It's only polite. It's also polite to leave a little note at the bottom of your description that says who did it, and links to their page.

If you have the money, you can also commission an artist to make custom coverart for you. As with the above, leave a note in your description.

Or, if you're a jack-of-all-trades with too much time on their hands like me, you can draw your own!

Descriptions

Your description is your pitch to the audience. While the title and the coverart serve to draw attention to your story, the description is what makes people click on it.

There are two types of descriptions on FimFic: short, and long. The short description is what shows up when your story is on the front page, or in a list-view list. The long description is what people see on your story's page, or in a full-view list.

The short description should act as a hook. It's there to make people click on your story. It should intrigue the viewer, and entice them to read more.

That being said, don't make it clickbait-y, it'll have the opposite of the intended effect. And for the love of all that is good and pony, do not include the phrase 'read on to find out' or anything even remotely similar. It's one of the most off-putting things you can put in a description.

Your long description should, in almost all cases, include more information than your short description. At the very, very least, they should be about the same, detail-wise. The point is to convey basic information about your story, giving a short synopsis of the premise without giving away any major late plot details. Don't spell out your entire story in the description, but give the readers something they can make a decision on.

Also (and I shouldn't have to mention this, but I keep seeing it), you do not capitalize each word in the description. That's reserved for titles only. Look on the back or the inside flap of a book and tell me if the description is capitalized. It isn't.

Tags

Tags are the little things you use to tell readers what's in your story. They are a very useful tool, and come in a few different flavors: characters, content, and genres. Make sure to tag your stories accurately; you can find information about each tag here.

Do note, however, that there is such a thing as 'overtagging', in which an author uses more tags than they could conceivably need. This is generally seen as a bad sign by readers, as it can indicate that the story suffers from a lack of focus. In fact, Knighty, the Esteemed God of Fimfic himself, once posted this graph to the FimFiction Discord:

To quote the man himself:

number of tags vs average rating
for stories

scientific proof over taggers write garbage

[sic]

This is a combined total of all tags, by the way, which includes characters. Going by the graph, the ideal number of tags would be 4-5. Of course, that's just an average. If you need more tags, then by all means, add more tags. But avoid adding tags unnecessarily. If Coco Pommel says one line in the entirety of your story, then you should probably not be tagging her. Likewise, if the majority of your story is not dark, then maybe don't include the Dark tag. The exceptions to this are the content tags (Gore and Sex), which act as more of a warning, and should thus be included if they're at all warranted.

(If you want to see more of what Knighty had to say during this conversation, check out Amby/Para's blog on the subject here.)

Publishing, and What Comes After

You've written the story. You've gone through it several times. You've had it preread, and edited. There's nothing else you can do to make it better.

It's time to take a deep breath, brace yourself, and hit that big shiny 'Submit Story to Moderation Queue' button.

Feels good, doesn't it?

Your story has now entered the moderation queue. This is where stories wait for the moderators to approve or deny them. It may take some time for them to get to your story depending on how busy the queue is. The Mods have lives too, after all. Be patient.

If your story gets denied, you will receive a PM explaining why. Fix those problems and resubmit.

If your story passes moderation, then congratulations! You've done it! I'm so proud of you. Your story should be hitting the front page sometime within the next ten minutes.

What do you do now? Well, if you're like me, you start refreshing the page every 30 seconds to see if anyone's upvoted or left a comment. Alternatively, you can step away from your computer for a bit and surprise yourself later. Your choice.

Now, a little bit about the Featured box.

Getting a story on the Featured box is a goal for a lot of people starting out (myself included). Even if you don't care about that sort of thing, it's still prime advertising space. It's like a billboard, proclaiming that your story is worth reading, and it's right on the front page. People will pay more attention to your story if it makes it on there.

How does it work? Well, the first seven slots are for new stories, and the bottom three are reserved for stories that have just received an update. Featured stories are selected and ranked by a mysterious algorithm, the exact nature of which is known only to the site's inner circle. It is not hard to tell what affects it, however; things like a story's heat (recent popularity, basically), its upvote/downvote ratio, its length (yes, story length is a factor, Knighty's confirmed it) all play a part.

I could tell you a few things about how to game the system. But I'm not going to, because that should not be your goal. You should aim to write a story that is good enough to get featured, not a story that exists only for the sake of getting featured. There's a term for that, and that term is featurebait. Featurebait is frowned upon for a reason.

Now, on the right side of the homepage is the Popular Stories box. This is somewhat easier to get on to, and is still a good advertisement, though not as good as the Featured box. It relies upon a story's heat alone, and also doesn't discriminate by age or updates; I've had old stories of mine pop up on there before due to renewed public interest in them.

Let's talk about comments for a bit.

Comments are the best medium for reader feedback on the site. While your upvote/downvote ratio does give you a quantitative measure of success, it's the comments that tell you what you're doing right, and what you're doing wrong.

As an aside, if you don't usually leave comments on the stories you read, then I implore you to start doing so. It means a lot to the authors. You don't need to comment on everything, but if you have something to say, then please, say it!

There are a few different types of comments. There are the kind that leave actually useful criticism. These are the rarest kind, and the best kind, and you should cherish them. Write back. Thank them. Have a discussion.

Then are the comments that pick out any technical errors that may have slipped through the editing process. These are useful. Make the corrections if they're right, and thank them.

There are the 'I liked this, because...' comments, which are always nice to see, and are a useful indicator of your strengths. On the flip side, there are the 'I didn't like this, because...' comments. These can be a little disheartening, but they are also useful. If people are complaining about something, then chances are you've messed it up. Take it to heart, and don't make the same mistakes next time.

There are comments that discuss your story, talk about the plot, and maybe try to guess where it's going, if the story's multiple chapters long. These are your insight into the minds of the readers. It's also a lot of fun to giggle at them when they guess wrong.

There are the generic, 'I liked this!' comments. These are fairly common, and are encouraging, though not particularly useful.

And then there are the comments that tell you they didn't like your story, but don't make the effort to be helpful and tell you why. Don't let them discourage you. If they can't be bothered to explain themselves, then you shouldn't be bothered to care. If you want, you can ask them why; you might even get a useful response.

Now, this should go without saying, but do not delete other people's comments. You have the power to do this on your stories. Don't. Just don't. Block the offending user if you feel the need to, but don't delete their comments. People will not like you if you do this. I will not like you if you do this. And, if you've made it this far into this thing, clearly my opinion means something to you.

Now, you may be wondering: "My story's done. It's published. There's nothing more I can do. What's next?"

You start writing something else, of course.

Helpful Resources and Other Neat Things

There are a number of useful resources available to (horse)writers looking to improve their craft. I'd like to use this space to highlight a few of them. Here's hoping this list grows over time.

• Once again, Ezn's Writing Guide. It's permanently featured on the site for a reason. It also has a (rather large) resources section of its own, so be sure to check there too.
• The School for New Writers, the largest author help group on the site.
• Bad Horse's blog index.
• bookplayer's blog index.
• AlicornPriest's Writer's Workshop blogs.
• Max Florschutz's Being a Better Writer blogs.
• The Writing Excuses podcast. "Fifteen minutes long, because you're in a hurry, and we're not that smart."
• If you have any interest in romance, consider checking out Aragon's 'It Feels Rapey' blog series. You can find them listed on his main page. They cover some of the most egregious failings of badly-written romance, and are highly entertaining reads in their own right.
• Another major romance faux pas, this time brought to us by Chuckfinley. Also with a followup by bookplayer.
• More of Aragon, this time talking about random comedy (and a bit about comedy in general), can be found here.
• I was right, I'm not the only one who's written one of these! Here's another, by Elric of Melnipony. This one's less about process and more things you should do, but it's good advice.
• For that matter, also check out the Helpful Tips section on FanOfMostEverything's user page, which is where I found the above.
• MrNumbers on hazardous topics. Now, I'm of the firm belief that you should be allowed to write what you want, and I try very hard to avoid going against that belief. But this is definitely something to consider, and consider carefully.
• The handiest guide to punctuation on the internet, at least as far as I'm concerned.
• How to use an apostrophe.
• The official guide to the site's BBCode can be found here!
• If you have a question about writing or a writing-related topic, consider asking about it on the #Writing-help channel of the FimFic Discord, the invite link to which can be found here! This is where I stole found most of the links for this section. I'm usually hanging around on there, as are a lot of people far more qualified than me to answer anything you have to ask. It's also just a nice place to hang out in general (despite our apparently, erm... sour reputation), so consider sticking around!

---

I hope this has been helpful. If you have suggestions, or have something to contribute, I'm all ears.
-RB