Underappreciated Author Spotlight: Miller Minus · 10:18pm Apr 1st, 2018
Eh, I'm not good at intros, and I can't really think of anything to say here I haven't already said in one of the previous editions. So read on after the break to see why Miller Minus is worthy of your follow.
As I write this blog, Miller Minus has 53 followers.
This does not compute. Only 53? Really? What the hell do you have to do to get any attention around here?
Miller has published 9 stories, and about 6 followers per story is actually a reasonable pace these days, but more for people who already are well up in the hundreds, where you're not getting that many new pairs of eyes on a new story. But the vast majority of people around here haven't read anything by him, so he should still be in that sweet spot where even if he only got 100 views on a story, most of those would be new readers.
The culprits here are a lot of the same ones I've covered before. It's just harder to get followers these days, but as I said, the fact that most readers will be people not already following him should give him a better follower-to-story ratio, I'd think. Miller signed on in 2014, probably a bit after the fandom's peak, but there were still plenty of readers back then. Another common theme is pace. Miller's written 9 stories in about 3 1/2 years, so the output hasn't been consistent. I'm not sure readers actually research that, to be honest. Scrolling through the list of them, noting publication dates, etc., seems like more work than just hitting the follow button and seeing if the next few new story notifications you get catch your interest. No, I think it's more about name recognition. If you see a story that looks like it might suit you, and it turns out you liked it a lot, then a month later, the same thing happens, and you remember the author's name from the first time, that makes a good trigger to follow them. But if you're only publishing once every 3 months, it's infrequent enough for readers to have forgotten what they might have seen by you before.
Another thing I'll touch on, and that incorporates some of the same argument, is that if your first couple of stories are great, it gives you a huge leg up. But who does that, really? People with lots of experience from other fandoms or original fiction sure, but for those of us going through the learning process here, of course your first few stories won't be great. My first is better than it had any right to be, mostly through luck, but it had lots of bad writing practices and dropped plot threads. The second was a great concept handled in a very amateur manner, but luckily it touched enough readers that it got really popular. Without that success, I wouldn't be here now, but it helps keep your head in the right place when you realize a large chunk of your fandom cred comes from a deeply flawed story.
Anyway, that's all to say that Miller probably suffers from the compounding of entering the fandom at a time readership was starting to decline and by not having his first couple stories do anything to grab significant numbers of readers. As many of us in the writing community lament, popularity often has little to do with quality, so as to why Miller's first few stories didn't take off, I can make some suppositions, but it's anybody's guess. If we knew what'd explode, we'd write nothing else. That said, you can do things to stack the deck in your favor. And that's also a theme I've discussed before.
So let's dive right in. Of Miller's 9 published stories, I've read 4. The first was "The Tortoise in Her Care." This is from early 2015, major show character tags, about 2500 words. Sounds like something that would appeal to lots of people for a quick read. It only has 400 views, which isn't bad for an "unknown" writer, and it has 24-1 voting. It was written for 2015 EFNW scribblefest, so it would have had somewhat of a platform for publicity.
Now, I haven't kept up with scribblefest over the years. I've heard several of the more literary reviewers say the ones that win often aren't the best entries. Since I don't keep up with those, I couldn't say if I agree. We do get the occasional submission at Equestria Daily that says it was an entry or even an award winner, and honestly, I've only read one of those submissions I thought was quite good ("This Mirror Left Blank" by Norm De Plume, if you're interested), but the one year I decided to enter, I thought the slate of winners was pretty strong, and not because it included me, since I didn't win anything.
All that aside, it still should have gotten a good number of eyes on the story. It's not actually Miller's first story—it's his third—but this is still in the phase of setting up a reputation I talked about. His first story has 723 views and was an entry in Equestria Daily's Outside Insight contest, so it would have gotten at least a little publicity that way. His second has 1385 views, but that's helped by a solo Equestria Daily feature and a Seattle's Angels feature. Plus an EFNW spotlight, but I can't honestly say I know what that is. A review blog, I'd think, rather than it being an entry in an EFNW event or something. Still, Miller had gotten a fair amount of publicity before writing "The Tortoise in Her Care," yet it only has 400 views. I would have thought he'd have some name recognition by then, but maybe the publishing frequency is to blame. I'm not sure about the title—it might be a play on "The Tortoise and the Hare," though it doesn't share a moral with that fable.
Of course it doesn't correlate with popularity, but how good is the story? I had mixed feelings about it. It's really a low-stakes thing in which nothing important happens. Relatively pointless slice of life has its audience, but it also doesn't tend to make much of an impression, unless you're one of the early-fandom heavy hitters noted for doing it particularly well. While this sets up a possibly interesting prior relationship between Fluttershy and Tank, it doesn't make a point out of that. What it comes down to is that Fluttershy originally underestimated him the same way everyone else did, but there don't seem to be any lasting effects from it, nor does Fluttershy seem to learn any lesson from it. There were some stylistic things as well, like repeated structures and some blunt emotions, but they're not worth going into detail over. If those kinds of thing bother you, then they might turn you off here, provided Miller has't gone back to edit them out. That was a lot of build-up for a short review, huh? Not a lot I can say about this story, though.
The next one I read was "Root, Root, Root." It's several stories later in the Miller ouvre, coming after another that got posted on Equestria Daily ("In the Belly of the Lights," which still only got 630 views, but it's a Rarity x OC shipfic, so that happens sometimes...). So why didn't I link this one? It's been deleted. 
So I guess I can go into a lot more detail, since there's nothing to spoil. This featured a young Rainbow Dash going to a sporting event with her dad. And really, it felt like two separate stories jammed together. There's a narrative thread about family bonding, but then a whole bunch of the middle of the story gets devoted to in-game action of a sport resembling rugby. If you think it's hard to make an interesting written account of something that's primarily meant to be enjoyed visually, you'd be right. There's a reason why there's nothing quite like a good play-by-play announcer on the radio. So all that family bonding stuff just gets abandoned in favor of very detailed accounts of who did what and when with the ball, and to an audience who doesn't know the game or the players coming in, it ends up being rather confusing. People generally don't listen to sports on the radio unless they're already serious fans, so they can recognize the various names and game action being spouted, and it's hard to get enthusiastic without that grounding. Had this been a real sport, then I could at least recommend it to folks who enjoy that sport, as they'd be halfway to the ideal audience for something like this.
We also get a subplot about an athlete with a black cloud hanging over his head, and he's looking for redemption. However, we always view him from some distance, as if from the announcer's booth, so we don't get a picture of how this really affects him internally. And then nothing comes of it. We go back to Dash and her dad at the end, the plot about the athlete never closes, and it isn't used as a teaching moment between our original protagonists. So like the Fluttershy and Tank story, it's just kind of there without anything of consequence happening. That doesn't mean it's a bad story. Nothing of the sort. The sentence-level writing was good, and I knew there was a good writer buried in here. I would have been more sure, had I read those two EqD-featured stories I mentioned, though without checking, I don't know whether they actually got featured before I read the two I had to date. Maybe they got featured later on, after some editing.
What makes me think that might be the case is that Miller started to get discouraged about then. He wondered if his stories were really that bad, and of course they weren't. The two I'd seen suffered from the same problems, but I don't think that carried over into his other stories; in fact, just the plots of those two featured ones wouldn't lend themselves to the same kinds of problems. At least I was able to more succinctly communicate what those issues were. Then came Miller's next story.
"Analemma" is a wonderful story. If you haven't read it, do so now. This was featured on EqD and is the story that got Miller into the Royal Canterlot Library. I've seen it rub a few people the wrong way, but as it has 147-1 voting on 1268 views, it must not be a strong feeling. This story creates a nice mysterious air, and it adds to that air steadily throughout (which is key to writing a good mystery). It actually carries the Mystery tag, but it's not the typical kind that follows a crime or takes you through collecting evidence. I'm not even sure it needs the tag. But it's still structured like an effective mystery.
Characterization provides the real draw here, though. The protagonist gets this lovely, unique voice, and I'm immediately drawn into her situation. She makes for a fun narrator, and she doesn't know what's going on any more than the reader does, so you get to discover it with her. And therein lies the mystery element, even though it's not like the solution to the mystery is held as a linchpin for how the plot will turn out. For a crime, whether the detective catches the criminal stands as an obvious driver for how the story will resolve, but that doesn't happen here. Well, it does drive the story's aftermath, but solving the mystery serves to satisfy the protagonist's curiosity, not as something she has a need to accomplish. As a mystery, it does mean I can't say much about it without spoiling it.
And the last one I've read was "The Disappearance of Harissa Honeycomb," another EqD feature. (Miller subsequently also got "Lily's Letter" posted on EqD.)
This is a criminally overlooked story. It's not the amazing thing "Analemma" is, but it creates a fun cast of OC characters, puts them in the middle of an interesting action scenario, and strikes a nice balance between adventure and light comedy. Except it doesn't have a comedy tag. Hm. Tragedy, you say? Sure, that's in there, but it carries kind of a wry observational tone that keeps things from getting too heavy. It has a decent-sized list of major characters, but it's long enough to give them all ample space for exploration. I quickly liked them, and their personalities come out in the right way: through what they do and how they act, not from some boring expository biography that undercuts the action and doesn't even make narrative sense to provide at the moment.
Y'know, I can't say a lot about this one, either, because it's also a mystery. The title makes no bones about that. I don't want to spoil the direction the investigation takes, and I can't tell you how it turns out, either, since IT HASN'T UPDATED IN OVER 7 MONTHS.
Get on that, Miller.
5 stories posted on EqD out of 9 total (and not that the rest have been rejected, either, since he hasn't submitted them all)? Inducted into the RCL? Shown steady improvement to the point that everything he writes now is consistently good? Yeah, that follower count needs to be a lot higher than 53.
Check out my previous underappreciated author spotlights:
Casca
Lucky Dreams
Ceffyl Dwr
Done and done. I thought I recognized the name; Lily's Letter caught my eye recently when it went up onto Equestria Daily. At the time, I wasn't sure; I was probably just primed to notice the title by my recent focus on the Flower Trio, and anyway I usually don't bother with Romance stories. However, this has convinced me to take a less cursory look.
May I take the chance to say these are very helpful posts? Always good to keep tabs on those authors who'd otherwise slip under the radar, partly for self-interest (you never know whether they'll show off a handy technique you could learn from), and partly for their sakes (no one likes working hard and then dumping their efforts into a void of non-response).
I'll understand if you find this proposal onerous, but have you considered posting these "Underappreciated Author Spotlight" posts more often? These days, I generally try and latch onto talent/interest rather than popularity, but the former two are considerably harder to discern than the latter one without signposts from other users.
Admittedly, I suppose I ought to identify them for myself, this being at least partly a matter of taste. That said, being somewhat conservative in habits, I prefer to get an idea of what I'm in for by reading other people's recommendations and reviews first before diving in, and posts like yours are very helpful in that respect.
Thanks, subscribed and reading. It's cool that you do this for other authors.
Judging by the Guessing author list and the prelim status, it also looks as though Miller Minus has a story sitting in the finals of the The Next Generation original fiction contest. For those who don't know, the final results won't be published until April 9, but reading can happen at any time.
Yeah, Miller's good stuff. :)
I don't think I get this April Fool's...
Well, I've seen him comment on my stories. When I clicked on his user page, I see a lot of his stories on my RiL.
May be time to correct that.
*tips hat*
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I'm not well-read enough to have a huge list of candidates, and really, I put these up about as often as I have time for. It takes me a couple hours to research and write them up, and in that time, I could have helped someone with another chapter or processed another story through the queue. I'm glad you enjoy them, but once every 3 to 6 weeks is about as frequent as they're going to get.
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He just won a silver medal in the recent original fiction mini write-off, too.
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Fair enough. You have to be realistic about these things. At the very least, I wanted to express my interest in (and enjoyment of) this kind of "unearthing hidden talent" post.
This is awfully nice of you, Pascoite! I'm forever grateful. It's true, this fimfiction account is my first foray into writing (taken seriously), and my first experience in any fandom at all. Honestly, I'm just glad I've had the chance to speak with so many great writers and learn so much about the craft. But a few extra followers means more critiques! And that's my favourite thing about this site. So again, thank you!
Also, you mean to tell me somebody is still reading Harissa?? I just may pick it up again then. But first, I have a writeoff-winning short story to upload...