So we just hit the end of prelims on this Writeoff. With the new Ponyfic Writeoff starting on Wednesday there's a limited window to have much conversation here before we all get distracted again, so it's a good time to ask how people felt about the Original Fiction Writeoff.

I think there are two discussions worth having here:

1) Original Fiction:
How did you guys feel about doing an OF Writeoff as opposed to a Ponyfic one? I know Roger's already building a new schedule, but I think it's worth asking—how many of you guys want to keep doing OF?

2) New Schedule:
How do you guys feel about the new rotation schedule, with one Ponyfic Writeoff and one OF Writeoff each five weeks? Is it too much for you? Do you want to participate in all the Writeoffs, or do you feel okay prioritizing your time for just some of them?

While I'd definitely like to give the original fiction writeoffs a try, I have no intention of doing two a month. I have a tendency to reroute all of my free time to focus on these, and I'd like to do some other work as well. (Yes, that's a personal issue, but this is how I deal with it.)

1) Original Fiction:
I've been wanting to make the step up to OF for a while, and I'm really pleased to have Writeoffs for it now. I definitely had fun this round, and honestly I found it refreshing to get to read a few stories that were built from the ground up instead of pure fanfiction. I still like pony stories, but it's nice to get something different.
I absolutely want to keep doing OF, and OF Writeoffs.

2) New Schedule:
A three-week rotation between Writeoffs is going to prevent me from participating the way I have been—namely spending the large amounts of time reading and reviewing that I've spent for the last two rounds. On the writing front, I don't think the schedule is unreasonable, but what I'm doing is unsustainable. I'm not sure yet what I'll do to respond.
At the same time, I don't need to enter every Writeoff (and haven't been, when my RL schedule gets busy). I'm pretty comfortable with the community fracturing a little bit into Ponyfic, OF, and Diehard groups, and I think we'll still see a lot of bleed-through between those with some people wanting to participate in both but preferring one type over the others. And I think for the Writeoff site as a whole, it makes sense to push toward a competition framework that's overloaded, to try to get it to grow past having just one community using it.
While I doubt I can keep up with the new schedule long-term, I think it's a good move and I'm willing to prioritize my participation.

Just tossing an idea out here, but what about spacing the Events out a tad further? Right now we're at five weeks between ponyfic events, which doesn't lend itself to evenly inserting OF rounds. If we space the ponyfic rounds out to six weeks apart, we can put OF fic rounds (short story and minific) at the three-week point. This will result in slightly longer waits between rounds for the purely pony authors, but will create a nice, even schedule with a bit more time to breathe between rounds.

I know I just started out participating in this thing, so I have no intention of trying to throw a long-term opinion around or speaking to the culture here (first impressions: y'all are nice and this was fun). But, as someone who joined and participated specifically because of the original fiction round, perhaps my take will be at least partially representative of part of the new blood in the community.

My general feelings on further participation: while not interested in participating every time a writeoff comes up, I would like to participate again. While I am not opposed to writing in MLP fanfic writeoffs by any means, I will probably favor original fiction ones, as that's the focus of my writing nowadays anyway and there are additional incentives attached to writing original fiction for me that aren't there with fanfic (practice writing original fiction, potential sales of work written for the writeoffs further down the line, the restrictive envornment leading to ideas and characters that could be further developed into sellable work). Again stressing that I would like to participate in fanfic rounds as well, time, prompt, and schedule permitting.

I have zero intention of participating Wednesday in a new prompt. This would be true if the new prompt was also original fiction, or if I wasn't currently attempting to participate in NaNoWriMo this month. My experience this first time around was a positive one, but it was a cramped one, too, and I need a better breather than a week and a half I've largely spent reading and reviewing other stories for the writeoff I was just in.

If I was to participate at the usual clip of 5 weeks in and out between prompts, I would only be writing original fiction, and if I were to alternate, I would have more like seven weeks between prompts. Neither of these are necessarily negative, but it's the truth of my situation as far as how often I could reasonably expect to participate, were I to end up participating as often as was feasible for myself, which I probably won't have the schedule for anyway.

I find I have next to no interest right no in OF, so I really don't care for them, particularly if they start impacting Pony WriteOff spacing.

So I suppose I'd rather this be a one-off thing, or at least a rarely recurring thing. Having it become a regular is going to start hurting the Ponyfic competitions, that's unavoidable, and I really don't want to see that happen.

Right now, Pony WriteOffs are the only real writing I do, and at 5 weeks they're at a somewhat comfortable spacing. I have no intent whatsoever to do a Writeoff every 3 weeks, and moving it to every 6 weeks, yea, I'm not at all a fan of that idea.

4826387
Whatever we do, can we have a calendar at writeoff.me? I nearly missed the novel event (even though I needed to bow out for time constraints and personal reasons). It would be nice to be able to plan my calendar out in advance based on the writeoff schedule, and right now it's not easy to do that.

An unrelated suggestion:

Maybe OF writeoffs shouldn't cause a deduction in FiM scores and vice-versa. Currently you lose points as soon as a writeoff ends, but it seems fairer to me to not penalize ponies who choose to play in only one category.

I'd say the same for Short Story vs. Minific, e.g., don't drop FiM minific scores until the next FiM minific round begins, etc.

This doesn't matter much because it's just the scoreboard and nopony cares, but still.

4826446
There are currently four individual and three combined scoreboards. The advantage would be that it would "stabilize" scores on the combined scoreboards, rather than giving undue weight to whichever types of competitions happened most recently.

I had to drop off the write off radar early this round due to personal stuff, but in general, I don't think I'm going to be doing the OF writeoffs anymore. It doesn't really fit with my writing style-- I'm more of a long form/expanded world writer (even my short story this round was actually a side story to my novel,) so the idea of trying to write multiple unconnected short stories regularly doesn't appeal to me at all.

But that's actually good, because there's no way I could handle back to back writeoffs on a regular basis. So I'll probably be sticking to pony rounds, though even those I'll have to pick up again after the new year because I'm working on something long for the current AppleDash contest. (Okay, maybe I'll get something in the next minific round. But short story is right out.)

I'd personally like to see this become a regular thing, and I support Cold In Gardez's idea of spacing it a bit more out (but not to the point of going back to just one writeoff per month).

More rounds and relatively tight spacing between events would be a plus for me. My personal challenge with the writeoffs has been to develop an idea (because unlike with so many other writers, they don't come easily for me) and to actually get it written. I'm averaging at about 500 words/hour. If I want to write a 6k word fic, that's 12 hours. Plus editing (maybe another 2 hours). And that's if I don't run into trouble along the way. Some weekends, that's just not gonna be possible, and more rounds will make me feel less pressured to get something to work that just won't.

Also, with the two scoreboards, I feel like people can pick and choose which writeoffs they really want to participate in. In the past, people have countered propositions to hold off more writeoffs with needing downtime, which I can empathize with. Now, if people are scoreboard fanatics, they can choose which one to take seriously, and only enter the other rounds when they feel like it. It will lead to a bit of a split, but I don't think it will be dramatic.

Five weeks is such an odd number. Yes I am aware it is also that by definition, I mean it's unusual. Six makes it every month and a half, and is so much neater.

1) I liked this event a lot, and if there are more, I'll definitely participate.

2) The schedule will be pretty tight. I would try to participate in all the events if I could, because I think it's excellent writing practice, but I'm not sure I'll be able to. I agree with 4826387 that an extra week would help.

1) I quite liked the OF event, and would look out to repeat the experience. I feel I have many ideas that simply don't mesh with ponies, and it is a wonderful occasion to try things.

2) If we keep 3 events in 5 weeks (minific - OF - Short Story) I will necessarily opt out once in a while. I don't think I can keep upt that rhythm, not if I intend to publish some of the stuff I write (being it on Fimfiction or somewhere else). Practically it probably means I will enter a competition if I see a prompt that really speaks to me. Spacing out a bit would probably be a good idea for me, but I understand that those not interested in OF would be the ones that pay due with fewer write-offs for them.

I thought the original fiction round was a neat exercise, but I probably won't participate in the future simply because my original fiction efforts are focused on longer form storytelling. I'm also dialing back my participation in the pony writeoffs for similar reasons: most of the stories I want to tell right now aren't going to fit into this kind of short story contest framework.
I still might pop in if I get a perfect idea for a given prompt that I can properly execute in a single weekend.

4826515

It used to be four weeks, but participation got so high that you spent half your time doing Writeoffs. So it moved to 5 to deal with judging taking like 10 days instead of the 3-4 it used to require.

It sounds like some ponies are less enthusiastic about OF, so maybe it should just be a bit less frequent than poni...?

Maybe it would have been better to start OF out with minifics instead of with short stories. This was probably a big hurdle for some authors, especially given the (at least to me) bland prompt.

4826640

It sounds like some ponies are less enthusiastic about OF, so maybe it should just be a bit less frequent than poni...?

Actually, by my count we've gotten two "I'm not really interested in doing OF"s, one "I'm only really interested in doing OF", one "I'm not really interested in writing short stories and minifics", and a lot of "I'd like to keep doing OF"s. So I don't think we're really seeing much consensus against it IMO.

1) I like the OF writeoffs. I'll keep doing it, and I might make it a priority over the pony ones, but I'll still participate in both, despite the schedule. Even though I suck at short stories. My brain keeps going novella or novel on my ideas.

2) Anytime is fine with me. Five weeks. Six weeks. I'll make time. But I second 4826440 in that an official calendar would be really helpful. I'd want to participate in all the writeoffs.

4826677
Not sure I agree with your count. Three ponies have said they're not interested in participating in regular OF: BlazzingInferno, bookplayer, and Morning Sun. All three are good authors who have been involved in the Writeoffs for over a year.

I don't think we should abandon OF, but I'd rather not see pony fic contests slip to a minimum six-week cycle or worse. I would prefer doing OF less frequently than pony.

The writeoffs are something I've been looking at doing for a long time, and I finally had the confidence to want to give it a try in this round. I discovered in the process, though, that writing original fiction just doesn't interest me much, and for the time being I'll be electing to skip any OF writeoffs that come up in the future.

4826481
Roger said at the beginning of this round that the scoreboard will eventually only take the writeoffs of the category you're currently looking at into account while calculating scores. So if you're looking at FiM minific scores, then the points from the most recent FiM minific round won't have any degradation, even if there have been other rounds since then. But it looks like this still isn't implemented yet.

Personally, I like things the way they are right now. I definitely think that original fiction competitions should be a thing, even though I doubt I'll submit anything to one anytime soon. And since I know I won't be participating in the OF rounds, I don't want more time between the FiM rounds.

And unless I'm mistaken, isn't Roger's intention to eventually open up the site more and have more competitions for more fandoms and such? We can't keep extending the schedule just so people can participate in every event.

To some or even many, the scores are important, so a schedule that affords regular sustainable participation seems compelling.

For me, however, scores have little import. I am much more interested in seeing what I can do and receiving feedback from other readers and writers. I would be more in favor of a regularly interspersed event schedule: leaving the pony schedule unaltered (five weeks between) with original or other events on a similar rotation with minimal overlap. I would or will participate as time and inclination affords. There is adequate activity that fracturing a little between the different type of events -- with heavy cross-participation, I'm sure -- would not be amiss. In short: don't change anything about the current setup.

Separately, I will endorse the suggestion to have a more accessible calendar on the site, to afford greater pre-planning for events. Memorizing the rotation isn't exactly rocket science, but it is an extra chore that can lead one astray; having a definitive resource on the site would be useful.

4826369
1) I loved doing an original fiction writeoff. I plan on doing a bunch of original fiction writing anyway, so it is a fun way to get feedback. I plan on continuing to participate heavily in both.

2) I like 4826387 's suggestion of spacing things out slightly more, with 6 weeks between Ponyfic competitions and 6 weeks between Original Fiction competitions, with the original fiction ones falling midway in-between the pony ones. The writeoff is fairly time/mindspace consuming, but it is a ton of fun, so I'm not opposed to doing it pretty frequently, but it would be nice to have at least a bit of a break between them. Realistically speaking the present schedule wouldn't stop me from competing, but it would likely result in me reading fewer non-finalist stories.

4826444
The combined scoreboard is for ALL writeoffs.

The way the individual boards are (going to) work is that they will each only deduct points when a story in that category comes up. That's Roger's plan, anyway.

So, yes, that would mean that people who only write original fiction or pony fiction would take a hit on the combined boards... but that's going to happen regardless because anyone who does both is going to be getting twice as many points. By having it so that the combined board words the same way as all the sub-boards, you can directly compare scores between the combined and sub-boards.

The other alternative would be to have all the sub-boards count down independently and then have the combined boards be summations of scores, but that would lead to score inflation on the combined boards and less comparability between them and the sub-boards.

4826369

Original fiction writeoffs are what I'm most interested in by far (I mean I literally haven't participated in a writeoff since, what, the first two? I've been out of it for a whiiiiiiiile.) I don't really care for horsefiction at the moment.

So yeah. 4826387 's idea sounds great to me.

4826917

And unless I'm mistaken, isn't Roger's intention to eventually open up the site more and have more competitions for more fandoms and such? We can't keep extending the schedule just so people can participate in every event.

But if each individual Writeoff category is spaced so closely together (or worse, at the same time), if someone gets interested in another category, they have to start dropping out of the one they know they like in order to cross the borders. Maybe cross-scheduling isn't a big deal for fandom vs. fandom, but Original Fiction is hypothetically something that all fanfic writers could have an interest in (and a potential path out of the fanfic ghetto toward actually getting paid for your writing). It's not going to be for everyone — witness some of the replies on this thread — but that crossover shouldn't be discounted.

For my own part …

Like 4826374, I flatly cannot participate at the frequency of more than one Writeoff a month. I haven't gotten a single word of my non-writeoff fics written or edited in a month with these back-to-back competitions, and we've got another one about to start, which I will probably throw something half-hearted in for and then skip out on reviews. So even if you don't like the Original Fiction events, deciding that you're okay with them crammed in between fast-paced ponyfic rounds is already carrying opportunity costs.

If I were forced to choose between ponyfic and original fic (and at this pace I'm going to have to), it would be original, because I think that would do more for my growth as a writer. (However, I won't do it if there's not enough critical mass to generate good feedback — and with the compressed schedule, we already lost a few of our most prolific and insightful reviewers, and several others turned in only a single slate's worth. There's a slippery-slope effect to that: the more people who decline to participate, the less incentive there is to show up. So as a practical matter, if the ponyfic numbers this weekend stay as strong as they've been and OF participation doesn't increase, I'd stay with the crowd.)

I think I best like 4826777's suggestion, slightly modified to even it out:

Pony Short ------ (6 weeks) --------- Pony Minific ----- (3 weeks) ---- Original Short ----- (3 weeks) ----- Pony Short (and repeat)

This way, if you only do pony, it's only one more week in between rounds, and if you do that plus OF, it averages out to one round per month. That also leaves room for another fandom at the midpoint of the 6-week bracket, if Roger wants to test another expansion before going too aggro on growth. I wouldn't join that, but hypothetically someone could do so and still have a half-time social life.

(Edit: Somehow I missed that 4826387 suggested exactly this, with original minifics in the gap. I strongly support that. I'd merely decline to participate in original minifics, because I'm tepid on minifics to begin with.)

If that seems like too long between rounds for the folks only participating in one side, maybe think of it as additional editing time? I'm accumulating a backlog of Writeoff stories I don't have time to edit and release, and that's not doing me any favors.

If the consensus is that the majority doesn't want to do the original fiction rounds, though, I'd rather see it dead than wedged into a corner. (Edit: That doesn't seem to be the case, thankfully.)

4826387
There is a trade off in that this is worse for people who want to participate only in one genre, but better for people who want to participate in both.

For the former group, 6 weeks doesn't strike me as such a hugely long time that anyone is going to get writeoff withdrawals, but for the latter group 2 weeks between events (occasionally) does strike me as being too much.

There is also a lot of value in simplifying things to 3 weeks between events.

4826440
This is very high on my priorities right now.

4826444
What will happen is that whichever scoreboard you're viewing will have scores decayed each time a contest that matches that scoreboard concludes. So the global scoreboard will decay every event, the FiM scoreboard will decay every FiM event, and the FiM Short Story scoreboard will decay every FiM Short Story.

4826917
This is true, but for now we just have two genres, so it's plausible to keep things spaced out appropriately.

I'm considering removing the global scoreboard so that people don't feel like they have to enter all the writeoffs and burn themselves out very quickly.

4827831

I'm considering removing the global scoreboard so that people don't feel like they have to enter all the writeoffs and burn themselves out very quickly.

I think this is the best idea. With the global scoreboard, you'll either end up with people feeling like they need to enter everything and burning out, or people giving up on the global scoreboard because they can't afford to be professional writeoff participants. The only people it will end up mattering to are the Iron Ponies who can enter every contest and keep their quality up, and they'll probably be doing that anyway.

4826369
4827706

Late to join the discussion, but to echo some of the previous comments here, I am absolutely in favor of more original fiction write-offs -- I'd even be willing to chip in a little prize money so we can keep that pot going. Writeoffs are a fantastic way to get me to actually, well, write, and expanding them into original content fixes a gap I've been looking for for awhile. Don't think I'm alone there.

I do see the issues in scheduling, and agree with them, but I think numerous other people have already addressed that. Space out the pony events by one more week (so the original content can be right in the middle at three weeks), and remove the global scoreboard so people don't feel they have to enter /every/ event.

The issue I have with spacing pony out to 6 weeks is that, a year ago, it was every 4. So you were doing something once a month.

It moved to 5 because, hey, more people entered, the extra reviewing time made it necessary. That makes sense.

But then moving it to 6 means you've cut out 1/3 of what you would have done a year ago without any gain for it, and at absolutely no benefit. And...yea, that kinda feels pretty sucky from my perspective, like 'Oh hey this thing I'm not interested in suddenly is taking away this thing I like doing'.

It's kind of more frustrating too on the grounds that, well, you can find places to compete to do OF all over the place. But actual reliable good Pony competitions are few and far between, and often much more tightly thematic like monthly shipping contests. This is freeform and unique and I don't want to see one group lose out so another can gain.

4828282

It's kind of more frustrating too on the grounds that, well, you can find places to compete to do OF all over the place. But actual reliable good Pony competitions are few and far between, and often much more tightly thematic like monthly shipping contests. This is freeform and unique and I don't want to see one group lose out so another can gain.

I'm tempted to simply say "that's what compromise is," but I know how frustrating it is to lose out on something you love doing. If there are people who genuinely feel like something is being lost by going to a 6-week rotation, then I don't think the world will end if we stick to a 5-week rotation.

I would be concerned about burn-out, though.

4828304
4828282
It is worth noting that something like 2/3rds of the participants crossed over between the competitions, so there's probably a fairly large common pool of writers.

4828282
I'm with CiG on this one, "seeing one group lose out so another can gain" is literally unavoidable, since it's either "don't touch the pony schedule and burn out the authors active on both sides" or it's "fiddle with the pony schedule and slow it down for the non-OF authors".

If I were god-emperor, I'd make it a flat five weeks between Writeoff rounds, i.e. there is a little less than one Writeoff per month, and simply start shifting those rounds away from pony and toward OF, but I suspect that would be a bad idea for everyone-but-me. In your benevolent dictatorship there wouldn't be any OF at all. Under the iron hoof of Bad Horse, the Writeoffs would have a three-week writing and editing period. There's a lot of mutually exclusive ideas about the ideal Writeoff; Roger's been herding us cats for a while now, and democracy is really the best option we've got.

I'm sorry we disagree here, but I suspect a compromise like 6/3 minimizes overall frustration/burnout/unhappiness. (And I'm no stranger to the Writeoffs changing in ways I personally dislike; I'd love to go back to the 1-10 voting instead of this frustrating ordered-list thing, but I'm in the minority on that one.)

4828304 4828353
Is this worth straw-polling to get a sense of the numbers? (Cold's original comment with the suggestion got a whole bunch of upvotes, so it's clearly got some core support.) Should someone make a new thread with an official proposal?

4828887

My inclination is to say 'Ponyfic and OF should be on schedules that completely ignore one another's existence', whatever that may be. If you only want to do OF or Pony, you're completely unaffected. If you want to do both, you have to choose between 'always be competing' or 'Sit some events out', but if you're only doing half of them you're still doing as much as any 'purist'.

And the other consequence will likely be declining numbers of participants per round, as people split into camps. Honestly, I think that's an overall plus - if participation splits evenly in half, for instance, it may well be possible to abandon prelims/finals and go back to a single round with a shorter reviewing period again.

4828304

Kinda going off up above - someone should be able to manage their participation. Yea, if someone tries do do literally everything they may burn out, but I'd argue we're better off having a greater number of events with the expectation nobody does all of them, then a smaller number of events so a subset of people can do all of them.

4828887 4828304 4828353 4828282
I feel like the OF side of the conversation is starting from the idea that it would be optimal for everyone to be able to participate fully in every writeoff, which is an assumption the fanfic-only side does not seem to share. Even with the six week plan this would barely be convenient for some people to do both, and if the site adds more contests it's a totally pointless goal to work towards; people will have to make some choices about what they want to give their attention to.

Basically, at some point we're going to have to say "this is a totally separate contest that people can decide to participate in the same way they decide whether to do writeoff or a contest being run by another group, or NanoWriMo, or all of them." I don't care strongly either way, but I also don't see any reason that line shouldn't be drawn between fanfic and OF (meaning that the fanfic writeoff is set where it's convenient for most of the ponyfic participants, the OF writeoff is set where it's convenient for OF participants, and if those overlap too much then people will have to prioritize individually.)

4826369

Honestly the only thing I'm concerned with is that the prevalence of original fiction contests will have a negative knock on effect to the pony ones. People's standards will start to change as we see new, exciting material come up. Until suddenly a story about Rainbow Dash talking to one of her friends about her life issues or something does not seem nearly as appealing as a totally new worldbuilding adventure full of fresh, original content.

As much as I'd like to enter original fiction writeoffs, I just don't have the skill, so it's entirely pointless for me. At least I can somewhat write pony decently well... but I have a hard enough time trying to compete already. I'm sure others are in my position, newbie writers getting acquainted in the comfy world of pony pony. The last thing we need is to our stuff be viewed as 'boring' because of the appearance of totally unique (and perhaps arguably better) stories.

4829046

I'm not sure that line of reasoning follows through, really. I constantly read published books, but that doesn't stop me from enjoying fanfic.

4829046

The last thing we need is to our stuff be viewed as 'boring' because of the appearance of totally unique (and perhaps arguably better) stories.

I don't get the whole 'arguably better' part. It's still the same crowd. Is there really a difference in quality between a ponyfic by Horizon and an original fiction by Horizon? I mean, the majority of the competitors all come from this site anyway, so it's not like we're going to be suddenly getting writers with 30+ years experience coming along to usurp us. And, as 4829064 said, I've seen plenty of fanfics that are new, original, and sometimes far better than some published stuff.
4826369 Figured I should chip in. I like the idea of doing OF, and I'd like it to mutually coexist with the pony ones, but that's just me.

4829064

You probably enjoy those things for different reasons, though.

At least to me, the majority of fanfic is like a tasty snack. Not necessarily the best thing ever but it's fun, simple to get into and easy to make.

Compare that with original fiction, which requires much more effort to invest new readers. An original fiction that grabs a reader's attention is most likely going to be considered very good by them.

Now consider that this is a competition, so things need to grab voter's attention quickly to stand out from the crowd.

I just think the original stuff is much more likely to be remembered because it's all that more impressive that it managed to grab a reader's attention.

4829098
But from that perspective, most of the original fiction won't be as good as the pony fiction, since it's harder to write in that respect and the writers here are the same skill level.

Personally, I like pony fanfic better than any of the short stories I read this round. (Which was admittedly not many, but still.)

4829102

That's what I mean. Since it's harder to write, when it does impress, it'll be much more highly favoured.

4829107
But it'll impress less often. I don't see the problem.

4829110

I'm not sure where you're getting the 'impress less often' from, since there will always be finalists and winners.

4829098

That presupposes the different writeoffs would be competing with each other, which they are not (exceptions being the couple of fanfic stories that got submitted to this last original fic writeoff, that I would bet were you to poll the majority of voters, you'd find out that they weren't brought onto the finals because it was supposed to be for original fic and thus they got abstained a lot, not because they were inherently less engaging than original fiction). I also don't really agree in general. Short fiction for fanfic is certainly structured differently than original short fiction with characters that don't exist elsewhere because it doesn't have to be concerned with introducing characters or providing backstory and exposition on the situation, but I've personally read ponyfic that's been more engaging and evocative than published novels, even published novels I've liked. To me, this is a similar argument to saying that a comedy is always going to lose out to a drama because comedies are easier to provide immediate engagement than dramas, so good dramas that draw you in are going to be considered very good while good comedies are going to be forgotten.

Is there maybe some truth to that argument? On an individual, subjective level, sure, that might sometimes be true. It's not a universal fact enough to where I think there's any holistic threat that dramas level against comedies. It can just as easily be said that comedies are at a higher advantage because people tend to like comedies more than people like dramas, so you're playing with a handicap to go drama. Some people are going to prefer original fiction and find it more memorable than ponyfic, some people are going to prefer ponyfic and find it more engaging, and most people are going to be in the middle and appreciate stories and contests on a case by case basis.

4829134

The writeoffs aren't competing with each other, I'm just worried we'll see a general trend in changing tastes as time goes on. There was quite a bit of support for this original fiction contest. Not that it shouldn't exist but it makes novice (read: bad) writers like myself very paranoid when the pond got that much bigger.

4829113
Finalists and winners are the best of that contest, that doesn't mean they're impressive, or even good. Even if everyone entered poorly spelled messes, there would be finalists and a winner. There might be people who didn't medal in a contest who would have won gold in a different one, against different fics.

And what I'm saying is that if it's true that writing OF is harder then writing fanfic, that's what would happen: Stories that win a gold in OF might be stories that wouldn't even have medaled next to a well written pony fic. On the other hand, on the rare occasion that a really great OF fic comes along, yes, people will give it more credit than a great fanfic. But the reason it would get that attention is that it would rarely happen.

(I'm not entirely sure I agree with your premise, anyway. I think fanfic is harder in some ways than original fiction-- people go into original fiction with no expectations about what characters or settings "should" be, and fanfic involves coming up with original ideas for settings and characters that hundreds of thousands of people have already written about. Yes, it is harder to hook people with original fiction, but your characters can act however you want them to and you can change details to make them do what you want them to do.)

4829145

Again, I don't really think that follows, because liking original fiction for what it is vs. liking fanfic for what it is aren't mutually exclusive by any means. Someone participating, reading, and voting in a fanfic writeoff is looking at different things than they would be in an original fic writeoff, and even if they're doing both, they're grading inside the curve of all the other entries in that writeoff, not all stories ever.

Unless what you're getting at is a concern that the original fic writeoffs are, as a result of somewhat fracturing the community into multiple pieces, going to draw participants of the fanfic side away to the original side, and the fanfic side is going to wither? In which case, I don't think it's something to worry about because the community is kinda founded upon the MLP fan community. This thread's shown that some people are going to favor one side or the other, especially considering spacing issues between writeoffs, but just as many are saying they're going to favor fanfic over original, and most of the original favorers said they'd really be interested in both. There's a certain amount of 'time will tell' on how any fractures might actually occur, but I have a feeling if one or the other is going to wither and dwindle, it's going to be the original fiction side. MLP fanfic is the uniting factor for everyone involved in a much more innate way than general writing is, and if it came down to a shootout between the two, I'd be putting my chips on MLP winning.

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I don't think I understand. Are you saying that since it's harder to write OF, writing OF is more impressive? Doesn't that just speak more of the individual author's skill, rather than the genre? (i.e. a good author is able to write impressive OF) Not that I even agree that OF is fundamentally more difficult than fanfic; in my experience, I'd rate the two about the same.

Regarding shifting audience expectations, I'm pretty sure this is something that already happens constantly. I agree that people may enjoy FF and OF for different reasons, but that doesn't mean that your views of one of them can't affect the other. Everyone is reading both pony and non-pony things all the time. And I don't even think this cross-contamination (for lack of a better term) even matters.

For instance, I think written horror stories are extremely difficult to pull off well, and they do seem more memorable to me when I see a really good one. But just because I read a lot of good horror stories doesn't mean a SoL author should be worried that I'm going to judge his stories to a higher standard. My set of standards is something that I've developed over years of reading; worrying about what genre I've been reading most recently feels very knit-picky to me.

In other words, I'm already holding up all of the MLP fanfics I read to the same (somewhat lofty) standard that I do for original fiction, and I suspect that a lot of other readers are doing the same. A relatively small shift in my immediate literary menu isn't going to make me hate reading what I've already been reading for several years.