On Equestria Daily's fanfic submission policy. · 4:32am Mar 13th, 2012
On March 1st, I submitted 'Worlds Beyond' to be featured on Equestria Daily. My first MLP fanfic, 'The Monster Mash', was featured there, and the effect on my readership can't be underestimated.
On March 6th, I got feedback from a pre-reader asking that I take out the 'opening credits' and that I go over Applejack's Funetik Aksent with a weed whacker. Not a problem; I made those changes, as well as a few other minor ones, and resubmitted my request. However, that resubmission somehow got lost in the shuffle, as I discovered when I gave them a poke March 10th. That poke got the ball rolling again, though, and I was confident I'd be good to go shortly.
Just now I've received a response from Equestria Daily, and I can only assume the original prereader never saw it—because it's very different in tone.
The complaints about my story are now much more serious, and more vague to boot. I'm told I have 'awkward pacing', 'comma abuse', and 'poor transitions', with only one concrete example given. Equestria Daily's "three strike policy" was explicitly cited, meaning I've gone from a story that needed just a few tweaks to be good to a story that needs major revisions, done right the first time, or it will forever be banned from their hallowed shores.
Worst of all, one of the things they cite as an error is something I explicitly disagree is one. To quote directly from the email I received:
4) Missing Descriptions: For example, you described Fluttershy's home acceptably in the opening, and the crash of the "star" exceptionally … but you never described Fluttershy herself. You must assume that the readers have never seen a Fluttershy before, and thus wouldn't know what she looked like. From your story, Fluttershy, and any of the ponies, are left completely bereft of physical descriptions. For someone stumbling over this, they might thing Fluttershy was just a weirdly named human … and for the record, using Fluttershy, whom you didn't describe, as part of the description for the star about broke my brain …
Really, anonymous prereader? Really? In a My Little Pony fanfiction, posted on a My Little Pony fanfiction site, I need to explicitly describe what one of the main characters looks like? Do I need to have a scene where Twilight Sparkle, purple unicorn with a star-shaped cutie mark and personal student of Princess Celestia (alicorn princess of the magical land of Equestria) uses her magic, as unicorns are capable of doing, to open a refrigerator door (insert a digression here on the nature of fridges in Equestria's Schizo Tech world) and put a sandwich inside (insert a digression here on the dietary needs of ponies)? I understand that if I were writing, say, a crossover fanfiction, it would be important to supply enough details for someone only familiar with one of the franchises in question to follow along, but I strived to avoid phrasing like "Twilight watched the cyan pegasus pacing in front of her" in much the same way I'd avoid phrasing like "Sara watched the muscular black man writing on his notepad".
This is, as you can probably tell, frustrating me. I don't know what I should do. I could write off Equestria Daily altogether, but I don't like the thought of just giving up on the best way of getting my story in front of more readers. I can try getting in touch of Equestria Daily and seeing what comes of that (though I honestly don't know if they even have a complaint resolution process). I could try giving my fic a massive rewrite, but as none of the problems mentioned have been identified by either myself or my prereaders, I doubt how effective that would be, and then it'd be my third strike.
I'm not looking for any pats on the back or people saying Equestria Daily sucks. I'm looking for solutions to my problem, or at the very least advice about how to take a more constructive approach to this situation than throwing my hands in the air (did I mention I have hands today?) and giving up on Equestria Daily.
Venting may also play a role in this blog post.
Applejack's accent is what made me like her part in the story. The only people that would need a description of Fluttershy's appearance would be anyone who hasn't ever SEEN MLP:FIM before, how retarded is this guy?
I liked the opening credits. They make the story stand out form others on this site.
Ugh, yeah, submitting to EqD is occasionally a crapshoot, given that I've gotten raked over the coals for including those very types of descriptions before. Best thing I can say is to address the points in the prereader email and include a Cliff's Notes version of what you were told needed fixing in your resubmission (the prereaders seem less likely to include self-contradictory requests if they have a reminder in front of them of what you got asked for the last time and evidence that it was addressed).
I would see if there's a way to contact them about this. In the likely event of that not working, all you can do is go along with it. I'm not saying I agree with them, far from it, but if you want on that site, you're gonna have to just do what they ask. Either that, or go completely overboard to prove your point. If you do that, I'd make sure you send a copy of the "suggestions" with it, along with proof of the "changes" you made. Maybe you'll get lucky and end up with a completely different pre-reader that agrees wholeheartedly with you.
I've contacted Equestria Daily, pointing out that the two prereaders gave very different responses to my story and asking for guidance in what to do next. All I can do at this point is wait and see what they say.
4) Missing Descriptions: For example, you described Fluttershy's home acceptably in the opening, and the crash of the "star" exceptionally … but you never described Fluttershy herself. You must assume that the readers have never seen a Fluttershy before, and thus wouldn't know what she looked like. From your story, Fluttershy, and any of the ponies, are left completely bereft of physical descriptions. For someone stumbling over this, they might thing Fluttershy was just a weirdly named human … and for the record, using Fluttershy, whom you didn't describe, as part of the description for the star about broke my brain …
Really, anonymous prereader? Really? In a My Little Pony fanfiction, posted on a My Little Pony fanfiction site, I need to explicitly describe what one of the main characters looks like? Do I need to have a scene where Twilight Sparkle, purple unicorn with a star-shaped cutie mark and personal student of Princess Celestia (alicorn princess of the magical land of Equestria) uses her magic, as unicorns are capable of doing, to open a refrigerator door (insert a digression here on the nature of fridges in Equestria's Schizo Tech world) and put a sandwich inside (insert a digression here on the dietary needs of ponies)? I understand that if I were writing, say, a crossover fanfiction, it would be important to supply enough details for someone only familiar with one of the franchises in question to follow along, but I strived to avoid phrasing like "Twilight watched the cyan pegasus pacing in front of her" in much the same way I'd avoid phrasing like "Sara watched the muscular black man writing on his notepad".
In one way, I agree with the prereader that having description in really helps, but at the same time, this is set on a site specifically for pony fics and one of the key problems a lot of people have about bad-fics is that there's too much description of certain characters too quickly. Most of us that have watched the FiM version of MLP will know who you're talking about when you mention Twi and already have an image of her in mind, for those that actually don't, because Google's being odd about how it ranks things say, then yes description can help, but it doesn't have to be a block. I almost never describe things exactly, and when I do describe something it's often across quite a bit of story.
Usually I'll put things in when it's relevant, such as when a character sees another and we as readers haven't been introduced to them yet I'll mention a few odds and ends or when describing actions or something that affects their normal look. Most of it is really dependant on your style of working though, so while I do try to build images thinking that the reader shouldn't know the characters, someone thinking that readers should know the character probably will write differently.
I think the best thing to do would be what you've already done and contact the admin of ED saying that their prereaders can't agree on what actually needs doing on your story. The other thing might be to send it to an independent prereader that you know will give decent fic feedback and include the notes from that when you contact ED again.