Say what? · 3:00pm Sep 26th, 2013
Well, I just got a reply to my submission request to have "Only An Imaginary Friend" featured on Equestria Daily.
This was their reply:
Thank you for submitting your story to Equestria Daily. Unfortunately, I am unable to recommend it for posting. This is your first strike.
Reasons for rejection:
Paragraph spacing (Long Description on FimFiction)
Uninteresting first scene (geography lesson)
Doubled punctuation (??, !!)
Applejack's accent is too thick
Picture embedded into story
Comma usage
Dialogue punctuation
Ellipsis use
Narrative alternates between talking heads and geography lesson
To which I say:
"Say what?"
Let's see what they're trying to tell me:
Paragraph spacing (Long Description on FimFiction)
I'm not sure what they're referring to here. My long description didn't have any paragraph breaks? Did it have too many? Was it too long? Doi...
Uninteresting first scene (geography lesson)
And this is unacceptable...why?
This is clearly a subjective opinion. A "geography lesson"? So they didn't like my description of Ponyville and the surrounding areas, which I extrapolated from the map that was SO GRACIOUSLY AND PAINSTAKINGLY done by Aurebesh (http://aurebesh.deviantart.com/)?
In quite a few MLP episodes, the story begins with a wide shot of the area, and THEN it zooms in on the characters. I did that in the written form, so I'm sorry if I can't start every story with a fight between a dragon and an Ursa Major. But honestly, I wasn't about to start my story with "[exterior, open field, day]" and move on to the characters.
Also, has anyone read the acclaimed "Austraeoh", ALSO featured on EQD? Read the first chapter only and see if THAT gets you hooked in right away.
Doubled punctuation (??, !!)
How is this unacceptable? Take a look at the following quotes, and I DARE you to deny that they're conveying different emotional levels of the speaker:
"What?"
"What???"
As a rule of thumb, though, I don't use more than three marks, unless, of course, the character is screaming really, really loud.
Applejack's accent is too thick
Excuse me? If anything, I thought I portrayed the Apple's accent as too light (I've written another story of another series where I have to portray Australian and Chinese accents. Believe me, THOSE were heavy).
However, if any of you readers honestly think that in my story, the Apples' speech is incomprehensible, write a comment expressly saying so.
Picture embedded into story
And this is unacceptable because........?
Those of you who saw the first comments on the first chapter noticed that I got plenty of thumbs down, not because my story lacked literary merit, but because they didn't like the non-pastel colors that I picked for my OC.
I expressly asked EQD to look past that and, you know, FOCUS ON THE STORY ITSELF.
Why are they worried about an illustrated story? The picture isn't being hosted on their server, and they don't HAVE to post ANY picture of my story in their site if they don't want to.
Comma usage
I looked at their link to see exactly what they were referring to, and their explanation there was "run-on sentences".
Given that this story was written by a former English teacher, and proofread by ANOTHER teacher, and not even MSWord's grammar checker raised any red flags ANYWHERE, I see no reason for this excuse.
However, if any of you DO see any run-on sentences anywhere, again, post a comment in the story..
Dialogue punctuation
See above.
And just to clarify, I taught English spelling, grammar, punctuation, vocabulary, literature, and composition.
Ellipsis use
This is another subjective opinion. The ellipsis is for when a character's dialogue trails off, which happens quite often in my story. The long dash is for when the dialogue is suddenly cut off.
Or maybe they're referring to how I use it at the end of a chapter?
Narrative alternates between talking heads and geography lesson
Looks like they only focused on the first chapter. But why is that unacceptable? The prologue is there to establish the world the characters live in. Did I use too many times the terms North, South, East, and West? Do the people at EQD have orientation problems?
And what percentage of the MLP episodes consist solely of character dialogue?
I COULD have started the story with the avalanche flashback, but then the story wouldn't have made much sense.
Again, I refer to you the fanfic "Austraeoh".
Now, if they had told me that my story was riddled with spelling, grammar, and punctuation errors (that's one reason why I won't read a story), or if my OC was too Mary Sue-ish, or if the story was not keeping with the spirit of the show, or if I was presenting unacceptable content, THEN I would have understood.
But none of the above reasons would hold water if this was for an English test.
But, let's be fair.
EQD probably receives hundreds of submissions daily, and they have to screen them out one way or another. But I do wonder how many of those involved are actual authors and/or have English as their first language.
I won't be submitting my story to EQD again, not until the pre-readers there get their act together.
From what I've heard from other authors, some of which happen to be English majors themselves, the pre-readers at EQD tend to be quite snobbish, self-important, and inexperienced. One of the biggest mistakes they make, along with many other pre-readers, is that they insist that a story fit with their own personal writing style. If something is different, it gets rejected, even if there's nothing actually wrong with it.
As for the one about paragraph spacing, I think they mean for you to go check the FAQ here on FimFiction regarding paragraph spacing so you can figure out what was wrong with it.
They were referring to the long description. I guess they wanted another line between paragraphs?