Site Post » How To Get a Story Approved on FimFiction · 9:16pm Apr 18th, 2012
Welcome to FimFiction.net, the best place to post your My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic fan fiction!
No doubt your mind is brimming with questions as you excitedly look at all the pretty buttons and bars, silently asking yourself: “What wonders will I experience here, now that life has brought me to this great crucible in my life?! How can I contribute to the greatness that is Fimfiction.net with my own undoubtedly awesome story of awesomeness?”
Fear not, dear reader and/or author, for I am here to help you and tell you...
o.0.o How To Get a Story Approved on FimFiction o.0.o
So... first things first.
“Deer WanderD:
Whi deid my storey not pblished?!!!”
My friend, I can cite several reasons off the top of my head, but most likely it’s because you did not read the F.A.Q.
STEP 1: Read the F.A.Q.
“How do I find the F.A.Q.? It’s complicated! There are too many buttons and ponies!”
Once you click on that misleading button, you will be taken to the F.A.Q. page.
STEP 2: The Stories Section
If you want to skip to the pertaining part, then you want to go to the Table of Contents and click on the Stories link.
This is what you will see:
Now, all categories are important and I am not going to go over each. POULEDIT: Image is outdated, we only allow 5 character tags.
But let’s investigate my favorite part of this section:
Once you have read that and made sure your story is not one of the types mentioned there, you are much closer to publishing your story! Yay!
A particularly important point is number 4: Your story MUST be related to Friendship is Magic BEFORE you submit it to the site! If it will be related ‘later.’ then make it ‘later’ before you submit!
“What does this mean?” You might ask. “I see words, in English... but it makes no sense!”
Well, allow me to interpret that for you. That means that your story MUST be related to Friendship is Magic BEFORE you submit it to the site.
Let’s assume you are writing an epic story that will span three continents; have 36 main characters (even if you can only tag 5 when you submit); involve great battles from beginning to end and just happens to be a ‘Human In Equestria’ story... and the only thing you want to submit is your 1005 word prologue (word count NOT including Author Notes) detailing with as much skill as you could muster your main human character/hero/soon-to-be-alicorn’s life in his room on Earth where he is writing a code that will breach the dimensions... be sure that by the end of those 1005 words he is already in Equestria. Even better, make it so that he has already met the Mane 6 or Celestia or Luna by the end of it... just make sure we can tell he/she/it/them is there or it won’t be approved.
“But! I want it to be dramatic! I want to leave everyone with a cliffhanger so that they await impatiently for my next possible update!”
I’ll be blunt. Even if people were willing to do that, Prologues (or Prolugs according to some) alone don’t really make the cut. Especially if they are short and don’t say anything remotely related to what the readers want to see, which is some sort of relation to Friendship is Magic. And also, unless you have a couple of successful stories under your belt, it is actually detrimental for you to NOT include more than just that.
So, you want to leave the Prologue with a cliffhanger so that they wonder where could the human (described in the summary as going to Equestria) possibly end up? Go ahead! But also add your First Chapter where more stuff happens and readers can see that you indeed have some interest in continuing your story.
This also raises another point.
Humanized Ponies
Sometimes the odd well-written completely humanized story will present itself to us and we will joyously look into formatted text, careful dialogue, good descriptions... and find that the story really has little to do with Friendship is Magic.
It has happened, and it was a damned shame because the story was good. And worse, it was based off of FiM. The problem was that it was so completely separated from it to make it the most realistic possible that it ceased to be FiM.
This site is about MLP: FiM. If your story has humanized ponies in it, yes, it can still be FiM; but you have to make sure that it goes beyond a little bit of common ground. It’s not just about the names alone either: when we look at stories we don’t have time for in-depth analysis, we deal with a lot of stories per day, and honestly so do our readers, so make sure, make very sure, that when someone reads that story they know that it’s about FiM.
Here’s a bit of advice: If you write something like that, ask someone else to read it without telling them it’s a FiM fanfic. If they recognize everything, then go ahead and submit it, you did well. But, if they don’t recognize it as a FiM Fic... congrats, you did a good job in writing a story! But it’s not a FiM Fanfic. This just means that Fimfiction.net is not the best place to try and publish it online.
Anyway, carrying on...
STEP 3: ADD THE STORY!
Fill up the form. It’s easy. You can ignore the red lines that sometimes appear under certain words if you want, most people do anyway, although I’m told they’re there for a reason... just like line-breaks, paragraphs, quotation marks, punctuation and all those useless details that don’t matter at all.
Once you have your story, you want to click on the NEW CHAPTER button, add a title if you want and paste/write the text. Remember that the word minimum has to be 1000 words not counting the Author Notes.
Another thing that you might want to do is double check that you have tagged the correct characters. Take a look at the image above again... If your story is about an OC, what the hay is the OC Tag not doing there?
When all of that is done, you can click on “Submit”.
See? It’s that easy! If you followed all the steps, (and actually bothered to make sure to follow the F.A.Q.) you should have no trouble in getting your story published and making your bid for fame!
Good luck, and I hope to have quelled some of your doubts!
~WD
I want to read "THE AWESOME DISPLAY OF SELF-INSERT ALICORNESS"!
Has anybody been having trouble getting their stories approved on FIMFiction? I thought they'd take just about anything.
EqD on the other hand.... Whooh! I give up even trying to submit anything to them, it's just an exercise in frustration and anger management.
I WANNA READ THAT STORY!
74147 As long as it's not something that's specified in the FAQ as "We don't accept this..."
it usually gets through. But, by Celestia, there are a lot that don't even try that.
lh6.googleusercontent.com/nU697_8Waz69meOyq2TrwkSJj2T1XfgXAM__wQDdruwvlaWml9p1qa5Pzaxp9BU9csYWohGZU5PWtruV82bHYnX5u1XTo97y5x9c-5h62ePc
"Alicorness" "He dates"
The real reason why that story would be rejected. I see nothing else wrong with it.
Cloud Skywalker-Squal?
Dude, write it. Now.
I'm Commander Scy Storm, and this my favorite blog on the website.
74147
I'm surprised this is a problem too.
Also agreed on EqD...
I understand that they basically blast out to the entire fandom so they have to be careful, but I'm not sure all of their pre-readers are quite on the same page. Back when I first tried to get my story published there, I got back one set of real corrections and one with a couple things like "Ummmyeah... Twilight seems kind of out of character but I have no idea why." If you can't even articulate the 'problem' to me I can't fix it, can I? 
If they want to be strict quality-control, they need to stick to cut-and-dry issues.
This is beautiful.
74153
I think it means "Alicorness" in the same way that you would say something like "Awesomeness", "Coolness" or "Radicalness".
AND THEN THE ALICORN WAS LIKE 'OH TWILIGHT WANNA GO OUT' AND TWILIGHT WAS LIKE 'OH YES JOHN, I WANT YOU'
BUT DEN CELESTIA WAS LIKE 'BUT I WANT THE SEXY ALICORN MAN' AND LUNA WAS LIKE 'NO, I WANTS HIM'
Immediately featured.
Wow. You may have just stolen the official title of most awesome moderator from Poultry with that one.
For some reason, though, I have a feeling that this is not going to change much of anything. If they can't see the section at the top of the story submission page they're probably going to skip this blog post. Even after you link it to them. Twice. And give them candy.
... Twice.
It's not that hard.
tl;dr
Don't be stupid
74191
Does that mean I could also use 'humaness', or 'personess?'
BRB writing my first fanfiction.
WILL YOU STILL ACCEPT MY PONYFALL:BROOKLYN HEIGHTS FIC?
I WORKED SO HARD ON IT AND ALL THE PONIES ARE THERE. AND APPLEJACK TOO
"...you dumbasses."
I'm curious, just how many unpublishable stories do you go through on a daily basis? To get this kind of reaction it must be a lot. On top of the barely legible 'stories', self-inserts, trollfics and clop/gore fetish fics that end up on here, the job of moderating this site sounds downright terrifying.
Much chuckling was had. This is basically beautiful.
74225 MY BODY IS NOT READY! So... no.
74226 Much more than you might think, given how little is not allowed.
74167 *Wrex voice* ScyStorm.
Something tells me a lot of frustration went into writing this, but all the better cuz it's funny as hell.
it's also pretty useful though, should i ever consider posting any of the stories i've thought of so far i'll be sure to come back and take another look. Wouldn't want to anger any admins with my very first story
WANDERER D HOW I MAKE RED SQUIGGLY THINGS GO AWAY?
74226
One thing I learned about the Internet is this: never underestimate the stupidity and idiocy that the Internet and it's users generates because the moment you do is the moment you will lose more faith
In humanity.
Take Dolan comics for example.
ubercoolawesomestuff!!1
74238 I mean, are we talking ten, twenty-five, a hundred? I'm genuinely curious about the volume of information that passes through here.
74260 Ask the elements of Harmony for help before you turn into Squiggly Moon
74267 the amount of fics per day varies... I usually have to fail at least 1 out of 5 fics because of things that could be avoided by reading the F.A.Q. and just by myself I average around 40 fics at times... I have no idea how many Poultron and the others get through when I am not around, but they are fast... and have endured more
74276
Maybe you only get the bad stuff :3
Sweet Zombie Jesus, Wanderer, that was funny as hell! Oh, what is your take on crossover fictions, like 1 show to MLP?
74285 They're fine, I mean, personally I love them if they're well written. As for the site, as long as they *do* have something to do with MLP story-wise, then it is following the rules right? So, they get posted!
>You can ignore the red lines that sometimes appear under certain words if you want, most people do anyway, although I’m told they’re there for a reason... just like line-breaks, paragraphs, quotation marks, punctuation and all those useless details that don’t matter at all.
hey if you submit a story based off this post i'm gonna get really mad so don't do it alright? thanks
Dude. I beg somebody, ANYBODY to make this fanfic. I don't give a shit on how awful it ends up being. It will truly be a win forever.
II don't know whether to be disappointed at how stories are approved or...
I know that HiE is a teensy bit overdone, but to take away the authors will to add suspense just lowers their confidence level, forcing them to either abandon their work or blatantly come up with a few thousand additional words just to make the cut.
So we would be able to submit a story that has two chapters in one entry (If first chapter has no ponies in it) then after it has been approved we can edit it so that chapter 1 and 2 are two separate entries?
Sorry for the horribly set up question, lol. Thank you for your time.
Good! Good, now make a "How to get a story approved on EquestriaDaily"
I demand you write this story!!!!
74421 An alternative: Write the prologue with the cliffhanger and no ponies, but already have the first chapter and possibly others unpublished there so we can see that the ponies do indeed come in the next chapter. But really, suspense shouldn't be limited to the prologue, if you want your readers to be at the edge of their seats you can just handle the suspense in the following chapters!
74427 Yes, but, if you already did that, what's the point?
74432 ... yeah... I don't know how to write that one.
Really, it depends on the pre-reader. But if you really want your story to be featured there and you are willing work on it, you can always ask for a second opinion from another pre-reader and/or a more detailed explanation as to what your story needs to be worked on.
74432
Step 1 : Pray to the Gods of writing
Step 2 : Livestream yourself sacrificing a goat
Step 3 : ?????
Step 4 : Enjoy the Glory of you're EQD featured story
74446
74469
I wanted to give you all a funny answer, but I'm out of ideas so take this:
damnhot.net/img/damnhot.net/img1/20120215/1000/happy_birthday_prison_style_01.gif
74469
Alternative!:
1.) Sell your soul to the devil
2.) ????
3.) Profit!
74469 74473 74474 Is it wrong that what I really wanted to say was: "It's not that hard!" ?
74477
The thing is, I haven't even tried to submit something to Eqd, but I've read so many writers complaining about how hard it is to be featured there that I complain just for the lulz
"Prolugs"?
People have actually typed this? On purpose? Non-ironically?
I swear, I can practically hear the bloodthirsty snarling of Angry Zombie Noah Webster as he prepares to take his vengeance upon those who have so wronged his beloved language.
Oh god, I love approximately 99% of the people here... That small 1% is full of idiotic trolls... You people are the funniest bastards alive. And people say our fandom is stupid...
Well, that was an entertaining and informative read. Keep up the great work...
The quality of stories lately must've tanked for you to have to put this out.... I doubt it'll do much, people tend to not listen to reason....
I love how you talk to us like we're slow.
I love you guys. Keep up the good work.
74446
Please write that story, you'll be able to make it awesome.
Oh and.....are people that dumb?
If you right click on the red squiggles, it means you (most likely) spelled it wrong and will give you spelling suggestions... Oh shoot, did I just miss obvious sarcasm...
I am very glad I read this. I was under the impression the way to get accepted on FimFiction was to put the lime in the coconut and drink them both together.
74484 and "You can ignore the red lines that sometimes appear under certain words if you want, most people do anyway, although I’m told they’re there for a reason... just like line-breaks, paragraphs, quotation marks, punctuation and all those useless details that don’t matter at all."
Between those two lines, I just owned someone who was complaining about grammar nazis (she has the writing style of a five year old). Thank you, from the bottom of my heart
74176 The problem with "strict quality control" based on "cut-and-dry" issues, however, is that it's a complete myth. Beyond a certain bar minimum of grammatical and narrative cohesion, the quality of all forms of writing, as is the case with all forms of artistic expression, is incredibly relative. I think My Little Dashie is a painfully obvious sadfic of average-to-mediocre quality that asks for its reader to gladly fork over their heartstrings so it can deliberately strum them like a guitar; a sizable number of its fans would conversely argue that it's one of the best pieces of fan fiction ever written. The same scenario can be applied to any story, be it Fallout: Equestria (IMO, an impressively detailed crossover with strong OCs that unfortunately suffers from a crippling lack of foresight and narrative efficiency), or Past Sins (IMO, not worth reading past the first chapter), or Through The Eyes of Another Pony (IMO, one of the most blatantly God-awful stories for which I've ever been outvoted about posting on the blog), or any other fic you can think of.
The point is, the reason that certain pre-reader may have been unable to articulate why they disagreed with your characterization of Twilight may have been because there was something about it just didn't feel right, because something Twilight did or said or thought made the part of our brains devoted to that character think, "That's not the Twilight I know and love, and I can't figure out why she's different". Admittedly, it is always better to accompany criticism with specific evidence, but at the end of the day, there's really nothing that requires we the pre-readers do that besides a sense of common courtesy. In essence, Equestria Daily functions as a publishing agency: we reserve the right to reject any story at any time, for any reason. We would of course prefer not to have to do that without giving some kind of reason, but complaining about the process being arbitrary is pointless, because it is arbitrary, and unavoidably so.
Equestria Daily looks to publish the best of the best, and each pre-reader's definition of "best" is unique. I'm sorry if that reality has discouraged you from submitting your work there, but short of devoting all our time and money to building a perfectly neutral pre-reading robot (which would be awesome, actually, especially if it could also make sandwiches), I'm afraid there's not much else we can do.
74574
I think you did....
I'm wondering if it was my story that pushed you over the edge and caused this blog post.
If so, I feel kind of special, but also kind of stupid. Sorry.