Facts and Figures from a Twilight's Library Reviewer · 11:18pm Apr 25th, 2014
"90% of everything is crud."
- The Internet"59.55% of measured horsewords are below standards. 32.02% are serviceable. The remaining 8.43% are actually quite remarkable and make me happy."
- SirTruffles
In my time reviewing for Twilight's Library, 393 stories have crossed my desk. The incoming folder currently contains 39 stories with 207,842 words total, or 5,329 words/story on average, so if this is typical, I've read 2,094,297 words since coming on board as a humble contributor. As I read, I kept a log of stories approved, stories rejected, and why I rejected them. It isn't much more than a curiosity sitting on my hard drive, so I decided I would share the results with everyone in the hope that you will find it useful for your writing.
The data is broken up into two parts: the 250 stories I read as a contributor and the 178 stories I've judged since becoming an admin. 35 stories in the 178 were actually ones I pre-read as a contributor, but the admins had not gotten around to ratifying them at the time of my promotion. I was allowed to approve them as a new admin, so consequently they are in both categories.
Today I am going to focus on the stories I approved as an admin. Note that this is my data and does not reflect other Twilight's Library reviewers. As a contributor, I was a bit silly and kept data by the day, which meant stories got mashed together and the data is not very clean. I can say that I had an approval rate of 42% as a contributor. 40% of my rejections were for story execution, 25% for grammar, 25% for mechanical issues such as punctuation, and 10% of rejections were for people putting things in the wrong folder or otherwise violating group policies. Beyond that, I got nothin'.
However, when I became an admin, I started a fresh spreadsheet and overhauled my bookkeeping. The data is much easier to interpret, so I can go much more in-depth. The most relevant numbers are at the top, but I'll put them here again for fun:
- 8.43% of all stories were approved with a feature recommendation.
- 32.02% were simply approved, which means:
- 40.45% were approved in total and consequently
- 59.55% were rejected.
Now, what separates the approved from the rejected? My philosophy is simple: Is it presentable? Does it make sense? Can I see entertainment value? If the answer to each of these is 'yes,' it's in. Simple as that.
Presentability:
Presentability, however, is the issue that most stories have trouble with. In my time as an admin, 69.81% of all stories I've rejected (42% of total processed) have had some sort of punctuation, grammar, or formatting error. It may not have been the ultimate reason I rejected, but they were noticeable enough to be a problem and consequently mention in the rejection. The top 5 errors were:
- 34.9% of rejections had issues with basic punctuation Ex: Alice swam; and Bob walked.
- 32.1% suffered from a conspicuous amount of typos. Ex: Twilight floated here book to Spike.
- 28.3% had formatting issues. Ex: wall-o-text paragraphs, missing newlines, exc.
- 28.3% had issues with punctuation/capitalization at the end of dialog. Ex: "I like flowers." She said.
- 21.7% contained noticeable fragments or run-on sentences.
Honorable mentions: tense errors(20.8%) and capitalization (19.8%).
With these, I am not trying to be that proverbial EqD pre-reader who sits in his swivel chair stroking his cat while smiting stories for missing a single comma in chapter 50. I simply believe that if I have a good story, then it deserves to look neat and be easy to read. A missing comma? No biggie. So long as it doesn't jar me, I will typically not even notice comma use. However, I try to crack down on more noticeable issues such as typos, run-ons, and the like because these grab the eye and actively hinder the reading experience. The reader should be focused on the story, not decoding the words or getting their eyes stressed by bad formatting.
Of particular note: bad punctuation/capitalization at the end of dialog is my pet peeve. I even made it its own category distinct from "basic punctuation," because quite a few people get it wrong. This is sometimes exactly wrong to the point that I question if some schools teach a different standard (has anyone heard of '"I like flowers." She said.' being taught as correct anywhere?).
Story Execution:
If a story has sufficently poor mechanics, I will likely not read for content until it is cleaned up. This is likely why only 39.62% of my rejections are for issues related to story execution. Notable errors:
- 13.2% of rejected stories broke my immersion.
- 13.2% suffer from extensive filler or are just plain dull.
- 9.4% did not give me enough context to understand what was going on or get invested
- 7.5% were plain confusing: the author failed to tell a coherent narrative
- 5.6% of stories were distractingly inconsistent with themselves or canon.
Honorable mention: OOC (4.7%)
Not too much to say about this. If I can tell what a story was trying to do and it did not do something that blatantly worked against its aim, I'll let it pass. Other than that, if the plot is followable, the story doesn't bog down in irrelevant filler, you can figure out what is going on, and the story treats the settings and characters in the way it implies they are to be treated, you're fine.
Administrative:
Finally, Twilight's Library has its own rules, regulations, and procedures, and in order to have us consider a story, the submitter needs to respect them. When this doesn't happen, things get kicked without reading. In fact, 28.30% of stories submitted have some administrative issue such as:
- 10.4% of rejected stories were put in the wrong folder or were sequels to stories not already in the library.
- 8.5% were submitted before enough had been written to judge it fairly.
- 4.7% had copious grammar errors in their description that needed to be cleaned up.
- 2.8% did not contain enough original pony content. Think episode recap
- 2.8% were re-submits that the author had not edited before resubmitting
Notable absence: "This is (poorly written) porn/gore without plot." Twilight The Pony, in his mercy, generally kicks the lemonfic as it comes in, so it never comes to me to deal with. For reference, Twilight's Library on occasion accepts clop, but it must do something beyond titillation to meet our standards.
This is some pretty basic stuff. Reading the categories/standards thread and asking questions in the forum if things are unclear boosts a story's approval chances by a solid 6%, as you are much less likely to mis-submit and be insta-rejected. The sequel rule is a common issue: if you're submitting something based on something else, make sure you check to make sure the original/prequel is in the library. If it's not, feel free to submit the prequel first.
Conclusion:
So, what can we learn from all this?
Presentation matters. 42% of all stories I receive have notable levels of grammar or formatting errors. Many of these errors are both jarring to the eye and violations of basic grammatical rules that everyone should be aware of. This means if you can provide a story that is well proofread, you will appear more professional than roughly half of all stories that were submitted here. Take a moment to think about that:
Your story.
Shinier than half the stories on this site.
So what can an author do? If you haven't already, take a moment to look over the convenient writing guide on this very site to refresh yourself on the basics. When you write, make an effort to write with proper grammar the first time, correcting yourself as you go along. This means when you go back for editing, you will be able to spend less time proofreading and more time making sure your story itself is well told. Finally, before you pop your story in the incoming folder, you might want to send it past another pair of eyes who may find some things you've missed.
Afterthoughts: Features... And You!
So now we know what I reject for, but I thought I'd close with a few thoughts on what I feature for. I have two neat little boxes on my user page: one for my all-time favorites, and a rotating list of any stories from the incoming folder that I feel are feature-worthy. These latter stories also have a chance at getting onto the Twilight's Library group front page (though it's way down there at the bottom... we should probably move that up).
In order to get a feature, you've got to 'wow' me. A vanilla admit in my book is: "It reads more or less cleanly, is competently told, and I can see its entertainment value. It is serviceable as a narrative." A feature admit is: "I couldn't stop laughing!" "Its chilly atmosphere seeped into my soul!" "I can't hold all these feels!" and so on and so forth. Basically, if I'm squeeing like a schoolgirl in my ribbon post, you're getting some honors.
Presentation is, as always, a must. Most of what I feature is proofread to a mirror-shine quality. However, what sets features apart is that the writing is usually very condensed: the author took the time to reduce their writing to the fewest words needed to both capture the desired atmosphere and get the point across. It reads clear and brisk, and each word feels like it needs to be there.
I don't have a favorite genre. If the author can offer me a well-crafted, unified experience, it doesn't matter what the subject is. Tags do play a role in setting my expectations; however: I usually expect atmosphere from dark or sad stories, whereas featured comedies are obviously the ones that make me guffaw. Of course, if a story acts like it knows what it's doing and proceeds to blow my mind, I'm not going to question it.
Well-done, unobtrusive, description is always a joy to read. Settings are more than just collections of objects and sensory stimuli. Well crafted settings have an atmosphere and a character: the descriptive words evoke some feeling and leave the reader with the impression that they know the place as opposed to merely being aware of its existence.
I hope this has given everyone a little bit more insight into what I do in Twilight's Library. I'm hoping to make this a bi-weekly recap in which I mention more specific trends I've been seeing, as well as giving my vanilla admits some more exposure. If you've got any burning questions related to pre-reading, do toss them below. I may expand some of the meatier questions into their own sections on my recaps. Specific rejections are, of course, off limits here. Please take that up by PM. Thank you.
Finally, shameless plug: I took an acting class not too long ago and found that a lot of what we were taught there could be used to improve my writing. I have decided to try writing a blog series to share some of what I learned. Expect the first one next Monday.
That's...a lot of data
I think it's kind of weird how dismissive of proper grammar some people are. As if it somehow doesn't matter. But it does matter. The words are the only tool you have to reach someone with when you're communicating through a story/post, you should be paying attention to those words.
2047043
I think it's a selfishness thing. The fun in writing is getting ideas on the page. Making them adhere to a standard is the work. Since the author doesn't have to read their own work, they can write and submit scott-free. Their profit was the experience of writing without paying the price in editing time. Who cares about grammar? You should totally tell me I'm awesome for that great idea I made! What do you mean you couldn't understand any of it? I had that great idea in my head, so start praising me for it!
2047039
SO. MUCH. DATA!
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2047073 Ha ha ha! Yeah. Well, it is something I often say when people insist I change major things about the stories. I write 'em for myself. So there's nothing wrong with being selfish. You can write junk and post it all day!
It's the... I dunno, careless arrogance of not just posting it, but expecting to get accepted to curated groups, expecting to get featured, expecting to get thumbs up and nice comments, without ever bothering to put in the extra effort to earn that, that's what really gets me. I've written a lot of fun crap, but I don't submit any of that to curated groups.
2047079
To be fair, we also get submissions from people who are not the author. They likely read a story, liked it, and decided to pop it into the incoming folder because hey, they liked it, didn't they?
But yea, for an author to actively submit something for review without proofreading it first is a very grumpy thing indeed.
2047087 Well, I wasn't just talking about library submissions, I was also thinking of some conversations I've gotten into. I've had people literally say that so long as somebody can figure out what you're saying, punctuation and grammar don't matter, and wasting time on them is stupid.
2047099
Oh, yea, I've run into that as well. I guess it takes all sorts, but it is maddening.
Thank you for this, SirTruffles. It's given me a lot to think about.
2047280
Glad you enjoyed it
Good job,
I was told there'd be graphs here, yet I see no graphs!
Seriously though, good job. Gathering and analyzing data is always fun, and you've even delivered some "behind the scenes" from Twilight's Library. You are an exemplary group admin!
Good blog, guy. It's interesting to see how the approval system works, at least for you, and I found it helpful. I try to write with good grammar anyway, but I can take some of the other things into account when I write. I might even submit a story at some point, provided I think it's good enough to at least be considered for approval.
Well done. This and others like it could reall help improve the standard of writing on the site. This is why I'm following you.
2048415
Glad you enjoyed it! And thank you again for the follow.
2048288
I said might! I had them, but then the site I was going to upload them to didn't play nice with FimFic's image linker
Granted, after writing the post, I see I focused on the state of things right now, whereas the graphs I had showed data over time, so they wouldn't have been on topic in the first place. If you really need a graph fix, there are many pretty graphs on the site statistics page down at the bottom, or I suppose you could click through random story-statistics
2047436
Thank you!
Nice information SirTruffles. Kind of fun to read what things cause the most rejections. Also fun to use it to predict where my unpublished story would fall. It would be a possible statistic on just about all of your presentability, and probably four of the exectuion ones.
I can guarantee if my old English teachers knew I was trying to write fanfics, they would all be laughing their asses off and saying, "I told you so! That's what you get for not paying attention and barely passing my class".
Anyways was a nice blog post.
2047099
I usually let fanfic authors get away with a lot, especially since I am a grammar retard and they are not professionals. Unfortunately, like you mentioned, I have run up against stories and authors that don't even give a little try on the grammar. There have been a few stories that I thought had good ideas, but were so hosed I had to give up on trying to read them.
2048770
Well at least the proofreading stuff is easiest to fix. Better than having your pre-readers mumble something about 'show don't tell' or other subjective style errors
Good luck with your writing, and thanks for the comment!
Does it count if I'm sitting on the couch and petting my dog? Or do I have to accept I'm not a proverbial EQD staffer?
I'm curious to hear from other pre-reader after your comment tht you prefer very crisp concise writing. Are there pre-readers who feel differently?
Very cool stuff and looking forward to more even if you paint me as more evil than I tend to appear.
2056190
You're an EqD pre-reader? Cool!
Perhaps if you had a mustache you could stroke. And I hear the old standby top hat and silk cape can make a body feel super classy whilst crushing hopes and dreams. In fact, I might have to invest in those one of these days...
You're already a ferret in a mask. I don't see much more to be done
2056507 Hm...I dunno if my cap is back from the cleaners and sadly genetics prevents me from growing a really good mustache...
Hey! just because I happen to have issues with being a real person on the net is no reason to imply I'm evil
2056714
There are always fine online retailers of supplementary evil features
2056722 You bring up a good point...