Jul
6th
2015
An Example Of How To Get In The Featured Box. · 6:58pm Jul 6th, 2015
Ok so none of my stories have gotten in the featured box. The reason why is that I can't crack the secret code they use. What secret code? Obviously there is a secret to get in the featured box. Hell that's how Rainbow Bob, Pen Stroke and Cold In Gardez (why did he choose that name?) get in the featured box they know the secret code but we can't interrogate them they'll never tell.
This is me trying to get a story in the featured box:
Sad and hopeless. But we don't write for popularity we write because we love it and hey: 
But I'll tell you a secret one of the secret codes is: clop.
I got in the featured box. No.idea how
Write a generic displaced story.
I think the secret is to have semi-professional writing. . .well, duh. But what we need is the secret of how to write semi-professionally. Now, I don't think Bluegrassbrooke's stories have been featured yet, and that personally offends me. She writes epic character pieces,and what gets featured? AN INCEST PORNO! Are you kidding?
Maybe it doesn't have to do writing as much as I thought.
It's wierd, I always wondered:
Me: Why in Equestria is there always at least one clop fic on featured?
3212177
Sometimes I see beautiful stories that are as good as any of the featured stories not getting what they deserved.
Oh well.
3212182 At least we still have Equestria Daily to feature all the good stuff... most of the time.
3212191
Yup and try to ignore the Hitler like rejection letter that pointed out errors that never existed in our story.
3212208 Nah, Equestria Daily rejection letters are perfectly reasonable. The critique is valid and it's already accepted that EQ'd has very high standards (otherwise we couldn;t trust them to feature the 'best of the best').
What I always thought for getting a story in the featured list, and this is purely my opinion and probably wrong, write a clopfic with grimdark twist. It'll become popular overnight.
38.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_m9ddz44PuI1ruy98mo9_400.gif
I got in the side bar...it was clop. Wanna know it was about? It was about Nurse Red Heart taking over the hospital and making everyone have sex with her.
Gardez is a small city in eastern Afghanistan. It's pretty high in the mountains, around 7,400 feet. I spent a year there on a deployment with a reconstruction team, and that winter was bitterly cold even by central Asian standards. The worst part was only a few weeks long, but there were days where it never got above zero degrees Fahrenheit. Now, that's not super-cold compared with even some places in America, but we were living in tends or even just sleeping bags at points, and I have never, ever been so cold as I was that winter. Afterward, I made a joking promise to myself: "Never again."
I guess it stuck in my head, because when it came time to come up with a user name a few years later, Cold in Gardez popped into my mind.
As for getting into the feature box, there's no real secret, but there are some key steps:
1. Have followers. This is unfair but true – writers with a lot of followers who get notified when a new story is posted are far, far more likely to vault their story into the feature box. With 300+ followers, you're getting close to this point yourself.
2. Write the most interesting, engaging, enthralling hook you can, and put it in your story description. After your follower count, this is absolutely the most important thing you can do to get people to see your story and decide, "Hey, that looks interesting." For a great example, see Titanium Dragon's Dying to Get There .
3. Good cover image doesn't hurt, for the same reason as the above. One of my stories, All the Mortal Remains, got a huge boost in the feature box when I finished its artwork. It's nothing complex, but it is striking and catches the eye.
4. Equestria Daily helps, but the submission process usually takes weeks, and it's hard to time an EqD feature with publication on FimFiction.
4a. How to get EqD feature? Write good stories. Sorry, there's no secret there, and the EqD prereaders aren't secretly biased against LyraxBonBon, or auto-approve certain authors. If they have a bias, it's in favor of good stories, told cleanly. You can call that unfair and complain that "X story was rejected by EqD, but it got 10,000 view!" but that's not going to sway them.
5. Word of mouth. If your story is interesting and well written, people will upvote it, and tell their friends.