Emergency new story announcement and "Show, don't tell" demonstration: Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea · 10:49pm Oct 24th, 2012
GhostOfHeraclitus posted Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea 45 minutes ago, and it's climbing up the "Popular Stories" list. It has a few hours left in which it might possibly make the featured box. It would be nice if it did.
Sometimes, a 1600-word story is something the author slapped together and threw up there. This is not one of those times. The goal with this story was to portray a sad moment in Twilight's life without needing to show somepony dying or going blind or losing a wing. Not that those aren't wonderful things for authors to do to ponies, but in a way it's cheating. Another goal was to show without telling. This story does not "tell", and still communicates. This is what you should look at if an Equestria Daily pre-reader says "Show, don't tell," and you don't know what they mean.
It's possibly a little bit longer than I'd prefer, and it doesn't have a plot. Twilight Sparkle makes a cup of tea. It's something between a story and a poem.
Other interesting stuff I came across lately:
Sugar and Spice and Everything Nice, by Donny's Boy. This is a BDSM fic that stays true to the characters. It's disturbing and sweet. And disturbing. And sweet. (FlutterPie and possible Flutterty, bookplayer!) It isn't explicit. The BDSM really is used to explore the characters, not as an end in itself.
From a rec thread on good stories with under 15 likes comes Crayons and Catastrophes, a Screwball story that is a little slow-starting, but it doesn't contain anything non-essential. It opens sweet and has a dark twist at the end.
I cried.
Oh lordy
445280 Authors: We're different.
445287
Yes, different would be the... diplomatic way of putting it. I do sometimes wonder what the little ponies would do if they could see the things that are wrote about them here. It would probably involve vomiting. And fire.
I'm really glad it did, but I wonder if even your abbreviated timeline was being optimistic. "A few hours"? My latest story got accepted yesterday afternoon and had already vanished off the front page within an hour. That's an alarmingly large number of submissions. No wonder Poultron is burning out.
Frankly, without some other source of eyeballs — like personal recommendations or a large Following catalogue — I'm not sure it's possible for new stories to featurebox, save for click magnets like "Twilight Sparkle And Master Chief Masturbate". Hell, even new eyeballs won't always do it. I had a story featured on EqD and even with that traffic it peaked somewhere around #15.
(The featurebox's immense brokenness, incidentally, makes me all the more grateful for your willingness to speak up about the stories you like. I've enjoyed everything you've linked and I really hope you keep it up.)
A show, eh? Off to the movies then!
445441 My latest story got accepted yesterday afternoon and had already vanished off the front page within an hour.
It doesn't depend on the # of submissions. The publish-robot waits 5 minutes between each story. There are 15 stories on the front page. Each story gets at least 75 minutes, unless knighty decreased the wait.
Stories published between 1AM and 8AM eastern time have half the chance of getting featured. Basically, they won't, unless you have hundreds of watchers.
Typical time-to-feature is 4 hours, based on checking all of the new stories featured last week (or maybe it was the week before). A story goes thru the front page, then climbs up the PopularStories list. Then it has to survive in the top slot until one of the existing featured stories ages out of the box. That's why the title is so important; there's no picture. Groups and watchers are also important. (Also no picture in notifications.)
I've had 2 stories published on EqD at the same time they were new on fimfiction that didn't get featured (Detective & Magician, Fluttershy's Night Out). (FNO was on EqD 2 days later, so it doesn't quite count.)
445644 Hm. It might have been 75 minutes, then; all I can say for sure is that about half an hour after I got the notification email it was halfway down the front page, and what I thought was about half an hour later it was gone. Thanks for the extra detail on how it works.
Any tips on how to get the EqD and Fimfic publication dates to sync up? I'm still trying to get a handle on their system.
445866 I don't know how, other than that it's better to be published on EqD too early than too late.
Good Horse
445915 It's never too early, or too late, for Caltrate
Really, really liked "Twilight Sparkle Makes a Cup of Tea." I agree that it's a great example of "show, don't tell," and I think I'd say it's somewhere between a vignette and a story proper. I'm glad it was able to hit the Featured box, as I think it was worthy of such.
Also, thanks muchly for recommending "Sugar and Spice." Your description of it also sums up what I was aiming for pretty well, too, heh.
445441
It is strange going back in time and looking at posts by well-known, well-respected authors back when the world was young and unicorns were frolicking in the meadows and suchlike. And when Horizon didn't know who Ghost of Heraclitus was, apparently, judging by his comment that Bad Horse's recommendation lead him there.
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Oh yeah, man, good times.
That was also back when I couldn't crack the featurebox to save my life, and the Horse was one of the hipsters who followed me before I got big. IIRC it wasn't even until Fugue State that I cracked the box. I remember it being a very close thing whether I was going to hit the trifecta (Equestria After Dark, Equestria Daily, and the Pony Fiction Vault) before ever featureboxing, but then Fugue State had to go and get popular before RBD posted it.
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Bad Horse was one of my early followers as well.
I wonder if he knows how to pick 'em, or if our association with him just makes his literati abilities rub off on us.
Or he just sends out assassins at the appropriate moment so we can make it big.
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(the answer is assassins)