Final submission to EQD for "My Roommate is a Vampire" · 8:25am Nov 22nd, 2012
We would like to thank you for the patience that you've shown in waiting this long for a reply. Our "pile" is currently deeply backed up, and your work has been the subject to discussion back and forth over that time, causing the delay.
We are sorry to have to inform you that the consensus among the pre-readers is that the work has not reached the level that we are asking for. Our great difficulty is knowing that it was very, very, very close to "being there", and we know that you must be disappointed. It is always hard for us to tell that to authors who have listened to our previous suggestions, and who have tried hard. Please know that we do not dislike the story, it's simply that we can't see it being able to more clearly present its premise without more work... work that you undoubtedly are ready to move beyond. As this is the story's third strike, it will no longer be considered for featuring.
The pre-readers would like you to know that this story has shown growth, and that we are certain that as you only become more adept in your writing that it is only a matter of time before you present us with a work that we will be happy to feature on the site. Best of luck.
(Two other pre-readers also looked at this story. A few details from their responses are below:)
I spotted errors in the following areas (an example per is included):
Missing words (A hoodie in the middle summer?)
Hyphen/dash use ("Octy! I - I can't!")
Capitalization ("Y-Yes!")
General punctuation (I shook my head, laughing, pointing at her.,)
I'm not sure if these issues only appeared in later chapters written after your last submission or they snuck in during revision. I'm looking at this story fresh, so I'm uncertain.
The telling aspect previously noted does remain, and while I would have liked to see more description of where Octavia was, I did like the stylistic impact it had. I was sort of reminded of Fight Club (the book, not the movie). I didn't find it too large of a problem, however; it's not how I would have written the story, but I wouldn't find that a reason to reject on its own.
As you seem to have a good eye for comedic timing and phrasing, I'd encourage you to submit other work to us; I may just have to read your other stories when I get a chance. Again, this isn't personal: I found the story rather funny and enjoyable on the whole, but the grammar is an issue.
-Pre-reader Air Pirate
Pre-reader [derp] also noted some concerns with pacing.
I hate EqD they can go eat a dick
EQD kinda know for being bias pile of crap with double standing rules for just about everything
Its like going to Phantasy star online world forums and counting on people to be helpful or smart or not repeat the same thing over and over......
So yea sorry about that sound to me they look at 3 chapters and toss it aside based solo on that
Chill, EqD is stricter then anyone else. Just relax and say, "Screw it. I'm not wasting my time with them!" You'll feel better afterwords. Trust me.
Amen bro, Amen
526623
They can go ahead and reject it because the plot flies along faster than a Lamborghini. They can tell me that the plot gets lost somewhere and I jumped the shark bigger than Jaws. I get it, I know it. I expected that to be the reason.
But for fuck's sake, I've been told that I've been using dashes/hyphens the "wrong" way three times.
Last part i laughed like there is no tomorrow and agree to the part about when you say you wrote it. oh and your new story "The Girl with the Lyre Tattoo" I love it. It is great! I told every brony i knew to read it and even got some of my friends that aren't pony fans to read it. They all love it. Keep up the great work bud you have some awesome stories!
This is why I never go on EqD. They're like the dumb-ass snob kids from high school with sticks up their asses. dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_Redheart_hmph.png Your story deserves better than those dicks and their stars, okay? dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/sillyfilly_Derpy_Hooves.png
526628 Look, we both agree that if one wishes to write like that, it's the way they're going to write. I'm not saying it's not a serious problem. I'm saying it's a common problem that you can ignore completely because of the fact that they're just too stubborn. It's what I've always done, and in the end, it helped me out tremendously.
Dennis TBH EqD when it comes to fan fics can go suck a nut.
I love all of your work your an amazing story writer.
So keep it up i will be shearing your stories with my friends.
Don't let EqD get you down they are just to picky when it comes to fan fics any way.
EQD seems to believe that there's a 'perfect' way of writing, which is simply not the case, but they're too stupid to see it.
So, most things get rejected (I don't even go there any more, Fimfiction is the superior site nowadays)
Well, Fuck. A site where you can get an automatic feature by having Trixie be the main character is just biased. Besides, 'My Roommate Is A Vampire' is an awesome fic. You didn't need the changes.
Okay... I am not going to join the EQD hate bandwagon here. What they are is a tool. Getting on their site is a good way of getting more views. But really Dennis... Roommate was flawed, very flawed. But its also the 3rd most popular thing on fimfiction. Put that one in the win column and write something else that is not as flawed.
526651
It is absolutely flawed and should be rejected on the merits of its plot and characterization, but not on that one line where my hyphen was misplaced or the "improper" use of a dash to indicate my character has stuttered.
Do you know the proper use of dashes and hyphens? Could you let me in on the secret?
EDIT: I'm not on that bandwagon. I still go to them every day for other stuff.
526644Except for the weird stories every now and then that pop up and make people think 'how the hell did this get past moderation?'. But other than those, yeah I find this site to be better by a mile. Tons of different writing styles and themes.
Also, to Dennis:
Don't let it bother you man. A lot of people here would agree with me when I say 2 things.
1) You're a good writer, through and through. Don't let anyone else tell you otherwise.
2) Forget EQD. I can see why they say your punctuation needs work (trust me, it's really nit-picky stuff that you have to be a real grammar nazi to pick up on), but in truth they're a bunch of people with sticks up their asses about 'perfect stories'.
Apparently, EQD only accepts "the best of the best" and if they want to decline your story, then that's their loss. Just don't let it get to you.
526655
"Best of the best" ?
I'd laugh if it wasn't so horribly tragic, according to some people the worst kinds of stories end up on there, basically 'whatever the pre-readers like' and nothing else.
526658Even more reason for me to not visit EQD.
526655
I was past the point of caring whether or not it got rejected by the second time.
I guess not, according to the blog up there, but Jesus, their constant railing on hyphens and dashes got to me.
526662Again I repeat. Bunch of grammar nazis. The only thing "wrong" with your story is the stuff that only really critical grammar nazis will pick out.
526662
They basically fucked up when they stopped letting the community decide what was good and what wasn't and turned into an elitist group of morons.
Don't worry about it too much, you could spend an entire year polishing a perfect story to an incredibly shiny sheen (Hey! that sounds like this story i once read, it's called 'My Roommate is a Vampire'. you heard of it?) and they would still reject you. No matter how hard you try, they will find a reason to refuse you.
They're very elitist when it comes to, well, anything. That's just from what I've been able to gather. Remember, FIMfiction is the only fiction site you'll ever need... ever.
It started to storm when I read this... no jokes... it has lightning! Hail! the whole shebang!
526681
Look, I love my story, I really do. I love it with a passion and I love all the likes and favorites because they got me a huge audience, but I'm not going to live in a pretend fantasy world that it's perfect. It really isn't perfect. It's...acceptable, really.
But c'mon. Cuddly wuddly Octy.
You've still got 1209 followers, which I think is a big deal on here yeah?
Also, I'm kinda well liked on Youtube and I linked your story to the fan music I made.
The same thing was done with the people that remixed said song, and I'm about to release "She's a Vampire N-TYPE" which will also have a link to you.
You put asses in seats, no worries there.
526654 Okay yeah.. I've read through the vampire and seriously... compared to some of the shit that does make it through, yours is flawless on a technical level
526683
I'm inclined to agree, it could use work, but not as much as they're suggesting. The general reader won't even notice the crap they pick up, i mean. hyphens. seriously?
526686
Still debatable. My entire style used to be based off Cormac McCarthy's and all that with periods thrown everywhere. A laptop in the dark, screen glowing. Fingers on the keys, clacking away.
I use it sometimes and it fits in places, but not all the time
Thank you for that compliment. You probably don't know how much that means coming from you.
526685
Sorry I couldn't find you at EQLA, man.
Thanks for writing that song, but I think you get how it feels when you get rejected from EQD, yeah? I mean, you're super popular on YouTube and have tons of subscribers and listeners. But you forget all about that because getting onto EQD is that thing that says you're pro.
But thank you for the advertising.
526691
Lol it's ok, only 3 people recognized me anyway, but I got to hang with the other musicians and some of the Bronies React and EFR guys. It was hella awkward though I will tell you that lol.
Anyway, getting on EQD does not mean you're a pro, it's the failure/success ratio you ascertain from reading your fans' reactions. Some trash has found it's way to EqD before, the pre-anythings are only human.
526654 I'll go further. I ragged on Vampire because I felt you made some bad mistakes... but I enjoyed it. I only resented it because I have a very clear headcanon on octiscratch and... you went way away from it. Had you called them anything but octavia and scratch I would have enjoyed it without reservation. But even allowing for the flaws, which are really just a new characterization I wasn't prepared for... it was good. It was damn good.
Keep cool! Even though you won't land on EQD you still are an extremly great author and you will get far enough reader here on fimfiction.
526628 If you want to get on EqD, you have to use dashes their way. Why is this a problem? Use a global search and replace on your story. I realize this is hard when you have so many chapters, but that's what you have to do. And, yes, the em-dash with no spaces around it is standard American usage; open up a book published in America and look. And, yes, they use style manuals. This is unfortunate, because the style manuals are all designed for journalism, not fiction.
It's better to submit a story to them before you have 20 chapters out, because they're going to reject your story if they find grammatical errors in any of the chapters. You only need 3000 words to submit.
Yes, EqD pre-readers mostly pay attention to grammar. Yes, this is frustrating. But it's even more frustrating when you get one of the pre-readers who cares about the story, because they will reject stories that don't have the style and content that they personally like. It's better for them to just pass anything that has correct grammar. That's a better indicator of story quality than one random pre-reader's assessment of story quality.
I have gotten a fair number of stupid rejections from EqD. But even when the reason for rejection is stupid, I learn something from those letters. The EqD rejection letters for a story usually contain more helpful criticism than all the reader comments on a story combined. The grammar rules and stylistic dogmas they enforce are ones you have to know if you want to write professionally. The only real problem with their rejection letters is that they are critiques and rejections at the same time, so they'll inevitably have n things they ask you to change, n/2 of which would make the story worse.
EqD does have serious problems with their checklist approach, their hatred of sparse prose, their tendency to "correct" the grammar in dialogue and first-person narrative, their insistence on prescriptive over descriptive grammar, their deeply-flawed interpretation of "show, don't tell," and their complete disregard for how popular a story has already been. They should have looked at the ratings on your story and said, "Whatever I think, this is something bronies like; let's run it." It's creepy that the pre-readers seem to have identical irrational opinions on all these subjects. That it's possible to create a literary group with so much groupthink is alarming, and the implications are horrible, but not unexpected--just open any issue of "Year's Best American Poetry" (other than 2010's, which is okay) and ask yourself how that collective paeon to crap came about.
I really don't care for EQD's methods for filtering out bad stories. The strange rules they enforce leave perfectly good stories to go rot. I go there for comics and art but I come here for fics.
Hyphens is the sort of stuff they need to be pointing out on the first submission, not the third. The first one is where all the really easy to spot problems get ironed out. By strike three, the only things that should be left are really deep seated conceptual issues with the story, or issues that are problems but the author stubbornly refuses to change. The first go through should be something like:
I know they're always talking about how it's not their job to be editors, and given their workload that's something I do agree with, but for something like this that likely crops up a lot they really should just include a link to some sort of an example of what they're looking for in grammar.
Thing about EqD is that a lot of their prereaders are absolute perfectionists (specially Air-Striker. Not that I don't like the guy. Usually he gives damn good feedback). So yiu either need 3+ perfectionist prereaders or being lucky with their prereader. None the less this story deserves a spot in it, but is it really needed? By getting the amouts of views and likes you have proven that this story is better than many of the ones that reach EQD. I would consider that a bigger feat than getting it posted in EQD. Don't think about EQD rejecting it. Think about your achievement of writing it.
You probably should have been excpecting this. The gramar nazis at eqd can be ass holes. Btw, Are you sure "fuckin' fuck" is the proper way to say that? :D just trollin'
Honestly you have a really really good story. If EQD doesn't want to feature it, their loss. Tell them to go shove it.
This is why I like EqD for their news and art, but not much else. Too damn picky.
526628 If you really hate EQD, there's a group for that. (Totally not advertising a group.)
I got a story on EQD (which in itself took a hell of a lot of effort, what with the submission being 'lost' and 'mysteriously deleted from the upload queue' half a dozen times.)
I immediately regretted it. New readers flowed in for a short while while the main post was on the front page. But once it was gone? Every time it was bumped into the story updates? Ignored. Because as luck would have it (which I suspect, was being done on purpose), was being lopped in with incredibly popular fics such as: Background Pony, Anthropology, Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons, Windfall, ect. meaning that anything I posted was pretty much guaranteed to be ignored.
And when the average EQD viewer has the general intelligence of a gold fish, they lack the ability to see metaphors, and plot lines that actually require thinking about what was said, and seem to ignore important plot points even when they're stated plainly.
TL\DR
Equestria Daily is an old boys club with the average reader being dumber than a gold fish. In the end, it's not really worth the effort unless you're already incredibly popular with the fandom.
526662
How to get a story one EqD:
1: Tear the hyphen button off your keyboard.
2: Type Words.
3: Success is now yours. Revel in your endless legions of loyal, screaming fans and boundless, immortal internet fame.
Because I'm nit-picky and can't resist a chance to be pedantic:
526654
Hyphens are the little ones used in compounds, to indicate stuttering, etc. ("The well-liked story was inexplicably d-d-denied a slot in the feature b-b-box.")
Dashes are the longer ones used to indicate breaks. ("Some people -- I'm not saying I'm one of them, of course -- take this grammar crap mega-seriously.") There are further distinctions between the en-dash (bigger than a hypen, not as big as an em-) and the em-dash (the longest of the lot) but the em-dash is what you'd generally use. Whether or not you leave spaces around the dash depends on your preferences and/or what style manual you're using.
My story was rejected for not having enough finesse, or some shit like that. Honestly, it would be great to be featured on EqD, but at the same time I don't really care. I like my story, my friends like me story, my fans like my story. And I'll be damned if I let one little rejection put me down.
EQD has fics?!?
527322
Wheller?!
Okay, dash/hyphen rules are about THE most obscure rules when dealing with punctuation.I personally use them along with "..." to give text a conversational speech flow. There isn't a rest sign for writing and unless you can actually write in phonetic script for people who can read it. Writing, like speech itself is a stylistic skill. While some things are concrete like the difference in uses of then and than, other obscure rules become choices as with contractions and truncated words to reflect inflections in speech.
For instance,
How do you do?
'ow do ya do?
How ya does mane?
The word "ya" which is not a word at all according to the dictionary that I'm aware of, is an inflection and is often spoken but rarely written. More common is "ye" though it is far less used.
The point of all this is that while there are prescribed rules, some common conventions that act outside or opposed to such rules are necessary and quite effective. Effective communication being the whole point, whoever it is that maintains such rules should be open to the possibility of updating and changing them or else the language is likely to go dead....over the next thousand years.
I agree your story was not up to my usual standards in terms of literary excellence ,but I can forgive that easily based on what has come of it (My roommate is onto me). However, with regards to punctuation and legibility, I see no fault. At no point did I find major error with your mechanical ability. I liked the story if it was a bid...shall we say...fast paced. It worked. Just keep trying man.
Speaking as an Equestria Daily pre-reader that actually ENJOYED 'Roommate is a Vampire', I'll say that yes, the hyphens/dashes issue is actually incorrect according to several writing style manuals, so it is a problem that needed to be rectified.
That being said, I wouldn't let this rejection get you down. You do have talent, and your fanbase, myself included, enjoy your work. It just takes some careful editing to get it up on EqD.
For what it's worth, *I* wouldn't be going up on EqD with anything I write. I have grammar issues like hell, and I know it.
527666
It got old the first two times they told me. I even did try and fix those hyphens. Now it seems like they combed through pages and pages to point one mistake out.
I pretty much knew it wasn't going to get accepted. That part I'm not even remotely mad about. It's just the inane things like capitalization (I still can't figure out what's wrong with that stutter) and punctuation (which is not conventional in the slightest and might throw people off) and hyphens and dashes that they point out as basis for dropping it.
527480
Yes?
527848
I
you
526728
You have a very clear headcanon on OctiScratch? Where did that come from?
There's all sorts of stories, and I like OctiScratch (as a couple, too), but my favorite Octavia and possibly my "headcanon" for her personality might be from "Octavia Takes the Bus." I loved that story. Even though 'Tavi and Scratch aren't a couple in that one. And as I said, I do enjoy them as a couple, too.
So, what's your headcanon, and how did you come by it?
Such passion, such anger...... I love it.