Equestria Daily, Fanfiction, and You: Changing the Pre-reader Process

Most of what I read is more padding and BS then actually fixing it.(Which can be said for the site most of the time).
But then again I don't know, still don't trust them.

What do you guys think, more BS? Or something more?

3071465 More BS. They're the EA of the MLP fandom.

3071465 Welp, at least you said we're fixing things. I'll take that.
3071592 Ouch. EA doesn't deserve *that* kind of comparison.

3071618
Actually I think he said it was more padding and BS, rather than fixing it.

AKA asshole.

3071618 So is the process going to be faster or what?

3071823 I think it's fair to say that the fic program on EqD is on its last legs. If we can't get the system to speed up with this change in place, we might have to call the whole thing off.

We don't have a choice. This system has to work faster.

3071465
Personally, I don't think it should be simplified down to yes and no answers. I understand that giving comprehensive and detailed feedback for each submission simply isn't feasible, but an author has a right to know the grounds for rejection. Was it honestly that hard to spend a few minutes writing the bullet points? If a pre-reader can't come up with reasons for rejection, should the story even be rejected at all?

3072026

Was it honestly that hard to spend a few minutes writing the bullet points?

The great irony of bullet points (our previous system, by the way!) is that they just added an extra layer of obstruction between our thoughts on a story and what the reader got back from us. The process of actually keeping track of which bullet points stories qualified for as we read and finding a quick and simple method of migrating them from a form to an email never materialized, either, and the whole thing just turned into a massive headache no one used after a while.

The emphasis of my article for authors is that they need to stop treating EqD as the only authority on writing well out there and find other groups that actually have the bandwidth to help them. They exist! And they'll meet our standards! I promise!

*Clicks link, reads, leaves*

If EqD cut out Fanfiction entirely, then there's a 1% chance (up from 0%) that I'd go there for reasons other than finding links to new episodes.

Finding stories they think are interesting to the fandom is hopeless because the fandom is so varied on what stories they find enjoyable. Good and bad is entirely dependant on what you as a reader are looking for in particular.

3072091
I don't quite understand where you are coming from. If a story has bad dialogue, you write a bullet point that says "Clunky Dialogue". If it has inconsistent formatting, you write a bullet point that says "Inconsistent Paragraph Formatting". Where is this qualification difficulty coming from?

And having trouble keeping track of which bullet points go with which story? That sounds like more of a problem with the pre-readers than the system to me. If a person can't keep track of simple information like a title and a list of problems, then why are they being trusted with sifting through stories? It doesn't matter what method you are using if your pre-readers can't do that. Your yes's will be confused with your no's. A simple pen and notepad can do wonders, you know. . . .

No offense, but your excuses seem flat--or you aren't telling me everything--or I'm being dense: one or more of these factors may be at work.

But regardless, I'm not in your shoes, nor do I envy them.

As I recall, there was once a movie reviewer who used to condense his reviews into one line. For example the Wizard of Oz was "Transplanted to a surreal landscape, a young girl kills the first person she meets and then teams up with three strangers to kill again."

Feedback for submissions is a really good idea, but at the cost of slogging down the pre-readers time and efforts. One or two lines is all we really need. "Great plot, but poor dialogue and horrible characterizations. " or "The plot never catches fire and just drags on with characters popping up and vanishing in no particular order. Also, use fewer commas and more periods." Or even "Plot is fair, but the POV headhops all over until the reader is unable to figure out just where the story went."

Then there's the elusive, "Just about good enough to post. Needs to have grammar fixed in a few dozen places and some dialogue tags cleaned up. Rejected without a strike. Clean it up and resubmit please."

3072432 We strived to standardize our bullet points as much as possible, so it wasn't the act of figuring out what to say. The problem is that we tried to encompass everything in some bullet point or another. It sounds hard to believe, but we must have had like 62 points no one of us was going to remember verbatim, so that's an extra ten seconds per point having to look up what the "official" point was. It was mostly a problem of interfaces in that respect, since something we tried to implement to expedite reviews paradoxically got in the way.

Sure, we could have written down our own phrasings of the different points, which would inevitably drag in accusations of inconsistency, which we really hoped the system would mitigate. The concept was simple; the execution of it, like many "simple" things, wouldn't get any easier.

... It really doesn't seem like this is much of a change in the prereader process, heck from what I gather it seems like its going to be even more problematic than before.

I figure this will probably end in worsening the preexisting communication problems, and cause even more bad press for prereaders (unjustified in this case) due to the backlash of disgruntled writers.

To put it bluntly, I don't envy you, the resultant shitstorm on the horizon is not going to be pleasant.

To be fair, at least stories get an answer. Art on the other hand...

3072432

It's because they're too nice to put bullets like:

* Your story is boring
* Nobody gives a shit about your OC because you haven't given them any reason to do so
* I don't know why anyone would waste their time reading this when there are so many better stories in the fandom
* Does this even have a plot, or does it just meander for a hundred thousand words because you shat out chapter after chapter without any kind of coherent plan? Because it's really, really hard to tell.

Those are the most common issues with fics submitted to EqD. At least, they were back when I was a prereader.

I submitted a story to EqD under the old system, once. I thought my one-shot deserved to see the light of day, was cleverly done, and wasn't going to waste anyone's time. In my opinion, it was 3,069 words of a silly but well-delivered concept.

I then received approximately the same number of words as it took to write the one-shot telling me everything that was wrong with my story and how it could be improved. Much as I was flattered to see the amount of effort put into telling me how bad of a writer I truly am and how shameful my hope to get my fic featured really was, I couldn't bring myself to think positively after about 3 months in a queue (extraordinarily short, I know) just to be told my story is teh suck.

Under the new yes/no system, I guess I'd have learned my story sucked about 2 months earlier. I submitted a story once, and ever since receiving that reply, I've been fairly against the EqD establishment in general. I'm such an edgy rebel. With this change, however, I realize that they're trying to prevent my situation from ever happening again. Perhaps the writers who think they're worthy of being featured on EqD will finally realize after receiving three "no" answers on six of their fanfics that their mix-ups of "their" and "they're" are most unbecoming of EqD stories (sometimes, depending on who's looking at it) and actually stop submitting every new story they write.

Thanks, EqD, for at least making sure the fanfic writers will not spend 2 months wondering if their fanfic is going to make it before receiving the ever-emphatic "no" answer. At least the future of EqD fanfic will be spared these torturous rigors of bewilderment and misguided hope.

3071618
Thanks for having the bravery to come in here and post. I'm glad to see our members are at least being somewhat civil; I'm often sarcastic, but honestly, I'm glad you guys are actually trying to do something about it. Thanks for at least not just giving up.

3071662
I'm almost certain he caught that and was making a joke about the wrong usage of "then" and "than" and how it makes the sentence carry a different meaning. I can't imagine the wiles of the English language would so easily escape an EqD pre-reader.

3078315
Oh, I hadn't even considered that. Perhaps you're right. That's funnier.