Hello, fic hopefuls! As a pre-reader, I realize the process can occasionally be confusing and the rules a bit unclear, so I leave this thread open for any questions you have! Simply reply to this post so I'll see a notification about it. We also run a thread like this on Ponychan's /fic/ board, but I know some people don't like chan boards.

Questions that we cannot answer:
1. Anything involving the fine details of actual story posts. (The admins handle that, not us; once we approve a story, it's out of our hands.)
2. Who your pre-reader was (Some of us prefer to remain secret, so unless your pre-reader volunteers the information, it probably won't happen. Sorry.)
3. Anything about comics/news/music/art (We only handle fanfiction!)

I welcome your questions and will do my best to answer them.

How often do you have to read really crappy stories?

452018
Every day. Multiple times.

How do you guys treat atypical/experimental writing?

452020

Why do you do it?

Perfect! This looks great Vimbert!

Let's see...how do you divide the work between each other?

As a general note, anyone curious about the state of the pre-reading queue can look here (it updates automatically): Link

452030
There are a few of us who really enjoy such experimental pieces. I tend to not be one of them, so I generally defer to them if something comes in.

452050
Because EqD publishing good stories is what got me into the fic writing part of the fandom, and I'd like to see stories only get better.

452073
The submissions are placed into a shared queue which anyone can claim and review; generally, we try to get to older stories first, but we're allowed to claim any. We thus avoid genres we don't like (I tend to shy away from shipfics myself) and minimize bias, so no one who hates Trixie reads a Trixie-focused story, for example.

There are also a few people who run the fanfiction email and do all the pre-screening for clop, non-English fics, etc. before they're forwarded to everyone else. I'm one of these people.

451986

Why Sky Pirates?

One question that springs to mind—technically two if you want to be pedantic.

Is there a method of reaching a consensus on what EqD readers want, or is it just within the adjudication of each pre-reader? Specifically I'm referring to choices made about style and story length, because those are the things that relate to me specifically as an author and I wouldn't feel qualified to engage about anything else.

I've had more than a few run-ins with folk over methods of punctuation, grammar and formatting that seem to boil down to 'that's how so-and-so does it' (often referring to the Chicago Manual of Style). I get that there are standardised ways of doing things, but what sort of allowances are made for personalisation and regional variation (English covers a big area, after all)?

As for story length, I think I'm opening up the distinction between the pace of a story and the pace of the narrative. With regards to my own EqD rejection (Shades of Grey—NO, nothing to do with that!), the complaint about pace was entirely justified. I had to go away and learn an awful lot more so I could do my rewrite; however, the rewrite improves narrative pace but not so much the plot's pace. A big part of the way the story was laid out to start with was based in the sheer number of poorly paced stories I was reading from EqD at the time. 'Poorly paced' is, of course, entirely subjective, but when chasing up feedback for the first version of the story, I had no trouble finding people who liked it because it was paced much slower than the usual. I'm tired of stories that deliver their ideas like a baseball bat to the face; to me, it's not 'fast-paced', it's under-developed. Thus, accepted flaws in my work aside, I know I'm not the only one not just accepting of, but looking for slower paced work that would be earmarked as 'boring' by the other end of the spectrum. So how do you folk decide what is or isn't publishable in that sense?

Maybe it just doesn't come up much because not many authors dive into novel length stories (certainly not as amateurishly as I did, anyway). Maybe I'm just showing my age!

-Scott 'Inquisitor' Mence

452261
Obtain this game and educate yourself.

452270
It's sort of up to each pre-reader what EqD readers would enjoy, but we assume that it's about the same as the FiMFiction audience, since 99% of the submissions link here anyway. It's largely not much of an issue; most of our rejections are grammatically based.

As for pacing, I would agree that stories like you describe aren't engaging either, but there needs to be some kind of hook fairly early in to draw the reader in. To open my own work up to criticism, Interference opens with a small mystery: "Why would Princess Celestia write a short, curt letter calling Twilight, and only Twilight, to Canterlot?" This mystery is by no means the focus of the story, but it is something more unusual and interesting than, say, Twilight waking up and starting her morning with oatmeal/a daffodil sandwich/whatever and nothing out of the ordinary happening.

It's a very subjective matter, but our opinion is perhaps summed up best by a quote from one of our bluntest members, Ebon Mane, discussing a similar subject on Ponychan's Ask a Pre-reader thread:

You're talking as though actually telling a story your reader will find interesting enough to continue reading is an unreasonable burden that you'd rather avoid. That's a terrible attitude to have, if I've interpreted you right.

Prose is a good medium for those who enjoy making an impact on readers. If your only concern is your story and you consider writing to entertain (or cause emotional response in) readers to be an unfortunate duty that gets in the way of your story's purity, a better medium for you would probably be daydreams or journal entries (in the original, private sense).

Quote source

452293

a young pirate in a Jules Verne-inspired fantasy world

Sold!

452293 HA! That makes so much sense I almost feel bad about asking (I don't.).

But seriously, I get that. It also made me realise that I was having a bit of a knee-jerk reaction to the volume of stories that went way too far the other way (Season 2 finale inclusive) by giving way too much away in either the synopsis or at the beginning. Of course, I went far too far the other way.

Anyway, thank you sincerely for your answer. One thing that did hit me after my first rejection email, was that I wanted to send a thank-you note (after the cool down from feeling punched in the gut, of course), but didn't know what would be appropriate due to the whole privacy thing and the anonymous email box. I could just be blind and missed mention of it somewhere, but might it be a good idea to mention somewhere either how to (so as to not clog up the fic submission box), or simply not to?

-Scott

452334
No way! We love thank you notes. If you send something to the fanfiction email, myself or one of the other pre-readers who run it will forward it along. We're used to getting just hate mail, so thank yous are very much appreciated.

452346 I guess sometimes I'm too concerned with doing the wrong thing to do the right thing!

So, Vim and Daffodil (or any other prereaders that may be lurking), what are your opinions on Nicholas Cage and binge drinking?

it's okay, you can tell us the truth... we're amongst friends, here.

452349

I know how that is!

Whenever I had my art accepted into drawfriends I would question that very action.

It's very sweet that you would go the extra distance to give thank yous even for rejections. Someone still took time and effort to look them over, right?

452355
Anything that makes Nicholas Cage more insane is okay by me.

He'll never match the real greatest actor of them all, though.

OH!! I thought of a real question!

On an average day, how many stories get moved out of the incoming queue after being preread? I've looked at the queue status spreadsheet before, but without any frame of reference for how fast things are moving, it's basically just a picture with some fancy numbers and letters in it.

*edit: Also, what's the best fic you've read that to the best of your knowledge was written by someone that speaks English as a second language?
I ask, because I'm editing for a guy that lives in Finland and it's shaping up to be a great story, but it's an absolute nightmare in the grammar and syntax department.

452538 Well, I do have some unfair advantages when it comes to that sort of thing. Being way over the average fan age for starters, but also having a personal interest in psychology, philosophy and with a background of depression and counselling. Not that it makes taking criticism easier in the moment (I am a damaged human, after all), but give me a couple of hours and I can be philosophical and eternally thankful for anything even approaching honesty and truth in any form.

452538

It's very sweet that you would go the extra distance to give thank yous even for rejections. Someone still took time and effort to look them over, right?

I haven't been rejected yet. However, I am fully prepared for the eventuality, and completely intend on sending the prereader a thank you regardless of what sort of feedback he/she sends me. I think that what they're doing is probably a fairly thankless job, and they at least deserve to know that a few people appreciate what they do.

452740
Stories are generally moved out of the queue within 12 hours of being pre-read. If I'm on, that can sometimes shorten to mere minutes. I'm a little obsessive-compulsive about the queue being current.

The best fic of that sort... I'm not sure. I've read some stories by authors whom I suspect are non-native speakers, but I don't want to make any assumptions.

One good story that I know was written by a non-native speaker (also a Polish speaker, IIRC) is this story. It's on the extremely short list of Trixie fics I can tolerate.

452740 GhostOfHeraclitus speaks English as a second or third language, but still writes it far better than most native speakers. You can find his not-yet-approved but excellent first story here.

454280
>weaponized dessert
yeah, gonna definitely check that one out.

What are the reasons for the "forbidden" categories, and how can they be gotten around? Blueshift, who is a pre-reader, got a Brony in Equestria story published during the ban on Brony in Equestria stories.

My guess is that all of the rules are supposed to reduce the number of bad stories by targeting types of story that are usually bad. But if that's the case, there should be a way around the rules, to at least get an initial reading, for stories that have a high probability of being good. For instance, if they were written by someone who's already been published on EqD, or if they have more than 15 upvotes per downvote on fimfiction.

I'm a little peeved about this because I've been published 3 times in the past 3 months on EqD, making me one of their most-reliable authors at the moment, yet I've recently had 2 stories that I thought were quite good rejected for violating rules that they didn't even violate. One was a 2800-word one-shot that has 172 upvotes on fim-fiction. The pre-reader decided it didn't satisfy the 2500-word rule because it was a branching story. The other, the pre-reader apparently didn't even read, and said he was rejecting it under the brony-in-Equestria rule even though it did not have a brony in Equestria, because he thought it sounded like it would be similar. It makes me feel unappreciated that after being published repeatedly, I still don't merit having my stories at least read before being rejected.

454319

Sounds like you could have asked for another look for the second one at least, giving the same reasons you did here.

452295

Will have to find an original Dreamcast or the updated Gamecube re-release though. Might be tough, but it is one of the best JRPG's ever, an under appreciated gem.

In this humble pony's opinion, of course.

454319
What were these stories, specifically? I can look into this.

Also, if we've rejected something and screwed up while doing it, for the love of Odin, TELL US by replying to the rejection email. Don't just ask about it here. Almost nothing we send is 100% absolute, and we're human. We screw up. I help run the fanfic email, and it gets easier and easier to make mistakes when one's trying to skim fifty fanfics in one sitting to determine if they don't break any rules.

454319
Ouch, sounds harsh and I know that feeling. To date, I've gotten 6 stories onto EqD, one of the stories I was most exited of seeing on the site got rejected, badly. Apparently, it was too close the the original source material of a crossover, despite that not being the case. It can get frustrating.

454505 Thanks, but I'll try replying to those pre-readers first. I think I confused the matter by raising specific cases that didn't violate the rules, when I really want to talk about cases that do violate the rules. This is my understanding:

- There are some special rules (don't write about Lauren Faust, write in English), but most rules target story elements that suggest a story will be bad. I'm assuming that the purpose of the rules is to save the pre-readers time, not to try to mold the world of ponyfiction to fit some vision or ideology. Is that right?
- Some EqD pre-readers have said on fim-fiction that exceptions can be made to the rules for special cases.
- However, the only exception I've seen made was for another pre-reader. For anybody else, stories that break the rules aren't read.
- Saying that exceptions can be made, without saying when they can be made, encourages people to send in stories that violate the rules, which is (on average) bad.
- Some good stories are ruled out.
- Some good stories are made worse to conform to the rules (e.g., the extended version of Pinkie Watches Paint Dry).

My thoughts:
- If a story was written by someone who's already been published on EqD, or if it has excellent ratings on fimfiction (say, at least 20 upvotes per downvote), that's strong evidence that the story is better than most of what's in the queue.
- A policy saying that a pre-reader will read and consider a story even if it violates some particular set of rules, if some specific and difficult condition is met, might eliminate more submissions than it would add to the queue, and most of the stories it would add would be above-average in quality.

It seems to me that everybody would win by having a clear and fair policy, rather than either a strict "Ze rules are never broken!" policy, or a vague, unofficial, maybe-you-can-get-around-the-rules-if-you-know-somepony one.

456483

- There are some special rules (don't write about Lauren Faust, write in English), but most rules target story elements that suggest a story will be bad. I'm assuming that the purpose of the rules is to save the pre-readers time, not to try to mold the world of ponyfiction to fit some vision or ideology. Is that right?

Yes.

- Some EqD pre-readers have said on fim-fiction that exceptions can be made to the rules for special cases.

Also yes.

- However, the only exception I've seen made was for another pre-reader. For anybody else, stories that break the rules aren't read.

Not true. If the author gives us a good reason to consider the fic, we'll do so. I can think of one case over the summer where an author submitted a humanized fic. He wrote a very well-thought-out message with his submission, explaining why we should not automatically reject his story, etc. It ended up being posted to EqD after one minor round of grammar edits.

- Saying that exceptions can be made, without saying when they can be made, encourages people to send in stories that violate the rules, which is (on average) bad.

The amount of submissions we receive that are blatantly against the rules but are looking for an exception are relatively few and far between. Most of the time they're cases of authors not reading the rules in the first place, and there's not much we can do to enforce that.

- Some good stories are ruled out.

Yes. This is the unfortunate truth of any quality-control system where the goal is to appeal to a majority. I'm still bitter over The Tree of Life not getting a Best Picture Oscar.

- Some good stories are made worse to conform to the rules (e.g., the extended version of Pinkie Watches Paint Dry).

Worse is subjective. But this is more the authors' problem than ours. The fact that many authors are willing to change their stories drastically to get on EqD is hardly something we can control.

- If a story was written by someone who's already been published on EqD, or if it has excellent ratings on fimfiction (say, at least 20 upvotes per downvote), that's strong evidence that the story is better than most of what's in the queue.

If the author is well known, we may give their story a second look, but not a free pass. FimFiction ratings, not so much. Since, y'know, this site isn't exactly known for having high standards.

- A policy saying that a pre-reader will read and consider a story even if it violates some particular set of rules, if some specific and difficult condition is met, might eliminate more submissions than it would add to the queue, and most of the stories it would add would be above-average in quality.

The problem is that there's no clear way to measure what is and is not "above average" without us actually reading the story, which eliminates the entire point of the rules. That said, every story gets looked at, barring ones titled "MY SEX-FILLED ADVENTURES IN EQUESTRIA FEAT. PINKAMINA CUPCAKES PIE". But if the opening isn't engaging and doesn't make the pre-pre-reader immediately think the story is something special, it'll likely be rejected by the end of the first paragraph.

It seems to me that everybody would win by having a clear and fair policy

The policy could probably be clearer, but here it is to my understanding: If the story is good, we'll take it. If it's not good, we won't. BiE fics, humanized fics, etc, just have less time to prove to us that they're good, since all-too-often they're wastes of time. The alternative is to not auto-reject any fics and pre-read everything, but we wouldn't have time to give reviews anymore -- authors would just get yes or no answers with a bit of elaboration, likely no more than a sentence or two. I feel like most authors that submit work to us would prefer the way we do it now.

Sorry if none of that made sense, it's really late and I need to go to bed.

Okay, how the hell did this make it on to EqD?

I mean, I joined this group because I was sure I was going to get rejected at least once (if not more times). Now, I made it on the first try and my story will never grace the folders of our little group here.

Don't think my instant acceptance is going to shake me from this group; I'm still gonna stick around here and try to help people if I can.

456989

I could always reject it if you like.

457015

As much as I appreciate your offer, I believe I will have to respectfully decline at this point in time.

In all seriousness, I'm just floored that it made it. I didn't originally want to write the story, my buddy Madcat124 poked me in the back of the head repeatedly until I gave in. I actually submitted the story to EqD after more goading from Madcat.

I guess I'm going to have to step up my game now, because I was really writing half-heartedly when I did it. Meh, whatcha gonna do? amiright?

hmm... here is a question: What would you say is harder to get accepted. A story with a single chapter that the author says will be a long story, or the same story with multiple chapters already posted?

456989

Well, as far as disappointments go, that one is livable.
Congratulations!

Out of curiosity, did you do anything special before submitting? i.e., had it proofread, edited it yourself over and over, etc.
Sometimes it's the stuff you least expect that gets the best received.

457249 Thanks!

The original form of the story is very very different from what is here now. The original was a sort of one-shot depicting just a couple scenes from the middle of the story in order to gauge interest in the story before I even decided to start writing the thing for reals. It was viciously dark, throwing the reader into one of the most twistedly grimdark scenes of the entire story. For some reason people liked it, so I had to keep writing it. lol

Out of curiosity, did you do anything special before submitting? i.e., had it proofread, edited it yourself over and over, etc.

All of the above.

I originally had a couple prereaders go through it before posting, and I edited myself as best I could. Self-editing is hard, by the way. Way harder than editing other peoples stuff, because you're biased to think that your writing is good enough. I've read the thing 50 times or more and every time I find something else that needs to be fixed, I've finally given up on that.

Then shortly after I was talked into making the EqD submission, I got together with a proofreader/editor that beat me over the head with the story repeatedly until I was crying and promised to never use progressive past tense again; unless the narrative is looking back at something that has already happened in the story's timeline or an action is interrupted (this helped my writing more than anything, I think). So, more fixing and then it was noticed that there was a massive character discrepancy with Spike in the story and Spike in the plot outline... so more fixing, then more problems were fleshed out and more revisions and editing. So on and so forth, until I was completely sick of it.

Even though I was disinterested in writing the story originally, I'm fully vested in it now and for a story I didn't originally like, I put an awful lot of effort into fixing the garbage that I put out there initially. Now I'm having fun writing the new chapters and trying quite a bit harder to make it worthwhile on the first iteration.

Personally, I still think it's a sub-par story (they say an artist is always his own worst critic), but others have told me otherwise.

457295
Self-editing is hard!

I'm going through the same process myself. I figured I should actually follow the advice I'm giving and learn more about the EQD submission process.

It's currently in the proofreading stage via SALT. The excellent reader helping me has already, among other things, shown me the problems with my commas and pointed out that I introduced one of my characters with the wrong name.

*facehoof*

I swear I read over that thing 50 times! (Give or take)

It's good that your enjoying it more now. Sounds like a little group I made on a whim that somehow developed into something bigger. *Ahem*

Welp, going on a tangent. Might as well test Fimfiction's thread limits.

I had a story sent back to me, it wasn't rejected, but he editor said "not a strike, conditionally accepted pending address of pre-reader's points):".

I made the required fixes and resubmitted it on EqD, that was a week or so ago. Usually it's not that long before I get a yay or nay reasons.

I don't really mind much, in fact it might be best if it takes another day or two to get done. Still the lack of an answer makes me wonder. Are you guys underhanded?

457385
A little, I'd say.

457110
Neither. However, if we're not sure where the story with one chapter is headed, we might send it back and ask for an outline.

And in general, unless the synopsis works wonders to grab our interest, some 100k word+ behemoth is probably going to sit in the queue for a while. We're all busy with college/our jobs, so a story that huge can be a little daunting to pre-read (unless we find enough grammar errors to reject on before we finish reading)!

Haha. This first definition is the way I commonly use 'underhanded', so that made me giggle a little.

458010
As do I, but I assumed in the context of his post he meant "shorthanded."

456516 Sorry if none of that made sense, it's really late and I need to go to bed.

It made sense. There's no perfect solution. If everything really does get at least the first few of paragraphs read, that makes me happy. The submission form, though, explicitly says that things that don't meet the rules will not get read, so I'm a little skeptical.

If the author is well known, we may give their story a second look, but not a free pass. FimFiction ratings, not so much. Since, y'know, this site isn't exactly known for having high standards.

I never said anything about a free pass. I talked about getting read before being rejected. Not the same thing at all.

fimfiction ratings aren't meaningless, but how useful they are depends on the average quality of the stories you're sent. 10% of stories have at least 25 thumbs and thumbs-up / thumbs-down >= 25. 1% of stories have at least 80 thumbs and thumbs-up / thumbs-down >= 80, and those are almost all great stories. You can check this yourself by looking at the first page of 'Top Rated' stories on fimfiction. Most stories with that rating that don't break the rules have already been on Equestria Daily. (The rankings appear not to be based on a ratio, but on a probability computed from a fixed binomial distribution, which is the more-correct thing to do.)

The fimfiction feature box is not based on ratings. Stories with a lot of views get featured, regardless of how many thumbs-down they have. I've seen stuff with a tu/td ratio of 3 in the feature box, which is in the bottom third by rating. The top slot in the feature box is occupied right now by a story with a tu/td ratio of 6, which puts it in the bottom 50% of all stories.

In my experience, anything with more than 40 thumbs-up per thumbs-down has an even chance of being an EqD-quality story, at least with a little cleanup. The problem isn't that high ratings aren't a good indicator that a story is worth reading; it's that mediocre ratings don't prove that it isn't. Excellent stories with some controversial element usualy fall into the gray zone between 20:1 and 40:1.

458621

The submission form, though, explicitly says that things that don't meet the rules will not get read, so I'm a little skeptical.

I added that line to scare people into reading the rules. It worked.

fimfic ratings and math stuff

You make a good point. I'm willing to concede that a fic with 25-40 likes per dislike is probably doing something right, even for this site. That isn't to say that stories with such a ratio will get free reign to ignore the rules, but I may read up to the fifth paragraph before rejecting them as opposed to the third.

459060

It worked.

Sort of.

458488
The use of the word appears to be a real one, I just didn't know it. I didn't think anyone was being rude.

So how do sequels work with EqD? I've heard that they get an auto-approve, but I'm not clear on the the details. Does the sequel get placed as a continuation of the original story's post or does it get its own post? Does a sequel submission go through the normal fic submission route, or does it get sent in as a 'story update'?

Just curious, because I've decided that the story I'm writing is going to require a sequel to finish the story satisfactorily.

Thanks!

463468
They get sent through the story updates and do not receive their own post.

They are, however, auto-approved, assuming there's no sudden horse porn or something.

Edit: Done! That was fun. Let's do it again sometime.

463479

So, what's it take to be a successful candidate for the currently open pre-reader positions?

Just curious. I already sent an application a bit ago, so an answer here won't change anything I did on it. And how long is it taking to go through them and get a response back to the applicants?

If you're not personally dealing with this mess, I totally understand a lack of an answer.

edit: What's the answer to the 'best pony' question? I had said Twilight, but I think the answer might be Nicholas Cage, now that I've noted a seemingly unhealthy obsession with the actor.