Hi, I've got haters now and I'm not sure what to do about them. Any advice?

It's these guys: https://www.fimfiction.net/group/3/shipping/thread/370533/are-there-any-twilight-romance-fics-in-which-twilight-looks-good https://www.fimfiction.net/group/256/twilight-is-best-pony/thread/370381/have-you-ever-seen-a-romance-fic-that-makes-twilight-look-good

6553431
Your first piece of advice is to stop being a troll and trying to play the victim card.

Your second piece of advice is to learn how to use the site. The search function would get you nearly everything you want to find, without bothering people. Then again, you probably do want to bother people.

Your third piece of advice is to explain what you mean. Use your words. One-word cryptic nonsense doesn't inspire anyone to actually help you.

Fourth, actually listen and pay attention to those who do actually help you. Instead of ignoring them and getting into some side-rant.

6553437
*groan*

I'm not a troll, and I'm not "Playing the victim". Some angry haters are harassing me. You seem to be one of them. Because I'm asking for advice on how to deal with the crying "EVERYONE! HE'S A TROLL! DON'T TALK TO HIIIM!!!" assholes, and here you are, doing he same thing.

Could you not play damage-control for your friends like this?

6553594
You're not being followed. You're in a lot of groups, so are a lot of other people. You're posting in a lot of places, and running into people who are, gasp, also active on the site. Get over it.

You're being admonished for your behavior, not harassed. You post the same thing in many places. So a given person, like me, has to see the same forum thread from you in several places like spam. You put little to no effort into any of them, and many of them seem to be because you are too lazy to use the site's search or look through a group's folders.

It would be one thing if you were looking for something specific, actually tried to find it yourself and simply failed, and were looking for help. Instead, you're looking for vague things like "good" or "not NSFW." The latter has a site-wide button under settings. Simply toggle "mature" back off, and you won't see a single [M] rate story anywhere on the site. Toggle it back off if you ever feel like seeing those again.

You're putting in more effort posting in a bunch of groups asking the same questions than it would take to simply look yourself. You're wasting your time and inflicting that on others.

And now you're characterizing it has harassment and people you annoy as haters. Yes, you are attempting to play the victim card here, and you really don't deserve it. You're not a victim of cyberbullying, you're simply an irritating person that is annoying people and they're responding annoyed.

6553648
Your lying would be a lot more convincing if you weren't so bad at lying.
If you and your friends are going to show up out of the blue and screech "NOBODY TALK TO THIS GUY, HE'S A TROLL!", guess what? That's bullying.

I'd like to read now from the rules for how the Study Hall works. *ahem*

Also, please head each post with a summary topic, and refrain from holding conversations.

Now, I'm not a mod so I might be overstepping my bounds, but it seems the two of you have better ways of working this out than arguing in a public forum about writing advice over whether you're being bullied. I'd suggest taking this to pms if you want to continue your argument, or alternatively use the handy block feature that fimfic has if you just don't want to deal with each other

As far as actual advice for you dealing with people you think are being mean and harassing you, I'd suggest either trying to talk to each other and work things out like reasonable people or just use the block feature. From the looks of the threads, I'd suggest trying to be clearer with your requests for help rather than asking something vague and just repeating yourself when people ask you for clarification

@mods if I'm overstepping my bounds let me know and I can delete this message and apolgize

6553750

Just because someone makes an accusation that they're being harassed or bullied doesn't mean they are. He was lying. If we want to learn something from this it is to be honest and not go around attempting to gain pity from unsuspecting kind strangers. Be a good person and honest. When others criticize you, that isn't bullying or harassment. Don't lie and make things worse for those who are actually being harassed or bullied by causing everyone to become more jaded about that.

So I'm new to this group and I not sure if it can help me or not but I'm currently looking for an editor to help with my stories. I need someone who can help me with my Grammer and who can help me fleash out both my characters and setting

Greetings everypony! I'm somewhat new to writing fanfics, and as silly and dumb as this may sound, I may need some help with the tags for my story. I was hoping for my story to be rated T at maximum, but I am not sure as to whether or not I should put the Death and Violence tags into my story. Without giving away too much of the story, the Prologue/First Chapter is a 'prequel' chapter that gives an origin to the villain (Think like how The Lord of The Rings first introduces Sauron in the movies). In this chapter there is a bit of violence, where one of the 'major-for-the-prologue-but-turned-minor-for-the-rest-of-the-story' characters has their wings impaled, though there is no mention of blood or gore (unless you count impaled wings as gore). There is also a lot of deaths for unimportant characters in the Prologue (think 'near extinction' levels of death). However, I plan on the prologue being significantly darker when it comes to violent acts than the other chapters as a way of showing the villain's horrific acts of terror prior to the events of the story; although there will be some violence, it will not be as violent as the prologue is. Again, sorry if this is a dumb question, but thanks in advance for answering it!

6722794
For something like this you probably want to talk to the site moderators if you're unsure.

For the most part, compare your story to the show. It has some cartoon violence in it. Decide if your story falls within the limits of the cartoon (recall episodes like Read it and Weep where Rainbow's wing is broken, Lesson Zero where most of Ponyville gets into a fracas and you see a cloud of dust with pony limbs and heads peeking out now and then, or Twilight's Kingdom Pt II where Twilight and Tirek do battle. If so, it probably doesn't need any special tagging. The tags are more a warning that someone who is expecting show levels will encounter significantly more in your story.

Same goes for death. If something bad happens to a character and they're never seen again, like Sombra, or if we see evidence of a funeral (like in Hearts and Hooves Day), that's fine. Probably needs no tagging. But if there is a lot of overt "this guy dies, then this one, and then this one. So and so gasped his last breath, bleeding his lifeblood all over the place" you may want to warn readers about that.

Again, check with the site mods though, as what you're asking falls more within the purview of site rules than writing skill.

6724912
Thank you for the advice!

Details

So I stopped watching MLP after the 4th or 5th season, and I have no idea what's going on in the series now. That being said, I do greatly enjoy reading fanfics about it.

My question is, would it be possible for me to write a good fanfiction without being caught up with what's happened in the series? Like would it be bad writing to just make the setting of the fic before the latest seasons, or to just try not to rely too much on the story of the show itself?

6790131
No

6790131
There is a difference between writing original fiction and fanfiction.

For the latter, you are writing as a fan of the show for fans of the show. You're allowed to skip on things like inventing interesting characters that you must introduce to your readers and convince them to like because fans already like Twilight Sparkle.

Following that difference, you're creating art that appeals to fans, and therefore writing well involves understanding what the fans are interested in reading. There is a wide range of things to do, but as a general rule of thumb the more you diverge from the show, the less fans you'll appeal to.

It's up to you to find your audience and produce something appealing to them. If you are cutting out whole swathes of the show then you're placing hurdles in front of yourself in that process. I'd further argue that if you're not interested in the whole show, and are unwilling to watch more of it then you may not be as much of a fan as you think. Perhaps your interest isn't really in the fandom afterall.

As far as general writing skill/quality, fanfiction is pretty much an early step you can take to gain experience and practice. It's also a trap. Writing well in fanfiction is different from writing well in other areas. What is good for fanfiction beyond elementary level isn't directly applicable to writing well elsewhere.

6791266
Thank you for your response! I will definitely try to get myself caught up on the show.

I have a question. When you refer to small boys and girls, do you use colts and fillies? What about when you refer to children or grand children? What term do you use then? Do you use foals and grand foals?

I'd appreciate any help with this.

6854663
The show has used both pony terms and general terms.

Some fans really like the pony terms and insist they be used only. It is offputting for them to read general terms or a mix. They can be very vocal about their preferences, but ultimately they're not correct.

It's up to you to figure out what you prefer and stick with it. Be consistent with your decision, and it will be the correct thing to do.

6855049
Thank you very much. That was very helpful.

Are there any classes on what makes good cover art?

When writing Pinkie Pie is there a way to show and not tell but also show her more mysterious odd side?
Like show her more human pony side
but also show her eccentricities
while having her take pov

I have a pretty good rating on one of my fics though my grammar sucks.
However I want to finish it.
and I have Twilight at first as the pov for 2 of 3 chapters

but I actually wrote her out (not killed her she just wrote it so didn't want to go on the adventure)
I want the pov in that story
To switch between Pinkie pie and doctor Whooves ( doctor who crossover)
and kind of play with the strange and not so strange in both of them
is there some guidelines for this or should I just play with it?

7057734
It sounds like your issue isn't Pinkie Pie or characterizing her well. It sounds like you have some deeper problems with your story. If you have Twilight Sparkle as your POV for 2/3rds of the story and then switch to someone else, that's going to result in a bad reading experience. It sounds to me like you have one of two broad problems:

A) you had one story idea that you began with, but then jumped to a different story idea. You lack focus. Pick one of the two stories, and tell that one. If it means changing the start to accommodate the second thing, do so. If it means cutting the last part to focus on the original story, do that. You can write the "cut" part later is its own story.

B) You don't have a story at all. Instead, you have a sequence of events. A story is more than simply "one day this happens and then this happens and then this happens and then this happens ..." until you run out of ideas. A story has a purpose. A concrete beginning and end. It focuses on a main conflict and resolves that conflict. More complex stories may have subplots to them, but they all still follow one major issue and solve that issue.

You should probably figure out what has created this problem for your project and how you want to fix that. What you're asking for is simply putting a bandaid onto it.

Writing combat/fight scenes

I have trouble making my fight scenes interesting, how can I fix that?

7092543
What do you find interesting in fight scenes? I notice your avatar is Alushy. I'm assuming you're familiar with Hellsing Ultimate and/or Hellsing Ultimate Abridged. What do you find interesting in the combat in those?

Some tried and true elements of good fight scenes and general action scenes:
Fast pacing. You want stuff to happen. Don't dwell on irrelevant details. Focus on the parts that really matter. The flowers and style of architecture don't matter. The looming, closed in alleyway does. Keep conversations short. While speaking doesn't really take much time or effort, it's difficult to do in the middle of a fight where you're conserving your stamina and breathing is important. If you're focused on making some argument, you're likely to be interrupted to a fist in the face. If participants string more than a couple of sentences together at a time, chances are it's not that intense of a fight.

Make it matter. Random folks brutalizing each other is boring, no matter how good they are at it. Your parents fighting is way more important, even if both of them are out of shape, middle-aged, and untrained. Pointless, senseless violence works in video games and TV because we can see it and are forced to imagine it as "real." You don't have that in written form. You have to entice the reader into imagining the violence. You have to make the fighting matter to them and you do that by getting them invested in who is fighting and why. "My OC is just angry a lot and gets into fights," boring. "My OC is fighting someone to keep them from harming some puppies so Fluttershy will fall in love with him," less boring but some folks might find that interesting. At least we're wondering if it will work or not. Fluttershy might be appalled by the violence period. She might be appreciative of the puppy saving.

Special effects. These work wonders in visual mediums. Sparkly fireworks and lasers look cool. But you're writing. Spending a lot of time describing special effects will violate the first item. Not spending a lot of time describing them will fail to make them vivid in the readers' minds. Use them if they're appropriate to your fight scene, but keep those competing factors in mind. Don't avoid them just because they're hard to pull off, but don't treat them like some kind of super juice that will make your combat more interesting the way they do in viddy games.

Technical stuff. Some folks will know exactly what you mean when you say, "My OC draws his .45 ACP and starts to spray." Others won't. The same goes for martial arts, magic, ninja spells, and whatever else you may have in your fight scene. You have to figure out what your audience will be familiar with and describe maneuvers, gear, and so on in anticipation of what they'll understand. Your best bet is to seed this information to the readers before the fight. If your combatants use some cool magic that you made up, then before the first fight where it matters, you should have some opportunity for them to learn what this all means. What is an easy magic feat? What is a difficult one? Why should they be impressed or not? How dangerous/destructive are these things? And so on. When the important fighting happens, they should have an intuitive understanding of the importance of that fireball spell when your combatants use it. That way you can make better action scenes and use that existing knowledge to keep your fight snappy and intense. Rather than stopping to explain what each little item is.

7092815
Thank you for your help! I find the really intense, gory scenes in Hellsing Ultimate to be the most interesting parts! I’m currently writing a Fallout Equestria fic, which means quite a lot of combat, so this was really helpful!

Writing complex emotional characters like gallus and fics exploring his childhood growing up on the streets in a mature way

Writing a powerful characters background expling how they got there power and explains the limits to there power

I don't know if this is the right place to be asking this but I'm kinda new here and I am currently writing a story but I cannot think of a good title for my story.

Hello there, I don't know if this is the right place to post this, but I need help with finishing a paragraph:

No one said anything, as a massive, pair of recurved horns, followed by an equally massive bipedal being, walked from within the lake, lava dripping and smoke slowly rising from its body. It wore what seemed to be a dark green armor, which protected its left arm and upper left shoulder and chest, its right arm also had armor but on a smaller scale; its waist, as well as its legs, which bended in a strange way, were completely covered in the same dark green armor. To the left of its waist, a long, tubular metal thing dangled, and on its right hand, he held what seemed to be a metal staff, with a skull ornament on the top. It had no muzzle; its jaws were also was covered in armor, with two smaller horns protruding from the back of its head, giving it an additional armor to its head. Its skin was pale, and its eyes, as well as a circle on its left chest armor, emitted an ominous red light.

The red part is where I need help, I think that there is something strange there, but I can't put a figure what.

Edit: also, if my describing doesn't make it obvious enough, this the the Marauder from Doom Eternal.

7202907
Let's see if I can make a few suggestions.

For starters, the entire paragraph is a description of this thing. So it feels like all of the sentences do belong together in this paragraph as they relate to this same topic.

No one said anything, as a massive, pair of recurved horns, followed by an equally massive bipedal being, walked from within the lake, lava dripping and smoke slowly rising from its body. It wore what seemed to be a dark green armor, which protected its left arm and upper left shoulder and chest, its right arm also had armor but on a smaller scale; its waist, as well as its legs, which bended in a strange way, were completely covered in the same dark green armor.

The first three sentences quoted. I think this highlights one of the differences. Your red highlighted section differs in "style" from the other sentences in the paragraph. All of them fit the style of "it (the demon) is/has this." You're basically engaging in an extended attribution of various details. However, your first sentence describes the demon doing a thing rather than merely being a thing. Remove a bunch of the details you've loaded into that first sentence, and you get "[demon] walked (from lake)." This is fine as a way to introduce the subject (who is the main topic of the paragraph), and the rest of the paragraph is dedicated to giving us a bunch of details about it.

Now, look at your second sentence. It's still talking about the same subject. You switch to the "it has/is this" style. Now think about why that detail (the armor) warrants its own, separate sentence. Since you go on to give some additional details about the armor, this is fine. Back to the first sentence. The main information conveyed by the sentence is the entrance of the demon. Why are you attempting to load the visual details into that same sentence? Could you not tighten up that sentence and separate the lava and smoke into their own sentence? (The problem is not the switching in style, mind you. That just draws more attention to it.)

For example, take this much-simplified version of your paragraph as I highlight the main topics of each idea presented in your paragraph.

1) No one said anything
2) a being walked from within the lake.
3) lava dripping and smoke rising from its body.
4) It wore armor (this armor covers various spots and emits light) (parts of this element are spread into other sentences)
5) its legs bendedbent.
6) a thing dangled
7) heit held a staff.
8) It had no muzzle
9) with horns protruding from its head.
10) Its skin was pale
11) its eyes emitted light.

By temporarily removing all/most of the adjectives to cut to the meat of what you're saying, we can more clearly see how to structure and dress these things back up. Why are some of these things connected together with conjunctions or a semicolon in one case? Some, like #5, are hidden in your extensive description of the armor.

Your red-highlighted section stands out but it is just one example of where you're mixing and tangling up a lot of pieces of your description. Instead of simply listing off a bunch of "it has/is this" sentences, you're mixing things up a bit, which is a good thing. The real issue is how you're bloating your sentences. Where a paragraph is focused on a main topic, a sentence expresses a fairly concrete idea. Combining several clauses together is good if that connection expresses some important piece of information.

It had no muzzle; its jaws were also was covered in armor, with two smaller horns protruding from the back of its head, giving it an additional armor to its head.

This probably shouldn't be one sentence but several.

"It had no muzzle" is one concrete idea.
"its jaws were also covered in armor ... giving it additional armor to its head" is another concrete idea.
"two smaller horns protruded from the back of its head" is a third concrete idea.

Combining the "no muzzle" and "jaws covered in armor" part seems to be implying some kind of connection between the two. Not merely that they're both about the demon's mouth. You are implying there is a deeper, more important connection involved. The semicolon is a vague connector, but imagine if you used some other conjunction to clarify this connection in some way. "It had no muzzle because its jaws were also covered in armor." The brain will try to interpret that connection in the most sensible way, and other options like "it had no muzzle or its jaws were also covered in armor" doesn't make as much sense. It's hard to avoid imagining a causal relationship between these two linked ideas.

Similarly, your embedding the "had two smaller horns on the back of its head" in the middle of describing the armor on its head seems to imply that it has more armor on its head because of those two more horns.

The audience isn't silent because lava is dripping from a demon. They're silent because there is a friggan demon. They're silent because it has all these impressive/intimidating features. I'd say cut many of your sentences apart into more concrete ones. Link bits together if there is a sensible connection that is important to convey, not merely because they're near each other in your description. Your description of the tube and staff could make sense to be described together as pieces of important gear the demon is equipped with. But you're vague about why they're in the same sentence. They're on different parts of the body (waist and hand). When it comes to the armor (another thing the demon is equipped with), you take a leisurely stroll around the demon's body describing the features.

You begin your paragraph with the demon's horns, then the entire demon, then its armor, then kind of lose track of your tour. The imagery of the "horns, then demon" conveys a sense of "the audience notices this first, then this." The rest of your description doesn't really convey that sense. I'd suggest adopting a simple head to toes ordering. That produces a stronger sense of flow to why you're describing details in a particular order. You could reinforce the fact that the demon is rising into view from a lake (presumably of lava). As more of the demon comes into view, describe lower down its body. The glowing eyes wouldn't be some off-handed item noticed near the end alongside a glowing spot on a lava-dripping demon. They'd be among the first things noticed as only a head and horns are visible. The strangely-bent legs would come much later.

Mix in some action. In addition to being a paragraph about what the demon looks like/is wearing, you lose track of the fact that the demon is in motion. Not only is it rising out of the lake it is also walking. Have it step onto the shore. Perhaps shake lava from its body like a dog might shake water from its fur. Use that as a vehicle to feed more description elements.

Overall, I'd say that your real issue is more than just the red-highlighted section. It should be its own sentence and so should several other parts. You already have one piece of connection to rely on: these are all descriptive components of the demon. As sentences in this paragraph, you already create that connection. You don't need to glue so many of the various clauses together.

7203439
Thanks for the answer Cryosite, I'm still a bit new to writing stories in general, and mixing that with the fact that English is not being my main language make things a bit more difficult, I will take a better look at it and rewrite the paragraph utilizing the tips that you gave.

I have started to rewrite the introduction of the Marauder, and I know that this is something minor, but I want to know if I am right or if the program is right:

Its eyes glowed in an ominous red light; it possessed no muzzle and, i

Here "Word" recommends the use of a semicolon instead of a comma, but I do not know if that is the better place for it, as "Word" sometimes can play with itself ( don't know if this is the best term for the situations that I wanted to reference )

7215288
https://www.grammarly.com/blog/semicolon/

You're going to have to identify what you're using the semicolon for. The two main uses are as a vague connector between independent clauses and the other is a sort of "super comma" in complicated lists in which items on that list contain commas. There are other uses as well. but your quote isn't complete, so we can't really answer your question well.

Read up on how semicolons are used, then ask again if you can't figure it out on your own still.

Every time I create a new story, I seem to get thumbs down that make me loose interest in continuing the project or I loose interest all together. In both, I usually have great ideas but can't type it down. I think its either my writing style or the story ideas.

Any ideas to keep a story running for sometime and get some positive feedback?

Thanks.

7215538
A quick skim of your profile shows that you've written six stories. Looking over their long descriptions, none of them seem to be "about ponies." They all seem to be about something else, with ponies maybe tacked on to be allowed on the site.

You're on a website for MLP fanfiction. People come here to read about ponies. I think that might be your biggest hurdle. Perhaps you should consider uploading your stories on a more general writing site, like Archive of Our Own or Fanfiction.net. Not that either of those sites are anywhere near as good as Fimfiction in terms of website quality, but you might find your audience better there.

Alternatively, you might consider writing about the kinds of things people on this site are interested in. If you have any story ideas that are about ponies, you may attract more readers.

Lastly, just judging from your message here, you might be receiving downvotes and low attention due to spelling and grammar. Those do matter. Things like misspellings "lose" as "loose" are marks of poor quality. There are millions of horse words on the site to read, you can't go around indicating to your potential readers that they'd be better off looking elsewhere because you couldn't be bothered to use a spellchecker.

7215566
Uh,,, okay.

I can deal with the pony characters, just need modify some bits here and there and with the crammer, I use Word and I also hate the horse puns.

I know this weird question but how do you put the black bar over the trigger warnings I can't seem to figure it out

7300651
Use spoiler tags.
Like this.
[spoiler]Like this.[/spoiler]

7300911
Thanks

Hey everyone. I've been developing a story based on the common tropes of 'darkness doesn't mean evil, and light doesn't mean good' and I'm trying to find other fics with similar themes for reference. Do any of you know of any?

3990426

er hi first time posting here but ive recently started doing a RWBY crossover with my oc entering remant and being made younger in the process and ive hit a snag i have no clue how to write a childhood for them should i try or should i do flashback moments for key parts once i have a idea?

Is this still active?

If so...

Plot

How do you make multiple plot lines without it being too overwhelming. On my working story i've got three characters on they're own journey to the Equestria world (note: it's not an oc fic but a crossover) i've already got it connected but i'm worried that it might overwhelm the reader and they might forget about the other character's story and/or got tired of it.

And another thing is it ok for me to change things? like Celestia being a queen and making them another humaniod species and more little details.

7373356
You're already explicitly changing things when you make a crossover.

Some people attempt to say a crossover isn't explicitly an AU (they're wrong). Even if it wasn't already an AU, you can make it one.

As for weaving plots: practice. There's no lesson or trick to it. It's up to you to try it out and see how well it worked. Some kinds of story get really harmed by confused readers forgetting plot threads. Other stories need more or they feel too simple.

So, just do it. It's your story to tell, so tell it.

3990426
I'm having trouble writing a great story concept/premise. Can you help me?

Hello there everyone. Though I'm not new here I am trying to get into the swing of writing and I only have a few questions. How does one write hurt and comfort? Staying in character while also getting into the character's heads as well as hearts. As well as writing the catharsis (emotional release). Am I making sense?

3990426
I was wondering if you or anybody else you know does this? I have an active imagination and usually write things on the fly but can never put my thoughts into words. It’s he reason why I never finish anything and sometimes my stories are a mix of thoughts all at once. I love nothing more than a good underdog story especially if it is high fantasy or things from other fandoms.

Getting started

I wanna write my first story but I am not entirely sure how to get started. I have a few things I wanna happen in one but I don't know if I actually have a cohesive plot so to speak.

7788323
Well, you can start by writing those things you want to happen down as a list and look at how you can connect those events.