I'll Become Immortal, and I'll Live On in Your Memory · 12:42am Apr 23rd, 2018
Fuck it. Here’s a thesis in two parts that literally nobody will like, ‘cause y’all fucking cowards.
- Being featured isn’t actually that hard. That’s how you get a popular story.
- Being featured ultimately doesn’t fucking matter. That’s not how you get famous.
Aight. Good? Good. This’ll be the first part in a two-part blog series. First one will be about fame, about getting fat cash -- a metaphorical kind of cash, mind. An avatar for the abstract concept of ‘success’, here represented by someone throwing bills at your face. This is a literature discussion, everybody’s welcome. Second blog will be a lil’ different. It’ll be about quality.
So let’s just get to it and stop wasting time. Hi, my name is Aragón, and I’m going to flex hard as this blog goes on. So call me daddy, babe, ‘cause here’s some sugar.
Yeah so let’s start by flexin’ a little, here. Credentials: I’m not the most popular guy in the website—jesus, by far—and I am still extremely uncomfortable acknowledging the fact that I have fans. But you gotta go all the way back to January 2016 to find a story of mine that wasn’t automatically featured, and even that was a rarity.
Does that mean I’m a good writer? Fuck, no. I’m the literary equivalent of your father having a wank—if you’re deranged enough I’ll turn you on, but you probably need help. However, I’ve got the business side of it down. I’m not the most popular motherfucker out there, but from the perspective of a struggling newbie who just got to the website? Fuck it, I’m living the dream. You wanna be popular, I can AT LEAST point you in the right direction.
…Or, well, so I thought. People kind of disagree with me on this point, to be honest?
Like, whenever someone honestly asks how to be more popular, how to reach more people and thus get feedback and motivation—I tend to be shunned out. There are a million reasons for it: some say that I’m “gaming the system” because I mostly write comedies, and those are easy to feature, for example. Others say that I’m just a natural Casanova, and that nobody else but me is gonna make my shit work.
Some just don’t give a shit, too. They just straight-out say “Yeah shut up you’ve got followers, you don’t have to make an effort,” and then they go for a high five. But I can’t give them a high five. I’m elbow-deep in some lady.
So they shake their head. And, disappointed, they leave.
Which means that fuck it, I’m tired of that bullshit, . This is me flexing. HRRRRRNNNNNGGG.
BLAM. Hi I’m Aragón this is my MASSIVE COCK. New account, no followers, no groups, no promotion, no shit. Featured immediately. One shot, one kill.
See, here’s the thing—there’s a reason the Featured Box is famously garbage according to most people: because writing a story that has high chances of getting featured and writing an actual good story are two completely different things, and they require two completely different skillsets.
Case in point, the story I just got featured with zero followers. Tl;dr: I consider it a trollfic. It’s even more terrible than my usual shit, and that’s saying something. Other people think it’s legitimately good. Here’s Horizon tearing it apart. Here’s me agreeing with him. Here’s an actual literal fucking part of that story, no kidding:
Yeah.
Now, is the story actually a piece of shit? Hm. See, that’s the funny thing—that’s a legitimate question. Enough people seem to disagree with me on the quality of this story to deserve at least a little bit of insight. Long story short: if you liked this story, I think I get you, but I disagree with you a bit. I wrote that story to goof off and have a bit of fun writing something particularly hammy, and the result ended up resonating with some people.
That’s some food for thought right there. But, again, more on that later. This is not a blog on literature. This is a blog about getting fat cash.
Getting Featured isn’t Actually that Hard
No, for fucking real. There are ways to sorta make sure you make it in there. I’m not talking about shady shit like registering your story in a lot of groups (I have literally never submitted my stories to any groups myself) or spamming others or shit like this. I’m talking about focusing on the marketing of the story.
Look, there’s a sad truth that you always need to keep in mind when writing fiction: readers don’t trust you. At least before they get to know you and become constant readers, or even fans—they plain and simple don’t trust you as an author.
This means that whenever you do something that MIGHT be seen as a mistake? They’ll assume it’s a mistake. The consequences of this are dire. Sometimes, it means that you have to employ subtlety with care, because they are going to fucking assume that you’re an idiot. And, if you’re me, they’re right—but if you’re you? Yikes! Not as good.
And sometimes, this means that they plan out aren’t going to read your story unless you force them to. This is where the short description, title, and cover art come to place.
Because, yes, this is about the short description + cover art + title combo. Of course it is. How the hell do you think I got (THE FLESH IS) WEAK to get me fat cash otherwise? That is literally all you have when posting a story, and it’s the one thing I keep trying to hammer into people’s heads when they come to writing-help asking for help.
All the readers can see when they look at the page is that, man. You need to sell your story. If all you’ve written is an Octascratch, you can’t just go and say “It is literally just another Octascratch”. Because then the reader, who doesn’t trust you, will immediately think, hey. Why should I read this? There are a million other Octascratches in the site, that I know are good.
So why bother with this one? I don’t know if it’s good. And, shit, I don’t trust the writer. Chances are it’s not good. I’mma pass.
Blam. Just like that, one reader’s out.
A lot of people think this is overly cynical, because it is. When writing a story, write the best story you can, and be honest about it. Try to create art, try to create something that matters to you, or something that lets you have fun, or something that you can be proud of.
But when you’re posting the story? You’re not a writer, you’re a dude running a marketing campaign. Fucking write clickbait. I know this sounds terrible, but the only way to get people to read your story and discover the wonderful things you did there is by making them click on that title. Don’t lie, don’t go out of your way to pander out to people within the story itself, but write clickbait when dealing with the short description.
This is, honest-to-fucking-god, the best way to have a real chance to get up there in the Featured Box. So here’s an EQD guide on short descriptions, featuring my advice. Here’s another EQD guide, on cover art, also featuring my advice.
Now—before I go and tell you the actual way in which I feel, you should write your description and choose your cover art:
Getting Featured Doesn’t Matter
Writing an easy-to-feature story and writing a good story are two completely different things, and they require two completely different skillsets.
This is a double-edged sword.
Look, Shakespeare wrote mainly to get fat cash. But—did you know why Shakespeare actually drowned in fame? Because he was good. He was entertaining, he was funny, he was heartwrenching, he was memorable. He was an actual good writer, who produced actual good art.
That should always, always, be your goal.
See, my advice on getting popular is always a two-part sorta deal. People get mad at both parts, for completely different reasons. The first part is just “pay attention to the marketing”. The second one is “have fun, and don’t actually write to be popular.”
I am not kidding here. Ask any writer who is actually good, and actually popular in this website, and they’ll all tell you the same: when writing, your goal shouldn’t be to be famous. Your reward shouldn’t be to get comments, and views, and feedback, and attention. That’s a plus, and also a motivator, but it shouldn’t be why you do this.
Ultimately, the best reward for writing is and should be writing itself. You’re going to share your story because you also want others to see it—but the only way to truly make it big, and to truly grow as an artist, is to enjoy the process itself. The planning, the discussing, the drafting and the constant editing, the pushing through a block to get a fucking scene done, the exhilarating feeling of success when you finally finish the thing.
That’s why one should write, and that is the only way to truly get famous in this website.
Because anybody can be featured, but featured stories are just read by a lot, and promptly forgotten. Nobody remembers something made just to be popular, because it tends to be pandering to the lowest common denominator, and also be absolutely unchallenging. Easy to read, easy to digest, gets lots of views—but nobody is going to quote it. Nobody is going to say it’s their favorite. Nobody is going to remember it once they’re out of the fandom, with a smile on their face.
They’ll just think, ‘man, that one fucking story sure had Cadance hitting the ground hard with her face, huh. What a waste of time that was’.
Getting featured means nothing if your story isn’t good, because you got the attention, but then you fade. I’m sure you all can think of a couple examples of writers who get featured often, because they know their marketing—but they’re not famous. They’re not relevant. They’re not good.
If you have to choose between popular and good, always be good. Write something fucking unmarketable and then bend over backwards to make it somehow appetizing to the casual reader. I’ve been there and I’ve done that, and I’m the dumbest asshole who ever fucked your mom. We both know that’s not a short list, either—so if I can do it, you can do it.
But also—dude, you’re not gonna last if you just write for the cash. You need to go BEYOND the cash. Because if you only write to get famous, you burn out. Nobody gets famous immediately. Nobody gets famous in one go. The road is long, and hard, and it’s got its ups and lows. Stories written without any love for the craft tend to be boring; readers can tell that kinda shit. They’re like dogs who can smell drugs, only in this case the drugs is just the faint aroma of quiet desperation.
So, yes, your stories smell like your dad. That’s what I’m trying to convey here. I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of people grow disillusioned with how they aren’t as popular as they should be, or how their stories aren’t getting any—and that is harsh! We all wanna be read. It’s why we share stories. But that can’t be why we write.
It’ll burn you out, and you’ll never make it, if you do it that way. Actually try to be a great writer. Grow, have fun, do it for the love. Then, as an afterthought, you’ll get famous. Not popular—famous. Well-loved.
That’s the true goal here, man. ‘Cause it’s not about the cash in your wallet, man. It's never been about the cash in your wallet.
It's about the cash in your heart.
The Actual Fucking Tips
Yah, the nitty gritty. Aight. This is actually simple.
The best advice I ever heard on how to write an enticing description goes like this: you should explain what your story is about, and why your story is different from any other story in the site.
Say you write an Octascratch. What makes it different from any other Octascratch? Does it have a weird framing device? Are the ponies completely different from how the fandom usually portrays them? Does this story have a unique plot? Is it focused on what happens after the confession, instead of the road that gets to it? Is it about Octavia and Vinyl hugging for eight hours, or the fucking building explodes?
See, the what your story is about part is the informative bit. You need that ‘cause that way the readers get what they’re in for. But the what is different bit is what matters, because that’s your hook. That’s the reason why the readers are going to read the story.
And yeah, that’s the other big thing: you need to give your readers a reason to read your story. You can’t just say something like ‘it’s an adventure where the main six fight a dragon’, because we’ve all seen that already. You need to give them an actual reason. It’s an adventure where the main six fight a dragon, but they do it from the inside. Because the dragon has already eaten them.
That’s more interesting. That’s a hook—something that’s enticing enough to get them to feel like they wanna know how this shit goes.
By definition, rules like this are sorta loose. Maybe the hook is not as important as the explanation, if the plot of the story alone is interesting enough. Maybe what makes your story different is a theme, or a particular writing style, or something on the technical side of things.
In that case, get cute. Write an interesting description. Write something that’s funny, or mysterious, or entertaining, or unique. The description is its own body of work, so don’t just explain what the story is about in the single most boring way possible.
That EQD interview I posted up there has some good advice; if you feel like this is not enough, go check it out. Also, I’m aware that I’m making it sound as if you could only get high-concept stories featured, but this is not particularly true. Low-concept can also be marketable, you just gotta work harder.
Third big-ass rule here would be to, in doubt, write something you like. Y’know what’s my favorite description I’ve ever written?
Does it properly explain what the fuck the story is about? Not really. Does it have a hook? Eeeeh. Kinda. But is it good? Fuck me, it’s stylish. I like stylish. It’s unique. It makes the readers smile. It makes you wanna see what’s the deal with this one.
Starting to see my point?
Write clickbait. Honest. That’s the best way to go around it.
Titles are more lenient. I like to go with puns, but sometimes simply something that sounds good is enough. There is no big rule for titles, to be completely honest, because readers focus more on the description—so just go and do something that sounds good to your ears, and has some neat musicality to it, and you’re set.
Though, one piece of advice: avoid common phrases, or sentences you KNOW have already been used as story titles. We all like to fuck a set of twins, yes, but nobody wants a set of twin mothers-in-law. If you, uh. Catch my drift? Look, not all advice can be seamlessly explained through sex metaphors. Just, fucking trust me on this.
Lastly, cover art. Again: EQD guide if you want details. IMO, you should mostly care about readability. Get something that can be easily understood in the smallest size Fimfic is going to show, and call it a day. I have a bias towards minimalistic, ‘one cute pony against white background’ cover art. I find that it’s expressive and cute without getting in the way. Overly dark, cluttered things sorta become a messy puddle if they’re not readable enough.
Oh, and tags. Last thing is tags. Not all genre tags in Fimfiction are actually genre tags. Out of all of them: Adventure, Comedy, Dark, Drama, Horror, Mystery, Romance, Sad, Slice of Life, Thriller, Tragedy, and aarguably Random, are all genre tags. The rest are content tags, and they shouldn’t count.
But those I just listed? Those are important. Don’t use more than two. Three at the absolute most. If I see an Adventure Romance Horror Comedy Thriller Dark Sad Drama I don’t know what the fuck kind of story you’re trying to tell. All I know is that you have no fucking idea how genres work.
If your story is mainly a comedy, tag it Comedy. If it has two jokes and the rest of the fic is literally just 20k words of Rainbow Dash mercilessly punching Fluttershy in the face to sad violin music, then don’t tag it Comedy. Tag it Drama, or whatever tone you’re giving it. Mixing tags is bad practice. There's, like, actual research on this, man. Three tags tops.
That’s it? I think that’s it. It’s 2:15 am and I have work tomorrow—this’ll have to do.
But oh, we’re not done. This is a series on quality and popularity. This one was on popularity. Next time, quality. Till next time, cheers. And have some cash on your way out—tonight, it’s on me.
Aragon, you doof,
that's not how you do a line break.that is how you do a line break and my phone rendered it wrong.Also, good advice and such.
Hahah I was born just to prove a point. You'd say that's bad, but joke's on you, at least I have a purpose. ZING.
Seriously though the fucking name is literally 'Paper Thin' and the avatar is a Pyrrha pic. How did this fool ANYBODY.
Title/Description is always something I have a lot of trouble with when I post a new story, thank you for the advice! I think I have some things to think about with the stories I've already posted...
Mlemornatoday.
We've been trying to hammer all of this stuff for ages, including Blueshift. But, if it helps some people, keep up with the good
pussyadvice4845426
God, we don't deserve Blueshift. But it's never enough, man. It's never enough. Writing-help is a fucking wasteland.
I didn't know people on this site wrote that sort of fan-fiction.
For about a minute there I thought this was a very itchy octopus, and that there was a whole sub-genre of fan-fiction I'd completely managed to miss out on.
I don't have much else to say about the rest of the blog; you had a point and made it well.
The sole time I've been featured, It was a unique premise with a snappy description and title and simple tags. So I guess that's an example of your point. Also, it was a bit longer than most of my stories, and the feature box algorithm supposedly favors longer stories.
- MLP: FiM
- MLP: Movie
- Comedy
Twilight's been meaning to ask.4845434
Can I make this into an actual story?
4845425
What?
HA! I knew that Paper Thin was your alt! Something about it made me know, somehow, it was you.
Maybe it was the title of the story. Maybe it was the premise. Maybe it was because the whole thing made me the slightest bit moist.
But damn if it isn't one hell of a drug...
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Well sure.
Heck you probably didn't even need to ask, I'm not much of one for writing my own stuff down.
And there's so many ways a story could go from that prompt, I'd love to see where it goes.
...ooh! I just thought of another possibility. Adventure.
Excellent stuff. Renown is a byproduct of the creative process, not the goal. The goal is creation. It's kind of right there in the name.
(Also, how do you do those snazzy in-blog story links?)
What're the chances we'll see this is a Biscuit story now? Or does is require a Present Perfect endorsement (or recrimination) first?
Hah. Joke's on you Aragon, my good fellow, I took one look at that story in the feature box and thought "that sounds really dreadful, I'll pass!" You might have suckered me in if you'd used your own name, but not with a new one! (And, honestly, even hearing you talk about and the contents of said story... I'll still pass, ta. But I am one of those people for whom high art doesn't appeal. I'd have laughed at the "four tens" thing though, because, as I have establised on many an occasion, I am a terrible, terrible person.)
I have had occasion to step back in the realm of Naruto fanfiction again (dorty traitor that I am), on Fanfiction.net.
One thing is very noticable, ye GODS, are many of the summaries utterly, utterly terrible. Fimfic actual quality control has spoilt me! Some people seem to think the summary is a place to tell you about why they haven't updated in a while, or how they suck at writing summaries. And those are just the ones that I haven't blocked from my mind.
I think I did alright with the two stories I've written here. I did (for a precious few minutes!) reach the feature box (non-mature), and really, that was all I could ask for (as well as the generally positve reception).
(Especially as one was a well-concealed very silly anti-anti-immortality April Fool's joke that gave no hints of what it was until the record scratch moment part-way in, and otherwise deadpan marketed itself as a dead-straight generic sadfic. (I even lied - with specifically asked permission - on for the tags.) And with it being my first story on Fimfic, so with little clue to anyone that doesn't know that I could not ever have written such a thing with a straight skull. So I take what I got as a whole-hearted win.)
I could have maybe marketed them better - but, to be fair, I wasn't writing with the intention of the feature box anyway. Hell, it takes SEVERE motivation to actually prompt me to attempt to write a story (four fanfics total in, what seventeen years?), so it was more than the stupid ideas had to pulled out and slapped onto the digital page, even if no-one else ever saw it! So I can be accused, at least, of writing for the right reasons.
As a passing note - the same rules apply to thread titles (blog posts, too, I guess). If you want people to read your threads on a forum, there is no substitute for spending a few moments thinking about your thread title to make it something at least a little bit clever, or unusual or funny or eye-catching. A little bit of marketing really goes a long way sometimes.
I, uh, really liked the story on your alt.
It's the sort of thing I'd like to see more of.
If you want, that is.
That a short fic with a popular, simple premise, appealing, simple cover art, and a short, simple description is the best way to get featured is a point you could have made without writing all that obnoxious, middle schooler "I'm more ironic than you" self-fellation. And you could have added the importance of timing with all the words you saved, since being one of the seven most popular fics at this moment is how you get featured.
Your second statement is simply wrong. Getting featured multiple times is how you get "famous" on this site. The exceptions (DontWannaKnow, Regidar, Iceman) are rare and each course they took was unique and unrepeatable.
But, most importantly, the only people on this site I ever saw obsessing over getting featured were the handful of slackjawed morons like you who always get there anyway. I ain't reading your stupid interview, and I'm not waxing your puerile ego any further. Get a fucking life and read a real goddamn book.
So I think we've had this discussion before, but it seems relevant to bring it up again: I maintain that your description for In Hindsight is wonderful and would only work for an author who's already popular.
It's the trust problem: a description like that tells me nothing about the story, and if I didn't trust the author, I wouldn't have read it. Sure, it's a catchy line, but it could easily have been read as juvenile humor from some first-time horny teenager who hasn't figured out how things like plotting or character work yet. It's different, but not necessarily in a way that implies the superiority of the author.
4845425
right on !!
And what if the issue isn't that the author is unpopular but that they want to write their stories but just can't, for any multitude of reasons? I'd like to think there's more people with one idea they don't know how to execute than people with multiple ideas that just don't stick when they are executed.
Okay, but that was funny as shit and I think about it now and again.
Also joke's on you, I didn't RIL that thing until you revealed you were behind it (and now I have to read it asap).
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It's an embed.
i.imgur.com/WiqYRal.png
4845471
All those wasted words, when you could’ve just typed “I’m insecure.” You need a nap?
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Funny you should say that. In Hindsight was the story that led me to the rest of Aragon's profile. Had no idea what kind of writer he was, but the title and discription made me want to read the story. Even with no knowledge whatsoever of an author, a snappy and intriguing description and title are enogh to warrant a read. You might want to try being a bit more open to unknown writers, you never know what you could find.
Your grasp of anatomy is questionable.
4845587
I dunno, there's probably a hole there from how much he opens his heart to us.
Am I doing this right
4845588
Eh. That would be a hole in his heart, not around it.
Anyway, the hole needs to be around his whole heart, and that's really big... maybe his heart is Grinch-sized?
4845471
Good! Dude that's awesome! That's the best case scenario -- not to write to get featured, but just for the sake of it. That's exactly what I'm defending in this blog!
Man, like, we're actually agreeing. That's pretty cool. Even if we don't like each other, we share a common goal. I believe that, in another life, in another time, we would have been friends, dude. The best of friends.
So canter on, man. Keep up the good fight. I'll give you a high five, but, uh, I'm kind of elbow deep in this lady over here, and I'm sorta not good at multitasking...? Look whatever you've got my thumbs up, even if you can't see it. At least she's enjoying it.
Cheers, mate.
4845585
Well damn, looks like I gotta find another hill to die on.
Time to pick Ara's brain some more, I guess.
4845455
Use the embed button and put in the story link.
- MLP: FiM
- Sad
- Slice of Life
Dilly Daliér is a mule with a dream that can never be.[embed]https://www.fimfiction.net/story/97490/to-be-a-mule[/embed]Man, I hate how right you are. Guess I better train in the art of click-fu so I can write short descriptions that schlorp up eyes from miles away. It's a skill that I've sadly neglected developing...
You're spot-on on the rest of the advice, too. I'm glad that I write stories I love.
Okay, so, I'm gonna push back on this, but in like... a weird angle. I like to slip up sideways on people.
You shouldn't write clickbait. Not in the sense of what clickbait actually is, as opposed to the technical definition of it.
Ask most people to define clickbait, and they'll be like "well, it's something that baits you into clicking on it, innit? That's... it's in the name."
But that's not really what we mean when we say clickbait, is it? Because that definition, the one up there, also fits that of a headline.
And we wouldn't refer to a headline as clickbait. DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN was not clickbait. 15 DIE IN TRACTOR-TRAILER JACKKNIFE isn't clickbait. The best headline I ever read, MAN ATTACKS TACO BELL DRIVE-THRU ATTENDANT IN CHALUPA-DRIVEN FURY was not clickbait. If you were to try and describe them like that, and point to the technical definition of them, "see man, they're trying to BAIT you into CLICKING. Total clickbait" you might win the round on being narrowly correct, but everyone will think you're either a jerk, an idiot, the worst kind of pedant, or all three.
When we label something clickbait, what we actually mean is "it's trying to bait me into reading this on false or misleading pretenses by using an attractive headline." (All clickbait are headlines, but not all headlines are clickbait.) Because when we start reading something, we're deeply inclined to try and finish it. They need to get you inside the clip joint before they start charging you fifty bucks for a Bud Light.
Let's be honest. When you click on "15 former child stars! You won't BELIEVE where they ended up!" you're not clicking on it to read "Rider Strong did a lot of indie film work, little bit of voice acting, got married. He's doing okay." You're clicking on it thinking "Oh man, did the Olsen twins finally do porn?"
The headline, the clickbait, is playing on your prejudices to try and make you think that you're gonna be reading about the utter wasteland of the icons of your youth, and instead what you get is... fifteen short blurbs scraped from wikipedia and IMDB pages. You feel cheated. You feel baited. Like with fun sized candy bars. You were lied to! This makes you much less inclined to trust the source in the future.
So don't write clickbait. What you want to do is write a headline. Now, you don't have to adhere to the AP style guide here, because we're not reporters. So you can go nuts, creatively. But that's what you're doing. You're not churning out something half-assed and trying to trick people into reading it, or at least, you shouldn't be.
And that going-nuts-creatively part lets you show off your chops.
Because there's also the unconscious evaluation thing. A good short description isn't necessarily a sign of a good story; Aragon hammered on that point pretty, pretty hard. But it is a sign that the writer is good enough at writing in order to have mastered, if only for a brief moment, both brevity and pithiness. Both those things are hard! They're real fucking hard. Not being able to master brevity has murdered more than one writer who can write dialogue that'll blow your mind but breaks down weeping at trying to set the scene without writing a colossal, boring textwall.
The part of your hindbrain that is always judging everything will see an eye-catching short description and go "dude has some skills. Let us see if these skills can also pay the bills."
The most masterfully brief short description + cover combo I ever, ever saw was for Austraeoh. I'm not, actually, a fan of it and its sequels. There's decent stuff in there and it's a killer premise. The execution, meh.
But fuck me, does it have a hook. The short description is "Rainbow Dash flies east." The cover art (the original, which in my opinion is better than the current) was a lonely, windswept landscape stretching away towards the rising.
Four words. That's it. Twenty-four characters. That's all it needed, because it sunk that hook deep.
There's a middle ground here; you can game the metrics without doing anything actually shady.
I'm not actually an expert on that; Bad Horse and a few others are. They've done the research where they have determined, statistically, what the best time of day and day of the week to post your story up to give it the highest chance of making it into the feature box is.
Because the time you post absolutely matters. It actually matters a lot. There are other ways to work the refs without spamming or violating or even bending site rules.
I don't disagree with the latter clause here, but I'm not sure it's entirely causal to the premise.
I generally think the Featured Box is famously garbage not exclusively, but in large part because this sites readers contain an enormous percentage of degenerate assholes. They're not clicking on stories that are eye-bleedingly bad in spite of themselves, they're clicking on them because they actually want to read what is basically the pony equivalent of child porn.
(Although, wonder of wonders, this seems to have gotten better over the past year or so. There was a time where on any given day the Featured Box was actually guaranteed to contain something not just bad, but morally outrageous. I don't mean this in the fun ironic "oh man, isn't Aragon such a degenerate?" ha-ha nudge-nudge wink-wink way, I mean it in a "the writer of this should probably be on some kinda list" way." This seems to have died way down.)
A good story isn't measured by how long it is, but by how long it stays with you.
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But if the story is long enough I'll end up reading it for the next ten years because I keep forgetting what's going on and sunk-cost fallacy set in a while ago.
This is the best story advice I think I've ever read.
You know someone’s now going to write a unique, post-confession Octascratch with a weird framing device, completely new takes on the two, with eight hours of hugging while the building explodes around them.
4846510
I'm already writing that, it's why I used that example. HAR HAR. MARKETING.
Are there any exceptions? Because I've written a story that really seems like it needs 4 tags. The Seasons of Earth and Love is a Romance, Drama, Sad, SoL story. The romance comes from the obvious fact that the entire story is centered around romance. Drama is due to the dramatic nature and conflict of chapter 3 and to a slightly lesser extent, 4. Sad comes from the ending, which is a pretty important part in a 6000 word story, if you ask me. The ending of chapter 3 isn't very happy either. Finally, slice of life comes from the various normal, everyday activities sprinkled throughout chapter 1, 3, and most of chapter 2 was SoL. Do you still feel a story like this should be reduced to 3 tags?
4846524
Well now I refuse to read it. This account shall not be sullied by marketing.
I’ll use my alt.
4846733
Yes. "Sad" and"Drama" are overlapping, and "Drama" and "SoL" directly contradict each other in the case you're describing. Just because there are SoL moments doesn't mean it's a slice of life. A reader looking for a pure SoL would probably not want to read your story.
"Romance", "Drama". That's it. Anything else is cherry picking. Focus on the core concept of the story, not on every little detail.
4845418
Because the hand up your butt wriggling its fingers to make you say what he wants is not so popular that everybody recognises their distinguishing features.
And also because RWBY is trash-tier, so not everybody recognises Pyrrha - and I say that as somebody who kinda likes her. At least, what she could’ve been.
Ho boah!
Looks like a good blog. Falling asleep at the keyboard, but I'll give this a read in a few hours.
Keep up the hard work, Aragon.
I like how "asap" in this context means "not quite three years later".