Sunday, 31 August 2014
Well then
You Really Bug Me, which I gave 8.5/10 in PR 18, has been rejected by Twilight's Library. Their decision, I guess, but I think BronyDad has got a really rough deal here. I don't care that the fic has a 98-0 thumbscore – I've disliked super-popular stories before – but I do think that this tale felt really pretty show-like. Yes, I'm unashamedly biased towards cute Fluttershy/Rainbow friendshipping stories, but I still feel this one's worth the time it takes you to read just under 2,000 words.
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TRG are all about writing quality as far as I can tell – often to absurd and excessive degrees. It may be functionally unblemished on the technical front, but the prose is very weak and even more tell-y. I'm not surprised it didn't get in, and from reading it, I would have my doubts that the author has the kind of skill TRG are looking for.
ReplyDeleteHell, TRG are usually tougher than EqD.
I think you guys are talking about two different things, M. He's talking about Twilight's Library, not The Royal Guard. TRG is WAY more difficult to get a fic into than Twilight's Library.
Delete<== Retard
DeleteJust mentally substitute and you'll be fine. *AHEM*
Still, even Twilight Library can be difficult at times and I wasn't downplaying the issues with the story in question. However, I took a quick peek at the rejection and... I can't really dispute much in it.
I mean, he does say a bit about how things don't tie together, but I don't buy it. I think he probably has a point and simply hasn't made it clear. 'This has nothing to do with a concert' is essentially a strawman, since the concert is tangentially relevant, and beyond that, whether or not it has anything to do with a concert has absolutely nothing to do with anything.
I get irked when rejections don't even make sense. Sadly, I've seen it a few times.
Either way, at a bare minimum the opening 5–8 paragraphs would need a major overhaul to get considered, because SirTruffles wasn't wrong about that.
I'm generally a kind and gentle reviewer, so I will give many things good marks if, at the end of it all, I've had a good time reading them and I think plenty of readers of this blog will, too. In the case of "You Really Bug Me", I did indeed have a good time, so it got good marks. This is about as complex as I get. (Also, something that's perhaps relevant here is that I have a generally high tolerance for tellyness, possibly because of the amount of Asimov I read in my youth.)
DeleteYou know, that's actually a really good point. I read a bit as a child, but nearer my 20's I didn't read at all. So when it came to learning to write I was pretty much an open book, style-wise.
DeleteI have found very little tolerance for older stories by even some of the best authors. I picked up a friend's copy of a Lovecraft novel and had a quick flip through. Inside a minute's analysis I determined that I will *never* read Lovecraft. Suffice to say there was a point when I assumed that I was the with with the issue, but then I read some truly fantastic writing from James Lee Burke, Joe Abercrombie, and Kelley Armstrong: modern writing for a modern world. The fact that how they write happened to correlate to what I'd been taught by some editing guides very much gave me the confidence to get serious with that style.
The other thing that lends be some strength in pushing a certain bar of quality is that there are quite a few things that I know are wrong that don't phase me. I have an early Ian M. Banks book with me right now where he can't even tell distinguish the proper applications of colons, semicolons, and dashes, and I really don't care. It doesn't interrupt the flow and I know exactly how it reads. Abercrombie uses a few very telly-y said-isms on occasion, and they always fit in so smoothly that I barely notice, proving that they do have their place and it's their overuse that causes issues (although, Burke can go for an entire novel without using one, also proving that they are never necessary).
So I'm a modern reader learning the modern style. I'm not going to pretend that I don't lose something that way, but I think I gain more in the long run. Then again, I'm as solidly anti-traditionalist as one can be, so let's not be too surprised. :P
-M
It's weird to click on a link and see a story called "Good Morning, Scootaloo." It's so close to "Awaken, Scootaloo" that it messed my brain up for a second not to see my name after it.
ReplyDeleteIf it makes you feel any better, I almost passed over GMS because my brain decided to tell me it was your fic, which I'd read some time earlier. This tells you more about my brain than about either story.
Delete