That Precious Featured Box
How To Get Featured On FIMfiction: A Twilight Sparkle Guide
It is another peaceful evening for Equestria, and inside Ponyville's library treehouse Twilight Sparkle finds a compact journal entitled "How To Get Featured on FIMFiction: A Twilight Sparkle Guide".
"I recognize this handwriting." Twilight Sparkle muses her to herself. "Why does it have my name on it, though?"
Curious, she opens the journal and reads the following printed:
Hello, everypony! I've been on FIMfiction.net for less than three weeks, and I've already found a pattern in how stories get featured. In this guide is ONE (The Twilight Sparkle Method) of the sure-fire ways of getting your story onto that coveted Featured Box. We've all seen these Featured Stories attain views by the thousands (followed by hundreds of comments), and while many believe these stories deserved to be featured, there are still those that believe some stories shouldn't have been featured in the first place. Either way, what's done is done, and no matter what type of standard you feel should uphold the "featured" status, personally I am proud of those who make the cut. Because potential is enlivened by opportunity. And opportunity does wonders for both the authors and readers alike.
This is the "Twilight Sparkle" guide. I find that any writing piece under the RANDOM genre with a clever situation involving Twilight Sparkle finds itself in the Featured Box.
This guide includes two specific guides: The Basic Guide and The Sure-Fire Guide. The Basic Guide provides suggestions everypony should have already been following by now, while the Sure-Fire Guide provides a "guaranteed success" method that will get your story on the Featured Box (with Tweaks added, of course). So let's get started!
The Basic Guide:
First I must outline the basic rule of thumb: If you're to be featured your piece must be clever.
Seems obvious and vague, right? That's the BASIC rule, and a rule accepted among the My Little Pony fanfiction community (moderators and readers). But it seems being clever and random (with an addition of Twilight Sparkle in the mix) is becoming the norm, and inevitably a cliche.
Here are a few extra bullet points:
Story Cover: You need to have an appealing picture as the cover of your fanfiction. Do you really believe your story is going to get featured without a picture to serve as its front? Posting a picture is sixty percent of the battle to attaining the glorious Box of Feature! It is painfully apparent that there are more views, comments and likes to stories that provide any kind of picture as opposed to those that do not. Why is this so? Because psychologically we, as readers, have a natural propensity to be attracted to physical representations of stories. And most often it is a picture that provides the representation. We tend to feel as if a story is lacking when there is nothing to tell us what to expect (or what not expect) because a simple description is just not enough. Now for fanfiction.net, there are no stories given the option to provide a picture, but for this particular guide I am referring to FIMfiction.net. And when there's an option to provide a picture, POST THAT PICTURE! Because the type of picture you choose to serve as your front cover is going to influence whether readers even take a second glance at your story. It is very similar to a front cover of a book you might run into at a bookstore. "Ah, this looks interesting." Turns over book to read description.
Title: Come up with a title that represents your story's theme, plot, character basis, essence, ironic feature or anything that will somehow be related to your story. This is pretty self-explanatory. And the sure-fire way to being featured will be explained in the "Sure-Fire Guide" below.
Description:Come up with a description that will have a reader interested in your story. Yes, this is very vague and basic, but this is THE BASIC GUIDE!
Story: Write an interesting story devoid of frequent spelling/grammar errors with a well-paced consistency.
Now on to the "Sure-Fire Guide"! This what you've been waiting to read, right? Well, let's get Twilight Sparkle added into this little guide, because this method will heavily rely on her involvement.
The Sure-Fire Guide:
Genre: Put your story under the COMEDY and RANDOM genres. Readers like to laugh, and FIMfiction readers especially like to laugh. We come from an internet society that enjoys comedic memes filled with rainbows and purposeful misspellings! Randomness is our middle name, and we just cannot get enough of something that will make us go "WTF?!". The moderators understand this, and so they've taken it upon themselves to give to the community. "Give em' what they want, eh? Sure-fire way to get some lovin'!" Each day I find myself seeing NUMEROUS fanfictions under the comedy/random genres placed in the "Featured Box", and I also find it to be hilarious how much of a pattern it's become.
Character: Two Words. Twilight. Sparkle. While already being a powerhouse character with her involvement in the mane six (and the popularity that comes with such a label), Twilight Sparkle is relatable as a character. Though due to her neuroticism and obsessive compulsive tendencies, she can be put into so many wacky and RANDOM situations there's no surprise how much people enjoy anticipating for their little pony to get into yet another cringe-inducing exploit sprinkled with so many "WTF?!" moments. It's similar to awaiting Ash from Pokemon to stumble upon another adventure. "Oh, I wonder what kind of epic adventure he'll find himself in next!" Twilight Sparkle is the type of character that just makes sense to put into the Comedy/Random genre. Throughout the MLPFIM series, Twilight Sparkle's neuroticism has had us snickering in our seats, so why not search for more of her mental breakdowns on FIMfiction.net?
Story Cover: There are many Twilight Sparkle pictures out there on the Internet, and seeing as she is an extremely popular character, even a simple sketch of the pony will have fans ready to click on that link to your story! Though I am finding most often a basic screen shot of Twilight from the series will prove to be "Featured Material". I've also found that these screen shots have Twilight Sparkle reacting to something "sudden". *cough* random...*cough* When a reader looks at your picture of a bewildered/apprehensive/unstable Twilight Sparkle, they will probably be thinking "Hmmm... What's Twilight gotten herself into this time? Hyuk, hyuk, hyuk. Might as well read the description."
Title: Come up with a long title that shouts "Look at my TITLE! It's long, and you're going to read the entire title because it's so long!". Very similar to Stanley Kubrick's classic black comedy "Dr. Strangelove: How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb". A title read by many and understood by few. Though it's a title that catches a reader's attention - enough for a reader to take the extra minute to read the description. As an Internet society that's become accustomed to condensing words and providing spelling/grammar quality derivative of second-drafts, stumbling upon such a long and confusing title just gets us to take that extra peek. We want to know what you're going on about in the first place. "Long title is long. Wtf is this author's deal? Hmm...seems interesting." I've found so many long-titled stories being featured it's just becoming a cliche. Just think of those stories that you find getting a featured. I'm sure a few are up there now.
Description: Now this one is a tricky one, because it really depends on the subject. Though since we're in the Comedy/Random genre, we might as well provide a description that gets a reader already smiling wryly even before he/she has read the story. To be "featured" worthy, you need a "featured-worthy" description! Something that just has a reader saying "*snicker* Oh, Twilight, you silly pony, you.". To do this, your description needs to be random on its own. Here are a few suggestions: 1) Break the fourth wall and address your audience in the description. "This story is going to blow your F%#ING mind! READ IT!" (And even if you come off as narcissistic with this example, you'll be sure to have people reading your story just to have a chance to prove you wrong. Until they find your story to actually be amusing.). 2) Short and simple. Like I said, we like short and simple (That's what she said...Does that work?). And providing one or two sentences that give a reader an idea of Twilight Sparkle's exploit will have he/she craving for more. "Twilight Sparkle becomes a tree. Fluttershy stumbles upon this tree, and, boy, is the little Pegasus horny." 3) All-out random. Just type words - in no apparent grammatical order - that somehow relates to your story. Trust me. Random works in all ways. "Twilight Sparkle. Spike. OCD OVERLOAD! WTF is happening?!" In the end, you'll be featured and readers will find themselves sucked in before even clicking the mouse.
Story: See "Basic Guide".
Now you're on your way to being featured, but the last thing to do is probably the most difficult. Being discovered. Now for one to be discovered, one needs to have already done everything mentioned above and start garnering views, replies and especially "LIKES"! The more "likes" your story obtains, the sooner you'll arrive to that beloved "Feature Box"! Moderators understand that when a story is well-liked among a small community of readers, it will most likely be taken into fondness by many more. And this particular occurrence has become a definitive pattern for featured stories.
Time: Yes, the time is included. Oftentimes a "featured" story is a marginally NEW story. And because a new story is placed on the front page for all FIMfiction readers to discover, that's your only time to be "liked" enough to be "featured". You have a very limited amount of time to get as many "likes" as you can, because there are more "New" stories waiting in que behind yours, and they'll be taking up more and more space on the front page until your story disappears into the archives of the "Search" bar. LWhen it comes to being on the front page, you want your story to arrive when many peoples are on the site. The more readers online, the more likely your story is bound to be read. And I am "GUESSTIMATING" that the site hits its peak in FIMfiction visitors from 6pm-11pm Pacific Coast Time. This is purely a "guestimate" that has not been studied much. So do not mark me on this. Now if you want to be on the front page by this timespan, you need to have submitted your story for moderation by "8pm-11pm" Pacific Coast Time the day BEFORE! It takes a while for your story to be passed for moderation, so it's going to wait almost a full day before it's posted. Again, I could be completely wrong on all this speculating, so I'm suggesting you follow the "Time" section with caution.
There you are! Your path to becoming featured is before you, so take those steps to fanfiction fame! I hope you enjoyed the guide. Hopefully this guide will be featured, but who knows? I might not have followed my own steps. So go for it!
Twilight Sparkle drops the journal. She stares ahead blankly.
She then mumbles. "What the?"
Spike steps into the room sleepily. "Hey, Twilight, I'm heading to bed. When will you be finished for the night?"
Twilight turns her head slowly to face a yawning baby dragon. He eye twitches. "Spike, come over here, please."
"Yeah? What is it?" Spike gradually makes his way to the purple mare.
Twilight puts a hoof to Spike's mouth, leans in to his eye level and whispers. "They're watching us, Spike."
"Huh? What was that?" Spike blinks in utter confusion.
"They're watching us. The fiction! They're calling themselves FIM! They're here now, recording our every move and creating twisted scenarios for our lives." Twilight Sparkle's eyes widen, her pupils shrinking to the size of tiny dots. "This could be a fictional story. Right now somepony could very well be illustrating this specific moment. Like now. And now. And now!"
Spike steps back in slight surprise. "Uh, Twilight? I have no idea what you're talking about. You need to calm down, okay?"
"Calm down? That's what the author wants you to say, huh? You're not actually saying those words! The author is!" The unicorn freezes and smiles nervously. "But, wait, the journal is in your handwriting! You wrote the journal, didn't you? That means you could be the author to this tale. You're the one having me say all this. You're the one putting me in wacky and random situations! You're the one who keeps shipping me with all the other ponies! It's you! You, Spike! You!"
Spike cries in fright. "What's going on? What kind of shipping? L-like mail service?"
"That's what I want to know!" Twilight magically throws the journal to a petrified Spike. "Look at this! It's yours, isn't it?! You left this for me! Who are you?!"
"B-But, Twilight, I have no idea what this is! How to get featured on FIMfiction?" Spike reads the front of the journal. "What's a "FIMfiction"?"
"How should I know? Some kind of community snickering behind my back, supposedly! They're all making fun of me! You're making fun of me!" Twilight's horn begins to glow a luminescent purple.
"Twilight, what is all this? What are you doing?" Spike blurts out, terrified.
"Something I should have done a long time ago." Twilight Sparkle disappears in a magical flash.
Spike figures Twilight had teleported out of the library treehouse. Though in an instant the psychologically unstable unicorn flashes right behind the young dragon and grins in a twisted manner.
"No more FIMfictions involving me, Spike! No more will I be stuffed into random occurrences started by own neurotic tendencies!" Twilight Sparkle cracks and finally plunges her horn into Spike's back.
But her horn was no match for the dragon's hardened scales. Twilight Sparkle's horn bent downwards, inevitably rendering her into a state of unconsciousness. Spike, at shock by the entire events passed, looks back to see his motherly figure knocked out-cold. A sky grin crosses the dragon's face.
"Oh, Twilight, you silly little pony, you. You will never escape the reality that is your demise. Wacky and random situations galore for you, my little pony! FIMfiction shall rule your fate forever! Mwahahahahahahaha!" Spike laughs maniacally.
End
