Furry Writers' Guild Forum

Section to post work

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#1

I think something that could really benefit the site would be the ability to post more of our work. Sure we have this place where we can discuss work, but it’d be nice if we could actually post the things we’re posting on our FA/Sofurry/whatever here. I know Furrag has that capability and it ended up being the same couple of people reading and commenting on every story, but I figured it’d be worth giving a try.

I still haven’t decided if I want to attempt to learn how to actually setup a database for posting these stories or if I want to limit the stories, say pick someone at random each week to post a story and we all talk about it.

Ideas and feedback from you guys would be wonderful. I also feel like I just woke up and this is poorly written, so if something is confusing please let me know and I’ll fix it when I’ve had some coffee.

#2

I like the idea, specifically the ‘one story is chosen at random to be discussed.’ I feel like a large part of the difficulty that a community of writers encounters is that everyone is so busy writing that no one reads or comments on other people’s stuff unless a dedicated commitment is made. By creating a ‘one story is chosen at random’ event, we can get a lot of participation since a single work per week or month isn’t asking too much of people, and that way, anyone who wants it can potentially get a good round of critique.

It, too, is also early in the morning for me. Apologies of this also doesn’t make sense or is syntactically… interesting.

#3

My idea wasn’t going to be a story at random, rather an author at random. I choose an author and ask them if they have a story they would like to post for that week. If not, they go back into the pool and I choose another. Then then they post their latest (or at least a semi-recent) story from FA or wherever.

#4

Yeah, that works just as well. It still addresses the problem I was talking about, and I think it’s a wonderful idea.

#5

That’s a lovely idea! Chances are I wouldn’t have anything to offer when it was my turn…but someone will!

#6

Yeah! And frankly, I may or may not either, but I’d still love to read other people’s pieces, as well as discuss them.

#7

I figure that even if people haven’t written anything for a little while they would still be able to submit one of their more recent works, even if it hadn’t been put out there for a little while.

#8

I have a personnel slush pile of work I’m sitting on, but some of the stuff in there is too scary to share. I do though have one story lurking in my pile that would be perfect for something like this. I’m not sure everyone though has work ready to post for something like this. We might have to just try it and see what develops.

#9

The main thought that’s holding me down from this is the fact that if we choose from random on this site, it’ll probably end up being someone who isn’t totally active, then time to try and contact and see if the have something will last awhile, etc etc. Have to really tweak this idea if it’s something I want to work.

#10

Maybe people can enter into a pool when they have things they’d like to be considered. We would need them to be proactive though and take their name out of the pool when they don’t have things to share. The second step is the part that is difficult. You might need to clear the pool after a couple months and have everyone put their name back in. That would limit the number of people in the pool who would be difficult to contact. On the flip side, we could have them submit the work to the pool with the understanding if it gets put select, we’ll post what they submitted previously.

I admit, it could be tricky to do this and get it right.

#11

You’re now the second person with this idea (or something similar to it). I may have to try that. I’ll hold off on this until we get a bit further into the FWG anthology, though. Plenty of work to be done with that, and still need to find a couple more judges.

#12

I like this idea. All in.

#13

I do like the idea as well, but it would definitely require someone who knows website coding more than I do to help pull off. I can do basic HTML and copy/paste coding from other people’s websites.

#14

The idea of a “pool” sounds similar to the “queue” of a critique group like Critters. I think that’s an elegant solution to that part of the issue – anybody who wants to participate can submit something to be selected out…

#15

Another idea is that we can just let people make threads and link them to stories whenever they post them. Can create a separate subforum for that.

#16

I’m going to throw my input in on this one. The last forum I was really active on had something similar where eveybody made a thread for their projects, with less than worthwhile results. It might not be a problem at first, but eventually it’ll devolve into dozens of threads per day with very few comments on any of them.

I think if you’re going to create a platform for people to post their work, making them separate from each other isn’t a very a good idea. Maybe instead of a new thread for every story, you could do a single thread for each author? Or perhaps a single thread for the week (two weeks? a month?) that everyone posts in. I’m not too sure.

That’s my two cents on it.

#17

While I agree that all the separate threads would probably end up as a mass quantity of answered replies to stories, I believe the one thread a week thing would group the stories rather awkwardly. Need to find a happy medium of some sort, or another solution all together.

#18

Honestly, this is the problem with writing in the fandom as a whole. Frankly, no one reads other people’s works. It’s a damn shame; I’m no great writer, but I’ve seen many writers on FA for example who are very good, and yet none of them have anyone watching them. Off the top of my head, I can name wwwolf: (http://www.furaffinity.net/user/wwwolf/ - The Changing Times is pretty good thus far). Honestly, if you can’t take the time to read other people’s works, why do you think anyone will take the time to read yours? I don’t think many of the people on here can answer that. And I can already tell that this sub-forum or whatever it will be will have the same problem. Why? Because if you look at the Thursday prompts, no one has said anything about them besides Sean. Sure, mine aren’t really that great; I’m learning. But vixxyfox’s is pretty solid, and no one said anything.

/rant

#19

I agree that this is a problem (the subset of it being, most furry readers also seem to be writers, which puts something of an undue burden on us when we the creators also have to be the audience and the critics).

But I’m going to play devil’s advocate here and note that a lot of potential readers – especially on sites like FA – just flat-out give up, because it’s just too hard to find the needles of good stories in the haystack of halfhearted RP, media fanfic, and poorly transcribed sexual fantasies. I think we do read each other’s work, but I think more reading goes on amid the published things like anthologies and novels, and far less online where it’s easier to see feedback. I don’t read much of anything on FA anymore except a handful of writers I’m familiar with (and some of those because I encountered their work first elsewhere), because honestly I don’t have the time or energy to slog through it anymore. So when people complain that all furry fiction is crap, I tend to suspect they’re only going by what they see on sites like FA and not so much by things that actually edited, and I try to steer them that way. shrug

But yes, I do think a subforum or anything else that’s been described here would likely have that same problem. I’d rather see the guild focus on encouraging writers to publish in and support the venues that already exist, and encourage people to read those, than try to reinvent the wheel by becoming yet another place to post stories online.

Because if you look at the Thursday prompts, no one has said anything about them besides Sean. Sure, mine aren't really that great; I'm learning. But vixxyfox's is pretty solid, and no one said anything.

In the heyday of the Thursday Prompts a few years back, it was common to get several replies from other participants. I wish the prompts had kept that level of engagement, but a lot of the writers involved back then aren’t as active on FA now. As far as the Thursday Prompts being cross-posted here, I’m not surprised that there hasn’t been a lot of participation here so far, given that participation on FA had already dropped off considerably.

#20

I will be one to admit I tend to give up a lot when it comes to reading stories on FA. Especially when I don’t know the writer (even a good chunk of times when i do know the writer) I tend to end up reading things I flat out have no interest in reading. I may have a thing for dudes and will soon be marrying a dude but I don’t really have all that much interest in the four million yiffy murry purry stories that end up crossing my vision. I also really have no interest in fantasy, something that I’ve found a lot of furries can’t understand when the entire fandom is based around fantasy. Though even in both of these genres I’ve found stories I absolutely love. Taste barriers are huge when it comes to reading all of these stories, one of the reasons all of these sites have the tags. If something is tagged “sorcery, combat, knights” or “butt sex, erotic, yiff” I will probably tend to click the little X button and make it go away.
Have I missed stories that people say are amazing that I go back and find later that I do actually like? Yes. Does it happen often? Not really. (Well, the second half of that sentence, anyways.) Like Poetigress said, there’s just so many stories posted.

Then there’s also the case of writers who…just shouldn’t be writing. The stories that are damn near written in text speech without punctuation or capitals. There are a LOT of these out there. Of course the only two (decent) ways of fixing this problem are either 1) To post a wall of constructive criticism bigger than the story itself, or 2) To start having stories be accepted by someone before they can be posted. Both will create about the same amount of a problem.

I also don’t comment on things as much as I’d normally like to. Submissions will stay open on my phone for days before I get around to reading them, and by that point reading feels more like a task rather than an enjoyment.

Ryan Campbell actually posted a great comment on the FWG journal about the mentoring program, I think it was in response to Hauke. Hauke had mentioned something about not having legions of fans watching his work, and Ryan put simply, “…writers don’t really get those to begin with. You want that, you’re better off learning to draw.” It’s just infuriatingly frustrating that this is an issue, but it is. There are maybe half a dozen writers in the fandom who actually have a large following on FA. 80% of that fan base is Kyell Gold. Nothing against Kyell of course as he’s a great writer and overall great guy. He must have secret bacon or something he offers to people who watch him on FA.

I’d love to make contests involving the Thursday Prompts; something that can get people reading and commenting again. I just hope it’s not a doomed idea.