It's not reasonable. If I had to take out detail because of it. So you want my writing to be worse right? How generous of you. (That was sarcasm).
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this. I know you're upset because I deleted your chapter, and (are you ready for this?) I'm sorry.
I had a really stressful week this last week with 200+ pages of reading a night, 2 essays due, a band concert, and a final project to start working towards. I was running on way too little sleep and I was really grumpy. I took it out on you guys and all I can really say is that I'm sorry. I'm taking a little break (just like 2 days or something) to clear my head and just relax. I couldn't help myself and decided to check in on these responses and reply to them. I think my first apology should go to Sam89 because Astinus was completely right. I should have worked with you rather than just delete your thread and tell you to add more without giving you any critique to go off of.
Skunter said:
I personally am in favor of the rule because I take the extra time out to write relatively decent quality fanfics. These aren't exactly fanfics I have a lot of time to write up either. It can take me a few weeks to write a full chapter, not counting the few days extra I spend revising it. While I understand that a lot of people don't have the spare time to write up high-end fanfics, I think it's a little unfair that they should post badly written fanfics when there are others like me take a little more time to write something out. From my experience, fanfics under 1,000 words tend to be very badly written and it's not unreasonable to ask people to write about a full page or two before calling something a fanfic/chapter. In most classes in school or college, that's actually a requirement and not a strenuous one at that.
This was my original reasoning. Although, after a much needed nap, I'm starting to reconsider enforcing this rule so harshly. It's not really fair to new writers who are just getting into this. I think there needs to be an alternative.
Vociferocity said:
general comment: apart from my prologue (~800) words, all my chapters are over 1k...except for one chapter, which is like, twenty words or something. but it's a joke chapter, and the others are all long....is that fine? I know it's following the letter of the law, but that's no big, right?
Actually, your twenty word chapter is what prompted me to put this thread up. Along with some other reasons, but your chapter was the final push to go seeking for other reasons. I found it humorous to have that short of a chapter. I was going to delete it because it didn't meet the requirements, but then I realized that you posted a full chapter after that and that the short chapter really added to the humor value of the story. This is what made me reconsider.
Vociferocity said:
overall, this rule is totally one I'm ok with. I get that you want this forum to be quality, slayr, and asking for longer chapters is only going to help that. experienced writers aren't going to have that hard a time finding extra content for chapters (except for special cases which are totally okay, right :D?), and it's going to spur beginner writers into having to put more effort in which...obviously is going to help them become better writers, and write more quality fics.
that said, I don't know how comfortable I am with threads being closed because the fic isn't quality. if someone is giving it their best shot, the best way to encourage them is to...you know, actually encourage them? closing their fic thread because it isn't a high enough standard is just...I don't know, it had a bit of an elitist vibe to it, which I don't love. closing a thread because people aren't following rules (like 1k chapters) is one thing, but closing because you don't think they're good enough is just gross, imo.
The first part was my reasoning. I really wanted to push new writers to really try and reach for their potential. I thought that by requiring more, people would be more inclined to try new things in order to get that word count up.
I now know that I was enforcing that
way too hard. I think I'm going to start to be way more lenient and instead of closing down threads and deleting chapters, I'm going to help them more. It's not helping anybody if I just delete their work and tell them it's not good enough. You're right in the fact that I was creating an elitist vibe. It wasn't intentional, but it was happening. And that's something I really want to try to avoid.
Astinus said:
The thing is with this rule is that it's very...unwelcoming to new writers. The ones who know what they're doing when it comes to writing won't have a problem with this rule, but the section shouldn't only cater towards them. It should also be more welcoming for brand-new writers to post their stories to the section and get some advice. Being told that their story isn't good enough because it's not 1000 words or more and that they need to describe more will only lead to frustration and confusion. They don't really get why their story, that most likely they did their best on, wasn't "good enough" for PC.
I understand wanting a higher quality of fics around the forums to read. That way, any thread that gets clicked on will be worth everyone's while to read and enjoy. But this is the Pokemon fandom. It's going to be full of young writers, and the ones who are old enough to be completely amazing are rare. For a lot of these writers, this is their first foray into writing any sort of story, and they don't know the proper way to describe characters or how to transition scenes or anything like that. They just want to write some crazy adventure that's running through their heads. And that story will be flawed in a few ways. But hopefully someone will come along and say "Hey, you have the makings of a great story here. Here are a few things you can improve on though." That's how it was when I first started actively reviewing fanfiction, and that's how it was when I became a moderator.
This did cross my mind when I was closing down the threads, but I just didn't care. It killed me on the inside to close down the threads and delete the chapters (oh how it killed me), but I was just way too grumpy to worry about that. I need to start enforcing this rule in another way.
Astinus said:
Things can change, and I understand that. The people who do know what they're doing and can share advice have been doing this so long that they've seen every problem in fic-writing, have told writers how to change things, and yet the problems keep happening from different writers.
What can be done to change this? I honestly don't know. If anyone has the answer to this question, I'd like to hear it because it's something that my friends and I have wondered for years. Maybe just a little understanding that this is the Pokemon fandom, targeted towards young people and young people make mistakes that we've already made and learned from. So the quality of fics here might not be the greatest because that's just how it goes.
I think this was my problem. I was expecting way too much from new writers. I was expecting them to pick up description in merely seconds and apply them perfectly in their next chapter. Don't worry, I realize this now and I'm going to stop being so strict with the 1,000 word rule.
Astinus said:
But, honestly, I don't think saying "this fic isn't 1000 words, describe more, thread closed" is completely helpful. Sam89 is probably confused and is definitely hurt by having his threads closed or chapters deleted. (And we've lost other new members too from this.) I think, if you want to raise the quality of fics, you can't just close threads. Make some pointers, show some examples, and leave the thread open. Because the member's aren't going to take any sort of advice if the first thing that they see is their thread is closed. That's what will stick in their mind (the "mean moderator") and not the person who actually read their fic and took the time to review. Even though they might react badly to the review or ignore it all together, but hey. Can't win them all.
I do feel bad about closing all those threads. I was acting like a tyrant and by losing the new writers, I paid a hefty price.
Although, I think my biggest disappointment was the fact that no one came up to me to tell me that I might be going overboard with this. It wasn't until I posted this thread that it became obvious that people were thinking I was being too harsh. I'm not blaming you guys for this. I mean, I would be scared to approach someone who was running their writing section like that. I just want you guys to know that if you ever feel like I did something wrong, please approach me about it. I promise I won't get mad about it. In fact, I love it when people disagree with me because then it's an opportunity to come up with new ideas to improve the section.
Anyway, I'm going to take that small break and come back in a couple days refreshed and in a better mood (hopefully). I apologize again for my grumpiness this past week and I'll definitely be working with new writers, not against them, to improve their writing. Thanks for all your feedback, it's greatly appreciated.