Why are there so few good fanfic writers now?

>>30725944
Because of rulefag

Too much canon now to bother with more fanon.

>>30725944
Because people like Penstroke got hated for writing good material.

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>>30725944
There are many fanfic writers.
It's just that you're interpretation of 'good' doesn't fit them.

>>30725944
Because 99% of them were bandwagoners who got on the ride in 2012 because it was the "cool" thing to do, and then got off the ride when the next new carcinogen arrived.

>>30725960
Partly this. But also partly that the show was still fresh then and provided enough information to make for a creative base while leaving enough to the imagination that writers could reasonably act out their own headcanons. Now that the lore and world has been more fleshed out it's much harder for writers to feel creatively inspired and since this is fanfiction and they don't get any money for their work pretty much their whole reason for writing fanfics in the first place is gone.

>>30725959
www.reddit.com

>>30726008
wwoah xDDD

Lots of the low-hanging fruit ideas were snatched up.

MLP is expanding its own lore, so no need for fan fiction.

>>30725944

There were ever more than five?

I wrote a story and got pretty good reception about a year ago, i tried a few times to start up another story but just stopped because there was little reception to the stuff i was writing whether it be good or bad, just seemed like complete lack of interest one way or another so it just kind of killed part of the reason for me to do it. As for the headcannon getting over ruled thing, that was never really a problem for me. I just made it apparent that my story would be taking liberties with the cannon from the start so then i just we t off and did my own thing.

>rape

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>>30725944

I blame the explosion of AiE into a hundred splinter threads.

It used to be that about half of the stories posted on the board were posted there. It fostered a creative community that both built itself up and culled the truly garbage writers from the board. Then for a while AiE became so used to quality that the Anons began culling writers that weren't garbage so much as just new to writing. That is when the stupid prompt threads began to turn into short-lived (and some not-so-short) generals, sucking the lifeblood out of AiE.

Today AiE is actually a pretty chill place, and the oldfags that lurk there are a good source of guidance. I would encourage any aspiring writer lurking this thread to consider posting there, provided they meet the two requirements: the story has to feature Anon, and he has to be in Equestria.

>>30725944
a fast writer could usually fill 2k characters every 20-30 mins. you can imagine how long itd take to write a decent length story.

would you ever support an autistic greentext writer on patreon to make it worth while?

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>>30730244

As a writer of little to no fame, I contest this sentiment. I write because I enjoy it. I like exploring the world I've created for a given story. And that's why I keep writing, even though the only general I was ever known in is dead and the story I'm writing currently best fits in a general that is also dead.

I'm having fun, and I share it in the Writefag Guildchat as I finish chapters. It doesn't bother me that so few people read it -in fact, it's a huge relief that I have no pressure to update regularly.

>>30730298
you make it sound like you cant do both like artists do.

>>30730308

I don't personally think any of my scribbling is worth a commission, and if it was, I would feel terrible about my positively glacial update schedule.

That's not saying that others can't do it, I'm just saying that a profit motive isn't a guarantee that writers will come back.

Not enough (you)'s for people to even stay interested.

The main method of greentext baiting was made a bannable offense, and the uncreative faggots never came up with a way to do it that wasn't considered roleplaying.
So yeah, partially this >>30725950

>>30725944
I just finished this:
>>30729383

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>>30725944
Can't speak for other writefriends but I couldn't write pone forever. It was a lot of fun for several years. Myriad characters and scenarios to explore and an exuberant audience to present them to but the subject is ultimately limiting. At a point, it began making more sense to move away from Equestria as opposed to handwaving our favorite colorful horses into the dramatic western/modern man vs nature/space opera pieces I wanted to create.

As for good? Swaths of you really just want to yank your dangles to horse pussy. Instant recognition, instant gratification, droves of writers producing minimal effort work controversial erotic content. The volume becoming so severe, in fact, that it begins to splinter an already niche culture into pubescent pockets of toxicity and opinions-as-fact where, you know, cartoon horse porn is concerned. Stir contents for 5 years and serve cold.

Who were the olds ones that were considered good? And on that note, what are top 10 fanfics that I should check out? I've only ever read like 2 or 3 and didn't much care for them.

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The whole 'canon being too big' is absolute nonsense and completely retarded, I have no idea why someone even ever thought this'd be a problem
You can literally make up whatever the fuck you want, even if it goes against canon, that's the whole fucking point
Want to make a twiggy addicted to maths or cum or with a huge throbbing marecock? What's stopping you?
You could back in S1, you can now, and you will be able to do it when S10 airs

So I'll just give my two cents about the matter;
For one, this >>30730380 is a thing, you barely ever get real criticism or even comments making you understand what you did right and what you did wrong
It's 4chin's culture, and the fact that half the newblood we got over the last 4 years are from /v/ or /b/

Then there's >>30725960
But that's to be expected, I mean, the fandom isn't nearly as big as before
You can't even compare it, to be honest
So either they left simply because they grew bored of ponies, or some of them actually tried to make money off of it and even become real autors, or because they killed themselves (which will be my third point)

And thirdly, autism
Here's how it goes, the more autistic you are, the easier you can immerse yourself while writing, the better the result
Of course you don't need that if you write a 2 post long green about some dumb prompt (and I'm not saying those can't be good)
But you can't write a correct 10k, or more, story without being able to get in there
And sometimes, if it's a story you love, with characters you love, you can lose yourself in there
It's kind of hard to explain, but you can get to a point where you become so immersed that you start forgetting about the fact that it's a story, or something like that, and even tho your brain is screaming that it's okay, it's not real, the message just doesn't get through
And it's scary to write these stories, some people can deal with it, many can't (I can't)

And finally, time
It takes hours to write something nice

Flutterrape has great writers.

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>>30725944
Because it's easier and takes less time to write porn, which is what 90% of this board wants, and if it's not that, you get shouted out. Most of the time anyway.

Writing more serious stuff with themes, drama and plot is often met with scorn or cries of being edgy or autistic. CYOAs particularly get a good reception because of the element of choice, but the culture here turns anyone else away towards EQD, where your submission won't get through because of the """requirements""" or fimfiction which is submerged in such large quantities of shit, that you'll be lucky to gain an audience at all.

And that's what writing is, exposing your ideas to an audience. Don't listen to those fags who say they do it because it's fun, they're just being modest. Every single writefag who has ever published a thing for perusal does it to expose it to other people, they want to see what people think of their idea, they like to see people discuss it and speculate. It's not necessarily attention whoring behaviour, but it does walk a fine line where it can easily lead to that.

Writefags are also a dime a dozen and underappreciated because of that surplus, I bet most of y'all can name more drawfags than writefags as a result. Shortage of ideas is one other aspect, fanfiction in this fandom essentially burned out within the first couple of years.

>>30730901
this desu

>fimfic, 4 years ago

>write a sherlock holmes fic, pour heart and soul into it, craft mysteries, adopt his writing style, create condensed fucking babby novellas of individual adventures
>days and weeks of work, tens of thousands of words
>50-60 likes

>write throwaway 2nd-person self-insert shit one night after work when I'm super tired and depressed
>few thousand words
>2k likes

He's right. So many of you fucks just don't fucking care about any content that isn't blatant wish fulfillment. Makes the medium of horse impossible to write for.

>>30730163
Absolutely this.

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>>30730924

I happen to have such a list ready for just this occasion:

https://pastebin.com/KJF8i9kd

>>30732151
not everyone wants to get invested in a long novel. you may not have as many fans, but odds are they were of a much higher caliber than the 2k word clopfic fans.