i just checked that place out and it has a seperate site for every genre and so many stories and my head hurts now. All i want to know is are they all shit stories? Or can i find anything good there.

 

There used to be the leading canon jockey site, but they've been falling behind lately, in favor of Ficwad. I'm not sure there's any author who's solely posting on FictionAlley anymore.

 

Ah thank you, some of their stories were kinda out there like there was on that was on how the black sisters whored themselves out to the death eaters who are sexually deprived and ......etc bad.

 

One thing you can count on from fictionalley is a decent standard of quality in terms of grammar, spelling, and to a small degree, content.

They don't just let anyone post there, and every update has to be checked out by the admins before *they* allow it to be posted. Keeps out the average ff.net authors, but in my opinion, that sort of elitist attitude turns me off from even perusing their site. Lots of canon-friendly "quality" even amongst some non-standard pairings, but a process more annoying than useful in my opinion.

The Park has some decent recommendations that aren't necessarily limited to their site. (Fictionalley Park = the forums there)

 

I have mixed feelings about fiction alley. From an author's standpoint they are horrible. They rank right up there with Mugglenet as perhaps the most anal retentive at trying to get a story up. They are hardcore grammar nazis.

When I look at their daily updates, I see a mix of stories. My opinion is that there seem to be an inordinate amount of Draco and Snape centered stories on that site. Most of the Draco ones are, you guessed it Slash stories.

The last story I read on that site was Exile by EasleyWeasley. It was a nice fairly short read about Fudge getting his way at Harry's trial and sending him to Prison and how Harry changes.

The site has been around a long time and you can find some older stories in their large repository. Finding the stories without having an author's name can be a pain. Their search engine is painful to use.

Hope that helps.
Jim

 

Yeah I've tried to post some stories there in my n00b days and was rather put off by their standards, but at least it works both ways as it forces the shit writers on FF.net to not clog it up too badly... Now if only they would drop all the Slash/H/G pairings... >_<

 

well from what i hear it's a good place to read selectively if you know authors. But to write there is like getting a jewish person like myself to lead the nazis on a comeback tour. Therefor i have decided to trust the opinion of the truly great and prosperous minds of darklordpotter.net. Thanks for all the insight and apparently there are a lot more big fanfiction cites than i thought(i'm new screw off).



P.S-jbern love Bungle in The Jungle(underline?) keep it up though the aritocrat Narcissa redeeming herself as a lover not a pureblood bitchy dark lord ass kisser is getting popular. Though that takes nothing away from your originality.

 

Fictionalley isn't so bad. It just depends on what your interest are. Trying to find an AU fic is like looking for a needle in a haystack though. The site is mostly canon friendly. But the navigation on the site is awful. There are worst. Have you ever been to Sugar Quill? The search engine on that site will make you want to kill yourself.

 

I quickly stopped trying to search the site for stories, it just wasn't worth it. But I have to second nonjon on the forums. Fictionalley Park will occasionally lead me to a story I wouldn't have seen otherwise.

 

Search Engine:

The search function was a pain in the ass, but now it is better than the usual e-fiction or ff.net search.

See here: http://forums.fictionalley.org/fics/search.php
For over a year now you can search the summaries, which is a must for fanfiction sites, and you have a lot of options, like story length, hitcount, pairings, etc. Not all options work with older stories (pairings, characters, complete), but over all it is better than ff.net.


Content:

The fic-intake team looks for grammar, spelling, chapter length (schnoogle 3K, rest 1k I think), and to some degree content. Thus 95 percent of ff.net stories wouldn't be accepted there. That's the main reason, why I like the site and browse it regularly. I don't have to fear that my braincells melt as fast as on ff.net, and I only need one minute per day to browse through the list of new chapters/stories.

Their daily updates - also available as e-mails: http://www.fictionalley.org/new/

I agree with Jbern - or have to warn - that over the last year the number of certain slash stories (HD, Remus/Sirius, HSnape, etc.) increased drastically. But then, that's a problem of most archives expect Siye, Checkmate, and Portkey.

They have similar ratings like ff.net, and nothing above R is allowed. Most fics there are canon stuff or ... err ... weird ... pairings. Alltogether I would rec only few of its stories here, and those can mostly be found elsewhere, too.


Authors:

For authors the site has improved, too. I didn't know the old upload script, but the actual script works fine. However there are some problems with MS-Word and typographic quotation marks (some UTF8 formatting problem). In their forums there are some threads dealing with issues, but it didn't seem to be that big problem.

Every new chapter is controlled by their fic-intake team, and you have to wait about 10 days until a chapter is accepted (or rejected). When 10 of your chapters are accepted without any problems, then you are able to register for a bypass - means the chapter is published without further control within a day. I think Tinn Tam is registered for that.

 

Correct.

I had only one chapter rejected at FictionAlley, which means they probably aren't that much of grammar nazis (same goes for Mugglenet); said chapter was rejected for repeated dialogue error, I think, and a misspelt spell (I got confused with the French translation >_<). Well, that's how one learns. They do have a file listing "Unforgivable Mistakes", so anyone who's not too lazy to check it out should get their chapter uploaded without problems. At least it spares me the pain of reading misspelt canon names.

I have a blatantly AU story which has been accepted there (before my being registered for the bypass) and is actually quite appreciated. Same for my two 'DLP' stories. So I wouldn't be so quick in condemning FA's standards; the main thing I personally find annoying is how damn slow the server is.

I also ought to mention their help system is quick and efficient. I once sent an email to the staff about a submission problem, and got a reply within a day.

 

FictionAlley's server had become faster during the last year, and now fanfiction.net is worse.

I assume Syaoran's "Dinner Time" or Vash's smut (even reduced to R) wouldn't be accepted. Other than that the spectrum is wide. The majority of stories is more canon orientated and more fangirlish - but the worse of that kind is sorted out by grammar and spelling.

FictionAlley's staff takes its job quite serious and proved its quality when the server crashed. I don't know how many complains they got about deleted stories and vanished chapters within that two days, but my two emails were answered within few hours. As compensation I even got some bonus mailspace for their pm-system, which I will probably never use.

 

How does the size compare to FF.net? Is there more reviewers? Only a day after posting on FF.net and I've still had mostly 'update soon' or 'ur stry rcks dude' and I'm going slowly insane.

Yeah, I like that people like my fic, I'd just love some technical comments. Not just a quick way of being added to alerts (Which I also love). I've been guilty of this in the past, but now that I see how irritating it is I'll never post a pointless review again.

 

You know you could just check the site out and get many of your answers. Size-wise nothing compares to ff.net. But you may get more feedback and reviews on schnoogle because members are kinder or more helpful. Or you may get negligible response. And that's assuming the site will accept your story. I've heard horror stories from some people that have tried and submitted their fics dozens of times to schnoogle, getting rejected for different reasons every time.

Nice things are you can see when a chapter was posted and how many hits it's received like for example here. Each fic has it's own forum, and each update has its own thread so the reviews are more like forum posts (allowing an author to easily respond on the public forum if they want). For example chapter six on that last page has these comments/reviews.

Getting technical feedback isn't easy. And you're probably best off explicitly asking certain people for it.

 

ff.net has clearly more readers and reviewers than FictionAlley. ff.net has probably more readers than most other sites together. So you probably receive most reviews there.

The reviews there are still somehow unorganised and sorted in threads, with one thread per chapter. I can't speak for my own stuff, as I never got a 'real' review anywhere, but I think the quality of reviews doesn't differ much.

Tinn has posted quite a few stuff there, she might have made other experiences, also concerning other archives.


EDIT: ah - nonjon was way faster.

I read similar complains quite a while ago and wondered if I should give it a chance. I was accepted. Either FA changed its requirements, or people who complained were just too lazy to proofread their stuff or care for a beta. Nowadays if I see someone complaining his story was rejected, I look into it and I didn't find a single one where I wondered why it was rejected.

It's often the same:
- punctuation and quotation marks
- misspelling of canon names or things, like Delores instead of Dolores
- their/there where/were its/it's etc
and so on.

And these errors are not just occasional typos but constantly repeated errors, which could be avoided.

I don't doubt a chapter is rejected several times if the author just fixes the error the FA staff mentioned instead of correcting everything. This seems to happen quite often. If FA rejects a chapter thrice you have to prove it was proofread by a perfect-imagination beta, before you can upload it a fourth time.

FA's Submission Requirements: http://www.fictionalley.org/submit.html
I don't see anything in there that might cause a problem except for very disturbing or NC-17 material.

 

I've seen stuff go on FictionAlley which, by rights, shouldn't have gone up - I'm talking about fics with noticeable spelling mistakes, poor grammar and suchlike. Granted, very little slips through the cracks but the ones that do are clearly being read by lazy volunteers who don't take the time to evaluate anything.

 

http://forums.fictionalley.org/park/forumdisplay.php?forumid=106&daysprune=1000&sortorder=desc&sortfield=replycount&perpage=20&pagenumber=4

The Niffler threads are pretty good. Baring them, it's a good database in general.

 

yeah, Niffler is nice. I still hate their search function, though, as well as their lack of Author Alerts.

 

I generally find fictionalley to be impossible to find a good story on.

In theory, their search function is the best around, as it has the most customisable filters, but in my experience what filters you set up and what stories the search returns for you have no relation to each other.

As for their submission policies...I dislike them.

Sure, it makes sure that all the stories on there have good spelling and grammar, but it isn't flexible enough.

For example, if a writer has used a specific turn of phrase or style for effect, and it is technically grammatically incorrect, they will reject the story, even if, despite being grammatically incorrect, the story still reads well.

Another objection is that even with their strict grammar and spelling rules, crappy stories are still all that seems to be around on there...obviously, good spelling and grammar do not necessarily make a good story.