# Do people actually enjoy reading furry stories? Serious question.



## Toboe13 (Aug 6, 2013)

I've always thought about writing furry stories, but it always seemed like people don't read them at all.....how do I find those readers and are they even out there?

dmitry


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## Kitsune Cross (Aug 6, 2013)

I like to know the story behind a picture but not really a furry story itself


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## Aleu (Aug 6, 2013)

Writers don't get much attention on FA unless they're already established.

Personally, I don't like stories with anthro characters. Movies, comics, etc are a different matter with me.


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## Fallowfox (Aug 6, 2013)

Fiction isn't my thing at the moment. Some people enjoy furry fiction, but it's not very popular on FA in comparison to Images. 

Reading requires a lot of investment and concentration, whereas an image provides instant gratification. I guess a lot of people don't want to invest lots of time reading a story by someone online in order to build the characters only to discover they don't enjoy their stories after all. They might opt for reputable published authors in bookshops instead.


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## Symlus (Aug 6, 2013)

I enjoy reading some of them. But comparing them to the art on FA... They don't get recognition here. SoFurry, on the other hand, is about equal parts writing and art (at least, from what I've seen.)


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## BennyBunnycorn (Aug 6, 2013)

Me, I personally tend to be more interested in a story with Anthropomorphic characters than ones with humans in them, but they don't have to be animals. They can be almost anything that's not human. I guess creatures other than what I already am tend to fascinate me more.


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## Harbinger (Aug 6, 2013)

I would find anthro related stories more interesting over normal stories, the same as i would if it had robots, aliens, or giant bug monsters in or anything else i liked.


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## ShiShi_Sukoro (Aug 6, 2013)

I noticed you didn't specify what 'type' of furry story. If it's clean than most likely not to be read all that much. If it's dirty, well that's a different story. I had a few of my own uploaded at one point (on my alt acc) and I couldn't believe the response. They were explicit, something I knew in my mind would draw a crowd, but that alone didn't prepare me for the masses to swarm. It's like if someone makes a giant cake. Offer it free, except the masses to come hither with all haste.


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## Friday (Aug 6, 2013)

I do! In fact, I didn't really enjoy reading for fun since I started high school, but reading Kyell Gold's stuff got me reading more, then writing, then reading other people's stuff too. I agree that having sexual elements in your story will get you more readership. It's not a factor for me, but I think it is for a lot of people. Personally, when I write, I add it as I feel it's appropriate.


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## Troj (Aug 6, 2013)

As a writer myself, I tend to be picky about writing, and as such, I dislike most furry writing, because it tends to be furry for the sake of being furry. 

The artists and writers who've truly excelled at their craft are typically ones who haven't confined themselves artistically to the furry ghetto, and who aren't in it to pander to furries (especially the horny ones). 

But, do I enjoy reading good stories with anthro characters? Hell yes. I love 'em. When given the choice between a great story about humans, and an equally great story about animals, I'll usually pick the latter. 

But, most of my favorites have been written by non-furry-identified authors.

If the most interesting or compelling thing about your character is that he's a fox or an otter, you're doing it wrong.


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## Mayonnaise (Aug 6, 2013)

If it have a good story, yeah.


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## Aleu (Aug 6, 2013)

Troj said:


> As a writer myself, I tend to be picky about writing, and as such, I dislike most furry writing, because it tends to be furry for the sake of being furry.
> 
> 
> If the most interesting or compelling thing about your character is that he's a fox or an otter, you're doing it wrong.


Pretty much these. I mean if it's like...some sort of race thing like...I dunno a WoW book focusing on Worgen, I'd probably read it. 

Regarding investment, that's why I'm picky about writing. I have a set standard for literature. Fanfiction will get me mildly interested. If it's written well then I'll read it. I read one where it was somewhat of a Good Omens/Titanic crossover. While it was almost copy paste, I literally had to applaud for giving enough differences that would make it less copy/paste and more that the events were an inspiration for the movie.

So yeah a good anthro-ish story CAN be done...but done well is a different thing imo


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## Friday (Aug 7, 2013)

Sure, I thought we were pre-supposing that the story was any good. For me to enjoy furry fiction, it has to be as good as regular fiction. If it is, I enjoy it more.


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## Willow (Aug 7, 2013)

I personally think that anthro characters work better in comics as opposed to written fiction. If for nothing else but so that way you can focus more on the story and everything else as opposed to what animals the characters are supposed to be.


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## OshiiRyuu (Aug 7, 2013)

i enjoy things that are about such parts, but normal human stories have no interest. I read Sherrylin Kenyon's books for petes, sake, lol.


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## CaptainCool (Aug 7, 2013)

I don't bother reading stories on FA because almost all of them are shit, plain and simple (I didn't read yours, so no hard feelings! <3). It's usually on the same level as the most terrible fanfiction.
Wading through all that shit just takes WAY too much effort. Starting to read every story just to find out that it is a flaming pile of crap takes way too long and is way too disappointing.
And then there are all those stories about the fucked up fetishes with people in the comments going crazy about how "hot" it is... Get them the fuck away from me! XP

A german user once wanted me to proofread his story. Oh man... OH MAN! It was full of grammatical and spelling errors (it wasn't even written in English), almost every sentence ended in an ellipsis, the plot was the most generic emo therian/furfag bullshit I have ever seen and the sample that he gave me was ten pages long but stretched so hard there was basically no content left at all. It was like a homeopathic story! XD


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## mysticfyre (Aug 7, 2013)

I don't read fanfics at all- after the ones I attempted to read were horrible wastes of time. I much prefer good art.


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## Toboe13 (Aug 7, 2013)

Thanks for all the help. So to get readers I need to write about sex, but to please the higher thinkers, it has to be a good story. So, if I wrote a GOOD story that just happened to have some sex in it, would that be horrible?


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## Aleu (Aug 7, 2013)

Toboe13 said:


> Thanks for all the help. So to get readers I need to write about sex, but to please the higher thinkers, it has to be a good story. So, if I wrote a GOOD story that just happened to have some sex in it, would that be horrible?


No. I know quite a few authors/writers do that.


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## Troj (Aug 7, 2013)

If you intend to write a genuinely good story, the sex usually has to serve the purpose of either advancing the plot, or fleshing out your characters, or both, and your story has to contain more than just sex, obviously, and your characters have to care about something besides sex.


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## Toboe13 (Aug 7, 2013)

Well yeah, of course. I've read a few "smut" stories that were published (not furry) and even though they pretty much focused on sex, the story/plot was fantastic. I remember all of them perfectly because the story was really nice. I think sex can be put in a story for entertainment value if it's an erotic story, but I DO NOT think erotic stories make you less of a writer or a thinker. I like smut stories just as much as I enjoy Jane Austen and Charles Dickens, it's just a different mood I'm in.


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## Troj (Aug 7, 2013)

Oh, agreed--writing or reading erotic stories doesn't make you less of a thinker. Sometimes you feel like some smut, and sometimes, you don't.

I tend to get annoyed with those erotic stories that try too hard to be "thinky," and fail, and don't just embrace the fact that they're smut.


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## Friday (Aug 7, 2013)

Toboe13 said:


> Thanks for all the help. So to get readers I need to write about sex, but to please the higher thinkers, it has to be a good story. So, if I wrote a GOOD story that just happened to have some sex in it, would that be horrible?



Not at all. Kyell Gold is extremely successful in the fandom for a reason. He does both; if you're looking for a sample of his work, Waterways is _fantastic_. It's a great example of amazing writing, touching storyline, and both with appropriate amounts of sexual content.


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## Toboe13 (Aug 7, 2013)

Fantastic, I can't wait to get started.


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## MochiElZorro (Aug 7, 2013)

Yep, as long as it isn't shit. So pretty much no, considering the quality of work out there. If your character is furry or part furry or whatever, don't make it the focus of the story, even if s/he is in a non-furry universe/land/planet. Also, I personally think sex/yiff should be thrown out the window entirely, and if it happens, imply it via character dialogue after a time skip instead of writing a whole porn section on it. DO NOT explicitly say or obviously reference it. That is a cheap move. Use manner of speech and body language to convey that the two have had intercourse. Make sure char. dev. ACTUALLY happens. There's nothing I hate more than a story about 2D characters.

Just some pointers I always stick to.


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## Aleu (Aug 7, 2013)

I find that allusions to the sexual intercourse are far more interesting (and erotic) to read instead of "He stuck his dick in it. She came." type of nonsense.


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## Friday (Aug 7, 2013)

I totally agree with not having the main character being furry a main  focus of the story. Just... that's not a story. Some amateur scifi writers fall into a  similar trap just talking about their world and not actually telling a  story. People read to be told a story, and if you don't do that, they lose interest in your work. Only established authors can get away with long preambles about worlds before they begin the story, because their readers know them well enough to trust that the information will be important and the story good, when it gets there.

As a rule of thumb for my writing, it's not furry unless I feel there's a reason for it to be. When I do make my story furry, I use it to explore themes of prejudice, usually. 'Specisiesm,' as I termed it, is a nice way to casually remove racism/homophobia/sexism from my story, making it less heavy-handed while still getting the reader to consider potential consequences of prejudiced behavior. As such, my writing comes off as more light-hearted, while still asking the reader to consider themes that can be rather serious. Jury's out on how effective it is, but I'm using furry in my furry stories for a reason, not because animal people are cool (even though they are).



MochiElZorro said:


> Also, I personally think sex/yiff should be thrown out the window entirely, and if it happens, imply it via character dialogue after a time skip instead of writing a whole porn section on it. DO NOT explicitly say or obviously reference it. That is a cheap move.



I have to disagree. Sex is an important part of some inter-personal relationships. For character development, sex can be important, and throwing it out the wayside as a "cheap move" can make an amazing story pointless. It's an arbitrary limit based on social mores. It's fine if sex in a story is an affront to your social values, and you don't want to read/write it for that reason, but that doesn't mean any story that contains explicit sex scenes for the purpose of character development is automatically meretricious.

That being said, a sex scene just to have a sex scene is pointless, and yes, cheap. Scenes need to create character development or move the plot forward. Doesn't matter the content, but it's got to do at least one of the two.

I'm sorry, this is something that frustrates me. I've read stories that would be much worse off if they followed this advice. Also, you're insulting authors who do have sex scenes in their stories.


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## Troj (Aug 8, 2013)

Nice points, Friday.

One warning about exploring "speciesism," though: because it's been done to death, you have to be ready, willing, and able to put a unique or intriguing spin on it, you need to not paint your two sides in stark terms of black-and-white, and you need to be careful about sounding "preachy." 

It can't just be a black-and-white story about evil hyooomans beating up on saintly furries, for example, or totally-evil rats always tormenting the purely-good mice, because discerning readers who know their tropes will see right through that.

I'd also add that animal characters can be very useful for satirizing or commenting on politics, religion, or public figures, where using human characters would hit too close to home.


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## Friday (Aug 8, 2013)

Of course! Speciesism in my work is not presented in black and white. It's something that all species are to each other, and something that, since it's based on both phenotype and genotype, is seen as having legitimacy. As such, it's approached very casually by most of my characters, and therefore, by myself and the reader. I let the actions of characters and their repercussions lead people to their own decisions. It's more of a theme or a parallel in my work than a point. The fact that it's comfortably removed from the human world allows my work not to feel preachy, because preachy is boring and feels insulting to the reader, in my experience. I wrote a short story, _Disease_, using speciesism as sort of a parallel to homophobia during the HIV era. I tried, I feel successfully, to avoid preaching and just tell a story, one that wasn't too uncommon during the era of HIV/AIDS. The reader is allowed their own decisions. I feel like, to avoid sounding preachy, I _had_ to approach it from a furry angle. If I had told the same story but with humans and HIV, some people would take it as me preaching no matter what was actually written, you know?

I also agree on your second thought. I believe, though I'm not certain, that Blacksad uses this technique to discuss/satirize McCarthy-era politics and society. It's on my reading list, so I'm not able to say if it's a good example or not though.


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## MochiElZorro (Aug 8, 2013)

Friday said:


> I have to disagree. Sex is an important part of some inter-personal relationships. For character development, sex can be important, and throwing it out the wayside as a "cheap move" can make an amazing story pointless. It's an arbitrary limit based on social mores. It's fine if sex in a story is an affront to your social values, and you don't want to read/write it for that reason, but that doesn't mean any story that contains explicit sex scenes for the purpose of character development is automatically meretricious.
> 
> That being said, a sex scene just to have a sex scene is pointless, and yes, cheap. Scenes need to create character development or move the plot forward. Doesn't matter the content, but it's got to do at least one of the two.
> 
> I'm sorry, this is something that frustrates me. I've read stories that would be much worse off if they followed this advice. Also, you're insulting authors who do have sex scenes in their stories.



Every time I've read a sex scene in a furry story, it sounds something like this: "An then Geroge caime with pricky kitty dick in bObbs moutgh ad he wass laik 'o yay' and licks it up wiht dogie toung cuz sexy." It's hard to find a good place for decent furry fiction. 

Oh and I didn't mean sex was necessarily a writing sin or whatever. I meant that if you write sex scenes it generally detracts from most stories, so it's best to simply time-skip and then allude to it (in the case that it is part of the story), because most authors never are able to pull it off well.

I also meant that explicitly saying things like "So I fucked Joanna last night" are kind of a cheap way to go about it. ESPECIALLY if the character tells the first person he sees and the partner is totally cool with that. People don't go around telling every John and Jane on the street they had sex with Clara last night... or at least normal people don't. It's more believable to either allude to it or have the partners only tell their most trusted friend (which BTW is an excellent point at which to have their trust betrayed). I just think saying it immediately after the time skip is garbage in a majority of cases. Sometimes I see it pulled off well, but mostly I don't.


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## Troj (Aug 8, 2013)

_Blacksad_ is INCREDIBLE. A must-read.

Speaking of speciesism/prejudice, the webcomic _Endtown_ also tackles prejudice with nuance, heart, and brains.

Oh, and no worries, Friday, I wasn't ragging on you---I was ragging on Brian Jacques and _Gene Catlow _.

I think using anthro characters to tell a parable about HIV was a very nice idea, especially given that a story about HIV itself might alienate some readers off the bat.



			
				MochiElZorro said:
			
		

> : "An then Geroge caime with pricky kitty dick in bObbs moutgh ad he  wass laik 'o yay' and licks it up wiht dogie toung cuz sexy."



...Followed by some reference to a character's "knot," and characters announcing when they've come.

Yup.


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## Friday (Aug 8, 2013)

I can agree with your points. I've definitely seen writing like that, and it's a lot of what's on FA, sadly. That being said, it's refreshing to see it handled well. I guess my opinion is, good writing is fun to read.

And Troj, I knew you weren't, don't worry  I was just explaining because I like getting practice articulating things as well as getting a chance to perhaps garner interest in my work. On a side note, I love Brian Jaques. I feel like his writing wasn't initially oriented at children, but his publishers asked him to dumb down his material to appeal to children. I'm happy that's the case, in some ways, because his books defined my childhood, but at the same time I wish they were more appealing to me as an adult. I find his writing and his atmosphere influences my own writing, but I try to write more complex/realistic worlds.

Also, I'm glad to hear a recommendation of _Blacksad_. I've been considering reading it, but it wasn't high on my priority list. Now it's higher


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## MochiElZorro (Aug 8, 2013)

Did someone say Brian Jacques? 

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/redwall.png


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## Nikolinni (Aug 8, 2013)

MochiElZorro said:


> Every time I've read a sex scene in a furry story, it sounds something like this: "An then Geroge caime with pricky kitty dick in bObbs moutgh ad he wass laik 'o yay' and licks it up wiht dogie toung cuz sexy." It's hard to find a good place for decent furry fiction.
> 
> Oh and I didn't mean sex was necessarily a writing sin or whatever. I meant that if you write sex scenes it generally detracts from most stories, so it's best to simply time-skip and then allude to it (in the case that it is part of the story), because most authors never are able to pull it off well.
> 
> I also meant that explicitly saying things like "So I fucked Joanna last night" are kind of a cheap way to go about it. ESPECIALLY if the character tells the first person he sees and the partner is totally cool with that. People don't go around telling every John and Jane on the street they had sex with Clara last night... or at least normal people don't. It's more believable to either allude to it or have the partners only tell their most trusted friend (which BTW is an excellent point at which to have their trust betrayed). I just think saying it immediately after the time skip is garbage in a majority of cases. Sometimes I see it pulled off well, but mostly I don't.



And yes, someone mentioned Redwall!

As for sex scenes, there's a yiff scene (Or "Joining" as they call it on Cygnus) in Perri's Spectral Shadows, which seems to serve a double purpose. Not only do you see this act that has been discusses for a few episodes past, but they also have a vision during the whole thing that shows you other incarnations of the characters and how they were in the past. But it's actually not too badly written. I like it. Perhaps it's how joining works. Sure Part A still goes to Part B, but...there's still some key differences. 

Getting onto the whole furry stories thing, the afore mentioned Spectral Shadows is actually pretty good. It's up for grabs on Perri's Fur Affinity page (Under scraps) or you can check it out on the story's Live Journal Page


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## Aleu (Aug 8, 2013)

With how much you advertise, it's like she's paying you or something.


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## Nikolinni (Aug 8, 2013)

Aleu said:


> With how much you advertise, it's like she's paying you or something.



She's not actually paying me to be honest. Most of the advertising is of my own accord. 

The references I make to it really aren't meant as "Advertising" though. It's just that the story skimms over a lot of issues like religion, loyalty to one's nation, equality, magic, science, magic and science being opposed to one another, etc. that it provides me with a lot of things to bring up. It also has plenty of genre shifts, so plenty of different adventures happen that again, provide me with a huge reference pool. Having the link in the signature was something I decided, since Perri requested I link to the story if I ever reference it. Seeing as I had a tendency to reference it a lot, I felt it more efficient to just put a link in there. 

The main reason why I try to spread the word and advertise it is because I think Spectral Shadows is really that good of a story. A friend of mine who isn't even into a lot of things furry read it and thought it was a pretty well-written story. Aside from that, it also delivered a lot of messages to me on the spiritual side, strengthening my beliefs in the supernatural and unbelievable, as well as providing me not only with the inspiration to continue writing, but also giving me an idea for my own serial I'm working on based on 1)My want to actually write with Perri's characters (Which I find odd, as I never liked writing fanfics) and 2)What if her characters met mine, and a whole bunch of other peoples' characters and worlds became interconnected? Though due to not being able to gather enough characters, it ended up turning into a "What if" alternate universe serial where every other serial is an alternate universe of the main story.

So yeah. It's just a devoted fan trying to spread the word of something he loves.


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## Sasya (Aug 9, 2013)

Goodness.  Rather cynical lot, aren't we?


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## Nikolinni (Aug 9, 2013)

Sasya said:


> Goodness.  Rather cynical lot, aren't we?



Never thought I was cynical but okay D:


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## Taralack (Aug 9, 2013)

Nope. All furry stories I've read so far (admittedly not voluntarily) have been mostly drivel that wanks on and on about how furry the characters are, and littered with grammatical and spelling mistakes. They all also mostly had bad sentence structure and flow, which made it even harder to read.


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## Troj (Aug 9, 2013)

Friday, if you haven't already, you need to also read _Grandville._


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## Friday (Aug 9, 2013)

Troj said:


> Friday, if you haven't already, you need to also read _Grandville._



Added to my reading list, especially since it's on Kindle, it seems 

Also, guys, I'm sensing a pattern here: People only like reading well-written stories! XD On that note, I'm going to create a new thread...


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 9, 2013)

Sasya said:


> Goodness.  Rather cynical lot, aren't we?



You clearly haven't been hanging around the forums for long.  Honestly, I'm surprised this has been as tame as it has been so far.  The last one of these got about five people essentially saying, "No, there is no such thing as good furry fiction."  It depressed the Bloc regulars enough many of them logged out and haven't been back since.


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## Friday (Aug 9, 2013)

M. LeRenard said:


> You clearly haven't been hanging around the forums for long.  Honestly, I'm surprised this has been as tame as it has been so far.  The last one of these got about five people essentially saying, "No, there is no such thing as good furry fiction."  It depressed the Bloc regulars enough many of them logged out and haven't been back since.



That's really frustrating, on a variety of levels. There is such a good thing as good furry fiction. However, it's for the most part not going to be found on this site for free. The system of visual art being commissioned AND put up here free allows good artists to ply their trade and get publicity, but since writing is rarely commissioned, and when it is it's not necessarily displayed, combines to create an issue where there's little to no incentive for good writers to put their work up here. It's also a lot more scary in terms of plagiarism; visual art is much harder to rip off, whereas written word can be altered easily and passed as one's own. On the reader's end, it's also difficult to trawl through hundreds of stories looking for quality writers due to the time it takes. It's much easier to do this for the visual arts.

These factors combine to make it rare to see good furry fiction on these sites. With that experience, people are rarely willing to take a chance to buy furry fiction from published authors. I don't anyone would be disappointed by Kyell Gold's work (Waterways is fantastic, and needs to be furry for the story to work), but most people will never get that far due to the combination of factors above.

I will definitively say that there is such a thing as high-quality and well-written furry fiction. Individual tastes dictate 'good,' but most published furry fiction I've read from Sofawolf and Furplanet is of better quality than many published, popular books.


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 9, 2013)

It's discouraging, more than anything, and it's one of the reasons I try to write furry stuff for more general audiences, and submit my works to non-furry magazines more frequently than furry ones.  It feels like with the furry audience, 70% of readers want smut, 1% are other furry writers who read your stuff mostly out of a sense of empathy, and the other 29% just write off all furry fiction regardless as junk not worth the investment it would take to read it (like Toraneko up there).  And I feel worse for the furry publishing houses that are struggling with this type of bias; it's true that pretty much every publishing agency affiliated with the fandom puts out quality work, but good luck getting people to realize that when their only experience with furry fiction is some shitty fetish piece written by a 12 year old and posted to FA.  Like, when people realize they have to _pay money_ to read books or stories published by these agencies, they immediately turn away and say "Well, all furry writing is crap anyway."  And then the publishers die and all that's left is shitty fetish writing on FA, thus fulfilling the prophecy, if you know what I mean.

But maybe I'm just grumpy.


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## Friday (Aug 10, 2013)

I get what you mean, and I share the frustration. It's even harder to be a writer without a community of other writers encouraging you and giving advice, and as you pointed out, the supremely negative attitude and outright disinterest from the general community makes it difficult to maintain one.

It's too bad FA can't do like a 'Best of' weekly vote for like the top 5 most popular piece on FA this week, writing/art/music, perhaps filterable by content or whatever. That way, people looking for quality general furry stories can just look there.


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## Aleu (Aug 10, 2013)

Friday said:


> It's too bad FA can't do like a 'Best of' weekly vote for like the top 5 most popular piece on FA this week, writing/art/music, perhaps filterable by content or whatever. That way, people looking for quality general furry stories can just look there.


Why not make it here? Not like in this thread but faf in general


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## Friday (Aug 10, 2013)

Who would I even go about talking to to suggest that feature? Or do you mean just like create a thread for it?


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## Taralack (Aug 10, 2013)

I would say a subforum dedicated to it would be good, but something like that would inevitably only attract the conventional favourites, which would just become another one of those "let's see how popular this person is" contests.

Then again, considering FAF is not as hugbox-y as the other big furry forums, that might not happen.


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## Aleu (Aug 10, 2013)

Toraneko said:


> I would say a subforum dedicated to it would be good, but something like that would inevitably only attract the conventional favourites, which would just become another one of those "let's see how popular this person is" contests.
> 
> Then again, considering FAF is not as hugbox-y as the other big furry forums, that might not happen.


Could be a rule for no repeat posts and no advertising your own stuff. -shrug-


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## Friday (Aug 10, 2013)

Aleu said:


> Could be a rule for no repeat posts and no advertising your own stuff. -shrug-



Hrm. Maybe a weekly program where you submit your stuff for consideration, but any individual can only submit once a month? I'd be happy to read/be a judge for that. It's also possible that perhaps it could be separated by genre in some way?

There are a lot of things to consider. I think I'm going to talk to M. LeRenard about this. M. LeRenard, expect a PM about it


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## Aleu (Aug 10, 2013)

Friday said:


> Hrm. Maybe a weekly program where you submit your stuff for consideration, but any individual can only submit once a month? I'd be happy to read/be a judge for that. It's also possible that perhaps it could be separated by genre in some way?
> 
> There are a lot of things to consider. I think I'm going to talk to M. LeRenard about this. M. LeRenard, expect a PM about it


That'd be pretty awesome. It'd be a good way to get writers some attention and see examples of some good stories :3


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## M. LeRenard (Aug 10, 2013)

I just realized, here's all us writers again complaining about how hard life is.  People probably think we're a bunch of whiners. ;-)

I was thinking, if you guys want, you can start a new thread about this new writing contest idea (or whatever it is).  We can certainly give it a shot and see how it goes, and if it looks promising, refine it later.


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## Nikolinni (Aug 10, 2013)

M. LeRenard said:


> I just realized, here's all us writers again complaining about how hard life is.  People probably think we're a bunch of whiners. ;-)
> 
> I was thinking, if you guys want, you can start a new thread about this new writing contest idea (or whatever it is).  We can certainly give it a shot and see how it goes, and if it looks promising, refine it later.



Maybe it might get me to get motivated to write some stories. Maybe, I dunno.


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## Friday (Aug 10, 2013)

I'm creating the thread now. I'm going to set forth a set of rules, give people a day or two to look over them and see if they have any suggestions for reworks of them, then open it for submissions. Also, anyone who's interested in participating as a judge, let me know.


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## Poetigress (Aug 11, 2013)

And since the contest is limited to new works, if anyone knows of older stories that deserve attention, there's always the Recommended Reading thread that I created a few years back, up there in the sticky posts. It doesn't get a lot of attention (probably because the rules say you have to recommend somebody else's story instead of pimping your own work), but it is still there.

http://forums.furaffinity.net/threads/36790-Recommended-Reading

Also, if you're looking for furry fiction that's worth reading, a good starting place is with stories and novels from the various members of the Furry Writers' Guild. You have to have had work published (not just posted to FA or the like) to be listed as a member, so generally speaking, the authors listed tend to be producing works of higher quality than just the average work posted to FA at any given time. 

If you click on the names, many of us list FA/SoFurry/etc profiles in our bios.

The member list: https://sites.google.com/site/thefurrywritersguild/the_writers


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## shetira (Aug 22, 2013)

Replying to OP's question:

Yes there are readers to be had on FA. But (and this is a big but), if you want the most attention you have to write what they want to read, not necessarily what you may want to write. For those of us who write within a particular niche because it's within our own areas of interest, that isn't that big a deal. Otherwise, you may find it rather dissatisfying. So you have to really decide who it is you want to write for: you or the audience.

If you want to write for you and post it because you can, don't be bothered at all by how much attention it gets. If you want to write for the audience, you have to pick your intended audience first and do a bit of looking around to see exactly what that audience seems to like. Either way, make sure the grammar is at least decent, it's proofread for basic errors (tbh, not my strong point *slaps self in face*) and you know the difference between its and it's (my biggest pet peeve). And don't write a 'furry' story. Write a story about people who just happen to be furry in nature or who become furry in nature.

When you post it's best to have a teaser (ie. the sort of thing you'd find on the back cover of a hardcopy) for the story at the front of your description rather than just some generic banter about why you wrote it, who the characters are or what the weather is outside. That catches people's eye when they might otherwise just pass the submission over when they're browsing. Then make sure you have a full list of keywords that accurately represents the nature of your story. That way it can show up more often in searches and thus reach a wider audience. If you can, make a thumbnail image that will show up rather than the default story icon. It can be simply a flat background with the title as text or something nicer. Almost anything catches the eye better than the default. And then, you just have to see what happens. It's pretty hit or miss.

Personally, I'd rather have a dozen misses that lead me to improve than one hit on something bad that suggests I can stagnate. So have your misses and learn from them. Have your hits and enjoy them. But if you want to write... write! And then write some more! After all, the real fun is in creating. ^.^


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## Raspberry (Sep 9, 2013)

From what I've seen, no. 

If you're on a site like Deviantart or Furaffinity, a site where the main focus is visual art, no one is gonna read your stories. Places like FF.net and Archive of Our Own, writer sites, have it much better. 

It's much easier to create a quick idea by glancing at a picture than it is to read a chunk of a story.


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