Trinary

Its said the two most important elements of writing are characters and story/plot. Have you read stories that had great characters but an uninspired or even bad story, or had bad characters in a good storyline?

One thing I've always wanted to try is make readers sympathize with a villian.

In other words, make them sympathize with you?

Write the story you want to write, and let people judge it how they will.

But on the other end of the spectrum, doesn't that attitude also play into a lot of first-time fanfic writers who are convinced that they've written the equivalent of Shakespeare and anyone who disagrees just doesn't "get it"? I understand not wanting to re-write your story to appease your readers, but if you write a scene or a story to get across an idea and most of your readers are not getting that idea, doesn't that mean you should take that into account? Where's the line between following your own vision and just having ones head up their BEEP?

Do you think there's any sort of bias towards longer or shorter stories? Short stories (especially comedies or tragedies) tend to get a lot of promotion on, say, Equestria Daily and get a huge number of readers. At the same time, sometimes it feels like longer stories can't attract readers outside of a hardened fanbase who were on board when you started writing. There are exceptions like Past Sins or Fall Out Equestria, but those were some of the earliest major, well-written works in the fandom. Do you agree/disagree?

Trinary is an awful writer, and you shouldn't read anything he writes. Ever. 

 

Not even the guest chapter he did for Tales. Or all the awesome stories he wrote that I helped him with. 

Exactly! Just like any time you see Chen crossing the street, you should totally never ever ever break for him.

If you wanted to highlight other MLP fanfiction authors who should get more attention who would you recommend?

(And no, that isn't a request for shameless self promotion. Although if you -really- wanted to....)

What is your favorite fanfic? And what is your favorite fic written by your co-panelists? (i.e. Chen what is your favorite story by Comma and Poni, Comma what is your favorite Chen and Poni fics, etc.)

En versus em, space versus unspaced; what is your preferred implementation of the dash?

The best implementation of the dash is Rainbow Dash. Duh.

Do you have trouble writing for a shared continuity?

What was the most cringeworthy mistake you ever made in writing your MLP stuff (grammar/spelling, plot point, mischaracterization, etc.)?

For any/all of you: which members of the Mane Six (or the other characters who tend to get the most focus in the show) do you have the easiest and hardest time writing for?

For all three of you monkeys: what scene (from any of your stories) did you have the most fun writing and working on?