As a writer who can barely draw straight lines I, of course, think that writing gets short shrift on Furtopia and other sites. Artwork gets two forums to writing's one (and the writing forum isn't even really a writing forum, it's a "technique" forum); a furry picture is what you see when you load the front page. I've been reflecting on ways to redress the balance at least partially.
I think part of the problem is that a potential reader, coming across a page with links to stories, doesn't really have any idea what's on the other side of the link - what sort of story it is, how long it is, whether it's legible even. All that's needed to display art, on the other hand, is a thumbnail or a sample image. Artwork takes a few seconds to appreciate; writing takes minutes or hours or longer.
I propose the following. Writers should have the option, at least, of submitting with their work a sample of limited size, similar to the "blurb" one might find on the back cover of a book or on the flyleaf. In a matter similar to the parade of sample artwork that greets you when you load up Furtopia's front page, display on the writing forum, above the list of writers, one of these sample paragraphs at random. A new one per day, perhaps. Thus someone coming to the furry writing forum could actually get a sense, in a few seconds, of what this featured story was like and maybe actually want to keep reading.
I would love to see this idea enacted more generally; it's something I'm planning on instituting on my personal site when I get around to it. It would be pleasant, for example, to do the following: for each writer on the list that Furtopia maintains, provide a link not only to the writer's personal page but to a sample gallery, maintained by Furtopia and not left to the individual writer, that would contain at least one of these "blurbs" I'm taking about. Basically, ever writer who submitted a short sample to be advertised on Furtopia it would get a chance to have it displayed. (To be fair I think a similar feature would be nice for artists as well - link to a small gallery of thumbnails.)
