Reviews

by Golden Vision

Rating: everyone
Tags: Adventure, Tragedy, Human
Length: 30810

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This is where I put reviews and things. Woohoo.

Published 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC
Last updated 2014-01-23 19:07:55 UTC

"A Dragon's Path"

Note: The story for which this review was intended has since been deleted.

Hi there! I’m Golden Vision of WRITE, and I’ll be your reviewer today. I hope that this review will be both enjoyable and informative.

In the absence of any other place to start, let’s begin with the synopsis—the cornerstone of every story’s readership.

The synopsis of a fic is the harbinger of the literary prowess to come; however, the synopsis of A Dragon’s Path contains a number of spelling, grammatical, and syntactical errors that make it difficult to read.

Spike a lone dragon has finally found his true family but will he go with his brother and learn the ways of the Dragon or stay with his friends in ponyvilie. And will his journey be fruitful or will he regret going on this journey into the unknown.

should be:

Spike, a lone dragon, has finally found his true family, but will he go with his brother and learn the ways of the Dragon, or stay with his friends in Ponyville? Will his journey be fruitful, or will he regret going on this journey into the unknown?

(Mechanical fixes have been underlined. The most frequent mistake was a missing comma)

Although the synopsis may appear to require the least effort on the author’s part, it is often the most important when attracting and retaining an audience. Readers want to feel invested in your story—in the world that you plan to create—and an abundance of mechanical or other errors can break that immersion before it’s even had the chance to form. Like it or not, the synopsis is a reader’s first taste of a story, and an un-edited one is the easiest way to completely turn off a large base of your potential readership.

On the surface, this sounds like an interesting concept. Somewhat along the lines of Dragon Quest, it offers us a chance to delve more deeply into Spike’s character: his past, his future, and his sense of belonging. Most often, that link to dragonhood comes in the form of a parent—more commonly a mother—so a brother’s presence may provide a more unique aspect to the storytelling process.

Delving into the first chapter, Encounters of the Brotherly Kind, it quickly becomes apparent that this fic’s opening resembles what is called a “weather report”. Although a weather report is most often used in the context of a phrase such as:

”It was a beautiful day in Ponyville. The birds were chirping, Celestia’s sun was warm, and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky.

We can most clearly see the equivalence with A Dragon’s Path by comparing this example to ADP’s opening sentence:

It was your average day in Ponyville…

A major problem with weather reports is their descriptive nature. While another fic may describe the weather and surrounding geography, and ADP may instead choose to lay out everypony’s current activities, the fact that this is a very passive description of a scene weakens its ability to draw a reader in.

As with the synopsis, the “hook” of a story is most often the opening sentence and/or paragraph. It’s popular to use, for this hook, an action scene—in media res, the act of throwing a reader right into the middle of the plot, is fairly well-known in this context—a piece of dialogue (preferably engaging and relevant to the plot)—or some other piece of prose that grabs the reader’s attention and doesn’t let go.

It’s most often undesirable to have a weather report opening because it fails to accomplish a hook’s stated goals. A reader may come into a story expecting sunny weather, or expecting Pinkie Pie to be baking or babysitting; however, that’s not what they came for. These are generic, stock actions, and so can disregarded. In this story’s case, readers open the first chapter to join Spike on his journey of self-discovery; consequently, the story should begin with a situation relevant to that premise in order to properly repay those readers who have given you their time.

There are also a number of mechanical problems present on the first page alone: punctuation mistakes, spelling errors, repetitive vocabulary, and missing semicolons and commas. For a reader who may have ignored similar mistakes in the synopsis, their presence on the very first page may only serve to further dissuade their continued enjoyment of this fic.

Further on, a multitude of dialogue errors become apparent. For example:

"Yaa, a really goo but befor he could finsh his sarcastic comment…. (*Burp*)."

should be:

”Yeah, a really goo—” Before he could finish his sarcastic comment, a loud burp echoed through the room.

Note that proper punctuation—such as an em-dash and closing quotation marks—have been added to this piece of dialogue, while the action following that dialogue has been separated into its own sentence. Note also that the action has been described in more depth, and as a complete sentence. Normally, the direct enunciation of sounds such as burping, crunching, or other noticeable noises is looked down upon in prose; however, if an author must, it’s most common to do so with simple italics, and with the addition of an exclamation point if necessary. Thus, in the absence of better description:

(*Burp*)

becomes:

Burp!

Moving on, it’s slightly confusing as to why Twilight’s book is of any import. It’s a fairly generic Twilight think to have present, but unless The Art of Organization is relevant to the upcoming story, it may well be better to open up with a different situation.

that's weird it's bright red scroll with the royal seal; must be important

It’s a bit odd that Spike would find this manner of mail strange and Celestia is (presumably) their only regular contact; thus, they’d probably be used to receiving royal missives (as in The Ticket Master, Dragonshy, and Return of Harmony). Therefore, Spike would be more likely to recognize it as:

“It’s mail from Celestia!”

and less likely to give a full physical description, which is better suited to more objective narration.

Relevantly, it’s not yet apparent whose point of view this story is from, yet. I would guess Spike, but we’ve seen nothing yet of his inner monologue, thoughts, or perceptions; it seems that the writing style focuses more on scene-wide actions and dialogue than any one character’s perspective. While that may not be an intrinsically bad choice for a story, it does make it a bit more difficult for the reader to connect with the characters on an emotional level.

Just quickly, good job on leaving out the final quotation mark before reading the letter’s text (same character speaking, new paragraph, and so on). Not many authors remember that—it can be a fairly little-known grammatical rule—so good work there.

It’s an interesting thought for the dragons to be migrating out-of-season. Upon reading that, my mind immediately jumped to what could have caused this—some kind of domestic political dispute? A new villain or monster so terrifying that even dragons are running from them? Whatever it is, it’s an eye-catching concept. However, at this stage in the story, I can’t help but wonder whether it might be more effective for the first chapter to open with the arrival of these dragons, such as with:

Twilight Sparkle’s world was covered in scales.

Rubbing her eyes to make sure that she wasn’t still asleep, she pushed the curtain aside and peered out of the window once again. Sure enough, they were still there: long, reptilian tails, elongated snouts with sharp fangs, horns and wings that stretched farther than most ponies’ bodies…

...and of course, scales. Scales everywhere.

It’s not the most well-written opening, but it should get across the basic idea: that Twilight is waking up to a surprising event ( Ponyville being covered by dragons). From here, we can go into (perhaps) a letter to or from Celestia, or an interface with the dragons. Perhaps something like this happens a few pages down the line, and I’m merely taking issue with things that aren’t there (though the hook still needs much improvement).

Moving right along.

Should Celestia’s letter remain in the next draft, I will say that it does its job—exposition—fairly well, excepting the numerous mechanical mistakes peppering it like much of the surrounding prose. Twilight’s reaction, however, comes a bit too quickly—the reader sees very little of her actual reaction, as she immediately rushes out the door to go accomplish her next goal. There’s very little characterization here; Twilight’s dialogue and actions comes across as a means to an end (that is, moving the plot along), rather than purporting to illustrate her thought process and/or emotional state in any meaningful way.

This pacing is a problem for the rest of the scene (short as it may be). There’s very little description of what her actual journey is, and though a scene-cut through telling or expository information can be useful, the writing here is too short and choppy to make up for it. In much the same vein, there’s precious little description to go along with this change in scene. Where is Rainbow Dash? Outside of Sugarcube Corner? On a cloud above Ponyville? How does she react to Twilight’s approach or actions?

There’s a definite lack of visual information here—both of the surrounding area and of each pony’s body language and/or actions—and that can be damaging to a reader’s immersion. After all, unlike in a naturally visual medium like television or film, writing needs to convey that same imagery through words instead of pixels.

"RAINBOW DASH!"

"HU-WHAT!

Do be advised that it’s a very unpopular decision to use capslock in almost any situation. Italics are much preferred, along with exclamation marks (which you have here) or speech tags corresponding to loud, explosive dialogue (i.e. “shouted,” “hollered,” or “exclaimed”).

Another problem within the text is the overuse of descriptors or epithets to refer to characters instead of their name or a pronoun. This particular issue is colloquially known as “Lavender Unicorn Syndrome.” For example, it’s largely preferable to use “Twilight” or “Twilight Sparkle” to refer to that particular character rather than “the purple mare.” There are several reasons for this—I would direct you to Ezn’s Guide, on the FimFic FAQ for a more thorough explanation—but the most important one is that it detracts from your prose. Longer, clunky epithets take the place of what should be a simple name (or pronoun, if you’ve recently referred to that character), and so can cause the reader to stumble over words that should just flow automatically. Although it may seem necessary to avoid overuse of a character’s name, as long as the writer takes note of which character has last appeared, the use of pronouns should void any feeling of repetition that may otherwise appear.

It is, of course, possible to use epithets in some cases—and at times even necessary—but only when strictly relevant or significant. For example, it would be a rare time when “the cyan pegasus” became useful, but far more common is to refer to Celestia (in Twilight’s point of view) as “her mentor,” or “the princess.” Epithets and descriptors can be a necessary way to paint a certain picture in the reader’s mind, but because they can be so blunt in their purpose, it’s recommended that they be used sparingly.

As a quick aside, the most common scene cut convention on FimFic is to use the {hr} BBCode tag, which provides for a simple horizontal line (plus appropriate spacing) between distinct scenes.

Scene 1 [ hr ] Scene 2

Removing the spaces between the brackets and the words, this becomes:

Scene 1

Scene 2

Keep that in mind. It’s a much cleaner way of doing things.

As the next scene progresses, it becomes clear that there’s an overabundance of both speech tags and adverbs. We’ll get to the latter problem in a moment.

Speech tags are, put simply, verbs that are used to illustrate dialogue. They include (but are not limited to) words such as: said, stated, questioned, replied, shouted, and whispered. The most common of these is said, and it’s common for a reason. Due to its simplicity, it’s a very plain, vanilla word that can be used often without too many problems. A writer need not worry about repetition with such words—with similar words including “he,” she,” “they,” “the,” and “and”—and so it’s often preferable to re-use “said” a few times rather than to constantly switch around terms, using vocabulary such as “stated,” “questioned” (in place of “asked,” which is a similarly vanilla verb), or “mentioned.”

With that said, this fic has an overabundance of those “variety” words. The following:

...like when a bear asked Fluttershy to watch his cave for a week," Rainbow Dash stated.

would be better served by the replacement of “stated” by “said,” as follows:

...like when a bear asked Fluttershy to watch his cave for a week," Rainbow Dash said.

Note that I’ve removed the adverb “bluntly,”  which was previously modifying the word “stated.” With “bluntly” specifically, it’s more common to represent that same descriptor or idea through body language or tone rather than an adverb. In general, though, it’s commonly considered bad practice to use adverbs any more than strictly necessary. If at all possible, it’s greatly preferred to use body language (to express the same idea or tone), or simply a better, more descriptive and relevant word.

This is part of a larger debate on Show, Don’t Tell (which we may well get to later) in which it’s better to show a reader a picture than to tell them what it’s a picture of. Words paint pictures, after all, and it’s much nicer to see the picture than to merely get the headline. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the inverse is true as well, and an author is only cheating themselves if they choose to directly give the reader that information rather than illustrate its existence.

As a quick example, take the following:

”Get out of here!” Rainbow Dash said angrily.

So, be this piece of dialogue (and associated verb), we know that Rainbow Dash is angry. However, we know this only on an intellectual level—there’s no actual emotional investment or belief that she really is upset. Instead, like children, the readers are told to accept this at face value. This is a practice that can harm immersion; thus, it’s better to expand upon the action. How might we do so?

”Get out of here!” Rainbow Dash snarled. She bared her teeth, pawing at the ground. She flipped her mane out of her eyes and glared.

Those parts meant to show Dash’s anger have been bolded. As we saw earlier, one way to replace adverbs is to simply use a stronger verb—in this case, snarled is an excellent way to convey that feeling of scathing, sudden irritation or rage. Additionally, to deepen this image of anger, examples of body language allow the reader to construct a more cohesive picture of what this “angry Rainbow Dash” looks like, thus enhancing believability. She bares her teeth and glares, which give us the clear image of a maddened pegasus who is not to be crossed.

Let’s take a moment to step back and look at some of the possible improvements we’ve discussed. They include:

—Lavender Unicorn Syndrome (the overuse of epithets)

—Speech Tag Variation

—Adverb Overuse

—Show, Don’t Tell (Body Language)

To apply these all at once, let’s take an excerpt from the fic and see how they work:

Original Version

"Eep!" goes a yellow pegasus at the mere thought of giant, flying reptiles

"So what Twi, all kinds of animals do stuff out of the ordinary stuff once in a while, like when a bear asked Fluttershy to watch his cave for a week," Rainbow Dash stated bluntly.

Revised Version

Fluttershy let out a high-pitched squeal. When Twilight turned to look at her, Fluttershy's hooves were held tightly over her eyes, head pressed against the ground. Twilight nearly facehooved. I thought she’d grown out of this ages ago.

Rainbow Dash groaned. With a twist of her hoof, she shoved Fluttershy's hooves away from her face and pulled her upright. "Oh, c'mon. They're just a bunch of fat ol' lizards." Fluttershy whimpered.

Dash turned back to face Twilight, who raised a skeptical eyebrow. "And so what? All kinds of animals do stuff out of the ordinary once in a while."

In the revised version, we've done a few things:

1.) Corrected spelling/grammatical errors to improve readability

2.) Changed examples of Lavender Unicorn Syndrome to full names or pronouns where appropriate

3.) Expanded told emotions to shown body language (e.g. groaning, hiding, etc).

4.) Provided the narrative with a concrete point of view (Twilight’s)

The fourth point is something that I’d like to address further. For most of the story thus far, the perspective has been that of an objective cameraman, watching the scene but without giving insight into any one character’s thoughts or perceptions. While this is a valid way to write a story, A Dragon’s Path would likely benefit from a more concrete form of the third-person perspective, in which each scene is narrated from the point of view of a specific character. This specific character may be Twilight, Spike, or whoever the author believes to be the most interesting or relevant to that particular scene.

In the example above, as you can see, I’ve chosen Twilight. Through her inner monologue—that is, her direct thoughts—we can see the situation through her eyes, gaining a better appreciation for her perspective while also becoming more immersed into the story. Similarly, when Twilight “raises a skeptical eyebrow,” we’re able to add in the adjective “skeptical” because we can see the emotion and reasoning behind her actions. By writing—or rewriting—a story in third person limited, then, an author can allow the reader to feel as though they’re standing in Twilight’s shoes—or horseshoes, as it may be—thus enhancing the reading experience.

Moving back to the story proper, Dash’s question about naming the dragons seems more than a bit odd. Most dragons in FiM canon already have their own, given names, so it makes little sense that Rainbow Dash would want to give them new ones. Furthermore, she’s shown very little interest in dragonkind as a species before, so her sudden enthusiasm in the subject is also strange.

Similarly, there appears to be no clear reason as to why Twilight would require another trench. They know that the dragons are approaching, but there’s no reason to suspect that they would land in any predictable location, much less the same plot of land as last time. It may be unwise to give the task of warning the town to Pinkie—a pony known for her ability to skimp out on “small” (i.e. important) details. Why not give that job to Applejack instead, a pony widely known for her communication skills?

As reflected in Twilight’s revised inner monologue earlier, Fluttershy’s attitude here is quite out of character (OOC). Even in Dragon Quest she only displayed an extreme reluctance to approach any dragons, and that was nothing compared to the apparent terror she feels hear. In any case, she gets over this fear so quickly (in the space of a paragraph) that its presence makes little to no sense—it’s barely a pebble, let alone a roadbump or actual conflict. It’s resolved to quickly to actually mean anything. Were this story actually about Fluttershy, this problem could actually be elevated to a meaningful character arc or plotline, but as this fic is about Spike, this fear only serves as a one-dimensional, temporary annoyance.

A scene break is missing between the “infodump session” and the dragons’ appearance. Furthermore, with all of the buildup after Celestia’s letter, we get to see precious little of the ponies’ actual preparation, which is somewhat odd. As a technical note, it’s uncommon to write out the numbers of dates or times (seven o’clock in the morning, or seven A.M. is the norm, rather than 7:00). The same is true for standard, everyday numbers (i.e. “two” instead of “2”).

Rarity’s eruption over the dragon’s supposed “beauty” is very odd, especially considering that she’s been in a similar situation before (Dragon Quest) and didn’t react in that way at all.

The transition from “reactions to dragons” to “the day going by” is nonexistent. This is a scene that needs further development greatly—the readers are expected to jump from “terrified ponies” to “ponies studying dragons” without so much as a hesitation. Although pacing can be a difficult concept to master, in a situation as basic as this, good or bad pacing between and throughout scenes can make or break a story. Transitions are a necessary concept in any piece of writing; otherwise, the reader can feel lost—as though they’ve been unceremoniously dumped from one idea to another.

Quite a bit of the narration in this section suffers from an overly-colored voice, which stands out all the more due to the objective narration that preceded it. Take the following sentences:

took like an hour just to get Fluttershy calm enough to faint

I mean this thing was huge just to help me put it into perspective one wing from the tip to its base equaled the entire Canterlot mountain from tunnels underneath to tip of the tallest tower and I repeat that is one wing!

Grammatical objections aside, the sudden shift to a familiar, colloquial—and first person, even, in the second quote—way of speaking is extremely disturbing to the reader’s sense of immersion. To read through a story, fanfiction or no, a consistency in narration is required. A familiar, first person tone is possible—Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn pulls this off with flair—but in this story, where the established voice is that of a third-person, emotionally distant narrator, there can be few things more turbulent than a shift such as this.

Going back to pacing, there really isn’t enough in between “settling down to observe” and “giant dragon appears” to convince the reader that the two things didn’t just happen in close proximity to one another (chronologically speaking). These scenes feel too rushed—too abridged—to really give the reader a proper sense of time throughout.

As a momentary aside, it’s somewhat puzzling as to why the Mane Six would spend their time observing and “naming” the dragons when Celestia’s original request was to discover the reason for their untimely migration. Why not interview one of the smaller dragons? Why not take specific notes on one of the more unfamiliar species, and cross-reference that with Twilight’s knowledge of dragonkind? There are many avenues that could make sense in this scenario, and unfortunately, Celestia’s letter comes off more as an excuse than a rationale insofar as it propels the plot forward.

And now we come to the pivotal point of the first chapter: the arrival of the dragon. As the final scenes of Chapter One seem to go together, thematically, the dragon in question must be addressed as a whole, rather than piece by piece.

one wing from the tip to its base equaled the entire Canterlot mountain from tunnels underneath to tip of the tallest tower and I repeat that is one wing! Its claws made as long and thick as red woods and teeth that shone almost as bright as the sun. Its scales where colored like blue lighting, claws that could easily hold all of Ponyvile with room to spare.

Going by scale alone, the idea that a dragon of this size could possibly exist is ridiculous; the idea that it could land in or near Ponyville with completely obliterating the surrounding countryside and the town itself entirely inane, if not impossible. Ignoring the objections to its biological feasibility—when discussing dragons, “because magic” can occasionally be an acceptable answer—the collateral damage alone would be immense: unfathomable, even. A beast of this size, travelling at such a speed, would not create a “moderately sized crater”; it would bring about a localized extinction event!

Furthermore, moving onto the “humanoid” version, the description is largely incoherent, and reminiscent of many an amateur’s introduction of an OC. Now, introducing a character can be difficult—tone, atmosphere, and physical appearance are all things that must be weighed and considered—but here, the impression given to the reader is a sense of self-importance that drags the quality of this OC down.

Let’s take a quick look at this dragon’s introduction.

As the dust settled a dragon of 8ft stood in the middle of the creator in a way it looked a bit like Garble but radiated power and wisdom much greater then Princess Celestia could ever have. He wore camo pants with a black sleeveless-t and a sleeveless black trench coat on top of his head was spiky Wight hair sticking straight back and a horn from his forehead that went up a few inches before going parallel to his muzzle.

Once again, ignoring the concentration of spelling errors and grammatical mistakes, this description gets quite a few things wrong:

1.) It compares a new character to an existing character. Namely, Garble. There’s no better way to break immersion in a story than to refer explicitly to a person or object outside of the scene during a third-person, objective narrative. If it were Twilight or Spike comparing him in their heads—and if this were a more personal account, and if either of them actually recalled his name—then it might work, but here, the comparison just falls apart.

2.) It compares an OC to a canon character, and suggests that they are superior to that canon character. This is easily the biggest misstep. Princess Celestia is the closest thing that canon has to a god (capital G or not), and regardless of that fact, she’s indisputably the most coolheaded, regal, and powerful being we’ve met (perhaps excepting Discord re: the last point). Saying that a character—and especially your specific OC—is superior to a canon character in something that said canon character is canonically the best at is an incredibly huge misstep. It’s a classic problem with self-inserts and Mary Sues—it’s like saying that your pegasus OC can fly faster than Rainbow Dash and do three Sonic Rainbooms in a row while making three hurricanes,—oh, and by the way, he’s also an alicorn. This is a clear and, sadly, widespread problem in the fandom, and one that any aspiring author should take great care to avoid.

3.) It gives the character unrealistic physical characteristics. Excepting the “larger than Canterlot Mountain” description from thirty seconds ago, there are quite a few points here that should raise red flags for any careful author. Most ponies don’t wear clothes, and from Dragon Quest, it’s quite apparent that no dragons do. “Camo pants,” “sleeveless t-shirts,” and “black trench coats” are inventions of 20th century Earth, and almost definitely not something that an Equestrian dragon would wear—and especially not the fashion of choice for a being “wiser than Princess Celestia.” And white hair? Dragons don’t have hair, or even fur of any kind. I mean no offense, but this entire description comes off as an author’s wish-fulfillment fantasy of “what would look really cool on my awesome OC.”

Those are the main three problems here. Let’s move on.

The dragon’s ability to follow the Mane Six and then break Twilight’s barrier with ease—Twilight being the Element of Magic and Celestia’s personal student—is also a hallmark of the classic Mary Sue. The fact that he’s so willing to assault a pony’s home, rather than approach them diplomatically (and without causing quite so much fear and panic) casts some very large doubts on the reader’s ability to sympathize or like him as a character, especially given the revelation that comes later. It’s also OOC; it’s unlikely that Spike is being held prisoner here, so what could this dragon possibly have to gain by effectively breaking into Twilight’s house? In the words of Nanny McPhee, he did knock, but that’s effectively nullified by the fact that he had to so thoroughly terrify the ponies beforehand.

The dragon’s first few words to the Mane Six do very little to establish him as a character. Perhaps he’s portrayed as being “polite,” but this is in stark contrast to his prior actions. Furthermore, he jumps right into things without even introducing himself or apologizing for scaring them. This comes off less as a character moment than a piece of clumsy writing—it would seem that the story is trying to “get to the plot” at the expense of characterization, setting, and good prose. This scene is incredibly rushed, and as it’s the climax of the chapter—and thus the story thus far—needs to be the most well-developed scene of all, which is why its actual execution is so disappointing.

To end the chapter, the reader sees him crying and embracing Spike, calling him “brother.” Though instantly recognizing some long-lost sibling is no more contrived than the average Disney/Pixar film, it’s quite the odd thought to think that Spike (barely a hatchling) has a brother (“wiser and more powerful than Celestia”) who instantly knows who he is. There’s no suspension of disbelief here; this situation is completely unbelievable.

This review shan’t go into the second chapter, both because we’re already approaching five thousand words of review here, and because I suspect that I’ve given you enough to work on already. Now, for some words in conclusion.

I understand that English isn't your first language, but the grammar and overall mechanics of this piece are easily its biggest problems. Fix the spelling, fix the punctuation, and fix the syntax, and at the very least, this fic will be readable for the average viewer. After that, you’ll want to take a long, hard look at the characters involved. Are they believable? Are they enjoyable? Take a few minutes to really evaluate if Spike’s brother is a necessary OC, or just a self-insert Mary Sue. Then work on the pacing and the general concepts of storytelling, as I’ve outlined above; this comprises Show, Don’t Tell, Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, and similar ideas.

Once you’ve done all that, then you might have the makings of a story. For now, though, this fic needs a lot of work.

Grade: 0/10 Pinkies

Let me know if you have any questions, comments, or concerns regarding this review. I’d be more than happy to help.

Cheers!

Golden Vision

WRITE’s Pocket Spycrab

"The End of All That Was"

Link: The End of All That Was by Maphysto.

Hi there! I’m Golden Vision, and I’ll be your reviewer this evening. Please keep all limbs or other protruding organs inside of the car at all times. It’s going to be a bumpy ride, so hold on tight!.

In the introduction, there could have been quite a bit more detail in terms of what, exactly, Twilight was reading. The hook itself was nice, but “a particularly moving passage” and “stories of ponies long dead” don’t really make for a vivid picture in the reader’s eyes.

Below, she could hear Spike softly humming

Random nitpick, but you don’t really need “softly” here. Sorry. It was bothering me.

By page two, we’ve already had the plot thrust into our faces. This is where the reader is thrown roughly aside. Most stories go one of two ways; they either gradually introduce the plot that will drive the story (as in the Harry Potter series, whose first book takes a whopping four or so chapters to even mention wizardry), or they throw it at you all at once. The latter is known as a “cold open” that starts “in medias res.”

Here, however, neither is present. Because the plot is so quickly introduced, any effect of a more gradual hook is lost. Twilight’s reading habits seem irrelevant and pointless in the context of the larger story. The reader is thrown for a loop—what should they be concerned with? Where is this story going? Furthermore, such a quick introduction of the plot makes it impossible for there to be any setup; thus, the whole piece appears rough and forced, making it difficult for a reader to become invested in the story.

As a note on the plot itself, “Twilight receives a letter from Celestia detailing a problem in the kingdom” is an overused trope. It’s so everpresent, in fact, that it was also a major plot point in the last fanfic I reviewed. We’ve seen Celestia ask Twilight to run errands for her in the past—Dragonshy being the most stand-out example—but this method can hamper the development of the plot, making it difficult, once again, for the reader to become invested in it.

This is especially evident when a plot such as this appears; namely, one that has the potential to hit so close to home. Instead of opening with a scene in which Twilight goes from reading a book to reading a letter from her mentor, why not open with a scene in which Twilight (or another pony) is with Rainbow Dash (or another local pegasus) and watches the symptoms set in?

These symptoms also seem more than a bit...underwhelming. Chronic fatigue? Sure. Chronic fatigue as a result of overexertion? Unless the point of this story is that pegasi are perpetual motion machines, then this problem feels a bit self-evident. Perhaps the pegasi are nauseous and can’t stand the changes in pressure that come from changing altitudes. Perhaps their wings have become too weak to get them off the ground. Be more creative, more inventive, and above all—this is a disease—be harsh. Be as harsh and cruel as you see fit. This is a problem that needs to be solved, and unless there is a clear sense of urgency, then the reader’s attentions will not follow with the story’s.

Twilight giggled, patting Spike’s shoulder again. “Thanks, number one assistant

Another nitpick here, but I don’t think she really needs to call him that here. Just “Spike” should be fine.

Moving on, Twilight’s reflections on Celestia’s “secrecy” feels both very forced and very Told. This is the kind of thing that should come out naturally—as an explosion of rage toward another character, or through subtle hints of body language and facial expression—rather than through narration.

More nitpicks! If you’re going to focus on Twilight’s discomfort with being a princess, then give at least some focus to her experience flying up to the cloud. “Taking to the air with practiced grace” doesn’t really cut it; we need to really see from her perspective, to be drawn into her flight and to experience it alongside her. This is big stuff—she’s been stuck on the ground for the vast majority of her life—and more importantly, this is plot-relevant stuff. After all, in a story whose premise relies on a disease affecting flying ponies, why not give the readers a taste of what “flight” really means?

There seems to be a surplus of body language scattered throughout the dialogue here. It’s not a damning problem, but it’s a bit distracting all the same. For example, this:

“You really oughta fly more, Twi,” Rainbow said, leaning back into the cloud with a small puff of mist. “You’ve gotten a lot better at it, and it was fun helping you learn. Besides, there’s nothing better than feeling the wind in your mane.” She fluttered her wings, gazing at them. “I don’t know what I would do without these babies. Anyway, what was it you wanted to talk about?”

would read better as:

“You really oughta fly more, Twi,” Rainbow said. “You’ve gotten a lot better at it, and it was fun helping you learn. Besides, there’s nothing better than feeling the wind in your mane.” She fluttered her wings, gazing at them. “I don’t know what I would do without these babies. Anyway, what was it you wanted to talk about?”

In general, an author should only use body language in conjunction with dialogue when the insertion of said expression would enhance either the emotional state of one of the characters, the tension and/or atmosphere of the scene, or the overall plot. If something is relevant to a certain action (i.e. looking to one’s wings when referring to them, as above), then it may also be preferable to have body language in that particular section.

Moving toward pacing, the story thus far seems to lack a good flow, sacrificing immersion and scene buildup for ease of plot-building. While nowhere near egregious as some other stories, the overall effect is still one that can dissuade the reader from becoming too engaged with a scene that they may feel is little more than an excuse to move the plot along. In order to fix this, it’s advisable to expand upon more than just dialogue: internal narration or monologue, for example. This is Twilight’s PoV, after all, so give us more of an insight into her mind and perceptions (though without straying into outright “telling” of emotions and beliefs, which is an admittedly fine line to walk).

The prose should also develop its transitions further; as mentioned before, “taking to the air...and alighting...on [the] cloud” would become much more vivid and memorable of an action if the reader could experience that action in full, with both sensory detail and third-person perceptions. It doesn’t need to be too long—perhaps a paragraph or two—but if applied to other, similar actions (though certainly not every one), this change could do wonders for the pacing of each scene.

When Twilight asks Rainbow Dash about the sick pegasi, it’s a bit unclear why she wouldn’t be truthful with her. At the very least, we know that Twilight isn’t a very good liar. Let some of that concern seep through; give this segment some actual emotion in place of its casual discourse. That way, the reader feels more of an impact from the plot: the disease is no longer an abstract conception, but now a concrete idea that both affects characterization and is immediately apparent

Many of the lines in between scenes tend to straight-out “tell” things that the reader can already infer. Take the following:

Twilight glided back down to earth, suddenly feeling sure of herself once more. Perhaps Dash’s confidence had rubbed off on her. Soon she would speak with the ponies affected by this strange illness, and she had no doubt she could find a solution.

While this is certainly a reasonable shift in Twilight’s mindset, there’s no reason for it to be displayed so plainly here. I’ve been using the concept of “telling” throughout this review, so let me take a moment to explain what it is, and why it’s usually not something that you want in a story.

The basic idea is that it’s better to show a reader a picture than to tell them what it’s a picture of. Words paint pictures, after all, and it’s much nicer to see the picture than to merely get the headline. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the inverse is true as well, and an author is only cheating themselves if they choose to directly give the reader that information rather than illustrate its existence.

Thus, when an author wants to convey an idea through text—say, Twilight feeling more confident about her task—then that can be done through either “telling” or “showing.” The quote above is an example of the former: the narration directly informs the reader of her mental state, and the consequences thereof. However, let’s see what happened if instead we go about showing this information:

As Twilight descended back to the earth, she felt a strength in her wings, a sureness that hadn’t been there before. Her hooves touched the ground, and she squared her shoulders, a tight smile flickering across her face.

Next stop: Ponyville Hospital.

See the difference? This way, we get to indirectly see how Twilight is affected by her emotions. She “feels a strength in her wings”; she “squares her shoulders” to highlight her newfound confidence. The final line also conveys the idea that she’s about to confront or meet with the ponies infected by this illness while also getting across some of her inner monologue, which is a good way to shade or color the events of the story so that they can better see through the protagonist’s eyes. Altogether, showing thoughts, feelings, or decisions can contribute to a realer, more concrete, and overall more immersive reading experience.

As a quick technical note, I would advise you to use a different means of transitioning between scenes. The most common scene cut convention on FimFic is to use the {hr} BBCode tag, which provides for a simple horizontal line (plus appropriate spacing) between distinct scenes.

Scene 1

[ hr ]

Scene 2

Removing the spaces between the brackets and the words, this becomes:

Scene 1

Scene 2

Keep that in mind. It’s a much cleaner way of doing things.

I do like the way you’ve written Twilight’s list; it’s a clean piece of technical writing that gets the gist of the problem (along with her perspective toward it) rather well. To skip back in time for a bit, I also liked her conversation with Blossomforth; though I feel as though the pacing could have been improved, it was a concise piece of exposition that didn’t come across as unwieldy or overly-clunky.

Something that I like about this scene is the way you’ve conveyed Twilight’s inner monologue: her thoughts, as presented to the reader through narrative text. This does a very good job of both setting the scene and further establishing her character. As I mentioned earlier, however, I would recommend extending this technique to other parts of the chapter in order to avoid what can be called “the camera effect” (i.e. showing only external stimuli—dialogue, action, and scenery—and no internal reflection or deliberation).

Finally, back to the plot of the disease, I like the idea of pegasus magic being the main target. I honestly didn’t see that coming. However, I would have liked more foreshadowing—perhaps (as I mentioned before), the pegasi feel sick, or nauseous. Perhaps they can’t quite handle weather as well as usual, or their hooves slip right through cloud cover that they’re trying to put together. Perhaps stomping on a cloud for rain only brings lightning, and with no moisture to boot. Be creative! What different factors might pegasus magic have on its carriers, and what might its loss or weakening do to them outside of simple fatigue and/or stress?

Along with the need for more foreshadowing, I’d like to see more buildup of the disease. It feels as though Twilight is getting everything too easily: the letter, the interviews, the research, and now the discovery. Put some stumbling blocks in her path; keep her confused, keep her guessing. Readers don’t pick up a book to see how everything goes right for a protagonist—we’d don’t read to see a straight line. We want zig-zags, we want curves and swerves and ninety-degree turns. Confuse us a bit; lead us in circles. Don’t keep things quite so straightforward.

Nitpick time!

Rainbow nodded, folding her arms.

Horses don’t have arms. They have forelegs.

In the next scene, Rainbow Dash seems a bit...unconcerned about the situation; if anything, she seems more carefree than usual, teasing Twilight about her position and pushing aside a potential issue in favor of offering practice for “sweet tricks.” By all accounts (i.e. Hurricane Fluttershy), Dash is a caring leader who really does want the best for her team—she’s very loyal, as her Element would suggest (one of the most powerful interpretations of the idea of “loyalty to one’s subordinates” comes through in CyborgSamurai’s fic The Powers of Harmony—go read it if you haven’t had the chance.). Therefore, it’s hard to believe that she would just brush this problem off rather than do all in her power to take care of things. At the very least, we know that Rainbow is a workaholic; if things aren’t running at top efficiency, then she’s going to make sure that they get back up to speed in ten seconds flat.

As the chapter progresses, some of the more abridged scenes actually do quite well. The reader isn’t interested in seeing the full exchange with the doctors in Ponyville General Hospital, but it’s important to know the results nevertheless. Thus, good call on “telling” that scene rather than “showing” it to us in full; sometimes, time skips or pieces of narrative exposition can be useful. It’s all a matter of knowing when to use them.

Meanwhile, however, it’s important to keep in mind that every scene needs to have a purpose: a goal that it needs to accomplish. The next scene, in Carousel Boutique, feels out of place. It seems irrelevant, really, which can weaken the overall progression of the chapter. It’s filler—an aside—that doesn’t really have anything to do with the problem at hand. It may be a necessary stop, but it needs something to really make it pop in the reader’s mind, rather than a section that appears easy enough to skim over without really losing any comprehension.

You can delete it, of course. But why not expand it? Perhaps the Crusaders are there, and Rarity has her hooves full dealing with them—all except Scootaloo, of course. She’s at home, sick, and isn’t able to play with her friends; Sweetie or Applebloom provide details of her symptoms that enhance Twilight’s understanding of the disease, or else deepen the plot’s complexity. Or maybe Scootaloo is unaffected. Maybe there’s something different about her (as with Rainbow Dash) that Twilight can use to combat the disease. There are quite a few possibilities here, and it’d be a shame to see them go to waste.

Something that I’m noticing here is that you seem to lack transitions between some of your scenes, i.e. the ending of one scene fails to set up the following one. Take the ending of the Spike scene:

Twilight giggled once more. “Go enjoy your treat, Spike. I can take care of things for the rest of the night!”

This has very little to do with the beginning of the next scene, which starts thusly:

Rainbow Dash came through once again.

The reader needs a connection—a logical bridge—between these two pieces, especially given that the second scene begins with a phrase that would appear to refer to something set up earlier in the piece. In this case, readers need a clear road map—complete with signs—to lead them from scene to scene. The story can’t just airlift them across [ hr ] tags; there must be something to relate the two scenes before and after the transition. Something like this:

Twilight giggled once more. “Go enjoy your treat, Spike. I can take care of things for the rest of the night!”

As he retreated up the stairs, Spike paused midway, one stubby claw on his chin. “And what about tomorrow?” he asked.

“I guess we’ll see,” Twilight said.

(Emphasis mine. Added text has been bolded.)

This is a simplistic correction, and clearly far from the best that you could do with actual time and effort (both of which I currently lack). However, it should be evident how “tomorrow” and “I guess we’ll see” lead directly into the next scene. The reader now has a bridge, and so the flow of the story becomes much easier to follow.

In the next scene, I liked Fluttershy’s introduction to the story. However, I feel as though I wanted it to be in a different, better-established setting (perhaps she pulls Twilight aside through some bushes and into a clearing to do it in private. Perhaps she does it out there in the field, and by the end of it, everypony else is staring at her in obvious horror). Her breakdown was well done, but I found myself wanting more tension; more of a breakdown for the reader as a result of this. What is the impact of this event? What ramifications might it have? You don’t need to give us straight answers, but there needs to be more done toward the end of the scene to enhance this atmosphere of grief, horror, and foreboding.

Going onto Twilight’s next letter, I can’t quite believe that she would give up that easily. If anything, she would throw herself further into her work, foregoing sleep, food, and any creature comforts in order to find a properly magical solution to the problem. It feels out of character (OOC) for her to give up, just like that.

The reason behind this illness, Twilight, is that magic in Equestria is dying.

...And there we have it. The big conflict; the giant whammy. The huge twist that’s going to make everyone fall out of their seats as their jaws drop in amazement and confusion.

Yet again, though, Celestia’s status as a purveyor of exposition weakens the power of this revelation. Were it Twilight’s discovery, it would have much more weight, and could properly resound in the reader’s mind. As it is, Celestia feels like an encyclopedia, only popping up when more information is required. It cheapens the overall effect, and makes Twilight feel more like an accessory than an actual character.

Now, while the twist might appear to be a powerful one, there are also some problems with it. Let’s go through them, one by one.

1.) Why only the pegasi?

This should be self-evident. Note that the letter didn’t say “pegasus magic;” rather, it said all magic is dying. If that’s the case, then why are the pegasi the first to fall? Why not the unicorns, who clearly rely on arcane powers to an exponentially higher degree than the other two races? Why not the earth ponies, whose lost connection to nature magic would weaken their crop and corrupt their fields? Why not, even, creatures outside of Ponydom: Timberwolves, falling to pieces for want of an energy field to hold their bones together; dragons, finding that their fires are weakening, their wings tiring on long flights. This is huge. This is like waking up one morning and finding that gravity no longer exists. There’s got to be a larger impact than this, and using only the pegasi as a sample underplays the entire conflict.

2.) Why is magic dying?

Though we may find this out later, it’d be nice to have at least some foreshadowing. Thus far, we’ve only seen symptoms of this “disease.” We’ve avoided any other deviations from the plot, keeping instead to a direct, straight-line path to this conclusion that avoids giving the reader an opportunity to deepen their understanding of the situation at hand. The story reads from Point A to Point B—that is, Twilight’s research to Celestia’s inevitable proclamation—but it fails to leave any dangling plot threads that might lead to further revelations later on.

3.) There’s very little to set it up.

This may appear at first to be very similar to Number 1, but it goes beyond that. The story does a relatively good job of establishing the idea that the pegasi are losing their ability to fly—with Fluttershy’s segment as both a poignant and distressing example of a possible conclusion—but it never really brings up the specifics of pegasi magic, or how it may relate to the world at large. As I mentioned earlier, it would help quite a bit to broaden the symptoms in order to hint more strongly at this conclusion. Flight is hardly the only thing that a pegasus’ magic allows them to do: they can also shape weather or cloudwalk. For the other races, perhaps unicorns are complaining of headaches, or an inability to pick up heavier or more numerous objects with their telekinesis. Again, be creative—I can’t stress this enough.

Enter Celestia and Luna. This is a short scene that I suppose helps set up the overarching plot and confirms what we already know, but neither character really feels like they have much depth here. Additionally, this section contains the first earthquake of what I assume to be many more. This is a major milestone—expand upon it! Make us feel the earth shake through the text. Don’t just gloss over it; use clear, vivid details to paint a horrifying picture of the destruction and chaos to come.

So that was Chapter One of The End of All That Was. What did I think of it?

It was nice. It wasn’t the most well-written thing, but I feel as though you have a good grasp of the English language, as well as an appreciation for good storytelling. The hard part, of course, comes into play when you realize that you need to expand this chapter, rather than cut some of it out (which is traditionally much easier). If you need ideas, then brainstorm with a friend—bounce ideas off of one another—until you feel that you have enough content to broaden this story to a more reasonable and immersive point.

Onto Chapter Two

I’m not going to be quite as expansive here as I was with Chapter One, because I feel as though I’ve already pointed out quite a few of the more systemic issues that I’ve noticed in this story. Instead, I’ll mainly try to point out new issues as they come up, or try to associate new events with previous issues and/or errors. With that said, let’s get started, shall we?

The introduction of the Equerries made me do a double-take. At first glance, they don’t appear even slightly relevant to the story at hand, and in fact serve only to confuse the reader as to their actual purpose. While I realize that you may be attempting to set them up as a plot device to be used later on in the story and/or chapter, you would be better served to merely detail some of their more notable characteristics, have Twilight wonder briefly on their meaning, and then move on. That way, this section serves as foreshadowing instead of a mere exposition dump. Should they become relevant later, that would be the time to go into proper depth on who they are and why they’re here.

A murmur rippled across the group. “Equestria’s magic fading... How could such a thing be... Is this related to the rumors of pegasi losing their flight... An unprecedented tragedy...”

Let’s get something straight. This is not how to write “a crowd of murmurs.” Line breaks are required:

A murmur rippled across the group.

“Equestria’s magic fading?

“How could such a thing be…?

“Is this related to the rumors of pegasi losing their flight?”

“...an unprecedented tragedy...”

There we go.

Twilight feels quite out of character in this scene. Her whole world is coming crashing down around her, yet she manages to blush, smile, and nod for the Princess. You’d think she’d be sitting there in some kind of stupefied horror, or else with a firm, no-nonsense form of determination.

This just occured to me, but it feels quite odd that Celestia keeps mentioning a need to “avoid panicking and riots,” yet the loss of magic, among pegasi, at least, must be so widespread by this point so as to be clearly noticeable. It feels like keeping a lid on the problem would be the wrong thing to do here, and out of character for Celestia—a skilled and wise manipulator of public opinion—who would be more likely to make a public announcement formally portraying the loss of flight as a disease, and one being actively fought against. Otherwise, public tensions and worry will boil over, with or without the reveal of Twilight’s own revelation.

I do like the Applejack scene...though I can’t help but feel as though it should come much earlier in the fic. It might also make more sense to have a progression of the “disease” in the order that each species relies on magic, i.e. unicorn to pegasus to earth pony. As most of the last race likely don’t think that they really need magic, it would come as an unpleasant surprise to both Applejack and the reader.

Ah, there we go. Loyal, leader Rainbow Dash. A pity she didn’t show up earlier, but it’s nice to see her tensions escalating here in Sugarcube corner.

Unfortunately, that scene seems quite similar to the earlier Rarity scene in terms of irrelevancy. I’m not going to state what I did before, but I will ask that you consider what, exactly, this scene needs to accomplish outside of merely setting things up to move the plot along at a later point. Its conjunction between two congruent Applejack scenes also increase the sense that it’s more frivolous than not. The evident timeskip that’s taken place between Twilight’s meeting and this scene also seems to come out of nowhere, and unless properly addressed, will leave the reader disoriented and confused as to the proper chronology of the chapter.

Ever since Twilight had left for Canterlot, a strange tension had been growing between her friends. Rainbow Dash had become moody and irritable, lashing out at others with little or no provocation, while Fluttershy seemed to be withdrawing deeper and deeper into her shell.

Oh, and this whole bit is a combination of Telling and exposition of things you’ve already shown us. As I said re: Chapter One, it’s an easy enough fix, now that you know what to look for.

Going back to the timeskip, I’m divided on whether I like it or not. It seems to do a good job of skipping over dull and/or unnecessary areas that would bog the plot down in irrelevant detail. At the same time, though, it feels as though too much is happening in too short a time (from the reader’s point of view, at least). One way to fix this might be to provide more of an introduction on Twilight’s side before the skip; this will make the reader feel more comfortable with the setting in Canterlot, as well as with the general problem(s) she will have to deal with. Provided that that’s done (or something along those lines), I believe I’ll come down hesitantly in favor of this timeskip.

This just in: Sergeant Enarme still feels kind of pointless. My intrigue has faded to more of a dull apathy by this point.

Twilight’s decision to step up to the plate and to seize her responsibility as a leader comes as a welcome shift in tone. The only two problems are that it took her so long (it should have stalled her for no more than a week at most—a month is long enough for the problem to appear nearly irreversible, and a hard time limit is better to increase tension in a story, anyway), and that we don’t actually get to see her leadership abilities. The latter is the most distressing problem: if the reader is told of Twilight’s triumph over the feuding, petty scholars, than they may feel cheated, or worse, apathetic toward her accomplishment.

Something that I’ve noticed, too, is that this chapter seems to lack a narrative arc (i.e. conflict, climax, and resolution). The closest thing to resolution is the final scene with Luna, and there’s some sort of conflict/climax present in Twilight’s discourse with the scholars, but it really doesn’t feel fleshed out. A lot of the chapter comes off feeling as filler in retrospect, which is a problem. Try going back over an outline of this chapter and restructuring it in order to get a better feel of how the events progress. By comparing this against a chapter of another book, you should be able to find a better way to structure this chapter (as well as, possibly, the preceding one). When it comes to storytelling, flow and structure can be two of the most important things to pay attention to.

And that’s Chapter Two. I had much the same opinion of that chapter of the previous one, so there’s not much more to be said here.

Final thoughts? This story might have potential (it’s still too early in the plot for me to tell), but your biggest issue is easily the flow and overall structure of your chapters. They feel very bareboned at the moment, which can be a major problem for readers searching for a cohesive sense of immersion. Fix that, though, and you could have the beginnings of a worthwhile epic.

Score: 5/10 Pinkies

Cheers,

Golden Vision

WRITE’s Pocket Spycrab

"The Letter"

Link: My Beloved Sister by Deil Grist.

Hi there! Golden Vision here, and welcome to your WRITE review. I can’t say I’ve seen much poemfic around, so good on you for giving it a go. In any case, let’s get started.

Tonight I tremble in our castle ruin

Amid the shards and scars of our battle,

Burdened by thoughts of three hundred more years

Without you, stained by cold guilt and hot tears.

Starting off, I certainly like the imagery of the first two lines. “Castle ruin” and “shards and scars” go together quite nicely, creating a very specific atmosphere. However, I can’t help but feel as though “our battle” is too blunt—too impersonal—for this section. “The shards and scars we left behind,” might work better (note that this is only a suggestion, and not to be taken as a specific word change). You’ve done well with the line breaks in this stanza; they same to flow easily—from “castle ruin” to “amid,” and then from “years” to “without you.” It’s a natural progression, but at the same time, it’s spaced well. That separation helps give the piece weight; it’s a contrast to the flow of each line.

One thing that I didn’t quite like was the rhyme—intentional or no—between lines three and four. It seems that you’re aiming for free verse which, while certainly an excellent mode of writing, also clashes with any resemblance to its more patterned siblings. A rhyme can seem out of place, confusing the reader.

Life’s promised joys and wonders to come

Are empty, wholly devoid of meaning.

My purpose is merely a hollow shell,

A beautiful perfume without a smell.

I would appear to stand corrected. You seem to be going for a very specific mode of writing, wherein the first two lines are unmatched, while the last two rhyme on the final syllable. It’s an interesting choice, and not one that I can honestly say that I’ve often seen. It remains to be seen whether this is a stylistic choice that works in your favor or not, so I shall reserve judgement until the end.

I realize that this is poetry, but “Telling” has a meaning outside of fiction as well. Life’s joys, you say, are devoid of meaning. Yet, the reader asks: which joys are these? How have they impacted her life—her world—her perspective? Poetry is the language of illustration, not narration. Make us see this world devoid of meaning; show us the shadows stretching across her mind. Don’t merely leave us to assume her emotions, lost for want of a concrete image.

I thirst for your presence again, wilted

Like a flower from summer’s driest heat,

Which turns over outstretched leaves as it waits

For the storm to open its dark gates.

I like your use of metaphor here—simile, rather. It’s a very clear image, and it works well to convey Celestia’s need for her sister. The final two lines fit seamlessly with that picture, conveying a sense of longing and deprivation.

Something to note here, I believe, is the concept of word economy. Significant detail, you might call it: asking yourself whether you’re conveying a certain idea in the best and clearest way possible. In many ways, this stanza holds a near-identical purpose to the previous one, and is quite frankly superior in the ways with which it shows Celestia’s emotional state, rather than telling it through a kind of expositional narrative. You could remove the previous stanza in lieu of this one; as I said, word economy. Keep only what you need, and remove all of the filler that you don’t.

Never did I realize I wronged you,

Consumed whole as I was by the limelight.

They considered you merely history,

Like pale Moon, dim reflection of Sun’s glory.

The rhyming scheme here is more than a bit forced, and it does this stanza a disservice by forcing the reader to contrast the two ending syllables, rather than flowing easily with the previous stanzas. Again, this is a place where the reader could use more imagery. How did Celestia wrong her? Make use see the depths of that despair: Celestia, alone on a cold, metal throne, as Luna drifts through an empty corridor. Give us a window into their situation—don’t let Celestia exposit it through narrative text.

What we accomplished, we did together.

Until that day, we were never apart.

How easily we forget things that last;

How easily we forget our own past!

I like the parallelism and/or repetition that you’ve got going on here. The rhyme—quite clearly—fits well. At the same time, though, this stanza suffer the same problem of exposition. Why tell us of “what [they] accomplished” when you could have her wax on “when [they] struck the Mad King from the skies / crystals singing with his fall / wind, earth, and sky as one / three of flesh made One of all.”

We grew up together in bleak chaos

Enforced by Discord’s rule of tyranny.

Our parents wished for us a better world:

Equestria, before bleak despair whirled.

Together we clung for stability,

For some sense in a world without true sense.

You were the rock that kept my mind grounded,

And in me, your source of hope was founded.

Same telling issues here. Good rhymes, however, although I suppose that the word choice didn’t make it too difficult.

Our fellow ponies lacked motivation,

Their spirits imprisoned, crushed, and weary.

We took solemn oaths for the good of all:

Our gifts would be wielded for evil’s fall.

I’m sorry, but I really don’t like the word “motivation” as it’s used here. It feels out of place; too 20th century in an archaic, classic piece. Besides, it’s—you guessed it—too blunt, too straightforward for what you’re trying to accomplish here. Their heads and hearts were bowed / souls bound beneath the skies / crops wilting with their spirits / as shadows filled their eyes.

This may just be my own biases, but I’m liking this A/B/C/B rhyming scheme a bit more than your current A/B/C/C arrangement. It just seems to mesh better. Take that as you will—far be it from me to encourage another artist to abandon his choice in style.

Despite our potential, we lacked strength

To overthrow him with our own magic.

We scoured the land for hints, tales of old

Which could return us Nature’s loving fold.

Our friendship grew deep roots during our search

Through ages of rich, long-forgotten lore.

Communion and harmony filled our souls;

Magic coalesced the Elements’ Scrolls:

Secrets of the talismans’ history

And how they might be found by destined few,

Contained by the delicate yellowed rolls

In penmanship ornate and letters gold.

“Equestria was born under the blaze

Of Hearth’s Warming Eve’s bright Fire of Friendship.

Founders’ jewels to Elements were forged

In flames magical harmony had gorged.

I’ll be skipping along here a bit, mainly because this section suffers many of the same issues. Yes, there’s the standard issue with—as should be clear by now—Telling and over-reliance on exposition, but moreover, some of these lines feel forced, as though they’re non sequiturs forced into a certain stanza for their image or rhyme alone, rather than for any deeper meaning. Communion and harmony filled our souls/Magic coalesced the Elements’ Scrolls is just one such example; there’s no clear flow between these two lines, and they feel unconnected, like two separate thoughts, rather than two parts of a single narrative.

Also, you’ll definitely want to go back over this to re-evaluate your word choice. “Gorged” was the one word that really jumped out at me, but just the general composition of this section came off as odd. Several of the lines felt quite forced—In penmanship ornate and letters gold—and came off as an attempt to sound poetic, rather than an actual piece of poetry.

A great deluge, as if by fate’s decree,

Soon separated us after our find.

Rain and wind washed us apart in a flood

Of howling gales and a river of mud.

I awoke at dawn battered by debris

And began my long search, calling your name.

Oh how frantic were my cries that rang out;

My mind was racing and was clouded by doubt.

I scoured the strange desolated land,

Driven by precious memories of you.

When night came after searching long and far,

I caught a glance of your bright guiding star.

That ray of hope gave me new direction

And fresh wind underneath my tired wings.

I trusted and followed your twinkling light

Full haste, for fickle was Chaos’s night.

This section was just strange, to be perfectly honest. We’re just moving past the creation of the Elements of Harmony, and suddenly—fwoosh. Noah’s Ark (or something along those lines). A hurricane, a tornado, something that’s both completely unexpected and completely disorienting. It comes out of nowhere, with neither foreshadowing nor transition; as a story, it makes little to no narrative sense.

The meter and rhythm here don’t really work. Some stanzas thus far have thus felt as though they’re outlined with a purpose, written to give a certain rhythm and feel. Here, though—and for many other sections besides—the syllabic pattern is almost nonexistent, and the odd spacing of stresses and hard syllables makes for a very uncomfortable mode of speaking.

I’m just going to skip along here, as we’ve already established a few of this piece’s major problems. They are:

1.) Lack of imagery/overabundance of exposition

2.) Need for proper narrative flow/transition between “scenes”

3.) Unflattering choice of meter and rhyming scheme

4.) Poor word choice and awkward wording

Unless I note otherwise, it’s probably safe to assume that these are spread fairly evenly across the poem. It does neither me nor you any good to go over every single instance and pointing out to you how to correct it.

...Okay, one quick nitpick. The hot breeze at my back always slowed me / Avalanches drifted up in my path. Avalanches do not “drift” into one’s path. They crash; they fall; they come roaring down from mountaintops to block, to bury, or to drown. They do not drift.

Moving back to a more story-centric viewpoint, I’m not entirely sure of the function of the storm/separation “arc.” It doesn’t really feel like anything said in here matters—it’s a road bump that’s more of an aside than an actual piece of story. There’s nothing here that couldn’t be written off as filler. Meanwhile, the confrontation with Discord could stand to be fleshed out quite a bit—as it stands, it’s so flat and bare that it’s barely worth reading.

Remember that phrase I used earlier—”significant detail?” Something that’s important to take note of while doing creative writing of any genre is to make sure that you’re writing what needs to be written. Do we need to hear of some lengthy struggle to return to the Elements? Probably not; this is a “mythic” arc where you could probably get away with some more Genesis-like language (i.e. “for forty days and nights/the fires forged anew/the sinew of our hearts and minds/the strength of me and you.”). Immediately afterward, though, you need to take a Homer-like approach to the final showdown with Discord. This is important! This is a huge, defining point in the sisters’ lives! Extend it over three—hell, four!—stanzas! Make it a battle to remember.

Moving along, you seem to be unsure of when exactly you want to bring in the Nightmare, and the conflict of Luna’s jealousy. You seem to brush upon it here, as the sisters matured as individuals, but you then immediately jump into Sombra’s piece. It feels like you’ve brought up a plot thread if only to immediately dash it aside. It’s too lengthy, too blunt, to serve as foreshadowing, yet it’s far too incomplete to actually mean anything to the reader. Consistency, flow, and focus are key here.

I do like the idea that Sombra’s dark magic (the “mirror of fear,” perhaps?) had an impact on Luna’s descent into madness. All other proposals I’ve seen seem to involve Discord, so this is a welcome, and surprisingly rational origin story. Yet again, however, you seem to brush this aside, barely touching upon their “battle” without even going in-depth on the sisters’ emotions and beliefs. The myth of the Fall is a powerful one, and one that has been spread throughout most all major religions. Why, then, does Luna’s own fall from grace take place over barely two stanzas, and only through the barest of narrative description?

And then we come to the end of the poem: Celestia apologizing to her sister, and promising that she will wait for her. Ending line, signature, and close.

So what did I think of this?

Well, as I mentioned at the beginning, it was certainly a welcome change to see an attempt at poetry where usually I see only bad crossovers and self-inserts. It’s not often enough that I get to see people trying forms of writing other than straight-up fiction on this site.

With that said, your weakest points are easily your structure and your imagery. You need to decide how you’re going to present this, not only in a way that will please your audience—as an ABCB format might offer—but in a way that will be both consistent and simple to read. You need to decide whether you’re going with free verse or some kind of iambic derivation; while I’m partial toward the latter, this choice really needs to be made much more distinct.

Much of this felt less of a story than of the summary prior to a screenplay: “CELESTIA and LUNA are sisters, and they have recently experienced a falling-out. They face off at CANTERLOT CASTLE.” Poetry is all about the what, not the how; we need you to paint a picture in our minds. It’s here that detail, rather than exposition—as I’m sure I’ve nattered on about enough by now—is king. Give us their experiences, not their life lessons. To use a somewhat-appropriate analogy, we don’t which MLP:FiM for the friendship letters at the end. We watch it for the twenty minutes in between the opening theme and the resolution. You need to give us detail; you need to give us action, description, and real scenery. Otherwise, you’re cheating the reader out of “real” poetry, and I don’t think that’s something that either of us wants.

If you’re willing to improve this—to rewrite this, to reformat it into something better—then I think you could have a truly beautiful piece on your hands. Poetry is the art of the soul as much as fiction is the art of the mind; it’s here, where literature and song intersect, that some of the most poignant work can be created. Keep going—keep improving, keep learning, and above all, keep writing—and you’ll be a great writer (or poet) soon enough.

Rating: 4/10 Pinkies

Good luck, and happy writing!

Golden Vision

WRITE’s Pocket Spycrab

"Repair and Deliver"

Link: Repair and Deliver by Sleepless Scribe.

Hi there! I'm Golden Vision, and welcome to your WRITE review. Let's get started, shall we?

So the first thing that I notice is that you've chosen to go with a first person PoV, which is—to quote your opening sentence—interesting, to say the least. It's not a stylistic choice often chosen in this particular genre, so we'll see how well that works out for you.

As I read on, I'm having a bit of trouble deciding whether I like your intro or not. It seems a bit info-dumpy, as in:

Ah, I had the best sister an earth pony could ask for. It was no surprise that she’d rather go to college than follow dad’s life path, but neither of us could even ask a unicorn to do the work we did. We found it strange that mom wanted to help from time to time, but when we heard that Violet wanted to pursue some higher education, we were all pushing for her to do it.

I, however, was content with working for my dad’s workshop.

There's a lot of "OC background information" here, and not much "plot hook." Now, not ever story needs to start in media res—that is, with a full action scene or some such—but there does need to be something to draw the reader. For a more slowly-paced story such as yours, the key to drawing in a reader is voice: more specifically, narrative voice. Especially in a first-person story, the tone of your narrator can be the most important draw of a reader. Witness, for example, the young adult series Percy Jackson and the Olmypians, or the popular urban fantasy The Dresden Files. Both have very strong-voiced, colorful, and above all, interesting narrators. We hand on their every word; we are entertained by how the tell the story as much as we are by what the story is actually about.

I'm not saying that this story needs a snarky, pop-culture referencing protagonist, of course. Right now, however, this OC seems very generic. Nothing about him really stands out. In fact, constant references to his sister, his mom, his job, etc, make it seem more that he's an adolescent or teen on Earth, rather than an MLP OC in his own right. I don't want to make any assumptions, but from my experience, Torque seems to be rather reminiscent of the average fanfiction author, which is one danger of writing in first-person. Third person provides a necessary amount of distance from your PoV character, while first person introduces a major risk of giving your own voice to the character, which may well not be in the story's best interests. Let's take a look at how we might reframe this character's narrative.

Perhaps he's a gruff, take-no-nonsense Manehattenite. I know that this likely isn't what you're going for, but let's make it an experiment:

Morning in Vanhoover. Sun was shining, taxi carts were rattling, and some couple was hollering at each other from the next door down. Of course, it hadn't been my alarm clock that had woken me up—the damn thing could never decide whether it wanted to go off on time or not. Still, as I shoved my sheets off the bed and plopped my hooves on the floor, I mentally thanked Mr. and Mrs. Loudmouth for the wake-up call. I might not care what domestic dispute they'd gotten into this time, but the early wakeup meant that I'd have more time to get ready. Maybe I'd get into the shop before it actually opened for once.

Give us a voice that stands out. Make Torque someone who we want to hear from. First person is hard, and it can be difficult to make interesting a character who, say, still lives with or near his parents. There's a natural trap there.

That leads into the next point rather nicely, which is that Torque's entire situation really isn't the best for the story at hand. Why put him with his family? Why not, say, give him his own place, with his own group of coworkers? I may seem to be nattering on about this, and heck—it may be subjective—but I can't help but shake the feeling that having "mom," "dad," and "his sister" so ever-present in the beginning just cheapens our ability to connect with your main character. He's supposed to be an adult, after all, and especially if this is a romance story, we want to be able to deal with him on his own terms. If you start things off with his family, we can't help but see him as a child—and again, with FimFic's likely demographic, as a possible self-insert. Young-adult male living with his family and shipped with a fan-favorite character? Check.

But let's move on to more mechanical/content stuff. I've blathered on here about this enough.

I'd just like to touch upon the infodump issue again, just briefly. Constantly referencing things like,

Every time I saw my father Ratchet I remembered the day I got this wrench and screwdriver stamped on my flank.

I know you’ve been wanting to leave Vanhoover and do some exploring for a long while,

a little personal workshop to design, build, and test my various ideas

Besides, how can I not use a gift from my sister? This was the first ever Hearthswarming gift she ever got me with her own money, remember?”

It was actually really flattering that my dad thought me the best pony for this job.

Let's talk about that last point for a moment. This is an example of mental/emotional telling—that is, pointing out certain thoughts or beliefs to the reader rather than implying them, either through narrative or external dialogue and/or action. The key is to know when to supply explicit or implicit detail—always ask yourself, "Do I need to state this outright?" Often, you won't. Here, for example, this doesn't really add much, as we can probably infer Torque's presumed flattery without much outside help.

Returning to the problem of infodumps (extraneous exposition, you might call it), the reason why it's often a bad idea is that it can come across as either an "As You Know" (when done through dialogue between two characters who would presumably have little reason to mention it directly) or as a little sticky note that the author is leaving up that may or may not be important. Will it, at some point, be important that his sister gave him that hat? Will it, at some point down the line, be important that he has his little workshops, or is it merely needless detail?

In some cases, this can be a situational problem similar to some Show, Don't Tell issues. When she mentions "designs you've been working on," we can reasonably assume that it's some kind of mechanical blueprint or technical piece. If he must bemoan setting up shop all over again, then let him do it in Ponyville, once it's actually an applicable situation.

Quick aside: Tall Tale is a really weird name for a city or town. Perhaps another word would work better?

Let's talk plot for a moment. I apologize, by the way, if this review seems a bit jumpy—I'm going through this story page by page and noting my thoughts as we go along. Earlier, I mentioned the concept of a hook, wherein you want something to draw the reader in. An interesting narrative voice is certainly desirable, but at some point, you really do need to set the plot in motion. The synopsis promised the reader "OC meets Dinky and is shipped with Derpy." While I'm an avid Doctor Whooves x Derpy shipper, and thus this OC is anathema to my religious beliefs, I'm still willing to see where you take this. The main problem, though, is that this story has yet to get to the point.

We open in the protagonist's—home? Apartment?—and from there, we go to his workshop. Here, we're treated to a brief period of time in which we meet his family (coworkers, in a revised version), following which we go with him on his journey to a new home. There are a few problems here:

1.) Pacing: It's okay if you're going for a slower opening. What's not okay, however, is that we've barely had any time to settle ourselves into the universe you're trying to build before the status quo shifts, and we find ourselves on a train going…someplace else entirely. There's no chance for the reader to evaluate the story—to really settle into the characters and setting—before Repair and Deliver picks them up and plops them somewhere else.

Very little happens in Tall Tale, and in fact, most of the beginning is just a description of Torque's travels without giving any real weight or meaning to the journey. You'd be better off either just skipping the train ride and overall trip, or—even better—just starting with his arrival at the garage.

2.) Characterization: This story so far—based on synopsis and hook—seems to resemble a rom-com. This is a perfectly legitimate genre to write; however, something vital that's missing is a spark to the main character. Let's take a look at my favorite romantic comedy of all time: You've Got Mail, with Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan (It may be the only rom-com that I know, but that's of little consequence).

In the very beginning of the film, we're introduced to our major protagonist: Kathleen Kelly (played by Meg Ryans). The opening sequence is something very similar to what you have here: New York waking up, the urban streets stirring to life alongside a stirring rendition of "Dreams" by The Cranberries. Within the first five minutes, we have a clear picture of who Meg is: she's the owner of a small bookshop ("The Shop Around the Corner") who likes kids, her boyfriend—a traditionalist critic and occasional conspiracy theorist—and the little things in life. We soon learn that she loves her coworkers, and is a bit afraid of the megachain "Fox Books" opening up down the street. Bam. We've got character, motive, conflict, and a clear personality.

In the fic thus far, in contrast, what we know of Torque is that he…likes his family? He also likes working with machines and things. Where's the inner conflict? Where's he coming from? What are the essential details that we know about his background, rather than the filler, generic ones such as his college-bound sister and her Christmas hats? Note that this is an issue separate from narrative voice, but certainly no less important. We need a character that we can truly believe in before you direct us to a relationship that you'd like us to believe in.

I'd just like to make a quick note here of something that you are, in fact, doing right—quite well, in fact—just so that you don't feel as though you're drowning in a sea of criticisms. Your diction is crisp, your dialogue legible, and your style, while not elegant, certainly readable if not enjoyable.

Moving along, Sparkplug's introduction feels more than a bit rushed. We get something of an idea of her character, but it feels crammed in. While it's clear what the paragraph is intending to do, the overall effect falls flat. Try looking at it from a more organic angle—give them a conversation, a dialogue, even if Torque doesn't speak a single word. Maybe Sparkplug's got a short temper and an even shorter attention span; that's fine. In that case, maybe she demands to know why he's lurking around, he tries to introduce himself, she cuts him off, and goes on her little shpiel.

Just a note, but the whole point about the project/school/etc feels forced in there. Just keep this part simple—i.e., comprising mainly introductions and, if you really feel it'd be in her character, Sparkplug giving Torque a tough time—and leave the career exposition for later, when he's actually gotten the chance to catch his breath and begun to get settled.

Some may have called Sparkplug mean, but I think she was just stressed out by having to put a job on hold. The question popped into my head as to why she wasn’t out doing work, but then I remembered that somepony had to be at the shop at all times, both to take requests for outside repairs and to help with walk-ins.

The school wasn’t too far away, and I seemed to have come at a pretty decent time. All the little ones were seated at tables in the back of the classroom eating lunch. When I came in, I was approached by a pretty purple mare sporting a two tone mane of different pinks.

This section sports two separate problems. The first paragraph comprises, as you may remember from earlier, a rather bad case of Show, Don't Tell. Especially given Torque's apparent familiarity with the workshop and those who populate it—he's no newbie or apprentice or even drifter—he should be able to get that much across through dialogue with either Sparkplug or another character.

The second paragraph has its own issue, but it mainly arises through omission. Namely, the fact that the story skips over Sparkplug so quickly without even giving her a chance to settle herself into the narrative makes her appearance seem to be a non sequitur—that is, without meaning or impact. Almost a cameo, even. The biggest cause, really, is that she seems to be either giving a job to a total stranger, or meeting someone familiar and then ignoring them completely. You can't have it both ways—if she knows him, or gets to know him, she'll give him the job (i.e., she was expecting him). If she doesn't know him, she'll ignore him, he might ask around and/or follow her to the job and then offer his services as a way to implicitly reveal his identity, rather than explicitly.

Moving into the schoolhouse scene, I'm starting to see a fairly regular issue in this story: setting the scene. Or rather, the lack of it. The story jumps from one idea to another—I'm reading this as an epub, and in the space of under ten pages, I've gone from Torque's house, to his workshop, to Tall Tale, to Ponyville, to the garage, and now to the schoolhouse. It's all over the place, and there's never a moment where the reader can actually settle into the scene. Furthermore, it can cause the narrative to suffer. For example:

When I came in, I was approached by a pretty purple mare sporting a two tone mane of different pinks.

“Oh, thank goodness you’re here! I’m sorry to bother you, but I just can’t seem to get this new projector of mine to work. My old one stopped working a few days ago, and my lesson plan for this week more or less requires me to incorporate it.”

Because this transition is so abridged, the reader is left with quite a few questions. For example, who else is in the schoolhouse? How does Cheerilee know who Torque is, especially if she's never met or seen him before? Much of this story thus far seems far too reminiscent of the oft-bemoaned "Hollywood phone call," in which nobody thinks to say, "Hello," "Who is this?" or "How are you?" when picking up the phone, instead immediately asking "Where's the gun?" without regard for whether the person on the other line is their fellow agent, their girlfriend, or a poor telemarketer from New Delhi. Because of this, each development in scene or plot seems to come off as forced, or a plot convenience. It feels more like an author struggling to tell a story than as a story unfolding itself before a reader: One is forced and the other not. Each scene thus far needs a clear delineation and transition, both with respect to its surrounding scenes and within itself. For goodness sake—it's been at least a day in in-story time, and there hasn't been a single line break. If that's not telling, then I don't know what is.

Hm. I can't help but wonder why Cheerilee is being so open about her students' problems with this stranger she's just met. Even if the reader is able to accept that such a transaction of exposition is likely to take place, Dinky's introduction alone is sure to raise some eyebrows. "Small [and] pale," she "[taps] her teacher's leg, her brows turned up in a sad gaze." She stammers, she trails off—she resembles some kind of Dickensonian orphan! While that may be applicable elsewhere, in here, it comes off as more "forced feels." Her introduction borders on a giant, neon sign telling us: This filly is important! Also, she is sad, and also poor and/or bullied! Be sad about it! It feels blunt where it needs to be subtle; it's overt, clumsy, where it should instead feel natural.

I'd like to point out that Torque still feels like—if I had to coin a name for it—Generic Video Game Protagonist #134. We've gotten nothing more out of him from his interactions with either Sparkplug or Cheerilee; he's bland, and doesn't appear to actually want, dislike, or desire anything. He needs that depth—that complexity—if you want him to be an enjoyable character, let alone half of a (necessarily) much more complex relationship.

Moving further into the scene…yup, Dinky pretty much opens up to Torque at the drop of a hat. In real life, kids don't open up that easily. At the very least, you need to give them a juice box or a ball; for a clearly less-trusting one like Dinky (bullying would certainly not give her an incentive to trust adults), quite a bit more would be needed. The fact that Torque seems to come on as a stereotypical "white knight" does not help his case either. See:

“Miss Cheerilee, I’m normally a pretty cheery guy, but if there’s one thing I don’t tolerate, it’s bullying. My sister, Violet Night, dealt with it a lot in school, and still deals with it in college. Every day I can help a victim of bullying is a day well spent.”

He's too perfect. Too "morally good," is one way to put it. We've seen nothing from this stallion but some kind of familial piety and a moral compass that's better than a schoolyard bully's. That's about it. I hate to keep harping on this, but where's the depth? The complexity? The self-insert vibes are coming on really strongly, and I'm sorry, but I can't help to just actually suspect that that's the case. Torque is a blank slate: a "Mr Nice Guy" OC who has an average life and does fun—even romantic—things with popular canon/background characters. Though he's not necessarily a full-on Mary Sue, he certainly suffers for want of any meaningful characterization.

Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon aren't exactly the most believable characters here. Canonically, they get by through taunting and verbal abuse; it's not like them to descend to more "masculine" bullying tendencies such as stealing lunches (and physical bullying, though thankfully this story doesn't go that far).

In any case, he solves the issue…with a stern talking-to? I'm not sure whether it says more about Cheerilee's obvious incompetence (which is potentially quite insulting, both to her image and canon, due to her Cutie Mark being actually for being a teacher) or about Torque's ridiculous—and complete unexpected, given his own special talent—ability for child psychology and/or further White Knighting.

Much of this chapter, then, seems set up just so that we can see how Torque solves this moral problem and looks good doing it. The rest is just filler—put there as something to skim over while we get to the point, which is seeing that, "Oh, Torque is awesome at dealing with bullies, and isn't he just great with Dinky, too? This means that he'll be the perfect stallion for her mother!"

Just a note, but this story is missing something important: a driving conflict or narrative. [Slice of Life] is acceptable as a tag, but it's not an excuse to just have characters doing things for the sake of fluff. He needs a goal—a problem—something that makes him an active character rather than a passive one. SoL just means that the plot would be acceptable if modified into an episodic FiM format; it still requires a concrete narrative and plot. The lack of such only makes poor Torque an even blander protagonist: Without something to strive for, what is his purpose within the fic? For what reason are we reading about him?

I'm going to end the review here. If you'd like me to go further into the other five chapters, I'd be happy to do so, but given the extent and depth of the review so far, it'd be unlikely that I'd have as much to say that would actually help you (as what I've supplied so far recommends a fairly fundamental change, if not a complete rewrite).

Final Score: 3/10 Pinkies

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about your review, feel free to PM me or to reply to this comment. I'd be happy to help you.

Happy writing!

Cheers,

Golden Vision

WRITE's Pocket Spycrab

Seattle's Angels: Reviews Week 31

STORY 1

A Night on Deck, by Bad_Seed_72

Golden Vision:

Wow. My first review. I’d like to thank the Academy, Senior TA Plum, and Obselescence’s gigantic pile of—

Oh. You mean I’ve actually got to review this thing? Dang.

Let’s get started, then, shall we?

An interpretation of Blueblood that doesn’t make you want to punch his face in? An OC whose character is neither overblown nor uninteresting? An embedded Youtube link that’s…subtle?

You’d better believe it, because all that and more can be found inside the pages of Bad_Seed_72’s A Night on Deck.

The fic tells the story of Noteworthy, a simple Earth Pony musician embarked on a cruise ship with his two most valued possessions: his saxophone, and a simple photograph. The contrast between the two is interesting; he considers the photo the most important thing that he owns (the saxophone coming in a far-off second), and it’s this juxtaposition of value and sentiment that foreshadows the ultimate choice that Noteworthy must make by the end of the fic.

The plot is simple, and the characters familiar. Blueblood is in top form here: At once both the bored, narcissistic noble and the curious onlooker, he brings a certain agency to the story that’s both refreshing and amusing to watch. His interactions with Noteworthy paint the picture of a stallion in need of something more to life, and it’s interesting to see how he ends up changing by the end. There’s more to life than rags and riches, Blueblood learns, and it’s Noteworthy’s saxophone that ends up showing him the way.

So much sax appeal.

The setting is certainly well-executed; Babs_Seed_72 gives us a clear window into a cruise ship populated by the upper crust. The nobles are grating, and the chefs—frantic to produce dinner for their impatient clients—are extremely entertaining, especially with their “authentic accents.” Ahoy, matey. Fancy some grub?

Where would I be, though, without discussing the protagonist himself? Noteworthy is a familiar archetype: the talented musician fleeing fame for freedom, choosing artistic expression over success. Contrast is once more the paint with which the author covers his canvass, as Noteworthy chooses the simple happiness of a poor harp player in the streets—our very own Lyra Heartstrings—over the professional expression of his best friend, Octavia.

This isn’t a Romance story, but it in many ways resembles one. Noteworthy is driven by a split in his soul between love for Octavia and love for his freedom, and the choice that he must make between the two is what drives the resolution here.

So kick back, relax, and take a bit out of A Night On Deck. The philosophical ideas certainly aren’t hard to swallow, and you may well find yourself asking the waiter for seconds.

STORY 2

Daring Do and the Dark Walk Home, by Mindblower

Golden Vision:

So, Daring Do and the Dark Walk Home. I was the one to bring this up in chat as a probable fic this time ‘round, and I did so for two reasons. One, I’d been searching for a fic for the past hour, and really wanted something to bring in.

My actual face upon finding this.

Secondly, Daring Do is awesome, and so is this story.

Now, I don’t mean awesome in the Michael Bay sense—you won’t find many explosions, gunshot wounds, or cheesy monologues here. What you will find, however, is a remarkable re-interpretation of a character that most of the fandom thinks it has pinned down to a T—namely, Daring Do, Miss Adventure herself.

It’s true that we’ve become used to the idea of Daring as an Indiana Jones analogue: She swoops in, saves the day, and gets the girl—er, ancient artifact. It’s not a hard leap to make, especially considering the fact that Daring Do and the Sapphire Statue resembles Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom much more than it does, say, Crime and Punishment. There’s action, there’s an overblown villain, and there’s temple raidin’ aplenty. What more could an action-adventure fan ask for?

Well, as Mindblower—author of Daring Do and the Dark Walk Home—shows us, there’s a whole new character beyond this idea of the generic adventurer that we’ve yet to discover. The popular image of Daring is that of the heroic archeologist, yet Mindblower paints a different—and in some ways, a more believable—picture. Here, Daring Do is no public-minded do-gooder; she’s a thief, a cat burglar, with more than enough skills to make it through her numerous escapades.

People have criticized good ol’ Indy in the past for being so reckless with the artifacts he uncovers. They might be a bit more incensed at Daring Do, however—rather than giving the priceless treasures she finds to a museum, she sells them on the black market to bring in enough dough to keep her in the black for another day. For this version of Daring, at the end of the day, the most important thing to keep in mind is how much cash she’s got stuffed into her saddlebags, and it’s her latest haul of moolah that brings the bulk of the tension to the titular dark walk home.

Daring’s voice is excellently dark: noir, but without being cliched; paranoid, but without getting on the reader’s nerves. For a pony so apparently amoral, Daring’s ruminations on the demises of her multiple companions, or “cohorts” as she calls them, are remarkably amusing to read through. It may be horrifying to imagine dying a slow death at the hands of bloodthirsty natives as your “trusted mentor” flees the scene, her saddlebags clinking with the treasure you found, but it’s a refreshingly organic look at what the life and mindset may be of a pony who’s devoted her life toward digging through old tombs and temples before robbing them of their ancient riches.

If I had one gripe, it would be that the end of the story—the ultimate “twist”—is at once both inconclusive and more than a bit confusing for a reader already invested in this fic. It’s unfortunate that Daring Do and the Long Walk Home finishes on what I can only call “an unbearably fanfic-like note,” but the rest of the story holds up quite well on its own. Mindblower’s narrative is both captivating and evocative, and Daring’s story comes through, surprisingly enough, without seeming too much like mindless exposition.

Should you ever find yourself in a dark alley, then, with alley toughs on your tail and saddlebags of dirty cash on your back, consider picking up Daring Do and the Long Walk Home for a quick read. It may not help you with your plight, but you’ll certainly feel less alone for reading it.

STORY 3

Refrain, by TSTS

Golden Vision:

If any of you have ever taken part in a Writeoff, you’ll know what I mean when I say that they’re as hard as hell to get through. You’ve got a limited amount of time to write what you need to write, and it’s a race against the clock to come up with an idea, form it into something coherent, and then write the damn thing. That’s not even taking into account the editing process, which for many participants is mostly a luxury.

Believe me when I say, then, that NTSTS, writer of Refrain, is no less than a fanfiction savant for his work in the Ponychan Writeoff “Time and Time Again.” Coming in second place to Duncan R—also an excellent author—his piece, Erase and Rewind, NTSTS found the strength within himself to outline, plan, and execute what turned out to be a twenty-five thousand word biography of Octavia’s life. And what an execution it turned out to be.

Refrain is a piece so reminiscent of biographical nonfiction that I looked over my shoulder at least once to see if my AP Language & Composition teacher was standing right behind me. Octavia’s past is both haunting and emotive: From the overbearing mother who rules her daughter’s life with an iron hoof, to Octavia’s final revelation beneath the lights of the Canterlot stage, NTSTS delivers a story whose themes wouldn’t seem out of place in a piece by Steinbeck or Baker.

The reader of such a fic soon realizes that they’re in for a ride: Although action is certainly no focus of this piece—barring one terrifying scene with a much darker subtext—Octavia’s narration of her life holds a gripping tension, both in the simple prose she uses and the song she creates with every word.

For Refrain is, at its heart, a story about a song. Every life, it seems to say, has its music—its assemblage of notes and dynamics that combine to form a concerto not unlike those in a Canterlot music hall. Octavia is forced to confront this truth near the end of the fic, when a jealous competitor calls her playing “the most emotionless piece of music I’ve ever heard.” Though any other pony might have waved this off as a mere symptom of envy, Octavia is shaken to her core. Truly, can a musician call themselves such if they derive no enjoyment from their instrument? What, the story asks us, is the purpose of music?

For fame, Octavia’s mother would tell us. For skill. For remembrance. I’ve seen few characters better written than this mare; as the bass to Octavia’s treble, her mother lends an unpleasant air of reality to the entire fic. At its heart, this story is a war of generations: the mother, determined to live her unspent life through her offspring, and the daughter, who is just as determined to break free.

Yet we see precious little of this rebellious spirit in Octavia, save for the few times when it erupts in a flare of anger and desperation. It’s cathartic to hear her scream over her mother’s platitudes, but as time goes on, the reader is forced to realize that Octavia is fighting a losing war. It’s only at the end of the story, when her mother has been removed from the picture, that Octavia is given the chance to take her first baby steps as her own mare. It’s a chance to celebrate, yes, but it is also a time to mourn—not for the mother, but for Octavia’s lost childhood and uncertain future.

Octavia’s mother is a despicable creature, to be sure, but she straddles the line between disgusting and merely pitiable. The dissonance in her every action shines through this fic like the plunk of a mistuned key, and the oppression she brings into Octavia’s life is truly horrible. The tone for this story is set earlier on, I believe, when a friendly colt asks a filly Octavia if she’d like to play. Turned down by a foal for whom the idea of friendship is as alien as the inner workings of alicorn magic, he says simply, “You’re weird.” Children have a talent for the cruel, yet honest insights that adults seem to lack. For her part, Octavia turns into herself to avoid the world outside, defending the last shards of her soul from her mother’s overbearing spirit.

There is one pony, however, who can bring Octavia back to life—to give her something resembling companionship. Grace Note, her music teacher, is both lovable and funny, playing the Maria Rainer to her mother’s Captain von Trapp. I’ll honestly say that if there was one scene in this story that made me sincerely tear up, it was the moment when Octavia realized that she’d taken her final lesson with Grace Note. The bond between those two is one of the few pieces of sunlight that shine through an otherwise drab, grey world, and its disappearance yanks your heartstrings out and ties them into the shape a treble clef.

Refrain is at once both tragedy and romance; it is the tale of love lost and thrown away, yet it is also the the tale of Octavia’s self-discovery as she emerges, at last, from her mother’s shadow to find her true calling waiting for her outside. It is truly the closest thing to literary fiction that I’ve yet seen on this site—it’s an art piece in itself, singing quietly through its words and characters.

Almost, you might say, like a song.

"Dystopian Circus"

Link: Dystopian Circus by Pearple Prose

Hey, Prose. Ready for your review?

Let’s do this.

So. Dat coverart. I think it’s already given me a very good idea of what to expect with this, but let’s dig into the words themselves before I get specific.

To begin, I quite enjoy your first line. “Celestia sipped her wine and watched the world burn.” Clipped, catchy, and completely and utterly dissonant. I’ve just started, and I already feel like I know what you’re going for.

I would have liked you to give us more detail up-front, however. “A burning spider web” is a nice image, but I feel like I want more. “Enemy war machine” is one thing, yes, but what is it, actually? You’re giving us some good stuff, but I really want a more detailed picture.

As for Celestia’s character...I can really dig the “Broken Celestia” trope, but I feel as though it needs more justification. She’s bitter, yes, but why? How would Celestia, an effective mother figure for all of Equestria, come to be on her balcony, watching Her Little Ponies die as she sips Bordeaux? It feels out of character for her, and while it might turn out perfectly justified later on, it can’t help but feel dissonant here—and not in a good way. Bitterness is good. Hopelessness is good. You just need to give us a reason to justify why she’s feeling bitter instead of homicidal.

I don’t really think you need the italicized thoughts in this, by the way. They come across as stronger if you make them part of the narration itself, i.e.

There wasn’t much left in her now, she realized. A few more strikes like that would mean the end of her.

as opposed to

Not much left in me now, she thought. Only a few more strikes like that, and that’ll be the end for me.

Discord’s introduction looks pretty good—his vocabulary certainly works with his portrayed personality—but I still wish, as I did before, that you’d put more description into his physical introduction. It feels like the story just glosses over his appearance, taking for granted what it should otherwise treat as a fairly significant event. Discord’s presence, if I’m to read the synopsis correctly, seems to be a defining part of the story, and I can’t help but feel as though he needs more initial focus.

His development, on an emotional level, works, but it needs a bit more clarification. It’s not clear, upon first glance, whether he’s the cause of this destruction or whether another party is responsible, especially given his glee in pointing out his need for “chaos.” It’s soon cleared up, but that momentary confusion is something that ought be looked at.

”Sometimes, ‘doing the right thing’ isn’t the right thing to do at all.”

And here we go, further down the rabbit hole with this despair-filled Celestia. I could have expected this given her earlier depiction, but it makes her feel more OOC, rather than less. We, the readers, still have minimal justification for her decision to just give up. I’d expect this talk out of [url=], but certainly not out of the sovereign Princess of the Sun. Celestia has shown us in canon that she never gives up in the defense of her subjects—look to Royal Canterlot Wedding for evidence of this point of view. In viewing Celestia as a completely “broken bird”, the reader is asked to raise their suspension of disbelief to simply unreasonable letters, and so the characterization breaks down.

Given Discord’s apparent lack of sympathy, I’d assumed that this took place before Keep Calm and Flutter On. However, his mention of Fluttershy as a “friend”—as well as his presence in the first place—shakes this perspective to the point where we’re forced to consider that this is indeed a post-redemption Discord. With that said, however, it may just be an interference of personal headcanon, but I can’t help but feel as though he’s being too cold, too outwardly unsympathetic. Too smug, perhaps.

Then again…

Reading on, I find myself coming around to understand this portrayal of Discord. The line:

”Make no mistake; we may no longer be enemies, Celestia, but I exist only for me, myself, and I.”

makes it quite clear, and it’s hard to retain that same dislike for his characterization. I’ll leave my previous reaction just in case you decide that you’d prefer to soften the introduction to his character, but I’ll say outright that I could reasonably see myself accepting a colder, more self-absorbed Discord. I find it more than somewhat odd that (presumably) years of friendship with Fluttershy would not have melted his chaotic heart, but I suppose that goes more toward author fiat than anything else.

Her ultimate decision to relinquish her power to Discord in exchange for humanity’s destruction is, while not unexpected, a bit...sudden. While it’s a perfectly reasonable way to resolve this impasse (note that it’s only “reasonable” if the reader has already accepted Celestia’s portrayal, which I have not), it needs more of a lead-up. More of a back-and-forth between Celestia and Discord as she lays out her options, her reasoning, before finally making that fateful choice.

I think that this, really, will solve two problems with one edit. By giving Celestia a chance to deliberate on her final choice, you not only make that resolution more believable, but also give her prior characterization more believable. A path of steadily dropped hints toward her motivations culminating in a final tract on her choices and reasons will give Celestia a position that readers can more fully understand. Empathy is both your tool and greatest enemy in this situation—this is a delicate arena, and you need to strike a balance between sympathy for Celestia’s decisions and horror at the rejection of her contract.

The best stories, fanfiction or no, cause us to question ourselves at a level deeper than most anything else. Dystopian Circus would be best served, I believe, by focusing more on Celestia’s internal conflict, rather than taking her ultimate choice for granted.

Moving on.

As a random note, I’m not sure whether I like or dislike the fact that you never revealed humanity’s motives for invasion. It might be enough for some to say, “Well, humanity invades things, so there,” but it’s not quite enough for me. There needs to be a reason, so whether it’s implicit throughout Celestia’s conversation or stated outright, it needs to be present in the story in some form. Human invasion is too much of a trope in ponyfic to be able to take it for granted.

It’s also unclear what the exact conditions and ramifications of Celestia’s trade with Discord are. What benefits, exactly, does breaking this contract bestow upon him? What could he not do before that he can now do? Was it merely a way to get him invested in Equestria’s defense, or was there a deeper, theological reason for it?

The ending also seems a bit...cut, I suppose. I feel like you could give it some more depth—really address the change in the status quo that comes with Discord’s presence. We see his giant form attacking the armies, but we don’t truly feel it. Try to invest more into that section so that we in turn become more invested. A callback to Celestia’s sacrifice—perhaps leading into some characterization on Discord’s part—couldn’t hurt either.

So that’s Dystopian Circus. What did I think of it?

It was a good idea, certainly, and reasonably well-executed. There was room for improvement, but I think that, on the whole, I rather enjoyed it. It was a nice, bite-sized piece of fiction that was rather easy to digest, and kept my interest throughout. If you put more work into developing your characters and backstory, I think you’ll have an excellent little oneshot on your hands.

Final Score: 6.5/10 Pinkies

Cheers,

Golden Vision

"A Device For Divine"

Link: A Device For Divine by stanku

Hi there! I’m Golden Vision, and I’ll be your WRITE reviewer today. Let’s get right down to business, shall we?

I’ll start with your synopsis, because something about it caught my eye—and not necessarily in a good way.

In a remote village, ponies begin to disappear.

This, I’ll give you, is good. It’s a nice hook, and hints at a kind of supernatural mystery.

Celestia sends Twilight and Fluttershy to investigate.

This is good, in that it sets up which characters you’ll be using, but I do wish that you would use this sentence to hint at either the circumstances of the mystery, or at any internal conflicts that Twilight and/or Fluttershy have.

After that, nothing is certain, nothing except the smile on Celestia's lips.

After that? After what? Perhaps, “However, they will discover that nothing is certain—nothing, that is, except for the smile on Celestia’s lips,” would be a better way to phrase it.

To be honest, this final sentence doesn’t do very much other than give a vaguely confusing tone of ominousness to the story. What is Celestia smiling about? Why is she involved, when Twilight and Fluttershy are likely hundreds of miles away? It confuses your reader, and doesn’t really get across what the full story will be about.

Ever wondered why Celestia smiles so often? Ever wondered how she has been able to rule over Equestria for over a millenium? Of course you have, and so have I. This story discusses these themes at length - I mean, I have some 50k worth of words already, and more is coming whenever I find the time to write. I hope you will enjoy reading this story as much has I have loved writing it.  What are you waiting for? Read it already.

Finally, this is exactly that kind of thing that you don’t want in your synopsis. A synopsis should contain:

1.) The plot

2.) The characters

3.) Any external or internal conflicts

4.) The stakes involved

5.) Any triggers or acknowledgements (if relevant)

What you certainly don’t want, however, is a plea to your potential readers to enjoy what you’ve written. It comes off as untidy and unprofessional, and really just clutters up what should otherwise be a fairly straightforward section.

Onto the story itself! Chapter One, here we come.

Huh. NickNack edited this? Cool.

The opening is very slow, both in a meta-sense and in a more localized sense. For starters, every story needs a hook—something to draw us in. While a character running away from some anonymous evil is an oft-used (and certainly a valid) method of beginning a story, it does you no good to start off with reflection and deliberation rather than the actual thrill of the chase.

A good hoofhold was crucial when running fast in this forest and Blue Fallow knew that, everypony she had ever known knew that. That was something they had learned as fillies; as soon as they had learned how to run, they had learned how to run on soft soil.

The panic gripped her throat and muscles, it seized her whole body. Fear sharper than a blade of grass cut through her very soul.

See this second part? You’d be much better off starting your fic with this, rather than the first excerpt. That’s not to say that the first bit needs to go—you can certainly work it in after the hook to establish characterization (i.e. if she’s somepony like Twilight whose mind never stops working, even if she’s running for her life)—but you still need that initial heart-stopper to get things moving.

Quick note: You seem to have a few punctuation mistakes scattered throughout, as in:

Whenever she tried to hide, the monster found her, wherever she tried to run, the monster seemed to follow

That middle comma should instead be a semicolon joining the two clauses.

It’s not unforgivable, but I see enough instances of awkward or incorrect sentences that you may want to consider just doing another editing sweep.

Glancing over the comments that someone appears to have left on your story, I will tell you outright that indenting your paragraphs is by no means required. In fact, most people on FimFiction and/or EqD will tell you that it’s perfectly acceptable, if not outright preferred, to leave only a single space between paragraph. That doesn’t mean that indenting is incorrect—to do both at once is technically correct, but it will make it harder for you to stay consistent.

She breathed like her lungs were on fire, which they might as well have been, because they burned. Every breath was a stab to the ribs now

This is good description—it’s got a good sense of imagery and word choice. This Kevin Lim guy in the GDoc comments has no idea what he’s talking about.

Random grammatical note: I would recommend you try not to begin sentences with the word “And.” In some places, it can work—stylistically speaking, that is—but in most places, it fails. As you don’t seem entirely experienced with this rule, I’d recommend following it to the letter until you get more comfortable with your writing. Sentences like:

And it was the last thought she had before her right front hoof sank deeply in the green mud that could have been some solid turf.

Would be better served if they simply began with “it,” rather than “And.” Not only does the “and” make the sentence grammatically incorrect, but it connects the beginning of this clause to the ending of the last one in a way that can easily throw off the rhythm of your prose.

At this point she started shouting, mostly just words like ”help”, ”please” and ”somepony, anypony”.

I’m noticing something about your style of writing here—namely, that it’s slow and thoughtful; in some cases, I’d go so far as to call it languid. While that might work in some arenas, you want a much more active style in a scene such as this. You want choppiness—panic, agitation, and wide-eyed fear. How might we rephrase the example above?

”Help!” Her eyes were wide and filled with with tears. She gave her hoof another yank and let out a cry as pain lanced through her leg. “Please! Somepony—anypony!”

Sentence structure can be used to create a certain effect. In a quiet, tense situation, you want to use longer, more complex sentences in order to strengthen that feeling of tension. In situations such as this, you want to create simpler clauses, use “harder”-sounding words such as “yank” or “cry,” and allot more time to action over narration.

Put simply, something like, “At this point she started shouting” does very little to make the reader feel a sense of tension or panic due to how matter-of-fact it sounds. It reads more like a financial report than a gripping, high-strung narrative.

Note: This “matter-of-fact” tone can be very effective if used correctly; see Terry Pratchett or Douglas Adam’s work for an example of how such a tone can be used for great effect in dry (British) humor.

Her mindless sobbing instantly turned into frantic screaming. She struggled violently for a few seconds, but the strong jaws simply closed in and broke her neck with a sickening crunch

Something that I’ve noticed that quite a few writers tend to do—including myself, mind you—is to overuse adjectives and adverbs. A professor of mine once told me that the best writers let their writing speak for themselves; William Zinsser’s book On Writing Well has as its central tenet: “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” Descriptors, be they of verbs or nouns, ought be used only when their presence would maximize effect. Otherwise, we can assume them to be either implicit in the original word or otherwise unnecessary.

Her sobs turned instantly to screams. She struggled for a few seconds, but the jaws simply closed in and broke her neck with a sickening crunch.

See how I’ve removed every adjective save for “sickening” (You don’t have to keep that one in, though it’s my personal opinion that “crunch” needs extra flavor to work here, which “sickening” provides)? This makes your prose much more succinct and straightforward, which is all the more essential in a scene that needs simplicity as much as this one.

And nothing else happened.

I don’t really want to get into line-by-line, but this is a very non-dramatic line. It seems to serve no purpose—if nothing happens, then why am I reading? This is like “At this point” in terms of tone—it has no place in literary prose (at least in this particular context), and just weakens your writing.

Except that Fluttershy, hundreds of miles away, couldn’t stop shaking on the floor.

This is a very obvious transition between both character, perspective, and simple location (though perhaps not in time). As such, you’ll want a scene break (created by the [ hr ] tag) between this and the previous scene. Otherwise, the two merge in a way that just creates confusion in the reader’s mind.

You also don’t really want to start with “Except that,” for two reasons. First, it makes the sentence grammatically incorrect. Secondly, you usually don’t want to “bridge” a sentence or idea across a scene break unless you really need to for effect. Here, it’s not quite necessary.

No moon, no stars, and no light, but darkness. Darkness that only let her see because it had moved.

I’m starting to think that you have a real problem with sentence fragments. Style or no, I highly suggest combing back through this chapter and eliminating as many as you feel is possible. It’s just disruptive to the flow of the story, and makes you appear grammatically inexperienced rather than stylistic.

She had to, though. Lying on the floor, covered in sweat and still trembling, Fluttershy was convinced that the dream had been important, that it had meant something. She felt the need to know what it had meant, even if this required exposing herself to the darkness. She closed her eyes, right then and there on the floor, for she could feel the mist evaporating fast. She needed to catch them before they vanished completely. Into the darkness she looked, even when she knew that something was looking back at her. At least the teeth that bit deep into her flesh certainly belonged to something other than to nothingness.

I don’t want to say that your prose is purple, but it’s certainly more ornate than it needs to be. Again, “Simplify, simplify, simplify.” We can pare this paragraph—and all the ones around it—down to size to create a much easier reading experience.

Still trembling and covered in sweat, Fluttershy felt that the dream had been important—it had meant something. She just had to know what.

She closed her eyes, trying to catch the last threads of her dream before they vanished. Her memories were dark and clouded, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that something was staring at her, ready to sink its teeth deep into her flesh.

If you want to get technical, we’ve cut the word count down by 43 words just through this edit. More than that, however, paring down the language has eliminated redundancy (the original version repeated some variation of “she had to know” two or three times), has given us a clear picture of Fluttershy’s physical and mental state, and just made the whole thing flow better. It’s much cleaner this way—be on the lookout for ways to simplify and tidy up your language, both while writing and while editing.

Quick protip: You seem to have an aversion or ignorance of em-dashes (—). They’re wonderful tools for creating interruptions or pauses in your narrative or dialogue; while I admit that I’m somewhat addicted to the things, I’ll also state outright that they’re one of the most valuable pieces of punctuation to keep in your toolbox. Try to use them more—they can rid you of many of your sentence fragment problems if you learn to use them correctly.

There’s actually a problem that I’ve noticed throughout your writing: you have a tendency to go into unnecessary detail on things that you don’t really need to talk about. There’s a concept known as significant detail that can be summed up as follows: Each scene, paragraph, or sentence contains a certain list of ideas that it needs to convey to the reader, and any words not devoted to that “certain list” are insignificant detail. This new category can comprise redundancies as well as unclear phrasing; their addition clutters up your prose and can turn off an otherwise-eager reader.

...Okay, this story is definitely getting purple. It’s not Skirtsian or anything, but phrases like:

The sound of a page turning filled the room for a moment before it traveled upstairs, letting silence occupy the room once again.

But when the case wasn’t so, one couldn’t help but notice all kinds of metaphors becoming something more than just tricks of language.

The dream was already turning into a mist, into grey smoke of which only glimpses could be recognised.

...do tend to push it a bit. This is the last time I’m going to say this, so listen closely: Clear up your writing, simplify your prose, and put everything in the most basic and readable format possible.

Let’s move on from this before I start getting even more redundant.

Twilight called Spike, but didn’t hear her own words. The confusement quickly changed into a smile, though, after which she ended the silence spell. A well-timed thunderbolt outside her house made her jump in the air.

There’s a definite tendency in this story to jump over actions and “summarize” them in a quick sentence. We need to see what’s happening in the story; it’s not enough to just give us the gist of each event and leave it at that. Instead, expand it to give a more play-by-play style narration:

”Spike!” Twilight called—

—before finding that the words evaporated the instant they left her mouth. She blinked before trying again. This attempt was no more effective; instead, her ears were filled with complete and total silence.

Silence. She almost slapped herself. A flicker of her horn did away with the silence spell she’d put up. Twilight grinned, opening her mouth to call for Spike a third time.

An enormous peal of thunder crashed through her eardrums, sending her what seemed like a foot into the air. She fell back to her chair with a thud, her mane standing on end and goosebumps covering the back of her neck.

The pegasi must have really outdone themselves with that one.

This way, you’re telling a story—we can envision the events as though they take place on a screen, rather than in, say, the vaguer format of a newspaper.

“Well, that’s really nice of you, but could I see those letters now?” Twilight answered, saying nothing more of Spike’s remark about her cuteness. He had begun to use such language more often now, and Twilight couldn’t help but notice. She wondered if that was the puberty speaking or whatever dragons had when they grew to that special age. Nonetheless, she didn’t mind the change as much as she sometimes pretended to.

I know I shouldn’t keep coming back to this, but there’s so much of this story—as in the example above—that you’re just not doing anything with. To quote my friend Applejinx, such a story “isn’t doing anything with most of those words, just 'ambiguating'. Be more directed. Stop making vague points in all directions and filling in the tapestry with goddamn fuzz words.”

This excerpt is also a fairly large non-sequitur. Do we need to know this? Is it relevant information? Take, for example, this quote from later on in the chapter:

It was a kind of magic even Twilight couldn't comprehend. Nevertheless, she hadn’t come here to talk about proper pet keeping procedures.

What impressions or sensations does this convey, and, most importantly, are they necessary? More than anything, this story needs to narrow its scope to those events and narration immediately and consecutively relevant to the story at hand, rather than keeping it set on the author’s stream of thought.

Spike, on the other hoof, seemed a bit let down that his comment hadn’t received any more attention.

Here’s a straightforward example of “Show, Don’t Tell.” Assuming you don’t know what SDT is and/or why it’s important, I’ll just bring in my standard copypasta to help you out.

Show, Don’t Tell

It’s better to show a reader a picture than to tell them what it’s a picture of. Words paint pictures, after all, and it’s much nicer to see the picture than to merely get the headline. If a picture is worth a thousand words, then the inverse is true as well, and an author is only cheating themselves if they choose to directly give the reader that information rather than illustrate its existence.

As a quick example, take the following:

“Get out of here!” Rainbow Dash said angrily.

So, be this piece of dialogue (and associated verb), we know that Rainbow Dash is angry. However, we know this only on an intellectual level—there’s no actual emotional investment or belief that she really is upset. Instead, like children, the readers are told to accept this at face value. This is a practice that can harm immersion; thus, it’s better to expand upon the action. How might we do so?

”Get out of here!” Rainbow Dash snarled. She bared her teeth, pawing at the ground. She flipped her mane out of her eyes and glared.

Those parts meant to show Dash’s anger have been bolded. As we saw earlier, one way to replace adverbs is to simply use a stronger verb—in this case, snarled is an excellent way to convey that feeling of scathing, sudden irritation or rage. Additionally, to deepen this image of anger, examples of body language allow the reader to construct a more cohesive picture of what this “angry Rainbow Dash” looks like, thus enhancing believability. She bares her teeth and glares, which give us the clear image of a maddened pegasus who is not to be crossed.

If a character—such as Spike—has a certain emotion or reaction, don’t just tell us what that reaction. Instead, show it—describe it—to us.

Twilight read the short, cryptic text yet again.

As a general rule, you usually don’t want to make “subjective” judgements outside of, say, first-person perspectives. It might be short, it might be encoded, and it might be written in Ye Olde Equestrian, but it is not “cryptic” unless Rainbow Dash says it in dialogue, or Twilight explicitly refers to it as such in an internal monologue.

Moving right along.

You tend to over-describe characters’ manner of speaking. See, for example:

”Tame?” asked Spike, his voice a bit hurt by the word mostly used in the case of pets.

This does somewhat fall under “Telling”—you could just as easily convey this emotion through body language or the like—but it’s also just not necessary. Strong dialogue should be able to carry tone through the strength of its diction alone; one of my favorite authors, Jim Butcher, writes dialogue with literally nothing more than “he said” and “she said” for every line. In general:

Start with a bare line of dialogue.

“Hey! Get back here!”

Add “he said” or “she said” to remind the reader of the speaker’s identity.

“Hey! Get Back here!” Rainbow Dash said.

Use words other than “said” if doing so is necessary to lend a certain tone to your writing.

“Hey! Get back here!” Rainbow Dash hollered.

Add in body language if there is no other way to convey a certain image or impression through text.

“Hey! Get back here!” Rainbow Dash hollered, tucking her wings in as she sped through the air.

You’ll note that a big theme of these additions is that they should be used only if strictly necessary. Simplicity is king, significant detail, etc. etc. etc. You get the picture. With that said, you should highly consider reducing most of your post-dialogue clauses to simple “he/she said”-isms. It’ll tidy things up quite a bit.

Nitpick: two words that combine to form a single adjective (unless one of them is an adverb) should be connected through a hyphen; i.e., “ill fit” should become “ill-fit.”

Going on, you have something of a problem with perspective—namely, keeping it consistent. This story is working within a third-person limited perspective, which means that you need to pick one character’s point of view per scene and stick with it. This chapter, however, switches between Spike’s and Twilight’s PoV at the drop of a pin, giving us:

He also knew better than to press the matter further, especially when Twilight was just making her way out.

alongside

Somehow she, too, had a vague idea of the contents of Princess Celestia’s letter.

In this kind of narration, we can only see into one person’s mind at a time. Skipping between two or more minds is cheating of a kind, but more importantly, it’s confusing for the reader, as well as a surefire mark of a story unable to keep its own narrative under check.

Moving back to dialogue, I’d advise against using long paragraphs solely comprising one character speaking, as in:

”The Princess seems to have other missions for Rainbow Dash and Applejack, as important as this one is. And do you remember the fashion show that Rarity has gone on about for weeks? Well, it is taking place right now – in Canterlot. When it comes to Pinkie... Let us say that the Princess advised against her inclusion for a number of reasons, number one being that she is Pinkie Pie. She might be ill fit for the atmosphere in Damp Town.”

This would read much better as:

”The Princess seems to have other missions for Rainbow Dash and Applejack, as important as this one is,” Twilight said. “And do you remember the fashion show that Rarity has gone on about for weeks? Well, it is taking place right now – in Canterlot.

“When it comes to Pinkie...” she went on. “Let us say that the Princess advised against her inclusion for a number of reasons, number one being that she is Pinkie Pie. She might be ill fit for the atmosphere in Damp Town.”

One subject per paragraph, plus the addition of speaker attribution—which you really only want to exclude if you’re in the midst of a rapid-fire back-and-forth between just two speakers—splits up the dialogue and makes it much easier to digest.

I will go on, however, to mention that you don’t quite seem to have a feel for Twilight’s—or Spike’s, come to think of it—tone of voice: that is, her diction. Take this excerpt. It’s got all of the ideas that we want Twilight to say, but does it really sound like her? Can you imagine, say, Tara Strong reading it out in an episode of the show?

“The letter says that Rainbow Dash and Applejack have gotten their own missions—ones just as important as this,” Twilight said. “And do you remember Rarity’s fashion show?”

Spike nodded.

“It’s going on right now,” she went on, “ in Canterlot. And Pinkie…

“Well, she’s Pinkie Pie,” she finally said. “According to Princess Celestia, Pinkie and this ‘Damp Town’ place would get along about as well as a barn on fire.”

The original dialogue was much more wordy than Twilight is in-show. This is both cleaner and closer to her canonical tone.

Twilight is crisp and precise, yet snarky. You want to make your characters “pop” off the page as much as possible—they need to exist as more than just conveyors of exposition. Give them depth through diction and your readers will love you for it.

Something that I’m noticing throughout this story is that there’s very little in the way of narrative structure—things just seem to happen. Take, for example, the opening of the scene in which Twilight meets with Fluttershy.

”Hello, Fluttershy. Mind If I come in? We need to talk.”

”Oh, right, of course you can come in.”

The familiar scent of a bunny, mixed with some other animals, greeted Twilight in the hallway. It always amazed Twilight, how ordinary and ordered Fluttershy's house was with all the animals living there. It was a kind of magic even Twilight couldn't comprehend. Nevertheless, she hadn’t come here to talk about proper pet keeping procedures.

”Fluttershy, I need your help. No, the Princess and I both need your help.”

”Oh my. What is it? Has something terrible happened?”

There’s no establishment of scene, characterization, or mood—things just leap into action because the plot needs them to. It’s clear that this scene exists solely to get Fluttershy on the road with Twilight, rather than to establish any depth or tone within the fic.

Another unfortunate factor within this scene is the extremely large amount of “infodumping” that goes on in Twilight’s head. We know who Fluttershy is, we know who Twilight is, and we know what Twilight wants. You don’t need to explain every detail—and especially not those details that aren’t even relevant—that goes through Twilight’s head.

The pacing of this scene is even more erratic than that of the last one; we go from Twilight asking if she can come in to a not-so-brief timeskip that encompasses Twilight asking Fluttershy questions, having tea, and then finally leaving. Nothing is accomplished in this scene, so it’s hard to see why it’s even here in the first place, but moreover, there’s no story here. This is a sequence of events that you might find in a newspaper article:

Extra, Extra! Twilight Sparkle Visits Fluttershy!

After a long entry process, Twilight managed to get inside of Fluttershy’s home. At this point, she asked Fluttershy about her health, taking special note of Fluttershy’s tired appearance. Fortunately, Fluttershy managed to reassure her of her physical and mental health. The two then took tea together before Twilight ultimately left some hours later.

That’s not interesting. That’s not a story.

It’s perfectly acceptable to “skim over” certain parts of a story—usually, a scene is included if it meets all of the following criteria:

1.) It advances the plot in some way.

2.) It establishes or deepens characterization.

3.) It provides a concrete tone or mood.

Often, if a protagonist is giving exposition to another character that the reader already knows, the author will just skip it over, saying something like, “Twilight told her all about Sombra and the Crystal Empire. By the end of it, Pinkie’s jaw had dropped.”

A scene also should not be included if everything goes according to plan. That means that if there’s a particular scene consisting only of, say, Rainbow Dash going back home and picking up her backpack, we don’t need to see it…

...unless she finds Scootaloo waiting for her outside her front door with a reminder that she’d promised to do flying lessons today instead of going camping. Conflict! This is interesting. This is relevant to the narrative at hand. It meets all three criteria, and so should be added to the story.

This scene with Fluttershy is the same way. There’s a discussion to be had, which can foreshadow the coming mission to Damp Town. There’s characterization to be established—Fluttershy’s fear and reluctance, alongside Twilight’s more urgent manner. There’s tone to be found, too: the sequence of events, if done correctly, should lend an air of tension and foreboding to the piece.

But without actually writing the scene, you rob your story of all this depth. Instead, it becomes an uninteresting blurb that we can just skip over, and if that’s the case, then why bother writing any of it at all? “It makes the plot make more sense” is not a reasonable excuse. This scene, as it exists write now, has no point to it whatsoever.

In the next scene—the one on the train—we’re met with an extremely large amount of exposition. I must ask, however, whether it’s truly necessary to report this—it comes alongside no characterization or tone, and it’s little more than an excerpt from an encyclopedia. Readers won’t find it interesting.

Moreover, it might serve your purposes better to leave Damp Town mysterious and unexplored. It’s ‘a remote town on the edge of Equestria,’ after all, so why would Twilight know so much about it? Keep it remote, keep it isolated, and keep it unknown; like the town in the short story “The Lottery,” an unknown town with unknown customs and history makes for a much more interesting story.

Fluttershy asked, still looking outside. There were some cows on a field that seemed to be of great interest to her.

I’m going to say this one final time: Everything should have a purpose. Don’t just say things for the purpose of saying them. Knowing that Fluttershy likes cows serves absolutely no purpose in this story; it just takes up space.

In fact, this entire conversation serves no purpose other than a meaningless infodump. You could cut it all out and start with:

”What do you think happened to the ponies who disappeared?” she asked.

This would clean up the scene, serve as a clear hook, and give us a clear idea of where the story is going. This also allows us to establish a better characterization and tone for the narrative at hand.

Meanwhile, Twilight’s response to her own question is utterly befuddling:

”We must prepare ourselves for the possibility that some wicked party is behind these disappearances. Should this be the case, my first guess would be that the changelings have something to do with this.”

Never before have characters in the show instantly decided that a new threat was related to an old enemy (unless you want to get nitpicky and bring up Nightmare Night). The parasprites are their own threat; the Ursa is an isolated incident. To Twilight’s knowledge, the changelings are gone—a non-issue. Even in the comic issue that they appear in (IDW #01), the Mane Six don’t even suspect changelings as the villains until they’re explicitly revealed to be such.

I’d like to note that I’m already six thousand or so words in, and I’ve yet to find any sort of conflict beyond a vague concept of “Bad Things Happening In Far-Off Town.” The synopsis promised conflict with Celestia, yet she’s had no presence thus far beyond a summarized, off-screen note. Fluttershy and Twilight appear to have no internal conflict—or, if they do, they’re so muted and inconsequential as to be completely marginalized—and there’s really no draw to the fic aside from an amorphous promise to have “interesting plot.”

Just something to keep in mind.

As Twilight and Fluttershy enter the village proper, I find myself wondering why they didn’t bring the others with them—or indeed anypony else. I know that there was—or was supposed to be—some manner of justification for this, but it’s starting to feel like lazy writing. What was so important about Applejack and Rainbow Dash’s “mission” that they couldn’t come along to this isolated, dangerous, and frankly intimidating village? It just doesn’t make sense, and a confused, irritated reader is not something that you want to have.

Meanwhile, the scene containing their entry into the village should be the high point of this chapter—full of darkness and malice, ratcheting up the suspense until the reader is shaking on the edge of their seat. By contrast, though, most of the actual scene is skimmed over, thus robbing it of any meaningful tension or depth. We barely even know what the town looks like, let alone what it feels like, which is often even more important in a reader’s mind.

Moving along, I’m in the scene where Twilight wakes up and fails to see Fluttershy.

I have no idea what the hell is going on. This is the trippiest, most confusing, and downright purplest piece within this story thus far.

Is it a dream sequence? Whose dream sequence? What’s its significance? Where are we? What’s going on? Due to the inability of this story to lay out a concrete sequence of events without skimming the whole thing, I can’t tell where the dream—hallucination? acid trip?—ends and the actual story begins. Something about falling, and then something about hunger is all that I get.

And now we realize that Fluttershy has gone missing. Clearly, this should be the emotional watermark of the chapter—where the tension has gone out the window to be replaced by horror and despair, only for the suspense to return tenfold once we’ve realized what’s happened.

Yet none of this is made manifest. Twilight has no apparent emotional response to Fluttershy’s disappearance and in fact seems to treat it no differently from a calculus problem. There’s a bunch of analysis in the narrative that really isn’t necessary to go through. The only thing even hinting at an emotional response is a two-bit referral to “her panicked state.”

And now we get to some kind of plot.

She didn’t know what to do. But then she remembered the story. It had been mentioned in one of the books about Damp Town she had gone though, barely a side note, really, but that was all she got. A long ago, in Damp Town, there had been talk of a Witch. A Witch that had supposedly lived in the Forest of Shallows long before the ponies that came to live there had come up with that name. In truth, nopony had ever seen this creature they had named the Witch, though something had given them the incentive to think that everything wasn’t like it should be in the Shallows.

I’ve tried to stay civil for this long, but I really feel that there’s no better way to convey the problems with this section than to give you my outright reaction to it:

Me: What.

What. Not, “Ooh,” or “Aah.” Not even a snort of derision or a whimper in fear for Fluttershy.

Just a flat, bland, confused, “What.”

We’ve had no introduction, thus far, to any concept of a “Witch.” There’s no foreshadowing of its appearance or existence, nor is there any narrative tension whatsoever that can relate to it. There’s not even irony present—perhaps, had Twilight waved off the existence of such a creature when Fluttershy informed her of it, then the ultimate irony of the situation would come about when ignoring those warnings results in the very thing they wished to avoid.

There’s nothing. Absolutely nothing. Instead, we get a half-baked piece of exposition out of nowhere that’s dumped right into the text without so much as a by-your-leave, without any context to place it in.

And this, I believe, is the biggest problem with this story. It’s unorganized and constructed without much thought or purpose. Things just happen, and often, meaningful things are glossed over while meaningless things hold the camera. There’s far too much going on in this story at one time—that is, in terms of moving from place-to-place in a very small word count—and at the same far too little, abandoning depth for breadth where it could instead develop characterization, story, or overall atmosphere.

I could go on with this review, but this is already stretching six thousand words. It doesn’t help that I firmly believe that—if this review is helpful at all—this story needs to be completely rewritten, with a totally different format, structure, and tone. There’d be no point in going any further than this because any issues that I might find with plot would be too specific to make a difference, especially as an improved version of this fic would likely dispose of them entirely.

Final Score: 2/10 Pinkies

I know this review might sound harsh. It is. You seem like an author who both knows what he wants, and is willing to take a few knocks to get there. You say you want to get on EqD? EqD is a lot meaner than me—what I have here is just the bare minimum to make this story readable. Their standards are even higher.

I hope that your devotion to this idea doesn’t wave with the admitted harshness of my review. Instead, you should take a step back and re-evaluate what you want to do with it. Take my advice, and…

Do what, exactly?

Well, we’ve done the criticism. Let’s get to the constructive bit.

First, read. Read more. Read a lot. And I’m not saying fanfiction—read Twain, read Orwell, read Butcher, read Rowling if you must. Watch how they work, both through prose and through actual storytelling. Read a book once for the story, and then read it again for the technique. Observe. Take note of foreshadowing, character development, or memorable lines. In the writing world, we stand on the shoulders of giants—those who have paved the way for genre and successful technique that we can learn to work with in our own time. Do your research and get into the proper mindset—in this way, writing is little different from any other discipline.

Secondly, outline your story. And I mean reallyoutline. Lay down the exposition, the characterization, and the plot elements that will come into play throughout. Go over them. Think on how best to work them in. Then go to work writing the story, put it aside, come back to it, and do your best to evaluate objectively whether or not your technique has worked. Really think about the play-by-play of each scene and how each weaves in with its surroundings to create a coherent, solid narrative.

Thirdly, practice scenes. Write them—in snippets, maybe, of no more than two to three hundred words. Do your best to start off with a hook, and to develop the mood, the plot, and the characters as best you can with limited space. Work on getting the reader invested into a story without glossing over the actual narrative. Avoid unnecessary exposition and Telling to the best of your ability and instead focus on the interplay between characters, or between a single character and their environment.

I wouldn’t worry about Equestria Daily just yet—you’ve got a long way to go, and it’s important to develop your skills one step at a time. Keep it in the back of your mind as an ultimate goal, though; it’s always good to have something to reach for. With enough revision, who knows? You might end up with a final draft of A Device For Divine right on the front page of Equestria Daily.

If you have any questions, comments, or complaints, feel free to PM me in reply. I’d be more than happy to answer them.

Best of luck writing!

Cheers,

Golden Vision

"Vengeance of Dawn"

Hi there! Golden Vision here, and I’m all revved up to review. Let’s get started, shall we? This fic is certainly a doozy!

So the opening of this story begins with what’s called a Weather Report. In general, this is a bad idea—readers want action, they want characterization, they want plot. They want a hook, and in general, beginning with “It was a beautiful day in Canterlot” tends to turn people off.

I’d like to note, however, that Vengeance of Dawn manages to neatly sidestep this problem: while the “weather report” in question isn’t quite a hook, it sets a rather nice tone for the diction and atmosphere you plan to bring to the story. Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series did something similar, which I quite enjoyed, and so I’m not vehemently opposed to the idea.

With that said, I will tell you to keep in mind—as I am still only on the first paragraph of this story—that you may be stepping out of one problem to land in another. In The Wheel of Time, the weather-based openings spoke mainly to the themes of the series—that all nations and peoples were connected, and that all of time is at once ageless and meaningful. Vengeance begins with a discussion of the Canterlot infrastructure, which—depending on its value within this story as a whole—may or may not be a good decision.

The third-person present tense is an interesting choice for this story. I am, again, unsure of how this will turn out. Let’s see where this goes.

Hm. You seem to be unaware of the more commonly accepted way of separating scenes on FimFiction. Should you wish to display a soft scene break (as in a short difference in either time or location), then two to four lines of extra spacing is often sufficient. For either a soft or hard scene break (the latter referring to any expanded lapse in either direction or time), the line-break BBCode tag on FimFic is often preferred.

To illustrate, here is what you now have:

Her parents, watching in the corner of the room, prepare for tears and consoling hugs and an evening spent soothing the sorrows of their daughter.

***

The sun beams down upon Shining Armour, currently in training to join the Royal Guard.

A bit messy, not least because the asterisks aren’t centered. But what happens if we add the BBCode linebreak tag? The tag itself can be identified by the BBCode [ hr ], with spaces removed. The end result looks a little something like this:

Her parents, watching in the corner of the room, prepare for tears and consoling hugs and an evening spent soothing the sorrows of their daughter.

[ hr ]

The sun beams down upon Shining Armour, currently in training to join the Royal Guard.

which becomes:

Her parents, watching in the corner of the room, prepare for tears and consoling hugs and an evening spent soothing the sorrows of their daughter.

The sun beams down upon Shining Armour, currently in training to join the Royal Guard.

Much cleaner, wouldn’t you say? Hard-coded into the site, and fairly easy to use while staying aesthetically appealing. Do consider its use, won’t you?

And now, of course, we move into Shining Armor’s scene. The “Tell, Don’t Show” style you’re using here works very nicely with the present tense; it gives us more of a narrative, distanced feel from the events of the story. However, upon moving into the dialogue of the scene proper, the present tense disappears, and is replaced by simple past instead. This is quite the jarring change: As a reader, I find myself jolted out of the story here, wondering if there’s something that I’ve missed; as an editor, I can’t help but wonder if the two parts were written at different times, with the author merely forgetting to keep the tense continuous.

The story progresses, and a few grammatical errors come into evidence. For the sake of a more comprehensive review, I’m going to assume that these are mistakes born of a lack of education, rather than out of a mere tendency toward typos. If I’m mistaken, please forgive me—I’m merely trying to err on the side of caution.

Original:

"Of course," Lancer said, "The biggest threat we have to contend with are swarms of ravenous flying banana-fish."

Fixed Version:

"Of course," Lancer said, "the biggest threats we have to contend with are swarms of ravenous flying banana-fish."

If a single sentence of dialogue is split apart by a speaking verb, then the first letter of the second half should not be capitalized, as it is not the beginning of a sentence. Furthermore, when pairing a noun with a verb, it is necessary that the plurality of each one is in agreement with the other: threats, plural, are swarms of fish; they is not swarms of fish.

Original:

"Yes sir," Shining Armour said absently. He paused in mid-nod, "Wait, what?"

Fixed Version:

"Yes sir," Shining Armour said absently. He paused in mid-nod. "Wait, what?"

The only time when prose ought to use a comma before dialogue rather than a period is when the immediate preceding text comprises a speaking verb, as in:

He said, “Why are you reading this?

Otherwise, an action or thought merely ends, and the dialogue begins as a new sentence.

Original:

Shining Armour shook his head, "Sorry sir, it's just that my sister is taking her exam for Princess Celestia's school today. I can't help but wonder how she's doing."

Fixed Version:

Shining Armour shook his head. "Sorry, sir. It's just that my sister is taking her exam for Princess Celestia's school today. I can't help but wonder how she's doing."

We again see the emergence of the pre-dialogue comma, which has been appropriately dealt with. This time, however, the two clauses “Sorry, sir” (which now has a comma added for proper emphasis) and “It’s just that my sister is taking her exam” have now been separated by a period instead of a comma. Why?

The original format contained what is known as a comma splice. I’ll let some copypaste explain the proper meaning for me:

When two independent clauses are connected by only a comma, they constitute a run-on sentence that is called a comma-splice. The example just above (about the sunscreen) is a comma-splice. When you use a comma to connect two independent clauses, it must be accompanied by a little conjunction (and, but, for, nor, yet, or, so).

Do note, however, that the the conjunctions in question would have sounded either unwieldy or plain incorrect, grammatically speaking. In this case, either a period or—according to my own preferences—an em-dash would have sufficed.

Original:

"Magic school eh?" the older pony grimaced.

Fixed Version:

"Magic school eh?" The older pony grimaced.

It’s entirely possible that this was a typo, but just in case it wasn’t, keep in mind that you can’t attach clauses to dialogue if they do not include a speaking verb; one cannot “grimace” words. Any body language or other action must act as its own sentence.

Original:

Before you know it she'll be putting on airs with the best of them and you and me will be saluting her.

Fixed Version:

Before you know it she'll be putting on airs with the best of them, and you and me will be saluting her.

If changing subjects midway through a sentence, it is necessary to place a comma and article to link the two; otherwise, the sentence is grammatically incorrect.

And now we come back to the narrative itself. The return to present tense is, once again, jarring to read through. Furthermore, the sudden shift in point of view and—presumably, time period—is confusing.

Reading on, it becomes evident that Breaking Dawn is meant to be Celestia’s pupil on the same date as Twilight’s test. However, this is hardly obvious, and in fact seems to be laughably implausible. I suspect that I will return to this soon enough, namely when Celestia must trade one pupil in for another (as I assume this text will have her do). In any case, the sudden introduction of a new OC doesn’t quite work with a story so clearly focused upon Twilight—why would we learn of this new OC who seems to have taken Twilight Sparkle’s place? The organization and setup for this piece just doesn’t work, and harms the reaader’s ability to suspend disbelief while reading.

Celestia’s introduction introduces far too much telling to work as the ones before it have. While the other present-tense PoVs work through implication and illustration as much as exposition, Celestia’s perspective gives away too much, too fast. Not only does this strain the prose of the story, but it also robs it of any chance to introduce these secrets as conflict later on.

I will say this: I do like the scene you’ve written up for the Sonic Rainboom, though I do wish that each of the Mane Six got a longer, more detailed part. Perhaps a more symbolic (non-literal) description of events would work better as well.

Now, here is where the narrative begins to break down. Had you stuck with the present-tense PoV for the entirety of the “introductory” sequence, then this would be an ideal time to shift to the standard past-tense format. But that’s neither here nor there, as there’s a grander problem at work here.

This section, wholly different in tone and depth from the earlier scenes, is at once both rushed and too detailed. Had it been identical in flavor to the earlier scenes, it might have worked in technical manner, yet failed to hold the readers’ attentions. Yet by expanding it from an expository snippet to a fully illustrated scene, certain things are expected: pacing, for one. This scene just rushes by, snapping past the reader’s eyes, with each event either glazed over or dismissed within seconds. Spike’s eruption through the tower, Celestia’s appearance, and Twilight’s rescue are all events that would be greatly improved by taking the time to fully develop them, both through description and thought.

The latter point brings up a particularly glaring issue with this passage in particular: a clear point of view character is never established. Again, the omniscient narrator works quite well in the earlier, expository “bird’s eye view” setting, but here, a consistent voice or perspective would only do this story good. As it is, we go from Lancer’s PoV to Celestia’s without so much as a by-your-leave, which is either very amateurish, very rude, or both.

Original:

"Fear not, Shining Armour, all will be well. I promise."

Fixed Version:

"Fear not, Shining Armour. All will be well. I promise."

or

"Fear not, Shining Armour, for all will be well. I promise."

Behold, once more, the comma splice. I quote this only to drive the point home: to link these independent clauses, a comma is insufficient; either an article or a period is needed instead.

And so we reach the end of this chapter. I believe the only criticism I have remaining is that Lancer remains a flat, uninteresting, and, frankly, plot-device character who only exists as a hindrance to Shining Armor. Otherwise, I must admit that I quite like the premise. I presume that this was written before Equestria Girls a thing?

(Though I do see that you eventually bring Sunset Shimmer in with the sequel. My goodness, Celestia. You’ve certainly been a naughty backstabbing princess, haven’t you?)

I’ll likely move onto the next chapter tomorrow. Expect any newfound criticisms to rest in the comments there; in the meantime, I hope that this piece gives you something to chew on; if you have any questions, feel free to direct them my way.

Until then.

—Golden Vision

WRITE’s Pocket Spycrab

The Royal Guard

[Generic Obs Whimsy]

This Week:

Action/Adventure

Of High Seas and Howling Winds, by InsertCoolUsernameHere

Through the Well of Pirene, by Ether Echoes

Harmony Theory, by Sharaloth

What Bound Them, by The Headless Horsepony

A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies, by DGD Davison

Trixcord, by RTStephens

Night’s Favored Child, by Municipal Engines

Dark

Without a Hive, by Phoenix_Dragon

A FLEet|ng LIght |n thE DArknEsS, by Flashgen

Romance

Colorless, by The DJ Rainbow Dash

Sugarfree, by Wade

Sad

Wonderbolt, by WovenWord

Slice of Life

Burning Day Brethren, by Cerulean Voice

Chess, by KitsuneRisu

[page_break]

ACTION/ADVENTURE

Of High Seas and Howling Winds, by InsertCoolUsernameHere

Twilight Sparkle has hit a wall in her studies. So when she is tasked by Princess Celestia with joining an expedition on a faraway island, she can't help but see it as a form of punishment. Nevertheless, she packs her bags and heads to Baltimare, one of Equestria's many port cities. It should have been simple: find a ship offering passage and pay them to take her to Haven. She soon learns, though, that ponies are afraid of the unknown waters past Eternity's Crossing. Despite her best efforts, she is unable to find a ship willing to take her there. That is, until she meets Captain Rainbow Dash.

Brash and enigmatic, Rainbow Dash, along with her crew, are the only ones willing to ferry Twilight on the waters of the Forgotten Sea. She expects six months of quiet travel that will allow her to continue her studies. What she gets is an adventure which makes her realize that, when sailing the high seas, the line between right and wrong is never as clear as it seems.

**Will I like this?: This sea-spanning adventure does more than fling us into a storm of action and plunder. While following Twilight's quest to reach the Forgotten Sea, readers are thrown into a maelstrom of personality as well. If you're interested in alternate universes that really invest in their characters or epic quests in the vein of "Pirates of the Caribbean," then this is the fic for you. —PR Golden Vision

Through the Well of Pirene, by Ether Echoes

Daphne has tried to live her life as any normal teenage girl would, focusing on school and the intricacies of adolescent life in an effort to forget her more imaginative childhood. Now, however, her kid sister has been kidnapped by forces she cannot understand, and she is forced to give chase into a land she had once thought only make-believe. Cast adrift in a strange and magical world, Daphne must reunite with her long-lost friend and embark on a journey of discovery that will take her to the worlds she could only dream of.

**Will I like this?: Through the Well of Pirene is a right tidy fic, with all the bits needed to be entertaining: compelling characters, excellent description, magic wands, and goblins. You’ll like Pirene if you like well paced tales of adventure that always find new ways to surprise and impress you. A proper tidy fic, this. —PR Comrade Sparkle

Harmony Theory, by Sharaloth

After the Changeling invasion, Celestia and Luna make the decision to have Twilight investigate the Elements of Harmony and solve the mystery of their power.

A thousand years later, Rainbow Dash awakens in a world she does not recognize. She has no idea how or why she came to be there. She does not know the language, the geography or any of the rules of this new time. She soon finds allies in Star Fall, a scholarly pegasus whose Talent is Magic, and Astrid, Star Fall's Griffin guardian. Together they set out to discover why Dash has been sent to the future, and how she might return to when she belongs.

War threatens the nations, a Nightmare stalks the shadows, and Rainbow Dash's arrival has turned her into a wild card in a deadly game that pits the law on both sides of a broken Equestria against a mysterious criminal figure, Max Cash. Yet the stakes are higher than anyone knows, for in her research Twilight Sparkle discovered a dark secret about the Elements, something that will shake the foundations of the world.

**Will I like this?: After a bit of a jarring intro, this story quickly hits its stride and doesn't let up. A dark, tense adventure into a future torn apart by war, threatened by a crazed alicorn and a madman wielding the very tools that once protected it. Beautifully written, perfectly paced, and populated by some of the most fleshed out, well-rounded OCs I've ever read in the fandom. —PR Jake the Army Guy

What Bound Them, by The Headless Horsepony

It's been more than a thousand years since the Mane Six's adventures in Ponyville, and things look very different. Equestria is gone, devoured by chaos. Nightmare creatures roam the lands, changelings prey on the few remaining pony settlements, and all trace of the peace and harmony during Princess Celestia's reign has vanished.

Until, that is, a small group of ponies set out to map the Tangle, and find a slumbering dragon inside. Now Spike, a millenium out of his time and with only his memories to comfort him, is ponykind's only hope. Together, he and his new friends set out to find the one pony who can set things right: Twilight Sparkle.

**Will I like this?: With excellent characterization and storytelling, What Bound Them certainly deserves more attention than it has. Set a thousand years in the future, the story highlights the struggle for survival based around a small group of ponies whose goal is to reclaim Equestria's future. Highly recommended for those who enjoy epic-length adventure stories. —PR Sorren

A Mighty Demon Slayer Grooms Some Ponies, by D G D Davidson

After Princess Celestia appoints Twilight Sparkle and her friends to be ambassadors to Earth, they decide to introduce themselves to the humans by appearing in a horse show, but they need someone to get them ready. They call on Megan, the legendary warrior who guarded ponykind in days of yore. Megan has banished or slain countless demons, but can she convince the ponies to hold still long enough for her to braid their manes?

**Will I like this?: I can tell you one thing about this story: It’s not what you expect. The best thing about it is the faithfulness it gives to its Generation One source material, making Megan and her newfound friends into extremely believable—and enjoyable—characters. The characterization certainly shines through. —PR Golden Vision

Trixcord, by RTStephens

In a desperate and costly bid to escape from his stone prison, Discord is left weak and helpless. Luckily for him, there is a nearby unicorn that he can hide in while he regains his power.

**Will I like this?: Two masters of the stage, Trixie and Discord, coming together as one. What could go wrong? Just a hint of chaos with a touch of oversized ego and delusions of grandeur. — PR Dash247

Night’s Favoured Child, by Municipal Engines

For almost a thousand years, the immortal Nightmare Moon has reigned over Equestria as Empress. To the average pony, Nightmare Moon is an overarching enigma whose rule is absolute and whose wrath is terrible. But to Twilight Sparkle, who, as an orphan, has never known her parents, the Empress is something else entirely. When the young unicorn is brought under the royal wing as an apprentice, she learns a great deal more about the supposed tyrant than she ever knew. But as Twilight is introduced to life with her new mentor, she is thrust into a world of political intrigue, conspiracies and secrets. Secrets that were never meant to be revealed. As allies and enemies plot against the very peace of the nation, will Twilight fall prey to the perils of her new position? Or will she prosper and find in Nightmare Moon the mother she never had?

**Will I like this?: An intriguing story that not only has a fantastic premise, but knows how to work with it. Night's Favoured Child is an excellent example of both character development and world-building, and a story that has kept me both guessing and enraptured. Do yourself a favor and check this one out. —PR ToixStory

DARK

Without a Hive, by Phoenix_Dragon

Young Nictis had one dream: to serve his hive by becoming an Infiltrator, the most vital and vaunted role a changeling could aspire to. To hide in plain sight among the other species, blending in, while gathering the vital emotional energies that fueled his people. Few were deemed worthy of the dangerous job. He was one of the few nymphs selected for training, in the hopes that one of them would develop the skills needed to be entrusted with such a treacherous task.

But when a training expedition ends in tragedy, Nictis finds himself thrust into the role not to serve his hive and people, but to preserve his own life. Separated from the hive, alone, he must put what little training he has to the test. He must blend in with the hive's greatest source of food, and its most dangerous enemy: the ponies of Equestria.

**Will I like this?: This story’s author takes an alien perspective and runs with it as if it were the most normal thing since waking up in the morning. The world is mysterious, and the characters breathe. Fans of world-building will fall head over heels for this one. —PR ArgonMatrix

A FLEet|ng LIght |n thE DArknEsS, by Flashgen

The following transcripts are of a journal found in Ponyville on April 16th of this year. The last recorded contact with the town had been 3 days prior, on the 13th, when a team under orders from Princess Celestia was sent to look into several missing pony reports in the area. When another group of investigators were sent on the 16th, the town was found deserted. The journal’s owner is believed to be the princess’s personal student, Twilight Sparkle. None of the town’s inhabitants have been located in the weeks since.

**Will I like this?: A mysterious, dark tale that keeps its thrilling suspense rolling right from start to finish—the intricate details, the oddities, and the anticipation all combine into something just as strange and alluring as its title. Whether it's horror, mystery, or even just general appreciation for gripping literature, this is your story. Just remember to read at night. — PR Yipyapper

ROMANCE

Colorless, by The DJ Rainbow Dash

I wish I could see you smile again.

Ever since it went away, the pony I once knew seemed to disappear as well.

At times, it makes me wonder if anything matters anymore.

It makes me wonder if I still matter to you anymore...

Twilight and Rainbow Dash come to a crossroads in their relationship as they look to the future. But with as bleak and depressing as it seems, what really is the point? Perhaps love does conquer all...

**Will I like this?: Twilight proves just how far she’s willing to go to restore everything that she once loved. This story takes you with her on a journey through a world drained of color and life. This piece proves that no matter how gray things get, there’s always a rainbow to keep your head held high. —PR Dash247

Sugarfree, by Wade

There's no place like Donut Joe's diner to unwind after a long, hard day. Good company, great coffee, and the best dang cucumber omelette in Equestria. After the week Celestia's had, she could really, really use a place to get away from it all.

Here, the regulars all know her as Sunny Skies, the unassuming workaholic mare who hasn't taken a day off in... ever. Well, today's her lucky day. Sunny's about to have one apocalyptically long holiday.

Luna's become delirious with a fever, Discord's fled the castle in terror, there's a living moon locked in Celestia's dining room, and something is very, very wrong with Equestria's sugar.

Put on a pot of coffee, folks. We've got an all-nighter on our hooves.

**Will I like this?: This is a story that plays with the characters of the Princesses like putty even as it sets up a most unexpected—but no less enjoyable—romp through adventure, romance, and magic. The pairing isn’t your usual ship, but that’s no reason to let it slide by. —PR Golden Vision

SAD

Wonderbolt, by WovenWord

I have something I want to tell you.

It's a very simple thing. A short little phrase.

I wonder if it still matters, though, in a world like this.

It matters to me, but I'd like to know if it'll matter to you.

**Will I like this?: I like to think that depression can have a silver lining somewhere in it. This story paints a very vivid picture of bleakness, but it leaves with its silver lining shining brightly for all to see: the definition of what it really means to be a Wonderbolt. -PR Comet Burst

SLICE OF LIFE

Burning Day Brethren, by Cerulean Voice

Three phoenixes' Burning Days occur simultaneously, against all possible odds. Deciding to take advantage of this once-in-an-eternity possibility, Philomena, Fawkes and Ho-Oh meet in the "Unbecoming" realm to share experiences of their worlds: their masters, acquaintances, apocalypse aversions and practical jokes.

**Will I like this?: What exactly happens to a phoenix when it turns to ash during its renewal? If you’ve wondered about that question at all, then this is the tale for you. There’s no need to be a Pokemon fan or a Harry Potter fan in order to enjoy this crossover; everything is explained very well. —PR Dash247

Chess, by KitsuneRisu

It's all just a game, isn't it?

When it comes to Princess Celestia and Twilight Sparkle, Chess is much more than just moving pieces around on a board.

It's a game of the mind, of thoughts, of conquest.

But in a game like this, sometimes your greatest opponent is yourself.

**Will I like this?: A simple experience that quickly turns to a deeper, more thoughtful tone. Still amusing to read, but great characterization makes the story thoroughly enjoyable. —PR Kaldanor

Can’t Choose Your Family, by CyborgSamurai

It's been five thousand years since the Summit of the Gods was last hosted in Equestria, and after dropping off Discord in Ponyville, Celestia returns to Canterlot Castle to meet with the entire Norse Pantheon. Before she can arrive, though, she's stopped by a guard with a strange message, sent on the behalf of a mysterious figure from her past.

**Will I like this?: I’m sure we all have those family members that are difficult to be around. We just have to tolerate them as best we can. This story takes all of that and puts it on a godly level. — Dash247

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