Just don't send this to Equestria Daily . . . .
“Twilight! Twilight, I want you to read this! Twilight! Come on, open up and take a look!”
Pinkie Pie rapped on the doors of the palace for a good ten minutes, using both hooves. Wound up in the curls of her mane was a scroll; it bounced around in her poofy perm as she banged and shrieked.
“Twilight! Come see what I made! TWIIIIIIIIIILIIIIIIIIGHT!!!”
Just as the doors began to open, Pinkie stopped banging and sat down. Twilight Sparkle stood on the other side of the doors, looking at Pinkie with narrowed eyes.
“Pinkie Pie, what is going on? What is it you’re so eager to show me?”
“Oh, hi, Twilight!” Pinkie chirped as if she hadn’t been trying to break the doors in. “I wrote something really fun, and I was hoping you’d look it over for me!” She then smiled and made a squeaky noise akin to a dog toy.
Twilight sighed. “Is that all? Why were you banging on the door for ten minutes just for that?”
Pinkie stroked her chin with her hoof, then shrugged. “I dunno. I’ve been uncharacteristically pushy before!” She smiled, and made another chew-toy squeak sound.
“Huh? Wait, what do you . . . oh, never mind.” Twilight shook her head. “Come on in, and I’ll make us some tea.
“Okey-dokey, Lokey!” Pinkie squeaked and hopped inside before Twilight closed the doors. The two made their way to the kitchen, and Twilight filled her kettle with water and set it on the heat as Pinkie took a seat. She bounced in her seat like an excited filly, her scroll of parchment almost falling out of the coils of her coif.
“Okay, let’s take a look at this thing, shall we?” Twilight asked as she approached the kitchen table. She aimed her horn at Pinkie’s scroll and pulled it out with her magic. Aided by telekinesis, she unfurled the scroll in midair and looked on the inside.
“It’s my story about me!” Pinkie said, grinning. “It’s about me and my friends having fun in a fictional Ponyville!”
“Hmm . . . pretty good premise, I guess . . . but the setup is a little boring. I mean, in this intro, you’re just going to visit your friend. Not a very good hook. And your friend is a princess? Come on, that’s totally unbelievable!”
“Keep reading!”
Twilight rolled her eyes and continued scanning the parchment, “Mm-hmm . . . yeah . . . what? Pinkie, you should at least explain where a character is if you’re going to name drop like that. What’s the use in talking about a character we can’t see or don’t know where they are?”
“Hmmm . . . you’re right, Twilight! I should have written up an extra copy for Spike!” Pinkie exclaimed.
“Wait . . . what?”
She then hopped out of her chair and yelled out to the room, “SPIKE! HEY, SPIIIIIIKE! OLLY, OLLY, OXEN FREE!!” Glancing from one part of the room to another, she raced to the entrance and stuck her head outside. “OH, SPIIIKE!” Pinkie pulled her head back in and frowned. “Where’d he go?”
Twilight did some glancing too, then looked at Pinkie and shrugged before looking back at the story. “I dunno . . . wait, an info-dump? Pinkie, info-dumps are a bad thing, for some reason! I mean, who wants a convenient paragraph in the middle of the page that answers everything you need to know right when you need to know it?”
Spike was actually on vacation, and was staying in a swanky hotel in Los Equines, courtesy of Celestia. The trip was funded by the Crystal Empire; Spike had taken a great opportunity to use his good standing with them to his advantage.
“And here, there’s also too much telling.”
“Huh?” Pinkie stopped and stared at Twilight. “’Telling?”
“Yes! Everyone knows that readers hate knowing exactly how their characters feel! If you’re going to write emotion, you need to be as pretentiously vague and indistinct as possible!”
Pinkie Pie, obviously looking sad and downtrodden specifically at Twilight’s comment, replied with a low, downcast voice, “I see.”
“And then there’s this part: ‘Rainbow Dash said ‘I’m the best flier in Equestria!’’ I mean, where did she even come from? You’ve gotta introduce characters before just giving them lines in a scene they’re not in!”
“Hello, Twilight darling, what are you reading?”
Twilight yelped and jumped away from the table, then turned to see Rarity, stunning and splendid and sparkling today, more so than usual. Her bouncy purple curls and white coat were especially fit of Canterlot nobility. Her hooves were shiny and buffed to perfection, and she also seemed exceptionally fit and trim, as a recent worry about the size of her plot had caused her to go on a diet.
“Rarity? But, why . . . how did you . . . oh, never mind. I was just looking at this story Pinkie wrote.”
“Mmm, that much I gathered, darling,” Rarity replied. “I mean, she seems to go on a bit too long talking about one specific character. And she’s not even the focus of the story.”
“Yeah. She also doesn’t explain certain things until, like, three or four paragraphs afterward.”
“Oh, hello, everypony,” came a voice from the entrance to the kitchen. The mares turned to see Fluttershy walk in. “I noticed the front doors were open, so I thought I’d check up on you. Everything okay?”
“Oh, absolutely, Fluttershy,” Rarity replied. “We’re just reading a bit, that’s all.”
“Yep-yep!” Pinkie added, smiling. “Twilight’s a proofreader now! She’s reading my fan fiction!”
“Hmm . . . a plot device that changes names and purposes halfway through the story? Convenient character entrances? No dialogue tags? Seriously, Pinkie, anyone could be talking right now!”
“Yeah, she’s right!”
“Well, give her some credit. She’s trying!”
“It’s just not a great attempt, that’s all. I mean, she uses waaaay too many adverbs. I mean, how can I read this if the narration isn’t bland and unappealing to the reader?”
Pinkie slowly lowered her head and lay it gingerly on the table, looking solemnly at her friends and whining pitifully. “Oh . . .” she muttered mournfully, “. . . I . . . didn’t know . . . .”
“And there’s another thing!” Twilight pointed out. “And the dialogue tags you do have are way too specific! I can’t be reminded of something a character is about to do that I won’t be too sure they’re doing and why! I can’t know about that stuff!”
“But why?!” Pinkie questioned.
“Well, it’s just not very good writing, Pinkie,” Rarity addressed. “ Plus, you could be a bit less lazy with your character entrances.”
At this point, Applejack walked in. “Hey, y’all, what’s up?” she interrogated. “Couldn’t help overhearin’, and I thought I heard that Pinkie wrote a story.” she explained. She saw Pinkie at the table and approached. “Come on, relax, Pinkie!” Applejack encouraged. “Just know to make the ‘write’ decisions!” she joked.
Twilight sighed and kept reading. Soon, the purple Alicorn tapped the parchment and said, “There! Too many adjectives! A bad case of Lavender Unicorn Syndrome!”
The alabaster Unicorn nodded. “Well said, Twilight.”
“Yeah, what’s up with that?” the orange Earth pony asked. “Pretty sure we can remember who’s who, even if these characters’re brand new and we ain’t never seen ‘em before, and could forget which is which at any time.”
“And there’s another thing!” Twilight said and tapped the scroll again. “The way you wrote yourself, you seem way too popular! I mean, ponies wanting to be your friend because you’re kind and they show kindness back to you? Every other main character wanting to help you out when you’re sad because they are all decent characters with similar morality and goodwill toward their fellow ponies? You being sad even though you’re the best party planner in all of Ponyville? And she just happens to be friends with the most important characters of the story? To be honest, you just come across as a self-insert Mary Sue character.”
“But . . .” The tears began welling in Pinkie’s eyes. “But I . . . .”
“And this part here! There’s totally no buildup to the big climax! I mean, if you’re going to have a character act this way, at least warn us firs—”
“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!” Pinkie started to wail. Screaming and letting tears descend like Neigh-agra Falls, she sprang from the table and bolted toward the doors and out of the castle.
“Oh, poor Pinkie Pie,” Fluttershy mumbled. “I wish I could help her.”
“Oh, me too, darling,” Rarity added. “She was only trying to share her writing. Poor dear didn’t expect such harsh criticism.”
“Yeah, criticism ain’t great,” Applejack said, shrugging. “Course, we can’t grow without it. Still, it’d be best if ponies weren’t such jerks about it—”
“Look! More crap!” Twilight shrieked. “These characters are written totally wrong! She wouldn’t react this way! And she would never treat her friends like this! I mean, it’s like everypony in here is written way too much out . . . o-out of . . . ch-character . . . .”
An awkward paused made the air swell in the room. For that moment, time seemed to stand still.
“Well . . .” Fluttershy muttered, glancing at the parchment, “she does make nice metaphors.”
“Yeah . . .” Twilight said with a nod. “Yeah, she does. I guess . . . .”
There was another weighty, cumbersome pause before another voice could be heard. “Hey, Twilight! Check it out! I just finished writing the coolest fanfic, and I want you to see it!”
The girls turned to see Rainbow Dash zooming into the kitchen, a roll of parchment tucked between her own hooves as if holding a newborn. Her features looked as lively and luminous as a lightning bolt.
“Sure, why not . . .” Twilight grumbled and took up the parchment with her magic. “Should just open up a drive-thru proofreading service . . . .” This time, she unrolled it to read herself, turning away from the others and taking several long minutes. There was the occasional hum of contemplation and sniff of disapproval.
After about twenty minutes, Twilight rolled the parchment back up and sent it floating back to Rainbow Dash. Dash took it back and gave a super-wide grin. Well . . . whattaya think?!”
Twilight inhaled, bringing her hoof to her chest, then extended her foreleg upon exhale. “Rainbow Dash,” she said plainly and without inflection, “allow me to explain to you in full and merciless detail why this story is the most disgusting, awkward, foul, cringe-worthy, and worthless excuse for literature since that one vampire book named after me. And having just read Pinkie’s crap, I can definitely vouch . . . .”
Spike, having returned from his vacation, stared at Twilight after her explanation. “So . . . that was ‘perfectly reasonable and totally objective criticism that Rainbow Dash should have learned from and thanked you for’, huh? I take it she doesn’t take criticism well?”
Twilight, ink coating her face and head, a quill pen jammed in each ear, and a large roll of parchment stuck up her butt, replied simply, “No. She doesn’t.”
