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No. 125734
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>>125701
Well hey there Rainedash, and happy holidays! It’s the season for giving, you know, and I’ve got just the thing for you!
And you are right, your prose is just a bit dry, but hopefully I've got some useful advice for you. Just remember that descriptive language is really imporant!
General Story Stuff:
All you have right now is the introduction, so there’s not much to say about the plot or conflict of the story as a whole. Still, there are just a few - okay, maybe more - problems with the introduction that I think will probably get worse as you go on, being systematic and all.
Alright, so lets start at the very basic, the fundamental idea: Twilight turns into a vampire.
It’s cute and has a lot of potential, but hard to arrive at and work with. I mean, vampires are really really old - they’ve been done to undeath. So you have a lot of cliches to work around, and it’s not like vampires really fit well with the loving, happy, everything-is-sunshine spirit of ponies. That’s your biggest hurdle, actually getting Vampire Twilight.
Which is really what this chapter as an introduction is all about.
From the start, your first issue is the mapping of the Everfree. It’s a really Twilight thing to do, but not for the reason you give.
Twilight’s such an egghead - she’s all into learning and studying for the fun of it, not just for impressing Princess Celestia. Really, knowing her, she’d definitely, absolutely, positively focus more on the joy of discovery over impressing Princess Celestia.
Besides that, I’d think Twilight would have the idea herself, not Spike. Spike doesn’t really spend his time thinking about studies and discovering things so much as helping Twilight keeping up with her own studies and discoveries.
Okay, so now that Twilight’s in the Everfree Forest, how does she end up being vampire-ized? Magical unexplained thing to the rescue! Now, stumbling across ancient cursed relics isn’t really anything too impossible to believe, but the delivery really hurts your case.
First, the shield. It’s bypassed/discovered way, way too fast. And I mean too fast, not too easily. Twilight doesn’t even take a second to pause to figure it out and get around it, it feels like. It’s just find problem, find solution, done. Twilight’s pretty smart, so I’m sure she wouldn’t struggle to get around such a basic defense, but the scene is just so short that it has no impact.
Then there’s the orb. Twilight just kind of makes a bunch of assumptions about it and gets closer without considering if it might be dangerous. Considering how nasty the Everfree Forest is at times, that’s a really silly thing to do. And you also go through the whole thing really fast, so there’s no real impact emotionally. I’m just not getting any sense of panic or fear from Twilight.
And at the end of it all, Twilight conveniently finds herself at home, oddly changed, and you end it with a few hints that yes, she is now a vampire or something like that.
And that thing about burning down the Everfree in retaliation? I really can’t see the Twilight I know doing or even thinking seriously about that, so maybe you’re just a wee-bit confused.
So that’s what you have - now let’s look at the underlying issue:
Characters, characters, characters!
One of the really big-huge things that’s hurting you is Twilight’s characterization, or really, the lack thereof.
The story is in first-person, which means you’ve got a great chance to show off the way the perspective character thinks, feels, and experiences the world. Sadly, though, you’ve really only kinda got the first one.
Look at the orb scene. Twilight’s just discovered some sort of magical relic - she would be excited, scared, worried, curious, all these things. And ponies show these emotions in a lot of different ways... but the most you give us is:
>Even more worrying
>After a bit of hesitation
And a whole basket full of questions. While this is a good start, it’s what a lot of reviewers around here would call telling - you’re telling the reader the way Twilight is feeling, rather than say, showing them.
When you’re worried, you act more cautiously. You might look over your shoulder, or perk your ears. When you’re scared, your heartbeat might pick up, or you might sweat a little. When you’re hesitant, it shows in the way you walk and move.
All these little details are a part of the way ponies experience emotions, and showing them to the reader is a big leap towards making your story a real experience - bringing the characters to life as living creatures rather than puppets of the author.
In the end, we see very little about how Twilight moves and reacts, let alone how her friends do, although it does get better in places.
Oh, and lets not forget about physical sensation. Is it cold, hot, just right? Is the mud damp in the Everfree? I don’t know! You didn’t tell me, you silly goose. As far as I know, Twilight’s in the Everfree Forest, but I don’t know what the Everfree Forest is like. Atmosphere is another big component of a really excellent story - it sets up a basis for why the characters act and feel the way they do, and adds another layer of realism to the story.
Here’s my final, general diagnosis on the general story:
Slow down! A major part of a satisfying and amazing story is the way the characters act and feel, and the amazing world around them. What you’ve written almost seems like the bare bones - it covers the major plot points, but there’s not a lot of substance behind them. I bet you love this idea a whole lot, and want to see it shine - right? Well, the best way to do that would be to start again, sort of. Take what you have now and write it again, this time slowing down. Think about what it would be like to actually be Twilight, walking through the Everfree Forest and encountering a magical barrier. What’s the barrier feel like? What time of day is it? As your hooves sink into the soft mud of the Everfree, does it send a shiver down your spine or do you just shake it off? When you see the orb, how do you feel? And then take those thoughts, those feelings and sensation, and write them into the story. Let the reader feel them as you feel them, see them as you see them, give them the whole experience.
Then you’ll be on the road to a real show-stopper of a story, let me tell you that!
Style and Mechanics:
Okay, now that that’s out of the way, let’s take a short peek at your mechanical issues so you don’t make the same mistakes on the re-write.
Super-duper first and foremost, one space after a period, each and every time... unless it’s an ellipse (...), at which point the space only goes after the last period. The thing about double-spaces is from back when ponies used typewriters, it’s really no longer needed and definitely not right in this amazing super-duper technological age. See what I did there?
>Mimimimi mimi miiii.
I really don’t know what’s going on here - is Twilight humming a song in her head? I wouldn’t do that, it’s kinda confusing. Generally onomatopoeia are to be avoided.
>“Looks like that idea was a bust to.”
You mean “too,” right? “To” is a preposition, while “too” is an adverb. So unless they’re busting somewhere in particular, you mean “too,” as in, “as well.”
>Pinkie also threw a, Yay for not Dying to Some Weird Spell in the Everfree Forest, party.
That’s a super-weird way of sectioning off a title - I would have used quotation marks, like so:
>”Pinkie also threw a “Yay for not Dying to Some Weird Spell in the Everfree Forest” party.
>My magic extended outward, poking and prodding the shield at random locations and measuring it’s size.
This is really sorta passive. Twilight’s magic isn’t its own entity, I think, so it’s really Twilight extending her magic outwards, not the magic doing it by itself. So it would be:
>I extending my magic outward, poking and prodding
This is also an example of its/it’s confusion. “Its” is a possessive pronoun, while “it’s” is a contraction of “it is,” a verb phrase. If you expand it out, you would have “measuring it is size,” which is kinda wonky and wrong. So you want “its,” which means Twilight is measuring the size, which is owned by the shield.
And finally, for now, there’s tense. You switch between past tense and present tense at times, while you really should stick to just one all the way through.
>I took a few steps forward, went face first into something, and fell back on my flanks.
Is past tense.
>Also, I can see the sky again, so that shield must have gone down during
Is present tense.
It’s up to you which one to stick with, although I think a lot of ponies prefer to use past tense when doing first person, although I might be wrong about that.
The biggest gift I can give to you is Ezn’s Guide To Writing, a big guide to anything you might want to know about the technical parts of writing pony fanfiction, which can be found here:
http://derpy.me/EznGuide
Additionally, there’s EqD’s official if out-dated Editor’s Omnibus, which is a great help: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WMMs8H-GpFIXPsQeC0RNu8V-Cq6uyGl_UERpOUK_6KY/edit
If you want to really make this story shine, those make some pretty excellent helpers. I really recommend you read them, particularly Ezn’s, before you tackle the re-write.
Good luck, and happy writing!
- PP
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