>>3546Chapter 2:
>Three-hundred-billion//>hundred-thousand//In numbers, hyphens only go between the tens and ones (and ten thousands and one thousands, and so on) place.
Well, this chapter certainly drags. Yes, we're getting a new viewpoint, but it's still telling us a bunch of information we already know. The only new thing is Bug's origin, but we didn't have to get it as a narration-only, after-the-fact summary. Those are really hard to pull off without getting terribly boring, and that's pretty much what happened here. His history could come out a little at a time as he converses with Rarity. Bite-sized chunks is often the way to play this. A huge block of exposition rarely works, because the reader has no reason yet to care about all this as much as you do.
>breaks//brakes
Chapter 3:
>and…" I said, trailing off//The ellipsis already means she trails off. Narrating it as well is redundant.
>dress and top that fitted me perfectly//In that sense, the past tense is just "fit."
>the cost of a new mobile phone//She doesn't have insurance on it? If not, might she be lamenting that?
>junk-food//You'd only hyphenate that if you're using it as an adjective.
>discretely//Discreetly again.
>looked positively loathe//This is the verb form. The adjective is "loath."
>and saw dollar symbols almost literally appear in the woman's eyes//You already pulled that with the guy in the cell phone store. It's repetitive.
Chapter 4:
This has a ton more of these "I sent" tags, and they're really unnecessary. Plus they look weird when they go back to regular font, but it's still right-justified, since that's not the part that's supposed to look like a text.
>right-happy//No reason to have a hyphen there.
>And I have the best,//Comma should be a period.
And now you are changing formats so the speech tags on the texts aren't in the same paragraph as the actual text. Neither one looks great, but this way probably makes more stylistic sense. You should be consistent, in any case.
>hold back,//Another comma that should be a period.
>just send me a massage//I can't tell if that's your error or Fluttershy's. I'm guessing yours, since nobody makes a joke about it.
>—NotABug, remember what I told you about touching in places? That goes for most of my—our body. Unless you really like Rainbow Dash, and I mean really really like, don't let her do anything unless you are sure you want it.—//I guess I'm surprised at how little Rarity cares about this. Most people would consider someone else using their body for sexual purposes to be a serious invasion.
>want to,— I sent NotABug//I'm going to stop marking these. It seems like it's only cropped up in this chapter, but maybe I missed some earlier ones. If you were using quotation marks, the comma would be correct, but since you want this to visually look like the actual text, you can bend the rules, but be consistent about it. Don't go with periods in the early chapters then switch to commas later.
>knight-in-shining-armor//Don't hyphenate that.
Chapter ?:
Basically, I'm satisfied that I know all I need to about this story to render a verdict except one thing: how explicit the material will get that prompted you to put the [Sex] tag on this. So I'm going to ultra-skim the rest to find those bits and see if they're tame enough. So I won't be taking near as many notes, but I will if I happen to notice something.
You have a number of places where there are two blank lines between paragraphs.
You also should really look at how these text messages appear on screen, both on a computer and a mobile device. You'll find that some of them have line breaks in very inpportune places, like having only the final dash on the next line. It'd behoove you to add or take out a word here and there so it all looks nice.
Chapter 6:
>High School//That shouldn't be capitalized.
>Given your activities,"—Fleur gestured at the portfolio—"I gather//Drop that comma. You don't use one in this format.
Chapter 8:
>moxy//British spelling? I've only ever seen "moxie."
>making me do go through this farce//Jumbled wording.
>I'm not going to get anymore work from you, am I?//"Anymore" and "any more" aren't the same thing. You need two worse, since an adverb wouldn't parse there.
>What's up, sis?//Seems like you want Sweetie Belle to be as correct as Rarity in how she types. As a term of address, a family relation should be capitalized, since you're effectively using it as a name.
Chapter 9:
>comfortable teddy that NotABug seemed insistent on sleeping in. I couldn't blame her—it was comfortable//So you're saying it's comfortable.
>"Comfortable enough to get some more. Time to add some things to my list.//Ah, confirmed for comfortable. But you didn't close your quotation marks.
>dare not to accept me//In this kind of phrasing, the "to" is implied. Leave it out.
>what,"—she gestured at what had become of the game machine—"is//Drop the comma.
Chapter 10:
>out voted//That should be one word.
>two-hundred-and-twenty//None of those hyphens should be there.
>I wondered if she were awake or asleep//Was. This isn't hypothetical.
Chapter 11:
>Rainbow's fingers explored the edges of my wings, gently running her fingers//So... Rainbow's fingers were running her fingers?
>checking my email, checking//Watch the close word repetition.
>—We're at the front door,//You're missing the ending dash, and don't you normally put color behind these?
>she— This//Em dashes shouldn't have space next to them on either side.
>Hiya Twilight!//Needs a comma for direct address.
>looked stunned. She looked//Close word repetition.
>If you think I'm going to let you feel sorry for yourself over something this inconsequential, you've got another thing coming//It's "you've got another think coming."
>led them free//That's a rather odd phrasing.
Chapter 12:
Okay, this is a real odd bird. The whole story's been about Rarity so far. It did spend a little time in Bug's perspective early on, but the bulk has been in Rarity's. And now after 100k words, you're going to introduce a new one? I mean... I can get why you want to use Windigo's viewpoint, but if you were going to, it would have been better to have little bits of it throughout the story. This isn't the kind of thing to spring on the reader now. I'm not going to make you change it, but this was a pretty bad idea, and there are ways of getting a lot of this chapter's info across while staying in Rarity/Bug's perspective.
Even with this kind of thing, I still see readers gush over bad decisions because they think it's cool to see part of the story through these other characters' eyes, but frankly, your average reader isn't too sophisticated about what they want from a story. I haven't actually looked at the comments to see if you got that kind of a reaction, but really, this is the first serious mistake I've seen you make. As long as you're going down that road, I hope you'll at least make it a little worthwhile, and that means inhabiting Windigo's viewpoint somewhat regularly from now on. If you have that major break in the story's structure only to abandon it immediately, that'd make things even worse, because then you've got a huge case of "one of these things is not like the others."
I really don't even see the value of utilizing Windigo's perspective anyway, unless you want to make him into a sympathetic character at some point. It just detracts from having this feel like Rarity's story.
To wit, the readership dropped significantly for this chapter.
Chapter 13:
You're falling into a trap the last few chapters where you start lots of sentences with participial elements. Authors of intermediate experience tend to do that, when they've learned to use such thing but not to do so in moderation. The problem is: they don't turn up a lot in normal conversation, so they stand out easily when repeated, like a fancy word. You won't notice "the" five times in a sentence, but you would notice two uses of "ventriloquist" on an entire page. These things are best used as seasoning, so don't let them overpower your story. FWIW, the author of Grendel put out a writing guide, and he considers participles a particularly weak way to start a sentence.
Another part of the issue is that you're doing this in the same places a lot, right at the beginnings of paragraphs. I'm going to paste in the first phrase from some consecutive paragraphs to illustrate, and I'll mark them with an asterisk if they are a participial element.
>Smiling at how NotABug had kept up her half of our deal*>There was two new aspects (note you have a singular/plural mismatch here)>Actually, flexible didn't even begin to cover it.>Opting not to wrap my hair or tail*>All my life I'd been a show-off.>I'm turning into a pony monster>I agreed with myself.>Picking up the underwear*>A mare's tail>The barbaric option>My mind derailed>Leaning into the cups*>Grabbing up the panties*>No, no, no.>I pinched the hem down>Sitting upon my sewing seat*>Rigging my sewing machine*>The buttonhole foot had to go>Taking out a seam ripper*>Humming to myself*See how it builds up? That started with one every third or fourth paragraph, which is already pushing it, but then you hit a stretch where the majority are. Couple that with other participial elements in the other parts of those paragraphs, and it's a structure you're abusing.
>"Phrasing," Rainbow Dash said.//So she's Archer now?
>the two officers each wore the severe uniform of a police officer//So the officers were wearing officers' uniforms? You don't say.
>There was plenty of things//You keep using singular "was" to refer to plural objects.
So you put a pretty big disclaimer on this chapter, but if this is really as explicit as things get, you're nowhere near having a problem. Honestly, her odd focus on shapeshifting her genitals comes closer to the line than any of the sexual innuendo.
>The fashion was the give away.//In that sense, "giveaway" is one word.
>on principal//principle
>came free of the egg, both her little wings buzzed//So these aren't going to be like show changelings who start out looking like grubs?
>Yes, mother.//"Mother" would be capitalized as a term of address.
>between Rainbow and I//between Rainbow and me
Chapter 14:
>wooshing//Don't italicize sound effects like this. It's a valid word, so just leave it in normal font. Trying to get visually fancy with sound effects is a rather amateur thing, unless you're going for a children's story feel, which you clearly aren't.
>I'm sure you have more important things to do with your day than using psychological games on innocent women.//That "using" should just be "use." It's a type of infinitive.
>NotABug looked around the room and her eyes fixated on our new mobile phone.//Needs a comma between the clauses.
>P.O. Box//There's no reason to capitalize "box" here.
>Uma no Sushi//I noticed this when you first used the name. Horse's sushi? Heh.
>Should we suggest it?//I was going to save this until the end, but I'll go ahead and say that the weirdest thing about this story is how unsurprised everyone is. They just all regard Rarity as if she's barely outside the norm. She looks rather horselike by now and has a massive horn, and she's carrying around a daughter who looks very much like a horse, and people hardly even consider her a curiosity. That's some pretty hard suspension of disbelief to get over. And now she's the one suggesting Sweetie Belle combine with Byte? Her own sister, Rarity wouldn't have any idea what might happen, has no idea what the long-term implications are, has no idea if this is even a good thing, and she's going to tell Sweetie Belle to try it? And Bug is the one being the voice of reason? That's pretty hard to swallow.
>Making my way to the kitchen, I left my little family and set about making//Watch the close repetition.
There's a parallel to good fiction structuring that you might think about using at the restaurant. It's that you shouldn't have a steady rising action to the climax. That's true in multiple ways. One, that there are lulls in what happens so it's not a monotonous climb. And two, that whatever conflict the story has doesn't just go linearly to its resolution. It's not interesting to read a story where everything works in the protagonist's favor and they have no real obstacles to success. So when everyone likes everything the chef makes them, it really saps the narrative of interest. There's no question in my mind that's how it will end up, because it's been that way on every visit to the restaurant so far. I might as well just skip over the scene, since I can already tell how it's going to end. You don't want me to be able to do that. And the chef said so himself, that he needed feedback to make good choices. That includes not liking something. By removing the possibility of failure, you've also removed the possibility of much interest.
Now step back to the story as a whole. Rarity had no real resistance to Bug joining her. They've had no trouble relating to her friends, maintaining their relationship, getting a love interest, having a child, setting up a business... What is there to keep me reading to find out if it'll work? I know it all will. There's no tension. The only slight source is Windigo, but he hasn't given them much trouble either. Bug didn't fare too well against him the first time, but Rarity easily dealt with his trap in the car. In well over 100k words, he's only made those two attempts on them. There's just a straight line from defining every conflict to seeing it resolved, and that's not an interesting way to drive a plot arc. Nobody has any setbacks. I like the story for the good characterizations and interactions, and that's a different way of generating interest, but the plot is honestly kind of dull. It's more a story about character growth, which can be a fine substitute for conflict, and that's what's keeping me interested in the story, but like I said, her character growth is just a constant stream of success, and it'd be a lot more engaging if you sprinkled in the occasional failure. Maybe keep that in mind going forward?
>do some work while NotABug does//Watch the close repetition.
>Which, is something I should be working on now.//No reason to have that comma.
Author's Note: who's Hando?
Chapter 15:
>if it were new//was
>in future/Missing a "the."
>cubical farm//cubicle
>He walked around and bundle//Verb forms don't match.
>half hour meeting//Since you're using "half hour" as an adjective here, hyphenate it.
>'Bee//There's not really a reason to use an apostrophe for a nickname.
Chapter 16:
>Everything about the transformation has been horribly mundane//That should really be "had."
>clop//Same deal as before with the italicized sound effects.
I have to say, this chapter is really dry. I see authors do this all the time: take a subject they know a lot about and show off, to the point it's pretty incomprehensible to someone without that knowledge. To a degree, understanding it isn't critical—I'm just supposed to get a general idea of what they're doing and accept them as experts, but it's still a lot of verbiage to plow through that doesn't mean anything to me. You might want to keep these exchanges less technical.
>dead-run//No hyphen.
