First Impression Critique - Fallout Equestria: Signs of Decay - by BusterBuizel · 10:13pm Mar 24th, 2014
First Impression Critique -- Fallout Equestria: Signs of Decay by BusterBuizel
Link to Story: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/177166/fallout-equestria-signs-of-decay
Link to Fimfiction Guide to Writing: http://www.fimfiction.net/writing-guide
Link to POV usage: http://andrewhutchinson.com.au/2014/03/19/first-person-second-person-third-person-which-tense-to-use/
Link to how to use commas: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/commas.htm
Date Created: March 24, 2014
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- First Impression -
When there are remakes and remakes of a certain thing, it becomes less and less original as time progresses. The Fallout Equestria series is a prime example of this, as there are a ton of fanfictions revolving around the post apocalyptic setting of Equestria. Not saying this is a bad thing, as it’s a great way to develop on fantastic character development as well as plots with the ever expanding interactions of the Fallout Equestria universe, nor that it’s bad that there are tons of fanfiction revolving around such setting. It’s an immensely detailed and interesting setting that a lot of people would have fun reading into, since roleplaying has and always will be popular to a lot of people over the course of the past and future.
In the description, the story frequently transfers from the third-person past-tense perspective between the third-person present-tense perspective. Lines such as "Billions meet their end, some slow and agonizing. Others vaporized, while some, against all odds” are a prime example of this, and should be avoided at all costs since there is no need to be transferring between past and present tenses while telling a story. Doing such only causes confusion for the reader as it makes it hard to understand the setting of the story for if it’s currently happening in the story or not. The story itself though has it’s own perspective, the first-person present-tense perspective, which is different from the descriptions perspective for an odd reason.
When narrating, do not break the tense that is used in the story, nor the character’s perspective, as well as in the description, for the description is part of the story itself. Narration should be used when for the character’s perspective, the third person perspective if the story itself is third person, for when telling necessary knowledge for the reader, and/or to give credentials to people who need it. In the last paragraph, the sentence "We follow a young stallion, seasoned by the horrors of the wastes to find his own path with his faithful friend by his side," is not necessary knowledge to the reader, for they are able to read the story and identify that themselves. Credentials are credentials, as they credit someone for their work or of a feature of the story. The line itself is also third person, but that is a different perspective that is used from within the story.
Making a good first impression to a reader is pretty important, as it is what will determine if a person will read a story or not. The proper use of tags is a good start to decide the genre of the story, as the description itself of the story is up to an extent, since there are some things that should be fixed.
- Grammar -
In the story, there are ten different times that ellipses have been used. "Ellipses should not be overused in fiction… their use in narration is often frowned on… because they are distracting… and also a cheap way to build suspense. They work better in dialogue, usually to signify the speaker trailing off…"
When writing a work of literature, it is important to never use numbers in said work of literature. They should be written wholly as the phrase for the number. When writing "2 apples", it should be written "two apples". "200 years" should be written as "two hundred years". For things such as ".44 magnum" or ".308 rifle", that's alright because it uses the decimal.
Another thing that should be used for when writing fiction are breaks. "It’s often necessary to switch character perspective, skip ahead in time, or otherwise change the scene being focused on. In some cases this can be worked into the prose, but it’s often better to do with little dohickeys called scene breaks. Scene breaks come in all shapes and sizes:"
An HTML horizontal line
A lightweight centred image (for example, in The Glass Blower)
Centre-aligned asterisks
Centre-aligned hyphens
Some thematic symbol in its own paragraph (for example, Black and White uses a centre-aligned double quaver)
Going back into the description, the line states that "Billions meet their end, some slow and agonizing. Others vaporized, while some, against all odds.\…Survived…" The sentences uses both past and present tense, going back to what was said earlier of pov past and tenses. This is also a perfect example of gaining a cheap way to build suspense, as two ellipses are used for the word "Survive" alone, far more that should be used for one word. Another thing of the second sentence is that "Others vaporized, while some, against all odds" is treated as a sentence by itself. This is wrong for obvious reasons, as if you remove the parenthetical phrase it becomes "Others vaporized, while some."
When using slang for anything in fiction, dialogue and third person narration included, the use of apostrophes should always be used. When a character thinks or says "for ya...", it should be "for ya'...". Removing the ellipses altogether could be recommended, although are not required.
For simple errors such as "'Too mutated to be ‘Normal’ and too ‘Normal’ to be considered mutated.' So that made him an outcast", capitalizing "Normal" is unneeded. Making "So that made him an outcast", as well as "He spoke again" their own sentence sounds weird for the reader. If the sentence "So that made him an outcast" was put alone, it would have no identification what made him an outcast, as "He spoke again" is not required to be used since the sentence before that, "My father handed me an Ironshod Firearms M29 .44 magnum revolver", is an action. Since the sentence is an action, it's only common sense that he would be speaking the next phrase unless there was a said tag after what was being said for if it were a different character.
- Story -
The plot of the story follows a pony named Ranger and his mutated friend Felix. With things such as 'curving the bullet', the story becomes very similar to the movie "Wanted", as both had guns and both curved bullets. So the hybrid of Wanted, Fallout, and My Little Pony is about Ranger and Felix live their lives in the wasteland that remains.
The story itself isn't original on it's own part for the most of it, as most of the aspects were created from before stories such as Fallout Equestria, Wanted, and others that may have been missed throughout the reading of the first chapter. Ranger and Felix live in a settlement called New Trotakomai that's being constantly attacked by raiders, and as the chapter centers mostly around action based encounters between raider and settler, there's not really much ways to express character's feelings throughout the story.
Ranger is portrayed as a battlefield-hardened veteran, so as his dad, as they have been fighting against the raiders for who knows how long. During the battlefield, Ranger almost accidently killed Felix without even confirming who it was before hand, of which could be related to his state of mind as a pony that has been broken and misshaped in many ways as the fights exacerbated beyond control. Although Ranger and the others have the hardened-veteran-like state of mind, they barely show any emotion other than through interaction of the other characters, and that itself is rarely any. Through the beginning of the story to the end, even past the so called "death scene" of the father (which will be covered later) the character barely shows any emotion nor remorse for any others, making his character bland and uninteresting.
Reading through the story is frustrating to understand, mainly for the lack of breaks that aren't used in the story when should be. The story itself is an extremely fast pacing story with barley little detail to the characters themselves as it focuses mainly on the action. Most of the character interactions were done simply to advance the plot, such as the "death scene" of the father of Ranger.
When said "death scene", it's not that the father dies, but it's called such because the story presents the tone and atmosphere like he really was dying, which is very misleading to readers, since they were informed that all he had received was a broken leg. During the scene, Ranger's father had broken a leg, which landed him in the infirmary, and Ranger went to see him. As Ranger talks to his father, Ranger takes no note of the broken leg other than he had one earlier. As the father attempts to portend his child with "Son, it's only a matter of time before I die", it would obviously causes confusion for anyone reading the story.
Why would he die from only a broken leg? Do they not have the medical treatment required to help with the broken leg? None of this is talked about ever in the plot, and for this, no one is receiving the information that is needed to make connections with the story, creating massive plot holes large enough for even the most adept readers to fall in.
As the father gives Ranger his mother's weapon, the Ironshod Firearms M29, this is another plot device that happened only for the sake of the plot. Sure, the broken leg might cause him to not be able to fight against the raiders, but that doesn't really explain why he would be giving him his weapon. As Ranger is given the revolver, the only things that goes on in his mind are of expecting the revolver. He gives no opinions, no emotions, nothing other than the visual descriptions of the weapon. This is extremely bland and boring characterization for both the father and the son, as they are tracked only to the plot and nothing else.
Backing up to the extremely rushed pacing of the story, the story zooms past everything and anything that it can as soon as possible to finish up the day quickly before anything interesting happens, such as characters developing maybe? The rushed plots cause major plot devices and a much shorter story that could had been created. The first chapter alone could had expanded out to maybe ten thousand words if the author had cared long enough of the quality of pacing while writing. Two thousand words are definitely not enough to describe the major plot holes that are needed to be covered before the advancement of the plot.
- Conclusion -
The first chapter as a whole could be an interesting development of Ranger and Felix as they are living in the wasteland, but is dropped short by extremely fast pacing, rushed character development and characterization, as well as poor narration throughout the story of the first person perspective of the character. Sure, I would recommend to the average reader who is looking for a quick action-oriented read, but for someone reading for character development as well as a cool story, I would not recommend them to this story.
Although the story could have a very interesting plot that could develop into something larger, since almost every Fallout story could be that, this could be an interesting read if the time put into the story itself was done. Making the chapters longer as well as more detailed could lead into less confusing plot devices, reactions, character development, as well as plot skips.
I dub this experiment a (somewhat) success. This story was actually a Pokemon fan fiction that I have recently ponified. That being said, it was one of my first stories I've ever written and truth be told I wanted to do this for fun and as a test to my skills.
Yes it is a good story and it gets better over time.
BUT! Now I have learned that no amount of editing (no matter how heavy) will save a story that was poorly written. Which is why I plan to deviate from my original story line that this fiction is based on and go somewhere I can explore freely.
Thank you for the critique, I am glad you enjoyed the action bits at least.
this was good