Write-Off Reviews - There Is Magic In Everything · 10:41pm Sep 15th, 2014
I reviewed all 23 of the stories from the latest writeoff competition, a short story writing competition where we had 3 days to write a 2000-8000 word story based on the prompt "There Is Magic In Everything".
Judging is open to the public. The stories can be read here and voted on here.
As usual, none of the entries were dire - the Writeoff Association doesn't really seem to attract people who have trouble with spelling and grammar - but they were all written in three days and aren't the most polished things in the world. I wasn't as thrilled with these stories as I was with the best stories from the last competition, but there were a couple of good ones, most notably Applejack Goes To Magic School For Some Reason, which was an AU comedy that actually made me smile. That being said, it was no The 18th Brewmare of Bluey Napoleon, which you really should read if you haven't already.
Love Call
This appears to be a poem of some sort, but it doesn’t seem to rhyme or have regular meter, and reading it out loud felt a little bit awkward. As it goes on, it grows increasingly irregular.
I will say that this story had me tricked about who it was about; I didn’t realize it was about Chrysalis until the end.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t super sold on the poetry, and while I think the basic idea of the story is alright, I didn’t really warm to it.
Stallion Whose Name I Forgot
Hm. This is a longer entry, really enjoys its symbolism. Unfortunately, I’m not sure if I was wholly sold on the piece; I’m not sure if it really all came together in the end for me. I realized when they got to the hospital that it was Rarity there, and I figured from far earlier than that that the whole piece was highly symbolic, but… in the end, it didn’t really quite work for me.
It wasn’t a bad piece, really, but I didn’t really feel like I really went anywhere with it.
Waiting
I noticed a typographical error in this piece – an incorrect word substitution – but it wasn’t too bad.
The real problem with this piece was that it was 6,000 words long, and yet still left me hanging at the end of the story. I was wondering how it was going to end, but…
It didn’t, really. It did have an ending, but it still felt unresolved, and on the whole the piece felt more like the first chapter of a story than a full story.
I do understand the implication at the end – that it worked and pulled the characters out of their ruts – but… eh.
And Yet…
This isn’t really one story so much as it is a bunch of them stuck together, all clustering around the theme. This is the first story so far which actually really pulled on the prompt strongly.
On the upside, each of these were decent enough little stories which hit on the theme.
On the downside, this isn’t a minific competition.
On the gripping hand, it did feel like a “piece”.
I wasn’t super sold on the ending of the last one, as it felt like the least strong ending of all of them, and indeed the very final piece felt like the weakest of the lot, so it ended on a whimper.
Homecoming
Ah, Zecora. The eternal trap of the rhyming couplet. One of the problems with these is that it is very easy to make their rhythm feel off, and in this case, a few of them, while they rhymed, felt off. In particular, the first one:
“I’ll need just a moment, my young Princess! I’m afraid that right now, my house is quite the mess!”
I think the second sentence needed to be shaved down; maybe “I’m afraid right now my house is a mess” would have worked better.
Also, “wisdom” and “tradition” don’t rhyme. And everyzebra is outright painful as a single word.
“I have not a clue how your schedule goes. I certainly did not want to seem to impose,”
Again, cutting down the second sentence to “I did not want to seem to impose” would make it read better.
And story and me is a half-rhyme.
Eh, I’ll stop.
One other thing:
Twilight caught glimpses of Ceecee and Shireeya shyly stealing kisses, and she laughed when Bentugo told her old zebra tales, complete with his hilarious impressions of dragons and diamond dogs.
The problem with using hilarious here is that it violates Bad Horse’s “don’t tell the audience how to feel” rule; telling us that something is hilarious tends not to work very well in prose. This is actually done at several points in the story, and it did pull on my attention throughout the prose in the latter half of the piece.
On the whole, I was not really sold on this; the story-within-a-story was reasonably authentic, but one problem with a lot of those stories is… well, they’re kind of meh. A lot of authentic mythology isn’t a thing of beauty, and it is the pieces which are really beautiful which I like to see, rather than the also authentic but not so beautiful ones.
I suppose that’s why I like Norse mythology; a lot of it reads like ordinary stories rather than myths.
Three and a half seconds
A coma patient reversal story, like many of these after you’ve read a few of them, you realize what is going on once things start getting weird. This was a fairly standard one, and I didn’t really feel like it did a whole lot unique with the premise.
Just One More
This has some weird sort of shifts in the prose, where it feels like different paragraphs are written in a very different manner. It got very distracting about midway through the story.
Anyway, I’ve seen similar stories to this, with the idea that the character absorbs SOMETHING and just keeps on growing, and I’ve never been super fond of them. This one was no exception. This one felt kind of rushed at the end as well; the rest of the story was slower paced, but once she starts draining things, it goes at a fever pitch and she goes from draining some grass to towering over Ponyville in a couple pages. It feels very abrupt.
A Light In The Dark
Hey, look, someone else mentioning that the stars that set her free could be interpreted as Twilight freeing Luna from Nightmare Moon!
I don’t have any major objections to this story, but at the same time it didn’t really light my fires either. It was just a reflective piece, and I didn’t really feel like it went anywhere in the end.
Dawn
This story suffers a bit from talking heads syndrome – it is an extremely dialogue heavy piece, with the odd dialogue tags to keep track of things and have the characters gesture or whatever, but I think that it might have been better if they had made me see the scene a bit more.
Also, Luna uses “hath” at the start, but uses “has” elsewhere in the piece. Not a huge deal – and the hases are way later – but it would be better to be consistent.
I’m also not sure if I’m sold on using “Mayhaps” instead of “perhaps” – it is “authentic” but it feels a bit too archaic.
“Because, Luna, it is better than to cry.”
I’m not so sure about this turnabout, either, especially given her earlier reaction.
And the ending… honestly, I don’t like it that much. I think Celestia should have been out there to do it on purpose. Why wasn’t it purposeful?
On the whole, it is hard for me to really know what to make of this piece – for all my nitpicking it is, essentially, doing the same thing as I did with Moving Heaven and Earth last competition, and I liked that story well enough, so clearly I’d be a hypocrite if I didn’t like this one. On the other hand, while the story ended with what had to happen, I’m not sure if the piece is really… necessary? Did this need to exist? I dunno. I guess I kind of liked it, and I liked the idea of talking about cutie marks and dismissing them as marks of destiny, but… I’m not sure if this piece really went anywhere. Honestly it feels kind of like a rehash of Moving Heaven and Earth. Maybe it is unfair of me to rate it lower for that, but meh.
Honestly, I feel like this needed to be a different story – make Celestia be out there, trying to figure out if she can/should raise the Sun on her own, and have Luna be the tipping point that drives her to actually do it. I like the idea of the cutie mark thing, but… I dunno. Probably needs to be a different story so that it has a real conflict.
Of course, it could be that they rejected her from their little circle, and she does it to prove that she doesn’t need a cutie mark to join their circle… and of course, gets her cutie mark in the process, both proving herself worthy and simultaneously ironically destroying her point about cutie marks.
Friendship is not Magic
Hrm. Twilight goes to find an ancient dragon to fix her horn, has a conversation about how magic is not good or evil but merely a thing and is not what makes her special (which would work a lot better if it was actually true; not calling Twilight’s magic special is like not calling a painter’s artistic talent special), and then leaves. Very to the point, about the right length for what it was, and at the end Twilight decides not to ask if it can fix her horn, which, while it was what the story was leading up to, didn’t really work for me for the reasons I mentioned above re: Twilight’s Magic.
Magic in the Earth, Magic in the Air
An adventure story starring Maud, Flim, and Flam of all ponies. The appearance of Maud felt like something of a contrived coincidence, but Flim and Flam coming back to town seems reasonable enough. Soarin’s appearance was DEFINITELY a contrived coincidence, though.
On the whole, the whole thing felt too contrived, and while it was certainly a contrivance, it didn’t really end up working for me.
Negotiations
Hey look, an Earth Pony Magic piece!
Admittedly I like the idea of naturalistic magic, but on the other hand, I don’t really feel like the show implies this to be the case at all – indeed, really, it seems that most ponies have fairly spot on the wall magic. Twilight is the rare exception – most ponies use magic to make their lives better, but only a rare few are really all that magical.
That being said, it was a decent enough piece, though I feel like the whole “negotiation” bit wasn’t done really quite enough.
Applejack Goes To Magic School For Some Reason
Okay, this is actually my favorite story so far in the competition. It made me smile, and maybe even – almost – chuckle a little. I know, hard to believe.
Yes, it is just a series of silly coincidences, but it made me smile nevertheless.
Parental Attachment
This… was a bit ridiculous. I actually came to the wrong conclusion that they were changelings, but the ending was weirder still.
I’m not sure if I really approve of this story, but on the other hand… well, it wasn’t something I’d seen before as a resolution for “where are Scootaloo’s parents”.
Mark of Destiny
That is a terrible pun. A really terrible pun.
Ugh. I’m not a huge fan of HIE stories in general, and while this played with it somewhat, as well as had fun with the whole idea of people using marks to enhance themselves, I’m not super fond of the tropes involved. Also, I’m pretty sure that cutie marks work in exactly the opposite manner, given what we’ve seen on the show – the person makes the mark and not vice-versa.
Really, the whole thing was very fanfictiony.
Farsighted
Ah, the Doctor Manhattan argument – that every life is a miracle of improbability. It is a very pretty argument. Too bad it isn’t really accurate, as while any particular outcome may be unlikely, in aggregate it is much less so.
It was a decent enough stab at such a story, though, and I do have a soft spot for the idea. Plus Twilight almost blowing up an oak tree was amusing.
Oubliette
A nasty little story about Tirek being left to die – or so he thinks, anyway. A very dark take on “There’s Magic In Everything”; most of the stories are at least somewhat hopeful, but this was just dark.
Not that that is really a bad thing; it was an interesting twist on the idea of “There Is Magic In Everything”, and why that might not be so useful for a thief of magic like Tirek.
And Discord’s duplicity in eliminating Tirek was a nice way to end it, though I don’t think Discord is the type to break his toys. Then again, Tirek may have crossed a line with him.
For the Best
Hey, a TwiJack story! I wonder who wrote this. *cough* Bookplayer *cough* Sorry, had something tickle my nose.
It was a sweet enough story and hit the points it needed to – and also brought up the whole idea that the whole “miracle of life” thing (brought up in Farsighted) also applies to bad things which also lead to the present.
After all, Wernher Von Braun aimed for the stars, but sometimes, he hit London.
It was a nice little piece, but it didn’t really go very far, and was much more about reflection than the story itself. Still, one of the better ones in the contest, I think.
Daring Do and the Jade Songbird
The magic of reading!
I think Daring Do type adventures can be very fun, but this didn’t really end up exciting me all that much, and I think the reason why was that Ginger Sprout, the sidekick, felt out of place… which makes sense, given the ending, but is still awkward to read for the same reasons power fantasies often are.
The Color and the Silence
I don’t think much of laser as a verb; it would have been better to say that it burned a hole through the clouds.
I like the idea of a magical tower of prophecy that even Celestia doesn’t really understand. It is a fun idea, doubly so because Celestia tortures herself with it, but sees it as absolutely vital.
I was a bit sad that Twilight/the Rainboom didn’t end up shattering all the windows, though.
The Sweetest Water
This very much has the taste of mythology clinging to it, and it reads very much like a fairy tale – because it is one, in the end, and it is about how people should be happy with their place in life.
I completely disagree with the moral of the story, but it is well-written and was enjoyable to read.
Feel
Okay, so, this story has one major flaw:
It isn’t a story. It is the start of a story. The idea of ponies travelling south through the snows of the frozen north in search of the legendary land of Equestria is a fine idea, but the introduction of the reason why the Queen sent them out really meant that it felt like the start of a larger story rather than a story unto itself; rather than ending in triumph, it was really only the beginning. And given the description of the flutter ponies, it has a not-unreasonable chance of ending in tragedy, if the flutter ponies who went south became changelings.
Tumbling Down the Slippery Slope
Ah, nothing like making fun of the cult of social justice. And the Humbug pun was both wonderful and terrible.
Fun times.
Anyway, this was amusing in its own way, but at the same time, dealing with social justice warrior types is mostly just frustrating, and I suspect that my recent run-ins with such folks have somewhat soured me on the humor of them.
Still, it was a silly little story, and beating them with the power of clean laundry was, at least, amusing.
Holy mackerel, you read 90K already?
My eyes usually start to glaze over after about a quarter of that...
2457870
All of this took me maybe four or five hours to read and write, all told, including the posts on the forums about it and distractions. Wrote a bit more than half of it last night, and the rest today.
Your continued admiration of Brewmare takes a fair bit out of the sting of your review of my current story.
Well, as I said going in, the benefit of this is that I get to test hypotheses about what people like/dislike about my writing.
2458158
If it was Dawn, I was probably a bit overly harsh towards it last night. And Yet... also rose in my rankings from when I read it the first time.
If it was uhm... I dunno. I could probably figure it out via stylo, but I'm not sure if I really want to pull back the veil so to speak.
Plus then I'd have to figure out who wrote all the other stories.
If you'd like more in-depth feedback on the story after, give me a poke.
Hmm. Maybe I should aggregate my reviews into a blog post...
On the other hand, how many of the competitors would see it?
Eh, probably not the point.
2458158
That reminds me.
The Case of the Cowled Changelings.
You mentioned a while ago that you were planning on posting it here on FIMFiction.
I still don't see it.
You still revising it or something?
2461393
It's a front-burner project, along with the long-overdue next Hard Reset 2 chapter and the equally-long-overdue Thou Goddess annotations. Right now I need to finish reading/reviewing this round of writeoff entries and complete yamgoth's commission, then it's back to those.
Its current status is "ripped apart because I was editing a few new scenes into the story to address the writeoff feedback". Despite its top score, I remember all of the reviews landing at least one major, valid criticism, so it wasn't publication-ready the same way Brewmare was.
And incidentally, my story was neither of the ones you mentioned. You just legit disliked it.
stylo does indeed catch me red-handed, but we'll all know this weekend anyhow.