What is "the Game"? Who's really behind it?
Twilight Sparkle, who had recently been crowned a Princess of Equestria, has her mind set on finding out. With the help of Fluttershy, the only friend she can truly trust, they will fight through strange challenges in order to survive.
Can new friendships bloom inside the Game, or will old ones perish?
"The Suicide of Twilight Sparkle" is a fanfic combining MLP: FiM with a concept from a video game called "The World Ends With You". The story has no connection to the game other than the setting, and it's written towards a reader who never played the game.
Chapters (2)
Not a bad start. Certainly more readable than some things I've seen on Fimfiction. I don't know that I particularly like the idea of a crossover with "The World Ends With You", but I love MLP and I love the game, so I figured I'd give it a look.
I read a little and skimmed the rest. This isn't my cup of tea, but I saw enough to spot two things I think would be good for you to work on, moving forward.
(1) Try to give things another editing pass or two before posting them. There are some small language errors, but not so bad they destroyed my ability to read. The bigger issue was that you flipped between 1st person perspective (I, me) and 3rd person perspective (Twilight, she) in the course of the story. This is jarring and really doesn't make sense to the reader. That's the sort of stuff you should definitely fix in an editing pass.
(2) Admittedly, I tend to be very picky about what stories I really read through, but I didn't feel like there was much going on here. This felt like you were inserting MLP characters in the TWEWY scenario without really letting ideas from the different sources cross-pollinate much. What's interesting about having Twilight and Fluttershy in the game, rather than the usual characters? I know that the game itself is enough of a long mystery that information comes out as a slow trickle, but here the primary reason I didn't find the story compelling was that I didn't feel like there was a whole lot of difference between reading this scenario with Twilight and playing it with Neku.
Oh, also, I really dislike the title, but I have issues with 'suicide' getting thrown around. That's really nothing on you.
Anyway, congrats on your first story and welcome to the fanfic-writing community!
hmm, well I'm not going to give up on it just yet, it has some potential, but the title definitely makes little or no sense, also it seems 'jumpy', if that's the right way to describe it, regardless not bad for a first attempt so keep it up and we'll see where it goes
2495915
The title may not make sense right now, but it will soon enough, trust me :)
I guess jumpy is a good word for it. I was shooting for "exciting fast-paced first chapter". Being able to reach "jumpy" status is good too xD
Thank you for read and the kind words :)
2495869
Thank you for the read as well x) and as for your advice:
1) I reviewed it, but not enough as I should. I was really eager to post it ^^U I'll make sure to read it attentively more than two times on the next chapters :)
The perspective shift was purely fruit of my own blockheadedness. The first draft of the story was 1st person, and I decided to change it while I was reviewing it. I was bound to miss some of it. xD
2) The first chapter was purposely jambled and confused. I'm hoping to make the next chapters explain more of what is going on and why.
About the difference between playing it with Twilight or Neku, I can assure you that, while the start may be similar, the plot development I have in mind is completely different from what you've seen in the game. :D
About the title, the only thing I can say without spoiling anything, is that it's pertinent to the storyline.
I will make an effort to correct myself and make the next chapter better. Thank you for the welcome as well! (~= w=)~
EDIT:
Re-read it all and corrected quite a lot of embarrassing mistakes ^^" Hopefully, I got most of them out by now.<3
I'm intrigued, I'll fav it so I can get a good tab on the next chapters, I think I've read a similar story, though I haven't even seen the cover of the game.
hang on, there were only 11 minutes on her clock, but it said they listened to Kazir for a few hours
... still a good chapter, its certainly shaping up nicely
2517552
I reread that part, what happened exactly was:
1) They heard him for awhile;
2) The clock stopped at 11:45;
3) Then they continued to listen, and it lasted a few hours.
I don't think I switched the timeline o 3o but it's still a possibility. I switch up things all the time -w-"
Thank you for the support, Reeve
Heya. Csquared08 here from WRITE with that review you requested. I also would like to apologize for the delay. I hope you can forgive me
So let's get this thing started!
Grammar and Stuff
Red text fixes the mistake indicated by the crossed out word(s)/punctuation or adds a necessary word(s).
Orange text indicates why the change was made.
As far as I can tell, that should cover all your consistent grammatical issues in the story. To sum things up:
- Use em dashes, not hyphens, to display interruption
- Comma splices are terrible. Avoid them at all costs. Use periods, coordinating conjunctions, or semicolons to fix them (preferably the first two).
- Don't use hyphens for whatever you were using them for with dialogue. Ever.
- Try to avoid clunky phrasing. Say things out loud. If it sounds off, you should probably fix it.
- Try to avoid unclear phrasing. If the sentence references something, and it's not at all clear what it's referencing when it should be clear, try to make it clearer.
- Make sure you keep your verb tenses consistent. For this story, that means past tense verbs in the narration.
- The passage I quoted didn't have this problem, but do make sure all your paragraphs are double-spaced.
Characterization
Normally, I'd take a look at each character in turn. However, your problems in characterization are in common to just about every character, so you get the whole thing at once.
The dialogue is very choppy, in part due to the unclear, clunky phrasing I mentioned earlier. As a result, the characters don't feel like characters. They feel almost like cardboard cutouts that do as the plot demands. Twilight, for example, seems in character, but her choppy dialogue in chapter two came off as incredibly flat. Your zebra OC, Kazir, also suffers from the same problem. He, too, feels incredibly flat. For what it's worth, though, Fluttershy seems pretty solid, but that might be because she hasn't had to talk yet.
My suggestion is to read things out loud. Does it sound like an actual conversation? If not, that means you have some work to do.
Plot
Things seemed rather rushed along. It felt like you wanted to hurry along and get to the part where Twilight learns the rules, but then you rushed us through that with a large infodump.
For starters, chapter one could use a few hundred more words. Describe things a little more. You might have a clear scene in mind, but we have no idea what that is. Show us this scene. Use Twilight to immerse your readers in the story.
My next big problem with your plot, as I mentioned before, was the massive infodump in chapter two. I understand there are only so many ways you can explain all that information to the reader, but you didn't even bother to use dialogue. The first suggestion that comes to mind is to have Kazir make his explanation a story. Have him paint a picture for Twilight, a picture painted with words and explanations. Be creative.
For the rest, though, I'll mention I know nothing of the crossover material, so I can't really comment on your accuracy there.
Summary
For the love of all that is good in the world, find yourself a couple good editors, preferably native English speakers. They can help you fix up all the grammatical errors and all the clunky or unclear phrasing. Once that's done, your characterization will have improved by default thanks to improved dialogue. And once the grammar is fixed, you can focus your efforts on making sure your characters are no longer flat, boring cardboard cutouts and also on making sure the plot is cohesive, immersive, and overall, interesting. You'd be surprised, though, at how much other areas improve from a simple grammar fix.
There's a pretty solid story in the works here. You can make it happen, but you'll need to do some work in order to do so.
Cheers!
~Csquared08, WRITE's Helicoprion Enthusiast
fc02.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/350/c/7/adminlogolongver01_01_by_burrakupansa-d5o8n6a.png
2577974
Thank you for the review, Csquared :)
I'mma gonna go ahead and reply to your reply -w-
1) The hyphens escape me mostly because where I'm from, - is used instead of " to signal dialogue, so it's hard for me to notice them when they slip by my fingers xD
2) About the comma splices, yes, I'm aware I probably do that a lot more often than I should ^^U I'll give that situation extra extra attention from now on!
3) I use double hyphens instead of em dashes because they look similar and because my keyboard doesn't have an em dash xD Alt+0151, I'll keep that in mind ^^
4) I like your correction better :3
5) Naughty hyphens. I shall correct the rest.
6) I'll think of something to fix that phrase up. I need to underline the fact that she doesn't have total memory loss, she just doesn't remember what happened recently, so I can't use your fix this time :<
7) Splicing = Bad. Periods = Good.
8) I wasn't aware I was being unclear, I thought what needed to be said was implied, but I guess I stretched it a little. Better to keep it simple and clean, right?
About the last grammar correction paragraph:
Verb consistency isn't really something I'm aware of. I'm not very knowledgeable of the english language and most of the time I'm writing or talking by instinct, from hearing others or reading what other's have written. Sometimes my instinct is wrong, and correcting it isn't easy. I'll try to do something about it though :)
The cardboard cutout issue worries me quite a lot :< I made an effort to explain what they were feeling, and tried to make Kazir have some personality...
I'll review the second chapter and pay more attention to Twilight. I'll remove Kazir's rhymes and try to improve his character :) rhyming kinda limited what I could do with him ><
The infodump on chapter two was the bare essential, there are many other aspects of the game that weren't explicit there and that I plan on displaying later on, by-and-by. I'll reduce the amount on the second chapter even further to make it easier to swallow :D
I'm aware it feels kinda rushed, some of it is intentional. They're always against a clock. I'm also aware that there's a good kind of "feeling rushed" and a bad kind. I'll be more careful next time :3
Response to the summary:
Again, I can't thank you enough for taking the time to do this. I already learned so much since I joined fimfiction and I joined like, a month ago! xD
Also, I'll try to dig for a couple of editors, but I'm not exaclty sure of where I'm going to find some. :/
One last time, thank you very much for your help :D
2594899
I apologize for the late reply. I've been busy the past couple weeks, so I hadn't seen this.
I also just checked, and apparently I didn't get a notification for this. Odd...
Anywho...
1) I think I've seen hyphens used for thought before, but I'm not sure I've seen them for dialogue. So you have me curious: Where is it that people are taught to use hyphens for dialogue?
3) Actually, in conversation with other WRITE guys, it turns out the double hyphen is acceptable. However, this was only the case back before the internet and some word processors couldn't produce the em dash. To compensate, people using those substituted the double hyphen for the em dash. However, even if Alt+0151 fails, the em dash is now merely a quick Google search away. Thus, the need for the double hyphen replacement has passed, so I'd strongly suggest using the em dash.
It wasn't the amount of content, or the even the content itself. Rather, it was the presentation of it. It read very much like a textbook. Yes, I got the information I needed. However, it was rather bland in its presentation. For a textbook, that's fine. However, I don't think you wanted a textbook, so you should change the presentation to make it more interesting. As I said in my review:
I've heard that this group is good for that. However, I've never tried to use them myself, so I have no idea. Still worth a shot, I'd say.
Not a problem, good sir!