Naxanz
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- Naxanz · 7.9k words · 11 13 · 534 views
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Needs some commas here and there, and there are some minor grammar mistakes.
Otherwise it looks good.
2723362
What's so funny?
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2723362
ONE OF YOU DIDN'T LIKE!
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2723473 The first chapter ended in a cliffhanger, causing me to think Rainbow gasped at the sight of dead pegasi.
2723573
Oh, well that's actually what I intended the reader to think. Lol
2723586
therefore, mission accomplished
How many editors do you have?
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None
2887247 Get one.
2887247 Were you looking for one? It's a good idea, but entirely up to choice.
2888622
You're right, that is a good idea. How would I get one?
2889526
Well, usually you get someone you know for real to help you out, but that doesn't have to be the case.
I as well as many other people would be willing to assist you. It's also a good idea to have multiple editors.
I can help I'd love too it's way better than the original rainbow factory I wou,d love to help so sign me up
2914090
Okay, you can be my editor if you want.
2916302 Looks like you found an editor. Good luck with your story then!
2887986
I was just wondering, but did you want me to get an editor because of the grammar mistakes or because of something else wrong with the story?
2920382 Grammar. Also, for common spelling mistakes, click this.
Howdy! This is Kalash93 of WRITE with the requested review of your story.
Initial impressions were disappointing, but the story improved as it went along, in spite of persistent mechanical problems.
The biggest issue here is grammar. You seem to have some sort of vendetta against commas, as they're missing rom the overwhelming majority of places where they are needed. You need commas for direct addresses, author. You also need them for appositives, like this bit here, which are brief asides in a sentence. You need them for relative clauses, which use those "wh" words to talk about something. You use a comma to connect to an dependant clause, like this one. You need a comma to connect two independant clauses joined by a conjunction, because otherwise, the subject of the sentence is unchanged. Go here for information about commas and how they are used. A comma can make all the difference between helping your uncle, Jack, off the donkey, and helping your uncle jack off the donkey. You have this macabre overdependancy on hypens, often hyphenating words that shouldn't be. Some examples of this are: "build-up", "re-stabilize", "dumb-bell", "hard-hat", "cut-short", "in-between", and "water-falling". Also, stylistically, you had too much stuttering. While not technically incorrect, it gets a little annoying with its frequency, especially in the first chapter. You overused elipses, which is meant for trailing off. It's not a common punctuation mark, so overuse of it takes away from its impact, as well as makes the story harder to read. The usage of other puncuation marks is mostly correct. Even, though you used no dashes in this story, I have some advice. When and if you do use dashes -- the things to the left of this clause, go space, then double dash, and then space again. Using double hyphens to frame title cards is alright.
Characterization in this story is hit and miss. The biggest issue I have is that Rainbow Dash does not act like she does in canon. That can be excused to a degree by this being an AU story involving the rainbow factory mythos. However, I just can't imagine Rainbow acting as she does. Even when she is being serious in the show, she still never could be described as businesslike. This Rainbow Dash feels like a wholly different character. There is no coolness to her. There is no sense of fun or adventure. Try to imagine Rainbow Dash sitting behind a desk and wearing a suit. Go ahead and try it. Doesn't fit, no? She does not sound like herself. Canon Rainbow Dash always sounds casual. She doesn't use formal diction such as "“Yes, I remember. They came back negative. What does this have to do with anything?”". It would be more her style to say, "'Yeah, didn't they come back negative? Why?'". I also find myself perplexed over Hide. Where exactly did he come from? He doesn't show up in chapter or chapter 2, but when he makes his first appearance in chapter 3, he's treated as if we've known him all along. His character is supposed to be amoral visionary mad scientist. However, you are trying to get us to believe that he is shocked by Rainbow Dash take umbrage with his horribly twisted ideas, but he had absolutely no problem torturing and killing ponies just to see if perhaps they could be turned into rainbows. You don't even explain how he got the idea. You did some things well with characterization. I like that you are taking time to make us understand and know the characters, as well as take care to show their development and growth throughout the story. The fact that you are marking this a tragedy and actually showing how Rainbow falls to the darkside and brings about her own undoing is the proper way to use the tragedy tag. If it goes as I think it will, then Rainbow's loyalty to Cloudsdale and the factory will win out over her morality. Your characters so far also all have unique personalities and speaking styles, which is nice to see. However, that is marred by the personalities being pretty one dimensional, which limits just how much the reader can invest in your narrative. One thing to be aware of is that you are writing a tragedy, which almost necessitates that we come to identify with the protagonist. Know that you have to set up Rainbow Dash so that the audience identifies with her. Your style isn't doing you any favors in this department. I simply am not finding her to be very interesting or likable yet. I recommend that you make her goals and actions more sympathetic through illustrating why we ought to support Rainbow Dash, and also make us understand why she goes over the the dark side. She doesn't have to be agreeable, but she should always be understandable.
This story seems to be driven by the combined powers of contrived coincidence and wanton stupidity. Why did they have to bring Rainbow Dash to the rainbow factory if all they had to do was just get her medically tested. What was the testing for and what does it mean? We don't know and it doesn't seem to matter. The worker caused the accident seemed like a mostly competent sort; why did he make that one mistake at that exact moment and why couldn't they fix it? Why didn't they enact emergency proceedures when things went south? Why does Hide tell Rainbow about his knowledge almost immediately after meeting her? And why does she let him talk? Seriously, having an admitted out in the open mad scientist cum probable serial killer makes no sense. This story seems to run on staggering failures of common sense.
Given that this story is inspired by Rainbow Factory, I am quite disappointed by the rather disconcertingly airy mood and casual tone. You have built up nothing to suggest that society, or even just Cloudsdale, could go the direction of the Rainbow Factory fic. In the original story, if memory serves, society was strongly social darwinist and racist. So far, we've only run into one character, Hide, who even shows any traces of having such tendencies. Your story is set in an Equestria that seems very far removed from the necessary grimdark elements to make the Rainbow Factory work. The problem I have is that you're starting with a story and setting that has none of the prerequisite things to make grimdark work well, or even be believable. It's as if you're trying to sell us a cyberpunk story where the most advanced pieces of technology are ENIAC and a Dodge Charger, and then promising that it'll be at the level of Blade Runner in less than a decade. There's nothing societally which would either foreshadow or facilitate a murderous social darwinist society. And if you're going for somethign like the original story, then you'll have to do better than just claim it's a few bad apples, because pretty much everyone in that story was vaguely fascist jerk who might as well have worn a name tag stating "Hi, I'm <name>, and I'm evil. The beginning of the story was wonderfully atmospheric, especially as the very uncertain Rainbow Dash went to the weather factory with a strange stallion. The ending of the first chapter was a very good cliffhanger, which made me immediately want to go the next chapter. However, you failed to do anything to catch reader interest at the ends of the later two chapters, which just sorta stop. And while I'm on that, don't just cut up a chapter and call it done because you feel like it's taking too long to write. Your first drafts ought to be rough-hewn. Editing is where you polish them and cut them down to size.
You do dialogue alright. It's not wonderous, but it's not bad. It's merely functional in all the right ways. If advances the story, gives exposition, develops the characters, and makes things somewhat interesting. I like how you opted to use dialogue instead of falling back on narration to tell the tale. However, your dialogue can occasionally drag on. This fic is very talky. However, this is balanced out by things always happening. The choreography is very nice because you use it to describe characters in motion and things happening. It gives a sense of liveliness and spectacle to your story, which is something that I appreciate. It made these first three chapters I am reviewing fly by surprisingly quickly. You have a nice balance between dialogue, narration, and choreography. I like it that you used imagery to build up a sense of atmosphere and location. This averts the common problem of having things take place in a nondescript white void where characters just appear, talk, and do stuff.
This story is paced well. I honestly cannot find any filler in it. I cannot find anything rushed in it. The chapters cover the important incidents of the story. Each scene accomplishes something, giving the reader the sense that things are happening. The pacing is good enough. I appreciate that you don't just jump right into the action. Taking the time to set up a rising action and rachet up the tension makes the payoff all the better when it finally does happen. You are doing a very good job at accomplishing a lot in relatively short chapters. They are quick to read and contain a lot of information, but they don't feel short, and they definitely don't feel rushed. You do a nice job of quickly and unobtrusively setting up scenes and then transitioning between them without cutting the flow of your story or making the reader feel as if they are jumping around. That's good; keep it up. The tight character focus on the personal story arc of Rainbow Dash is another thing that really helps with the pacing. You keep the cast ice and trim. This also helps with avoiding the sideplots which inevitably spring up whenever characters begin having meaningful interractions. I would like to see more of the social climate soon, which would give the audience a reference point for how things are now, before things gets strapped to an ICBM and launched right into the heart of Grimdarkia.
Your pragmatic writing style is perfectly suited for what you are trying to do. You focus attention on the things that matter while putting in just enough to keep the reader immersed in the story without detracting from anything. The lack of internal monologue means that we can only perceive the story from an objective viewpoint. However, your style has the side effect of making things feel flat and unemotional, which is not good for inducing the reader to form connections with the characters or care about the story. It can bore some readers. Another unfortunate consequences of the rather semi-arid nature of your style makes horror a tad difficult to execute well. Horror is done best with either a very sparse style that delivers just the bare bones and lets the readers fill in for the remainder with their own imaginations, or horror is done best with a very rich style that sucks the reader into the story like a pea circling the drain in the kitchen sink. Nineteen Eighty-Four does horor well because most of the narrative is quite dry. You know things are really messed up because the protagonist casually deals with a severed arm lying in the street immediately after a bombing, and he doesn't even flinch. That's horror being horrifying because it is so ordinary in the story that it breaks audience expectations in a way that forces the reader to focus on the story. The second kind of horror works on creating a very rich narrative into which the reader is immersed. That'd be more your Cupcakes type of horror. I'd suggest leaning more towards the latter type for when showing Rainbow succumbing and giving into the evil, which will make her transformation from ambitious, but fundamentally good pony, into a sociopathic maestro of death all the more believable and impactful. It could be used to make your viewers fully aware of the fact that they are reading about the bad guy. Then as time goes on, cut down on the lurid details until such scenes are treated just like any other ordinary scene in the story.
Space out your uploads. You uploaded all three of your chapters on the same day. This meant that not only did you only get onto the front page once for all three of your chapters, for you can only get any story onto the front page once per day, but you didn't leave any time for possible interest to develop around your story. Letting a story stew for a few days before updating it also enables you to get feedback, which you can use to edit/write future chapters before they are released. Keep this in mind for the future: The time you are on the front page is when you story is absolutely going to get the most attention. This is doubly true for when you first upload a new story, as that will stay much longer on the front page than a story will following an update. Just don't be a moron and try to exploit these things; the staff is very quick to catch on and whip out the banhammer.
Is your story memorable? No. There are numerous spinoffs, retellings, and tributes to famous fanfics; this story is not unique. Because it is linked to Rainbow Factory, it is in the position of needing to be compared to Rainbow Factory. How does it compare? Don't really know -- I hurried through Rainbow Factory and didn't pay much attention to it; it didn't really do much to grab me. Nevertheless, I distinctly remember thinking that it was at least a pretty decent fanfiction that definitely had some impact. Nothing about your story really gets to me, either. There is nothing especially interesting or unique or just plain good that makes me want to see how this all turns out. We already know how this story ends, so why do we want to trudge back through it again?
Another thing about your story is that it is in the lamentable position of being one of the many such tales inspired by Rainbow Factory, and by extension, numerous other derivative tribute fics. Regrettably, this is a category which is not widely held in high regard, not because of there being any inherent sin present in writing something strongly inspired directly by another story, but because so many of these wannabe stories are crap. That is going to maybe draw some readership based on affinity, but it's also going to turn off more jaded readers. So, how does it stack up? Not too poorly, actually. Most knockoff stories are quite easily riff bait, yet this story is alright and displays some potential. It probably would have fared better and drawn more attention if you had distanced itself from the Rainbow Factory label. Doing that might have also reduced the number of downvotes, because labeling your story as being related to famous fanfics does tend to draw haters and fanboys who will downvote out of hand. In short, your story isn't memorable, and what individuality there is gets overshadowed by its genre and competition, as well as by the fact that the viewer cares more about what it all means in relationship to Rainbow Factory than what it means solely within the context of the narrative. There's also the issue that nobody read Rainbow Factory, or reads grimdark in general, for the nuanced characters. They read it for the dark infamy of being set in a psychotic hellhole where the institutionalized industrial murder of subpar offspring is standard operating proceedure.
One of the toughest things for me to say about this story is whether or not I enjoyed it.On the whole, the story got more enjoyable and interesting as I went along. The beginning was rough but tolerable. The highly atmospheric sequences of the first two chapters were solid writing and quickly got me interested in the story, but later events made me care not so much for the characters. So it turns into a character-driven story without any compelling leads. There are more plotholes and grammatical issues than I can shake an avtomat at. But let's disregard all those things for a moment. Did I enjoy this story? Sorta. It's just okay -- merely satisfactory. I think that it can be quite a fine fic if you get a good editor and give it genuine effort. You have the potential, but you need the practice.
Overall, your story is fair. It's just a distraction, and a decent one at that. The premise has enough promise to be worth exploring and there is no reason to discontinue this fanfic. The pacing and style are the strong points of the story. If you can work on and improve your characterization and dialogue, then the harebrained plot, lack of pull, and technical issues can be more easily forgiven. However, the writing quality of this story is merely fair and it's rather forgettable. I'd say that its mediocre, but has plenty of room for improvement. I'm being lenient on you becuase you seem willing to make an effort and your story is still in just its opening stages. You win 4/10 flutteryays, which is decent but flawed. The average is 5/10.
I hope you enjoyed your review and that you will continue to write and improve your craft.
This is Kalash93, WRITE's sarcastic gunman.
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Thanks for the review. I'm going to try and improve on everything that you said, and I got an editor now.
Uh sorry about that I thought it was finished sorry for that other comment
3000730
What other comment?
Yes Dashie! I knew she wouldn't just suddenly want to kill anypony! Thanks for this awesome chapter
Interesting
Well, this seems interesting enough. Mind you, the Rainbow Factory is gonna be in a helluva state when the Doctor get's finished with it...
3852176
I may or may not continue this story. Please don't get your hopes up lol