Twilight Sparkle should have seen this coming; Rainbow Dash has read all the Daring Do books in the series. Now, undeterred by this fact, Rainbow Dash is absolutely sure another Daring Do book exists and will be sold at an upcoming Canterlot auction. Her friend has always shown unparalleled loyalty so Twilight agrees to assist her friend in this consumer-like endeavor. Both girls discover the book's contents reveal the Daring Do author's intentions. The magnitude of this realization will unveil an obvious truth.
You can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it - Mary Renault
Chapters (1)
While most people try their hooves at writing by exposing their work to the general public, it'd prob'ly be more effective to directly contact ponies for prereading and editing. Try scrounging around the highest-ranked stories, and take note of the editors and prereaders credited by their authors. Get in touch with them to see if any are willing to give you advice and prereadings on your work. If you ask them directly, it gives you a better chance of response.
Anywho, I'll start off with a few pointers; I'm no editor, but I'll share some thoughts I had while reading through it.
I'd probably turn this into a stream-of-consciousness segment, in order to place the reader in the mindset of Twilight, and enhance the characterization a bit. I don't mean turn it into 3rd-person omniscient, but rather a narration conforming to Twilie's thought process.
I'm probably being picky, but "incessant" would be a good word choice here.
Heh, this kinda confused me a bit; the structure/wording is a tad wonky, and hard to determine what'cha meant.
I'm assuming you mean something like her request only being having a chance of being fulfilled if she had Twi's full attention.
Maybe try something like so?
I'm prob'ly bein' nitpicky again, but Dash would totally say "There's gotta be another book." She uses a heavily casual vernacular, employing conjunctions and slang wherever possible. Only when she's emotionally distressed or in some altered mindset does she ever expand sentences to fully-worded forms.
Meep, feels like "another" was repeated too close. Maybe redact the second one; it'd feel more natural.
Again, Dashie loves contractile slang. Using dialogue that conforms to canon character personalities helps immensely with characterization. Take Huckleberry Finn for example; Twain's use of realism through accents gave a colorful portrayal of attitude and setting.
Same dealio here; this kind of speech is befitting of Twilight or Rarity. Dash uses casual speech, and AJ uses heavy accents. Pinkie uses massive streams of sentences that flow into each other. Again, always emulate character speech; it pulls the reader in, and allows one to immerse themselves in the dialogue. Also, comma between "asked" and "seeking." On a side note, the word choice might be a bit more powerful using the conceptual theme of "rejection" rather than the action of "being rejected." Perhaps a bit of restructuring for better sentence flow as well?
Hrm, kinda feels a bit flat here... It's not "news," per se, and we could use just a tad more colorful words. She's going into pitiful puppy-eyes mode.
Heh, I love begging Dashie. *ahem*
Here it kinda feels like the focus was too much on the characters' intentions of their actions, rather than actions themselves, forcing the reader to be kinda distracted from cuteness. If we wanna focus on the actions themselves, you'll wanna expand on Dashie's face, and Twilight's futile resistance.
Eh, feels a tad awkward... word choice? Also... "fist?" What's that?
Must... not... GIGGITY.
*ahem*... hoof-pumping. Add a humanized tag if you wanna use hand-based actions like this. Also, hyphenation.
Awkward commas? Also, "the" rather than "this" would work better, methinks.
Tense conflict... past-tense "represented" would be much more fitting.
Meep... we gotta get better word choice.
Ehhh... "seeing as" isn't that great of an element to repeat... Feels layman. Just sayin'. Also, "of course" implies that the narrator is interacting with the reader through explanation, being a casual dialogue term. It would only be appropriate in a "story-telling" mode, where the author is actively narrating directly to the reader. In which case, the author him/herself would need characterization, or some sort of relation to the story. Since that's not what we're doing here, it'd be better to avoid casual vernacular in the narration.
Alrighty, a couple things here... small implies size by default definition, so we can streamline this down to "small wings."
Also, we gotta watch those tense conflicts. They're popping up here and there; sentence flow becomes rough if the tense isn't consistent.
I should note that, while endearing, this little snippit about Scootaloo's lessons kinda detracts from the story's flow. We're on our way to the auction here, and instead, we can focus internally on Dash's anticipation of getting her hooves on that rare book.
Since we're simply referring to the flight's duration, we can use something more time-related rather than expectation-related.
Also, I should note that in both canon and fanon worlds, only the Princesses (Tia/Luna) are experienced at long-distance travel. While Dash is an experienced flyer, she's not exactly endurance-typed. (Note greyhound-like napping habits.) If long distances were so trivial, Wonderbolt induction wouldn't pose any problem to Dash's friendships by leaving Ponyville. In addition, Twilight may be an alicorn, but she's not exactly athletic. (Not to mention, she just learned how to fly, as you've said. Since flight didn't come inherent with wings, this implies that the musculature of flight is also undeveloped, vastly limiting Twi's long-distance flight ability.) We definitely need a deus-ex-machina here to explain Twilight's flight capabilities. Perhaps an offhand remark before departure about how Twi's wings are still sore from the rigorous training Dash had been putting her through for the past month. Bleh, I'm rambling. Onwards!
Oxford comma between "items" and "the." It improves the sentence flow. and clarity. Also, I'd think the activity would be more capable of "streaming," rather than an immobile object like an auction house. Try "bustling" instead.
Eh, in order to illustrate the setting more (reader immersion, remember), we can clarify the crowded environment a bit. Also, she's a princess being noticed. This can also be used to illustrate the crowded area by their attempt to make way (being too crowded to do so). At this point, I should mention that "Rainbow," "Dash," and "Rainbow Dash" can all be used interchangeably to break up monotony, using an occasional sprinkling of appearance-based character references like "cyan pegasus." Avoid using "RD," though, as that's strictly suited for dialogue rather than narration.
Also, since Dash is taking point, cutting a path for Twi, we have to include her in the crowd's attention. (If she were behind Twi, then we could just mention the attention Twi gets.)
Comma between "available" and "though," methinks.
)
Also, beginning sentences with prepositions tends to be risky, and often ends up with a stilted sentence flow. While perfectly acceptable (ocd literalist critics aside), best practice is to "stick" the preposition closer to its target. (Tough to explain. See here.)
Also, since this is an auction, I wouldn't think seating arrangement would matter, unless it was Twi & Dash's intent to get a close look at the book.
(To Tartarus with my rambling ocd finickiness....... huh.... finickiness is a word, apparently.
Welp, my caffeine is running out, so I'll stop there.
In brief, yeh got a good premise here, and the ending was nice & fuzzy. Though I was expecting some kinda revelation along the lines of "Your FATHER? ZOMGWTFDASH?!" from Twi. I'll abstain from up/downvoting, as this is probably one of your practice works.
So all in all, keep flexin' yer writin' skills, and I'm sure you'll be hammering out some gems in the future.
So is rainbow's dad the author of daring do series? Should rainbow have realised that by looking at the bottom of the book covers?
Ehh... you forgot to remove this y'know. Its not supposed to be I here. But im writing like this anyways. Look at your story, its like this even when the letter stopped
how could anyone down vote this its made me tear up at the end
2835700 Discouraged? Not at all. Its more accurate to say I'm ecstatic by your extensive and detailed review! I've never considered myself a professional writer and my stories are recreational activities. Those highest-ranked stories...for a long time I've been convinced my stories will never be that good. It may sound foolish but that is the reason I don't seek out prereaders or editors; I feel little to no desire to attain a place among the stars when my place is here on
EarthEquestria. What I'm trying to say is that foolishly editing my own writing feels more comfortable. Then again it would be most appropriate to seek out advice. I am my own fool.I always knew of my issues with tense and verb confusion, but I never realized my sentence structure was so confusing! I'm going to make it a goal to fix that assuming it is possible. Proper descriptive wording is also hard to come by so that will always be lacking. However, the use of 'commandeered' seems like a stretch.
Well, I've got a lot of work ahead of me. Thank you so much for the extensive review! It is much appreciated!
By the way, all my writings feel like practice works.
2836082 Yes, RD's dad is the author of the Daring Do book series. Aw, man! I left out one of the most important key details! I was going to indicate that a pen name was written on the books' covers. Well, I'm really kicking myself over that now.
2836853 Whoops! Thanks for that catching that.
2837158 I'm sure they have their reasons. Thanks for the time in reading the story.
2835700
Wish granted! Among a few changes and patches made just now, I added that in for your enjoyment.
awesome story
2840932 Thanks!
2845291
you're welcome
2835700>>2836082 The author put a fake name...
2975999
That was edited in a few weeks ago. At that time, there was no pen name, and the only explanation was that Rainbow simply never bothered to learn the author's name.
Bet Twilight never saw that one coming.
I liked this story. Gives a new perspective to the Daring Do series and what it means for Rainbow Dash. Well done.
2993906 Thanks! Your opinion means a lot to me!
I'm open to all opinions - good and bad.
Aww, that's adorable! I've seen the idea before that someone wrote the Daring Do novels as a tribute to Rainbow Dash, but the idea of her own father doing so is just really sweet.
3113524 Glad you enjoyed it! I had hoped the idea would come across as a pleasant story benefiting from an unexpected twist of expressing a father's love for his daughter. After the cameo in S3 with RD's father, I couldn't resist the urge to write something about him and RD. Additionally, back when S2 aired, I read a few blogs, threads, and stories discussing the Daring Do author's identity. This story is the result of those motivators. I'm still wondering if this story is an original idea. I wholeheartedly doubt that but still rather curious about it.
Anywho, I recently saw this pretty awesome wallpaper and will link it here for no particular reason:
derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/4/16/300395.jpg
Cheers!
Wow, the ending made me tear up slightly.
And the twist, WOW! If only that had been in the show. Don't get me wrong, I find the whole of Daring Do being real plot very interesting, but THIS would've been more heartwarming. 
Excellent job!
4133336 A father's love for their daughter is a powerful thing. I thought that would make for a good twist and was a little disappointed with the Daring Don't episode in that regard albeit was fine overall. Most children undervalue the love given to them by a parent until that one moment in their life it could be fully recognized. That is quite possibly one of the most heartwarming emotional moments; the point in time when a parent's entire belief and love in their child comes to light.
Glad you enjoyed it. Cheers!