I'm a gamer that loves to play and understand how games work. I (still) refuse to get an editor, even after four years on the site, so you could say I'm a bit stubborn. And sometimes funny.
A side story to this.
I dream. I dream of a perfect world, a perfect world, in which the touch of the sky, is not a luxury. A world in which I could fly...
Special thanks to my pre-readers stanku,BluegrassGroove, keam and Smaug the golden
Cover art by cury of DeviantArt.
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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It's out!!
4430497 Yep
4430498
No need for a
It's a wonderful story!
Nice to see it out.
As requested, one review. Now with even less slack than before!
Overall score:
A poor and boring read that is filled with grammatical errors. It requires a massive overhaul.
Read the full review here.
Enjoy, and feel free to ask any questions.
4640963 Read the whole review twice.
I put the whole story in a word processor (LibreOffice Document Writer) and the only thing it underlined as incorrect were the names and terms that I made up (gentlegryphon, Insbuck).
As for the story itself, it was given a complete overhaul not once, but twice. I have the first version stached somewhere.
I don't really know what to say about the transitions, I though they were comprehensible.
Overall, I don't even know anymore. Two people pre-read the first version and the two more pre-read the final one. It makes no sense that they didn't find anything wrong
4640987
Go into this document. In the top left corner is a button that says "Tools." Click it. A dropdown menu will appear; press "Spelling..." Then, in the right hand corner, press "ignore" to cycle through the errors. (Though yes, there are sometimes where it brings up made up words that I don't have problems with. However, most are errors in spelling or usage.)
The transitions are comprehensible; that's not the problem. The problem is how the affect the story. With so many scene breaks, the story reads badly.
Not to put anyone down or anything, but some people aren't at a high enough level to critique other authors—and that's the honest truth. I know I wasn't when I first started. To tell the truth, I don't know why they didn't say anything, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was either simple unknowing or willful ignorance.
4641014 Well, the first version of the story was a boring monologue, in which the author just spoke. I wanted to change that by giving the reader the actual scene, instead of just a description.
The current version has flashbacks which make up at least 50-60% of the story.
As for the pre-readers, I can't really choose who pre-reads my stories and provides feedback on that. I only wrote a 'In need of a pre-reader' thread topic in the Writer's Group and waited. If all of them were wilfully ignorant, I think my faith in members of this website will go down by a few points.
I wanted the story to have flashbacks of the past, but now, I don't know what to do. They make up a sizeable portion of the story and I don't want to cut any of them out.
4641040
Honestly, I'd bet on naive prereaders before willfully ignorant. The world is filled with people who just don't know.
You don't have to cut them out; that's not what I'm saying (I do apologize if that's how I sounded). What I'm saying is that you have to make them work. Those are two very different things. And once you clear up the constant beige prose and emotional exposition, that will come easier. Pacing is one of the last things I work on. It's more of a finishing touch, really.
Hello, good sir, this is ChromeMyriad here with your review from WRITE! For those about to read the review, beware of SPOILERS!
First, let’s mention the description. It’s short and sweet. I feel it leaves enough unsaid to draw readers in and—despite maybe one too many commas—doesn’t have any significant mechanical errors.
Mechanics
I know, I know, you didn’t want the review to focus on grammar and such. It becomes necessary to mention, however, because this is a rather extreme case. While comprehensible most of the time, sometimes the prose descends into complete gibberish due to lack of mechanical understanding. I’ll mention those parts individually later, but for this section, I’m going to mention a few errors you can start with as well as a good general reference.
Misspellings,
missing prepositions—here, we’re missing a ‘to’ after ‘referring’—
and misused words abound. Frankly, it seems English might not be your first language, as the mechanical errors are not restricted to these.
There are also quite a few dialogue errors. Here, there ought to be a comma where the period is.
I’ll link a decent reference for English grammar rules. I’d also recommend contacting some of the groups for new authors to get a firmer grasp on grammar.
Alright, that’s out of the way. I’ll restrict myself to storytelling and stylistic concerns from now on.
Miscellaneous Mentions
I know I quoted this already, but I need to revisit it. From the context, it seems you’re trying to say the ‘author’ stepped out of the fourth wall. I apologize if this isn’t what you meant, but it’s confusing either way.
The ‘fourth wall’ is an imaginary wall that only exists for characters in a play. When you’re looking at the stage, watching the actors, the audience can see three of the walls that are real for the characters. The fourth wall—the one the audience is looking through—doesn’t actually exist. An actor is said to be “breaking the fourth wall” when they interact with the audience or otherwise acknowledge they’re in a play.
Pinkie Pie is often said to break the fourth wall because she interacts with the audience or references things outside her universe. This is usually used a joke. I mention all of this because this fic has a serious tone, which is broken a bit by having the ‘author’ step out of the fourth wall.
If breaking the fourth wall wasn’t what you meant by this, it’s still confusing because it looks as if you are referencing the fourth wall. It should probably be removed to avoid confusion and preserve the tone.
You should also take redundancy into consideration when writing. The first part of this sentence states that the agent is in the audience. If guests do not hold some privilege relevant to the plot, then the second part basically restates the first. The second could be deleted without losing anything. Redundancy is just something that slows your story down, so it’s an issue to look out for.
Outside of dialogue, I don’t mind the author using ‘everyone’ if it isn’t first-person perspective. When the speaker is a pony, however, it’s worth it to stick to established canon vernacular unless you’re neglecting it for a very good reason. I recommend using ‘everypony’ when a pony is speaking about other ponies.
It’s not immediately clear what was funny. This is due to the ‘inspiration’ bit right after what I assume is the joke. To avoid confusion, you can move the audience’s laughter to after the word ‘earlier’. This will also help the reader visualize the scene, since a public speaker will often pause right after a joke to allow the audience to laugh.
Take care to keep within the same perspective. Nobody but the crystal ponies themselves would know they were indifferent. The ‘author’ wouldn’t know and neither would the omniscient narrator, so this actually switches to their limited perspective for a moment to tell us how they feel. You can easily communicate the same thing without switching perspective by describing their body language or expression. Perhaps at the mention of their home they blinked, but otherwise remained motionless. This would show they acknowledged the ‘author’ mentioning the Crystal Empire, but weren’t phased.
The perspective shifts several times within the story. Sadly, the only cure for this is to reread the entire thing and ask yourself if whoever’s narrating would know what’s being said about the characters.
I realize you’re worried about the word ‘said’ becoming redundant from overuse, but it doesn’t. Saidisms—words used instead of ‘said’ like ‘explained’, ‘replied’, and ‘declared’—should be used sparingly.
Eesh. They’re just bones with flaps of skin on them? That’s a really strange way for wings to be disabled. Disabilities that impair movement usually have to do with nerve problems or degeneration of the muscle rather than complete lack of any nerve or muscle whatsoever. If I were immersed in the story at this point, I’d definitely be tossed out by this sentence.
There’s a critical difference between being intelligent and being knowledgeable. It’s one thing to correct teachers when they perhaps don’t remember the course material as well as a prodigy might, but he’s supposedly learning all of his facts from these same books he’s correcting. Correcting his books isn’t as much intelligent as it is clairvoyant.
A small error, but it’s worth it to stick to consistent anatomy. Gryphons have clawed talons that they grasp things with, not hands.
Having one person talk while the other takes actions is very confusing. This looks like Tesla is the one saying everything.
The Wots
There are many points in the story where you imply or state something that is utterly incomprehensible or confusing. Sometimes this is due to word misuse, other times it’s due to odd stylistic choices. These are instances where the reader is left so completely in the dark that they need to stop reading to try to understand what’s going on. I would’ve added them to the Miscellaneous section, but there were so many I needed a new section for them.
Wot?
Well, it’s over the audience’s head, too. This never gets explained or becomes important, but it’s clearly important because a whole section of the ‘author’s speech is devoted to it. Why mention it at all?
Why would the audience laugh? Graveyards aren’t very funny, and neither are pandemics. I must be missing the joke.
I have no idea what is meant by a ‘symbolic price’.
I—What? He forced the ill to buy his medicine, then became rich, then… sold it back to them? They already had the medicine, didn’t they?
I have no idea what this sentence means. It’s clear from the context what’s going on, but passages like this destroy immersion.
I have no idea what this means. Was she forced to do sexual things to obtain them? That’s about as close to a conclusion as I can draw from this sentence.
What indication do we ever have that the unicorn is getting exhausted or that the ‘author’ does/doesn’t know their limits? Why would the unicorn keep projecting until they faint from exhaustion? Don’t they do this for a living? Why doesn’t the agent believe the ‘author’ when she says she doesn’t know the unicorn’s stamina level? Why is this even here, since the speech just continues unabated afterwards?
They haven’t been established as particularly close-minded. Why’d they kick him out?
Did they not tell her what she had? She could be hiding it from Helmut, but why would she do that?
Instances like these completely destroy the pace of your story because the reader has to stop reading and try to understand them. Many of them can be cleared up with a few sentences that establish certain facts earlier in the story. Some of them serve no purpose and can be deleted entirely. Either way, something should be done to clear these up.
Showing and Telling
Telling is when an author uses exposition to inform the audience how they’re supposed to feel. Showing is when an author makes the reader feel a certain way using vibrant description.
Generally, you want your readers to actually experience the emotions you’re trying to convey rather than try to imagine how the emotions feel.This fic has quite a few instances of telling. I won’t quote them all because I don’t want to clog up your comments, but here are a few clear examples:
It’s a little hard for the reader to be immersed in the mildly frightening atmosphere you’re trying to get across here because you just tell us the ‘author’ is slightly intimidated. Instead, she might wince or shudder or flatten her ears to show some level of fear. Body language is a powerful tool authors can use to get their message across.
Here, we’re told that the Royal Society is close-minded to new ideas, but we can’t get invested. We don’t know what actually happened. Since scientific societies are generally populated by those who are at least intelligent, there should be some form of logic or reason as to why they felt this way, but nothing is established about them beforehand. This section ought be expanded so that we can understand what’s going on.
Perplexingly, we dive back into a flashback to hear about the time Helmut crippled a couple of other gryphons, but we don’t actually see the fight. I’ve already spoken on the difficulties in getting invested in something we don’t see, and this is no exception. It’s not the reader’s job to imagine a completely one-sided fight, it’s the author’s job to show them the fight and let them decide for themselves.
I think I’ve made my point. It’s important to look for telling everywhere, since you almost always want to be showing instead. Telling can be something as big as an expository paragraph that summarizes a key part in the story or as small as just saying a character is ‘indifferent’. Generally speaking, if you can replace a summarized part of the story with a description, the story becomes stronger.
Characterization
In a character-driven tale like this one, having three-dimensional and relatable characters is important. What do I mean when I say three-dimensional? Well, a common mistake made by new authors is to inject a character that has only one job. This can be a villain with no particular reason to be evil, a hero with no reason to be heroic, or a shopkeeper whose only job is to tell the main character where the bad guy went. A three-dimensional character has motivation for what they do and good characters have motivations that the audience can understand and relate to.
The idea is to make the reader feel genuine emotion when the character does something in the story. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to be invested in these characters because they come and go so fast. Even Helmut, the main focus of the story, isn’t relatable. Let me just list out the number of characters that are brought up in this fic:
Helmut Grayfeather
Wilhelm Grayfeather
Ambrosia Grayfeather
Two nameless bullies
The bullies’ father
The school headmaster
The ‘author’
The agent
The ‘author’s unicorn friend
The mysterious, but tall, mare from the back row
The mailmare
Tesla
Professor Beakstein
Professor Theodore Lavitt
The shady businessgryphon and his cronies
The actors from the play
The doctor who gave the Grayfeathers the bad news about his wings
The ponies and gryphons affected by Helmut’s gravedigging
That’s eighteen characters or characterized groups that are introduced in the space of seven-and-a-half thousand words. Even a very skilled author would find it nearly impossible to characterize this many in such a short space. Now, not all of these need to be fully developed; it’s fine to have a few characters who play their part and then leave the story, but almost all of these characters are flat!
Helmut’s father is mentioned about three times before being killed, Helmut’s mother once. The bullies’ motivations are cliche and their presence is just used to prop up Helmut’s character. The bullies’ father, upon hearing the news that his two sons are scarred for life, basically laughs it off over tea and crumpets while he also props up Helmut. The ‘author’s whole story is basically telling us what a godsend Helmut is. Maybe you can see the pattern?
Helmut is what we call a Gary Stu. He’s a perfect character who bad things happen to in an attempt to make the reader sympathetic. Despite his winglessness, he excels in every physical and academic pursuit put before him. Nothing is a real obstacle to him except maybe his loneliness. The audience can’t relate to a character who’s perfect; real people have flaws. And before his winglessness or anger issues are pointed out, I mean flaws of character that actually debilitate him as a person. His anger is completely justified in every case and his inability to fly doesn’t seem to inhibit him at all. In a society where nearly everyone has wings, it seems illogical that a flightless individual would have so few issues. He is simply uninteresting.
Furthermore, killing off characters only carries weight when the audience feels some way about them. Wilhelm and Ambrosia die, but we aren’t invested in them because they’re basically sidenotes in the story. They simply don’t appear often enough for us to understand them or develop any feelings about them.
The mailmare is probably the most egregious misuse of reader time. She’s the love interest of our protagonist, yet she’s not given a name or any time to develop her relationship with Helmut. We just get a token justification for their meeting and immediately cut to them being in love and OhHeyShe’sDying. The audience has absolutely no idea who she is or what she’s like, so the whole climax is just an unimmersive blah.
Simply put, the reader needs more time with these characters. It seems like you, the author, have a decent idea of who they are, but the audience doesn’t, so we can’t sympathize with their suffering.
Plot
On an overview level, the plot is great. A misunderstood genius falls in love with a girl and decides to bring her back to life, but creates a monster in the process. That’s an interesting premise. Unfortunately, the execution just squashes it.
Before I really dive in, let me just say that not revealing the ‘author’s name or the names of her various friends really does nothing for the story. It provides meaningless obscurity to unimportant details.
In terms of wordspace devoted to the various pieces of the narrative, you spend a whole lot of time setting Helmut up before he builds his castle and almost no time setting him up afterward. This strikes me as backwards because the interesting bit of the story isn’t Helmut’s parents or upbringing, it’s the creation of his monster and his relationship with the mare. Like I said, perfect characters aren’t very interesting, and Helmut excels at everything. The mare, however, is fascinating!
She’s a lonely mailmare who keeps delivering missives to an isolated genius who lives in a castle. She gradually falls in love with his brash superiority and comforts him when his parents die, getting closer to him. She finds out she’s going to die and spends her last few days with Helmut as he goes mad with the grief of losing her, then she wakes up as stitched-together monstrosity filled with pain. Betrayed by the love of her life, she still defends him with her newfound power.
It’s never really explained why she does this after he completely violated her right to death and gave her a life as an outcast filled with suffering, but it would be beautiful to explore her motivations.
In terms of story focus, I don’t think the plot could’ve missed any harder. Even then, the plot is incredibly rushed and rather poorly explained. Everything happens so fast the audience can never get invested in a moment before it’s gone. This leaves me with the feeling that this is something of a planning document: an outline for a much longer story.
The premise for the plot is good, it just needs more time and more meat to be moving.
Conclusion
Frankly, this story is a mess. It’s a mess mechanically and a mess stylistically. Almost no time is taken to develop anything, and even the developed parts are at best mediocre. Everything needs more time, the plot focuses on an uninteresting character and leaves everything else flat, and the characterization is almost nonexistent.
In terms of improvement, this fic would needs a rewrite. Its current form might do as an outline for the larger piece, but it’s lacking in nearly every way. A decent premise does not a story make.
Enjoy your review! If you have any questions, feel free to PM me or respond to this comment.
~ChromeMyriad, WRITE’s Nanite Construct
4641481 Thanks for the review.
First of all, I did not notice these numerous mistakes. I had two pre-readers for each version of the story and I'm very upset that not one gave a slightest clue that something is off
Initially, I planned this as a one-shot, but I'm probably going to have to rewrite it and make it a story instead. If I really want to make it better, give more space for characters and correct all the problems, that's the only thing that comes to mind. I'm not a fan of really long chapters and I'm probably going to break it into smaller parts.
I did not notice that I made a Gary Stu, because I though a lonely, disabled character, is enough him to not be labeled as such. I was wrong...
I'll add this to my 'To-do' list and work at it. I never though I'd fail a story that much
4641578
Honestly, if you wouldn't mind just cutting back on some of the unnecessary characters, you could probably keep this as a one-shot. Like I said, the interesting part of the story could be told just from the mailmare's perspective. If you start the story when she meets him, you could probably develop the two of them into interesting characters and give their sacrifice real weight.
It would just mean cutting Helmut's backstory down to only the essentials needed to understand his character.
4641588 Will do. The few ones I'll keep would probably be the main characters (Helmut, the mailmare), his parents as side characters and the evil salesman, along with the book author. I'll see how it turns out
4641601
Good luck and write on!
4641603 Thanks again for the review. Have a nice day