Twilight didn't know what came over her. At one point, she was having a wonderful tea party with her friends, and the next thing she knew, she was trying to kill the princesses.
This could have something to do with the fact that nopony would listen to her at her brother's wedding, everypony thinking she is crazy, or even the fact that Discord was set free without anypony noticing.
She finds herself at Celestia's court, facing crimes she didn't commit.
"Twilight Sparkle, for stealing the Elements of Harmony, attempting to kill me and Princess Luna, and Betraying everything you were supposed to protect, you are hereby banished from Equestria, never to return!"
Celestia's words continued to ring in her ears as she followed the road out of Equestria. She would never see her friends again.
My entry to The Exiled Competition
Cover art can be found here. It was made by StarlightSpark on DeviantArt.
So, like, actual murder is less horrible than attempted murder?
4020256 Murder almost never happens in Equestria.
4020284
That is entirely unrelated to how horrible it is.
4020287 True, but read later chapters when they come out.
4020293
Why? You haven't really made a very strong case for people to keep reading, so what reason do we have to continue?
4020301 You don't have to. Others can read on if they want to. Oh, and rereading your first comment, I'm going to change the '3 most horrible crimes' to '3 of the most horrible crimes.
Ohh. We got hanged from a cliff.
4029624 Totally.
Wait, I didn't. I wrote this.
4029726 If you want to be a critic, go right ahead. I don't have an editor. If you don't like the way I write my story, just don't read it. I want to write stories for other's enjoyment. And frankly, I don't understand half of what your saying.
4029881 Wibbly Wobbly Timey Wimey.
4029953 My story. I will write it my way. With or without an editor.
4030056 I wont take what you have into any more consideration. I am tired, stressed, and constantly told what to do and what not to do on a daily basis. I don't get much free time in my life, and when I do, I try to enjoy it as much as possible. You telling me what I should do just makes me fell like not listening to you. I don't like having to redo multiple things over again, which is why I didn't continue a sequel for another story of mine. Either you stop telling me what to do, or I completely ignore you. Understand?
4030208 Well you caught me at a bad time, and I am not in the mood to listening to other people. Writing fan fiction helps pass the time away, and gets me away from my horrible family. You telling me what to do reminds me of them, and I don't want to remember them all the time.
By the way, the reason my writing skill 'need work' as you are saying, is probably because I'm only a freshman in high school.
*10th, 1001; Armor
*leave, but; also, since she didn't actually leave, a different verb would probably be better. Like, "She was about to leave, but"
*Mi
*You're kidding, right?
*a
*Oh, it's; you also use "It is so nice" again in the very next thing Discord says. Probably best to change that to something else.
Also, just thought I'd mention that if your narrator isn't a big source of story flavor or or related to the plot, you're probably better off not drawing attention to them by using the pronoun "I."
... Why is the name of the spell so important?
Discord is being very straightforward here. This would also probably require extensive rewriting, but I would suggest for him to be much more vague about his plan, at least while he's still in the statue; after all, he has many more powers than just brainwashing. Perhaps he could just give a hint here about the fact that he can't brainwash Twilight, so that later, when the readers start to figure out what Discord's plan was, they wouldn't be asking why he needed to use a spell first.
Oh, and when Discord says his plan will get "Twilight banished from Equestria," he hadn't actually used her name before then. He just called her a "purple unicorn," and "the Element of Magic." Of course, we the readers know who this must be, but the Queen probably shouldn't.
Try to expand on actions like "proceeding to release Discord." A flashy, magical event like that sounds like a perfect spot to throw in some descriptive text, talking about the sights of the spell being unraveled, and the sounds of the statue crumbling into dust as Discord emerges from its hollow shell. Also, for the conversation, not every line has to be directly related to moving events along. Especially with Discord, who enjoys hearing himself talk and not making sense to anyone who happens to hear him.
You mark the date and time at the top as the ninth, which is fine. But then you start talking about how Shining had his wedding on the tenth. Then, in the next sentence, the time shifts to "the other day," when the Queen found Discords' statue. I would suggest that you don't put the bolded time sentence until the scene is actually starting. You could lead into it with something like "Chrysalis, the changeling queen, had something peculiar in the garden the other day. Just sitting there. Something that would soon be giving Twilight Sparkle a great deal of trouble." And then put the date.
About the beginning; when was Twilight having a good time? Was it the ninth, as we were just told? She could have been enjoying herself the day before the wedding, but I think that isn't really what you meant. If you're just talking about her whole life experience in general, you should probably rephrase that. Something like, "Twilight Sparkle had a great life."
Boy, I talk a lot. Reaction time now.
Yes, Discord. That spell. The one you just promised to give me, should I let you out of your eternal imprisonment. The one we were just talking about. That spell.
And now, two super-villains, whose powers threaten to destroy the entire nation of Equestria, set their sights on Twilight Sparkle, humble Princess/librarian.
This is going to be a bad day...
Words can't not express that I hate Discord right now!
4043420 First of all, I write all of this on my Surface with a flat keyboard. All of the keys feel the same. That would probably explain why some of the 'a' are actually 's'. Second, the other errors are small errors and I didn't notice them. Third, the name of the spell doesn't matter. I just thought it was a good way to cut off the Prolouge.
*sisters-in-law (I think, according to a quick google search. Could also be sister-in-laws, but that's what I got. You might want to check on that.) Also, the "She" here refers to Twilight, but it could also be read as referring to "the right mare."
Perhaps Cadence shouldn't be running about, alone, when she's just about to leave on her honeymoon. Why not flesh out the scene, make her walk up arm in arm (foreleg in foreleg?) her new husband, have them both thank Twilight again. I mean, Shining Armor is mentioned for the first (and last) time in this chapter in this one sentence: "With that, Cadence and Shining Armor left in their carriage." This is actually a scene that has been covered in the show (what with the joke about Spike and the bachelor party), but I should note that it is Shining Armor who thanks Twilight in the show, not Cadence. You don't have to follow the show that exactly, of course, but you should keep that fact in mind, and make sure your version is good enough that fans won't have too much to complain about. Also, don't explain the joke. This particular joke involves a call-back to earlier, when Spike was set up as being in charge of the bachelor party and having no idea what he was doing; that might be hard to make work in your story. If the joke doesn't work, I'd just leave it out.
I don't think the place tags are helping. The readers should be able to figure out where events are occurring through the text; interrupting with an announcement every scene change, when it's still the same day, just breaks the flow of reading.
The scene at the library seems to be set up to show that time has passed, and to establish Twilight's motivation for the day. However, the date tag already showed that time has passed, and Twilight's motivation is established with a single sentence not even related to her location: "Twilight had decided to explore around Ponyville and meet some of her friends." This scene also establishes Spike, and his crush on Rarity, but is that important? Is it going to play a role later on? It feels like this isn't doing much for the story, at the moment. It's also short. Why not dive into the dream a bit more? Give it a bit of a narrative, set the tone for how Twilight thinks her day is going to go. Or you could just get rid of this scene entirely and go straight from the wedding to when Twilight enters the Cake's bakery.
Also, when Twilight is talking here, 3/4 times you start her off with "Spike." Repetition is not your friend here.
*Sugar Cube Corner
Sugar Cube Corner is the name of a store. As a name, it should be capitalized. And please, describe it for us; assume we have never watched the show (ha ha), and tell us things we need to know about it. It's a bakery/sweets shop. It's cheerful. Is it crowded? If you're feeling poetic, you could even talk about the smells coming from freshly-made pastries. Just set the scene, near the start, and then the characters can talk as much as they want.
The cooking joke is funny, but I wonder if it actually benefits from being split up like that. I would try putting Pinkie's nonsensical answer with Twilight's reasonable question; I just think it would flow better.
Needs more stuff! Flesh things out more!
And now we're back at the library. Twilight's determination to go out and visit her friends doesn't seem to have lasted very long. For such a simple thing as going out to see Pinkie, you probably don't really need that coherent a plan anyway; I would suggest trying to eliminate the need to state her reasoning at all, and for the parts you still have to, something like "she was hungry" would do fine.
There is a lot of dialogue here, and not much action. Perhaps you could break up the talking bits with smaller actions, like if Crystal took out the book earlier in the conversation, to show it to Twilight, and you took a sentence or two to talk about how the book looked. Then, you could have them talk about the history of the book as they flip through the tattered pages. Crystal finds the page she wants, and hands (hoofs) the book over for Twilight to look at. Twilight comments on the spell.
Something like that.
*Let's
... So. Much. Critique.
Comment now.
"This book is extremely old, Twilight Sparkle. Eons have passed it by, and it's author has been condemned to the dusts for centuries. Why, it may even be older than my grandfather, who I miss dearly."
"I'm so sorry about your grandfather."
"Oh, he's not dead. He just left somewhere, and hasn't written yet this decade. He'll be back."
"Wait, how old is your grandfather anyway?"
"The ancient Emperor of the Changelings was there in the time before the Sun and Moon, before the Earth itself was made, before the stars began to burn... So pretty old, I guess."
"... Okay. And what about your grandfather?"
"HE IS MY GRANDFATHER."
4043641 That was Chrysalis being undercover. Revealing she is a changeling would blow that cover.
stupid twilight she is so gullible when it comes to new magic spells
4043733 True. She does like new spells.
4043775 I try to update as often as possible. Usually I update every day, but I didn't the past teo days because I was preoccupied with other stuff.
*but
The information in the first paragraph is all things that could be presented as part of Twilight talking about the spell, instead of making the narrator do it for her. In fact, part of it is already covered by that; just Twilight mentioning "I've never seen a spell that requires the Elements of Harmony [before]" is enough to let the reader know that this spell does require the elements.
*a while (awhile is a word, but is used differently); "this spell" is said twice. Also, "procedures" are things you do; I don't think you need to get them ready for anything, although you may need to get ready to do them.
A minor note: small numbers like "3" can easily be written out as "three." I don't know that there's a rule about this, but I think it looks nicer. Just a thought.
I think it would look better if you formatted the letter to Celestia like an actual letter would be formatted, like:
"Dear Princess Celestia,
asdfkjakldfjakdfj. asdfhakjdhfaidhfaidjfnkaljnfdlauhdfajdsnflkansdflkjhasdlfa.
Your faithful student, Twilight Sparkle."
"Twilight began work for the spell right after she sent the letter." Back on the fifteenth. So this is something she already did by now, on the sixteenth. We were there just a few sentences ago; we could have watched her get started. If you have things separated by date, keep them separated.
... Twilight thinks it will take three days to gather an apple core, cold milk, and a pegasus feather?
Those items all seem rather mundane, but the sea-serpent's scale is comparatively interesting. Why not show that, with Twilight visiting Stephen Magnet, instead of the visit to Applejack's farm? You could even have it so that Twilight's already gathered the other items, and she could show them to Stephen, instead of having the narrator tell us that she picked them up.
"Supposedly, this spell is supposed" has "supposed" there twice. Okay, the sentence makes sense, but it's kind of silly, don't you think? Why not, "According to this old book," or, "this spell should?"
*recieved
The paragraph where Twilight is shown as being determined to make the spell work after having put so much effort into it is rather awkward. The sentence "In fact, she couldn't believe how hard she was trying" isn't very appealing. Try to show us how much effort she's putting into it; make us unable to believe the power she is willing to use for this. And after that list of how difficult this spell is, "There was no way that she could get this spell wrong" doesn't really fit, because it sounds like she was just listing the reasons why the spell might go wrong.
*lair; also, all the commas are gone. Like "Discord's lair, July 18th, 1001"
We don't need the note. It's a nice thought, but you can just assume people have read up to this point. If they haven't, they can just go back and read, but the note interrupts the story.
*... I have no idea what you were trying to say here.
Discord's section is super extremely mega short. Also, it doesn't need to be there. We don't need to know that Discord is plotting behind the Queen's back yet, when it would be so much more interesting as a twist later on.
*it's
*you're
Wait, so the spell is just to make a potion, and not to actually directly relax minds? That might be something you'd want to mention earlier.
Now to make this comment even longer by adding an opinion to it!
The only reason Twilight got away with saying there was no way for her to get the spell wrong is because it all went horribly right.
4043821 Stupid auto fix correct some things to other stuff and I don't notice it.
*I don't think this is the word you wanted. Perhaps "blame?"
I like the question marks in the time/place marker thing.
Why is Twilight wondering what day it is? What reason does she think she's been unconscious for long?
*missing quotation mark
*Lair (unless you actually do mean layer. With Discord, you never know...)
And... Boom! Chrysalis is kicked out again off-camera. Ha ha!
I do hope she comes back, though. It would be interesting seeing her try to get back at Discord.
I am greatly looking forward to the part where we find out just what Discord made Twilight do. Especially the word "have;" that implies getting someone else to do the job. What happened?
... Looking at the previous comments on this page, I feel somewhat abashed at having put long, rambling reviews on the previous chapters. Certainly, writing fanfiction is not something you should be feeling pressure about. If you disagree with any part of my comments, then, as the author, you can just go ahead and ignore me. If you don't want to spend the time it would take to implement the changes I suggest, that's fine too. But I hope you read the comments I leave; I like to think they contain good advice. Their purpose is simply to provide new ideas, to allow an author to look at their work from a different perspective, and, if they are struggling with how to improve their work, to give them a new option to try out.
There's only one more chapter up on this story, right now. I will continue in this manner, and comment on that as well. I only hope that this does not make writing this fic a less enjoyable experience. Your civility in responding to the comments of the parasprite in Chapter 1 earned my respect, and I would like for my commentary to reflect that.
4043974 I'm glad your liking this story. Although, I don't see why the big deal about the parasprite is. He is just another fanfic writer as far as I'm concerned.
*you're
You know you're in trouble when only one pony in all of Equestria is willing to defend you.
*Princess
*stealing (Right? Like, taking the jewlery, not taking stuff from the ponies, who are also called the Elements of Harmony.)
*extraneous quotation mark
4043843
4043504
Hey, it's cool. I'm just pointing the typos out in case you want to fix them.
Cutting off the name of the spell works pretty well, in that it keeps the readers from knowing exactly what the spell does until later. Cliffhanger style.
4043669
... That last part was a joke. Obviously, saying that wouldn't have been a very good way of convincing Twilight to go along with the Queen's plan.
So... where was the part in the trial where they went over how Twilight stole/robbed the Elements of Harmony?
I am now imagining Discord with a magical mirror, saying the lines from Snow White.
It's hilarious.
4044064 I know you meant all in well with jokes, I completely understand that. I never watched Snow White entirely, but I can guess that the lines you are talking about are: 'mirror, mirror on the wall.' As for the part about the elements being stolen, well, I'll get to that stuff in the story.
I just looked at the votes this story has. 18 up to 7 down. You know what I have to say about that?
HAHA! Majority Rules!
Very good. I like.
Stay Awesome
RDD
so when will the action happen?
4062195 That depends on what you mean by 'action'.
4062317 i dont mean to sound rude but its taken 9 chapters just for her to leave what i mean is when will every one else start doing something but like i said i dont mean to sound rude and if you some how get offended then im sorry and even though ill still keep up with this story ill refrain from commenting anymore
4062585 It may have taken 9 chapters for her to leave, but some chapters didn't include her at all. Also, in the story, its only been a week for her to leave.
4062620 so soon?
4062633 A lot happens in a week.
4062888 I find that second sentence of yours funny, because you have 'well' and 'we'll' next to each other.
4062888 Who knows really..... It can't be the author himself now can it?
4063984 I don't really get what you mean by that.
that thing with the barrier the same happened in a book of the sword of truth series called naked empire but contrary to the title it wasnt about naked people ( i love that series) and i liked this chapter
4083256 All will be revealed in time.
4083589 I've never heard of that series.
4083755 its a great book series but ive found them a little hard to find
4083784 Maybe one day I shall look for them.
4097685 Not everything is what it seems.
oooooooooooOOOOOHH DISCORD SO COLD
and poor twilight techanally didnt do anything wrong
she be inocent
4100782 Hello, and welcome to this story, Bronydom.
4107099 Shh, don't spoil the surprise!
4108915 Its okay. I could have deleted it myself, but I didn't want to. If the people want to know more about my OC, then they have to look at my 'Doctor Whooves' series.
4113628 I wonder where you might remember it...
4114298 Nope. Wasn't offended. I don't get offended easily unless its something I really don't like.