Bob's life has gone bad. His family all hate him after spending two thousand pounds of his parent's earnings on video games. He had no real friends in the first place, anyone who tolerated him now hates him after he smashed a fire alarm in the middle of winter; he still has cold feet. He can't seem to do anything right. Maybe his luck will change after he is sent to Equestria...
(My first fic. Please don't judge too harshly. Always open to constructive criticism though.)
(Any similarities between my fic and others is 100% accidental)
Chapters (7)
4450756 Thanks! Think I should continue?
4450768 Thanks for the support! The romance tag is there for a reason!
this pleases me. continue as planned. please
this continues to please me. carry on:)
you keep on pleasing me:)..... LEMONS!
Hmm... Can't say I'm not skeptical. I've seen this song and dance way too many times to not be. That said, I'll give it a shot.
<Straps on armor>
Alright. Let's do this.
Fuck, where do I begin?
So this little punk-ass shit steals his financially-strained parents' money for video games, has a self-gratifying whino moment about it like the whipped bitch that he is when he's rightfully tossed out of his soon-to-be-foreclosed house, and then gets to go to Equestria because...
4.bp.blogspot.com/-zqhUSLtm6eg/ULQH3_CWJ4I/AAAAAAAAAlM/s_XtZmw5VC0/s1600/Shrug.png
Not only that, you explain to the audience how the settings are supposed to make them feel, you beat the painfully obvious into our heads, and the story is rife with literacy errors.
Have to say, not off to a terribly good start.
4450773 NOOOOO. Oh, god, OC romance stories are the bane of every writer and reader in existence! This already had a lot against it anyhow; don't throw ammo at the enemy! For the love of cheese puffs, please let me at least keep my sanity when I brush this mess off of my shoes on the way out!
Well, I read up and as I guessed this story is leaking in quite a few places. I will stay as constructive as possible with this criticism, but I hope you will in turn listen to someone trying to give you a little free advice I learned the hard way.
Ok, first there is the grammar. When the title of your story wasn't even properly capitalized, I had a feeling this would be a problem. Your very first sentence isn't even properly formatted. As you have it it reads:
No, I will give you that at least the spelling is correct, because
nothingfew things tick me off as a reader more than a writer who does not even care enough to write in actual English rather than text lingo. That said, there are punctuation errors, such as a missing space, missing capitalization, and a missing period. Corrected, it looks like this:I know those seem like small changes, but they are important. at least forty percent of the fics I give up on within the first chapter I drop because the grammar is botched. You also seem to have a problem with run-on sentences and past vs. present tense later on. I'd suggest asking for help from an editor, and by all means, don't let pride get in the way. Even great writers get a helping hand from one, if not several, editors.
Now that I've gotten the issue with the grammar out of the way, let's talk about the content itself. Not trying to crap all over your fic, but the premise of this story is insanely dull. I have seen this exact story, point for point, told in at least a few dozen other fics, and more often than not, they failed to spice it up also.
One of the inherent problems is your main character. The truth is, he's just plain and unlikable. For one thing, this character is either a total idiot in the literal sense that he lacks basic, third grade logic, or he is a completely selfish asshole. I mean, this guy actively acknowledged that his family was hurting for money and needed to pay the mortgage, and yet he spent two thousand pounds on video games!
I have a feeling you were going for the loveably irresponsible protagonist vibe here, but it falls flat. A loveably clueless mistake would be something more like accidentally forgetting to pick up eggs on the way home for a birthday cake for a younger sibling. But this guy knew he was doing the wrong thing and did it anyway, not to mention there is no way to accidentally spend two thousand pounds on video games.
This is a big problem as a story teller because if your main character is not likeable in some fashion, then the audience has no one that they care about enough to root for. Thus a story that was already riding cliche harder than a rented mule into the point of dullness is made a slog to get through.
Then we get the worst part of this excerpt: Luna just straight up invites him to Equestria. Now, dude, I am not trying to insult you personally, but certainly there has to have been a more unique and logical idea in your head than this. It is an immensely lazy way to introduce the main character and Luna (whom I really hope you don't ship him with given how much your story is already in the cliche zone). I mean she literally just asks him to live in Equestria? Why? Why him? He doesn't have anything memorable about him save for the fact that he was stupid enough to pay for two thousand pounds worth of video games with money for the mortgage. On top of that, why is she inviting anyone from our world into Equestria? I'd say it's not very wise to invite creatures from a foreign world to enter yours when you know nothing about them.
Wrapping up with this little mini review, I will warn you that this is about to get very blunt very fast. This is bad. This story is really bad. But the largest problem is that it isn't even bad in a memorable way. I mean, at least some things are so bad that they are fun to watch utterly flame out, like Birdemic and The Room. But this is so bland and lacking any sense of uniqueness that it feels more like a list of bad HiE cliches than a story. Antisocial/irresponsible unlikeable protagonist with little memorable character traits? Check. Everyone around him hates him including his own family in an unrealistic way? Check. Wakes up in Equestria and/or in the presence of a main cast pony? Check. It is just too boring to care about at all, and arguably, that is a bigger issue than a fic being conventionally bad given the entire point of a story, let alone the first chapter, is to invest me in the characters and conflict.
That said, I am also taking into account that this is your first story, I am not trying to discourage you from writing. Even if this story is bad, that doesn't mean that you can't improve at writing. Every writer has to start with a few less-than-pleasant stories, including myself. Instead, I am actually going to give you some advice to help you out. First, I'd work on your grammar. It isn't awful; it just needs a bit of sharpening. An editor would also help with that, so I suggest you ask around.
Also, a really important part of writing that many people gloss over is research. You need to deeply research not only what your story is about, but also the genre that it fits in. Find similar stories and learn what tropes and conventions are good for your genre and which ones are a death trap to stories. I spent months on this site before ever even typing a word into a story because I wanted to analyze what worked, what didn't, and what the audience would and would not be receptive to.
Finally, I would implore you to find a mentor, someone more experienced to help guide and teach you in writing. I never would have learned to write nearly as well without my mentor instructing me in the finer points of writing and literary analysis.
To sum all of this up, you seem like an alright guy and could probably learn to write well with the wisdom of a veteran and a lot of elbow grease, but as is, this story is deeply flawed to the core in a way that critically taints it. Still, hold your head high. If nothing else, it took guts to post something for public critique, and if you work at improvement, I might see one of your stories in the featured box someday.
I like it
4453545 Thanks for taking the time to write that. I'll try to follow as much as that advice as I can. And thanks in general for not just running from my fic, I appreciate constructive criticism in any form.
4453135 Thanks for summing up the story line. I appreciate any and all criticism that shows area's of improvement.
4453435 I have no intention of turning this into an OC romance story. That said I don't have any real plan for this fic at all. This is going to be a more, Trial and error fic.
4454210
1. Plans are nice, especially when writing something coherent. Trial and error could work for a first-fic, though I'd advise against continuing that way.
2. Thank God for that. Pretty much no-one does OC romance right, and it's painful to read on most occasions. Heavy-handed mane six shipping tends to sting just as bad, though.
4454167
No problem. It's what I'm here for.
4454332 I now have an extremely basic plan for the story. It may change and it is kinda bad. Still open for advice,
This start i've read to much *Story Starts with a Person/Pony With A Horrible Life A Few (ALOT) Chapters later Its Like they never had a horrible fate
I'm still gonna read this
Really did Princess Woona (Sorry Couldn't Resist) Tell Tia? Cuz' she was Calm Too Calm I almost stopped following this story after Getting the Guards.Why did they accept? They just like "Sure, I don't think ANYTHING bad will happen" That would obviously happen. No hate bro but really?
4455568 I would assume that the princesses would be fairly skilled in the whole 'Staying calm in annoying situations' don't ya think? I plan on using the conversation to mop up my horrible story line so far (Or try to). I also don't see what you mean by;
4455643 What do you think Without knowing its kind Name Or any info at all
Despite what some people have said, this is a good start. Dont give up and keep trying. There's a lot of things you can do to continue it with a few spelling and grammar inprovements.