Twilight Sparkle and her friends are only barely known, legendary characters in Equestria now, and so are the Elements of Harmony. Coal Slitter, an amateur historian when searching through a ruined village finds a magical necklace that might help him prove that the legends about the Elements and a powerful fourth alicorn are not just tales. With some help, he might find out who had modified the past and why.
The story follows canon up to the season three finale.
The main reason for the hiatus tag is that I grew bored with this story. I think it has fundamental issues that'd require full rewriting and I have new ideas for other stories. I plan to finish this one some day but as for now, it stays in the drawer, so to speak.
Chapters (11)
I'm liking this. Besides some spelling or gramma errors here and there, you've written quite an interesting tale.
Here are the errors I spotted-
Chapter 2:
Should be "ignored"
The phrase is "so much for"
You meant to say "though"
Chapter 3:
Present tense/past tense problem. Better would be, "bigger than any Coal had ever seen."
The comma is unnecessary.
Not the correct punctuation when writing in English. “
Chapter 4:
"locked"
Not technically wrong, but it is simpler to say "the domed high ceiling."
The word "more" is redundant. Remove it.
There might be more. These are just the issues I noticed while reading; I wasn't specifically looking for problems.
I eagerly await the next chapter.
4616621 Thank you for the constructive feedback, spotted errors have been corrected. I'm not sure about "so long for" being wrong here, though. I changed it, but I believe I have seen the phrase in similar context somewhere...
I'm happy I managed to pique your interest. Chapter five is on the way.
I'm confident that "so much for" is more correct, although your readers will understand either way.
It did just occur to me however, that my correction of "domed high ceiling" would be even better still with "high domed ceiling". Not important enough to change, since the meaning is that same either way, but it might be worth thinking about the next time you use similar phrasing. Being pedantic, it might also want a comma between the two adjectives, but again, not an issue worth dragging you away from whatever else you're doing for the minute it would take to change.
Heck, I've probably more blatant errors in my two posts here than that.
moar?
4688609 Moar is under the rather slow process of editing my stuff, but I hope I'll be able to publish it by the end of the week.
Some spelling issues, but an interesting chapter overall.
Is this dead?
5647924 It most certainly isn't, but I just got a new job which takes a lot of energy and makes for good escuses for not writing. I'm mostly working on background development, but a new chapter is also on its way.
5649324 Good luck with that
Ooh, this looks good! I have only read the first chapter for now (don't have time for more right now q.q), but you have definitely caught my interest. A dark mystery surrounding a destroyed and abandoned Ponyville? Elements of Harmonly all but forgotten? No one remembers Twilight, while she is obviously imprisoned somewhere? I am curious to see how all this sticks together.
I guess this will feature a dark/evil Celestia as well? I mean, I can't imagine who else could suppress the knowledge of history and make such things forgettable. But it is a bit odd that she would leave one Element simply lying around in Twilight's old home. And Twilight's captor did seem like a not pony, and it didn't seem like a dragon (and I'm not sure what else besides dragons and other alicorns and some tartarus monster could actually beat and imprison an alicorn).
Anyway, I can't wait until I have more time to read more of this, it's a good start that catches my interest for sure.
5930975 Thank you for the encouraging comment and I'm glad the story is enjoyable. I plan to give answers to everything, so stick around.
You really need some type of dividing line or asterisks or some marker between switches in character perspective because, right now, it's very disorienting.
6249512 Thanks for the advice, triple asterisks were added.
Ok, this chapter was good and interesting. I'm not a fan of changing perspectives often but I don't think you did too badly but the past Silver stuff felt more than a little confusing as it was being interspersed with the present or whenever the Twilight stuff happens. Actually this chapter creates a bit of an issue for me and I don't know if it's intentional or not. I don't know when the Twilight stuff happens relative to the coal stuff. Originally it felt like they were concurrent, which is a basic assumption in stories like this. However, with this chapter, you introduce that time is not constant with the breaks between different elements. This means that the Twilight chapters could be years old and we'l discover Twilight died a pitiful death when we get the flashback from coal upon finding the body and figuring out what happened based on what was previously displayed. If this is intentional, then good job, if not then you might want to think about reworking it somehow so that it clearly demarks and separates Silver as an exception to messing with time.
Also, with the number of perspective switches, thank you for using the asterisks. It makes this chapter much easier to read and, other than my bias about # of perspective switches, keeps the flow working by telling us, we have changed perspectives.
6258358
It might be a little spoiler, but the Twilight stuff happens many years before the Coal and Silver stuff, while those two, with the exception of this chapter, happen at the same time. They all will connetc eventually.
In short, they are not concurrent. It's good that you pointed it out, though, I will try and make it more obvious.
6274952
The problem is that there IS no easy way to show they're not concurrent and based off years of indoctrination from dealing with fantasy novels and most novels, changes of perspective are normally assumed to be concurrent unless plainly stated otherwise, either by flashback of little headers that say 10 years ago. It actually makes this story a little weirder if they aren't concurrent because I have had no reason to believe it wasn't until you started messing with this part of the story. This, unfortunately, may mess with expectations and unintended promises to the reader conflicting with what you originally intended. (On phone and can't link to Writing Excuses podcast on promises to the reader. It's a very useful podcast and even more useful episode. I'll link if interested and I get on computer).
6274976
Do you mean www.writingexcuses.com? I just found it via Google, thanks for the tip. I'll give them a listen. The thing is, the Twilight part always played in the past relative to the main story and it was supposed to be some sort of surprise or twist as the story proceeds, that's why there's no "Ten years ago". I didn't think it would be too confusing. Maybe by going back and inserting some hints in the early chapters could do the trick?
6281788
Might be able to do the proper setup. Foreshadowing would be good. Even if it's subtle, as long as people can go back and go "oh, I should have seen that coming. 'It is surprising, yet inevitable' (quote from Writing Excuses)."
Also link to specific podcast I mentioned about promises.
6283935
Many thanks for all the help and for introducing me to WritingExcuses. It's the kind of podcast/tutorial thing I've been looking for since I started writing, and it's simply awesome.
Hmm...
Interesting....
Hmm...
What happened??
Tracking...