Magic is a curious thing, especially for a pegasus. When a high-level spell targets Fluttershy one lazy afternoon, she is shocked to learn that it was a creature from another world, attempting to contact her. At first Fluttershy is embarrassed, and her friends are skeptical at best, yet she feels certain that this could be a good opportunity to teach the creature something about kindness. As she relays these experiences to her friends, she realizes that she might be learning something as well.
Fictionalized reinterpretation of the author's experience with hypnosis, as part of the Hypnoponies community.
(Note: Story contains a Mane Six ship, and also there's a human. Story does not contain pony/human shipping. The story tags were most unfortunate.)
Yes... after all this time it's finally here. This takes me back, pav.
Huh. Apparently that's a thing.
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That's the one. I didn't want to toss the hyperlink up in the story description, in the off chance that the story had bombed or attracted any flaming.
As it stands, the story is probably merely resigned to obscurity.
Great prologue; Sounds like a promising story!
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...I apologize, but it's not very well written. You're doing a lot of thing as a writer that are kind of annoying, and make for a disjointed read. A few examples:
Chapter 1:
What name? You never actually say. You state that she says a name and then abandon it and start talking about something else. It's rarely a good idea to open a chapter with an incomplete thought that leaves us wondering just what happened. Especially if you never explain it.
Why are you repeating yourself?
...and that would be what? I have no idea what sort of "presence" a doctor would have while informing a patient that their wing would be in a cast. I'm not even sure if that's the word you intended. Presence? Really? Because I can infer that a doctor in that situation might be, for example...sympathetic. Or reserved and hesitant, concerned that the patient might not take it well. Or maybe gentle, because he knows how important wings are to a pegasus. Or maybe stern, because he'd had too many patients beak their wing a second time because they didn't listen very well.
But presence? As in, the degree to which he draws focus? This metaphor falls completely flat.
Here's another thing: be aware of how many time indicator you use. Here are a few:
...it's like every paragraph has 2-3 references to when something happened, how long it happened for, or the time relation its happening had to other events. The above isn't even a complete list. Just doing a word search in addition to the above, I count 12 instances of you saying that something happened before something, 8 instances of something happening after something, and 9 instance of something happening while something else happened. Why are you doing this so much?
Look at all the times you needlessly add "now" to the end of sentences. How are you feeling now? I'm feeling ok now. I'm well rested now. None of these add anything except a distraction because you're doing it so often. Sometimes 2-3 times in a paragraph. If somebody simply asks you "How are you feeling?" it's understood that they want to know how you're feeling now, rather than how you were feeling last week. Why do you keep specifying?
Or, consider this sentence:
Seriously? Three time indicators in a single sentence? A bit? A moment? A while? You have a massive preoccupation with telling us when things happen, and it's really weird. Especially since none of those time references add anything. If you'd simply said "The two stared at each other in silence," that would have read much better than telling us how long they did, let alone telling us three times.
Another problem: you regularly mix run on sentences with sentence fragments. Either alone is a problem, and you're doing both. And worse, very often your sentence fragments don't make much sense. For example:
Run-on sentence following by a sentence fragment that doesn't make sense in the context of the previous sentence. To do what you're doing, the word "normally" needs to relate to the previous sentence. It doesn't. What is it that is "normally" the case, and where does it occur in the previous sentence?
"He didn't have any coat...normally?" No.
"He was like a pig...normally?" No.
"He walked on two legs...normally?" No.
"He was like Discord of Spike...normally?" No.
Are you saying that pigs normally don't have coats, but sometimes do? I don't think so.
Are you saying that Discord and Spike normally walk on two legs, but sometimes don't? I don't think so.
What is it that the sentence fragment "normally" is intended to refer to? I don't know. It's not clear. You have this sort of thing going on fairly often. Random single word or incomplete sentences that don't seem to relate to anything.
I apologize if I seem harsh. Many of the things you're doing that I feel detract from the story aren't even incorrect. Some are, yes. But many aren't. These aren't spelling or grammatical errors. They're stylistic habits you have that are distracting and weird. For example, read this:
"Bob walked into the store and perused the aisles. Finding a jar of apples he liked, Bob went to the cashier to pay.
"Hello, Bob," the cashier smiled.
"Hi, Karen," Bob replied.
After paying for the apples, Bob left the store and went home. Bob's house was a modern, two bedroom detached house that he was very fond of. So was Bob's mother. And Bob's sister. Bob's cat also liked Bob's house because Bob let him run around and play in the living room while Bob watched."
What do you notice about this that's strange? The word "Bob" appears in every single sentence, sometimes even more than once. is that incorrect? No. But it's distracting. It's odd. There's no reason for it. You have a lot of little "theme" habits like this in your writing.
For example, did you realize that in chapter 2 you have twenty four ellipses? Under 2400 words, meaning you have an ellipsis more often than every hundred words. That's not incorrect. There's nothing wrong with it. But it's like having the word "Bob" appear in every sentence. Why are you doing it? While we're at it, chapter 1 has twenty four dashes. Which means that roughly - to be somewhat imprecise - every fifteen sentences contains a parenthetical interruption. Not that there's anything -in my humble opinion and that of many other editors - technically wrong with that. But it does lead me to ask - as with many of your other stylistic choices - why exactly you're doing it. Do you see how - now that you're reading somebody else doing it - it's a bit distracting?
It's not technically incorrect. But why are you doing it?
Your writing has a lot of weird little habits like this.
I like this
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First off, thanks for all the pointers. Some of the presentation was needlessly aggressive, like the wall of 25 quotes in a row, but nevertheless you do bring up a lot of excellent points. I know that I've been grappling with ellipsis and emdash abuse, but I hadn't been mindful at all about the time indicators. That's another good one to watch out for.
I still feel like I could defend a few of these points, all the same. Regarding the opening with Fluttershy saying The Human's name, or with that sentence fragment you referenced with "He walked on two legs...normally? Yes," I feel fine with foreshadowing in this manner. I prefer to have faith that my readers are smart people; they can recognize that information is missing and therefore wait a few paragraphs to get their answer. As for something like the repetition of "Exactly as it should be," the emphasis is important. In my mind, once is a nonchalant statement of fact. Twice alerts the reader that FS considers this abnormal, or at least reason for concern.
All said though, authorial style is a two-way street, and you've given me a lot to think about for the next chapter. Thanks again for your time!
XD You tell her, Fluttershy.
HMMMM..... This is interesting, keep going
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I like it. Shame it's been over a year since the last update. I may or may not be affiliated with the Hypnoponies community.
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Never say never though. This was an interesting premise and (as you can probably understand) a personal tale, so I should think about dusting this off at some point.
Like so many of my fics.
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I wouldn't be qualified to teach others, given that it's been years, and even back then I was comparatively a novice. Even then, keep in mind that this is just a novelization based on my own personal experiences. I did get actively involved in the hypnosis and tulpa communities, and that did impact my life in a big way, but this story's angle of "what if it actually was a portal to Equestria?" is purely fiction.
That said, I really should revisit this fic at one point. It was intended to be a sort of homage to what those experiences meant to me, but right now (through the fictionalized lens), we only have the "what it is". Given where the story cuts off, I haven't covered the "what it meant to me" bits. Some day.