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The Equestrian Bureau of Investigation team is trying to catch an unknown criminal. Using the info and evidence of his crime they will try to get inside the criminal's mind and track him down. But this crime is nothing they have ever seen before.
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How do you not have more followers? Your writing is amazing!
5304218 Thanks! That means a lot!
This is good.
Well, since nopony else has done this yet, I'll just put this here:
Pony+FBI+profileing= Pony Minds
PONY MINDS!
Name of Story: Equestrian Bureau of Investigation: Indecisive
Grammar score out of 10 (1 is grammar that needs to be worked upon as basic principles such as capitalization and spelling is an issue, and 10 is impeccable): 6
Pros: The storyline, so far, looks to be incredibly fun, and I look forward to more. The Characters are seemingly well developed, and the premise is brilliant! Throughout the chapter, I was begging, “Please have a deep storyline that will keep the crime hunting fun to read.” Some form of outcome besides another one behind bars is important to any good crime series. You do a very good job of painting the scene, as I felt right there with the characters when they arrested the bartender.
Cons: There are a number of grammatical errors that make some thoughts hard to understand, and quite few awkward phrases that do so as well. Some of the dialog is a big generic or somewhat strange and takes you out of the scene. Other than that, it is pretty solid!
Notes Section (how you can improve your fic, at the very least an elaboration of Pros and Cons section)
Something you may want to try: find a proofreader and/or editor. This is a great of catching those awkward phrases and dialog that pop out here and there. Making sure your characters sound like they are speaking to other characters, and reading from a script is fairly important in a dialog heavy fic like this. Though they never seemed robotic, per se, there were some obvious phrases that a pony would probably not say in that situation.
Enjoy your review! Please help me out by looking at my story/ this story: Clairvoyance
Is this a Criminal Minds cross-over?
Short and sweet. I'd be ok with a sequel.
Greetings, NixWorld! Here begins the review you requested from WRITE.
Synopsis:
You'll normally set off a participial phrase with a comma.
Story:
Just from the first screen, I can tell that I'm going to have to point out a lot of mechanical things. I know that's not among the things you asked me to look at specifically, but it's the window dressing for your story. It's how you present yourself. If you don't get the basics right, it reflects badly on the story as a whole, and the reader has no reason to give you the benefit of the doubt when you break writing rules on purpose.
So, we start off with a weather report. This is so common as to be cliche. It says you couldn't think of anything more interesting to say. Get to the characters and action. If the weather's actually important, then work it in to one of those.
Let's examine that first sentence, though. It needs to do more. All it tells me is a cold fact. Make it mean something and give it some richer imagery. I usually don't like to give examples, in case the author just uses mine instead of thinking up his own, but in this case, since I've already told you not to open with the weather, I don't mind, since I'm doing exactly that. So visualize that street. Give me some evocative detail about it and come up with something to compare it to. Something like this:
The heavy rain collected in puddles, which reflected all the lights and buildings of Manehattan to make a mirror world below all the drenched roadways and alleys.
There's a verb error here: everypony was. Another issue with the early going here: This sentence alone has three "to be" verbs. These are inherently boring, as nothing happens. You really need to choose more active verbs. It's impractical to remove them all, but you could reword most of these, and you'd have a much more active (= engaging) story.
You need a comma after "umbrella," and "cutie mark" is two words. Good use of "flailing" there to impart some action to the scene and create a visual. But look at all of these similarities: dark brown hat, dark, mane, dark blue coat, and you'd just referred to dark building walls a bit ago. There are times repetition can work, when the reader can tell it's done for effect or thematic reasons, but I don't see any such intent here. Come up with some better descriptions. Think of things that are dark brown and dark blue, then use them as references for the colors.
"in which"
More dark. And when you have a multi-word phrase used as a single descriptor, you need to hyphenate it (usually): low-tone. However, that could stand more description, too. Liken it to something. You also need a primer of how to punctuate and capitalize dialogue. If the dialogue ends in a period and a speech tag follows, you replace that with a comma. And if you have a tag after it that identifies the speaker and uses a speaking verb, like you do here, it's still part of the same sentence, so you don't capitalize it, unless it's something like a name that has to be. So "responded" here should be lower case.
This whole paragraph is very sterile. It's your choice whether you want the narrator to stick with Frost or be omniscient, but in either case, I can't get to know the character if you won't let me. Give me some clues here as to how the events make him feel. For an omniscient narrator, all you can do is give factual descriptions of his behavior and appearance, and even relay his thoughts. With a narrator who sticks with Frost, you can adopt a conversational style and have him comment on the events as if Frost is. One of the two will be necessary to make a connection with the character.
Another participial phrase that should be set off with commas. And I think you meant "splitting."
What does this mean when they don't have hands?
This is pretty vague. What does it even look like? What is the waitress doing? If she's yawning, for example, then it defuses the scene's tension. Let her contribute to the scene, since she's probably the most emotional one there.
You've tacked two complete sentences together with a comma. And rather than just tell me he's worried, show me. How does he look? What does he do? Make the reader a witness to the action. Don't have the narrator feed me the conclusion; just present me with the evidence and let me draw my own conclusion.
At this point, I'll note that I'm only pointing out the first instance I see of mechanical and stylistic issues. It's beyond the scope of this type of review to point out every dialogue capitalization error, so I'll leave it at showing you how to correct one and letting you apply that to the rest.
There you go, but there isn't much here, and it comes far after she would have reasonably given a reaction, so it doesn't feel right. You have to keep on top of the timeline.
Direct address has to be set off with commas.
Describe it to me. You provide the visual, and I'll reason out the emotion. It's all about having a little movie playing in my head. In this case, you're making me think up how it looks.
Use a proper dash for cutoffs. In word processors, you can get this through the following codes: Alt+0150=–, Alt+0151=—.
That's already apparent from the way you punctuated it, so you don't need to say it again.
Passive voice has its uses, but it tends to stop the action, which isn't a good idea during an action scene.
Show me these emotions, but since one is internal to him, you need to decide what kind of narrator you want. An omniscient one can tell me what Frost thinks, and a limited narrator can state those thoughts for him.
Note how certain punctuation can break smart quotes. These are backward.
You make it sound like the cutie mark is covered by her clothes. If so, why bring it up? For that matter, the full description of her doesn't belong here. It's a tense moment in the middle of action, and by saying all this, you imply that the ponies present would take the time to note all those details about her. That's not really reasonable.
Around here, you waver back and forth between past and present tense.
You should spell out numbers that short.
Why are you capitalizing that? You haven't been with the other races.
Typo.
You said everyone already saw that. So why does she need to point it out?
So we have cars? I'm a little lost as to the tech level here, then. Is this supposed to be current-day Equestria or some time in the future?
I don't see how that bit about the rain is relevant. I mean, it's raining, so it's pretty self-explanatory.
You just had them do this exact action in the last paragraph.
Given what she says, this is redundant.
Who are these other ponies? What are they doing there? That "further into the room" is oddly placed, as it seems to refer to the other ponies, not where Frost and Flare are walking.
How do they know it's comfy? This is coming out of nowhere.
What does that "where" refer to? It makes it sound like the vases were somehow on the shelf and the floor at the same time.
This is really symptomatic of the whole story. It's just a list of actions. The characters don't come alive. This mare might as well be a statue. Even in a brief encounter like this, you can infuse her with some personality. For all I can tell. She's just standing there doing nothing. What was she up to before she saw them? How did she react? Once she sends them on, does she go back to whatever she was doing before? As it is, there's really not a point to her even being in the story.
They're both unicorns, right? This is ambiguous.
That's odd. And awfully convenient.
Odd line break here.
To whom? You haven't given the narrator a perspective.
I don't get why he immediately jumps here and is so sure. Couldn't the murderer have been drunk? Lame? Epileptic? Any number of things?
You've mixed phrases. It's either "meanwhile" or "in the meantime."
This is characteristic of a lot of conversations in the story. It's just back and forth dialogue for a while, with the narration only contributing speaking actions. This is what we call "talking heads." The characters might as well be floating disembodied heads. What's happening while they talk? Do they move? Have facial expressions? Check the time, yawn, scratch their heads? This kind of things adds realism. Also consider that half of a conversation is nonverbal, and you're neglecting that.
What's the point of saying so? Is there any significance to the plot? There could be an emotional significance to one of the characters, but you need to make that apparent.
That's a very spartan description of the place. And it's pretty redundant to say the smell of wood is coming from wood. What condition are these shelves in? What kind of wood? There's a wide variety of smells. Something dusty and old? Something fresh-cut?
No reaction? We find out later he's guilty of something, so aren't there any telltale signs of that? Would he recognize their behavior as police?
That sentence just doesn't parse. I can't help fix it because I can't figure out what it's trying to say.
That's some awkward phrasing. "Loud car honks and engines"? Is he in a lot of traffic? I haven't seen any description that said so.
It's pretty redundant to call them "car lanes" in a street. He has multiple sirens? And it's pretty self-explanatory that he's going toward his destination.
Yes, that'd be how a one-way mirror works.
That's not true. Cops can cuff someone on the scene and then let them go if the situation warrants. That won't show as an arrest on that person's record.
I can't figure out what it is that Water doesn't know. This is confusing.
You've confused "its" and "it's."
Odd paragraphing here. Not sure whether you meant to have another line break or not to do this one.
That was a pretty vague explanation of what motivated the crimes. And the suspect sure changed his mind quickly. This is the high point of the story. Don't blast through it like that.
The ending's pretty weak, too. It just peters out without coming to any sort of conclusion and moves over to a fairly minor character. You have to end it in a memorable way. That's the impression that's going to stick with the reader. You have to start strong to draw interest and finish strong to seal that perception. What message do you want the reader to take from your story. Cement it there.
Mechanically, there were quite a few problems. I pointed out the different types I saw, but only one or two instances of each. That's often the last step to fix, though, since there's no use correcting a passage that's going to be rewritten anyway.
So on to the more aesthetic things. The writing style is very stoic and similarly structured. It suffers from what I've seen called "list syndrome," which is a two-part thing. The narration just lists actions. This happened. Then this happened. Then this happened. The other effect is that it can be repetitive in structure, where all those actions have the same wording to them. When you just get clumps of sentences in a row that all start with the subject, it gets into a rut. So throw a little more variety into the sentence structures and sprinkle a healthy dose of how the characters react to and feel about those actions.
More on those reactions and feelings, then. Don't just tell me how a character feels. There are times when it's fine to, like an unimportant moment or a minor character. But for the most part, you need to get at emotions subtly. Your characters are your actors. Does an actor just declare how he feels? No, he gets you to interpret that from how he looks and behaves. It's much more engaging that way and gets you to identify with him more. Watch out for words or phrases that directly state a mood or emotion.
Conveying emotions is a big part of building your characters, as it shows how they tick inside. Some of the bigger facets of their personalities may come through in their actions or via archetype, but the details are in how they respond to minute-by-minute things. So without that, I don't feel I know your characters at all. After reading the story, I couldn't provide a list of personality traits for any of them. One minor thing, but Flare and Frost have similar enough names that it's easy to confuse them. This adds a bit to the problem. Writing guides often tell you to make your character names very different so they don't blend together.
The plot actually was not bad, up until the reveal of the criminal. I've already commented that the scene went by very quickly and that his change of attitude was awfully abrupt. What kept my interest was this discussion of how the crime matched the way a villain had been killed. That was an enticing thread that brought up the possibilities of cults, revenge... really, a lot of things. But it went nowhere. It's a Chekhov's gun. Why bring it into the story if you weren't going to shoot it? Even if it ends up being a dead end, they never took the investigation in that direction. So on the one hand, it might make for a nice red herring, and on the other, it could have some significance to this criminal. But there just isn't a reason right now to have it there.
Whether it warrants a sequel is entirely up to you. Did you have fun writing it? Then go for it. I see in the comments that you had readers who enjoyed it.
Keep writing, and have fun with it!
fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/349/4/b/reviewer_logo_longver03_01_by_burrakupansa-d5o60h2.png
Pascoite, WRITE's mineral
5418938 Thanks for the review!
That's it? Huh. Please do a sequel.
Aside from the technical errors that could be dealt with using a prereader or proofreader, I thought this was an enjoyable read. If you do write a sequel, I'd recommend a proofreader or even just a friend who'd be willing to go over it: especially if you don't realize that it's strange grammar (due to English being a second language, for example), then even an untrained read will yield a massive improvement.
I wouldn't have minded seeing more of each character, though. It's an issue I have with a lot of crime shows in general: a lot of the characters end up blending together and there wasn't too much too differentiate them (or at least not to me), but your reviewer has gone on about that so I won't yammer on about it more than I have to. The good news is that it wasn't that big of a deal for me: I was much more interested with the method they used as opposed to who they were. It would have helped, but it wasn't really the end of the world.
And the one thing I was very happy seeing is the absence of spelling mistakes. If there are any in there, I didn't catch them. There really isn't an excuse for spelling mistakes, but they still seem to crop up often, especially in stories with a lot of technical errors. I got the impression a lot of effort went into purging them, so major points to you on that front.
I wouldn't mind a sequel, myself. Practice makes perfect, so if you do make another I can only assume it will be better. Not to mention I enjoy seeing mystery stories.
5431048 Thanks. That means a lot. I had so much fun while making this story and I'm glad you liked it.
5431066 Frankly, that's always been my number one rule: enjoy what you write. That's not to say there isn't a lot to improve, as I and your two reviewers mentioned, but if you didn't like writing it, how can you expect anyone to like reading it? I'm still learning loads, and my first story was so full of writing problems that when I submitted it to AppleDash group it got the holding pen folder (the evil folder). I enjoyed it a lot, though, and I didn't really feel the need to have perfect prose and grammar, so I was happy, and a few people who read it were too.
As for improvement, practice makes perfect. A proofreader/editor is just a way of making up the difference until you know what you're doing enough to manage without (and even then, they still help: extra eyes are always welcome), however long that may take.
So yeah: take the advice your reviewer gave you (all good points: unlike me, they probably know what they're talking about) and do better next time.