At around the same time of Hearth Warming's Eve, Twilight decides to join her friends from CHS to celebrate their version of Hearth Warming's Eve, which is something called "Christmas".
Chapters (6)
- Member Since 21st May, 2014
- offline last seen Jun 5th, 2017
Probably Minion
I'm just a former writer who's now a full blown TF2 brony. I'm also the starting engineer on a highlander team that's gonna start competing next season. Feel free to add me on Steam. :D
Probably Minion
Joined 21st May, 2014 ·
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- Pump It Up · 3.3k words · 37 5 · 1.8k views
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Uh, she never dismantled it remember? Might want to fix that.
The only problem with this story is the lack of detail and the pace. Other than that keep at it.
This is ok, the spelling is decent but...you are going way too fast. I feel like you were racing through this. Slow down, take your time. Also, the mane six seem pretty ok with Twilight being away during Hearth's warming way too easily. A little more talking would be nice.
Still, not horrible. You just need to fix a few issues here and there.
I think you should re write the story. I agree to what alchemystudent said.
Your pacing is insanely fast. Jumping from scene to scene like a movie that was made in five minutes.
Slow the hell down and write longer chapters. I love the concept of the story.. But unfortunately its getting destroyed by carelessness and the lack of effort.
Sorry.
I like it tho. Thats a plus.
5345153 I agree with you. This isn't by any means the final draft. I still have to fix a few problems. I think I was just rushed and motivated to get it up to at least 1000 words so I can publish and get it out there before I forgot the idea for this story. It probably won't be finished until Christmas Day at the latest. But I do have something to say to you (no offense obviously).
Thanks for the tips and for reading my work! :)
"Absolutely, go right ahead." said Applejack
^ you mean Rarity right?
Make a note of this. Please double check your work before you publish.
Common errors can lead a reader away from the story andor confuse them.
Said this, said that, asked this, asked that..
God. Too much.
You really need to bring out more character interaction with their emotions. Not just said after every single time one person speaks. There is options like: transitioned, continued, noted, mentioned... Etc.
And why is Rarity always the one to say: go ahead or go for it... Whatever.
Not impressed, but like where this chapter will go.
5348645 Rarity was the one who came up with the idea of having this discussion in the first place that's why she did most of the talking. I apologize if you weren't impressed with the grammatical errors and repetitive content you seem think jumps out. I'm gonna fix these problems and improve on it but have one question, WHY SO SERIOUS?!?!?!?!?!
Wouldn't they have snowball fights in equestria? I mean it snows so the fillies and colts must play around and make snowmares and have snowball fights.
5349436 I don't think they would have snowball fights since they don't have "hands" to make snowballs to and throw them at each other.
5349436
5349501
Ponyville had a great snowball fight once.
So far it is okay, just slow it down and expand it a bit.
When I saw the title, I could not help but think of Linus's (is that right?) speech from A Charlie Brown Christmas
5364609 I'll be honest with you, that didn't even come across my mind while I was writing this. Thanks for pointing that out! :)
To be honest, the true meaning of Christmas has nothing to do with gifts or being thankful in and of themselves. Those are merely Christmas traditions. It is the reason for giving gifts and the thing in particular to be thankful for that is what Christmas is about.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christmas
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Does anyone else think equating EQG with earth and the US is a bit of a stretch? I mean, sure there's a degree of intentional similarity, but I don't see it as necessary. In that context, I don't see why one couldn't invent a different holiday. Obviously hearth's warming has it's own nice separate context.
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Otherwise, nice enough story, although I could swear I saw some spelling errors and maybe some grammar issues in there. I feel like the writing could be better, but I haven't got a specific point to make. It'll be interesting to see where the rest of the story goes. It'd be interesting to have Twilight and Rainbow tell them about Hearth's warming and see how they react.
LOL!!! Funniest line ever!
I like this story and all, but it's very fast to really get into as t'were.
Slow it down and add about a thousand more words
Liked how you made Santa take a selfie with the cmc.
Finally got to review this. It's a very cute story so far, and I do have some suggestions for improvement. As you requested, I'm dropping them here in the comments. I'll start with the story as a whole and work my way down to smaller line-edit-level things. Forgive me if it gets a little rambling, I'm on my lunch break, so I don't really have time to make it concise.
Conflict
There's hardly any of it. Not every story needs to be one long fight scene, but there's always some kind of conflict, even if it's only internal. I expected this story to have its conflict centered around the fact that Twilight abandoned one set of friends at the last minute to go hang out with the other, but so far, there hasn't even been a hint of guilt, let alone external repercussions. No matter how true their friendship is, her Equestrian friends should be a teensy bit disappointed. And it should be nagging at her conscience, too. Even just a little. Without some kind of conflict, there's no story, just a series of scenes.
Pacing
Speaking of scenes, it's been mentioned in other comments that the pacing is far too fast. This is probably true; I can't help much with this, because I tend to have the same problem. The best advice I can give you is this: Things can happen that aren't the primary plot points, as long as they contribute to the story. The contributions don't have to be major. It can be something as small as a little character building, setting the mood, or developing the theme. Which leads me nicely to the next point.
Theme
It's hard to say for sure what the main theme of the story is. My first impression was that it would be about Twilight learning about the true meaning of Christmas (per the title). Religious history aside, I assume the "true" meaning is meant to be about enjoying the company of (and being thankful for) family and friends. But without any apparent conflict, there's not much to tie the theme to, so it's hard to make it stand out.
The other option is for it to be about resolving conflicting opinions of what Christmas is about. The kids think it's about presents. Rarity and Fluttershy focus on being thankful for things while you have them, and Applejack always takes time to remember what she's already lost. Twilight is, of course, just fascinated by learning about a foreign culture's holidays. Problem is, this is all established in Chapter 5, and has little effect on the rest of the story. Which is doubly odd because Chapter 5 shares its title with the story; normally that would make it the climax, where the differing opinions that have been threaded throughout the previous chapters are finally brought to some kind of agreement.
Extra Stuff
Now, despite the complaint that the pacing is too fast, there's actually unnecessary stuff in here. Rainbow Dash coming with her is one; it does (as far as I can see from the chapters posted thus far) absolutely nothing to progress the story or build up the characters or the theme, whatever it may be. If there was a hint of guilt about them leaving their friends behind, I'd say maybe Dash was going to be the one who came up with a clever solution to bring the rest of her Equestrian friends there (and maybe, just for laughs, the entire rest of Ponyville). But without any indication that this is the conflict of the story - or, really, any indication of conflict in the story at all - there's nothing for her to resolve. Given that she barely participates in the story, she's left feeling pretty pointless.
The selfie with Santa is funny, so I'll skip over that and assume that it could somehow be worked in as a legitimate part of the story. Which brings me to the Humanquestria (it's a word now) thing as a whole. Is it even necessary? That depends on the what the point of the story is. If it's about Twilight having to deal with split loyalties, then her human friends are a perfectly good source of that conflict. If it's about trying to work out the meaning of Christmas from apparently conflicting angles, then no, it could just as easily be ponies.
Another one that depends on the theme is Applejack's story in Chapter 5. It's a weird negative mood spike compared to the rest of the story. It's absolutely necessary if the story is about resolving conflicting views on the meaning of Christmas - Applejack's perspective is an important part of that, and something that a lot of people have to deal with. If that's not the point, though, then her bit sticks out as sort of emotionally off-kilter from the warm fuzzy remainder of the story.
Friends and Family
Maybe I'm being a little too critical pointing this out, because it's basically universal in the fandom, but Twilight's family seems to have vanished. Given the ease of travel for a teleporting unicorn pegasus with unlimited access to the kingdom's railways (who's going to say there's no seat open for a princess?), I'd be really surprised to see Twilight doing anything but spending Christmas with her family. Days before or after it can be spent with friends, sure, but she's close enough with her family that there's no way she'd miss spending Christmas day with them. (And for that matter, many of her friends have established known living family as well.) But like I said, family is handwaved away often enough in the fandom that it's almost assumed now anyway.
Line Edits
Some little things I caught as I went through it:
Overall
Quotations - When a quotation ends but the sentence continues beyond it (if you're putting a "said" after it), there should be a comma at the end of the quotation. This also applies to a couple of places where you ended the quote with a period; if the sentence isn't over yet, it's a comma. For example: "I wonder if my CHS friends are trying to send me a message," said Twilight.
Chapter 1
Timing - The introduction says it's Hearth Warming's Eve, but the story actually begins a couple of days before that.
"wasn't not" - Avoid the double negative if you can. It makes readers have to stop and think about what you mean, and speedbumps like that in your story are disruptive to the flow of it.
"What the hey" - It's usually "hay" in Equestria, for the pun.
"I guess that makes since" - sense
Chapter 3
"Christmas ghost stories" - Not wrong, actually kind of awesome. I think we need more emphasis on how weird an idea this is (Ebenezer Scrooge aside).
Snowball fights - It seems like unicorns, at least, would have these. And if Twilight's not familiar with the idea of a snowball fight, then she shouldn't know enough about the rules to suggest that the CMC make a team (she wouldn't know that it was a team-based game).
Chapter 4
"the Mane 7 along the CMC" - along with
"first owner of business" - first order
Snowball fights again - Also, it seems pretty unfair for a whole gang of older kids to be playing against only three younger ones. Maybe even out the teams a little more. Scootaloo would be thrilled to have one of the Dashes on her side. Either that or put more emphasis on how confident Applebloom must be to agree to such unbalanced teams.
Chapter 5
"the people with love" - the people we love
"understanding that Christmas" - understanding what Christmas
Chapter 6
"choclate" - chocolate
"go awake everyone else" - wake, or wake up
One final note
Not about the story itself, but in the future, the best time to bring in an editor will be before publishing. You only get one shot on the "new stories" list, and if it's not already polished at that point, you're going to miss out on a lot of potential readers. This applies to full stories and serially published ones equally - the editor should either have the full story on hand, or for stories published chapter-by-chapter, the initial chapter(s) and at least a general outline of where the story is going to end up. That'll assure that they can do the best job they can catching any flaws in the overall story, and it'll give you the chance to make the best first impression you can on potential readers.
Hopefully all this rambling has been helpful, I know it got a bit long there. I'll be interested to see the conclusion of the story.
What Blooming Cherries said, but I'm interested. : twilightsmile:
I agree it's all going by a little too fast, but again, I'm still interested.
Yeah, what Alchemystudent said. But still like it!
Too fast. Again. BUT LOVE IT!
You know what I think the true meaning of Christmas is?
Effort.
Yeah, there's the generosity, the being with the family, the kindness, but honestly those are only parts of it. Anyone can buy something whether it costs a million bucks if you're rich or nothing if you're poor, but it's the effort you put into it. It's putting effort into that kindness, sharing and loving because anyone can give something. If you got something someone really wanted, then that's effort or if you made something that they didn't even know they wanted, that's effort. That's loving.
Christmas is effort.
As hilarious as that selfie thing was and Sunset's reaction to it, I honestly would've liked it if only the CMC could see Santa in the photo cos they believe in him.
5397361
conflict: this is supposed to be a fluff story- not an epic. you don't NEED there to be a major conflict.
pacing is somewhat of an issue, I'll admit, but again, this story seems to be more of a fluff story about Twilight ( and Rainbow Dash) spending christmas with the EQG girls
friends and family: I hate to say it, but I suspect twilight is somewhat of an ass when it comes to her family- note that in Season 2, she had been out of contact with Shining Armour for long enough that his wedding was a total surprise to her. Furthermore, in my experience, visiting family doesn't have to be on christmas eve/day. Since twilight and Rainbow Dash are only expecting to be gone for a couple days, it's entirely possible they are planning on visiting their family afterwards. As for the other members of the Mane 6, Fluttershy only has her animals- so she's probably ask AJ or RD to make sure the animals are fed. Rarity's parents seem to be away most of the time, judging by how Sweetie Belle seems a somewhat permanent resident in the Boutique. Ergo, its not hard to believe they're off on another one- and Sweetie Belle could stay with AJ in all likelihood. Pinkie's family probably don't even bother celebrating |Hearts Warming Eve if Pinkie's right about tem just woring all the time is true. Ergo, there are good reasons why none of the Mane 6 have plans.
5667139 Thanks for backing me up! I really appreciate it! :)
Ok, so first of all, they all believe in Santa? Weird. And second, why didn't you tell the story of Christmas? The day Jesus was born as a child. I thought you were gonna bring it up, but you never did.
I still like the story though.
Sooooo this story has Santa Claus in it. . . . . . . . . .Santa. . .Claus. . . . . . . . . . :|
WAAAAAY too fast and Pinkie says "okie dokey lokey"
This just popped in my head. Call the Equestria Girl version of Rainbow Dash, Rainbow Dash and the pony version Dashie cause you keep calling the other Rainbow 'Pony Rainbow Dash' and I keep picturing the pony version walking around and interacting with everyone. They didn't need to use a bucket to pick names from they could have used AJ's hat instead cause it makes more sense than them pulling a bucket out of thin air
6682480 Thanks for the tip. I think I might do that! :)
6426646 I'm just trying to keep religious aspects out of my story since not all bronies are Catholic and celebrate Christmas like me. That's the only reason why I didn't mention Jesus in it.