Wordplay is amazing when it comes to creating his works of fiction, but recently he's been feeling like that's all he's good for. His family has been trying to tell him otherwise but to no avail. But when his friend pixel wavelength calls him and several other ponies to help her deal with a crisis that threatens the entire internet, the adventure that unfolds may help him learn he's great for more than his works of fiction.
All the oc's featured in this story are not mine (except for one) and are the property of poniverse.
Also my entry for the poniverse mascot Summerpalooza 2.0 contest
Chapters (5)
Whoo! Wordplay! Precious few of those stories we've read about in these contests. You are, to my knowledge, the only Wordplay entry in this contest. It makes the actual review and judging process kind of odd and nonstandard, but considering how much work you put into writing canon for our Poniverse mascots, I'd be remiss in not honoring that work and giving your story a full read-through and review. Not to mention you haven't received any comments to date, and that is just so sad. Let's get started.
(-) Be very, very careful with your first impressions. I don't normally start reviews with a minus point, but I will if it's the first thing I see. The plot that you've established in your story description is engaging and entices me to read more . . . but your grammar and capitalization makes me want to run for the hills instead. The average attention span of an internet user is astonishingly low: not more than a few seconds, by my guess. Those few seconds are what determine whether a reader will spend the next 20 minutes on your story or not. And the fact that "Pixel Wavelength" and "Poniverse" aren't capitalized suggests to me that I should spend my 20 minutes elsewhere.
(+) Engaging conflict is key to an engaging story, and I'm happy to say that your story has plenty of that. You waste no time in establishing Wordplay's personal conflict regarding personal worth and talent as well as Pixel's greater conflict regarding a virus that needs to be resolved. Both of those are gripping and effective storylines that I want to read to resolve, and they're the primary force that keeps me reading through your chapters. The definition of a page-turner.
(0) You use a very classic story structure, much like MLP's pilot episode. Character with personal problem plus greater problem equals big quest with lots of friends. It worked there, and it . . . sort of works here.
MLP's pilot episode had a difficult task to achieve: establish the premise of an entire cartoon franchise and introduce no less than six different main characters with distinct personalities. I still, to this day, don't know how Lauren Faust pulled it off. You do much better than I was expecting you would: Wordplay, Buffy, and Pixel are fleshed out quite well. But a few characters are pushed to the wayside, receiving little to no development: Viola and Viridian come to mind. Perhaps the story would be better served if you spent more time developing everypony's personality, or if you established some characters at the outset as side characters.
(-) This is a problem I myself continue to struggle with, and it involves Wordplay's personal problems. You establish his insecurities about where his strengths lie at the beginning of the story, and to be clear, the way you solve it through the story is wonderful and complete. (And that is a very strong plus, don't get me wrong.) But the way it's revealed to Wordplay is rather disappointing. See, this conflict line seems to disappear through most of the story until the very end, where it comes back up and his friends have to remind him that he's better than just a writer. It casts him in overall a more pitiful light than I think he deserves. Don't you think that through his adventure, he would have realized these facts for himself? Overall, readers are more impressed with a character that digs himself out of his own hole than one who needs others to point out where to climb. Case in point, Twilight Sparkle—she learns friendship and realizes it for herself. I think Wordplay deserves the same.
(-) The best thing grammar can do is do nothing—that is, be unobtrusive and unexceptional. Commenting on grammar is not normally a good thing, and I have to comment on yours, unfortunately. I'm really not sure why so many proper nouns aren't capitalized in your story (Wordplay, Fair Dice, Pixel Wavelength). To add to that, many lines of dialogue in your story are mis-punctuated. In particular, the sentences before a line of dialogue normally end with either a period or a comma, depending on whether a dialogue tag is used or not. You tend to use no punctuation at all.
This might seem minor (and it actually is to fix), but poor grammar can significantly distract from the storyline itself, making it harder to read than it has to. Words themselves should be quiet, in the way that they don't make themselves known and allow the story to shine through. Yours are louder than they ought to be. On my part, I had to fight through this grammar for the entire story to actually get at the story. This is what I would believe to be the most significant issue with your story. But you're lucky in the way that poor grammar can be fixed by adherence to a few simple rules; the same can't be said of most other problems in writing. If you need some help with that, my user profile actually contains a compendium of grammar tips (not to blow my own horn or anything).
(-) This is a more minor point, but I was intrigued by your story title when I started reading, but upon finishing, I'm just confused. See, "apocryphal" normally refers to rumors that are widely believed to be true but of doubtful authenticity. The Illuminati and Loch Ness Monster come to mind (among the right circles). I'm not entirely sure what this word has to do with . . . well, pretty much anything in this story. Because Wordplay's self-deprecating thoughts are not what I would describe as apocryphal; "misconstrued" might be a better descriptor.
Whoo. There is potential here, most definitely. The story you've weaved is engaging and ripe for a sequel, actually, and your storytelling itself is very good. But the poor grammar makes it more difficult to uncover than it ought to be. Even if a story is incredible, you're unlikely to get many readers or rosy comments if people have to dig to get at it. Just do the digging for them, first!
Good luck in the contest!
~Tai
7520248 Great to hear that you liked it
Regaurding grammar, I consider my own grammar to be very good, but when i type these up onto the site I have a tendency to make errors. I tend to use my phone to type my stories instead of a computer so I'm bound to make errors. Now that I think of it there's probably more in there than I'm aware of. I'll get around to fix that at some point.
As for capitalization, I have a bad habit of not capitalizing names and such when they don't appear at the start of a sentence. Something I should change I guess. Same with me not putting punctuation before dialogue, I've just never done it that way.
I did not even realize quite how similar of a structure this had to the pilot episode
You have a good point about wordplay realizing his problems on his own. When I was working to finish the story the idea just didn't quite occur to me. Sounds like it would work better though.
As for the title, when I was in the process of writing the first chapter I had no idea what the title should be so I took my search to the Internet. I started looking for synonyms of certain words and eventually found the word apocryphal. The reason I feel like it fits is that wordplay is believing false ideas of himself, or something along those lines.
Overall very constructive feedback, thanks!
P. S. An idea for a sequel actually did pop into my head a few days after finishing, so there's a good chance of that.
7521188
I don't like to play the elitist card, but I think there's a lot more to good grammar than I think you've been made aware of. Fimfiction is a community of writers, and as such, grammar is held in much higher regard than in other places. Grammar Nazis come in greater numbers here than almost any other place on the internet. Not only that, but well-founded Grammar Nazis who know what they're doing. On their standards, proper noun capitalization and dialogue punctuation should be a given. There is a right and a wrong way to it. The Fimfiction Writing Guide (yes, Fimfiction does have one) is actually a stupendous resource that covers the grammatical rules that are of most relevance to a writer. I'd certainly recommend giving it a skim.
See, the title of your story is why thesauruses should be used with caution: just because a word has the same definition on paper doesn't mean it's interchangeable with another word with that definition. The words "pigheadedness" and "tenacity" have similar definitions, but they are certainly not interchangeable, for instance, having distinct connotations and use cases.
7521955 Thanks for the advice
Also, did you just make up the term 'grammar nazi' or did you hear someone else say it?
7522185
Nope, Grammar Nazi is most definitely a thing, generally referring to somebody who adheres to and preaches about grammar rules much more fastidiously than the average person does. They're the annoying people that fix your your/you're errors. On Fimfiction, they're the people who point out esoteric grammar rules you might have never heard about. Kind of like me.
7522319 Got it.