My name Is Christopher. I don't have kids nor never thought I would I was living out in the country and it had been snowing that day I had been working to get fire wood and went home and fell asleep the next morning I awoke to a noise in my living room. As I grabbed a bat from the wall next to my door. I ran to the spot where the noise was coming from. As I came to the noise I noticed that the noise was coming underneath the tree. So I moved the branches and pulled the box out and i got a little surprise that Christmas morning.
Chapters (1)
First off, this comment isn't intended to be negative, so if it comes across that way, I apologize. My intent is to give you some suggestions on ways you can improve.
I think the premise for this story could be very good. The short description made me think of My Little Dashie, which is probably one of the classics on this site.
However, I almost didn't read it because of the description. Not the content of it, but the grammar. I decided to go ahead and give it a go anyway. Unfortunately, I found exactly what I found was even more grammar issues. Now, I'll admit up front that I am not a writer. I did pretty good on essays and stuff in college, but creative writing was never my forte. However, I do a lot of reading, so I've got a decent idea of what to look for.
The first recommendation I would make is to use paragraphs. 1300 words in not one paragraph worth of information. While, to my knowledge, there is no specific length a paragraph has to be, some general guidelines are usually a minimum of 3 sentences, though in some cases only 2, and not more than 9 or 10. The way I decide when to break them is anytime there is change or break. So, the end of a scene or though would be a place. The other way is just looking at it. If it looks like the paragraph is getting long, then find a clean place to end it and start another. I would recommend reading some different things to get an idea of how long they typically are.
The next thing is your sentences. You've got kind of an odd mix of choppy and run-on. I would recommend learning how to use compound and complex sentences. They can be helpful in cleaning up some of the run-on sentences, though you'll still need to break some of them up. As for the choppy ones, try to think about how it actually sounds. Does it sound like bullet points, or does it actually sound like a story.
Vs.
I know I'm not very good at story writing, but do you see the difference? The both give the same general information, but the first doesn't read like a story. It reads more like a list, which, unless you're Twilight, isn't very exciting. Yours isn't quite that bad, but a lot of it reads more like a list than a story. That will become smoother with more practice, but it's something you should be conscience of while you're writing.
The last grammar thing is making sure you do quotes correctly. Unless you are using quotation marks for just a phrase or slang (i.e. I think the kids call that "cool".), the punctuation should always be inside the quotation marks ("Good day to you, sir." vs "Good day to you, sir".) I would recommend doing a little research on it, as I know there are times when you use a comma in place of a period in quotes. I just don't write enough to remember all of the rule.
One thing you can use a "find" or "find in page" feature to help with is extra spaces. You didn't have a tone, but in the first part, you had a double space and a space before a comma. An editor/prereader would also be helpful for catching those things.
On the less technical side, you may want to reasses where you put you detailed descriptions. For example, it really doesn't amtter to the reader that you keep the bat on the left side of the room. Howeverñ it would be great if you spent some more time describing Snowflake, since you are introducing the only other important character in the story so far. Again, I'd recommend reading through some stories, both on here and some published ones, and watch where the authors spend their time.
If I judged it merely on times spent, getting up in the morning was a more important part of this story than him meeting Snowflake, the namesake of the story. That seems a little odd to me, especially since most of it doesn't really do anything to build the characters.
And finally, be careful with realism. I get that this is fanfiction about magical talking horses, but if you get too unrealistic, it can break the immersion you've built with your reader. The place where this jumped out in your story is losing three fingers. The pony may be magical, but if a human loses 3 fingers to an ax, then tried to patch it up with bandaids, he's not ever going to wake up from "passing out". He's going to die. I think you were trying to go for her feeling guilty about him geeting hurt for her sake, but try to keep it a little more realistic. Either he would need to go to the hospital, or make the injury less severe.
That's about it. Again, my hope is to help you grow as an author, not to make you feel bad. If you havrn't read it, I recommend reading My Little Dashie. It is very well written as a short story, and gives a good example of how to write a lot of what I think you tried to fit in this story. I wish you the best, and have a great day!
P.s. I apologize for any typos I may have left. Touchscreen keyboards are the worst.
I can't even...
