The important ponies, lings, or whatevers are important. They get all the food, love, or whatever. They get all the abilities. They are the only ones that are gifted.
Or so they like to think.
Enter me. I'm a disfigured underling, and I'm also perhaps the most gifted individual since Starswirl himself. And even then.
This is my story.
Tags may be updated as the story progresses.
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9593033
Yeah... I'm kinda debating on that. Probably should put that on, but the Hive doesn't play a big enough part. It's a tool I'm using for the setup of the story, not an actual plot component... Yet. Might show up, but it likely won't be any more important than it is in the show- and certainly not worthy of being tagged as a "main character".
... Yeah, you may have noticed, none of the tagged characters have shown up yet; in a departure from my normal pattern, I've tagged it on my short-term plans for the story rather than its current state. All three of those characters will be in place fairly quickly.
9593236
That is true.
Lemme review the tagging rules again 'afore I go to them, though.
Edit: Yeah, changeling tag added. I'm almost done writing Chap. 2 right now- for publication tomorrow- and with what I've got planned, yeah, it's warranted. The hive might not play a big part, but...
This story has my interest, but from the beginning to the end something has been bothering me a ton.
https://jerryjenkins.com/show-dont-tell/
See, throughout this entire chapter I have been told about a huge portion of the main character's life. However, I have almost never seen how he felt about it, what his experiences with it were, how it affected him...
The main character feels like a robot. He keeps telling and telling and telling. In a story, the reader wants to experience and feel what the characters feel. If all I hear is exposition then I don't feel alongside the character, I just get told that "it happens". This doesn't make me immersed, it makes me aware of the fact that I am a reader, which is the opposite of immersion.
"I’m not sure if that was a compliment, or what. I mean, it is easy- and for them, too, even if they do it in an intrinsically wasteful manner."
I am being told that this is what he thinks, how about writing about how he realises all this, the emotions he feels throughout the entire process?
"… Good thing my levitation is so efficient. I’ve seen lots of young ‘lings like myself starve to death with levitations numbering in the hundreds of thousands of runelets; the love we consume directly fuels our magic, and we aren’t given enough to waste."
Here we learn that apparently our main character saw his own kin literally die while he survived because of his amazing talents. What about what he felt when he experienced all this happen? Did he feel guilty, that he happened to survive watching his kin die, not being able to help them? Or was he able to help them? Did this result in a feeling of anger towards his Queen, for her lack of care for her subjects, or did he agree with it? And if so, why? See, this one topic alone can change our perspective so much, yet it is skimmed over like it can all be covered in a single sentence.
"I’ve tried to mention my magical capabilities. The precision with which I can both sense and reproduce magic.
But to no avail. Noling will believe me."
We can connects this with the topic above. When he saw his kin die from starvation, and he tried to tell them of a solution, yet nobody believed him, what did he feel? What happened?
See! All of these thing are such a huge part of the narrative that, skipping it all in a single chapter, as if they weren't very important for us to understand our character better...
I tell all this so you can better yourself. (Not that I am a guru of writing or anything) If you want us to be more in tune with the story and its characters then you have to take that simple advice into consideration. I genuinely believe that if you improved on this alone, your stories would rise up in leaps and bounds.
Here is an example of a story on this site that I think does this very well:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/353594/grief-is-the-price-we-pay
Amongst the 98 chapters, there are perhaps only 30 chapters where there is action. The remaining 68 is literally only about building up the characters. We see slices and bits of their ordinary lives, and so we see how they act in tense situations, easy situations, we see their opinions, and how they grew as characters as time passed on.
Maybe you don't want to spend so much time on writing a slice of life story, and you prefer writing a more plot-oriented one, that is perfectly ok. What I am trying to put emphasis on is that if you want your readers to be immersed in your characters then we must live with the characters, just as we lived with Spike and Thorax in Grief is the Price We Pay. We need to live with Crooked Wing as he goes on in story, whether it is adventure-packed or not.
Sorry if this was too long, I am a bit of a "ranter". Thanks for listening
9593473
Don't worry about the ranting.
And yeah, I kinda agree with you.
The problem is, this chapter is the backstory. If I showed, I'd have an entire story... before I could get anywhere close to the real story at hoof. Don't worry- I'll probably be returning to just about every one of those topics later, probably via flashback, possibly conversation.
And yeah... The main reason I tend to end up with a lot of tell-instead-of-show in my stories is that I can't think of how to show properly. I don't plan on doing that here; this chapter (and the next) are just laying the groundwork, after which...
I selected the characters and situation because I sympathize with them. A lot. I tend to be very empathic myself, but... but I'm pretty sure I'm autistic as well. Never been very good at making friends, even though I can strike up a conversation pretty easily. It's because of that that this story is tagged 'sad'- I expect it to be mostly slice-of-life, and generally depressed, as problems- both past and present- come to haunt the main character. I haven't tagged it SoL just yet- rather, as 'adventure'- because that's what I'm usually actually able to write. And, technically, this story does represent an adventure for the main characters. I'll probably switch it over as soon as I feel safe saying it's not an adventure story.
Oh, and there is one last thing that was mentioned just once in this chapter:
Crooked Wing is female.
9593520
- As long as you are aware of the problems that come with that it should be fine. This is your story, and how you will write it - and how you deal with the problems that come as a result - is up to you. I'm just here because I am interested.
"Crooked Wing is female"
Rip lmao.
Interesting setup for Scootaloo and I assume Lyra.
9594657
That would be correct.
You can probably guess where the last character tag comes from.
Did you just explain a plausible reason for the background pony phenomenon?! Lol.
I can see Cheeselegs doing that, unfortunately. Judging a 'ling by its shape and all... Sigh.
Soon, the badflankery will begin, as Lyra!ling reads ALL the grimoires and ascends to greatness!
...With a public library holding magical books, why is everyone not already a savant? That cutie-mark magic thing (and/or inefficiency) sucks.
9595311
... I did, didn't I?
I'm looking forward to seeing where this ends up going. I'm curious whether this will be (and which would be more interesting) an AU or mostly follow canon?
Having a second magic paragon in town (I imagine Twilight, once she arrives, is probably fairly inefficient, but she has mana reserves for days) could be quite interesting...
I also wonder at what point it will be revealed who they are. For them to be of most assistance, they'd kinda need to be revealed, but I can't see that happening easily. I wonder if Nightmare Moon would somehow detect them? The Changelings were thought by some (the darn comics spoiled it a bit) to have been locked up by the Sisters...