Hi-Rez, or Rez as his friends call him, is a photographer pony, following in the footsteps of his deceased father. Unlike his father, however, Rez is an inventor of magic. He has invented several useful spells for ponies of all kinds, and intends to make more. He has grown up blind and has managed to find a way to cope, but being blind soon takes its toll.
Sure, you can get around your own house blind, and maybe even around your own town when you're blind, but wander too far and you soon lose sight of where you need to be, so when Rez finds himself on unfamiliar turf, will he be able to find his way home again?
(All category tags are used lightly and may not be present throughout the entire story. Unlisted categories may be present.)
(The cover art was drawn by Mephilez.)
very interesting, looking forward to more
Sounds like the cakes got themselves some Cocaine there....
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WHO TOLD YOU?!
I mean, er...
What gives you that crazy idea?
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Lol. Come on sugar that Pinkie wasn't supposed to use. Then when she does she blanks out and wakes up somewhere weird and the cupcake (most likley made with it) makes them both blank (Pinkie most likley ending up somewhere else). It all screams cocaine or some kinda drug. narwhaler.com/img/dr/r/its-so-true-discord-my-little-pony-DRr2Uc.jpg
Lol i dunno. could be anything. You're the writer. For all I know the idea could be changed solely to troll me.
Well someones high on cupcakes
1283252 Not sure if MLP does have illegal drugs hmm.
Who is that pony at end o:
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I'm not telling.
I think that something you could do for the prologue is to put it into narrative form, so that other people can read it without getting bored. Emotions, thoughts and actions all serve to grab the readers attention.
I know that this is only the prologue, but one thing that you have to make sure of while writing is that every bit is as good (or close to) as the last.
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Hm.
You have a good point.
I might just have to do that now.
Regidar hasn't arrived to this story yet.
You sure have won a great achievement!
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Either that, or this has been un-updated long enough for said Regidar to not notice.
Review: The Long Way Home, by HyperRandomness
Hi! I’m cheezesauce, summoned from the deep recesses of WRITE to offer some feedback that may or not may be useful. Do take my criticisms with a pinch of salt. Maybe some vinegar too, if you'd like.
Title/Synopsis:
The synopsis is a rough overview of the story. It’s meant to draw readers in, like how good advertisements net potential customers. Unfortunately, I don’t think you’ve managed to do that. Instead, you’ve given me what feels like a bland summary of your story. It does not convey the tone, and it doesn’t give me a good first impression. Do invest some time in your synopsis. Pick out the information that would give me a gist of the story, and make it sound exciting.
And I’d avoid stuffing notes before the synopsis. Keep it professional. Give readers what they want and remove all that or leave it for later. Meaning that you should remove unwanted bits like:
The title is fine. The cover image is fine. Let’s head down to the actual story.
Introduction:
The first thing that happens is that I get slapped on the face by an author’s note. Out of all things, an author's note. As a reader, I’m feeling a tiny bit annoyed. That’s not what I was looking when I clicked the link. Give me the story. Put that at the end of the chapter or the story. I’ve been told Fimfiction now has a feature for inserting author’s notes, so maybe you could play around with that a bit.
Wait... That author’s note. I don’t think you should put that down. It’s like going “Oh hey there, I’m going to tell you a story. It’s not very good, but it’ll get better! So don’t stop reading!” It has nothing to do with the actual story, and it's drawing attention to the quality of the fic.
Moving on to the ‘real’ introduction...
If people form first impressions from the synopsis, this is where they’ll form second impressions. Your goal for this section more or less the same: get people interested in your story.
Here, I can see that you’ve made an attempt to engage the reader, but this lacks punch. It's missing flavor and style, the things that make it interesting to read. You’re simply throwing that piece of information at us and expecting us to lap it up. It’s telling.
Hmm... I thought this foreshadowing was rather heavy handed as well.
Prologue:
The infodumping done here is ridiculous. You’ve simply made Hi-Rez’s entire background story into a chapter. His father died, he tried to perform some magic but failed, he was going through tough times, he met this Lens Cap person and they worked together taking photographs... and so on.
It’s all really, really bland. I think you’re aware of that yourself, but putting an author’s note explaining that it IS an infodump doesn’t make up for it. How much of this information is actually necessary? If there’s something in that infodump that is not important, then it has no place in your story. The fact that his father died doesn’t make the story sad, because of the way you’ve brought it out. You told it as a fact. His father died, and so Hi-Rez was sad. No sadness felt here. None. This leads me up to my next point:
Show vs. Tell. This means that you should show out an idea, and not simply tell it to us. Don’t just say everything outright like that; let the readers visualize it inside their minds. I don't find it easy to explain or elaborate on, so I'll just let someone else do it.
“Choose an emotion or an idea you wish to convey, and then dart around it. Present the readers with happenings, and with reactions. Then let them figure out the underlying details for themselves. It’ll make your writing all the greater and more powerful.” –Ezn
(Ezn’s Guide: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xemG7BLk2rvAmQCREIaj5wX2ubvmVt7WziEvh7xXV9g/edit)
Also, do look at what >>Hopkinz has said again, it’s quite relevant.
The ship out of nowhere:
Now, this ship isn't that big, metal object floating in the water. No, far from that. This ship is the 'ship' in 'relationship'. That’s right. I’m talking about Lens Caps, the assistant photographer that, for some strange reason, finds Hi-Rez handsome. You have absolutely no build-up to the relationship between them. What brought them together like that? Perhaps because of his Mary Sueish appearance, yes? I know it’s tempting to jump straight into all the sweet and mushy romance stuff.
Don’t do it.
I’m wondering why this ship is even necessary, given that Lens Cap disappears from the story within the first two chapters. Do you even need this character? I see no function of having her in the plot. She comes in as part of the mega info-dump, and then leaves suddenly. This leads back to my earlier point on info-dumping: if you don’t need something, get rid of it.
Hi-Rez, Runner-up in the Mary Sue Competition:
Reasons for his award are as follows:
So... what are Mary Sues anyway?
“Mary-Sues are characters who are usually extraordinarily gorgeous, amazingly talented, unusually powerful, and exceedingly attractive to whoever the author has a crush on.” –urbandictionary
“She's exotically beautiful, often having an unusual hair or eye color, and has a similarly cool and exotic name. She's exceptionally talented in an implausibly wide variety of areas, and may possess skills that are rare or nonexistent in the canon setting. She also lacks any realistic, or at least story-relevant, character flaws — either that or her "flaws" are obviously meant to be endearing.
She has an unusual and dramatic Back Story. The canon protagonists are all overwhelmed with admiration for her beauty, wit, courage and other virtues, and are quick to adopt her as one of their true companions.” –tvtropes (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MarySue)
Here, try The Writer's Mary Sue Litmus Test: http://www.katfeete.net/writing/marysue.html
Mechanics and other bits:
Scene breaks: I’d recommend using the standard scene break for Fimfiction, instead of a distracting dotted line. The code for a scene break is 'hr', enclosed in square brackets.
>>Sometimes, you need to keep things simple. Hi-Rez didn't stop crying for days,
Why is that in bold? It’s incredibly effective in breaking immersion.
Using caps breaks immersion.
You mean: A cutie mark.
I don’t like this line. I really, really don’t. It has to be one of the worst lines I’ve picked out from your story.
1: You’re breaking away from narration to address the reader directly. (Yeah, you heard me.) This is jarring. It’s breaking flow; it’s breaking immersion.
2: The writing is informal. It ruins the tone of your story. Look at your tags again. You’ve labelled this as a sad story. Since it’s a sad story, you’ve got to make it sad, right? So bear that in mind and work towards it. You can’t be shooting out comments like that as the narrator.
3: You’ve pulled me out of the story to place the fact that he’s blind, and you’ve done it under a gigantic (and hugely unnecessary) spotlight. It’s like you’re raising that piece of information high up into the air and going like “LOOK EVERYPONY! I want you to notice this!”
It’s not going to make people gasp in shock. It’s not going to make anyone feel sorry for him. In fact, the results would be quite the opposite.
Don’t just dump a huge descriptive paragraph about her. You’re supposed to break it up into little pieces and slot them in the narration. And choose something interesting to say about her, something that builds on her character, you know? Saying that she was ‘of average height’ hardly adds anything. What am I supposed to infer from that? It’s just excess fluff that should be removed. If it’s not important, don’t mention it.
Putting a giant paragraph of description there has also ruined the flow of the story. You see, she was talking about something. She hasn’t quite finished yet, so don’t cut her off like that.
1: Why is that in smaller text? I think you’re trying to show that she’s said that quietly, but that’s not the way to do it. At least, not in this instance.
...Okay, I get what you’re doing after reading further. You’ve placed Hi-Rez’s dialogue and bold, and Lens’s in a smaller font. You shouldn’t be doing that. It looks clumsy and unprofessional, and you are supposed to write in a manner that enables us to tell which character is saying what, without the need for all this formatting junk.
2: There should be a comma before ‘she’, and not a period. Punctuation errors in dialogue tagging are a common problem amongst writers.
>>Wrong: “I’m gonna miss you.” she said unwittingly.
>>Correct: “I’m gonna miss you,” she said unwittingly.
Have a look through your story and correct them yourself. I’m not going to point of every single one of them.
Every time you swap into another character’s perspective, you need a new paragraph. Simply put as ‘new speaker, new paragraph’. The correct way to do this would be:
Also, don’t put the ‘was’ in caps. Use italics if you must.
It should be: ever since he was born
Look at how old your character is. 17, if I’m not wrong. Now look how he speaks. That doesn’t sound like a seventeen year old talking, does it?
Overall:
I’ve looked through the prologue and the first chapter pretty thoroughly, but skimmed through the remaining chapters. All in all, I think there’s lots of room for improvement. Brush up your characters, get rid of the info-dumps, and improve on your descriptions. Do read a few writing guides as you go along. They’ll help you get the basics right. And don’t be afraid of rewriting entire sections of your story; I do it all the time
Keep writing.
--cheezesauce, WRITE’s perpetual underground lurker.
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