This story is a sequel to Whiteout
This is a sequel to Whiteout because the author abandoned it so I decided to take it into my own hands.
Whiteout 1 https://www.fimfiction.net/story/158287/whiteout
Devon hadn't exactly been the most level headed to begin with, and waking up in a foreign city in the dead of winter with no recollection of how he got there wasn't doing him any favors. If that wasn't enough, he's also stuck with Alek, a disembodied voice that only he can hear. Can the pair manage to work together long enough in order to uncover what happened to them, or are they already a lost cause?
It sure would be a lot easier without hooves too...
Chapters (7)
Hum, okay, nice to see someone picking up this story again after so long, this story was actually one of my most favored HiE stories that I had ever read, with a non-brony human turned pony. I did like the premise of a human trying to make some sense in this world that he doesn't understand all the while seen as crazy by everypony else and trying to capture him because he is a danger to the public and himself for his own safety; and hearing a voice that tells you what to do doesn't make his care very persuading case for being sound of mind either; I wonder if that was what caused his first freak out in the market place.
I am not really keen on the MC (Main Character) suddenly getting amnesia already having identity problems with being inhabited by two being, but then again it could be the medication he is currently under, so who knows, if that will change very soon. It just comes as a little weak writing if you didn't consider what is his back just yet before launching into this project. Also, it's called a straitjacket if you didn't know the proper term, or maybe you intended to for him no to know what it was called.
Just to let you know a professional doctor wouldn't say such things as 'freak out' as it's not a clinical term to describe their own patient like that and makes it look like he doesn't care about their feelings and makes relations with the patient much more tense then it needs to be, aw well as sounding like he is talking at him and not 'to' them, makes all the more harder to get their cooperation afterwards .
It would help your writing better if you add more description of what the MC is going to sees, or perceives around him to help have a better sense of what happening to the readers; as well as adding a more subjective tone to his descriptions to have a feeling of what the characters around feel about him or what he is interpreting from them, sense the limited point of view of the narrator makes it hard to convey what other characters are thinking.
You might also want to use a text to speech program like Balabolka (yes it's free) to help you better see your mistakes and better structure your writing, it certainly helped he a lot in my own writing skills over the years, I am sure it will help you a lot too.
I am hopeful that your writing will keep on improving, and I wish you good luck on this project.
If you are looking for a new cover art for this I am open for commissions just to let you know.
P.S. here is my DA gallery if you want to take a look.
https://www.deviantart.com/amalgamzaku
Again good luck
I'll follow this story
so far seems like a great story. can't wait to see more.
I wonder if he has a medication that prevent Alex from hearing to David or that it is affecting Alex so that he can't even use his magic? It would help to know if this was a sequel to the original or a clear reboot, it seemed like it's a sequel but there is no sight of a clear recap on what happen before and the information is too sparse to make it clearly. I wonder if the medication's has the unintentional side effect of losing his memory for the time being because of the different brain chemistry or that he got really hurt at one point? From the sound of this the doctor already gave him his new made up name he gave to the filly, and it could be that he was recaptured after the grocery store? I would wonder why they are using that name instead of the first one of when he was in custody, or just why if this is a reboot.
But to be honest, I would much prefer this be a complete reboot so that you can really start fresh with the same premise of the story with your own spine on it, even if you are still inexperience in writing. as for the 1K chapter, normally I that would annoy me a lot for how short it is, but I think this might be best for you for now to get your feet wet while you learn how to write a story, it will be much easier to manage for you to look over your mistakes and to get a constant routine in practicing in your writing. You should really practice proofreading your chapter with a text to speech because their are still a lot of issues in your writing that would need to address pronto if you want to keep your readers, and please don't take what I say as an offence, I really want you to to keep on writing this story.
1:
Correction: I tried to move around[,] but I [could] barely move[even wiggle my limbs] at all for that matter[due to my current garment I was wearing]. So I gave up on trying to move[/in getting] around because my restraints won’t(purposefully design to not) let me move around because how heavy[/restrictive] they were.
you use move three times in the same sentences that is way to redundant and having it used twice in the sentence for the same function really doesn't work well. Try to avoid using the same moms or verbs in the next sentence that follows, it helps to make a better flow and and not make it sound like you keep repeating yourself too often.
try your best not to start a sentence with the same words or structure one after the other for the same reason I just told you before and try to limit doing that for more then twice per 1K chapter, try to use other synonyms for words you can normally fine it in the right mouse button to look them up in a text program or definitions, it really helps for that.
a doctor or any medical professional wouldn't call a patient by their name without a calling them mister or miss, it's common professional politeness, unless they already are very familiar with each other, and you don't provide any context as to why they would be in this case.
Again same as the first, it's redundant to say the same words so close to each other, if you can try to use excretions of euphemisms to signify the same thing.
Fixed: All of the sudden I felt my belly rumbled, signalling my stomach need for sustenance.
“Oh, I see that your a little famished” the yellow doctor chuckled in understanding, needing little guessing what that meant, before I added. “Yeah, could use a snack, anything on the menu today doc?
This is just an example of who you could structure it.
It's a padded room it can be bare metal, it's supposed to prevent patients from hurting themselves.
It would help that you give the doc a name and you can't always used the yellow doctor every time you mention him. Also what is the food he is being served is it grass, hay, a salad maybe?
Is he serving him using his hoof, his mouth or his TK?
Try using foreleg or forehooves, for the front and rearlegs or hind legs/hooves for the rear.
He is also probably wearing an adult diaper under there too.
fixed
It has been awhile later at this point where that I heard hoof steps coming towards my door. Then, when they stopped close by, I heard someone unlocking the door.
you could remove that second hoofstep part
Nice to give a name on this one but nurse Red Heart is already stationed in Ponyville I would suggest that you use another name unless you want to make this another rampant case of Nurse Joy clones.
Could need a more polite term to designate patients .
Hope this helps and good luck on your next chapter
The writing is better this chapter around, still need work, but at least you are improving, I can tell you.
I know that's is clear in the other story, but you never stated why he would want to try to escape, and on that same note you didn't even mention that he was human or that he came from another world for that matter. And sense he clames that he doesn't remember who he is at the moment he wouldn't have a motive to try to escape or resist the staff. A good story needs to establish the goals of the character and what are the obstruction in his way. In the original his goal was a desperate gamble to reach Discord's stature a mad god that could maybe send him home, and seemed to have attracted his attention and he his pursued because David is one of those 'crazies'. You can still make up for it in the coming chapter just to let you know, so it's not unfixable for the most part.
Again this is a case of redundancy in over using the same words over and over. You can conveyed the same meaning with 'reply' 'answered', 'retort' or other similar words and you can also emotions instead to add a tone to how they respond like: "This again" annoyed, "This is great news" jubilant. you can even follow it up with an action: "Welcome to the group" He held out his hand in greeting.
What does David think of the conversation? Surely he has to have an opinion about what other are making discussions for them.
Glad to see some description you could add a lot more in your chapters. Now what does he guess happen there in the first place and why didn't they lead him to a bathroom that wasn't in disrepair? On an extra not the bathroom is a good place for David examine himself in the mirror and to show the reader how he looks like in the story.
Watch out for your punctuation and capitals.
I think this would be a better time to for him to panic about getting one in the first place as he has no clue how ponies even get those and has only a vague knowledge of what they are or what they are called. I think their should be more to getting a cutie mark then just fix something out of the blue, and from the last story it sounded like he had some working knowledge medicine and possibly veterinary from recognizing what he was injected with. Try to research properly everything in the original story to get a clearer picture on the details about David and what he thinks of that world, it's annoying as hell for the reader to see inconsistencies like that and just the same for you too to point that out for you. There is also the fact that what made David stand out from all the other ponies was the fact that he didn't had a cutie mark in the first place with is just strange and very unusual for ponies to which makes him stick out more like a sour thumb which was a major problem in the original. It can be an important part of the story to; so getting one drastically changes the dynamic of the original, which is not bad as such but would have needed to be handled more delicately then just trowing that out like this. On the other hand the mark could belong to who ever is replacing Alek, so it could be just a temporary thing or.
Again, you need to add context, don't presume that the reader read the original story and just pick up where it left off, you need to reestablish who the characters are. As for the other being itself that is replacing Alek, I wouldn't say it's necessarily bad, I would say that it could be interesting new dynamic actually, that could be a force that keeps making him look like he is insane and prone to self-harm, which ponies will come to stop him from risking harming himself, and dismiss everything he has to say.
Please avoid using words such as 'like' or 'stuff' it sound Juvenal and makes it hard to take the writing seriously
Despite my issues you are getting better in your writing, I just hope you will keep on more attention in reviewing over your writing more to fix your mistakes more fixing. Keep it up.
Thanks for your very, very long review I will make sure I will take note on what you said and to make my story better.
okay nice to see an update on this, but I would really suggest that you use Balabolka to help with your writing.
I see this was picked up again, though by a different author if I may add, and was either completely re-written or spanning into something completely different than the original authors approach. I would also like to ask if permission was given in order for you to continue this? Some authors dont like this happening without prior affirmation.
Did you mean authors?
Okay, while this is a really short chapter, I can see the effort you put into the structure of this chapter this time, in spite of a few hiccups here and there, so good job on that. I think you had the right idea in recapping how it was David arrived in Equestria in the first place and adding your own interpretation on he got locked up in an asylum in the first place, which would help you get a better sense of the character, there is a lot of context missing to under what was going on at the time. Just to let you know the original story explained what had happened that got him to land in the padded room in the first place you completely changed how it had actually happened, so you would really need to study the original story more attentively just to let you know. In the original he was acting unruly and dismissed everything that was happening around him as just having a lucid dream and so he thought he was not subject to any social norms and though that this world inhabited talking pony was just part of the crazy that was his dream. While I wouldn't say it was a bad idea at all, the execution on how you when about it is much left to be desired. I could, maybe, interpret the flashback of the chapter as being nonsensical seeing that it was all a dream so it doesn't actually need follow a rigid structure of how the events actually happen and is purely subjective, with no room David narration to actually show reflection on what he was thinking at the time, I could easily let it slide; as well as make it up in the next chapter when he wakes up and add some context to what he remembered of the event.
Now for the next issues in your writing, after you managed for the most part . First off I would strongly suggest that you stop calling ponies by their colors, it gets tiresome when your repeat it over and over again, after the first time you can be just go with 'he' 'it' or just 'pony' or 'talking horse' or even give him a placeholder name like 'vendor' 'customer' or such, at least. Next you would need to explain why he started to panic when the pony went toward him with seemingly no hostile intent, when he didn't vent bat an eye of being in a city full of talking pony before, and you didn't even when in at how he realized that he was turned into one of them, there is just no context to what he was thinking or feeling at the time in the narration, you would need to go into more discretion of his surroundings especially when it's out of place of what is normal, and show how he was taking it all in, like was he feeling afraid, scared, curious or just amazed at all that he was seeing all those ponies around him.
Here is a quick example on how you could have gotten in describing his environment as well as communicating his thoughts at the time: Seeing all the craziness of a world of techno-colored talking ponies, that I was obviously dreaming, I decided to just take everything in strides and assumed that I was lucid and enjoyed exploring all the conjuring that my chaotic subconsciousness come up with. I saw naked horses walking like they were people, walking talking selling, even some were sporting a clothing cortical like a hat or a scarf, which just look all the more silly. As for others there where some flying in the air right above me with wings like the ones I had on my back, making them twitch in wanting to join them. There some with horns poking out of their forehead with a flow which seemed like they used to levitate things around them. I was just at Aww at all that I was seeing around me.
For the police officer part, I feel it could have been handled better, you don't just tackle a person on to the ground for just looking confused, and you don't just pile them on top of David for no apparent reasons, which would only make things worst, and you most certainly don't inject him with a sedative for that. While he was piled on by the guard in the original, the rest didn't follow and just doesn't makes sense at why the police would so brutally arrest him like that for not apparent reasons it is just excessive use of force. In the original, which I last read two years ago, it was well implied that David, why believing that he was dreaming, was being an ass and was very disruptive in public order with jumping on vendors stalls and and getting into other ponies faces with no respect of personal space, while screaming at the top of his lungs that they was impossible and that he was dreaming; which would easily make everyone assumed that he was being crazy. It can be infers that then the police pony tried to calm David down, and failed. He tired to arrest him for public misconduct, just David escaped and chased after him, and probably making even more of a recuse of things as he kept on stumbling into other ponies or stalls attracting even police run after him, which led to the dog pile, and get arrested and sedated after furiously resisting arrest.
I will give you props for making so that David was right in front of a psychiatric hospital.
Hope this helps
I wish you good luck on that.
Jesus. I don't mean to rain on your parade, but I have several pretty bad complaints about this fic. I just powered through the original to be able to better put my issues into words.
Firstly structure. You really need to work on this. Let the text flow from subject to subject, do not arbitrarily cut it up into individual pieces in five-six sentences. The paragraph-structure makes the entire thing hard to read and even harder to follow. Also, please delete the double spacing. Not only does it look unprofessional, it literally makes the text harder to read.
You should also think of dialogue as an excuse to break a paragraph. Dialogue should be at the start of it's own sentence. If you REALLY need to say something else in that paragraph, keep it extremely short, however the majority of a work should consist of descriptions. Do not lean on dialogue to save a story, especially when you make as many mistakes as you currently are doing.
Secondly, there is a severe lack of impact. Pretty much everything is written in almost a pseudo-RP style with short explanations and it doesn't allow the reader any sort of time to digest what they just read. This balance can be very hard to strike, but I advise you to better paint the scene with your words. More than half of reading is imagination. Read parts of the original where the author is describing something happening or even a room, then take a look at your own writing. Describe, but not too much. Let your text flow rather than be jagged as it is currently.
Thirdly, dialogue. There is such a thing as too much stutter. I see what you're trying to do, though. You're trying to use the dialogue itself as a way of conveying how a character says something. This is a very, very useful tool but it should NEVER be overused. See below:
Do not do what the second one does. They essentially tell the reader exactly the same thing, but they do it in an imaginative way rather than just telling them. A reader can imagine the dialogue being nervously said by that one description. You use this kind of dialogue very, very often and it's only detrimental to the story itself. This critique is essentially the same as the second one. Use descriptive rather than prescriptive language and you'll quickly find the story itself mend easier.
Oh, and NEVER use dialogue to enforce a dialogue that is impossible to imagine, such as this excerpt taken from the first chapter.
You cannot write "pl-pl". It is impossible to say. If you want him to stutter, just say that he stutters and let the reader figure out the rest.
I can say a lot more about the dialogue and how it ties into structuring, but I'll just leave this link.
https://www.dailywritingtips.com/dialogue-dos-and-donts/
Fourthly, use commas moderately. They're very useful tools in moderation. It's strange, sometimes you never use a comma but other times you overflow a sentence with them. Moderation.
Fifthly, sentence structure. This below cannot be excused and should never be in a final product. This should be one sentence. It could be broken up into two, but that's not what you're doing here. You're terminating a sentence and then continued as if it was a comma.
This is how it should be written, if you want to keep the existing structure.
I could go on for days. This work shouldn't have made it past a first draft, let alone release. I understand and respect the wish to continue where another author has left a story, that is not the issue. The thing you need to understand is that this work is nothing but disrespectful to the original author and work. You really need to improve before trying to tackle something like this again.
I believe sincerely that you can be a good writer someday, but you are just not there yet. I suggest that you start reading. Reading is what makes you understand all the nuances of a good work and what you write afterwards will turn out much better.
Let me say this... THIS IS A MASSIVE IMPROVEMENT compared from before, and I raise my hat to you for sticking with this project with putting up with my constant nagging. The ending might started to feel a bit slippery, but you you managed to hold it up the whole way. the only slight issue I might have would to know if Drift was making up his story for forgetting his past that it was genuine, in hearing his inner thoughts, but that can easily be clarified in the next chapter along with showing more of his internal monologues more. You managed to set up a good creepy mood about the place, and that their seems to be more about this hospital then there was before. You still have a lot to learn in writing, but your perseverance has started to pay off for you, keep it up and good luck on your next chapter.
This sentence is so, so long, it hurts to read.