Twilight looked through the book excitedly, it was concerning an area of magic apparently not visited in many years; the creation of magically animated constructs.
‘‘There are many different types of construct.’’ Twilight spoke aloud as she read, not because it was necessary but because it helped her to remember things ‘‘Rock, metal, fire to name but a few, each has its own method of providing itself with energy, rock constructs require the intake of minerals from almost anywhere, metal constructs require vast amounts of electricity and fire constructs require burnable substances such as wood.’’
‘‘Without command a construct will remain stationary except to seek out a new energy source as required.’’
‘’It should be noted that unless a construct is bound to a particular unicorn it will follow almost any command given to it barring that which would cause its own destruction, binding can be achieved by taking a small amount of matter from a unicorn’s horn and mixing it with the construct’s being, this can only be done after the construct has been created.’’
She closed the book before speaking excitedly ‘Imagine what a help something like that would be, I mean, Spike helps me as much as he can, but sometimes he does struggle with the heavy lifting, and maybe one could help AJ with her applebucking! The possibilities are almost endless!’ At this point a voice drifted down from upstairs.
‘‘Twilight, are you speaking to yourself again?’’
‘‘No Spike, well, maybe a little, but it’s nothing to worry about.’’
‘‘It is when it keeps me awake at night; get some sleep, Twilight.’’
‘‘Oh, alright.’’ She made her way upstairs though there was no way she was going to drop this.
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‘‘Ah’m not so sure that this would be such a good idea, sugarcube.’’
Twilight snorted in exasperation ‘‘Why not? You’ve got to admit it could be useful.’’
‘‘Maybe it could, but it still don’t seem right to create sumthin’ just to do work for us.’’
‘‘But we build carts and carriages all the time just to do work for us, this is no different to that.’’
‘‘I don’t know, if it’s something that needs to feed itself, it just makes it seem like it would actually be a living thing.’’ Twilight stared at Fluttershy in disbelief.
‘‘It doesn’t eat, it just takes in fuel like we use to power trains.’’
‘‘But darling, I can’t help but notice that all the things you’ve mentioned work with at least some input from ponies for instance, I use a sewing machine to make my work easier but without me it’d be pretty useless.’’
‘‘I agree with Rarity, you can’t claim the awesomeness for yourself if somepony else did all the work.’’ Rainbow Dash puffed her chest out with faux-pride ‘‘Besides, like some lump of rock could keep up with me in the air.’’
‘‘Well they wouldn’t necessarily be made out of stone, Dash, you could even make one out of clouds, you know.’’
Pinkie Pie squealed ‘‘Ooh! Could you make one out of balloons? Like a giant balloon animal?’’
‘‘Well, maybe, Pinkie, but it wouldn’t exactly be resilient, now would it?’’
‘‘The thing is, Twilight, Ah know you’re powerful curious about these constructs, but I don’t think anypony would be willing to use one, it just doesn’t sit well with how we do things here.’’
‘‘But-’’ Twilight sighed deeply ‘‘Yeah, I suppose you’re right.’’
Rarity was the first to notice the oncoming signs of depression coming from the studious unicorn ‘‘That doesn’t mean you can’t study it dear, Princess Celestia may have asked you to study friendship, but we all know how much you like to study magic as well, you should feel free to continue looking into it but, don’t get your hopes up that it might revolutionise the way everypony works.’’
Twilight perked up almost immediately ‘‘You’re right, I can still research it, I could even put it into practice maybe!’’
Rainbow Dash had found the book ‘‘Where did you get this thing anyway, this thing looks even older than that egghead stuff you normally read.’’
‘‘I found it in the storage downstairs.’’
‘‘What? You have more books downstairs?’’
‘‘Yes, what’s up here is only about half the collection, I’ve read everything up here so I decided to move onto the books in the basement and found this, and maybe got a little overexcited about the possibilities.’’
‘‘Well, no worries, sugarcube, just be careful fooling about with magic like that.’’
‘‘It’s hardly fooling about, Applejack. I will be pursuing this with my standard scientific approach.’’
‘‘Still.’’ Applejack gave her a worried glance as she and the others left the library.
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Hours into the next day and Twilight was still searching around the canyon for a suitable mass of rock to use, by this time she was exhausted and almost sick of the idea of continuing, it was only her determination to see her project through to the end that kept her going. As the sun was setting the air became horribly muggy in the sheltered canyon, the mud Twilight was caked in becoming even more uncomfortable. A dreadful stink rose from the puddles of water and the light reflecting off them reduced visibility. The canyon was denied even a lick of wind by the high walls.
It was just as Twilight resolved to go home for the day that she noticed an area where the rock wall of the canyon had splintered, excitement lent her energy, this was exactly what she had been looking for. A short search revealed a large mass of basalt with seams of grey rock within it. Twilight swarmed over it, eagerness clearly evident.
‘‘Hmm, Obsidian, means that the mountain above is more than likely a sleeping volcano, when it came out it must have picked up other types of rock as it cooled before it settled.’’
She summoned a tape measure seemingly out of nowhere before starting to measure the rock.
‘‘As it stands, the rock is the same height as me, but a good deal wider.’’ She laughed slightly ‘‘Thankfully.’’
‘‘This means that when fully formed, the construct would be…’’ A roll of parchment and a quill appeared and Twilight began scribbling furiously muttering to herself ‘‘Apparent density…rough volume…along with reforming. It would be about half again my height! Perfect! Not so big as to be unwieldy but also able to bear large loads.’’
She let out a little squeal of delight as the parchment and quill disappeared, only to land on the head of a certain unsuspecting draconic assistant.
‘‘Now, all I need is to bring it back with me. No way am I going to repeat that debacle with Tom.’’
Somewhere in Ponyville, Rarity’s head snapped up from her work ‘‘We swore we’d never speak of that again!’’
Unaware of this, Twilight bound the rock to her with magic to prevent any mishap such as when she teleported with Spike, she’d rather not find out whether she could burn rock if it could be helped. When Twilight appeared back in the libraries’ basement it was lucky for Spike that she made him jump as this allowed him to avoid the mass of rock.
‘‘T-Twilight! What’s going on?’’
‘‘Oh, hello there Spike, what are you doing down here?’’
‘‘I was just doing some dusting.’’
‘‘Oh, alright then, I’m just going to be doing some work.’’
The spell itself was almost misleadingly simple, all she had to do was provide the magical energy while the transmutation circle as the book put it directed the form it would take, apparently the circle would act as the guide but it would be Twilight’s mind that decided the exact specifics. Excited to start she had sent Spike out of the library for and got down to work immediately even though it was nearly dark by this point.
She fed her magic into the markings on the floor slowly at first, carefully, until the markings started to glow and then her excitement got the better of her again and she pushed harder until she had to close her eyes to avoid the glaring light, and then, just as soon as it started, it was over. Before her stood what appeared to be a larger than life statue, the body was the pure black of the obsidian while the mane and tail were varying shades of grey, she tentatively approached. The black ‘coat’ of the female earth pony statue was perfectly smooth and very shiny, the mane and tail were rougher, as if imitating hair, the statue appeared to have its eyes closed.
‘‘Interesting, the construct is neither a pegasus or a unicorn, obviously it would be too heavy to fly,’’ She hadn’t seen in any of her readings an instance where a construct could use magic, though some more complex ones did use a horn as its focal point. Shrugging it off she continued her study, commenting on the nature of the ‘hair’.
‘‘I didn’t expect the different types of rock to separate like that, but it is convenient, this’ll strengthen the obsidian itself by not having impurities within it.’’
True to Twilight’s earlier prediction the construct was half again her height, making it hard to see its’ eyes though she thought they must be closed from the glimpse she could get. Finally having sated her curiosity she took a step back and rested her horn against its chest, taking a deep breath before sending a magical ‘jolt’ throughout the rock. As she looked at it again there was no indication that anything was different until its eyes slowly creaked open, revealing an icey-blue glow.
Why don't you remove those annoying lines from your description?
This isn't a Youtube video, it's screwing up the front page and it makes your description hard to read, why not just have it all in one sentence?
denver.mylittlefacewhen.com/media/f/img/mlfw4387-13349270369921.png
1262662 You can't explain Pinkie magic
1262646 Yeah, I screwed up the formatting on those, I'm still ironing out the kinks when it comes to using this site.
1262662 I assume you mean the part with the transport spell? Well evidentially I need to change something, 5 solid dislikes means somethings wrong, it's just a pity no-one ever tells you whats wrong in a clear manner, if people would actually comment with ways to improve rather than just dislike and leave it at that.
1262878 Well then it's your lucky day beacause:![:twilightsmile:](https://static.fimfiction.net/images/emoticons/twilightsmile.png)
weknowmemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/choo-choo-motherfucker.jpg
TWE is here to help explain where this went wrong and how you can fix it!
For starters, one of the first things I noticed here was a lack/incorrect use of punctuation. Particularly a lack of periods and misuse of inverted comma's, 'these things' instead of quotes, "these things." In fact, it's pretty much the only reason I can think of as to why you're getting all this hate. Taking the second paragraph from your story:
‘There are many different types of construct,’ Twilight spoke aloud as she read, not because it was necessary but because it helped her to remember things ‘Rock, metal, fire to name but a few, each has its own method of providing itself with energy, rock constructs require the intake of minerals from almost anywhere, metal constructs require vast amounts of electricity and fire constructs require burnable substances such as wood,’
I had to read over this and the next three paragraphs a couple times. Not just because I'm tired, but because I honestly couldn't tell what was going on. The commas instead of periods didn't help that any. A quick edit:
"There are many different types of construct," Twilight spoke aloud as she read. Not because it was necessary, but because it helped her to remember things. "rock, metal, and fire, to name but a few. Each has its own method of providing itself with energy. Rock constructs require the intake of minerals from almost anywhere. Metal constructs require vast amounts of electricity. Where as fire constructs require burnable substances, such as wood."
Your story isn't necessarily bad, your biggest issue by far is just punctuation. I would suggest grabbing an editor. There are quite a few people on this site, as well as groups, that are more than happy to help edit stories if asked. It'll save you a lot of hate and get your story looked at for what it's really worth.![:twilightsmile:](https://static.fimfiction.net/images/emoticons/twilightsmile.png)
~TWE~
1262872
Yeah don't worry about it.
The formatting is pretty easy once you finally figure it out, just a few tags here and a couple of sentences in the right place and your paragraphs and descriptions will look great.
1262878
There is a group of people on this site who devote their ways of criticising stories in a friendly manner but I can't think of their names (it'll come to me in a minute or so), but one of the things on the site is half of the piss-poor community whom don't really tell you what you are doing wrong in your story.
Here is the link to the group, just found it: (You choose which group is best for you.)
http://www.fimfiction.net/index.php?view=group&group=248 - Author Help.
http://www.fimfiction.net/index.php?view=group&group=394 - Struggling Authors.
http://www.fimfiction.net/index.php?view=group&group=916 - School for new Writers (I recommend this for your first story experiences.)
1262919 Ah, I've had that complaint before, I gather that its because this is a predominantly American site, normally writing like that is perfectly acceptable, all my stories on Devart are written like that with no issues, its just the way I've been taught to do it, I could alter it to cater to the audience I suppose.
1262927 That honestly is pretty much it. If there is one thing the media has gotten correct about us in america, it's our unwillingness to accept that any way other than our way of doing something is the right way to do it.![:derpytongue2:](https://static.fimfiction.net/images/emoticons/derpytongue2.png)
1262927
(haven't read your story yet)
Ok, I'm really curious as to where you live that that is considered acceptable. I've lived in both England and Australia and I've never seen speech to be handled with inverted commas, unless its a quote inside of speech.
Also, might I suggest changing your cover picture for the story. I'm not being funny mate, but of all the fics I've read with a pony creator cover picture I've never seen one without spelling/punctuation problems or aren't just plain terrible.
(reading story)
Also this piece of punctuation right here ";" does not need to be used so much. I went through over 12,000 words worth of chapters of random stories on my watch list, well written chapters from well written stories, and I found only instance of a semi-colon. meanwhile your 1300 words have five semi-colons. It is a very specialised piece of punctuation that should only ever be used for either great effect or if it absolutely has to be.
"Twilight looked around the canyon carefully, trying to find the exact kind of rock she could use, she’d decided rock was the best choice; it could survive off vegetation or pretty much anything, making them the easiest to care for, a metal construct would have been too hard to make, forging all that metal, and other types were too unstable to trust in a library."
ok, not only should a semi-colon not be used here, but quite a few more full stops should be used instead of commas.
(pushing way through story here. you were doing well before, but now...)
authors note in the middle of a story absolutely DESTROYS immersion. it should not be used in the middle of a fic for anything other than a warning for a potentially offensive and skip-able scene. and even then, most people would argue it shouldn't ever be used at all and I would have a hard time arguing with them.
(finished)
OK, great effort, but I'm afraid you need more practice, and an editor, before your work is ready to be consumed by the masses (or fimfiction.net, whatever).
also seriously change that cover picture, I totally thought the obsidian pony was a half arsed changeling with its colouring, and I've never seen a cannon mare with hooves like that.
1263057 Okay, one thing I've found on this site is that people can't handle the speech thing so that is going to be changed, normally I would make my own cover image but at the moment I don't have the software that would make it look any kind of good, I may end up just removing that image, in fact I probably will because I didn't like it either particularly, I just felt obliged to put something.
And the semi-colon thing is just something my version of word does, where you see those I've probably just put a comma in and then its done something.
And yes, full stops are a problem for me as I tend to just go with a story and forget about them.
Also the author's note shall be removed, it was laziness on my part and an explanation will be included, I was just worried about making it too wordy but someone else has commented that an explanation would be appropriate so that will be done.
An updated version will be put up later today at some point that hopefully addresses those concerns.
Thank you for an honest and well thought-out comment, if more people gave comments like that it would be a great help.
1263079
your welcome brosef.
As for the picture you might get away with just finding some picture featuring a pony and a construct of some sort, maybe even a robot or some sort of golem. that would probably be related enough and I'm sure there's plenty of great pictures like that out there if you look.
As for the punctuation concerns I'm afraid you really are just going to have to go through your entire fic with a fine tooth comb or get an editor to. what people feel to be punctuation errors really pull readers out of a story. I would actually suggest looking up common conventions for writing and punctuation online, articles or or essays on these things actually tend to be less boring than they sound and can do a world of good for ones writing, in and out of fiction.
As for the magic, I wouldn't suggest you explain it myself. I think it would probably be much better if you approached the use of magic and the "science" behind things in this story vaguely, instead of explaining the how. It's Twilight Sparkle, we the readers know she is capable of doing ridiculously OP things with her magic, it would be best not to be bogged down in trying to explain scientifically a thing that doesn't exist, and instead focus on character development and interactions.
we don't need to know how or why a construct can be... err... constructed. other than a sentence or two explaining that it can be done and maybe some limitations to the magic it really isn't necessary. What I'm really interested in is what the construct will be like, how it will react to Twilight Sparkle's many quirks and charms and how Twilight is going to react to it.
I don't know here you are going with this story, and your description is cryptic as hell (err... hate piling on problems, but you should probably look at improving that too) but I am almost certain that if this is going to become a good story you should try hard not to get bogged down with the many technical explanations that could possibly arise from a magically oriented story. Instead you should try and focus on your characters and use the magic as a plot device only.
I feel I may be starting to ramble. I apologise for the state of my two posts, I'm actually quite tired.
1263142 Do you mind if I ask where you felt the story bogged down? And possibly why it did so.
I have addressed the intro and formatting issues, and taken a second look at several pieces of punctuation, altering the speech marks as well.
I removed the first/third person switch from the intro and hopefully cleaned up the intro a bit, but if you could point out anything else it would be much appreciated, sorry for troubling you for all this but I think its clear I could use the help.
1264297
interesting idea... me gusta Mucho! Soy contento!
1264297
re-read it quickly, to be honest there are no major problems until we get to the last section. all problems/issues before that would be best worked out with an editor or the like, not something really suited for a half arsed commenter.
But that last section... just went through it looking specifically for problems. ouch.
ok, first things first. you have a scene where twilight is in a canyon and is looking for the rock that is going to become a main character (a 'lolwut' sentence right there). It takes two paragraphs, there's almost no description and the second paragraph is mainly description of the teleport that isn't really a teleport apparently.
Its possible to cut this scene out, but really I think this I an important scene and it would do good to make this scene memorable. I'm going to outline how I would handle this scene in dot form:
- describe the setting, the canyon. description for all five senses(well, most of them) , how pretty or rugged the canyon is, how colourful or grey. appropriate use of flowery descriptive language (probably quite a lot).
- describe twilight looking for a suitable rawk. her actions, how she looks ,her body language and her thoughts are all important. (for example: she could be currently walking, covered in dirt from looking all day, looking frustrated with her head down and thinking about how shes 'spent hours looking for a perfect rock that apparently doesn't exist.')
- she finds the rawk, describe where she found it, the rawk itself, her thoughts and feelings upon finding said rawk.
- her next actions, followed by 'getting the flag back to base'. (things she could do, since she's Twilight: examine rock, examine surroundings of rock, take notes on rock and surroundings, consult some form of checklist. twice. puzzle over how to get rawk back to treebrary)
so that's basically how id do that. that's actually how I plan scenes funnily enough, complete with silliness and overuse of brackets or sub dot points.
Also if shes going to basically teleport the rock back to the treebrary then... just have her actually teleport the rock back to the treebrary. she can teleport with spike, she can teleport with a rock. Theres really no need to complicate it unless it becomes a plot point later on, in which case its fine.
and finally, I apologise if any of this is harsh/mean/annoying, but there's no 'spell check' for tone, and while I can work up the effort to write up all this crap I for some reason can not work up the effort to re-read it to check if its nice or mean.
Just completed pretty much a complete overhaul of the latter half of the chapter, an extra three hundred words which I hope helps make the introduction clearer as well as improving how it flows.
1268823 Don't worry about it, if it weren't for your help, and trust me, it was all helpful, I don't think I would've been motivated to take any action to improve, I'm not sure if I've actually made it any good. But I have done a pretty comprehensive re-write.
Any honest comments, so long as they're within the bounds of decency, are fine by me.