Contained herein are a series of scene sketches. I wrote them from prompts, focusing on one specific detail, and was limited to a severely small number of words. It was one of the most helpful things I ever did in my writing career.
1. Déjà Vu – Write a scene from a present and past perspective at the same time.
2. Body Language – Write a scene between two characters with no dialogue.
3. Phone Tag – Write one half of a conversation, and help the reader fill in the rest.
4. The Reluctant “I” – Write a first-person scene only using a first-person pronoun twice.
5. The Argument – Show an argument from the outside, without taking either participant’s perspective or side.
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Hey, everyone. OtterMatt here. Just for the record, I’m not coming back to FimFic. Not ever. I’m sorry to say it, but my life has moved on, as it were, and writing just isn’t a part of it anymore. That being said, I love these stories of mine very much. There’s a lot of myself that I put into them, and at least a couple people have told me that these stories meant a lot to them as well. So, for those people, and for anyone else who enjoys my work in the future, I’m charging my friend Spabble here with curating my completed stories. Thank you all for the love, the faves, and the support as I grew and learned. Keep doing what you love, and the best of luck to you all.
Interesting. I've always thought that you get better with writing the more you practice. Little short scenes like this are good for that.
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Man, you should see some of the prompts that are still to go, too. These are so great. Little stuff that no one really thinks about on their own, but can make SUCH a huge difference in stories.
I find this very interesting. I'll see if I can write along with the prompts. Maybe it'll finally get me back into writing pony fiction ^_^
Though I can't help but feel that mouthing something in the "No talk" prompt is kind of cheating :P
Funny, I do the same thing.
I write little snippets of stories & individual scenes that might wind up being fleshed out or in some cases added to an existing story that I'm writing.
Often times however they remain in their incomplete form.
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I agree with you, Gaiascope. Featherweight's "Hey," at the end, breaks this rule as well.
Score: Editorial 20/20 - No errors as far as I could see. Writing quality 17/20 - One error, other than those already mentioned here:
It may seem nitpicky, but I counted you off for something new writers often miss: viewpoint. Stories are most effective when each scene is rendered from the viewpoint of a single character. This resonates with us as human beings, for the simple reason that, in life, each of us is limited to one viewpoint--our own. That is, we don't feel another's emotions, hear another's unspoken thoughts, or intrinsically experience another's motivations, only our own. We infer these things about others from tone of voice, body language, facial expressions, and so forth. Thus, keeping each scene in a single character's viewpoint helps the reader to know with whom they should identify--it feels "real" to us because it closely matches the human experience.
With that in mind, take a look at the above quoted paragraphs, noting especially the bolded phrases. Up until this point in the scene, we have been in Featherweight's viewpoint, feeling with him, thinking with him, knowing his motivations. With the first bolded phrase, however, we are abruptly shifted from Featherweight's viewpoint to--presumably--Sweetie Belle's, because of the following, which explains the problem with each bolded phrase:
1. Being inside Featherweight's head, he wouldn't see a glint in his own eye--so neither should we. Rather, we would get the direct feeling beind that glint. Is he feeling proud of himself? Clever? Relieved? Happy? Desperate? Describe the emotions Featherweight is feeling. We would get them directly, because he is the viewpoint character.
2. Here, you have the opposite problem. Featherweight wouldn't know directly that Sweetie Belle had "caught on instantly;" he would infer that from the fact that she got up to meet him at the back. So reword the sentence so that he first sees her action, then realizes she understands.
3. In the same vein, Featherweight is doing the "enveloping" in the hug, and wouldn't directly know either that Sweetie "suddenly found herself" in it, or that she returned his kiss with "equal fervor." As I said, he would infer this by her response to his action.
These things may sound picky, but doing viewpoint incorrectly will cause many readers' suspension of disbelief to break, and earn a work such criticisms as, "jumpy," "unreal," or "contrived," from readers without enough knowledge of the craft of writing to allow them to articulate prescisely why they feel that way about it--no one notices things like viewpoint until someone does them wrong, unfortunately.
Overall, you've written a very emotionally powerful scene, and done it subtly. Refreshing to see, especially for a fan fiction site. Too many people who do this appear to post immediately after typing the first draft, rendering some otherwise incredible concepts difficult to wade through. I applaud you for your determination to hone your skill.
Sorry for the long post, but I evaluate people's writing for a living, and I wanted to be as thorough as possible, since you did ask for explanation.
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Agreed, for the most part. I wanted to try to set my viewpoint as sort of a third party looking over the shoulder of Featherweight, not really in his head so that I wasn't too tempted to use his thoughts to fill in the blanks in the actions. The actions needed to remain subtle enough that the reader should have to interpret what's going on behind the motions.
And the "Hey" breaks the rule intentionally, which is why it ends the scene. As for the mouthing though... yeah, I don't really have a defense other than I thought it should go there.
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Well, if a third-person, outside viewpoint was what you were really going for, (not really a widely-used technique these days ) then the thing to do would be to focus completely and only on the outer, visible actions of both characters, without any discussion of motivation or thought at all.
Not easy to do, these days, since third-person limited (inside one character's head), or first person, are the viewpoints most of us are used to seeing...
I wish you success.
Let me know if I can be of further help.
No real errors.
But nothing exemplary about it either.
There was absolutely no emotion behind this scene. The words did not flow, and sadly... that "twist" was so cliche and predictable.
My advice, aim for shorter sentences. That way you can use a varied vocabulary... rather than wasting so many words.
Example:
The small, shortened sentences would have less words, and that can seem very nice in some ways.
vs
Simplicity is elegant.
"It was just before the main course was served when they walked in, bound for a table."
That set-up is... bleh.
So many unasked questions. So many wasted opportunities.
Also, ponies talked... ruining your test's main rubric.
My advice: Less explaining, more doing.
example:
Featherweight gave a large smile, and waved, keeping his hooves low so his parents wouldn’t notice.
vs
Featherweight smiled widely. He raised a hoof, but hesitated.
He peaked over his menu, Mom and Dad were chatting with their waitress.
Featherweight took a deep breath, locking eyes with Sweetie Bell. Then lurched forward, waving frantically.
-------------------------------
Positives?
There are some good scenes. Written albeit funny (in my biased opinion) but they're cute:
"In the hallway behind the bar, she found herself quickly enveloped in a firm hug of both hooves and wings, and a pair of familiar lips planted themselves gently but eagerly on her own. She returned the kiss with equal fervor until they broke for air."
Pretty words. Too bad it's almost obscured, hidden in a sea of less-pretty words.
Work on clarity and creativity.
Best of luck.
Rating 11/20,
But I'll "thumbs up" your story.
1317448>>1317509
Fair enough, and definitely thanks for taking the time to read.
It is pretty hard to balance a fully-developed scene with such a short word limit, which is something I've never had to work with before. I've got things to work on!
i think this might be quite helpful i just wish to see more prompts
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If you feel like doing it, I'd gladly send you the list of prompts I'm using. Just be sure to send me a link to your results!
that would be great
Heh. Didn't realise you'd started doing these. Anyway, better late than never, no?
Editorial: 18/20
1) >He drew a hoof over his eyes to clear any lingering tears, and took a deep breath.
>remaining two candles, and shook out the match.
>He wrestled the cake tray onto his back, and walked into the other room.
Reason: Nitpicky, but you only need to place a comma before a conjunction if the conjunction is connected onto an independent clause. Given your omission of the subject (aka, he) from the second clause, you'd really want to just run the two together without a comma.
It's partially justified in the first one given the sheer length of that clause, but the last one has no excuse.
2) >While the memories may be tinged with grief, Peridot and his wife sang without a trace of sadness as they commemorated the birth of their only child.
Reason: None attribution of ownership on the memories. 'The' should really be 'their' here. That, and you've used while when you needed although.
Again. Nitpicky.
I'd also prefer 'were' rather than 'may be', but it'll hush now.
(Also, cough Jade looked tiny. She had Double space.)
Style : 18/20
I don't think you succeed on that 'startlingly similar' part. I also don't really think your main character was overly thoughtful about the comparison between the two. I also think this could have been an excellent place to use tense to your advantage; having one section in past tense and the other in present could have made the shift between the two of them a delicate balance of jarring and evocative, particularly if you allowed your paragraph barriers to melt away as the scene progressed. As for the twist... I agree with HoneyX3. You could see it coming. There were other, minor things (the choice of the irregular past tense of 'to fit' angers my British ears), but overall, it was styled nicely enough. Your sentence structure was fairly varied (though I'd have liked to have seen at least one semi-colon) and it told a scene well without having to clue us all in to what was going on. Nicely done.
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My editor for my other fics pretty much conditioned me to use em dashes almost out of reflex. I used to use semicolons a lot more.
And yeah, it's not exactly original, though the part about the tense passing being the only clue is quite useful. I may have to remember that.
First! Wait a sec...
677 words, I went a little over this time, but I don't mind. That's a good problem to have. And yes, you'll just have to accept that for the duration of this scene, ponies have phones. Outside of that, let me have it! What do you think of my little vignette?
I didn't spot any technical errors, but I feel that maybe you broke the rule about don't be tempted to explain too much outside of the actions/dialogue. We basically know exactly what happened because Lyra's thoughts told us.
It's good, though. A nice little read, as all of these chapters are.
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The big part of that in the prompt was to not let the guesswork by the other character fill in where it shouldn't. Like a house rule against metagaming, if you're into D&D style games. The outside character shouldn't fill in what she shouldn't know. I feel like it's okay, because Lyra was there, so she's not guessing about the past because she knows, and I don't think she infers too much about the conversation at hand.
Thanks for sticking with me! All this feedback has really been awesome.
If you're wondering, the point of this scene is to write a first-person story and only use first-person pronouns twice.
Another scene done, and this one's got me excited. It's a bit of headcanon from me, and I might actually end up taking this idea and expanding it into a full-on story in the future, I dunno yet. There's a lot more to it that I'd love to tell, but there's something about simplicity and the short-story format that I'm really learning to love here. There's more that's left to the reader to interpret, and that's a really cool thing. For example, what does the last line imply to you?
I think it shows the cracks in Celestia's armor. She loves so much, but that holds her back from running Equestria to its full potential. By breaking down and crying like a filly, it might put doubts into the minds of her subordinates.
I think this chapter, expanded somewhat, could be a really good start to a story about Equestria's recovery after the Nightmare stuff. Or, handled differently, could be a final chapter of a sad story about Luna's decent into evil. Either way, it does leave the reader a lot to think about.
How come I got notifications that all four chapters updated?
What if there was no
Mary SuePrincess Cadance? Sometimes a problem just needs honesty and communication instead of magic.1465116
Sorry, I went back and edited the scenes for the new formatting, and for some reason if I don't unpublish/republish them, the edits don't stick.
What a great idea to practice body language!
1317509 Featherweight smiled widely. He raised a hoof, but hesitated. He peeked over his menu, Mom and Dad were chatting with their waitress.
That is better!