Pinkie has lost her cookbook, and turns to Twilight and Spike to aid her in her search, while Twilight is still skeptical as ever of Pinkie's theories. The two ponies (and one dragon) will embark on a journey of epic proportions to find it. What will come out of the quest, you will have to find out. Hilarity ensues.
This is my first time writing fan fiction, so any constructive criticism is very much appreciated!
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My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
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Way too short. That's my single complaint here.
I liked it, my only complaint is that there could have been some more detail, but other than that, no issues to be seen. At least from me.
My only criticism is that things happen a little too fast.
But aside from that, I liked it
It was a nice little reading.
1679888>>1679910>>1680228 Thank you guys, I'll keep it in mind for my next fic.
Howdy there! TWE's FoughtDragon01 here to lend a hand in helping you with this lil' story you've got here. For starters, I have to say, for your first attempt at fanfiction, this is pretty good compared to other first-timers I've seen. But of course, I'm not just here to offer congratulations; this story could use some improvements, and I'm here to offer some suggestions. M'kay? M'kay. Without further ado, let's dove into this.
First thing we're going to focus on is the mechanical stuff. You know, punctuation, grammar, the works. Trust me, this thing was definitely readable, save for a few awkward sentences (which we'll go over later), but everything else looked good for the most part. However, there still are a few recurring errors all throughout this thing that I feel is worth bringing up. The first thing I want to focus on is the tagging for your dialogue. Dialogue tagging refers to the 'he said, she said' stuff you put after character dialogue. The problem is that your capitalization is wrong.
Several times throughout your story, they look like this:
When it should look like this:
It's odd, because there are certain times when you have the correct capitalization, like right here:
But almost every time near the beginning, and even near the end, the capitalization was wrong. I don't know whether to chalk this up to innocent mistakes or if you really have trouble understanding how this works. If it's the former, I suggest rereading over your stories to ensure that you catch little mistakes like that, but if it's the latter, then I have some advice that I hope will be helpful.
Whenever you use 'he said, she said', or any kind of variation like 'he yelled' or 'she exclaimed', remember to keep it all lowercase. Try to see it as a part of the same sentence that the dialogue is in. You wouldn't randomly capitalize a letter in The middle of a sentence, would you? Exactly. Obviously, there are exceptions, such as using names:
But there is also another one. If you don't use a dialogue tag and instead move on to a new sentence, then you would capitalize it like normally. In other words, it would look like this:
Now, there's one other thing I want to focus on before we continue, and that's your dialogue's punctuation. This can be where it gets a little confusing, especially when you try to explain the regional variations, but I'm going to default to the standard U.S style. When you writing dialogue, and you plan to tag it with a 'he said, she said' or a variation, if the very last punctuation before the closing quotations is a period, you want to replace that period with a comma. In other words, instead of looking like this:
It would look like this:
However, if the final quotation of a sentence is a question mark or exclamation point, like the following sentences…
…then, as you can see, you'd leave them alone. It probably sounds confusing now, but trust me, once you get the hang of it, it'll be second nature. While errors like this don't ruin the story by any means, some people (me included) can find the absence of that sort of thing very annoying, sometimes annoying enough to just stop reading the story altogether. It sounds unfair, I know, but it's standard when it comes to writing stories, so I think it'd be something worth getting used to.
Now that we've gotten all of that out of the way, we can get onto the story itself. I'll say this now, it has potential to be a great fic, but there are a few major things that need to be fixed if it's going to become that great fic. Now, you already heard this from everyone else already, but I still feel the need to say it in order to drive the point home: the pacing is a mess! Part of the problem comes from a glaring lack of description. All throughout the story, we as the reader are only told what happens as opposed. We're told this, we're told that, we're just told stuff. This makes the story grow pretty stale pretty quickly. In order for you, as the writer, to make a story engaging and keep in engaging, you need to show us what's happening. This goes back to the golden rule of writing: 'show, don't tell'.
You want to help us picture the scene in our minds. Take a second to slow your scenes down. Describe the scenery. Describe what the characters are doing. Take a moment and dive into their thoughts and tell us what they're thinking or feeling at the moment. Doing these things helps to increase your story's immersion and strengthens our connections with the characters. Be honest here, which one sounds more engaging?
Do you see the difference? One example simply told us that Twilight was organizing, while the other was able to get the same thing across in a much more descriptive way. The whole point is to paint a picture in your reader's mind, and just telling us what's happening would be no more engaging than hearing some guy blather on about the game he saw last night. This is something that you absolutely must keep in mind for every single story you write in the future, because if you don't follow this rule, all of them will sound same-y and boring, which you don't want at all. If this comes across as difficult for you, don't fret; it is pretty difficult for new writers to get down at first, but there are plenty of people around the site willing to lend a hand. All you have to do is ask.
As for the story's actual plot? I like the concept, but the execution leaves a lot to be desired. I've already touched on the pacing, so I won't retread old ground, but there are still plenty of things to talk about. Going back to the whole pacing thing, I feel like things progress far too quickly to the point where I'm questioning certain actions your characters did. Even if you followed the whole 'show, don't tell' thing down to a letter, certain things still don't make much sense plot-wise.
For starters, why in all of Equestria would Twilight only take herself, Pinkie, and her baby assistant halfway across the world to ancient ruins that could hold Celestia-knows-what? Doing something as reckless as that just doesn't seem like the thing the wary, study-driven unicorn would do. Knowing Twilight, she'd try to find whatever she could on those ruins as well as the gods Pinkie saw before even considering setting foot in their ancient ruins. Heck, if anything, Twilight would probably be a bit curious as to how there could be gods in Equestria. You'd think she'd have a few questions to ask Celestia in that regard, especially since these gods are alicorns.
Adding on to the whole 'Twilight teleports them there' thing, just how far away are these ruins? As far as I could tell, Twilight was only able to comfortably teleport a few meters ahead of her, maybe even a few hundred feet. But these ruins sound like their hundreds, maybe even thousands of miles away from where they live. So, Twilight would not only have difficulty mustering up the magic to do that, but she'd undoubtedly be completely exhausted afterwards.
Another character I wanted to focus on, of course, is Pinkie. While I can't give you flak for getting her character wrong–in fact, all of the characters seem spot-on, save for those odd decisions I mentioned–I can discuss how you handle her. You avoid answering a lot of interesting questions based solely on the fact that Pinkie is just 'being Pinkie', which I found amusing at first, but eventually got rather annoyed by it when you kept using it to explain all of her odd actions. How did Pinkie find those ruins in the first place? How did she make friends with ancient deities who, judging by Samrio's first appearance, are apparently hostile to intruders? Because Pinkie is just Pinkie? Hard to buy, if I'll be honest.
I guess you can chalk this up to suspension of disbelief, but when it comes to people like me, the kind who beat themselves over the head trying to stay true to canon in their stories, things like that really stick out, and can actually be a buzzkill. Now, I'm not saying this can't work, in fact, I wouldn't really care if you didn't change much at all, but these are the sort of things you need to consider if you want to write fanfiction. Staying true to canon things established in the show can really be what makes or breaks your story when it reaches public eyes. One thing I suggest doing is to stop and ask yourself–and I mean really ask yourself– 'Would this character do this?' I'm serious. Take into consideration everything that the characters do in the show. If they're personality and way of thinking don't match up with the things that you want them to do, you may want to either consider approaching the plot in a different way, or changing the plot altogether. Trust me, you don't want to screw up characters, especially ones as established as the Mane 6; it's just a death sentence in this fandom.
Well, I've been going on about this for a while, so I think I'll wrap things up here. All things considered, this was good. No more, no less. Everyone's start is a rough one, but trust me when I say that it could've been a lot rougher. With some practice, experience, and fine-tuning, I can see you becoming a great writer on this site; it all just comes down to you being the one to make that happen. Keep in mind all of the things I mentioned up to now, because I can promise you that they will help you in the long run. I hope you continue writing, and I hope you improve, because I see promise in you. I want to see what you can really do.
Goodbye, and best of luck to you.
~FoughtDragon01–TWE's 'Not-so-nice' Nice Guy
i.imgur.com/3lZia.png?1
Well now, the long comment above me is long, boring and informative... sounds like my school actually.
Pinkie could have been more Pinkieish, but I won't hold you to that.
Good ending
1696659 Wow, all the things that I never seem to notice... Anyways, thanks a lot! I'll be sure to keep all of that in mind for my future fics. You've been a great help, thank you.
That was an amazing story, Pinkies randomness made me smile the whole time. If possible please right more fan fictions like this... possibly a sequel? lets hope for it.