The fireplace was lit in Pinkie Pie's room above Sugarcube Corner. With Tank beside her, Rainbow Dash lay on the floor in front of the fire, enjoying the warmth as Pinkie read her latest chapter. Her eyes began to droop closed. It was just so comfortable here.
"Aww." Pinkie sighed. "No Gummy this time?"
Rainbow Dash blinked her eyes, fighting against sleep. "Mmmm? Oh, did you finish reading, Pinkie?"
"Yup!" The pink pony grinned, bounding up from her bed with the new pages in hoof. She came over to lie by the fire with Dash, putting the story down in front of her. "But you didn't write anything new about Gummy...."
"Oh. Yeah, sorry Pinkie. I just felt like, y'know, I should give some other characters a shot. You did say to put in more characters." Rainbow Dash yawned.
"It's okay. So, anyway. Rainbow Dash? Are you awake?" Pinkie's voice was starting to become a blur past the edge of Rainbow Dash's senses. She thought she could feel something prodding against her shoulder, but maybe it was her imagination. The fire was so comfortable. This was like laying on a whole cloud stuffed full of sunshine. Rainbow Dash wished she could get a fireplace in her own home, but she didn't think clouds were made for holding fires well. That was okay. She could just come visit her friend at Sucarcu—
Why did it feel like somepony had just folded her face in a very tight, wet towel?
"RAAAINBOW DAAASH!"
The eyes of the blue pegasus shot open wide, and found themselves staring into two huge purple orbs. Her wings tried to shoot her into the air, but the motion wound up as an ungainly flop onto her back. "Mrkmrrm Mrr! MRKMRRM!" She tried to yell back at Pinkie, but Gummy was clamped onto her face so firmly that she couldn't get her mouth open.
Pinkie calmly reached over and plucked the little alligator off of her face. Rainbow Dash sat up panting, her eyes still as wide as teacups. "What–! Pinkie–! Why did–! Aaagh, I'm all slimy now!"
Giggling quietly, Pinkie Pie offered Dash a towel. "You fell asleep on me, Rainbow Dash. I thought you wanted help with your story. I can't help you if you're asleep, silly."
"Yeah, but that doesn't mean... Eeew! Pinkie!" Rainbow Dash scrubbed her face with the towel. After a few moments of cleaning herself off, Dash finally started to get her composure back. Her eyes darted around the room and found Gummy. The smug little alligator looked totally unperturbed. She did her best to transfix him with a glare, but Gummy didn't seem to notice.
"Don'cha want to know what I think!?" Even sitting on the floor, Pinkie was able to bounce up and down.
"Oh. Oh! Yeah, the story! Was it awesome!?"
"Yup!" Pinkie giggled. "Much better than last time. Not that last time wasn't awesome too. But this was much better." She peered at the pages for a moment. "Though... I really liked the action you put into your first story. Maybe you can try to put some more of that back in? Remember, characters first. That's the most important. But your readers wi— I mean, stories are always cooler if they have a little bit of action in them too."
Rainbow Dash frowned in thought. "That sounds kinda hard, Pinkie. Characters and action?"
"You can do it!" Pinkie gave her a wide smile. "Just spend some time thinking about the scene you want to tell next. See if you can find a way to develop your characters while they're doing something more active than standing around talking."
"I dunno Pinkie. But I guess I'll try..."
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The Amazingly Awesome Adventures of Tank the Tortoise
By R. Dash
Chapter 4 – Ninjas on a Train!
The train was rumbling through a long valley between two mountains when the white rabbit waiter arrived at Tank and Winona's room with dinner. Winona had apple fritters while Tank dined on leaf-flavored cupcakes.
"You and Commander Spike go way back, don't you sir?"
Tank grunted stoically. He might be saddled with a partner, but that didn't mean he had to like it. Tank the tortoise was a loose cannon, and he wouldn't let Winona's by-the-book attitude keep him from doing his job.
"Sir, do you have a plan for locating the Carrot Cita—"
All the lights in the train car blinked out, and Tank felt something metallic ping off his shell. Immediately, he threw himself across the room and tackled Winona to the ground. The brown-and-white dog gasped, but Tank threw one hand over her mouth to silence her.
Winona nodded in understanding and reached into her purse, pulling out two sets of night-vision goggles. Tank took one, exchanging it with his normal flying goggles. Staying low, Tank crept to the door of the compartment he shared with Winona. He poked his head out quickly to look around, and then pulled it back into his shell as another metal projectile whizzed by.
"Who is it?" Winona asked worriedly.
"Ninja-bunnies," Tank growled. "Stay here, Winona. I'll handle this."
Tank tensed, preparing to dash out into the corridor, but Winona rested a paw on his shell to stop him. "No, sir. We do this together."
Tank hesitated a moment before nodding. "All right. You take the ones on the right and I'll deal with the ones on the left."
Winona nodded, and on a three-count the pair rushed out into the corridor. The train left little room to maneuver for a flying tortoise, so Tank was forced to fight in the style of his forebearers. Sighting a clump of ninja-bunnies clustered down the corridor, Tank ran forward and kicked off with his left foot a moment before tucking his head and all his limbs into his shell. The shell rocketed along the ground, spinning faster and faster until it crashed into the cluster of ninja-bunnies. As the rabbits went flying, Tank came out of his shell and assumed the Tiger Stance. Down the corridor in the opposite direction, he could hear the high-pitched screams of the rabbits facing Winona.
"Tank the tortoise," came a squeaky voice from the shadows. "Thou wouldst quake in terror, shouldst thou know the plans our glorious master has lain for thee!"
Tank turned to face the voice, and a black rabbit clothed all in white ninja clothes stepped out of the darkness. "Rochefort! You traitor! We thought you were killed in the explosion at the rainbow factory. If Spike saw you now, serving Angelbunny, his heart would weep!"
"DOCTOR Angelbunny, my esteemed Tank. Thou and thy companion wouldst do best to grant thy new master the respect he is due." Rochefort cackled. "But the time for games is at an end. Minions! Come, we return to the Citadel!" And with a puff of smoke, the black rabbit vanished.
Winona came running up behind him, panting. "Sir! Who were those rabbits!?"
"Minions of Dr. Angelbunny," Tank growled. "Our worst fears have been proven true. Winona, take a letter. 'Dear Commander Spike....'"
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Rainbow Dash finished reading the new passage to Tank. He grinned up at her, but he usually did that whenever she gave him any sort of attention. Was he enjoying these stories? She hoped he was. "What do you think, buddy?"
In response, Tank's propeller whirred on and he hopped up to lick her cheek. Rainbow Dash couldn't help but giggle a little. "I hope Pinkie likes this one too. She seems really good at this kind of thing." Dash didn't understand why Pinkie would know any more than anypony else about writing, but she'd always had a very good memory for names and dates. Maybe she knew more than that, too. It was weird to think that Pinkie, in her way, might be as much of an egghead as Twilight Sparkle. But thanks to them, even Rainbow Dash liked reading and writing now. Having friends who were eggheads was kind of nice, sometimes.
Not that she'd let anypony hear her say that out loud. She had a reputation to maintain.
A good and entertaining chapter
I can't wait to read more.
I'm going to make two guesses, either Pinkie is secretly the author of Daring do
Or she's been using her 4th wall breaking powers to peruse the vast world of pony fanction
Either way AWESOME!
i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/newsfeed/000/176/875/55654%20-%20Lyra%20artist%253Athelivingmachine02%20crying%20hands%20mismatched_anatomy%20poison_joke.jpg?1316640432
HANDS!
I have a feeling you're giving us advice on writing....
2044326 yup it twas a shit day
Why do I have a feeling that Rainbow Dash is going to have a bestseller on her hooves when all of this is over?... Would be pretty awesome...
I'm still debating on whether or not Pinkie is actually helping or not, because character-based exposition is never a bad thing, and indeed, is entirely unavoidable in writing. Sometimes you just can't squeeze action and characters at the same time.
That said, RD's story is still improving either way, and is getting more and more interesting with each chapter, so she's still doing something right, so maybe Pinkie's advice is helping.
Remember how I had commented before that I was reading the chapters in RD's story in RD's voice? Yeah, that's since stopped, but I see that as a good thing, because now my mind sees it seriously enough to decide that the characters need voices of their own and the such.
2047086
Not my intention! And I was kind of worried about that line. I actually try to do a word search on 'hand', 'foot', and permutations of 'any/some/every-one/body' to make sure I don't do that, but... I wound up kind of confusing myself. I mean, tortoises do have hands (though they often look more like just big elephant-type blocks), so it would clearly be an error on RD's part to talk about him doing things with his hooves. Do you think that would have worked better with a different word, maybe 'arm'?
Though I suppose I am kind of trying to extra-anthropomorphize him for the RD-written passages, and it might be more appropriate (though probably a LOT harder) to be trying to pony-morphize him instead. Hrm. I may have to think about this a while....
Actually, I've been so wrapped up with writing, I've only read two fanfics on the site so far. One was the link that got me over here from Equestria Daily in the first place, and the other was -clearly- better than what I think I'm capable of writing at the moment. So I'm about as unqualified to comment on the state of fanfic writing in this fandom as anypony can be.
2047183 It's actually cool. A pitfall many authors make is no character development, not enough action or too much of, etc etc. Pinkie is teaching the reader as well as Dashie.
2047183
Easy, dude, the advice isn't really bad, and even if it's unintentional, I at least, find it helpful, so maybe you could write the story and give advice to other authors at the same time, don't think advice has ever been given within a story itself before, so maybe you stumbled onto something quite revolutionary here.
2050120
Pretty sure you tagged the correct spelling. I think it's Owlowiscious. Wanted to respond to your comments inre the sidekicks, though. I see what you're saying. Yes, Angel Bunny isn't exactly an original villain and thinking of Spike as a pet would be pretty demeaning, but I'm trying to think of the story from RD's perspective and I don't think with only a couple very short bits of writing under her belt she'd have the creativity to play outside the common conventions with the characters she's using. That's mostly with respect to Opal and Tank playing a lot when they're together and Winona being hard-working and obedient. Gummy is always a bit of an odd duck, and I'm not actually sure if RD would have enough experience with Angel Bunny to recognize that he can be a terror. Spike isn't a pet, but he's now an established pet-sitter / pet-wrangler, so I think it would make sense to her to continue to put him in that role - especially since, whenever I think about what she would write, I have a very hard time imagining her actually writing about other ponies.
I'm still debating what to do with Owlowiscious. I don't expect Peewee or Philomena to make appearances, simply because they aren't really part of RD's life. Also, I'm only anticipating writing about four more chapters of this. I know where and how I want to end it, and it's not going to be a long story in the end.
Oh my gosh, this story is amazing! How did I not know about this? Thumbed and faved :)
Just a couple of notes: double exclamation marks are something of an overkill, and Pinkie calling Dash by her full name is a bit weird. Like, she calls her Dashie more in the show, no?
That much being said, you've got a very nice slice-of-lifey feel and tone to this. And there's also some sad irony in that Rainbow Dash's first
fanficstory is more coherent and better written than some of the stuff on Fimfic. =\ But yes, keep it up and I'd like to see where this is headed.2050990
Thanks for the input! I tossed the two double-exclamations I found in the frame story (one in Ch.3 and one in Ch.4). Didn't check the Tank story because it's intentionally imperfect.
I did a quick episode browse, though, and I guess I'd misheard the 'Dashie' in "Feeling Pinkie Keen" as a 'Dash'. But overwhelmingly, Pinkie seemed to be calling her by her full name in every other episode I looked at. So I'm switching to Dashie (and thank you for that), but I'm actually backpedaling a lot of it back to a full "Rainbow Dash" or removing the name from conversation all together.
Aw man, I was going to do something like this. Ah well, kudos to you on a job well done.
2076156
And Tank sounds like Farnsworth and Dash is Ruby Rod and she likes him because he's super green oh god make it stop
I think a lot of people had this idea between Daring Do and Rainbow's off-hand remarks about her novel but I'm really happy with the way you're doing it. The only thing that jumped out to me was that the beginning of the second chapter felt like it was trying to re-establish the whole setup which would be continuous from chapter one, but that saiiiid...
I love how Rainbow is thinking about what she's writing and how she reacts to her friends and where that development might lead. It's what takes it from a cute gimmick to a story I'm really looking forward to seeing how it plays out.
Its official: pinkie is a best selling secret author
Please tell me there's more to this.
2076785
Eyup. The plan is for eight chapters total, and I know what I want to do with each of the remaining ones. It's just a matter of getting them to the point I'm happy with them. I'm hoping, but not promising, to have Chapter 5 online sometime tomorrow, and the others within the next couple weeks as my writing schedule permits.
2076156
I thought Morgan Freeman was supposed to take over voicing Twilight in Season 4 though...
2076252
And now I can't get it out of my head either! Aagh! I'm trying to write more over here, and now Rainbow Dash wants everything to be green!
2076885
Rarity can't work like this! Green is NOT her color!
Wait, Tank has a character tag, but half the popular background characters don't? Come on!
2076885
Good, because I'm liking it.
This story reminds me why I like Rainbow Dash. She is brash and a competitor all the way through, but there's times where she's more adorkable than Twilight.
Rochefort? As like the Rochefort from the Three Musketeers?! As the Rainbow Dash herself would say: "This is going to be so awesome!"
Also does the whole "
turtletortoise vs bunny" thing is reference to a certain story involving a running competion?2078270
Uhh... Yeah! That's the ticket!
Truthfully, it might have been in the back of my mind when I named him that. But I mostly did it because I thought Rainbow Dash wouldn't be above picking a cool-sounding name, even if it was a moldy, pungent French cheese.
Tank was forced to fight in the style of his forebearers. Sighting a clump of ninja-bunnies clustered down the corridor, Tank ran forward and kicked off with his left foot a moment before tucking his head and all his limbs into his shell. The shell rocketed along the ground, spinning faster and faster until it crashed into the cluster of ninja-bunnies.
Hell yeah, go Tank!
Wait... Tank has hands?
Now I'm imagining Tank as Dangeresque. This story is awesome.