Novel Tale sat behind a table just inside the entrance of the Canterlot Bookstore. His latest book in a series of mystery novels had come out just a few weeks before, and that meant book signing time. Every book of his had a book signing or two to go with it, something he had been doing since he first came to Canterlot and started writing, about ten years ago. The book signing was going to end in another hour and there wasn't anypony with a book for him to sign at the moment, but he had a strong feeling that was going to change very soon.
Sure enough, a lavender unicorn mare with a deep blueish mane with a pink and purple stripe in it walked through the door. It always pleased Novel to know that he had a minor celebrity and the personal student of Princess Celestia as one of his fans.
She looked around for a moment before she saw Novel and her eyes lit up. A book levitated out of her saddlebags as she trotted up to the table.
“Hello, Novel! I've got your latest book here, ready to be signed!”
Novel smiled, always happy to see his biggest fan. “Hello, Twilight. The book signing is almost over. I was starting to think you might not show up." His smile turned to a smirk as he took the book and a nearby quill with his magic. "That would have been a first!”
“Oh, I'd never miss one of your book signings!" Twilight said excitedly. "I just decided to visit my parents while I was in Canterlot and it took a little longer than planned. You know how doting parents can be!”
Novel nodded knowingly. “That they can. I take it you enjoyed my latest story?”
“Very much so! I found the story to be just as engaging as always!” Twilight said enthusiastically.
Novel chuckled. “Twilight, you have no idea how much I appreciate your enthusiasm.”
Twilight grinned. “In fact, I think this may be my favorite one yet! I especially liked that changeling creature you introduced!”
“Oh, really?”
“Really! I thought it was so interesting, I decided to do some research on them! However, even the Canterlot Archives only had some vague references to them as mythological creatures. It seems that their being shape-changing emotion-eaters is the only point that anypony can agree on. Descriptions of them were extremely vague and conflicting beyond that.”
Novel passed the now-signed book back to Twilight. “Well, yes, that was where I got the idea from.”
“That just makes it so much more amazing that you were able to flesh them out so well! I mean, looking like insectoid ponies with wings and horns? Legs full of holes? Ruled over by a queen changeling? However did you come up with those sorts of things?” Twilight asked as she put the book back in her saddlebags.
Novel waved a hoof dismissively. “Oh, you know, just a very active imagination is all."
"Well, that active imagination is what makes you one of my favorite fiction authors, Novel! You shouldn't sell yourself short like that!"
Novel gave Twilight a sincere smile. "Thanks, Twilight. That means a lot to me. I hope to see you at my next book signing!”
“You can be sure I'll be there, Novel!” Twilight responded as she turned to leave.
Twilight wasn't the first pony to ask him about the changeling creature he had introduced in his latest story. They all were convinced that he had a fantastic imagination to be able to come up with such a thing, even if he did have a basis in mythology to work from. He didn't think so. He had a good imagination, sure, but it wasn't that great.
Really, it was just a matter of writing what he knew.
Novel Tale arrived back at his home in Canterlot. He took off his saddlebags and left them on the couch in his living room, passed through his kitchen, and headed down a set of stairs into his cellar. Now sure that nopony could see him, a green fire began at the tip of his horn and rapidly raced down his body. His light grey coat, black mane and tail, and book and magnifying glass cutie mark were replaced by the black, hole filled carapace of a changeling with a light blue upper carapace plate and magenta eyes.
He trotted over to a pair of barrels against the far wall and opened one up, revealing it to be full of a green, semi-transparent, gel-like substance. His horn glowed and he began the process of transferring the emotional energy he had gathered at the book signing into the gel, just like he did after every book signing.
He meant what he had said to Twilight. She really didn’t have any idea how much he appreciated her enthusiasm and she hopefully never would. Every time he had a book signing, she was there, always giving off plenty of emotion, all directed at him. He had never met a mare, or any other pony for that matter, as enthusiastic about books as Twilight Sparkle and a lot of that enthusiasm for books thankfully transferred over to ponies who wrote them.
He grabbed a small jar of the green gel off a nearby shelf with his magic and trotted back upstairs, shifting back to Novel Tale as he did so. He levitated two slices of bread from the pantry and a knife from a nearby drawer and sat down at the table as he started spreading some of the green gel on the bread.
He took a bite of his gel sandwich and his eyes widened slightly. He looked to his sandwich in confusion. He didn’t remember having gathered any ambition lately. How long had that jar been sitting there? He shrugged as he continued to eat and his mind wandered to his most recent book.
It had been a calculated risk to introduce a changeling character in his latest story. There were some expectations on how much emotional energy he would bring back to the hive and interest in his series of books had been tapering off. Well, mostly tapering off. Twilight and a few others had still been loyally following his stories. He had needed to do something to renew interest. What better idea than to put a changeling in a mystery novel? He had realized his queen might dislike that idea as being too risky, so he hadn’t run it by her first. The way he saw it, as long as changelings remained creatures that, as far as ponies knew, only existed in mythology and old mares tales, nopony would think anything of it, and he’d be perfectly safe.
It would take something crazy, like changelings in their natural form attacking ponies in broad daylight, for his plan to backfire and for ponies to become suspicious of him. And there was no way that would ever happen in a million years.
Right?
This is your first time writing? it's pretty good ^w^ keep up the work, i'd love to read more
I am really enjoying this story.
It has a strong start and kept me wanting to read more. It's amazingly well written so please continue with your story of this changeling who is unaffiliated with Chrysalis.
Yes nurex ambition is delicious.
Two words. Love It!
I'll be honest, from my first overall view of the plot, I thought the story would be a rather slow paced and lacking story. But the number of views and good ratings encouraged me to give it a read. And after reading the entire story, although I'll admit that I usually don't enjoy these types of stories, this is one of the, if not the only, story that was able to neatly wrap up a conclusion without any side effects. Although it doesn't sound like much of a praise, this is my favorite story that i have read on this entire website. Bravo, you deserve a face, a like, a favorite, and maybe a follow if I can learn how to do that fancy shmancy stuff.
Don't get me wrong, I like the story, but that author's note alone tempted me to upvote. I resisted! But I expect a "real" upvote is coming soon.
Ok, I'm running on between 4 and 5 hours sleep, so I'll have to leave commenting on the higher-level, more abstract suggestions to a later date (and I may not be as eloquent and thorough as possible) but I'll probably be fairly busy for the next little while, so I figure I should at least do something useful today. When I can eventually spare some properly rested time, I'll re-read what I cover today to see if I can give anything more.
Also, don't take my over-explanation of various grammar rules personally. I don't know where your conscious knowledge of grammar ends and your intuitive knowledge begins and it's been my experience that, when I give people the "English grammar in plain English" crash course their high school English curriculum overcomplicated, it tends to really help.
Prologue:
Mixed-tenses typos. Should be "had".
While I'm sure an operatic reading of a novel would be an... interesting experience, I'm also sure you meant signing.
The comma shouldn't be there. (You don't need a comma after "but" and you're not using two commas to mark the insertion of a supplementary clause into the middle of a sentence that works perfectly well on its own)
If you can think of a phrasing which doesn't use "with a" twice in quick succession, this sentence will feel better.
Not a huge deal, but a phrasing that doesn't depend on the context to disambiguate the "is this one person with two statuses or two people with one status each" ambiguity in "a minor celebrity and the personal student of Princess Celestia" would make this sentence feel slightly more comfortable since it requires less effort to parse.
I can propose a new phrasing, but I'll need to know whether you want your phrasing to say that Twilight's minor celebrity is an effect of being Celestia's personal student (eg. "minor celebrity such as the personal student of Princess Celestia") or something Twilight has earned herself (eg. "the personal student of Princess Celestia (and also a minor celebrity in her own right)").
You only use a comma before "and" if you're listing three or more things (you're only listing two actions here) or it's the second comma in the matching pair that are used in a manner similar to parentheses around an inserted clause.
Also, I don't entirely trust myself on this, given that I don't have anything concrete to back it up, but, for some reason, it feels like it might flow more naturally like this despite it being longer:
She looked around for a moment before she saw Novel, and her eyes lit up, a book levitating out of her saddlebags as she trotted up to the table.
(It has to do with that sweet spot between "sentences are too many and too simple to feel like they flow ideally" and "the sentence is too long and complex to parse comfortably" but I'm worried that my evaluation of where that sweet spot lies may be compromised by my tiredness.)
Replace the semicolon with a period and capitalize "the".
You got the "a semicolon can only join two independent clauses" part right (it has to be used somewhere that would also make grammatical sense with a period) but you missed the other requirement.
A semicolon is used to indicate that there is an implicit coordinating conjunction (eg. and, or, but, nor, so, etc.) being conveyed by the speaker's tone of voice. (eg. "I like this; She likes that." is really "I like this but she likes that." and "It can be quick; It can be slow." is really "It can be quick or it can be slow.")
"You're later than usual" and "The book signing is almost over" don't gain that extra meaning from their relationship to each other.
To really drive the difference home, imagine saying "I like this" and "She likes that" about 30 seconds apart... and then keep that feeling of complete unrelatedness while saying them without the delay. That's what a period means in a situation where you are supposed to use a semicolon. (It also helps to explain why so many people fail to understand what they're used for. The simpler and more common the case, the more likely people are to not need the hint.)
Anyway, there is one other issue with that paragraph. I can't find any reading of “Hello, Twilight. You’re later than usual; the book signing is almost over. I was starting to think you might not show up. That would have been a first!” that makes it feel natural. (If you try reading it out loud as if you were voice-acting Novel in an audio drama, it becomes very obvious that it's too long-winded to feel realistic for a casual greeting between real people.)
How about just "Hello, Twilight. I was starting to think you might not show up. That would have been a first!" ...possibly with a chuckle in his voice? (Even if it didn't feel stunted to have so many unconnected sentences in a single greeting, "You're later than usual" and "the book signing is almost over" are implicit from "I was starting to think you might not show up.", given what the reader infers about the history between the two characters.)
Again, drop the comma.
"shape-changing" and "emotion-eaters".
Hyphens are used to explicitly show how your nouns and adjectives group together to form compound adjectives. (For illustrative purposes, look at "hot blooded male". Is the male hot and blooded or does the male have blood that is hot? For the former, you write "hot, blooded male" to make their mutual independence explicit by clarifying that it's a list of simple adjectives. For the latter, you write "hot-blooded" to make it explicit that "hot" modifies "blooded" rather than "male".)
The one potential tripping point is that you don't use a hyphen for adverbs ("rapidly running stream" rather than "rapidly-running stream") because "rapidly stream" makes no sense, so there's no doubt that "rapidly" is modifying "running".
"Oh, you know." and "Just a very active imagination is all." are both independent clauses. Use a period after "know".
(Remember, "<subject> <intransitive verb>" (you know) or "<subject> <transitive verb> <object>" (imagination is all). You need a conjunction like "and", "but", "after", or "because" to have more than one verb in a single sentence. A comma isn't enough.
You only attach an interjection to a sentence using a comma if it's part of the same thought. "Thanks" and "That means a lot to me" are separate thoughts, so you use a period after "Twilight".
For example, interjections like "Thanks", "Hi", "Bye", and "Ugh" almost never get joined with anything other than the name of the person being spoken to. ("Thanks, I think." is the only exception that readily comes to mind.)
Interjections like "Yeah" and "Hey" are commonly seen both with and without a comma because they can either be complete ideas or attached onto another sentence to alter the feel of it.
For example, "Yeah, that's a good idea." ("Yeah" is flowed into "That's a good idea" which makes it sound distracted, dismissive, or hurried.) versus "Yeah. That's a good idea." ("Yeah" is read as a separate sentence from "That's a good idea." Makes it sound engaged/agreeing/encouraging.) That gives expressiveness while still leaving the presence or absence of exclamation marks free to indicate how excited/engaged/emphatic the speaker is.
The comma after "with" is unnecessary and, when the reader is paying attention, introduces a wrong-feeling semantic pause. Just remove it and everything is fine.
"green, semi-transparent, gel-like substance" (You're applying three independent adjectives to "substance" and two of them are compound, so use hyphens and commas to make that properly explicit)
...and, in case you weren't sure, there are no hyphens or commas in the phrase "three independent compound adjectives" because there's only one simple adjective. counts like "three" aren't adjectives unless they're part of a compound adjective like "three-toed" and "compound" is part of the compound noun "compound adjective", not an adjective of its own.
(They're "compound adjectives", not "adjectives" which are "compound"... and you don't normally use hyphens when building compound nouns. However, given that no training or certification is needed to name something, I'm sure some using hyphens do exist.)
No comma.
This feels awkward because, intuitively, "just like he did after every book signing" should be modifying the action he performs but, instead, your grammar has it modifying "he felt", which is a side-effect. (If the transfer of energy were something someone else triggered without him being able to stop or control it, then "he felt" would become a surrogate "action he performs" and it would feel right that way.)
Period, not semicolon and remove the comma after enthusiasm.
An argument could be made that they'd make sense with a conjunction like "for" in place of the semicolon, but it's a stretch which reminds me of counter-productive, archaic sounding pedantry like the grammar joke in Beavis and Butthead Do America.
I feel I should mention this one just because it took me so much longer than usual to conclude that it's fine and someone else might point it out as a false mistake. (Specifically, it's fine as long as you meant "all directed at him" to be a stylistic contraction of "and all of it directed at him" so that the sentence can be interpreted as a list of clauses rather than a comma-separated mass of sentence fragments.)
Remove the comma.
"upstairs"
No comma.
Period, not semicolon.
"might not like the idea as being to risky" makes no grammatical sense.
At the very least, use "dislike" or "disapprove of" and "for" instead of "not like" and "as", but I highly recommend one of these instead:
"might consider the idea too risky"
"might veto the idea for being too risky"
"hadn't run" (You want the past participle, not the past simple)
If you're ever unsure, I suggest using verbix (eg. run). It also does other languages you may or may not find useful, such as latin)
Don't start a sentence with "And". You're trying to convey a sense of another clause being added as an afterthought after a moment of pause, so use "...and".
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well that wasn't quite what I was expecting for feedback
you are right though. English never was a great topic for me, and my knowledge is mostly intuitive, as you put it. I have educated myself quite a bit on the subject since I began writing (you shoulda seen my very first rough draft...), but most of what you've explained there went over my head.
I still appreciate the feedback nonetheless.
all that being said, I do have two point of contention.
are you sure? Because the pause feels very right to me.
This is one point I did do some research on, and I've read in more than a few places that it's okay to start sentences with "and," "but," "so," etc., despite what most English teaches would tell you.
Well so far so good, you have my interest,
*Next chapter and away!*
Meanwhile, Novel Tale is silently laughing his plot off..
In the immortal words of Elan the bard, "A 10% chance is pretty unlikely, but everyone knows that a one-in-a-million chance is a sure thing!"
That being said, this is really well written. You hooked me. On to chapter 2.
You have my undivided attention, and that never happens!
This is going to be one sweet ride, I can feel it!
My favourite part:
Just... that line
This has been on my "to read" list for a long time and I am glad that I am finally reading it. This looks really good.
Only thing I am concerned about: It seems that the queen knows what he is doing. Or at least knows that he is there and is a writer. I wonder how that is going to play out.
3748900 Well it does now! :D
I am hooked.
INCOMING INCOMING MURHY STRIKE DETECTED!
4980912 *Air-raid siren*
Ha, I had adream in a dream a few weeks ago...
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAA!!! He has no idea how wrong he is. XD
Somewhere deep in the badlands, a Changeling queen erupted into a massive sneezing fit...
NEK MINNIT.
Wow, first story ever and it ends up with a 69:1 like-dislike ratio. If anyone's got raw talent hidden away, it's you. But that aside, great set up. I look forward to reading more!
That gel was interesting. To me it sounded like he (meaning in his body) dumps all the emotions into one barrel so where did he get the jelly jar of emotions?
I liked that part too. I liked the idea that the changeling didn't just eat all the emotions straight away but when you think about it it makes to store some of it.
Headcanon: You, the author, are also a changeling.
4643409 Hello hooked, I am dad.
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Why did you name me this way?
[youtube=8l6T3fwxAyw]
Joke is at 0:27
5588419 A perfect case of Dramatic Irony.
This prologue just tells me : Something is going to go so very wrong
Re-reading this and... I JUST REMEMBERED HOW WELL WRITTEN THIS IS! HOLY SHIT WHY DO YOU WASTE YOU'RE POTENTIAL ON SUCH TRIVIAL THINGS AND NOT EXPANDING THIS UNIVERSE THAT YOU HAVE SO MASTERFULLY CRAFTED?!?
oi55.tinypic.com/2yvvuyf.jpg
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i.imgur.com/7aypHeo.png
...And then Thorax proves changelings can be trusted - it's only their queen that cannot.
Aaaaaaaand jinxed.
This is a novel idea.
Only just heard of this story, hooked by the end of the first chapter.
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the picture you linked has gone, but the error message it has left is still appropriate to your comment
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over a year later and i say the same. just came across this recently and already am highly interested.
HAhahaha weeeellll
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Yeah, same here. Good intro hook!
Nnnnnooooo, there's no way a comfortable life could be disrupted!
Always fun to visit archived stories from the BTA, let's go!
I mean, valid. It's the sane thing. Nobody kicks over the sandcastle, everyone can keep on.
Negative emotions might be useful for forging weapons or charging munitions, but in most depictions you can't eat it.