Oh my god what a perfect night it was like the Grand Galloping Gala I swear

Suit and tie with a girl by my side pulling up in a limo

Sucks for the people who didn't get to go or chose not to go

EDIT: Totally gonna write some high school prom story now

Response:

Pre-reader Air Pirate here. I'm conditionally accepting this for posting, but there are a few grammatical issues you should iron out first. This is not a strike.

>Pegasi /Pegasus

These aren't capitalized, just like you wouldn't write "Human" rather than "human." Spellcheckers assume that "pegasus" is incorrect because it thinks you're referring to Pegasus, the singular creature from Greek myth, not a type of pony.

>A few flap of my wings

I think you mean "flaps."

>"H-Hey!"

Generally, I don't see repeated instances on a stutter still capitalized unless they're proper nouns.

>I grabbed him and held up at hoofs' length.

Presumably, you meant "hoof's," but wouldn't foreleg/arm/leg make more sense? A hoof really isn't that long.

>We're best buds, but...," he trailed off, pointing at a clock,

The comma isn't needed here. An ellipses is sufficient to connect dialogue to attribution.

>"Hey there",

Generally speaking, commas and other punctuation go inside quotation marks, particularly when it's dialogue, even if that dialogue is a quick quote in the middle of a sentence.

The style was a bit difficult to wrap my head around, and I still think it'd be improved with more description so readers have a clearer idea of where Soarin' is in each scene. However, a lot of this really works pretty well to convey his state of mind.

Just give this a few editing passes and send it back in, and it'll get posted after we give it another quick look. Feel free to reply to this email if you've any questions.

Signed,

Pre-reader Air Pirate

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

no

EDIT: For all the slow ones, if hilarity does indeed ensue, you shouldn't have to say it. Case in point, me.

Because bored

Skype: dhuynh95

It began with a kiss. Though admittedly, every single one of our encounters began with a kiss. That was all it took. The precursor to this initial meeting of our lips was hard to pin down. Maybe it was the way the shadows complimented her face, the way the light made her seem so mysterious and brooding and sexy. Maybe it was the way our bodies seemed to mesh together, our coats rubbing and our flesh warm and soft. Maybe it was the hesitation with that first kiss, a palpable tension that was to be relieved, or our carnal desires. Our breaths would hitch as we gazed into each others' eyes. Sometimes she would take charge and kiss me first. But when I felt dominant, I would take her by surprise.

This time, we had been sitting side-by-side in bed together. Me, idly turning the pages of a book I'd stopped reading half an hour ago. Vinyl, her eyes closed and a pair of headphones on.

And then it came. Arousal. There was no emotion to this. It was a purely physical response to some of the lewd thoughts I'd been harboring as of late. There was a tingle between my legs, and I began to feel blood flowing.

I wanted her.

Response:

Dear Dennis the Menace,

Thank you for taking the time to submit this work to us here at the fan fiction desk at Equestria Daily! It is good to hear from you again! We apologize that it has taken so long to get back to you, but our staff is overwhelmed at the moment with an obscenely long submission queue.

We went through this story and found it quite humorous. We are more than a little concerned about the abundance of needless parenthesis, single-line paragraphs, and alliterations and onomatopoeia (such as long strings of capital E's). We do, however, concede that such things are part of the pacing of such a work, and is part of your writing style. Is there anything that could be done to rein in such examples, though, as they feel awkward, and draw the reader out of the work.

Our primary concern is how out of character Celestia is made to be. Atticus certainly has gotten under her skin, but the reader is left to wonder why. The idea of Celestia reacting as she has tends to fall over into the unbelieveable. The reader must be given some way of rectifying their canon understanding of Tia with the one you are representing. A deeper submergence into her psyche than you've suggested would certainly help, and would be a great way to add some more humor.

This is not a bad story in any sense, it simply presents the reader with certain hurdles. In it's present form it is a good story, but it could be great... and we post great stories, as you are aware. This is the story's first strike, and we wish you the best of luck with your revisions!

She grinned, a pair of fangs poking out from her mouth. Her slitted golden eyes flashed, and I could have sworn that I'd seen a forked snake tongue. She tossed her head, blowing her short spiky cobalt mane.

I opened my mouth, ready to let out a bloodcurdling scream. Then I stopped. I paused, and cracked open an eye. A friendly face grinned back. A pair of golden eyes, a deep amber color with slits for pupils. A toothy smile, a pair of sharp canine fangs poking out from her lips. A coat dark as night, sort of. Cute ruffled ears.

“Hey.”

My ear perked. “Hey?”

She reached down, offering me a hoof. I hooked my hoof around hers and pulled myself up.

“Hey!” she said again, smiling a little wider. “Nice to meet you!” Her wings suddenly sprang out and made me flinch again.

I let out a cry. Pegasi had a tendency of doing that, talking with their wings. But these weren’t your normal, run-of-the-mill feathery wings. They were bat wings that rustled like leather when they unfurled and folded. I could count the number of bones she had in her wings when they were outstretched. Her skin was stretched across thin. It was eerie.

“Nice to meet you too,” I started, “um?”

“I’m the goddamn Batmare!” she squeaked, making me jump again.

I frowned. “Really?”

She giggled. “No. I’m Nocturne.”

“Nocturne, huh. Vinyl Scratch,” I said, extending a hoof. “So, are you a…”

“A bat pony?”

“I was going to say Night Guard, but sure, bat pony,” I blushed.

Nocturne puffed out her chest, standing with her head tilted with her nose in the air. “Luna’s Night Guard, 5th Battalion, at your service!”

“Where’s the cool armor?”

“I don’t wear it all the time, silly,” Nocturne giggled. “I’m a huge fan, Vinyl Scratch.”

I was pretty sure this was coming from the mare standing solitary in the corner of the room not dancing, but I believed her.

“What’s your favorite song?”

Nocturne stumbled. “Huh?”

“Your favorite song,” I repeated, my voice trailing off. I shouldn’t have put her on the spot like that. “Never mind.”

She scrunched her nose and sniffed. “Do you have a dog?”

Dog. Canine. Wolf. Lycan. Octavia. Secret. Promise. My thoughts had become shorts bursts, sporadic key words. I froze. There was an awkward pause in the conversation as I gulped, clenching my jaw.

“A-A dog?” I shook my head. “No, no!”

Nocturne sniffed again, leaning a bit closer. “Are you sure? The nose knows.”

Did all these Night Guards have hyper sensitive senses or something?

“Pretty sure,” I lied.

“Been ‘round any dog parks lately?”

“N-Nope!”

This was starting to seem less like a conversation and more like an interrogation.

Nocturne squinted her eyes in a vicious look, as if testing me. I realized how dangerous she was. These Night Guards, heck, even Royal Guards themselves, were all trained soldiers.

Then she smiled again. She threw a hoof around my neck and gave me a playful nudge.

“O-kay, Vinyl Scratch. See you ‘round. C’mon Apollo.”

Apollo?

“Of course,” a low, mellow voice rumbled beside me.

I didn’t even scream. My skeleton only jumped out of my skin when a stallion with the same coat and eye colors as Nocturne appeared next to me in a shadowy wisp. I was most definitely intimidated. I cowered a little bit. His expression was unchanging and almost lethargic.

“Bye Vinyl,” Nocturne said, waving. “Gonna keep an eye on you.”

“Stay safe, Vinyl Scratch,” Apollo said. “There are things that lurk in the night.”

Hey! I'm...not dead? Gonna keep this short and sweet, but I just went through a week of hell for finals, so that's almost over. Saturday, I've got myself a nice suit and a date to Winter Formal, but Sunday I expect to be back into the swing of things with The Girl with the Lyre Tattoo.

My Roommate is a Lycan? What can I say? No inspiration, no ideas. I saved the documents and if you so feel inclined to see who our little fanged friend was I'll give it to you. Maybe I'll even let you steal it and write it on your own!

My only defense is that I shouldn't feel happy when I delete a story. I just shouldn't. But when I did, it was like a huge pressure was being taken off.

In addition, I'm somewhat thinking about letting you all have my Skype. Just for fun, to chat, ask me questions, whatever.

Response:

Thank you for submitting to Equestria Daily! Unfortunately, I am unable to recommend your story for posting. You will find my notes detailing why below. Please note that the technical issues are only a selection and should not be treated as a comprehensive list.

>In this case, walking with two feet, and as such, she had learned to crawl on the sidewalk before dragging herself into a godforsaken alley to freeze to death.//

Awkward sentence construction here. It’s unclear and too broken. I would just suggest splitting it in two without the awkward (and stacked) conjunctions

>A single drop turned into a drizzle, a sprinkle, then a downpour, soaking her mane.//

You have a tendency to tack clauses on the end of descriptions like this one in a very jarring and unclear manner. This often goes past what I would excuse on behalf of style. Keep it clear, keep it smooth.

>"Beautiful," she whispered, her lips parting like a fish out of water.//

This is very odd/out of place simile. You have this poignant imagery going, then you nuke it with a very bizarre description that is more comical than anything.

>He thought about calling them all the way in Paris,//

Awkward here, and it’s not terribly clear either.

>but he felt a little selfish for thinking that way//

Very dull and quite tell-y. This kind of issue in your introspective narration pops up again.

>The fact that Adrian was getting a glimpse at the first naked girl he would ever see in his entire life was outweighed by the fact that she was the first naked girl he had ever seen in his entire life//

This is very awkward and not terribly clear

>She...wasn't //

Be consistent with your ellipsis use. Either having a space or not afterwards is both fine, but be consistent with whatever one you choose

>As quick as he could he slid into the driver's seat,//

Missing a comma after ‘could’, or just nix the prepositional phrase entirely. I personally would go with that second option.

>Questions ran through his mind.//

Very dull. This is an example of taking short, sharp sentences too far. This kind of information could be presented in a myriad of ways more interesting than this. Even something simple like describing how the questions make him feel (‘Questions ran though his mind like a…’, for example) would improve it.

>yanking it a bit harshly.//

Awkward and kind of nonsensical

>a tear running down her face. Perhaps the rain.//

The fragment here is too disconnected from the prior sentence to make it work well enough to get me to ignore the fact that it’s a fragment.  I would suggest wording it as ‘Perhaps it was just the rain’ or something.

Okay, I am going to stop listing specific examples now. The prose isn’t too bad, honestly. I always have been a fan of short, sharp sentences, and there are times you use them to great effect. My problem is that there are also times where the prose becomes quite messy and a little too jarring. The examples I have listed above are generally indicative of issues that pop up more than once, so please look carefully for the rest!

However, the prose is not the reason I am rejecting the story.

There are two more general points that I want you to consider. The first is bad exposition/scene setting. The second is poor pacing stemming from poorly executed tension in the plot.

You have a tendency to launch into long paragraphs when describing something for the fist time, whether it is a city, a person, or even a room. When you do this, you tend to list features, which is incredibly boring. As a general rule of thumb, keep your exposition and scene building short, concise and emotive, only picking out significant or important features specifically. Use broad strokes and general language to paint a picture of something, rather than listing all of its features. Get me to imagine the thing you are describing rather than just telling me.

For an example (from your own story) where scene building was done nicely, see here:

>His neighborhood could easily be described as suburban, comfortable and homogeneous in nature. The people here were friendly, their lawns were trimmed, and their houses well-kept. At the same time the phrase, "Good fences make good neighbors", was taken to heart.//

Good description here. Not too long and it paints a far broader, more emotive picture. It instantly lets the readers to fill in the details with their imaginations in the way you want them to rather than listing unnecessary detail (the last comma is unnecessary, though).

I see that done well, therefore I know you can do better, so why would you settle for less? Keep it concise, keep it necessary (half of the description of his home city just seems superfluous and could easily be shortened), and keep it engaging. It gets boring otherwise.

Finally, and this is easily the most significant point, the execution needs some work. This story is derivative of a kind of premise that has been done a lot, and so in order to get this story to stand out, the execution needs to be stellar. Except, I am currently constantly losing interest as I read, struggling to find the will the click past chapter three.

At the end of the day, you aren’t selling the tension right. This is unfortunate because you get off to a decent start (the prologue is very nicely done, for example), but after he picks her up, all of the suspicion and questions and confusion that would only be natural seem to get washed over. That’s not to say they aren’t there at all, they just aren’t being sold well enough.

The situation you are writing about is crazy. It’s about a teenager finding a naked girl who has no memory of anything and taking her in and looking after her. It’s so unrealistic. However, that doesn’t mean it can’t be done in a way that is well done or entertaining.

But what it does mean is that you have to make the emotion believable. You have to sell the fact that the main character should be filled with trepidation and confusion and suspicion, and that’s not something that will go away overnight. You started doing this decently when he first finds her, but then he gives her a bath and suddenly all of that melts away. Then literally overnight most of that tension is gone beside a few lingering questions that aren’t terribly engaging. I can buy that he might start feeling more comfortable, but it’s just moving too quickly at the moment.

Because of this, the tension holding the plot up doesn’t feel real, and that’s where this story falls down. And when I combine this with the fact that the main character is quite boring, it leaves the entire story with a lot to be desired.

That’s not to say that there isn’t any tension, just that the execution needs to be improved to make this story stand out. You have chosen to work with a premise that is quite hard to pull off, so I wish you good luck.

It is worth noting that humanised stories are technically banned from Equestria Daily. There are exceptions to this rule, but only if the stories in question are technically exceptional and work hard to impress us. Frankly, it's a high standard to meet. We decided to give yours a shot, and while your story is decent, it's certainly not remarkable either and not quite there just yet.

However, I also know that there are moments where your writing is entertaining and effective, and I think you show real promise, so I am going to keep your strikes alive. If you want, try to address the issues I have, send it back and I will look at it again. The beginning needs to be stronger, but I think you can pull it off.

This is your first strike out of three.

All the best,

- Pre-reader lost in Middle-Earth

http://muffinsforever.deviantart.com/#/d5lsops

Give all of your love. This image deserves this blog post. It is absolutely perfect. Tell them I sent you!

And as a side note for my readers of Lyra's juicy ass, don't stop commenting! It's the only way I can interact with you and feel loved...

:(