Weast? · 12:46pm Jan 26th, 2013
Arrr, lads and lasses, we be goin' to find th' treasure! I brought us th' map, here, leads us straight to th' Melodia App'ratus EqD submission, arr! Have a look, ladies;
Good morning, afternoon, evening, or what have you! I am the pre-reader who is also a bear. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend your story for posting at this moment. Here are some of the reasons why:
> It was a cool day, though the day wasn’t there for long, as Twilight began to eat away at it, turning it a vibrant purple and orange.
Purple indeed, though this is not the purple unicorn you know and love. Also, Twilight should be twilight.
> A blue bird had flown by my window, on the breeze, with a nut.
Bluebird? One word?
> Anyway, I went and fetched them from my cabinet, and was
No comma.
> ... suddenly, through my mailslot, slipped a little piece of paper folded tightly into an envelope.
Your independent clause seems to be missing its subject.
> ... but I made due.
... but I made do.
> ... headache-in-music-form.
This wraps around in a rather aesthetically displeasing way in your Google Doc. I imagine you had trouble figuring out how to fix that, and if you have, you can fix this by putting zero-width spaces after the hyphens in this word.
> But instead, she went right to Vinyl and whispered something in her ear, who in turn whispered her reply.
If it's as loud as you make it out to be, would they have heard anything whispering?
- You seem to use a lot of:
-- Directly addressing the reader.
-- Parentheticals, with actual parentheses.
Neither are bad, and at times, you use them to good effect. However, you seem to do so a bit too often, as at points the narrative becomes less Octavia telling a story and more Octavia just talking.
- Could use more focused description of setting. Octavia's current way of telling the reader about places quickly pushes them aside for what happens next, which would be great if she were telling the reader a much shorter story by mouth.
- Octavia doesn't seem to show much affect with respect to her terminal illness. "By the way, I'm dying."
- Sound effects in prose, taking up entire paragraphs. While I'm not a fan of them, they seem really out of place in your story since your story's supposed to be Octavia logging her experiences or something.
- Out of place Portal reference. (Really, if you were going to try to shoehorn in a Portal reference, why not the turrets?)
Mostly minor grammar things and the description thing, which should be fairly simple fixes. If you need help with grammar, you can go to MLPChan's or Ponychan's /fic/ boards for one-on-one help. Send this back with fixes and it should be good to post.
Not bad, eh? I have a few gripes, some being that a) Octavia isn't much affected by the fact that she's dying, 'cause she's known it for a long while now, an just wants to live her life with, and b) I wasn't trying t'a "shoehorn" a portal reference--I felt it might be cute to add it--but rather, it fit. Shoehorning refers to forcing for appeal to the audience, and as much of you might know by now, I had sworn up, down, left, right, east, and weast (yes, weast; it's where the treasure is) that I wasn't going to post it, and I also don't think it was forced. Logic core, emotion's processor, companion cube--seems logical. (I also have no clue where he suggested placing the portal turrets, because as far as I know I haven't added any cute bullet-hoses to the story...).
Anyways, he's made some valid points, and I'm aware of the grammar mistakes that litter the story. We'll talk and hammer some things out, I just figured I'd see what you all thought. Also, I won't be here this week; I'm leaving tonight at 12:30, to go to a huge debate, so wish me luck ^.^
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Sometimes it's the stupid things <3
It's my understanding that brackets go within the sentence they belong to.
Out of place Portal reference (Really, if you were going to try to shoehorn in a Portal reference, why not the turrets?).
Actually you had that one right. The prereader is wrong on this one.
This one could technically be right. Instead of bluebird (the species), it is talking about a bird that is blue.
I agree with you on this one. She's been like that for a while, so she has come to accept it. I don't see how that wouldn't be obvious.
Not entirely sure what he meant by that first part, she is logging her experiences and maybe the sounds we're just something that made an impact on her and that is reflecting in her storytelling. That, or she just really likes sound. I don't know.
While I'm not overly sure how much I agree with some of the stuff, it's him who decides this stuff not me. I hope you get all this stuff fixed and this makes it to EqD. I look forward to more writing from you
Not sure how he (or she ?) wanted you to try and put in the turrets. I personally enjoyed the references, and it didn't feel like they were forced in.
Good luck with the debate
What's the debate about? (It's the only thing that hadn't been commented on at the time of reading)
i missed the portal reference what was it?
It seemed to me that she wasn't terribly affected by having a terminal illness because she's telling us a story that had already happened. Why would she be affected by a terminal illness she no longer has?
I see his points... except for blue bird/bluebird anyway.
Good luck with resubmission