Learning Experiences and Future Projects. · 8:35pm Apr 7th, 2012
For those who were interested, it looks like A Bluebird's Song won't be popping up on Equestria Daily as yet.
I won't copypaste the response, because I doubt the prereader who took the time to do it would appreciate me bunging it up onto the internet. However, the general gist implied that it was almost there, but with a few problems. The writing was described as decent, which I'm kind of pleased with but I fully intend to improve on. If I want to get it posted, the main things I've got to do is tone down the over-describing, and comb it for cheesiness and cliches, which I definitely agree are floating around in there and need fixing. The choice at this point is to give up, or up my game, and I intend to do the latter if at all possible.
The only point from the prereading that I would tend to dispute was that he/she thought the TwiDash, particularly Twilight's confession at the end of Chapter 4, felt rushed and without precedent. I must admit, that part was deliberately intended to seem a bit of a face-heel turn on the part of Twilight, and I imagined her thought processes were more altruistic than romantic at the time. (IE: Twilight wanted to prove to Dash that she didn't want her to change, rather than specifically wanting to admit her own attraction, which obviously happened at the same time.) I intended for it to appear that the burgeoning relationship was a welcome side effect of the kiss, rather than the main intention of it. To be fair, it was only inspected up to Chapter 4, which doesn't really give a full idea of the context of the kiss, but I'm obviously not going to blame the pre-reader for that, because it's not their job to plough through the whole thing like a proofreader.
I'd appreciate some more feedback/opinions on the TwiDash issue, actually. On one hand, I'm loathe to edit it because I'm actually pretty happy with how it turned out, but on the other hand I don't want the romance plot to be hamstrung by a rushed or otherwise iffy start.
All in all, I'm pleased with the response despite the rejection, because it gives me a chance to take a step back and look at my work through the eyes of an outsider. I don't want to annoy all you readers and interrupt the flow of chapter release by retconning in massive edits right now, which would doubtless mean no new chapters for a few weeks. Instead, I plan to get the whole thing finished before going back and patching things up. That means if I decide to try for EqD again, it probably won't be for a couple of months, and I'll be submitting a finished product next time.
Also, one last quick note to say that I'm working on a side-project, which will probably run to about 10-20k words, and is a 'Young Celestia' story, because over the course of writing A Bluebird's Song, she's become easily my favourite character to write for. It will quite probably include at least a mention of Discord, but don't worry, it's not DiscoLestia.
If you read this far, thanks for getting through such a horribly long blog post. The new chapter is well underway, but due to delays caused by Easter-related family visits, it's still taking shape.
DiscoLestia sounds like Celestia went to a Disco :|
I've reread the end of chapter 4 and I say I gotta agree with the prereader there. Well, partially. I think the part that makes Twilight's actions seem too rushed is the line “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I am.” After that it reads like she's lunging herself at Dash, kissing her a little too forcefully. I think if you want it to feel like you described up there, here's what I propose:
- Have them sitting close together. Well, okay, they are already, but expand upon that. What I always like to use in those situations is feeling the other one's breath on one's face. Twilight is already overcome with emotion and being very close to Dash while they're talking and she's telling her story makes it look less like her feelings come about with a romantic intent.
- Ditch the line I quoted above and change the end of the paragraph above it to something like: All she wanted, now more than anything, was to make Dash’s life a little brighter and see a smile on her friend's face again. (Bold parts are my changes.) Also, I'd say, change what Dash says before that from “Twilight, are you saying…?” to maybe "Twilight, what are you saying?" or "Twilight, what do you mean?" The way it is now, I think is too ambiguous, if that's the right word. I was thinking, Well, what is she saying? Does Twilight love her, too? Like her really much?
What Dash is asking her implies that she has an idea herself about what Twilight means, but I can't think of anything she could infer from what Twilight said before that, other than thinking, Wait, does she love me/have a crush on me, too? And Twi basically confirms that with her “Yes, I am.”, which kinda contradicts what's stated in the paragraph above that.
- The kiss at the end makes it too dynamic. In my opinion, if Twilight really only wanted to cheer Dash up in a more ... engaging way, she'd do it slowly and gently. Maybe have her place a hoof on the back of Dash's neck first and then going for the goods. I dunno. I don't really have a good suggestion for this part.
Well, these are my 2% of a Dollar. I'm surprised the prereader even read until chapter 4. And in case you're wondering: I'm still working on the drawing. The ground in it gave me a lot of trouble.
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Thanks a lot for the feedback, fresh eyes are always useful for things like this. I've gone back and had a re-read of it myself, and I'd agree that it's those few lines that cause most of the trouble. On reflection, it does seem a bit too forward for Twilight, even despite her state of mind at the time. I had her lunging instead of taking it slow, because I wanted it to come across as an 'oh, what the hell, go for it' kind of decision, rather than something premeditated.
I like the idea of having more of a buildup, perhaps exploring Twilight's motives a bit more clearly, and I think your dialogue alterations flow a lot better than what's currently there. Currently, I think it feels that the mood transition from 'sad/exasperated' to 'romantic' happens too suddenly, rather than the gradual shift that should probably happen.The difficulty with adding a buildup is that I'm pretty sure Twilight would chicken out if she'd given herself time to psych herself up and think about what she was going to do. I imagine, with the scene as it is now, that the kiss takes Twilight as much by surprise as it does Dash. I'm sure there'll be a way to get around that without Twilight seeming out of character, though.
Regarding the "Twilight, are you saying...?" line, in my head that was in reaction to Twilight suddenly blurting out that she 'couldn't live without [Dash]'. I guess that does seem kind of unclear exactly what she's referring to, though.
Anyhow, once the main story's done I'll run through a few new iterations of that scene and try to strike a balance between 'impulsive' and 'not-too-rushed'. Also, I'll probably poke the good folks over at Ponychan to see if I can grab a few reviews.
Drawing-wise, I'm really looking forward to seeing the finished product. I hope the ground isn't proving too annoying.
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The reviewers on ponychan tend to not like having already long stories thrown at them, since they're usually busy with enough others. I guess you could get the samurai - he doesn't care how long a story is. But he is very, very thorough and already has a good amount on his list, so you'd probably get a review for your 100k+ word story sometime around 2014. Many reviewers also focus more on how it's written rather than the story itself and I doubt you'd go back and change important points in the early chapters. But having someone go through looking for wordings and awkward phrases and such can't be a bad idea.
You could ask Applejinx for his thoughts about how you handled the characters in select chapters. He specializes in that.
And don't worry. I'l finish the drawing ... eventually. I just made the ground a little too realistic for what I intended. But you can admire my other TwiDash in the meantime.
Thanks for the recommendation, I'll probably try and chase up Applejinx about it. My main plan is getting a check-through of just the first few chapters, rather than spending years looking for someone who'll plough through a story of this length. If I can get a feel for what kind of recursive issues crop up early on, doubtless those problems will continue throughout the story so I'll know what to look for when I'm on an editing spree.