First Impression Critique - Reality check - By ColdHandsNoHeart

First Impression Critique - Reality check - by ColdHandNoHeart

Link to story: http://www.fimfiction.net/story/178289/reality-check
Link to Fimfiction's Writing Guide: http://www.fimfiction.net/writing-guide
Link to How to Use Commas: http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/GRAMMAR/commas.htm
Link to Tell, Don't Show by Victoria Grossack: http://www.coffeehouseforwriters.com/fictionfix/0505Grossack.html

Date Created: April 4, 2014

* * * * * * * *

- First Impression -

Having a proper grasp on the grammar, spelling, punctuation, and style of the language that the story is being written is the first step in order to write a good story. As long as someone understands how to use punctuation and grammar properly, then it's always possible to give a good first impression to the reader who is reading the story. The story, Reality check, written by ColdHandsNoHeart, is a story, through first glance of the description, that seems to be lacking understanding on how to properly use grammar and punctuation.

The description is the most important feature that will attract readers into a story; failing to give off a proper description, one that uses proper grammar and punctuation, will tend to keep potential readers at a distance from the story, mainly because they do not want to read something that wasn't reviewed properly, if at all, before release. No one likes errors in a story that they are reading, and it is highly recommended to fix any errors caught while writing and reviewing before releasing the story to the public.

The usage of tags in a fimfiction is also very important, as tags are used to outline the theme or mood of the story. Using them properly is very important, since the more that is being used will tend to make the story seem more complex to the reader, as it represents the number of themes that will be used throughout the story. The story uses both the Dark and Comedy tags, two tags that are polar opposites to one another, and should never be used in a story together unless the author knows for sure on what they are doing.

"“Randomness” is not comedy. Spouting inanities about cheese monkeys and flying monster trucks doesn’t make you funny so much as it makes you desperate to be funny. In a similar vein, arbitrary violence is not a punchline and gratuitous swearing doesn’t equal funny. Nothing equals funny. Try as you might, you will never find a formula for always-hilarious humour, because that’s not how humour works.

Making a reference to an Internet meme or film that is (or was at one stage) actually funny is also not funny. You do not deserve any chuckles for simply mentioning a funny thing that some external party was responsible for."

"Also, remember this: unless your story is packed to the brim with jokes and intended to keep the reader laughing all (or most) of the way through, it’s not comedy. Having little bits of humour sprinkled around your slice-of-life or adventure story is a good idea (if it fits the mood) and I encourage it, but a few jokes here and there are no reason to call your work a comedy."

Dark tag should only be used if the story is intended to be a few shaders than the original mood of the show, where the writer may "go in the complete opposite direction, and paint a picture of a blood-soaked Equestria ruled by an oppressive sun tyrant, where casual racism is a part of daily life and a good segment of the population have weapons on their flanks. And, in principle, that’s okay – one of the main points of fanfiction is to go to places and tell stories that would never happen in canon, and to subvert the world and see how familiar characters act in situations their creators never intended."

"A common practice in fanfiction, especially on sites like Fanfiction.net, is to preface stories and chapters with little blurbs telling the reader a few things about how the story was written, and perhaps encouraging them to leave a comment or to give the story a chance even though it’s their first fic.

Don’t do it. Fanfiction readers are notoriously impatient and fickle, and forcing them to read through a bunch of stuff they likely don’t care about before they can get to the story they’re trying to read is a bad idea. What’s more, announcing a story as the first one you’ve ever written or saying that it’s “probably not very good” is an even better way to have your tab closed. Why would anyone want to read something terrible?

“Okay, no author’s notes at the top of a chapter, got it,” you say. “Does that mean I should put them at the bottom instead?”

While it’s somewhat preferable to have these types of notes at the bottom of a chapter instead of the top, it’s still not ideal. Having things like “phew, this was a tough chapter to write” or “sorry for the late update” as endnotes may feel like a courtesy to your serial readers, but consider the effect they’ll have on someone reading through your story after its finished. Real published books don’t have notes from the author at the bottom of each chapter because that would break the reader’s immersion."

Oh, and yeah, it's supposed to be "Reality Check". Gotta' capitalize it.

- Grammar, Punctuation, and Style -

When writing a work of literature, as said before, having a common understanding of how to use grammar, punctuation, and a style is very important, as it is the basic structure that the story will be written on, as well as it being what the viewers will be reading.

Throughout the story, there are plenty of sentences that fail to use commas properly (e.g. "Hey I'm your neighbor and mate so we'll say mates rates and call it even shall we?", "Whew the forecasters where right for once it's like a sauna out here", et cetera). "Commas should be used to separate the elements in a series, connecting two independent clauses with a conjunction, separating off introductory phrases, setting off parenthetical elements, separating coordinate adjectives, setting off quoted elements, and clarity." The given link will provide more information on each rule of comma usage in more detail. Commas are also used in literature to address a character.

Ellipses (the '...') are seen differently between writers, as the uses vary. "Ellipses should not be overused in fiction… their use in narration is often frowned on… because they are distracting… and also a cheap way to build suspense. They work better in dialogue, usually to signify the speaker trailing off… In addition, an ellipsis has exactly three (3) dots." The story itself uses eighteen ellipses, some not required, and some that should be replaced with an en dash.
"This is a hyphen: “-”. It’s used to join compound words (“eye-colour”) and compound modifiers (“over-propelled” pegasus). This is an en dash: “–”. It’s a little-used punctuation mark employed to indicate ranges of values (“pages 40–45”), relationships (“Doctor–patient relationship”), and a number of other things. This is an em dash: “—”. It’s used—without spaces—as the “dash” punctuation mark." The en dash can be used in dialogue commonly to show that the character has been interrupted with either an action or another character with dialogue. Using ellipses can be often misleading, as ellipses in a sense of dialogue shows that the character is trailing off, not being interrupted. Trailing off and being interrupted are obviously two very different things, hence why two different senses of punctuation are used to show each.

The dialogue that is used in the story is also something that needs improvement on. Although the color scheme for each character is something that could work out in a great way for identifying characters, it is also a way of leading into confusion for the reader, which is also in a sense of identifying characters as well. The color of the dialogue can be used to have the reader assume that the character speaking uses the color of the text to the color of the pony's fur. This can be used for good in some scenarios, but it can lead into confusion for readers who do not know the fur color of the character, or with characters who have the same, or slightly the same, fur color as another character. Confusion can be avoided by simply putting the said tag after each character's dialogue, and it should always be done if there are more than two people in a conversation. "Colours don’t have any conventional uses in fiction because hey, coloured ink’s expensive. Seeing as we’re not constrained by that kind of physical limitation on the internet, it’s something an experimental author can play around with. I’ve seen coloured text used for character dialogue. (Screw said tags and their complicated punctuation, amirite?)"

Abbreviations in a work of literature should also be avoided, as this is a story that's being written, not a text message to your friend. Write out the entire word, or phrase, and don't be lazy in writing the next two letters needed ("yr"). Numbers should also be avoided, and should always be written out as the entire word phrase for the number, such as five, and twenty two. Typos, such as "the forecasters where right", should immediately be hunted for and removed from the story. Redundant phrases such as "ridiculously ridiculous" should also be avoided, as it makes absolutely no sense. Also, yes, you do capitalize the character's name "pinkie pie".

Sentences that uses multiple exclamation points are completely horrible to use in a work of literature, and should completely be avoided from. "Multiple exclamation marks don’t make your sentence more urgent or exciting; they just make you look like a tool."

"A trend I’ve seen in ponyfic is the use of bold text for loud dialogue. It’s not technically a correct use of boldface, but it’s probably easier to read than LONG PASSAGES OF CRUISE CONTROL FOR COOL. Of course, both ALL CAPS and bold can become crutches for weak writing, and they’re best avoided in more serious works."

Strikethroughs should not be used at all in the sense of a story such as this. They make no sense for an appearance, as well as mostly any kind of literature that is being written. "Strikethroughs are basically amazing and will make every fic 20% cooler. Strikethoughs should only be used in comedy trollfics."

When giving space to a story to show a break in the scene or the time frame, you always want to use breaks frequently in order to show that the scene or time frame has changed to avoid confusion for the readers. "It’s often necessary to switch character perspective, skip ahead in time, or otherwise change the scene being focused on. In some cases this can be worked into the prose, but it’s often better to do with little dohickeys called scene breaks. Scene breaks come in all shapes and sizes:
An HTML horizontal line
A lightweight centred image (for example, in The Glass Blower)
Centre-aligned asterisks
Centre-aligned hyphens
Some thematic symbol in its own paragraph (for example, Black and White uses a centre-aligned double quaver)"
When a character writes something down, there is no need for the use of quotation marks. Simply write it is as it is. Dialogue uses quotation marks to identify someone speaking, and merging the two will only cause confusion for the reader.

- Story -

The story follows an eighteen year old named Jack who is teleported into equestria (because this has never happened before) and gets a job there with no questions asked on why he's in equestria, why get a job, et cetera.

In the beginning of the story, Jack is talking to his neighbor, Harold, who, of course, might never make an appearance in the story again, about the weather. He then goes home, where he is then contacted by Princess Luna, who offers him a "proposition". Understandably confused by the offer (but not understandable how he's not confused by everything else), as it was never explained in the story what the offer was, he is then teleported into Equestria to the Mane Six. Completely ignoring the fact that he was just teleported into a different planet, with him leaving everything behind from his old home, he automatically decides that he is going to get a job and a place to stay in Ponyville.

The first thing to address properly would be the multiple plot holes that the story seems to slide on past. One of them being that Luna for some reason needs a random human in order to do what most likely a princess alicorn herself could do, or, in fact, something any regular pony could do. Why does Luna need specifically this human in order to watch over something? Is it seriously important that it has to be a specific human?

Going down the list, or up in the story, is that why isn't Jack even affected that there is a voice inside his head telling him what to do? If someone was remotely human, they would start to question whether or not if they are going insane, since they are hearing voices inside their head.

Later on in the story, why doesn't Luna just teleport him to her? It would save a lot more trouble for Luna to have contact with the human that she had chosen if she had simply teleported him directly to her, other than teleporting him to the Mane Six. With the Mane Six, why are they so open-hearted to letting a strange creature, one they have never seen before, inside their house and with their family? Sure, I guess I can understand that in the show that they can be sometimes generous to one another, but not this generous (exception of Rarity).

Near the middle of the story why does Jack decide that he is going to need a job? What causes him to have use for bits, when he was just teleported to another country with no understanding on how the economics work in the country? If he was sensible, the first thing he would do is seek out Princess Luna in order to figure out what she wants, or if he is able to get her to teleport him back. Getting comfortable with life as if it's just a regular day to be teleported to another world is pretty strange, since he doesn't even know what a regular day of life there is like either.

Character personality and characterization is extremely poor in the sense of the reaction of the characters. The main features of this would be of Jack, having no sensible reaction of being teleported to a land full of magical talking ponies, as well as having no sensible reaction of having a random voice talking to him inside his head. It represents the characters of the story poorly (with the exception of Pinkie), and shows them as some kind of morphed different characters of their original self. When the story says ""Let's just say I have my resources" said Luna very slyly", why is she talking in a shy voice? Princess Luna, from my understanding, is not a character to be shy at all, as she is very much more of the dominant type, being a princess alicorn, and all. The others could also could be more centered around their regular show-like personality, as it seems kind of weird for Applejack to be the one to offer her place for an animal she's never seen in her house.

A very important piece of advice that should be used for improving writing is the difference between show versus tell. Show versus tell describes the style in which the story is being written. "It’s a vitally important concept for anyone who wants to write well, but it’s not the easiest concept to actually understand. The best way to describe it is with examples.

Tell: Princess Celestia looked down at Twilight Sparkle’s dead form, lying in the bed. She remembered doing the same with her previous students.

Show: Princess Celestia looked down at Twilight Sparkle, an age-worn face on a pillow. Her eyes were wet with tears. Twilight’s face appeared to change before her eyes – to green, to brown, to yellow. All old, all smiling… all with permanently closed eyelids.

Tell: Pinkie turned on her chainsaw and menacingly walked over to Rainbow Dash, preparing to cut her in half. Dash was horrified.

Show: Pinkie revved her chainsaw and skulked across the room. Dash started crying."

When writing fanfiction, it's most of the time that showing would want to be used, as it is far more interesting than having the entire story in the style of telling. As a writer, it's very important to distinctively tell the difference between the two, and having the ability to transfer between one another in order to give a better reading experience.

"Now, showing is often a good deal harder than telling. Instead of just saying that Rainbow Dash was happier than she’d ever been before in her life, you need to put some thought into how she would act if she were happier than she’d ever been before in her life, and then write about her acting in that way.
The enormous benefit to that extra thought is that is much, much more engaging for the reader. Instead of just passively accepting that Rainbow Dash was really happy, the reader has to imagine her zipping around the room, or hugging her friends, or just smiling really wide, and then use their understanding of body language to interpret those actions as meaning “Rainbow Dash was really happy”. And if your reader is actively imagining and interpreting your story (even in cases where the interpretations are instantaneous), that means they’re under your spell.

So don’t just tell us, in dull, Wikipedia summary–esque that Spike was crushed when Rarity rejected him. Imagine what Spike would do in that situation, and tell us that."

Showing can be a powerful tool in order to engage readers, as said before, in the story that's being written. Although it is great to use in order to slow down the pacing of the story, giving descriptive information to the reader, as well as engaging them in the story, it can be overused, and should still be limited.

Telling can be good for it's own purposes, as it can tell the reader exactly what is currently happening in the story. "The author’s voice dominates, even intrudes, instead of allowing the characters to act for themselves in the reader’s imagination. The reader is told what to think and to feel, instead of being allowed to draw her own conclusions herself." Telling should be used during travel/transitions, for unimportant characters, early drafts, and when telling with a voice. The link provided will give more detailed information of when to use telling, opposed to showing.

- Conclusion -

Breaking the third-person perspective of the critique for the conclusion, I would have to say that I would definitely not recommend this story. It is a complete mess on grammar, punctuation, spelling, characterization, the plot, as well as mostly everything else about it. The story requires revising before anyone would be able to take it seriously.

Going back into the tags that are used into the description of the story, I would change them up a bit. 'Crossover' is unneeded, as "there are two main types of crossovers: regular crossovers and fusion fics. In the former, elements (usually characters) of the two or more universes involved will interact with each other. In the latter, the two or more universes involved will be combined to form a new, fusion universe." Replace the 'Crossover' tag with a 'Human' tag.

The 'Comedy' tag is unneeded as well, as the story isn't funny (unless I didn't see the humor buried under the multiple grammar issues). The 'Dark' tag would be unneeded as well, that's if the story isn't going to have a progressional darker theme. Introducing everything as is in the first chapter is a good way to get the tone started and prepared for the more darker chapters ahead, but unless there is going to be a showing of a darker progression near any of the future chapters, then I wouldn't put it in the story's description. "Show where the grimdark is coming from. Have a believable progression from the status quo in canon to how things are in your fic."