Past, Present, and Future

Hello, folks.

Let's start off with the Equestria Daily contest results. Near as I can tell, my entry was disqualified for use of a pony's POV. I could speak up in my defense but, in the end, I made a mistake and that's really all that needs to be said. It's not a total loss, as I managed to get some criticisms out of it from extremely dedicated individuals that took the time to review every single entry. There might be more out there, but so far I've only managed to find reviews from InquisitorM and PresentPerfect.

Of the two, InquisitorM's review is the more positive.

Gander collides with a pony on his way to see his mother. As a half-pony griffon, the two don’t see eye to eye… at first.
Consistency requires that I point out the very mediocre quality of the narrative – specifically, giant bucketfulls of telling, even PoV hopping to it can tell from different points of view. Sadly, one of those points of view is the pony, and this story is disqualified.
That said, if you look past the technical aspects that disqualify it, it is also the best conceptual implementation of the prompt I have seen yet. I don’t think I have to say more than that I liked this story despite the writing, and if you know me at all that’s worth taking note of.
5/10 Prompt: Rejected (but fucking awesome)

This review is exactly what I was looking for. As I've just started writing, and Taking a Gander is my very first story, I expect there to be writing issues to deal with. I expect a learning curve to slap me upside the head. What I needed to know is where my weaknesses are, and that's the very issue InquisitorM points out. I'd never even heard of the Show versus Tell debate until now, and I'm in the process of learning how to keep this from being a problem for me in the future. And on a personal note, hearing that the idea behind my story was a solid one is very encouraging.

PresentPerfect's review isn't quite as encouraging.

Gander is a hippogriff, and this makes him sad as it should because he sucks at being a griffon. So he goes off in search of his mother, bumps into a pegasus (who isn’t actually Spitfire) and spends a great deal of time arguing with her about nothing. Gander is unfortunately not a great character, alternately self-loathing in private and a total jerk around others, and that’s what really sinks this piece, as I didn’t care about a thing he was doing. It doesn’t help that Ducky is perky and annoying. And what’s with all the waterfowl names? N

The N standing for Not Recommended. I'm not quite sure how to react to this review. It was my intention that Gander act like a jerk, in the same vein as Gilda, due to his upbringing. His personal character arc was supposed to correct this, changing him to be more open-minded by the ending due to learning of ponies and their culture. As for Ducky, she was the other side of the coin. It was her job to represent everything cheerful and good about ponies. The real question I have here is, does PresentPerfect not like the characters because they are written poorly, or are they simply not his cup of tea? If it's the first, then I have to find a way to identify and correct the problem. If it's the second, well, you can't please everyone. The last issue about names isn't one I take highly. All three character names follow griffon and/or pony naming conventions. If you want more justification for vaguely coincidentally related names... Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer. That is all.

...and I'm going to allow myself one minor indignant outburst. I don't know PresentPerfect and I'm sure he's a wonderful person, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say he's not a fan of hippogriffs. Here's a line from his review of another entry from the contest:

It also deals with a pony-griffon hybrid, which yuck, and really horribly shoehorns in what happened during the timeskip.

Hippogriffs are legendary creatures born of a mare and a griffin. As MLP directly takes concepts from classic legends, such as minotaurs, I can't think of any reason why the inclusion of hippogriffs into the world is objectionable. I'd like to believe that his criticisms of my story stem from writing-related issues. I'd like to. But thanks to yuck, now I can't.

Okay, so, let's move away from the past and into the present. I've finally struck gold this week, and TehSporkBandit has agreed to proofread and edit From Gander to Gendarme. It's a new experience for me, working with an editor, but it's been incredibly rewarding. We've been working on previous chapters this past week, rooting out errors and inconsistencies, and I'll be updating the chapters just as soon as I'm done with the rewrites. However, due to the change in focus, I can't promise I'll have a new chapter this week. The upside is I have Monday off work to catch up, but that greatly depends on how much time I spend polishing what's already been written. Once we get through the backlog, I should be able to continue with my chapter-a-week schedule.

As for the future, TehSporkBandit is also teaching me some of the finer points of writing, especially in regards to InquisitorM's comments of over-telling, so my chapters going forward should be greatly improved. I've got a good idea of how this story will end, and a few nebulous concepts for future stories in the same series. World-spanning adventure sort of stuff. Long term, Gander will be around for as long as I've got ideas. Short term, it's my goal to continue working on this story for a few months as practice, and then take a bit of a break from it and write an unrelated short story to compare against Taking a Gander. I'd like to see how much progress I've made. If the short story works out well, then I'll continue to switch between the long-spanning series and the shorter works.

So, in summary; lost the contest, writing needs improvement, and working on improving. It's been a crazy week, but I'm still here. As always, thanks for reading,

-Hack