Hands-off or Hands-on Can Somtimes be Such a Problem · 6:00am Mar 24th, 2015
Most authors here are willing to accept critiques of their work. I just seem to have a hard time, at times, from just offering some general point (ie, move this event up in sequence; this character does not work this way; expand or excise this section) instead of going "here, rewriting it like this makes it better."
The latter just seems so terribly arrogant to me, yet there are instances I just can't help myself.
Probably has to do with all my collaborative work with Wargame and An-Twan and others (Yes, I'll blame them. Perfect).
Anyway, today's Blog has a bit of both of those. The first wound up being a more hand-off approach, where I just made suggestions and pointed out things in the story, only tossing in direct changes when I felt they might be choice. The second became much more hands-on, possibly due to what I felt needed change.
So without further adieu, the two stories for your consideration today are:
The Draconequus with the Dragon Tattoo
My Deadly Shot: Trixie is Lethal
First up is The Draconequus with the Dragon Tattoo by A M Shark. I went into it as a fan of the movie adaptation (The original Swedish work. The Fincher adaptation is good as well, but ultimately pointless IMO. Heck, I didn't even own copies of the novels until a few days ago!) I read the first few chapters here, was quite intrigued, noticed some of the comments said more was posted on fanfiction.net, and so went there and promptly binge-read the rest over the course of most of an afternoon. I was expecting a nice gritty adaptation from a very gritty source, and wanted to see how the Apples would be transposed to the seedier Vangers from the original, as well as who the author would eventually place in the role of the killer (especially given who the killer is in the original source). Mostly the latter.
What I got was probably one of the best Fluttercord stories I have ever read. Now while that may not be saying much (Fluttercord isn't one of my preferred ships), I still like to think that I can recognize a good one of those. And boy is it. Discord starts off as malicious, very in control of himself and his plan. Of course Fluttershy derails that by being, well, Fluttershy. The way the two of them come together is quite well handled, with rational reasons for their behavior given, frustration and distrust on both their parts, and the eventual relationship coming about only after a long, slow build on both their parts. Much better then in the original series (I always felt that Keep Calm and Flutter On should have been no less than two parts). Even if Fluttercord is not your thing, read it anyway as a wonderful guide on how you can believably build a solid, deep relationship beyond basic friendship.
Now, again, I came at this from the angle of someone wanting a murder mystery, and curious to see how it would be pulled off in a Pony world. That... needed some work, I felt. But Shark was doing a smart thing and was reposting the story here on a chapter by chapter basis. Now I'd absolutely fallen in love with the story as I'd read along, and wound up making notes on little things here and there (as is my wont) on what could be better. Wound up expanding on a number of those and giving reasons why and sent off a good and long PM to Shark, with the suggestion that since she is reposting this piecemeal, she might as well take the opportunity to fix any deficiencies (if she felt they were thus) pointed out by other critics and myself along the way.
Thankfully she responded favorably, a few more specifics were knocked out, and changes were made. There's now I feel a better flow to the story; interaction with the Apples coming back sooner than it had been to contribute suspects; a few subtle character details are kept or brought out; and the confrontation with the killer feels less of a cheat than it had been. All in all, very nice.
It's also a story that's not getting near the attention it deserves, IMO. It's a really fantastic story from a character perspective, and the way that it integrates the cross-over material is one of the most successful I've seen. That success is probably because it only takes a minimum of material from the non-MLP source and then allows the characters to be (wonderfully) themselves over the course of it. Seriously, go read, I highly doubt that anyone here would be disappointed with it.
Next we have My Deadly Shot: Trixie is Lethal by Wave Blaster. This was just a case of wholly unsolicited meddling on my part.
When I read through it, I had a very similar reaction as that of Bon Bon Dies at the End; I was highly entertained by the idea, but there were some ugly technical problems getting in the way of it. So I went through and un-problem-ed a lot of it. GSP made up a fair chunk of that. A lot of the rest was presentation, the way things were formatted and some word choices that just weren't emphasizing the correct thing and not playing with the humor as much as it could have been. There were some logical aspects to it that needed fixing, but that just needed a bit of effort put in. I wound up doing the work simply because I highly enjoyed the story and wanted to make it more enjoyable by smoothing over all the rough edges, not because I was asked directly or the author really publicly requested such be done. Again with the back and forth between myself and the original author via PM, most of my changes were agreed to, and in the end I think it turned into a fine little piece.
Now, unlike Draconequus above, I had absolutely no background in the source material. Wave does do a very good job of explaining and laying out the origins of much of the characters (original and his adaptions) in The Sketchbook part before the prologue. Which I didn't read until long after finishing the main story. Ahem. 
Anyway, that led to a whole thing on what should be part of the story, what should be foot-noted as an Author's Note within relevant chapters, and what should be its own separate appendix. It also gave some nice insight and a reminder that not everyone who reads your crossover material will necessarily be familiar with all the sources, and you should try and make things as clear as possible within your story when using those elements. And contributed to the whole "fixing" thing.
The end result with My Deadly Shot, is a rather silly, very fun story of Trixie with guns. It has snark, unsafe gunplay, Sonata, more snark, and some really cool action sequences. If you liked the absurdity of Bon Bon Dies at the End, give My Deadly Shot a read, as it's very much in the same vein.
So, in the end, there we go. One hands-off critique, one hands-on. Different stories, different results. Again, the latter does have an uncomfortably arrogant feel to me, even though I go in with the best of intentions. I come here to read good stories. I want more of them. If I can help people make good stories, well, that's just perfectly self-serving, now isn't it? Of course it's still just my definition of good, which certainly isn't the same as others', as I've been reminded of from time to time.
Any opinions on the whole thing one way or the other out there?
Having written with me I would blame me too. As for the second story being a lot like BBDatE at first, I have to say your right about that, its easy to get caught up in an awesome idea without really getting into making it work, its something that's plagued me since I used to write Naruto Fanfic which I will never let anyone see ever. I have to say you're very hands on approach was very important for me development as a writer into the much better writer that I am now today, and its been a big part of why we've been able to go back and forth so much not just as writers but as pretty decent friend's. For example your a great teacher and you're influence has taken me from the guy that wrote the original chapter of BBDatE to the amazingly fantastic writer who sent you that beautifully crafted first paragraph of SitS 2.
Just keep on doing what you do man, and maybe post a few more blog posts like this in the future because I at least found them interesting. This was a cool post and I hope to see a comment or two from the authors of these stories, their's probably a good story of how they first got in touch with you.
There are so many purposeful mistakes in this post that I will not correct out of spite.
Sure, spite, I believe that
And we both know that Sleepless in the Saddle is going to be your magnum opus!
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I can attest to this. When I started out with Old Paths, I saw your hands-on on approach firsthand. I certainly wasn't expecting that much red text. But I felt that that approach worked well for a noob author like myself, and showed me just how far my story could go cough18,277wordscough.
And when we worked on The Plunge, I kinda saw the hands-off approach. Unfortunately that pesky contest deadline got in the way. I even thought about calling it a collaboration. So I believe both hands-on and hands-off are useful in the right areas. And I too have looked at fics and thought that something would work better someplace else or dialogue could flow better if worded differently. But I never really review stories or critique authors as much as I should.
I have been working on a few... ideas as of late. A one-shot and a potential long term story. Seeing as I have no deadline, things are coming along slowly, but I should have more content soon enough. Once Season 5 gets under way, I'm sure I will have even more fresh ideas.
And I'll have to keep a closer eye on the little feed thing at the top of the page in case more of these posts drop.
Ha ha, Apples, seedier, heh heh.
Wow, that's cool to hear you are enjoying the story even if you're not into that particular ship.
*covers face* Dawww, why must you say such nice things?
But I really do have to say I appreciated your critiques and suggestions on how to improve the story. I asked for constructive criticism and you certainly delivered. I actually went back and updated the chapters on fanfiction to now match the ones here. (*mutters underbreath* Now if I can just finish getting that next chapter ready.)
(Oh, by the way, I submitted tDwtDT to the Goodfic Bin and when asked for a reason I felt the story was worth reading, I included a link to this blog. Hope that's ok. I probably should have asked about that first.)
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I have very loose criteria when it comes to what I read; basically, do I think it'll be any good. I won't dismiss a story out of hand just because of the characters it features or those it ships. If done well, I love me some crack-ships just as much as the usual conventional-ships, often-times more so. I might not actively seek out stories with non-preferred ships or characters, but they won't stop me reading something; that's reserved for just really bad stories.
Oh, yes please!
As for using this as an endorsement of the story for Goodfic... yeah, I'm cool with that. Wouldn't have had a public blog extolling readers to check out the story if I wasn't fine giving it a boost like that.