Night Terrors by Emylia Hawke: A Technically Sound Story With Way Too Much Going On

I’ve said it a lot before, but there are a lot of good writers on Fimfiction. Emylia Hawke is one of them. Her short story “Night Terrors” is grammatically perfect. There’s coherent dialogue, good pacing (for what it is), great establishment of settings and characters, and all the technical elements I expect from any competent author.

The story starts with our dream-walking heroine Misty Moonrise in the Never—the shared dreamscape of Equestria. She is Princess Luna’s pupil, and on this night she will be taking her first foray into dark magic. Before a lot can get done, however, they are interrupted by a nightmare monster. Misty Moonrise is separated from Luna, and comes across Lyric, a bard who also appears to be a dreamwalker. Together they battle monsters conjured from the deepest fears of dreamers. The Never is being corrupted by an unknown force, and it is up to Misty Moonrise to cleanse it.

One generic thing that everyone points to is the concept of “show vs tell”. But that’s simply not a problem for even a half decent writers. It’s not a problem in this story either. I knew what the Never looks and feels like, I could imagine all the actions just fine, and I never felt like there was too much time spent on any of the many monsters featured here.

But I just couldn’t seem to care.

There’s so much high, dramatic language here that by the second or third paragraph it starts to look silly. There are so many magic/fantasy clichés being thrown out, and so many monsters jumping out of the trees or swooping down from above, it starts to feel like a Dungeons and Dragons manual (about halfway through the story there’s literally a bard playing a tune of healing). And in a little over 10,000 words, we get Princess Luna and Discord struggling with their biggest inner demons. And it all gets a resolution.

Look at this excerpt, for example:

Upon the nearest hill, a roiling mass of shadow dominated the scene. Lightning flashed from somewhere in its inky depths, and terrible thunder rolled with its every motion. Hollow eyes of crimson glared from a gaunt face that rested upon an arched, serpentine neck. Horns sprouted from its head, broken and chipped, and serrated teeth glinted lethally in the moonlight. The fearsome Never beast was colossal, perhaps even larger than the rotting monster that had attacked Misty and Princess Luna. It was certainly more intimidating, for the sight alone was enough to make both Lyric and Misty balk and gasp.

And then it spoke, its gravelly voice like the crumbling of mountains into dust. “Embrace me…”

You can imagine an old British guy narrating that. And I can do that with pretty much any paragraph.

This all follows tones and patterns found in fantasy, like Lord of the Rings or The Wheel of Time. The difference is, those stories are multi-volume series with plenty of room to space this stuff out. After a few pages of “and then they walked, and they ate, and then they walked, and then they slept, and then they had breakfast, &c. &c.,” a spectacular scene like the one above seems really exciting. When you get a black magic transformation, 2 different monsters attacking at the same time and a magic fight scene all before we meet the other main character, another monster seems tiresome.

I think a part of the problem is that those awesome actions sequences are what readers remember most about those stories. Thus, when a less experienced author starts to write fantasy of their own, they try to cram in as much of that "good stuff" as possible. It usually doesn't work.

And then there are the characters. There’s Misty Moonrise, Luna’s brilliant pupil, and there’s Lyric, a bard with some kind of military background. The author spent so much time trying to flesh out these characters, revealing their past through dialogue and flashbacks, but the task at hand is so urgent that most of the interesting things they allude to just fade into the background. For example, Lyric goes on and on about how she aspires to be a great bard, to collect stories from far and wide, and to leave her mark in the world. I’m led to believe that this will become really important later on. This is what defines her.

And the final payoff?

“Then the moment I awaken, I am writing everything down on paper. This will make such a delightful story!”

That's it.

It’s not that having a character with special powers or one with a turbulent history is bad. That stuff is what a story depends on. But these details should be more than filler, and with four very different characters (and the two auxiliary ones being familiar and well-loved in the fandom) struggling with their inner demons, there's no room to give any of them a fair share of the spotlight. It doesn’t take a bard as passionate as Lyric to fill the same role, and her fear gets thoroughly dissected so early on in the story that her part in the greater scheme of things becomes that of a generic bard. A lot of reminiscent dialogue is recorded overall, and clearly it's meant to make the reader sympathize with the characters, but most of the things revealed have such a small payoff in the end that it feels like time wasted.

Perhaps it will all fit together when the Shadowmancer Saga finishes, but in its current form “Night Terror” doesn’t work as a hook for a series. With the number of stories that will eventually be involved (at least 4, judging from links in the story), there’s no reason that so much has to happen in the first part, and that’s the core of the problem.