Switcheroo contest reviews · 3:54pm Jul 31st, 2015
I wanted to offer Writeoff Association-style reviews of the other six entrants in Skeeter the Lurker's "Switcheroo" contest, analyzing the stories with one eye toward how much I enjoyed reading them and the other eye toward how they could be improved. I'm assigning HORSE scores and tiers to each story; for a full explanation of that system, see my explanatory blog post.
Reviews below the cut!
First, a reminder: I've also entered my own story into this contest.
The Kindest Silence
7,099 words, [Alternate Universe]
What if Rainbow Dash never existed to turn six young lives upside down with her Sonic Rainboom?Harmony will always find its Element-bearers, and something certainly would have united six friends to wield them ... but a change as small as the flapping of a butterfly's wings can have enormous effects on everything that follows.
It's a slightly different take on the "change-an-episode" premise, altering the entire world around the episode while keeping the core premise identical.
The other entrants:
Letting Peewee Go
There's the core of an interesting story here, being held back by some writing issues. The most noticeable is that in many places the narrative tone is overly familiar with the reader:
Spike tossed a piece of coal to Peewee and watch the bird munch on the black nugget like it was popcorn. Then the unthinkable happened, or what should actually be the most expected. Peewee’s entire body burst into fire.
Needless to say, Spike didn’t sleep very well at all that night. After that long, previous day, all the stress caught up to him and disturbed him in his dreams. He imagined Peewee trapped, needing Spike’s help. The little dragon was so close, within his arm’s reach, but whatever evil forces that held the little phoenix kept him at bay, lashing at him with shadowy tendrils. It wasn’t a very enjoyable vision.
Spike got out of his blanket-lined basket and washed up in the bathroom, performing the morning ritual and all that. Afterwards he walked downstairs to go make himself some breakfast. With groggy eyes, he turned towards where Peewee was last night.
Giving us your opinions and judgments of your own story is a distraction from the story itself, and in cases like that last one, it's a sloppy substitute for actual story. "And all that" is a handwave, drawing attention to the fact that that part of the story isn't important; but if it's not important, why are we reading it in the first place?
The other problem here -- closely related -- is that this is a textbook case of "show, don't tell". Trust your readers to form their own opinions based on the scene you present, rather than telling them how they should feel. The only thing that "Then the unthinkable happened" does is dilute the impact of Peewee bursting into flames by pulling us further away from the scene and closer to the storyteller; you can show us it's unthinkable with Peewee's face scrunched up in a confused expression, and Spike gasping and sprinting around in circles, and that keeps us in the scene instead of interrupting our reading with an outside opinion. Likewise, the first two sentences of the dream paragraph tell us your summary of what you then go on to describe -- and don't offer anything that the dream doesn't already do better and more vividly. When we read about a dream of a trapped Peewee and black tentacles, you don't need to interrupt the story to beat into our heads that Spike isn't sleeping well or that his stress is shaping his dreams. Those words could have been more effectively used by giving more meat to the dream itself, or showing Spike tossing and turning in his basket.
That said, I think this made some good choices. The plot goes far afield from the Breezies episode; it's less a rewrite than a total re-envisioning of the same moral, so it feels original. When the telling didn't get in the way, it also made good use of imagery (like in the dream). The scene with the poacher felt weird -- not least of which because Twilight was concerned about Peewee being inside after everyone saw him fly out to the Everfree Forest -- but I do appreciate how far from its roots this dares to go, and the pacing is pretty smooth throughout. Now it's time for a major editing pass, tightening up all the telling and letting the story speak for itself.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
Tier: Needs Work
Sleepless in St. Maretinique
Unsurprisingly (given the author), there's some solid writing here, with a lot of great little details to supplement the core romance. The argument over coconuts, Dash's opinions on fish, Applejack eating the rose petals, etc.; all of these things fleshed out the story in ways that made for great reading no matter your opinions on the shipping. Every time I turn around there's something clever or thoughtful, like Dash's arranging of the rainy days to line up the trip or the banter about souvenirs.
I don't know that this broke any new ground in Appledashery, and the retelling stuck closely to the original episode's structure, but it never was boring despite the overall arc being predictable. One of Kurt Vonnegut's rules of writing was "Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages"; while there are many stories for which that's not good advice, this is one that executes it enjoyably.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
Tier: Solid
Princess Diamond Tiara
This certainly doesn't pull any punches. From Tiara's first line, her full terribleness shines through, and we get a portrait of her manipulation that feels realistic and foreshadows a terrible trainwreck ahead. The ponies around her react believably to her behavior, and the near-revolt that results feels entirely appropriate. The story's tendency to paint in huge, broad strokes is a double-edged sword, though; most of the story's commenters noted the suddenness of Tiara's rehabilitation once the worm turns, and I have to agree. I don't get enough of a sense of how Tiara has internalized her role in the Summit as to fix everything all at once, from doing manual labor to giving her butler the weekend off because of her awareness of his desire to be with his family. (Wouldn't it make more sense if that was the sort of thing she never even noticed, and she had to find that sort of thing out when she started treating him as an actual person?)
I suspect that was a factor of the rush job the author's note mentions. The editing starts slipping as the story goes on (e.g. "she says as she started down the road"), and severe moments of telling start to creep in ("Diamond looked towards the entrance, where Princess Twilight and Gustave le Grand were standing. One was still cowering in fear over Diamond Tiara’s ability to destroy his career, while Twilight looked beside herself"). Unfortunately, the difference in quality between the early and later parts is pretty obvious, so this is a case where the story might benefit from some post-publication editing.
In terms of its take on the episode, this is a fairly straightforward retelling; like the previous one, it's relying on its execution and its color to keep interesting the story which readers already know. As it stands, the execution doesn't feel quite strong enough to carry it, but I can see what it was going for, and I think another draft could get it there.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
Tier: Almost There
Why Earth Ponies Don't Fly.
This is one of those stories where I miss the Consistency category from my older HITEC system, because the story is a melange of good and less-good parts, which makes it harder to usefully communicate with the HORSE ratings.
What I like the most here is the choice to omit the Rainboom entirely, transforming this into an Icarus-like cautionary tale about leaving the dangerous things to the experts rather than the episode's original moral about arrogance. It's a very different reading of the moral, but one that keeps the letter of it and doesn't lose the spirit of the episode. Unfortunately, that's alongside a lot of strange decisions about which elements to include. I don't understand why Pinkie's competing feels like a threat to Applejack, for instance; the point of that originally was as a blow against Dash's pride, but the conflict here centers around whether they could even get Applejack off the ground in the first place.
Speaking of conflicts, there's a subplot about Applejack getting really tired that simply vanishes, and an awful lot of words are spent on questioning whether Twilight can cast the spell on Pinkie or not (which, since we know the episode's outcome, feels like whipping up tension over a foregone conclusion).
The prose needs editing (including some basic spelling and grammar errors -- getting an outside editor might help here), and what needs fixing keeps shifting. Probably the biggest ongoing issue is the use of telling to narrate something to us that you've already establishing in a better way:
And now, for some reason, Applejack had been asked to compete for her. A choice of logic that was completely lost to her.
“I just don’t think this is a good idea, Twilight,” Applejack said.
“But usually, there’s a good reason why Earth Ponies don’t compete in the young fliers competition,” Applejack stated as she gestured with her neck and head toward her back, noting that esencial limbs that required for flight were missing.
(That one's a threefer.)
her body felt like it had gone through Apple Buck Season all over again. Pain rushed through every inch of her body, tingling with her movements as she picked herself off the ground.
That sort of duplication is just wasted words, when you could be making me smile with prose like this instead:
Tarp, planks of wood of various lengths, metal wiring, and large scraps of construction paper that filled the table in front of her with a number of designs. Some were large and abstract, some were small and yet, detailedly complex.
All of which flew over Applejack’s head, ironically enough.
The big buildup over how great AJ's flight is before the single sentence "Then the momentum from her jump gave out." is also great.
So there are certainly signs here of a much better story. It's just going to take some coaxing out to get there.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
Tier: Needs Work
One Night at Fluttershy's
Reviewers talk about stories passing the "Zecora Test" if the author can write her rhyming prose in a way that doesn't induce cringing in readers who can tell an iamb from a trochee. Another common one is the "Luna Test", for proper use of Early Modern English pronouns. This story makes me think that there should be a third one, the "Vinyl Test", for effectively describing communication from mute characters.
This passes with flying colors -- and happily so, because she plays such a major role in the story. It was a pleasant surprise seeing several thousand words of nonverbal communication, and feeling like it struck a nice balance between the immersion-killer of telepathy and the tedium of representing sign language in a verbal medium. It even plays with the effect, such as Vinyl and Angel's silent exchange. That great ... voicing? ... is one facet of the generally excellent characterization here, and keeps it an entertaining read throughout.
The major factor marring the exemplary execution here is how quickly and conveniently the situation gets resolved at the end, after a number of scenes which only serve to reinforce the fault lines between Octavia and Vinyl. You took roles which were originally filled with friends and gave them to perfect strangers; AJ and Rarity's reconciliation makes sense because (once their rage boils over) they can reassess and return to their previous baseline of mutual respect, but I'm not seeing any reason for Vinyl and Octavia to stop being at each other's throats when they're so transparently incompatible and it would make more sense to go their separate ways and never have to speak to each other again. I think the Filly Scouts thing was meant to give them common ground there, but if so, there's precious little context to give emotional weight to the literal turning point of the story -- not only in what's in Octavia's past that gets her assessing Vinyl differently, but also in why Vinyl would bother to give her the time of day when the question comes up. Essentially, the problem is that the way you get to the point where you're selling the turnaround requires them to already be acting like adults toward each other. Especially since Fluttershy is offscreen for the whole thing.
“Okay, what’s going on?” Rainbow jumped to a hover to better examine them. “You two are like totally different mares.”
I was wondering that, too.
That said, I think this is among the strongest entries of the competition.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
Tier: Solid
Fruit of the Problem
This is a solidly plotted story, and the prose here is just a joy to read. There's some amazing subtle humor, and that sense of depth and wit is welcome:
"It's good t' hear everythin's taken care of." Applejack turned and marched off the porch, possibly with a bit more force than necessary. It was probably a flimsy board anyway. The hole would be easy to patch up.
"Where ya goin'?"
"Doin' the rounds, unless Carrot Top did that too." Huh. Applejack had never heard of flimsy dirt before.
This isn't to say that there aren't problems. The one that leaps out at me is that the thickness of AJ's accent is way overdone. ("Th' problem is Ah'm so busy savin' Equestria that mah family's had t' call in one o' th' neighbors t' help look after th' farm.") The various problems that come up also seem, for lack of a better word, sudden; I'm not sure I buy AJ's fear over being replaced, and the headcanon that introduces the reason behind the hospital scene really needs some form of foreshadowing, rather than only coming up at the time the scene plays out.
In terms of the structure it borrows from the episode, this has the same structure but not all the same beats, which I think was a good choice. AJ's got more maturity than Spike and more pride, so ends up breaking things in a different way, which comes out pretty clearly. Having it occur alongside the events of the original episode was a nice touch and lets you reuse the moral in a way that creates contrast. Once you start drawing the parallels it does signal your ending, but really, with the contest theme, what can you do.
HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
Tier: Solid
And that's the batch!
In terms of predicting winners, there are a number of strong contenders and some very different prompt interpretations. I think it's going to be a close race. Fortunately, we don't have long to wait -- judging ends tomorrow!
I'm really going to have to rethink how I portray the Apple family accent. It works when I use Applejack as a secondary character, but putting her in the spotlight means asking my readers to put up with more apostrophes than a roll call of the Cthulhu Mythos.
I do agree with you on the strength of One Night at Fluttershy's. The Kindest Silence is a fascinating alternate universe, but I'm not sure how well it follows the prompt.
You said you reviewed Switcheroo stuff, yet you didn't review the most important Switcheroo story of them all.
False advertizing.
You should fix this immediately.
3284499
I love this description.
You have no idea.
~Skeeter The Lurker
3284499
I think The Kindest Silence's ultimate rating is going to depend a great deal on how much the judges value novelty. It's got some construction faults, and it's anyone's guess what the judges will say on its prompt adherence.
Re Applejack's accent, I don't think the particular method of expression is the problem so much as just the thickness of it. An apostrophe is like a hot pepper: adding a few gives an edge to the dish, adding a bunch overwhelms it. Even a small number of accent cues are enough to prime readers' brains and get us thinking the line in her twang:
This is four accent cues instead of nine and I suspect that most readers will see it as basically identical to the one I quoted in the post.
Even that is probably overkill; my own rule of thumb is one accent cue per sentence. (I don't write a lot of Apple family, but you can see that rule in action in Applejack's scenes in Mark of Destiny.) I've also found that you can get a lot of accent cues out of word choice and grammar without ever having to fiddle with pronunciation. Skywriter's Contraptionology! is absolutely marvelous about this.
3284516
The rickroll halfway through Chapter 1 is a nice touch.
3284622
Ooooh. Looking forward to the results even more! The close competitions are the fun ones.
3284730
Couldn't resist. I also like how a bunch of bullies downvoted my comment.
3284924
Most likely the unlabeled Mature link, in a context that people without View Mature turned on can see. "Suddenly NSFW" gets a lot of people's hackles up.
3284924
It also didn't help that you made the exact same joke on PresentPerfect's reviews. You need some new material.
Vinyl Test is canon now. :V
3284499
I used to love doing all the "Ah"s, but it gets enough opposition from some quarters that I've dropped back to a lighter form of the accent - mostly just eliding the ends of 'ing' words and running words together ('shoulda', 'gonna'). I think it makes for a voice that's nice and round-sounding, but not Lovecraftian. To be honest, when I see people sprinkling apostrophes all over AJ's accent, she ends up sounding more like someone from Yorkshire than a southern gal. :)
I actually have a story that may need the Vinyl Test if I ever get around to finishing it. :) (Spoiler: the "mute" character is Boulder)
These reviews are really super good and useful. I've often had issues with stories in which the author's own narration gets in the way of the story, but I've never known how to express that problem.
3286553
Agreed wrt the accent. Glad the reviews were useful! Drop me a line if you want a preread on the Boulder story.