Hope in The Storm · 1:26am Aug 4th, 2012
I submitted "Hope in the Storm" to Equestria Daily. This is the feedback they gave me, completely unedited, un-paraphrased, exactly what was said in the e-mail they sent me:
"AN //Authors notes are far less useful than most assume, and quite rare from experienced writers. Yours doesn’t fit the category of ‘necessary’ and I strongly recommend you do away with it. If you have to tell your readers what your story is about twice—as that’s what your synopsis is for—and why you’re writing in the style you are, then you already have a problem.
>20% cooler // This meme (all memes) are tired and played into the dirt by now. Dash only says this once in the whole show.
>?!?! // This is extremely amateurish. If you must use more than one strong punctuation mark, go with ?! at most, and never double up on the same.
Go with italics over full capslock for emphasis.
>vanquisher of … Queen Chrysalis // What? She opens the story with a lie?
>Nopony never really cared about // Character liberties aside, Dash doesn’t speak like this.
Comma splices.
>Valiantwing // Might just be me, but this sounds a bit hokey. If you’re attached to the name, consider breaking into two words, then referring to him as Wing?
>She was the most beautiful creature in all of Equestria. // See, you have a problem here, and it’s that you’re breaking narrative tone. Why? Because this is a subjective opinion, mixed in with narrative that holds to objective observation. Now, if it said “To the pony pulling the cart, she was the most beautiful creature in all of Equestria.” you’d be fine. See the difference?
You have some issue with word repetition.
>The mare, his love, had been spent from her ordeal, was resting in the nearby hospital bed. // Bad structuring.
Compound hyphenation misses.
Homophone confusion // “The pegasus couple went to see they’re fading child”
Show vs Tell issues // “She began to cry out in emotional pain” / “I got an excited look on my face.”
Parenthesis are terrible punctuation to have in a story. I strongly suggest you replace them with em dashes or commas for your appositive structure.
A grey armor… suit? How does that work? Either explain it, or simplify.
Rampant dialogue tagging mistakes. Learn proper dialogue tagging at EQD’s Editor’s Omnibus. This is one of your more systemic and serious of errors.
>I would later learn that he would be much more than that. // This degree and severity of foreshadowing doesn’t do you tale any favors.
Missing punctuation // crying hard “It’s
>I became brothers // Um. Rainbow Dash is… female. Females aren’t brothers.
Okay. So. You have, at heart, a really engaging story here. You really do. If you could just bring your execution up to par, this thing would make an excellent piece. Unfortunately, that’s not going to be terribly easy; there’s a lot you have to learn about writing. Fortunately, it’s not terribly hard either, and you do it well enough that it really feels like you have something of a predilection for it—the strength of your story comes through even despite so many errors, and that really says something. I recommend you do some studying, take this piece over to ponychan’s /fic/ board for some reviews, and take your time in fixing the whole thing up before resubmission. Also, consider your pacing. It tends to drag a bit. This is strike one out of a possible three for this piece, and I really hope to see it come back in good form!"
See this? It's freaking beautiful right? Look how imperfect I am! It's truly exciting! No joke. I'm taking this all to heart, and learning all I can about writing to make it better. I figure they're going to tear me apart in Ponychan, but I believe I will get a lot out of them if I submit my story there. Some of the things on this list were simple oversights, but some of them are truly things that I need to work on and fix. Looks like I'm spending NaPoWriMo editing!
I'm glad that your taking all this to heart. I know a lot people who would be complaining and insulting over a review like this. I wish you well on your quest to the depths of Ponychan.
268514 I agree you constantly hear people saying they hate eqd
I'm really happy the the guy from EQD liked it. At first it sounded like nothing but constructive criticism from an English professor! However I personally think what you have is still very good and I'm excited to see what happens from here.
268535 I don't understand the hate some people have for it. What did EQD ever do?
268545
Submitting a story is a very daunting process, and they're very anal about a lot of things. They all seem a little stuck up when it comes to submitting things on their site. But, you have to push through all that stuff. It's true, a lot of the things on here made me feel really stupid for missing, but they're mostly just mistakes.
268551 And this is why I know you are going to go far with whatever you do. You have the one thing that is vital to becoming good at anything, the ability to recognize mistakes and the will to improve yourself pass them. It is a skill that I admit I lack sometimes. I can't wait to see where you are a few months from now.
268545 *Ahem* this was originally posted by hahatimeforponies here. I hate quoting long posts, but I just couldn't express it better...
">> MischiefMax That's just it really, there are cases of stories being rejected for totally arbitrary or unexplained reasons. The prereaders and moderators have their preferences and the admission of things on to the site is highly subjective. Personally, I'm not absolutely dripping bile over these guys, but I don't think it deserves its place as the de facto centre of the community. In decentralised fandoms like this, no fan website should have that place. The fact that it's possible to bribe your way into getting a feature on a website that's clocked over 200 million hits, by supplying the owner with Trixie art says a lot really. And don't tell me it hasn't happened, because I've seen it first hand.
And that's not even getting into the inconsistencies. Human in Equestria is okay, but humanised ponies aren't? And neither is brony in Equestria? That's decidedly arbitrary for the non-negotiable rules. The rules also state that things might be rejected for being overdone, but who's to decide what's overdone? And then you have the fact that the *.MOV series gets a free pass, and they haven't removed grimdark stories like Cupcakes or the low-quality tripe that made it up back when any old thing was posted... It's unprofessional, because they aren't professionals, but most of the community treats them like they are, and that's the problem.
Apparently much of Equestria Daily's target audience are a lot like the protagonist of Brony Hero of Equestria. In fact I get the feeling that that story is single-handedly responsible for brony-in-Equestria stories not being allowed on Equestria Daily because it hits too close to home for a lot of its readership. Sometimes this fandom reminds me of the furry fandom, in that the guys who own the websites and seem to be calling on the shots have a narrow range of interests that skews the neutrality that they should have if they're taking a position of authority.
FlimFlamPhilosophy put it best. "Trixie Variety Show"."
268592 Hmm. Well I never really looked though the stories there so I don't know their preferences and all such that was stated. But I can agree with most of what was said. But I cannot accept as fact until I look for examples my self. The only thing I can't believe is that you can bribe your way in with pictures, if that ever happened I would lose a great deal of faith in their ability to choose stories, and other things to post there.
268604
It's a corrupt system, you have to be less biased to run such a site. I don't have the patience to do such a thing, but to be a sort of central for a fandom, you have to be less selective in your material. At the same time... I really want to get on there! If not for this story... for music most likely.
268610 I never really paid much attention to what was happening on the site. I pretty much just check it for news, wallpapers, and music. Then I also haven't been part of the fandom long so I haven't had much time to observe. Now on to the other question at hand. You do music?
268624
Yeppers! Been writing music before I was even a brony! Only started writing stories about a month ago. I haven't written anything directly related to MLP, but I'm thinking about doing that soon, after I get some better equipment. You can check out my music page here.
268604
hahtimeforponies stated that it was a Nightly Roundup feature, which I thought was nothing. But then again I copied the whole comment. But you get the point across. Personally, I prefer FiMfiction.
268919 I read the thread. Most the links do lead right back here anyway. Thats why I always check here for my stories instead of EqD.
I sent it in (I think) to Ponychan. That was a daunting process, I had like 12 tabs open at one point.
268926
268592
272221 Why did you need twelve tabs?
272224
there was all these instructions I had to follow, and documents I had to keep up with, not to mention I had to copy and past a whole bunch of stuff from FimFiction, and had to have e-mails and this blog post open for reference, it made my head spin. Not to mention, I'm not even sure if I did it right.
272227 Well I hope everything went though properly and that you get some good reviews soon.
Good show author.
>And no worries, you did the /fic/ post just fine.