CCC: cleverpun's Critique Corner #13 — Why Don't You Tell Them? · 6:42am Nov 13th, 2015
Title: Why Don't You Tell Them?
Author: Titanium Dragon
Found via: Titanium Dragon’s userpage
Short summary: Twilight asks Celestia why everyone thinks Celestia grants alicornhood. Celestia and Twilight have a conversation about it. Celestia is a bit melancholy.
Genre(s): Headcanon Delivery, Conversation Story
What does this story do well?: While normally I would consider an uninterrupted string of dialogue—broken only by dialogue tags and token action markers—to be bad writing, there are exceptions. In the case of Conversation Stories, that is the entire point, after all. One must ask, then, if the conversation is presented well, if it is clearly written, and if the characters come through in their dialogue.
The story is easy to read. While there are a few awkward sentences and odd grammar choices here and then, the prose flows smoothly. The conversation is presented in a digestible way, and there is not much room for misinterpretation.
The characterization is a bit harder to discern. I’ve often said that one reason FiM is a popular ground for fanfiction is because of the archetypal nature of the characters. Here, Celestia and Twilight have extremely few defining characteristics. Whether that is a play towards their archetypal natures, an attempt to keep focus on their conversation and the ideas in it, or lack of authorial effort, it is hard to say.
Given this is a Conversation Story, I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt and say it was intentional. Twilight and Celestia are bland, but that can work in the context of a conversation story.
Where could this story improve?: The other fundamental component of a Conversation Story is the conversation: the ideas and themes being delivered. In this aspect, the story felt incredibly dull to me.
The story is labeled Drama, so I assume it is supposed to make the reader emote; to empathize with Celestia’s reasoning and agree with it. The setup and delivery are so blunt, however, that it falls flat. Celestia explains that she lets ponies believe she grants alicornhood in order to prevent them from wasting their lives on it. She provides zero examples to back up her assertions, though. There is no leadup to the question, and so Twilight’s concerns don’t have any weight either.
If this story was truly commuted to provoking thought, then it needs to give both sides of the conversation equal ammunition. If the story started with Twilight’s actual encounter with a filly, and took us through her brief struggle to answer that question, it would provide a more emotionally resonant opening. It would also give an opportunity for actual characterization of Twilight.
Then, the next part could be Twilight confronting Celestia. Rather than having Celestia vaguely remark on the reasons for her decisions, she should describe in detail one or more instances that illustrate her points. Instead of alluding to times when ponies threw their lives away or insulted her, she should describe them to Twilight. There’s room for parallels to the opening section with Twilight’s indecision, and parallels with real life and Philosopher’s Stone-style wild goose chases.
The story lacks this, however. It only offers a brief buffet of thoughts, rather than a true conversation. It offers nothing provoking or insightful to the reader. Both the participants in the conversation feel unengaged, and their concerns and conclusions feel contrived.
In a single sentence: A Conversation-As-Story, which lacks the substance to provoke thought.
Verdict: Downvote. The “conversation as story” genre is an incredibly divisive thing. Some people like it because it mimics a fundamentally interesting pastime; having casual but interesting conversations. Personally, I find it boring, and this story did not change my mind.
Titanium Dragon has a record of writing stories that are responses to other stories. I generally dislike those stories, because they tend to stand poorly on their own. Without the context of the original, they don’t resonate with the reader very well. This story feels like one of those; a conversation where the reader is missing fundamental pieces. I assume it gained popularity because of people taking it as a grounds for further speculation, but in that case it would be better suited to an essay or blog post than a fanfic. Even if you enjoy the Conversation Story genre, I cannot recommend this.
The story is labelled Drama, not Sad.
Yes, Sad and Drama are almost the same color, but the story is not a sadfic.
This wasn't actually a response fic, actually, just an idea I had.
Anyway, I'm sorry you didn't like this story. I sometimes do write conversation stories, and sometimes they're quite popular, and some of them are better than others. This one was intended to be a fairly lightweight delivery of the main idea.
I think the main reason this sort of thing IS popular is because they're so easy to read; a brief piece like this is very easily digested and contains little other content, and thus delivers what the audience is wanting (the philisophical argument) without much else. I do think there are better ways of writing these sorts of stories in the sense of making them "proper stories", but there is a reason that they appeal to the audience in this format.
Part of the reason why I write stories like this is because I have characters chatter away at each other in my head (it is one of my hobbies), and sometimes I think the conversation would be interesting enough for a general audience to enjoy.
I do have other stories which get at ideas via more direct action.
3539347 Fixed the tag mislabel. I blame Knighty.
I don't have an issue with the Conversation Story genre (even though I generally dislike it). The problem with writing a good conversation story, however, is that it has a lot of direct competition. It has to compete with actual conversations, with essays/blog posts, and many other idea delivery systems that aren't shackled by prose conventions.
A conversation story can't simply present its ideas (unless the ideas are particularly heady and/or vague, I suppose). Conversation is built upon back-and-forth. I already mentioned in the blog how one might have given the story more weight, by giving Twilight and Celestia more backup for their views. An editor for "Princest Is Wincest," It Said gave me just that advice--the original version of the story lacked Celestia's explanation/justification for her current views, and it made the story blunter. It's still a conversation story, but the participants have an exchange with each other rather than just the reader.
Stories which rely solely on the reader to do all the work are tricky things. They require a very specific audience. I think this story would have been better off as a 500-1000 word blog post, but obviously I fall outside that specific audience.
It makes me think of "Darwinian Pool Room" by Issac Asimov--another conversation story that lacks weight. If you ever get a chance, read it and perhaps do a compare/contrast with your own story
3540390
I'll have to check that out.
Forgive me for tooting my own horn. But I ironically wrote this fanfic that is pretty much the opposite in message but has similar structure. http://alexwarlorn.deviantart.com/art/Alicorn-World-562544232