Brutal honesty but good advice? · 5:17am Mar 15th, 2016
So, nother quick update and...I guess confession. Some might say this is jumping the gun a bit, but I honestly wanted to see if 'Friendship is Scaleless' was worthy enough for those who run the Equestrian Daily site, based on both the attention it's gotten here and the support from everyone.
Well, after submitting it and waiting around for several weeks, this finally popped into my mail box (for the sake of privacy I will not be disclosing who sent it):
Thank you for submitting "Friendship is Scaleless" to Equestria Daily. I'm completely unfamiliar with "Dark Souls," so I'm not getting any sense here of Seath being "the darkest soul." He doesn't seem particularly evil in the opening chapters, and the way he fights something called the Chosen Undead makes me think his enemies must be zombies. Zombies to my thinking are bad, so if the Chosen Undead is a good zombie, I'll need to know that.
Maybe in the scene with Frampt and Griggs and all, you could spell out for those of us who don't know just why they want to kill Seath. Show us that they're the good guys--if they are the good guys--and have them mention what it is that makes Seath a bad guy--if he is a bad guy. Maybe have them talk specifically about this cause of theirs, the one that Frampt refers to at the end of chapter 2. I need something that'll give me some information about who these characters are and what they want.
Mechanically, the story has some problems, too. Most of the places where you use "thine," for instance, should be "thy"--when used as an adjective, "thine" only appears if the following word begins with "h" or a vowel--and I noticed more than a few times where "thee" should be "thou" and vice versa. Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thou for charts and examples of when to use which form.
Also, I noticed some fairly consistent mispunctuation at the end of dialogue. For example, in the line, "'Well the formula for it is right here, so all we need is an emerald flask, and a bonfire.' She stated." there should be a comma after "bonfire," and the "she" following it shouldn't be capitalized. There really shouldn't be a comma after "flask" either... But for the dialogue punctuation, check the FAQ at the top of any Fimfiction page, click on "Writing Guide, and look in the section on "Said tags".
Another difficulty I had was with character voicing. When Spike says in chapter 1, "Twilight, you know I’ll always be the first to support you in whatever studies you choose to pursue, and out of us all, I will also be the last to call you out on your more…eccentric habits…" I had to look twice to make sure it was Spike speaking. That just doesn't sound like words he would use. In that same section, too, the point of view wavers back and forth between Twilight and Spike, the narrative sometimes telling us what Twilight's thinking and sometimes what Spike is thinking.
All in all, then, I'll be sending the story back to you for possible revision.
Now first and foremost let me say that being rejected comes as no surprise to me. Rare is the author who gets accepted for anything off the bat and rarer still is the author who does so for a crossover (though as a few other stories on the site will attest, it CAN happen). What I wish to hear from everyone else is how accurate do they think the other points are (obviously forgiving the pre-reader not being familiar with Dark Souls). Do I fail to accurately convey voicing? Is my punctuation off as often as stated? Have I perhaps shown too much favoritism to Seath and not cast him in the more ambiguous light I should have?
I strive to make my writing as perfect as possible and will gladly take this commentary on board if folk believe it's accurate. I post it for all to see because it comes as a bit of a contrast to the comments for each chapter which generally agree that my writing is fine as is.
What do you all think?
Huh, when I tried to submit to Equestria Daily, I got shot, non descriptive answers that gave me nothing to work with.
This is actually helpful, even though I really do enjoy your story and I love it.
Well, Seath is the main character, so you kind of have to make him a bit more likeable than he is in game.
EQD is kind of a trashfire of a website (doubly so where fanworks are concerned, triply so where fic in specific is concerned), and this response is pretty emblematic of that to me. If they really had no knowledge of the source material when judging, not just a crossover, but one with an alt-source main character? They should have handed the job off to a different reviewer. Your voicing is a little inconsistent, especially for characters like Spike: The example there was decent, but it's not back-breaking. The punctuation examples were all very minor, and while your thee-thine-thou is wrong, it's wrong in the correct way, which is to say it's usually correct relative to how they are established as being used in Dark Souls canon.
TL;DR I don't think submitting to EQD is actually beneficial in any meaningful way, and even if you clean everything up that they discuss here, it won't necessarily improve your fic a lot.
3808875 Well that certainly offers an interesting counter-pespective. Thank you!
Dude, EqD prereaders put a fic on the site only if it hits their personal buttons for what they specifically like in a fic.
Seriously.
If you get the wrong prereader for your genre or style, it's a guaranteed no every time.
A prereader once rejected a fic because, according to the prereader, "Twilight turns into a dragon, and I used to masturbate to thinking about turning into a dragon, so that makes this a fetish fic. Fetish fics are banned, so you're rejected."
EqD fully backed him up on this.
Not to mention the times they accidentally forwarded their email conversations talking nonstop shit about the author to the author with their rejection.
There's also strongly founded rumours that the prereaders don't even read 90% of the ones they reject, or if they do it's a bare skim, considering how often points they bring up are just wrong.
They're also fond of just hand-waving and saying 'Oh, bad grammar.' When they don't want to give the actual reasons they failed a fic.
EqD was first. That's literally its only claim to fame. It's far worse than every other alternative for every single aspect it provides. Back in like 2010 it might have been actually SOMETHING, but these days it just coasts by on reputation.
3810835 Well now I know for the future. Thanks!
3811016 Yeah, it's one of those sad truths about the fandom.
Also, Ariamaki made a very good point- "Gee, I have no idea what this fic is about, crossed over with or starring! It's TOTALLY not completely unprofessional of me to try this anyways!" -No competent prereader ever
Im gonna be honest 90% of the issues where so minor i diddint notice them, but they do have a point on the dialouge... the way they speak is.... off... its like... no one talks like that, mabey the people in dark souls but not in mlp.
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Could you give me a few examples of the above for reference?
I'm gonna be honest here, and say that as far as critique goes what I see here is pretty tame... assuming they actually read the entirety of the story. In reading their critique of story elements, I find myself suspecting that they only got a few chapters in before saying "good enough" and going on with that. Quite frankly, if that's all that a critic has to say about a work of 266k+ words, then you've done a truly remarkable job... or they've done a terribly bad one.