Rainb0w's One Chapter Review: Flash of Fate: Betryal · 8:07pm Feb 5th, 2021
Bit of an interesting review here, cause this one is a request! the author saw my review of Dead Tree and wanted to be picked apart as well, so I guess I have to oblige.
The author only has a few stories listed, and they are all between 1 and 3 thousand words, save of course for their “Walking in Shadows story”. This leads me to a bit of a conundrum because the author wants to be picked apart so the only one that I can rightfully review is Flash of Fate: Betrayal; since it’s vote ratio is almost 2 to 1; so I need to see what’s wrong with it.
Moonlit_Stardust
I sit here in this cell and yet all I can think is *how did it go so wrong*, I was starting to adjust to this world and it’s differences from mine. I had just gotten my own home, a paying job, frie- no they were never my “Friends” now that I look back on it. They turned on me the moment something went wrong, the moment one of those damn beings spouted bullshit.
I should have run when I had the chance, but no I thought I could tell my own side of the story, thought they would give me the benefit of the doubt. But now that I look back on it I should have figured they wouldn’t, they saw me as nothing but a intelligent animal. They never saw me as an equal and I let myself fall into the trap they set for me.
I do know this, they will NEVER have my trust again.
I just have to bide my time and hope the allies I have made come for me, I just hope these Beings are as lax in their Guard core as they are in their brains.
The story starts up and I have no idea what has happened. The main character is brooding about something that went wrong, about some group abandoning him, about not being given the benefit of the doubt (god does that sound relatable) But then he says something about allies coming for him? And a Guard core? And brains?
I just sat there for who knows how long, waiting. Staring at the door, the only way in and out of this two by two hell. I was starting to think I had been forgotten, left to rot in this cell like some long forgotten relic of the past. But then the noise started, a soft clip clop, clip clop of iron shoes against stone in two sets. The noise slowly getting closer as time progressed, it was agonizing, purposeful and the guards took pleasure in it.
It seemed like a century, but was in all likely only minutes, before the noise stopped in front of the door to my cell. I could hear the guard speaking softly on the other side, probably discussing how best to handle me, to get me to the sham trial they were likely going to hold for me.
The discussion went on for quite a few minutes, before they went quiet. Then the jingle of keys on a metal ring was heard, before a scraping sound came from the door. There was the sound of clicking as the tumblers started turning in the lock and then the door started opening. Once the door was fully open I saw my escort for this walk down the green mile.
I think I’m starting to understand the ratio, and looking at some of the comments left on the story confirms the theory I’m crafting in my head.
The story starts very abruptly, which isn’t a bad thing, but there’s stuff being presented to the reader that isn’t explained and there’s no real description of where the character is, what his conditions are, or even the conversation that took place between the guards.
Again, this isn’t a problem per se, at least in terms of plot construction. It’s believable for the character to wait in a cell for a long time, but in that instance of waiting, between the first and second paragraph in the above quote, there should be some description of what the surrounding area looks like, so the reader has something to sink their teeth into and create an image in their head of the surrounding environment to ground the characters in it.
There also needs to be a typed out conversation of what the guards talk about, not only because it would create more flow to the story, but it’s also a chance to characterize the main character and the guard. They could talk about why he’s imprisoned, or if the guard has any relation to the main character, the way the character responds to hearing this guard talk about him can establish their temperament as a character, etc etc
The story continues much in this fashion till then end of the chapter. The main character is shackled and brought through the castle and into a court room where Princess Celestia Judge Judy’s her way into the scene. I laughed pretty hard when the main character kept calling the Princess “Sun bitch” but I think I’ve stumbled onto the fundamental problem with this story.
As I’ve stated before, the story kinda just, barrels onwards without really describing anything. The story is only 1875 words long, and when calculated to pages of a book, that equates to only 6 pages. 6 pages is rather short for a chapter and nowhere even close to a full story. That isn’t the author’s fault, that is more the fault of Fimfiction’s 1000 word minimum. When I was a novice I thought 100 words was a lot before I realized it wasn’t even half the length of a chapter I’d read in a normal book .
The events of this chapter suggest this is some kind of series, so with that in mind, if this were an actual book, then I’d assume that by the 6th page we would still be inside the jail cell after the main character had just got done explaining the circumstances of why they ended up where they were, explained the way the jail cell loooked and felt, heard some dialogue from the guard, and was just about to get put into shackles.
The chapter needs to be slowed down. The chapter needs some room to breath and enough time to properly introduce itself. It needs time to establish itself and effectively say what it needs to say; meaning it needs more words.
I’m not going to make any judgments on the author or his skill as a writer, because I’ve made similar mistakes in the past, so I’m going to leave off with a bit of writing advice I wrote for stories just like this:
Avoid ‘talking head syndrome’ (stop and smell the flowers)
As written on A Life Well Written
“Talking Heads Syndrome” refers to an otherwise fairly well-written scene (dialogue, characterization, mechanics, etc.) but in which the characters don’t seem to be anchored to the physical world. The characters seem to be nothing but heads floating somewhere in the ether.
An example, a fellow writer in one of my critique groups wrote a scene for a mystery story in which a detective is arguing with her boss. Though somewhat trite, the dialogue was realistic and believable, but there was virtually no description of their surroundings, no description of how the characters react to their environment.
One of the biggest mistakes I see inexperienced writers making is falling victim to the talking head syndrome. It isn’t their fault, they just don’t know how to avoid it. The problem is that they have the entire story in their head, and when they translate it to paper (or screen) they lose a lot of detail mostly due to their inexperience.The story could be the greatest work of fiction you have ever imagined, but unless you know how to set your scene, your characters will no doubt end up as talking heads. You could go on google to read a lot of long-winded articles about how to avoid this problem, but I think the solution is that you just simply need to stop and smell the flowers
What i mean by this is that as an inexperienced author you’ll be excited to get your story out as fast as you can, and you don’t realize that you need to actually describe things, so your scene ends up reading something like
“Hello Spike” Twilight said.
“Twilight, I’ve been looking all over the castle for you”
“I’ve been right here in the library, you must not have been looking very hard.”
“Well I’m glad I found you.” Spike said.Think of the picture you have in your head. You probably see a library, cause you know what a library looks like so your brain fills that in contextually, but do you see the characters anywhere? Do you see them doing anything? You know what Twilight and Spike look like contextually but you probably don’t see them in the scene, and it’s probably hard for your mind to hold onto the mental image of the scene.
That’s talking head syndrome, and the solution to this is to stop and smell the flowers, Literally, describe everything.
If you’re at the start of the scene, describe what the environment looks like. Are you in a house? A castle? A library? If inside, what does the interior look like? Is it well lit? Poorly lit? Is there sunlight coming in from a window? Are there characters in your scene? What do they look like? What are they doing?
Obviously you're not going to describe everything, as that would get tedious, but describe just enough to set a picture in your readers mind and to make the scene seem lifelike. Think of it like looking at the different scenes from a movie. When you first introduce the scene you’re going to describe as much as you can, but once you’ve described something you aren't going to describe it again. So for example, if a character enters a town, you’ll describe what the town looks like, the buildings, the locals, the weather. Then your character enters a building and you do the same thing, you describe the inside of the building, but once your character leaves the building you don’t describe the town again because the reader already knows what it looks like. You can describe it again if something is different, say a building collapsed and a crowd had gathered, but if nothing of note happened you can just move onto the next scene where something does happen
This also ties in very well with the pacing of your story. If you want a scene to move slowly or build tension you should spend more time describing things in detail. Have a couple descriptive paragraphs of a character looking longingly into a locket his lover gave to him and describe how it makes him feel. Describe how he hasn’t felt the same way since his lover disappeared. Describe his determination to find his lover and how he won’t ever give up as long as he has the locket.
That whole scene could be half a page or longer, but say somepony steals the locket from him and the character makes chase. You aren’t going to describe in great detail how he chases him, you’re going to use broad strokes to describe how he chases him through alleyways and through the market, past the ponies holding grocery bags and weaving in and out of the crowd until the chase leads them to a dark alley on the bad side of town.
Then you could describe how sinister the alleyway is, describe the fear the character feels as three ponies step out of the shadows holding weapons, describe how somepony blocks the entrance way of the alley and traps him inside.
Knowing when to stop and smell the flowers and when not to will be the key to other people’s enjoyment and readability of your story.
I will admit this needs to be gone over and expanded on now that I have gotten my feet wet and developed as a writer.
Though I have to laugh that you picked the very first Fimfiction story I posted as it is technically (even though it wasn’t meant to be) part of a series with this one being towards the end (second to last of a four part series) by this point the MC is five years into his..... I guess existence in their world and has had to face numerous issues.
Stories One and Two (One being his arrival and Two being the events leading up to chapter Three) would have established all the stuff mentioned here.
It’s not my best work I will admit (read “A Captains Lament” if you want to see how I have progressed) and likely suffers from “Edit Syndrome” for those who don’t know what that is, it’s when a story is edited and changed so much that it’s flow becomes jumbled due to the writer removing sections and adding in more without changing anything.
Still thank you Dashie, I might go back and edit this soon to make it better.
5448467
I mean, to be fair, you did tell me to pick any story
5448494
True, that I did!
But if I am honest? I expected you to pick A Captains Lament due to its length!
Heh, maybe you should do another one on A Captains Lament? It would act as a good comparison Review?
5448500
I guess I gotta review A Captains Lament then
5448519
Only if you want too!
I am kinda curious what you would think as it give more description to the ponies and environment, it’s a bit more fast paced in the beginning due to the suddenness of what happens.
I intend to add another chapter to it in the near future too as it is one of my more popular stories for some odd reason.