Hi, y'all:

My first fic on this account, Blackout, has gone largely unnoticed (even though I received some initial positive feedback on the premise and early chapters). After watching my view counts for a couple days, it seems like readers are falling off exponentially the further they get in the fiction. I'm thinking (hoping) that this is an issue of pacing, not of the writing itself, and was wondering if I could get a few peeps to check up on that for me.

If you're interested in helping out, just do me a favor and read what I have, and let me know if/when you get bored and, if you can, why! I'd really like to know why people are losing interest and hopefully improve the readership loyalty.

Thank you!

What you're struggling with is less about pacing as much as it is that people find your story uninteresting.

This can usually be traced back to the protagonist and how they're written. I can only speak for myself, but that's what I find so off-putting about it. Carrot Top's narration doesn't have a consistent voice. You can tell that the character is meant to be the sort of character who throws out biting quips or is always somewhat grumpy or distant.

Carrot Top doesn't have her personality come across through dialogue as a character and more as a loose collection of lines that are strung together to form the basis of her personality in the narrative, but it doesn't come together in the way that narration should. The actual description of what's going on is too plain and the lines themselves don't paint a clear picture of a personality to me. They feel jumbled, like the character has traits but no real internal voice--no personality.

What's the worst is that it doesn't sound like this is a story that would be told by any real person in the way that Carrot Top tells it. Something about the words and the sentence structure feels stiff and unnatural. Compare this to FO:E

"Hell, it wasn’t even a plan.  Plans have… plan stuff. Calamity had a bunch of ideas and vague hopes tied together by multiple points of “and then something happens”.  We didn’t have who or what we needed to even try it. I doubted we could get them."
---
"Yep, this was what wet felt like.  I thought I was wet a few minutes ago.  Wow, was I wrong. The rain was heavier now, falling in sheets that drenched me to the bone before I’d gotten into the street.  But I didn’t care. All I cared about was Silver Bell. The pony in my head was biting her hooves, insisting that I should have gotten the two of them to safety sooner.  Why did I have to fall asleep?

My hooves splashed in the river beneath me.  Calamity and Gilgamesh were faster, reaching the station house that had been claimed by New Appleloosa’s mayor/sheriff.  Ditzy Doo was already at the front door.

The lights were out.  Not good."
---

The personality of this character comes through with each word chosen to describe the world around her. You are looking at things through her eyes and you feel it. If I were to imagine myself having a conversation with Littlepip, it would be simple to do. That's how well-defined she is. Could I do that with Carrot Top? Not even sure that you could at this point.

That's a problem.