It’s… been a while. I had a sudden lapse of reality and had a hour of just mental chaos, in other words, a damn mental breakdown, but I’m all right now. Just dandy. Not fine, just a bit dandy. Maybe a bit fine, but not fully dandy.

If you get what I just referenced, you are the MVP for today.

Anyway, today, we--and by we, I mean I am going to be reviewing the story about a period of ponies that we really, really need to not forget. Thank you Banana Prince for submitting this story about our G3 counterpart that goes by the name of Minty, whose obsession of decorating and socks will always be remembered no matter what season it is!

I mean, seriously, she loves socks so much that she’ll go to war to try and save them from becoming abominations.

Despite the sock craze, Banana Prince's fanfiction called "The Gift of Winter" does not play on her obsession but rather her calm desire to create these socks. The author gives us a backstory to play on and…

...well, that’s all there is to this story.

It’s a slice of life about Minty’s life previous, while making it relate to her love of socks and winter.

Now it’s an okay concept, sure, but it’s so short that it fails to even give something interesting to look at. Let’s take into consideration how the story presents itself. For starters, the author decided that the past should be mostly told to us:

The green mare with the pink mane looked over the hill and saw the fillie’s school. Suddenly she saw herself there again.

She was the funny one. She had a deep resent of that position. She had no idea why she was clumsy. It didn’t help at all that her grades weren’t the best. She had a hard time concentrating when the joke clouded her mind while she made a hobby of finding where she belonged, trying to overcome her bad luck and growing a strong sense of humor and humility at the same time as she desperately waited for each day to end.

The way the information is presented gives us a very disconnected view of Minty as her past self, which, in a sense, fits considering she is not like that anymore, however; the lack of immersion here kills that instantly. Instead of an immersive view through events, we get the information chucked at us. This isn’t a very good way of showing how the idea of the school being a place where she had to struggle to get through her day. Give us some examples and show us what is going on along with you telling us what had happened. There needs to be a balance regardless if it’s a character study or, as I had also interpreted it, a more distant narrator who jumps into the scene to give us another point of view.

Another criticism of the distant viewpoint is that it breaks the flow of a story. In “The Gift of Winter” the flow is not broken, but the flow is “disrespected” due to how many times we jump between the main narrator (present) and the distant narrator (past). The author decided to use this technique three times throughout his or her’s story. If an author does this too much in his or her’s story, he or she threatens to leave perfect opportunities to immerse the reader into the character, which was the entire purpose of the story. In this case, every scene told by the distant narrator was told to us with very little description given to try and balance the showing vs telling. If a fanfiction author is going to write a story diving into a certain character to show more about them than we already know, then give us something new to see. We like being told things for information to help move the plot, but the plot can only move if we can see it, not being told of it.

This picture is so related.

Switching from the metal gears of perspective and show vs telling, I will now also point out some other things that really grind my gears about this story. For starters, the dialogue progression is a major issue in this story. I’m mentioning this problem for two reasons. The first reason is that there isn’t much dialogue in this story. We get a little blurb between Minty, our main character, and a vaguely stated Pearl, who the author decides to not give much detail about other than that she is a vendor who Minty always buys her yarn at. This encounter moves the story along, but it doesn’t give much to think about. It should’ve been expanded on so we could understand their relationship. Maybe some more small talk?

Before we even dive into the small talk bit, the author should consider the interactions of the characters and their relations with the environment. This could add more character to them, because from what we know, Minty likes the cold. Does Pearl like the cold? Assuming that she’s one of the ones shivering at her store, I can rightfully place in her in the bracket of “people who don’t like the cold”. So the author could play on the weather by gearing the responses more towards the environment. The freezing weather warrants the “C-Cold as can be” tone for Pearl, which can allow more room for more character development!

The other reason as to why I’m mentioning the dialogue progression relates to the wording of show vs tell. In this section of dialogue, we get the mistake that all authors do when they’re trying to write more creative dialogue. Let’s take a peek, shall we?

At the market was a multitude of booths with yawning ponies wrapped in scarfs, holding on to mugs of warm drinks (provided by a grinning Donut Joe). Minty trotted up to the one with different crafts supplies displayed.

"Hi, Pearl!" Minty greeted in her jolly way.

The mare behind the counter lit up from her tired stated seeing the candy colored mare coming.

"Hi, Minty." Pearl waved. "Lemme guess. The usual?"

"You know it."

And at that, Pearl got two bags already stuffed with bolts of yarn of every color from beneath the counter just like every year. They exchanged the bags with bits (that were dropped then recounted).

I’m not joking when I’m saying this, but that is all the dialogue the reader (you) will get in this story. There are many things wrong with the text surrounding it, hence why I brought the context before and after to give us some more information. For starters, the lead-in is very vague. What type of crafts are we looking at here? Raw materials for the crafts? Paper mache? Stone statues? Origami? Specifying what we’re approaching helps us get to know the character she is about to meet.

The second mistake the author made in this dialogue section is telling us how Minty felt and not showing it. Not only do those who do not know Minty (in her G3 form) would know her “usual jolly way” of greeting another pony or creature, but even if we do know how she greets ponies, what would it look like? Telling us how she acts breaks the immersion aspect of storytelling. Show us it. Convey and portray, my friend. Don’t leave one out to dry.

The third mistake relates to the environment versus interaction criticism I talked about earlier. We’re missing that here, and as a result, Pearl’s line sounds really bland. She just sounds like a flat OC tossed in to try and develop Minty’s character and nothing more. So much opportunity to expand here, and nothing is done about it.

The final mistake is something I’ve reiterated throughout this entire review so far. Simply put, we need more. There’s just the bare bones here, and I can’t say enough that the description, lack of dialogue, and show versus telling is really off-putting for me.

Now since we’re done with plot diving (pun intended), dialogue criticizing, and describing events, characters, and other nouns I can’t list, let’s move into the grammar section, because I grammar, you grammar, he she me grammar (with not-sees).

In “The Gift of Winter”, there are a lot of issues in terms of grammar. First off, there are a lot of basic errors like the proper singular possessive spelling of filly…

The green mare with the pink mane looked over the hill and saw the fillie’s school.

[Third paragraph, first sentence]

...run-on sentences…

She made no hesitation to scarf down some breakfast oatmeal and get outside and made her way to the crafts store just like she had for every year that came since she was a filly.

[Second paragraph, third sentence]

...subject-verb agreement errors…

There waswere too many happy memories brought back by the cold for her to spend hours fighting it.

[Second paragraph, second sentence]

...tense agreement and awkward wording…

The mare behind the counter lit up from her tired stated to seeing the candy colored mare coming towards her.

[Dialogue Section, Halfway Down]

The list goes on and on but the amount of errors in the story really kills my ability to read it. If I have a hard time understanding the story due to its errors, then this is not a story I can recommend.

The only positives I can say about this story is that it has potential to be something bigger if it’s cleaned up, polished, and expanded on. There’s so much more the author can tackle with this concept, since there’s a lot of things we don’t know about Minty even though she’s a part of the G3 universe. I encourage you to dive more into the subject instead of dancing around it. Thanks for the read!

Score: Needs Some #Work!

-Soaring

4362020 I am liking these reviews of yours.

4362399
I'm glad you like the reviews! More will be coming soon!

4362601

4362020 Thanks. It feels like a wake-up slap to read reviews - something kind of painful, but if I got it, then I probably needed it. If I remember right, I did this in my earlier days of fan fic writing so I did expect things to be wrong with it and I wrote this while was in school so writing time was limited. Stories always feels so much different when you write them as opposed to reading them. Plus, reading something I wrote versus someone else reading are different experiences so I welcome criticisms.
You know, I've wanted to republish some of my fics after a good re-write. If you want to do a re-write of it, I could replace what I have with it and give you a credit in the description.

4784683

If you want to do a re-write of it, I could replace what I have with it and give you a credit in the description.

Well, then it wouldn't be your writing anymore. I'd rather see the author improve from the advice I and others give than seeing a get-free card given to them.

Also, I'm a very busy guy. I'm working to finish all my chapter fics before I leave the fandom. So this story you have here is something that I might not be able to do.

I do appreciate the offer, though. Also, I'm glad the review helped you realize how you write. I do believe you have the potential to do what you want with it in a re-write, so I would suggest doing the re-write yourself. Either that, or have a friend jump in and collaborate with you. If that doesn't work, you could always have a friend who acts as a reader to suggest things to you. You know, bouncing off ideas?

Lastly, thanks for the follow! I'm glad you think I'm worthy of being stalked viewed as enjoyable enough to be followed!

4784751 Any time.
I'd love to get some colabing done in the future. In my past experiences, I've found that I'm cursed to repel cover artists. I feel like it'll be a similar case if I try to colab. Other than that, I have no idea how the usual colab process works so I'm hesitant to do it. Most importantly, I don't have internet access via computer so I can't do anything on this site beyond messaging, commenting, and reading fics.
Though, in the future, I'll be writing on my own time and computer so things will get better. I just hope to master some of the finer points of writing that you've pointed out through experience.