My Wings Will Keep You Safe by Astral Phoenix

Overall Score: 4/10

First Impressions

The synopsis presents a cute premise, but is constructed rather awkwardly. The sentences are clunky and telly, and you commit the sin of asking the obvious question.

Unless there’s a major turnaround I suspect this will be a low scoring story.

The Review

I’m going to drop my usual style of review because there’s not a lot of contrast I can use here for what’s good or bad. It’s all sort of bland, and needs some flavor. I will say that your punctuation was pretty good, and it’s refreshing to see that you understand the rules of dialogue punctuation and pronouns. I haven’t had to explain Lavender Unicorn Syndrome in a while and I’m glad I don’t have to here.

Your first issue is pacing. The pacing for the first few scenes is lighting quick, like you were trying desperately to get them out of the way so you could arrive at a more important scene. Don’t do this. Your early scenes are the most important ones. They draw the reader in so you can deliver the more satisfying plot elements at the proper time. If you lose interest in the first scene, how can you expect anyone to listen all the way to the last scene?

This is not helped by your dialogue and character interactions, which feel wooden and scripted, serving more to explain or advance the plot than to build personality and depth to the character. It gets so bad at one point that Apple Bloom begins to feel like the adult and Twilight the filly. Early on, you spent nearly an entire scene explaining over and over again how hungry they all are, and somehow still managed to make it feel like the story was rushing along on its own agenda. Then you have Scootaloo being hangry enough to snap at Fluttershy, but not so desperate that she’s frantic for food. This odd disconnect doesn’t help with immersion at all.

Which brings me to the next major issue with this story. Telly narration. Every other line you’re explaining through narration why a character is doing a thing or how hungry or agitated they are and you don’t bother to offer any clues or actions to support the statement, and you just keep doing it. The art of storytelling does not involve concisely explaining to the reader what is going on. Even comedy, with its high energy, often fast paced and amusingly brief plotlines, takes the time to let the reader draw their own conclusions, subverts their expectations, and guides them along a journey that elicits laughter through cleverness and a trust that the reader is smart enough to understand what is going on.

You haven’t done this. You feel the need to explain everything, as though you’re worried the reader won’t understand. Well? If the story isn’t clear enough, then that just means you need to go back and look at why. Give context clues, express emotions without naming them, don’t rely so much on the narration as on the characters’ unique and varying personalities to tell the story. Your characters aren’t all cardboard cutouts. They are intricate, unique, and interesting. Use them.

”Why?” Scootaloo questioned.

Less glaring, but still noticable is your use of dialogue tags that… just seem a bit odd. Sure, Scootaloo may have asked a question, but when you use “question” as a verb it’s usually meant to indicate an interrogation or to express skepticism. Dialogue tags become mostly invisible amidst prose, so adding tags like questioned, or stated, or responded, or replied, or instructed just start to feel out of place. It’s best to just use “asked” or “said” unless the situation specifically calls for a different one.

”What is that?” Twilight curiously asked.”

to absolutely no one but herself.
I get it, Twilight is a dorky science nerd who talks out loud to herself a lot, but the way she talks during this entire scene goes beyond verbal rationalization. The show commits this sin ad nauseum because they want to express a particular thought and are limited by the medium, but in writing we can use narration to voice Twilight’s thoughts without her seeming like even more of a weirdo than she already is. You might as well have had her say “She looks so peaceful. I just can’t bear to wake her up” as well.

This is an example of one of the advantages writing has over visual media, and you should learn about its strengths and weaknesses, and how to properly make use of it to make your story the best it can be. Probably the best way to do this is to pick up a book, and read. Just read. Enjoy it, and then look back through it at how thoughts and dialogue are structured, and how they are used. You can learn more from books than most people realize.

“I’m so sorry, Apple Bloom,” Twilight replied, “When the others left I thought you were with them.

You’re telling me that responsible, organized Twilight Sparkle didn’t once check on the CMC during their meeting to see how they were doing or offer them tea or cookies, didn’t notice when Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo left alone, and just assumed they were all gone? Where was she? In her lab in the basement? She certainly wasn’t in her study, or she’d have spotted Apple Bloom missing, and she certainly wasn’t in her room reading or she’d have noticed Apple Bloom sleeping in there. And you’re telling me Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo didn’t notice their friend was missing? Or if they did, that they didn’t at least check on her. This is beyond suspension of disbelief. This just straight up wouldn’t happen.

”Oh dear,” exclaimed Twilight. “It looks like we’re in for a really bad storm tonight. I’m not sure how I can get you home.”

Yeah, it’s not like you can fly, or cast a shield around the two of you, or teleport directly into the barn or anything. Nope. Absolutely nothing Alicorn Princess of Friendship Twilight Sparkle can do to get little Apple Bloom home to her parents.

”Arrow Steelwing, at your service, Your Highness. Is there any way I can be of assistance before I leave?”

Twilight then got an idea. “Could you by any chance help to escort a young filly to her home?

Ah yes. An alicorn Princess with her wings (albeit inexperienced wings) and vast knowledge of magic cannot possibly help this filly, but a regular old weather pony can. I see now. I get it that you’re basically saying Twilight can’t fly in the storm, but I’m starting to wonder what Twilight is even good for in this story.

I tend to skim right past songs and poems in stories, as they are generally just filler. In this case, I chose to read it, and it’s a bit confusing. I can’t find the cadence or rythym. It does show that she’s not a songwriter to have the song be poorly and hastily constructed, but since this is text only, you should find a way to at least let your readers imagine the song for themselves.

Apple Bloom deciding she likes Twilight and wants to go back to Golden Oaks is very cute, and is very much the way a child might respond after such a harrowing night.

All in all, this is very hastily assembled and sloppily done. If you’re done with this project then feel free to move on, but if you’re interested in improving it, I would recommend you scrap the first two scenes, re-examine the plot, go read a few books, fine tune the plot, read some more books, and then carefully construct each and every scene in this story. It could be a very cute and heartwarming slice of life if you put the time and effort into it.

I hope this helps. Feel free to ask me any questions here or in a PM and as always: Never Stop Writing.

Thank you for your review. I'll certainly consider on trying to re-write the story at some point, although, I'm also planning on a re-write on one of my other fanfics and I plan to make it into a follow-up to "My Wings Will Keep You Safe" I'm still in the planning phase for it though I don't think I'll be able to re-write "My Wings Will Keep You Safe" before it. I'm also in the work on my main story "Rise of the Apple Princess" so my hands are quite tied. I'll just keep at my current project at the moment and see where I'll go from there. Again, thanks again for the review, it's really helpful.