Title: Terror of the Flutterbat by Discord the Narrator
Amount Read: All
Verdict: Reject (3/10)
Reason:

Posting this review on Halloween...you know what that means!

So, the main reason I rejected this story is pretty simple, as it’s just very quick and rigid. It’s only a little over 5000 words, which for a horror thriller isn’t enough time to build a lot of suspense. Even just a few hundred words in Fluttershy transforms into a vampire, and so there’s just no real buildup to it and we’re thrown right into the action. And from there, nearly every few hundred words another character is transforming, so there’s just so little suspense as everybody keeps dropping like flies. You just get used to it because it’s so often, and so it never has any impact like the author is intending since it’s not really a shock and doesn’t have any anticipation leading up to it. In the writing too, the story is just rather rigid and telly. This story could easily have been longer, but as it’s just very straightforward and just describes mechanically the actions that the characters are going through.

So, I guess while appropriate that this story was submitted for October, it just moves very quickly and has some rather dry exposition. So, for those reasons, this story is a reject.

6645023
Oh...

6645023
Well, I didn't expect that number. I was aiming for a 5 or a bit more. But well...

Anyways, thanks for reviewing my story.

6645029
Such a pity. I rather enjoyed it.

6645033
The upside is that a lot of what I dinged the story for is in terms of mechanical execution, which while not just a "go back and edit it" thing, is generally easier than to fix than things like poor characterization or a thin story. A good editor or two would be good at noting when the writing gets that way especially if you explicitly mention it to them as something you wish to improve on, and just reading some more verbose stories can help you get an idea of how to actually do that (this is coming from someone who had and at times still has the exact same problem). There is such thing as too wordy, however, and it's a delicate balance to hit that effectively.

6645044
Wow... I didn't know about that. Thanks for the info!