Twilight

TD is a good writer, go give him advice and nitpick his chapter. I will do so myself, this weekend.

Huzzah! Indeed, all feedback is appreciated.

5900357 Alright, having now gone through chapter, there are definitely some pros and cons.

I think the most important one, as Kai Creech already noted, is the severe lack of conflict. Twilight is so skeptical--from beginning to end--that there isn't any conflict between her and the Amulet. And further, because she is so staunch in her position, her extremely emotional reaction to everything feels very out-of-character for her.

That said, I do think that the concept is great: the Amulet preying upon Twilight's logical, studious nature is a clever twist, and it matches Twilight's personality and known weaknesses.

Here are some things that I think you could do do make the chapter more engaging, and also play up that angle;
Have the Amulet say in greater detail how and who made it. You could even frame it as an actual history lesson. This could target Twilight's thirst for learning and her student-at-heart nature. This history needn't be real, of course. In fact, one way for Twilight to overcome the Amulet could be that, after getting engrossed in its lesson, she notices some inconsistency or detail that she disagrees with.

Have the Amulet reference things that Twilight has done in the name of research (like "Lesson zero" or some other made-up event from Twilight's past). Or someone she admires, like her friends or Celestia. Then the Amulet can do a compare/contrast with their behavior and its own.

If you wanted to be less subtle, you could also have the Amulet try to bribe her with time travel magic or something, going to meet famous ponies of the past.

Alternately (additionally?), have the amulet use the Socratic Method on Twilight: it can ask her a series of questions, and then use her own answers against her. This would be a good way to reuse the "the Amulet is actually a tool" lie from the current version of the story.

"Tell me, Princess, are the Elements perfect?"
"Of course they are! We saved Equestria three times with them, and they never steered us wrong."
"Then why did they not work for Celestia? When she tried to use them to heal her sister, they instead sent Princess Luna to the moon."
"Well, yes, but... that's not the same! Celestia tried to use them by herself."
"But didn't you just claim the Elements were perfect?"
"Well, they work perfectly under the right circumstances. A tool is only as effective as the pony using it."
"And if the pony using a tool is inexperienced or incapable, then what sort of things might happen?"
"I suppose somepony could get hurt."
"So what is the difference, then, between the Elements and myself?"
Twilight said nothing.
The manifestation smiled. "I knew a pony as smart as you would listen to what I have to say."

I definitely think there is a lot to be done with this angle. Giving the Amulet's manifestation a more concrete character and voice and giving the chapter a better conflict will fix most of its current issues. (For the former, I'm thinking perhaps stoic and academic, with a few sinister cracks in its facade near the end, but there's lots of other options.)

As always, these are suggestions, not orders. If you had any other ideas or concepts you needed help refining, let me know and I'll do my best to help

5907609
Thanks! I'll take a second hack at it after I finish up the fanfic I'm working on right now. I'll definitely be incorporating some of that. And I definitely need to work on the Amulet's voice.

Belatedly bumping this, but finally got around to it. Most immediate is comments about the Cadance chapter need reworking since there's a new Cadance chapter. Everything else I think people have well established already!

5900357 Is this chapter going to be ready for posting next week? Considering no edits have been made, I suppose it is up to you if you want to post sub-par work or not.

6135499
I am sorry. I've really been off my game this year and been procrastinating on getting this done for far too long. I dove back in this evening and am presently making revisions in my offline document as there's a substantial amount of rewriting that needs to be done in the middle to fix the problem WRT: lack of conflict and personality.

6138556 Do you have an ETA for completion, or do you want me to post the next chapter ahead of this one?

6142412
I'll have it to you by midnight eastern time today (Thursday).

6143071
I'll have it to you in a short bit. I finished the editing; I'm proofreading it now to try and catch capitalization issues and make sure that the dialogue tags are consistent for the apparition, as well as cleaning up some excess exclamation marks.

6142412
Sorry about that. It was hard knocking the rust off the old gears.

Thank you for you patience.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1u9_Z6ju-ThYHAJ1c0F0GDrCX_OfNDX3aMduoGn1v9GM/edit#

6144372 Well, you're still doing better than the people who dropped out of the project

Also; have you considered a title for your chapter (perhaps "Knowledge")?

[copy-paste of GDocs discussion;]
I think the main issue is the one I mentioned at “I don’t spend a lot of time thinking about that.”; The Amulet's temptation lacks cohesion. What exactly is it tempting her with? There's like 5 things that come up, but each one only receives cursory consideration and attention.

The Amulet can and should bring up other ideas in its discussion, but they should all be in service to one goal. Right now, none of them stand out as being a focal point for the Amulet to actually get put on someone.

From the way it's written now, I guess the focal temptation is supposed to be knowledge. Which is fine, just take all those other things and change them to reflect that sub-theme.

I think there's two major ways you could streamline this;

Option A; split the conversation into two distinct halves. The first half is about the Amulet trying to convince Twilight that it is only a tool. When Twilight starts to agree with it, that marks the transition into the second half; the Amulet actually trying to tempt Twilight

Option B; instead of the two halves being distinct, mix them together. With each of the Amulet's examples of how it's only a tool, it also slips in a subtle (or not so subtle) reference to the import of knowledge. This would probably be closer to the current version, but it might also take more finesse in how you make the sub-theme run through the entire conversation.

Both versions would ultimately have similar content, its more a matter of arrangement: A > B > C > D vs Ad > Bd > Cd

The leftover outburst from the first draft also doesn't match the current thread of conversation.

Other than that, I think the flow and pacing is a lot better than the first draft, though the ending of their conversation is still a bit abrupt (again, possibly a leftover from the first draft).

6144372 Do you have an updated ETA?

6144372 Do you have an updated ETA, or should I post the next chapter?

6156545
I will try and get it done tommorrow. I'm sorry for the delay. :(

6158255 Stop spending all your time arguing with people on reddit

6158255 I'm gonna post the next chapter this week. So I guess you can finish it by then or I'll post the less edited version

6161507
Roger.

6161540 your chapter is now posted