The GDocs link

The title is still a WIP though. It's hard to pick something without spoiling too much.

Alright I finished going over the chapter. As with all critique, this is just my opinion. If you have any questions, or need additional explanation/clarification with any of my advice, feel free to ask and I will do my best to answer.

Overall, I do still like the concept of the chapter. I have a soft spot for children being cute, and this chapter is designed to set that up. The times when the comedy worked, it was on point and I had a hearty laugh.

I did, however, encounter a lot of issues that impeded the comedy.

The vast majority of the story is described in a dull way. The descriptions of characters and their actions is extremely straightforward, to the point of being blunt and boring. Obviously, one can't give fancy descriptions to every little action (that would create its own problems), but for the majority of the story I wasn't particularly engaged by the narration or phrasing. I actually stopped marking all the bland narration, because there was so much of it.

Another narrative issue is what I call smooshing sentences together. Often you will take a bunch of sentences or actions and smash them together with commas. Things like these;

Sweetie Belle took one look at the bits, and turned her nose up at them, and looked to the shadow frowning

The voice seemed more insistent, so Sweetie took another three steps, strolling almost completely into the shadows.

What is gained from having all these ideas crammed into a single sentence? Picture these same sentences, but with periods instead of commas;

Sweetie Belle took one look at the bits. She turned her nose up at them. She looked to the shadow, frowning.

This phrasing still has its issues, but now each individual action has more room to breathe. The audience can spend more time processing each one. This can also be a good thing for making descriptions more engaging. Now that each action has its own sentence, you can spend more time and effort describing each one, instead of smooshing them all together.

Another major issue was telling. Instead of letting readers infer what an action means, or how a character feels, you tell it to them constantly. Here's just one example among many;

Sweetie gave it [the ball] a gentle rub with the back of her hoof to clear the dust.

We as the audience can make a guess as to why she is rubbing her lost ball. Telling us why not only robs us of the chance to figure things out for ourself, it also slows the narrative down by introducing details that don't need to be there. This becomes even worse when it is things like character feelings or motivations; figuring those out is often a huge part of enjoying a story.

With this grammar and style stuff out of the way, I also had some issue with the pacing. A common piece of writing advice is "start as close to the ending as possible." In a story, every word needs to forward the plot. There are exceptions of course--it's okay to have a silly aside if its funny or engaging--but these need to be done sparingly. The first 700 words of this chapter don't forward the plot and are incredibly boring to read through.

Finally, I'm not sure that this chapter, as written, fits into the meta-plot about the Amulet. Kai Creech also pointed this out, but I feel it bears repeating. How did the Amulet end up in an alley? Who removed it from the various security measures around it? Where did they go? I'm not saying answering these questions is impossible, but it seems like they create more problems than they solve.

What if Sweetie Belle chased the ball into the Amulet's room? This could create some opportunities for comedy (like why do they let them in, and how did a kid with a ball manage to bypass the various security measures, and why doesn't anyone intervene?). It would also cut down on the explanation/setup required.

Overall, though, I do still like the idea. Like I said, when the comedy was on point, it gave me some good laughs. It's in the same vein as FanOfMostEverything's chapter: drama that is quickly undercut by comedy. It's a nice counterpoint to the more serious chapters. With some streamlining and adjustment, this could be a great chapter.

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What if something the Doctor did when he 'fixed' the security opened a hole?

6014631 I haven't read the Doctor Whooves chapter yet, but based on the comments I've seen, it has some of its own plotholes.

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I've yet to go through the comments on the chapter, but from what I've seen already I pretty much agree. They point out a few things that didn't sit quite right with me on writing it.

The bland descriptions; yeah... Though I hate to admit it, a lot of the story is written very blandly. I think I'm going to have to go through and redo a lot of it, as there was a lot of stuff in there that I couldn't get the right tone. I blame the 1.5 month break for exams.

And I like the idea of them wandering into the chamber. My original idea is closer to what I have written down, which is why I think I mentioned before that I needed to see the previous chapter to mine before starting.

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Running a bit short on time here, but I've put up everything I have up until this point in the GDocs if anyone wants to have a look through it. I'm going to try to finish the last part (after the highlighted bit) tomorrow.

Sorry for the delay.

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Last parts of the chapter are finished and up on the GDocs.

Alright, finished going over the chapter.

A lot of my criticisms from the first draft still apply; there's still a lot of telling and dull description.

The more severe problem, however, is one of pacing. The introduction and setup go on forever. I already mentioned the importance of "starting as close to the end as possible" in my previous post, and the problem has become much more pronounced because of the new scenario.

The general content of the confrontation seems to be the same. And this is fine; recycling some things from draft to draft is only reasonable to avoid re-doing too much work. But the appearance of the Amulet in particular doesn't fit with the new scenario; if it's appearing in Sweetie's thoughts, why is it the same shapeless alley-shadow from draft 1?

Another smaller issue I noticed; there's a large amount of head-hopping and abrupt shifts between characters thoughts. Choose one character's perspective to be in (probably Sweetie Belle's). Random interludes into other character's thoughts can be amusing, but they are also distracting and can disrupt the flow of the narrative. If the story is about Sweetie Belle, then stick exclusively to her thoughts.

Overall, I still like the idea of the chapter. And again, there are some good descriptions and jokes among the typos and beige prose. But the vast majority of the story is boring and doesn't forward the narrative. The story needs to be more focused with its wordcount--cut out everything which is bland exposition--and the other stuff needs to be described in a more engaging way.

It's also worth asking how much of a Comedy you want this to be; is the main comedy from Sweetie's encounter with the Amulet? Or is there other silly stuff happening on the way there? (I didn't think Berry's scene was that funny, but it could be made more so, for example.)

This might sound harsh, but I found this draft pretty dull. There were many parts where I skimmed over it, and I found it hard to pay attention to the whole thing. But with more focus and engaging description, it could be a very engaging, funny chapter (especially in contrast to the other, more serious chapters).

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Or is there other silly stuff happening on the way there?

That is the general intention, yes. There's quite a few silly thing (in my opinion) that lead up to getting Sweetie Belle there.

I could very well cut Berry's scene at the beginning, as that serves little more than to shpw where's coming from. In fact it may work a little better that way if she comes in as a surprise to the reader. I like to hear your opinion on that change.

If the story is about Sweetie Belle, then stick exclusively to her thoughts.

I will try to do that, though I consider the Amulet as having just as much importance in the encounter as Sweetie Belle.

6148201Obviously comedy is subjective. Just because I didn't find something funny, doesn't mean no one would find it funny.
I generally have a low tolerance for "lolrandom"/meme-y comedy anyway.

The Amulet is certainly an important character across all the chapters, and narratives with third-person omniscient perspectives can and do work. But there needs to be some sort of flag or signal to readers of when the perspective is shifting, and it needs to shifts for important narrative reasons. A lot of stories handle this by switching perspectives in between chapters--the chapter break acts as a time for the reader to adjust to the new perspective, and having an entire chapter in the new perspective gives the reader time to acclimate.

Obviously, that's not an option here, since it's only the one chapter. Still, if you want to keep things the way they are, then having some sort of signals to the reader for each perspective switch is important to prevent disorientation. It also ties into my criticism about the portrayal of the Amulet; they need to be more than a generic shadowy figure to warrant going into their perspective in the first place.

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True, true. Having it as a shadowy figure also poses a challenge as you might've noticed. In potions I've referred to it as simply It, bu then defaulted to the gender of the voice it uses instead.

Based on what you've said, I have made some alterations to have it initially try to appear in a disguise, with a dramatic--kind of over the top--reveal and everything. And it's a lot easier to portray the Amulet in that form.

There's still a few things I mean to address, which I'll look at this afternoon after work. The sections you say dragged for too long will be especially tricky because, well, every time I edit something, no matter what, it only ever gets longer.

6149717 Either make them interesting or cut them. The only reason I took issue with the length was because said sections were boring

6149717 Is this chapter ready for posting? And do you have a title/author's notes you wanted in there?

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I have a title, haven't thought about an author's note.

The chapter is otherwise pretty close to done.

6189024 The chapter is now posted. I went through and fixed some spelling/punctuation errors and typos (things like missing words, incorrect tenses/tense shifts, incomplete sentences, dash/hyphen misuse...).

I also deleted some clauses that were telly/obvious to the reader and/or bogged down the narrative. Most of it was pretty minor stuff, but hopefully it helped the story flow a little better.

To be honest, I still think the story is too bloated and long-winded; it takes too long to get to the point. But it is supposed to be comedic, and comedy is a very subjective thing. Just because I found it to be circuitous doesn't mean readers will, and I hope it is received well.