TThe Ghost Of Ponyville

• MLP: FiM
• Dark
• Adventure
• Horror

Strange occurrences have been happening in the old manor just outside of town. When a certain cyan pegasus and purple alicorn decide to find out what exactly is going on, they discover something that was a bit more than they bargained for.

• Twilight
• Rainbow Dash
• Pinkie
• OC

RCharge · 11k words · 615 views

Summary: Hmm, not easy to describe this story properly. It is a horror story, that has a storyline focused around Twilight, with events and places familiar out of the horror genre. The story takes place at nightmare night, and follows Twilight through her day, which has some horror elements added to it, like a spooky mansion, maybe a ghost, mysterious chars, etc.

Most important question first, is it scary? Does it fulfill its duty as horror story? Answer: Sadly not. It has some good ideas in it, it has also the required scenes and dialogs for such, but, how it is written down and how the atmosphere develops, it fails at entertain me in horror aspects. Also we must consider it is teen rated, not everyone, so the first 3/4 of the story is written like an 'E' story more or less, which put the story in some limits, while the end reads like an 'want to go mature soon' scene. I think more consistents about which audience the story wants to reach would be a great improvement.

So, to say something good though, what the story does do good, is the organisation of the scenes that take place and the pacing of them. We start with a teaser for the horror, go over to the beginning of the day which is spiced up with some mystery and social interactions, and then, step by step, the horror comes in. And like I said, the main ideas behind the scenes are good, it is just the way it is written that hindrance the story at shining with its full potential.

Okay, let us go over whats wrong here. First of all, the story needs a look or second look by an editor. Besides some basic stuff, the wording is the most annoying thing in the writing of this story! (A good trick to avoid that is to use the search function in a doc, highlighting one word for some pages and see how often it is used) Most of the time a new 'object' comes to the scenes it is mentioned quite often under the same name, also we have the purple alicorn problem in this story too. (Just as example: 'grime' it is covering the windows quite often in this story, 3 times in the first chapter, 2 times in the second and one time in the last one. The story is only 11k words with 3 chapters, so a bit more variety would have work wonders. More so with it is always the same scene, with it cakes the windows.) Furthermore, we have a zebra in this story which rhyme quite good most of the time, but then suddenly fails for no reason I noticed.

That along with some storytelling errors along the way, it really breaks the tension and atmosphere that is a must for a good horror story. Don't get me wrong though, the story has its moments, a few good written scenes that raised questions or increased the tension of an events are very well still in this story.

* While making the rating, I noticed I forgot to say something that this story also does greatly: The dialogs of the show characters, it really comes close to what I think they talk like. Always feels good to read proper dialog for them.

Rating:

Horror: 3.5/10 Well, it is a teen story with some basic horror scenes written mostly for 'E'
General entertainment besides horror: 6/10 Yes, following Twilight through her day is something interesting and the ideas are good.
Writing skill: 4/10 The writing itself is solid, but not inspiring or catchy generally. Good work on the show chars dialogs though.
Creativity 7/10 The scenes could be randomly taken from several horror movies, but making it all fit together and guiding a char through it, good job.

5.15/10

Additional Feedback:
I would recommend to hire an editor for the wording of the scenes. Adjust the little errors here and there in case of logic, (like why do they stay for hours in the mansion with Twi unconscious? Why not take her home or in the hospital?) and focus on one group of audience, so either cut the ending out and rewrite it, or spice up the previous chapters.