Welcome to the second trial run of scoreless reviews! As I said last time, we’re applying this experimental format to a longer fic this time around, so we’re going to be putting Djclarke3’s An heroic story underneath the microscope and cut it open for analysis.

Before we get to that there are two things I want to mention. First, I believe this is a first work of a fairly new author, and I’ll explain a bit more about this assumption later. Second, I had to stop reading at about chapter five, or halfway through the story. Got those two facts down? Awesome. Let’s hit it.

As I said, I stopped reading the story at about chapter five, and one reason for this is that the story has a long, convoluted plot that constantly spirals around in circles while going absolutely nowhere. 

First off, the story’s short description mentions that Herobrine is meant to be the central villain of this story. But in the five chapters and almost 15,000 words I read, there was no mention of the central antagonist whatsoever, and I’m still not even sure where he comes into play.

You’ll notice that I couldn’t provide a summary of this story in my own words, and that’s because I really have no idea what direction this story is trying to go. If I may be honest, the story reads as a bunch of different genres all forced into one mega story, with a very thin connection to the MLP franchise.

The story itself also suffers from a fair bit of overeptitiveness. Let’s look at the first chapter, where we find that the protagonist, Brandon, has just returned from Japan. Here’s every single instance where the author mentions that Brandon was in Japan:

Brandon was being driven home after his long trip from Japan.

During the time he told his mother and little sister about his time in Japan.

It felt weird to be back in this area Since he was gone in Japan for a month.

What's crazy is that Brandon went to Japan to learn and train in the ways of self defense during that time.

"Well Papyrus Tibia honest with you it has been a while since he left to Japan",The short skeleton replied back.

During that time, Brandon started telling them about his time in Japan.

He then asked what they have been doing during the time he was gone in Japan.

As you can see, it becomes pretty well established by around the second or so line that Brandon has indeed just gotten back from Japan. There really isn’t a reason for the author to include this many references about his trip to Japan, as it just becomes overbearing and feels like we’re being beaten over the head with this fact.

Let’s move on to the pacing of the story. The pacing honestly feels all over the place, and this coupled with the jigsawed plotline doesn’t make for an enjoyable experience. We get chapters like the prologue where nothing really happens in relation to the main plotline of the story, yet we also get action scenes that just fly right by.

The pacing of the story is further harmed by the author’s use of ‘meanwhile scenes’ and flashbacks. The general consensus is to use these sparingly, as having too many is disconcerting to a reader. Every scene change here forces me to focus my attention on an entirely new setting with new characters, another point I’ll get to later, and just makes it incredibly hard to figure out what’s going and where it’s happening.

Most readers prefer linear stories, where it’s easy to figure out what’s going on and in what order. Of course there are stories that break this rule, but those have proven time and time again to be the exception because they do it well. Here, however, the spastic methodology of storytelling just makes it messy and hard to track.

My recommendation here would be for the author to redefine his focus for the story and stick with it. There are a lot of plot points and extraneous scenes here, so I would recommend that he sit down and figure out what aspects he wants to focus on and where he wants the readers to pay attention.

And that brings us to another classical point: show don’t tell. The narrative style of this story is omniscient third person, which is easy to write in but can quickly become a crutch for telling, as seen in this story. Show don’t tell, in case you don’t know, refers to the concept of revealing information through character actions, dialogue, or other methods as opposed to simply having a narrator say ‘this is what happened.’

This borders on the concept of an ‘info-dump,’ or long paragraphs of exposition and background that serve to set up the world around a character. While it is theoretically effective, the major drawback to info-dumps is that they are boring to read, and oftentimes the reader doesn’t remember everything set up in this manner. The preferred methodology here is to gradually include information about a world as deemed necessary. The key there is ‘necessary:’ we don’t need the backstory for every single leaf on a tree.

Let’s couple these ideas together. Here’s a passage from chapter two:

What Brandon said was in fact true. For three years, Monsters and humans have been trying to get along and live together peacefully. It may have taken a few months to get Monsters their citizenship and everything, but it was a big change for the U.S. Brandon is happy that Asriel and Chara are alive again enjoying the surface. Alphys is doing cool research in the science department. Toriel is loves teaching kids at the elementary school in Stewartville. Papyrus enjoys making different types of pasta with Brandon. Undyne loves the training he and his siblings do on Fridays. Asgore is content with all the gardening he does. Sans is just being his usual self and Mettaton is now one of everyone’s favorite celebrity.

First point is that there is a lot of information that can be shown. Brandon can communicate this as he talks to his mother’s grave, or the information can be shown through dialogue with these characters. For example, “So, Toriel, how’s teaching going for you?” This establishes the same line but shows it rather than just tells us.

Let’s bring the concept of info-dumping into this as well. The author here just ‘dumps’ a large paragraph that tells us what all of the characters (so far) do for a living. Sadly, this information does not seem pertinent to the plotline, as when we reach chapter three, Brandon is really the only one we’re still focusing on. So all of this extra information just clutters the story as more things the reader has to remember.

This brings us back to my primary concern for the story: that it’s overcomplicated. There are so many plotpoints going on that I have no idea what story the author is trying to tell. We have the plot of something happening in Japan, then Brandon going to Equestria, then a version of Sans attacking Princess Celestia followed by a subplot of Joey ignoring everyone… and it just goes on and on. If the author wants the story to attract fans, he truly needs to streamline the plot to make it coherent, because as it stands I don’t know what’s going on.

Furthermore, there are a lot of things that don’t make sense. Minecraft creatures attack Brandon and his friends while in Equestria, but it’s never really explained how they got there or why. There seems to be a backstory of Monsters like Sans arriving and assimilating with the world, but there’s virtually no context as to how this happened or why. Honestly, this story just feels like a bunch of different franchises haphazardly stitched together without a main plot to guide it.

Whew, that was a mouthful. Ready? Let’s move on to characters.

I had one major problem with the characters in this story: there are way too many of them. Around chapter three, I just gave up on trying to keep track of everyone because it just wasn’t feasible.

The thing is that the author seems to make every single character important, which is a good thing, but the sheer volume of characters just makes it impossible to remember who’s who. There are characters who are described in great detail in one chapter and promptly never mentioned again, which is an extreme waste of detail and clutters the reader’s memory.

The characters also seem fairly two-dimensional and have little to no depth in them: they seem to be here just for the sake of a crossover. Granted I know little of the other franchises so I won’t be focusing my critique on them, but the same could possibly be said for them as well.

The story seems to happen before the events of episode one, but somehow the mane six already know each other. Here, the author seems to characterize them very stereotypically: Pinkie wants to throw a party, Twilight says a lot of sciency stuff (by the way, greenhouse gases aren't really related to the sun dying out), Rainbow Dash is aggressive, etc.
I complained earlier that this story was only very scarcely connected to MLP, and it honestly shows. The focus doesn’t sit on any pony elements at all, and in the first five chapters, Brandon spends more time outside of Equestria than he does inside of it.

Let’s focus on Brandon, the protagonist of this story. Brandon, unfortunately, reads to me like a Gary Stu, or an overpowered characterization of the author that’s really just a self-insert. He falls very flat and I have a hard time getting behind him.

The author does attempt to make us care for him by talking about how he’s an orphan and his parents have died, but because this information is again shown to us rather than told, it loses its emotional appeal very very quickly. 

Justifications also seem very weak here, as Brandon seems to follow the guidelines for ‘badly written displaced protagonist’ in that he’s very powerful and beats everyone he fights, is almost instantly hailed by a hero by everyone, and has some sort of tragic backstory that drives him.

The author even says that Brandon is ‘the reincarnation of Neo.’ I don’t even know who Neo is (the Matrix?) but it does make me roll my eyes. These kind of stories really just feel like they’re written for the author to live out their fantasies, and makes for a fairly boring read.

In conclusion, the story is overcrowded with characters and barely connects with MLP. The main character feels like a Gary Stu and makes it hard for me to sympathize with him, and development all around is very low.

Chin up, we’re almost out of this. There are a lot of grammar things that say to me that this author either isn’t a native English speaker or is new to writing as a craft. The other points I made in this review make me think that the second option is true, so let’s dive in.

First, the title is incorrect. The author mixes up the use of ‘a’ and ‘an’ throughout the story, so let’s establish the rules. ‘A’ is used as an article whenever it follows any consonant (a letter that isn’t a, e, i, o, or u). So the title of the story should be “A Heroic Story,” not “An Heroic Story.” ‘An’ is an article used when the first letter of the next word is a vowel, so it’s used in ‘an article,’ ‘an orange,’ ‘an eagle,’ etc.

The author also randomly capitalizes words that don’t need capitalization, for instance:

“Alright I will see if can get him to open up at School”, He said.

‘School’ should not be capitalized because it isn’t the institution’s name and it doesn’t start the sentence. I pointed out most of these errors, but I highly, highly recommend that the author find an editor to help out with the story overall.

Next point. In the example above, the comma is outside of the quotation mark when it should be inside. Again, this happens often throughout the story. Finally ‘he’ should not be capitalized because ‘he said’ isn’t a new sentence, it’s connected to the previous one.

Which brings us into the next point: punctuation. The punctuation of this story is all over the place. There are missing periods, missing commas, double punctuation marks, missing quotation marks, the whole shebang.

I’ll only talk about the double punctuation marks because the rest is straightforward.

"Sure what time?",He asked.

Punctuation marks like question marks serve as stopping points for a sentence. Therefor it is incorrect to place a comma after them. This sentence should be written as

“Sure, what time?” he asked.

Or

“Sure, what time,” he asked.

I give these two options because this happen quite a few times throughout the story, but note that editors would probably use the first one.

Beyond that, there are a few instances of extraneous words, for example in the phrase

The creature began to look at Celestia with seriousness on his face.

The ‘on his face’ is redundant, we already know it’s on his face because he’s ‘looking’ at her. I would personally just say ‘seriously’ and nix the rest.

There are also a lot of missing words throughout the story, but I won’t go through every single instance. Again, I recommend the author find an editor to catch all of these small things. 

Next point: title case. Title case is something used whenever we are referring to the title of things: books, institutions, names, that sort of stuff. So the story, written in correct title case, should be called ‘A Heroic Story’ rather than ‘A heroic story’ because it’s a title.

This is further scene in:

*At the golden oak library*

Which should be written as ‘The Golden Oak Library,’ because that’s it’s full name or title.

And finally, the author makes a few decisions that come off as amateurish. These include the use of music to ‘set the mood,’ along with instructions about when to play or pause, pictures inserted halfway through a story, and colored text.

Now, all of these things can be effective if done right. That’s the key part. In regards to music, you can’t assume that a reader is going to actually go and do these things, so it’s not wise to rely on music to have all of the emotional impact and to rely on pictures to convey information instead of telling us.

And finally, with colored text and all of the other points, some readers may be reading through a PDF or some other form, meaning that all of these things won’t even show up for them. Coloring text also makes it hard to read for people with vision problems. And finally, all of these things won’t translate if someone does a dramatic reading of your story.

I’ll leave it up to the author as to what they want to do about these issues, but I’m of the opinion that they don’t add to the story and can be safely removed without consequence.

That was a mouthful, wasn’t it? But hey, we made it to the end!

I won’t lie and say that I took the most notes for this story out of all the other ones I’ve reviewed, and this is probably the longest review I’ve had to do so far, but there really is a lot to cover.

I think there is a story here but it’s so buried that I can’t seem to find it. The author can, with a bit of work and assistance, work to fix this in the future, but as it stands the story is pretty weak.

The number of grammatical errors, the scattered plot line, and army of characters all overcrowd the story and drag it down. Having an editor and pre reader would help with this, so I’d recommend the author reach out to try and find some. I also highly recommend you read my notes: they may seem a bit blunt but I’ve pointed out the areas where you can improve.

Again I don’t mean all this to discourage the author. We all started somewhere after all. And I can give props to the author for their ambition and dedication. Keep it up, and you’ll improve in no time!

Next time we’ll be talking about Communism with Moonshot’s MLP: Friendship is the Communist Manifesto. Sounds great.

If you’re a fan of massive crossovers, you might like this story.

I really recommend you go over my notes and consider some of the things I pointed out, and don’t get discouraged by what I have to say. Writing is a craft that only gets better with practice after all.

I do have my reading notes for your fic, if you would like to see them let me know.

If you’d like me to add a scoring component to this story, let me know.

This borders on the concept of an ‘info-dump,’ or long paragraphs of exposition and background that serve to set up the world around a character. While it is theoretically effective, the major drawback to info-dumps is that they are boring to read, and oftentimes the reader doesn’t remember everything set up in this manner. The preferred methodology here is to gradually include information about a world as deemed necessary. The key there is ‘necessary:’ we don’t need the backstory for every single leaf on a tree.

Great point that I'd like to add to. Long descriptions on fimfiction also serve a role as info-dump, helping you focus your introductory chapter onto establishing your main character in the world instead of the world around your main character.

7228253

An excellent point! The long description is a tool that isn't really utilized enough.