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Patterns

by SunTwi06

Summary:

On her way to the animal shelter, Fluttershy finds herself in the middle of a rainstorm with barely any shelter and no means to call for help. But then a miracle comes in the form of an old classmate from school. A rainbow-haired girl who not only lends a hand, but willingly makes an offer the shy girl can't refuse.

Initial Thoughts:
Okay, so. My guess is we’re looking at a story about Fluttershy meeting up with Rainbow Dash after an extended absence or some time since high school. Probably ends in FlutterDash shipping. Let’s see just how close I get to the mark on this one.

Note: This review will contain spoilers. This is because of how short the story itself is, and how I basically couldn’t say anything about it without spoiling something. You have been warned.

My Reaction:
Ah, well. Can’t guess ‘em all, I suppose.

So, Patterns isn’t a shipping-fuel story, and it doesn’t take place after Equestria Girls. Sort of the opposite, really. This is more of an origin story, of sorts, showing us one possible way that the human Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy could have met.

Now, the first thing I really noticed about this story was, I’m sorry to say, the poor grammar. I honestly cannot believe this story has an editor. From the very first sentence, and within nearly every single paragraph, there are a plethora of mistakes. Misused words in places they should not be, poor use of formatting, and endless tense shifts made this story quite frustrating to get through.

Which is unfortunate, because beyond this issue, the story is actually quite lovely. Caught out in a rainstorm, Fluttershy becomes distressed and seeks shelter inside of an alleyway. While hiding out from the storm, who should walk by but Rainbow Dash, who offers Shy the use of her jacket and umbrella, cementing their newfound friendship. There’s nothing complicated about the story, outside of a flashback that, honestly, we didn’t need, and the characters are largely in-character. The real strength of the story is here, in how Dash and Fluttershy interact with each other in a genuine way, and I was pleasantly surprised by that.

Near to the end of the story, I felt like the author decided they needed to wrap up and end things quickly, because the pacing picks up a bit too much, and rather suddenly. This makes Fluttershy and Dash’s freshly minted friendship feel a bit forced, or rushed. But, on the whole, the story flowed smoothly along towards the inevitable conclusion.

If I had any other major thoughts about Patterns, I'd say that I think the tags were a bit off. Sure, there's some emotional distress here from Fluttershy, but I didn't get a 'Sad' vibe from the story. I felt like this was a pretty standard 'Slice of Life' type of story, and adding that wouldn't go amiss.

Grammar: 5/10
There are no great spelling errors in this story, but that might be the only grammatical error to not make an appearance. There are serious formatting issues, from large gaps in the text, to changing line splits, to a few truly awkward sentence structures that obscure the text’s intentions, such as below:

The roll of thunder bellow across the dark clouds on the overcast. The first drops of rain descend upon the rumbling clouds, as if the skies were angry and upset.

‘Bellow’ is in the singular, whereas ‘thunder’ is plural. Raindrops cannot ‘descend upon’ clouds, only descend from them. There are several such oddly-worded sentences that hurt the story’s readability. In other cases, a lack of commas – and an abundance of run-on sentences – further hamper reading, such as:

The whole time, Fluttershy kept running hoping to find a clearing even though she didn’t know where to look.

And:

Fortunately, Fluttershy’s eyes spot a form of shelter at least before the rain lets up

The worst grammatical offender, however, is the constant tense-shifts. They are found in almost every paragraph, and constantly caused me to trip up while reading.

Story: 8/10
The story itself has a nice setup, general arc, and conclusion. There is an arguably misused flashback, which serves little to no purpose, and a general use of ‘Tell’ over ‘Show’ that becomes quite egregious at times, including the ending, where it somewhat drains the emotion and energy from the piece.

Characters: 9/10
There are only two characters in this story, and each has been written with strict adherence to their show-selves, which I consider a positive thing, most days. If there were something to complain about, it might be that both characters become friends rather too easily. This, I would chalk up to the pacing of the story in this part, which seems to speed up considerably. I’d have liked to see more of Fluttershy’s thoughts, near the end, when she’s in the alleyway, and less the narrator explaining what she was thinking, as the story went on.

Final Word and Rating

5+8+9 = 22/30 = 76/100%

Patterns is a nice, simple origin story for the childhood-born friendship of Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, and it excels at building that friendship, and letting these two characters’ voices and personalities shine though. However, no amount of well-realized characterization and structural planning can make up for shoddy editing, and as many grammatical mistakes as are peppered liberally throughout the text.

To the author: Your characterization and story-plotting skills were on good display in this story, but the issue of grammar really hurts your score here. I’m aware that you have an editor, but perhaps you should look into having a second pre-reader or second editor for your next project. If there are this many errors in your story, despite having a dedicated editor, then perhaps your style of story and their style of editing are incompatible. If nothing else, having a second editor will allow you a second chance to catch these mistakes before you go to publish. If getting another editor isn’t in the cards, then I would urge you to read up on tense-rules, and other rules of grammar, and then do more final read-throughs prior to publishing.

Practice with grammar, in this case, is the best way to improve.

Feel free to comment below.

7350090 My apologies for the late reply. I still have three other people I have to reply to but yours seems to be the easiest to respond to so here we go.

First, thank you for the review. 2nd. While I'm aware of the tense issue/s(this wouldn't be the first time someone has pointed this out), my editor has stated that he writes like that because he likes the way it sounds. Of course, this doesn't nullify the criticism but I just wanted to let you know the reasoning behind it.

3rd, if you could believe it or not, this story was in a worse state than this before my editor got to it. But moving past that for a moment, I do need to bring this up because this is important. Getting a 2nd editor is impossible for me. Believe me, I've tried to find someone, anyone but either I get ignored or it requires payment (witch I don't exactly have the money to use). But even if I could, I'd rather not waste time on that if the story itself doesn't even make over 300 views and/over 20 votes(likes or dislikes). Obviously, there are exceptions but the point is, getting a 2nd editor is far easier said than done. But other than that, I do appreciate the review and I'll see if I can fix this at some point in the future.

On a very unrelated note, the soup story(the one from the blog) is finished. Just thought I'd let you know

7350239

While I'm aware of the tense issue/s(this wouldn't be the first time someone has pointed this out), my editor has stated that he writes like that because he likes the way it sounds. Of course, this doesn't nullify the criticism but I just wanted to let you know the reasoning behind it.

There are several issues with that statement.

Firstly, if he's your editor, then his job is to correct any mistakes you make within the composition, not to add his own style to it. If he's the co-writer as well as the editor, then his job isn't to supplant your role as the writer, either.

Secondly, if he likes the way it sounds, that's one thing, but there's a very clear difference between the tonal aesthetic of how something is written and the arguably correct and mechanically sound way of writing it. Consistency and clarity are the two main things that editors help writers focus on, and when the editor isn't helping the writer achieve these things, that should be concerning.

The issue with tense changes isn't what sounds pretty. If your editor likes to write in present tense, fine, but that means that either the whole story should be written in present tense without tense changes, or that he should refrain from "pretty-ing" the language of the story at the cost of actual clarity and understanding. Making the story sound good doesn't work if at the same time you make the story difficult to read, which negatively affects how it sounds, anyway. It just makes for bad writing.

Getting a 2nd editor is impossible for me. Believe me, I've tried to find someone, anyone but either I get ignored or it requires payment (witch I don't exactly have the money to use). But even if I could, I'd rather not waste time on that if the story itself doesn't even make over 300 views and/over 20 votes(likes or dislikes). Obviously, there are exceptions but the point is, getting a 2nd editor is far easier said than done.

I can sympathize. It's difficult to get people to take the time out of their day to give your work a preemptive read. That said, I don't agree with the idea that you won't try and get a second editor because the story won't make over 300 views and/or 20 votes. That stuff happens after the publication process and shouldn't affect if you want to get another editor.

The most obvious way of getting views and likes is not just self-promotion and having an established readership. It is, actually, just being able to write well. Editors help with that. So saying that you won't hire another one because your stories won't make X number of views or get Y number of votes is self-sabotaging; you have no guarantee before or after that a story will get viewed, or that it will get likes or dislikes. But having some refinement for craft, and therefore an editor, another proofreader, extra help, extra eyes, extra minds - these will at least help alleviate some of the baser anxieties that come with writing.

Not to suggest my personal method, but for one of my stories, I worked exclusively alone for the first two drafts. Afterwards, when I felt that I had polished it up as much as I could, I started promoting it in groups that allowed for asking for help. I got many responses, and was able, with their feedback, to crank out the third draft and get it published. Such efforts, though extending the two-month-long drafting process into a three-and-a-half one, resulted in greater success than I could have anticipated.

Asking for help might not guarantee you'll get any, but it's far better than not asking and hoping that past mistakes and patterns go ignored.

7350315 I didn't expect a response from you but I'm glad you did. To answer the first part, I understand what you mean. I wasn't saying he's in the right but to me, it doesn't bother me that much. Honestly, without him, the story would be arguably worse. That's not me lowballing it btw, that's me being serious. My writing isn't what you call great. But I do understand what your saying.

As for second part,

That said, I don't agree with the idea that you won't try and get a second editor because the story won't make over 300 views and/or 20 votes. That stuff happens after the publication process and shouldn't affect if you want to get another editor.

Okay, fair enough, I should've phrase that better. I'm not saying I don't want(or that I'm not trying to get) a second (or 3rd in this case), pair of eyes. I'm saying that (to me) I see little point in doing that when the end result changes little(even with my best stories that didn't/don't have this issue get little views/votes). As for the second half, I have asked for advice/suggestions(that's why some of the past stories got removed for the record as to re-fix the problems that were mentioned). I can't really do anything if comments don't appear or offer suggestions.

I get what you're saying but it's not that I haven't been trying. I have. It's just that I get overshadowed hard. I even made a blog asking for suggestions on what my readers what to see (I got some answers but not a lot) so it's kinda hard to figure out where to start. With that said, I'm thankful for you taking the time out of your day to respond. It means a lot.

On a unrelated note, I've been meaning to message you regarding the review you did on "Trained For Sin" but I just haven't had the time to do so. I did like the review btw but I wanted to answer your questions. I'll do so tonight after I'm out of work

.*

7350357
In many cases, sure, it's easier and far better to defer judgement to the editor. They, by virtue of being distant from your work, will not be held back by biases that might prevent you from making necessary changes.

Even so, you, as the author, have some manner of obligation to your work. This is to say, you have a right to own it, own up to it, and therefore pick and choose what suggestions you want to keep, and what suggestions you think won't do any good.

As it stands, the objective view is that what suggestions your editor is making are harming your story more than helping it. Accepting all of them without understanding why they're being made or for what reason they need to be there is risky, and I would advise that instead of taking it all at face value, try to understand your editor's judgement. If that judgement operates against the clarity of the story - which you yourself must be the judge of, in the end - then that judgement should be summarily rejected.

This, of course, relies on whether or not you are able to judge for yourself if a suggestion is worthwhile. You may have to try and study the mechanics of writing and figure out how we string words together properly for you to decide if breaking a story's internal consistency is worth the trouble. In the case of tenses, the general rule has always been, Stick to one as much as you can, for both the sake of consistency and the sake of the reader. Any change to that, from whatever source, even this one, should be regarded with a manner of scrutiny.

Take only what you see works, not what is just given to you freely.

7350386 I will keep that in mind.

7350090 So, just to give you a heads up- I plan on removing the story and fixing the issues you presented to me. I don't know when it'll be back up or if it'll be the same title but I will make sure you're the first to know. Thank you for the review. It has helped me see the issues with it