The Race.

The two mares stood side by side, one earth pony and the other a pegasus, two beings whose names along with four others where the first to be called upon when harmony was threatened, their names? Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. The sun was shining down from its precipice high above the duo, and no clouds -other than a fairly large storm cloud which could be seen near Canterlot- where in sight as the sun's relentless heat beat down upon them.

Rainbow Dash tilted her head towards Pinkie and said "First one to Canterlot and back gets the last slice, okay?"

Pinkie, looking rather serious -that is if she was not wearing a pair of Groucho glasses and an oversized neon green sombrero- did not say anything, instead choosing to briefly nod her head.

The two –After a moment’s pause they shout, in perfect unison, “READY...SET...Go!!!” and charge off towards Canterlot, although it would be more appropriate to say that Rainbow Dash is the one charging off towards Canterlot, since Pinkie Pie was not only bouncing but bouncing away from Canterlot and towards the other side of Ponyville.

Huh, It looks like she is heading for th-"WAIT".

What on earth? Pinkie? But how?

"That's easy silly, I can talk to you because you’re on the other side of the wall and I can go around the wall."

The wall? What wall?.. Wait the fourth wall?

" Well duhh, what other wall is their?"

Bu… I... ugh, you know what never mind that, why did you interrupt me?

"I want it to be a surprise!"

You want what to be a surprise? You mean that you going to th-

"SHHH!”

...Okay then, do you care if I tell them what you’re doing up until then?

"It’s a-okay with me!, but you have to pinkie promise you won’t tell where I am going!“

Okay, cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye...Why do I get the feeling your glaring at me?

"…You have to do the movements with it or it doesn't count.“

...How did you kno... Never mind, Cross my heart, Hope to fly, Stick a cupcake In my eye, there are you happy now?

"I’m very happy now, I can't wait to see the look on Dashies face, I have to get back to the race now, goodbye!"

Bye?, well that was surreal now where was I? Oh yes.

Pinkie was bouncing towards Sugarcube Corner, upon her arrival she proceeded to bounce up the steps and into her room, somehow without waking up the twins despite getting several feet of air with each bounce. Once she was in her room she went over to her dresser and began to dig through it, digging deeper and deeper, throwing various random objects out of it -objects such as a rubber duck, giant foam finger, and a... replica of a police public call box?, which promptly after landing on the ground faded away with what could be described as the most wonderful sound in the universe (And coincidentally caused a brown stallion with an hourglass cutie mark who was walking by her window to look around in alarm before running as fast as he could in the direction the he had just came from)-, after a few more minutes of digging the only part of her visible was her tail which was twitching side to side and was the only thing that signified that she was still in the room. After a while a loud ringing could be heard from the clock tower, and upon hearing this she quickly popped out of the drawer, holding a bag of bits in her mouth and hopped over to the window. Upon reaching the window she pulled out a larger version of her PARTY CANNON -this one bearing a colorful label which showed that it was called a PONY CANNON-, and pointed it out her window, which faced away from Canterlot, and towards the *REDACTED*.

Meanwhile Rainbow Dash who had been making good time towards Canterlot, having completed over half of the first leg of the race, was forced to land due to a rather large and fairly severe storm that was in her path. Going around the storm would take her far longer than it would to walk through it(although she wasn’t even remotely happy about this and said several things that would make a sailor blush)-the reason she would have walk through it instead of flying through, was because the lightning, and gale force winds could permanently ground her if she where to even try and fly near, and despite her pride she would not risk her wings and possibly her life in order to get a piece of pizza. It did calm her down some knowing that the last time she had seen Pinkie, she had been going the wrong way, and because of this she knew that she had a major head start on her. She raised a hoof up and brushed her bang back so that the rain would not cause it to obscure her vision once she started through the storm. She then proceeded to do a few stretches so that she would be less likely to sprain anything, and so that she would be able to go longer without feeling sore.

After around ten minutes of various stretches she started jogging towards Canterlot, although she had some trouble seeing since the rain had picked up its pace, (thankfully the lightning had stopped and the wind had died down) she was already soaked to the bone and therefore did not pay to much attention to the additional rainfall, which was unfortunately coming down hard enough to make it so that it was still too risky to fly. So she trecked on, her gaze locked ahead, a scowl upon her face, occasionally muttering several very explicit words under her breath. The icy rain beat relentlessly down upon her showing very few signs of letting up. Thankfully, after what felt like several hours of walking the rain began to let up, the clouds slowly dispersing. As the sky became slightly brighter, she looked up and saw that Canterlot mountain was only a short distance away and that the sun had begun to descend, she shook herself dry, unfurled her wings and took towards the sky as she flew towards Canterlot she could see the smoke from the friendship express as it went back towards Ponyville, she alighted at the edge of a city for a short while.

After waiting for a few minutes, she dove off the side of the mountain and began to dive towards the ground her hooves held in front of her, a cone forming a in front of her as the air tried to push her back. Faster and faster she went hurtling towards the ground, right as she was about to hit she pulled up, a massive explosion of color and sound tore away from her, a rainbow trailing behind her as she rocketed towards Ponyville. After a short period of flying she reached Ponyville, mere moments after the train that she had seen earlier pulled away, to continue its journey away from Canterlot.

As she landed Pinkie hopped over towards her with a large grin upon her face and asked “What took you so long?"

Rainbow Dash stared at her for a few minutes, eyes wide and her jaw scraping the ground, before managing to sputter out "Bu-but ho-how did you beat me?"

Pinkie's grin somehow grew even larger as she said "That's easy, I took the train!"

To this Rainbow Dash then did the only thing she felt she could do and collapsed into a heap upon the ground, Pinkie tilted her head and looked at her curiously for a moment before hopping away so that she could go and enjoy what she later claimed to one of the best pieces of pizza that she had ever had.

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Higherbeach

Higherbeach #1 · May 31st, 2013 · · ·

I'll be honest, I got excited for a moment that someone else posted in the group, then I looked at it and said 'Eenope'. Wall of text, using different colors of text for different characters... those pretty much guarantee that this is going to be FAR worse then it could be. I recommend fixing this stuff at least for when CN reads it, if he reads it. I honestly must say, this will probably not get a lot of good words about it. Just giving a little advice, so good luck!

Brilliant Verve

Brilliant Verve #2 · May 31st, 2013 · · ·

2655648 Thanks for the advice, and good luck to you too.

Mudpony

Mudpony #3 · May 31st, 2013 · · ·

I'd suggest reading EZN's guide. Should offer some good advice on how to make it a bit more compelling read.

On a wall of text related issue: you only want one speaker per paragraph. The second paragraph is a mess due to this, since it is Pinkie talking with the narrator. The last paragraph also suffers due to failure to do this. Break them down into separate paragraphs and it will help the readability a lot.

Meanwhile Rainbow Dash who had been making good time towards Canterlot, having completed over half of the first leg of the race, was forced to land do to a rather large and fairly sever storm that was in her path and going around would take her far longer than it would to walk through it(although she wasn’t even remotely happy about this and said several things that would make a sailor blush), the reason she would have walk instead of fly was because the lightning, and gale force winds could permanently ground her if she where to fly near it let alone through it, and despite her pride she would not risk her wings and possibly her life in order to get a piece of pizza, and considering that she had seen Pinkie going the wrong way she knew that she had a major head start on her, she tied her bang up so that the rain would not cause it to obscure her vision once she started through the storm, after tying it up she did a few stretches so that she would be less likely to sprain anything, and so that she would be able to go longer without feeling sore.

Holy run-on sentence, batman! This should be at least seven distinct sentences. Definitely want to look over the rest of the story for other run-on sentences.

You also need to pay a bit more attention to spacing around parenthesis and quotation marks. Often the spacing before and/or after them is not correct. In some cases the space is missing, while frequently with end quotes, there's a space that should not be there. Some examples:

But how?"That's easy silly

Missing the space after the question mark (though really the Pinkie conversation bit should be the start of a new paragraph).

sound in the universe( and coincidentally

Space should be before the opening parentheses, not after it.

A proof reading pass would help as well. For example:

was forced to land do to a rather large and fairly sever storm

"do" should be "due" and "sever" should be "severe".

Also, the 10 should be written out as the word, not the numeral. And you've got a couple of ellipses in there that have more than three periods. That's a no-no.

Salivanth

Salivanth #4 · May 31st, 2013 · · ·

Well, I was going to go through this and provide critique, but to be honest, the very first paragraph made it quite clear that the biggest piece of advice I can give you isn't a thorough critique, but rather this:

Edit more. Edit obsessively. I spend about 4 hours editing a story for every hour it took to write it. And the last story I wrote, it took me 2-3 hours to write, I spent around eight hours editing, and then decided to step away from it for a few weeks, come back, and rewrite the thing. Editing is ridiculously important. Your mistakes aren't just a matter of not knowing your grammar, you make a bunch of mistakes that should be caught in the editing process by a novice. I mean, let's just look at the first paragraph.

1) There are two spelling mistakes.
2) The sentences seem to run on forever.
3) You use the word "mare" three times in a single sentence, and five times in the same paragraph.

Now, the latter two are things that might take someone to critique them, but the fact that you have two spelling mistakes in the first paragraph to me indicates that you haven't edited your own work with any degree of thoroughness, so why should I spend the time to go through it? This isn't me being mean, it's just the truth. If you'd edited your own work to the best of your ability, I'd have been happy to provide more specific advice, but as it is, you're missing a very important lesson about editing.

You should obsess about editing. As I mentioned, I generally edit for several hours for each hour it takes to write the story. I've written two stories so far. The first one I wrote in an hour and a half, then edited repeatedly, got pre-readers, and consulted with them for a few hours, editing continuously. Then I posted it, got a well-educated person to pre-read it, and he tore into that 3,000 word story for a solid hour.

Editing is ridiculously important. My advice would be to take the story down, spend a few hours editing it yourself (If in doubt over whether you've edited it enough, you haven't!) and then get some pre-readers to fix things further. Writing a story is the easy part. The hard part is making it good.

Brilliant Verve

Brilliant Verve #5 · May 31st, 2013 · · ·

2655988>>2656176 Thanks for the critque/advice. Hopefully I managed to fix some of the major mistakes and make it so that one can read it.

Salivanth

Salivanth #6 · May 31st, 2013 · · ·

You still have a ton of spelling mistakes, dude :( I don't think you understand the concept of OBSESSIVE editing. If this is honestly the best editing you can do, you need to get a very patient pre-reader to edit your spelling for you.

bahatumay