The beat is always the same, nothing ever changing. Vinyl's life was in a rut, every day a repeat of the last. As she finally slips into a depressive slum, she meets a pony, somehow able to continue living even after the horrors of being broken. How does he do it and what happens if Vinyl takes a page out of his book, living life to the fullest?
Author's Note - Put Crossover because the basis of the story is based off Yu-Gi-Oh! But not an entire ripoff, just using some plot points.
Chapters (4)
Well... there is one big mistake that you're doing consistently...
When you have dialogue followed by an attribution of who said it and how, you must treat the whole thing -- dialogue and attribution together -- as a single sentence; if the character's sentence is meant to end with a period, you must use a comma instead, and then you do not capitalize the first word outside of the closing quote unless it's someone's name. Like this:
If the dialogue ends with a ? or !, you use those as usual, but you still treat the whole thing as one sentence and do not capitalize the next word unless it's someone's name (or the pronoun "I", which is always capitalized, of course):
Now, if the following text is not a direct attribution of the preceding dialogue, but is a separate action instead... then you end the dialogue with a period, and start a new sentence:
This is because here, you have a sequence of events:
(1) Vinyl says her dialogue. ("Aww, how cute. You look rather funny when you're embarrassed.")
(2) Prism's face turns even redder, prompting her to laugh at his embarrassment. This is a separate action from (1), because she's not laughing as she's saying the line of dialogue, she's laughing in response to what Prism is doing after she finishes speaking.
(3) Vinyl then speaks again, ("Like that."), as a separate action from either (2) or (1).
The above are just a few examples; pretty much all of the dialogue in this chapter has this punctuation/capitalization mistake, and needs to be fixed.
Aside from that... a couple of minor spelling errors:
(Also, technically, cul-de-sac should be italicized by convention, since it's a non-English word, but it's been absorbed into the language sufficiently that it isn't necessarily necessary. That's a good convention to be aware of, though; generally, if you're borrowing an unfamiliar word from another language, or if you're using a normal word in a non-conventional manner, it should be italicized. A good example of the latter is Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern novels, where she italicizes between when she uses it to refer to the dragons' teleportation abilities ("going between") rather than its usual usage.)
Also: watch your verb tenses a bit more carefully; I spotted a couple of places where you mixed a present-tense verb into past-tense narrative, such as this one:
("They've" is "they have", which is present-tense; "they'd" is "they had", which is past-tense. The rest of the sentence -- "wasn't", "had stated" -- is past-tense, so "they'd ever seen" has to be past-tense as well, for consistency.)
Conversely:
Vinyl's dialogue here is all present-tense, but "welcomed" is past-tense. (Of course, this one could just be a typo.)
(Ah keep tellin' ya, if y'all would cut back on the coffee a bit, ya wouldn't be so "tense" all the time.)
(*sigh* That joke never gets old for you, does it, Applejack.)
(Nnnope.)
On the other hoof:
Yay, someone who actually knows that the possessive "its" does not get an apostrophe!
So, you get a gold star from Miss Cheerilee for that.
I'm not sure why this is being swarmed with downvotes, other than the fact that you're bringing in an OC and some people just reflexively hate anything with an OC in a starring role...
4017832
Well then... thank you for liking it?
Second, I am gonna try and fix those changes you've pointed out. Except the ending dialogue with a comma thing, flat out refuse to do it. Had a bit of an issue with it and will ignore that rule.
Third, (what happened to first?) Dragonriders of Pern, finally someone knows that series!
And yes, my verb tenses suck... I thought I'd be better by now but apparently need more practice.
WOO!! GOLD STAR! I'll take it!
And... I have a feeling if I showed you the other chapters, you'd hit me with a newspaper...
4018349
That was a very bad joke about his personal hygiene... I should really get rid of it...
4017961
Um... no. You cannot ignore that rule. That's why it's called a "rule." If you do not punctuate the dialogue with a comma instead of a period before the closing quote mark when the dialogue is followed by an attribution, as I described below, then you're doing it wrong.
4018544
I'm not supposed to no, but I do. And I live with the consequences...
4018552
What is your issue with it?
4018581
It never made sense to me... because every time I used it, I'd get yelled at. This was when I was writing another story, Tears of Snow. Another editor, kept erasing it and say it wasn't right... so I just refuse to use it. Never explained how I was doing it wrong or how to properly do it.
4018586
Then not to put too fine a point on it -- that other "editor" has no business being an editor or a proofreader, because he doesn't know what he's doing.
The end-with-a-comma rule is the correct method, and this can be easily proven simply by picking up any random book at the bookstore or library and actually reading it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is simply flat-out wrong; tell them to go read any English-language book published within the last 200 years.
Also:
Quotation Marks and Dialogue Mechanics
He said, she said - Mechanics of Dialogue
Fiction Writer's Mentor: Punctuating Dialogue
4018611
and yeah, I knew the stigma about OCs in starring roles, but I didn't think it got this worse were they'd downvote without at least reading. Granted, my writing style not everyone likes. I understand that...
Thank you
4018615
Oh yeah, or just click a random story that's on the Featured list. ...I guess I can give it the ol' college try and see how bad I do it. Can't be worse than it already is...
4117432
Thanks! And yeah, I thought it'd be funny... it was quite the lame pun...
I've seen that this story has little to no comments and almost as much dislikes as it does likes. I think that does you as the author an injustice considering you have mad some of the best fanfics that I've read. Here's to hoping that this story gets more likes :)
Sincerely,
TOPO
4155381
Thanks! I don't understand it... maybe its the bad description? I've always been horrid at those..