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The mark of an exile is one of voice,
One we uphold through our loyalty and choice.
The mark of an exile is something that affects them forever, changing the way they think and the way they speak. Zircon learns this firsthand after following an exile from camp. However, things get out of hoof quickly...
Thanks to the Editor: Mondai Shunketsu
Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments! No pointless flaming.
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In regards to your forum post: You have to understand that not everyone will like absolutely everything about your story. It could be a little thing, like the combination of tags, or the fact that it stars and oc. Or, it could be a big thing, like storyline, that they may not like.
It wouldn't be a mark against your writing ability, just the opinion of the reader.
I hate Shakespeare, but that doesn't mean he wasn't a phenomenal writer.
2925188
I knew that having OCs was a risk, but I wanted somewhere new that wasn't a place we've seen before. In other words, I didn't want Ponyville or Canterlot. I wanted a place that I could make a backstory for that would allow the plot to advance in the direction I wanted.
Alright!
First things first which is that while I'm not great at grammar I feel that this story has a few mistakes but I put them off as an accent for the zebras. I absolutely love the OC of Zircon! He is adorable and I really like how through him you have shown so much of Zecora as well like how she just gives off a trust able vibe that I am loving so far. The story has a very interesting idea and is doing great at giving realistic reasons for stuff about Zecora that it feels like some reasons straight from one of the story writers. I also like how you introduced Zecora. It just felt natural and I loved it.
Now to the downs of this. It does feel a bit rushed but that may just be the fact that I am used to really long stories but that isn't really a compliant. I'm not a guy who likes to look at any bad stuff but I would have to really struggle to find much else to complain about in this story.
Keep it going!
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Thanks...
See, ordering around works. Sort of.
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Crap. I do nothing, because nothing I do will effect you.
Oh God, I was totally about to review this and then left it up on my computer before I left town for a few days.
Sorry about that, not my best move right there
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You review it when you want!
2960381 Stop yelling at me! I do what I want to when I want to!
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*Goes to sob in a corner*
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This review is brought to you on behalf of the group: Authors Helpings Authors
Grammar score out of ten: Seven and a half.
Pros:
The premise of the story creates the interesting question of how it later resolves itself with canon
There is a good amount of direction in the story
It clearly got better as time went on
Cons:
Some of the characters are lacking in development
Persistent minor grammatical errors
Zircon is very bland and uninteresting in the beginning, making the story hard to stick with initially.
Notes:
Instead of posting what would quickly turn into pages upon pages of commentary here, I have instead opted to PM Nexosaur my thoughts about his fiction. What he does with them is his choice. They are, as is usual for me, far too lengthy to leave in a fimfiction comment.
Also, please do not feel obligated to review one of my stories in turn. I will not hold you to the Authors Helping Authors agreement. You still could, but I would not expect it of you.
Hey there. I'm Starman Ghost, and I'm here to review your fic on behalf of WRITE.
I always liked Zecora, and I always thought zebras were underappreciated in the show itself, so I'm glad to be covering this story
FORMATTING AND GRAMMAR
Your fic is clean and easy to read. There are a few minor issues with your formatting, punctuation, and word usage, but none of it was frequent or painful enough to make me want to stop reading. In particular, I noticed:
When you want to indicate that someone's stuttering, or is cut off while talking, you should use dashes (—) instead of hyphens (-).
This is kind of an awkward way to do a scene transition. Since you've already used a ~ to denote scene changes before, that would work well to replace it. Or, you could just weave the scene transition into the following paragraph, saying something like "That evening, the crowds watched in horror..."
A bit of incorrect word usage:
I think you meant "assent" here.
That should be patients', not patient's. You would use patient's if there were only one, but since it's referring to multiple patients, you pluralize it by moving the apostrophe to the right.
If the unicorn was supposed to be saying he enjoyed making money more than he enjoyed his job, I think the word you need to use here is "former." "Latter" implies he's enjoying the job more than the money.
And a few spelling errors:
No hyphen in "backup."
"Mismeasure."
"Side effects", no hyphen.
There might be more that I missed. I can't be sure. You should always proofread your chapters after you write them so that you can catch and correct mistakes like these.
NARRATION
Your story has a strong opening, leaving the reader wondering why Zecora was banished while dropping hints that foul play was involved, which gets them invested and wanting to see what happened next.
I'm afraid things kind of kick to a dead stop at the end of chapter 2, though. A scant couple thousand words after introducing the mystery of why Zecora vanished and hinted that the kid probably wouldn't be directly told about it any time soon, you wrapped it up and put a bowtie on it. While there was still the issue of how they would escape the forest to resolve, having the big question that got me invested in the story in the first place answered so quickly left me much less inclined to continue.
When I pressed on, though, the town you introduced in the following chapter got my hopes up. A dying, gradually starving village that's being devoured inch-by-inch on all sides by a malevolent forest? That's an intriguing premise, and it's ripe ground to instill powerful feelings of gloom, despair, or horror in your reader.
But, well, that potential is squandered. There are a few nods and gestures made towards the fact that the town is depressive and that things are bad and getting worse; Zircon has to drink alcohol instead of water, ponies are sad and underfed, etc. It's good to have details, yes, but I don't think what you've given really conveys just how dire such a situation is. To pick an example at random, you mention the houses have to be built close together, but that fact doesn't really reflect as they move through the town. You could get more mileage out of this by adding something like, say, "As they walked into the street, they were plunged into the shadows of the buildings that loomed overhead," or "Zircon felt as if he could touch buildings on opposite sides of the street by stretching his legs." Descriptions like that more vividly convey the idea of a town that's been built to house more people than it could ever reasonably be expected to.
This is more of a minor note, but I still think the concept is important important. At times, your narration can be a bit redundant and could benefit from streamlining. Take this, for example:
There's no need to tell us here that he's wishing for a response. He's yelling at Zecora, asking her why she didn't answer. You've already shown us that he wants her to talk to him. There's no need to tell us after the fact. The same goes for passages like the following:
And so on. You need to trust both your ability to convey what's happening and your readers to be able to put two and two together, and while it can be a rather frightening leap to take, you will be rewarded with a cleaner story that will give readers more for their time.
And in a case where you've told, but not shown:
This is an example of telling rather than showing. Just saying there was "rage across her features" is functionally the same as saying "she was angry." Picture this scene in your mind. What specifically about Zecora shows that she's angry? Eyes narrowed? Teeth bared? Front legs bent like she's about to charge? Share these details with your reader.
PLOT AND CHARACTERS
To begin with, I enjoyed how you fleshed out Zecora's backstory, and in particular I like that you gave a creative reason for why she always speaks in rhyme. It's a well thought-out reason that ties into the history you've given her, and it's not really something I've seen done before
However, since it only features one canon character, your story will live or die by your ability to craft OCs.
Zircon seems to be shaping up pretty well. I found him likable and easy to identify with; the adults are brushing him off and failing to tell him something important, and who hasn't been in that situation as a kid? He's not satisfied with their explanation, though, and takes the initiative to go out and find answers himself.
So far, the other OCs haven't really made much of an impression on me, but to your credit, they haven't really been around that long. By the same token, though, I think you made a mistake introducing a lot of important characters at once. When you're trying to establish and develop multiple characters at once, who at the time are nothing to the reader to a list of names, you quickly turn your story into an exercise of memorizing which traits go with which names in order to keep the characters straight. That makes it rather hard to identify with them. Remember how in the pilot of the show, Twilight met the other members of the Main Six one at a time, and they got scenes to establish their characters? Something more like that would work better
I already covered problems with the atmosphere of Death Town(tm), but now I'd like to talk in particular about how the ponies in the town just don't really feel like ponies who are faced with a gradual, inevitable death. Take, for example, the lack of food. We know that food is being tightly rationed and that many ponies are receiving so little food that they're visibly malnourished, and yet the sheriff's job is "monotonous"? When civilization breaks down to the point that necessitities are in short supply, "monotonous" is going to be just about the last word to describe the sheriff's job, unless he's gotten used to a daily routine of bucking ponies who try to break into the storage building to steal food. People who are running out of things they need to live tend to be frightened and desperate, not sad. If you want to show us a town where food's at a premium, don't show ponies looking tired. Show ponies coming to blows over a can of vegetables. Or, if you don't want something quite so grim, you can always make the town's situation a bit less dire. After all, a tiny town surrounded by (and slowly eaten by) an evil forest is plenty gloomy even if there's enough food and water for everyone.
And for that matter, given the town's situation as you've written it, shouldn't they be urging Zircon and Zecora to leave as soon as possible? Aside from the obvious motive of not wanting them to be the town's next victims, there's also the practical concern of the fact that two more mouths to feed is just going to run them out of precious essential supplies that much sooner.
One additional question I'm left with is why the other zebras were so quick to believe the unicorn's accusations against Zecora. Why do they trust him so much that they hang onto his words like that? Why do they distrust Zecora enough to so readily believe that she's out to poison them?
CONCLUSION
To be honest, I found this story rather disappointing as it is. You have nice ideas that complement each other well, and the story is decently constructed, but I don't feel like it's been given as much consideration and effort as it really deserves.
The good news is that this shouldn't be terribly difficult to fix. Take a careful look at the descriptions you've given, cut away the redundancy, and focus on showing in places you've simply told. Give some thought to how you can use the mystery of why Zecora was banished to keep readers something to stay invested in for the long term, dropping hints along the way like the story of what happened in Saddle Arabia. It'll be much more satisfying for readers when it's finally revealed. And, of course, always carefully read your chapters after you finish the rough drafts so that you can catch mistakes in grammar and word use that might slip by you when you're first writing a section.
Starman Ghost, WRITE's Unpaid Intern
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Thanks. I'll go through the issues.
Yeah, introducing all the OCs at once was a bad move on my part. I think I'll rewrite the entire couple chapters involving the town, maybe extend Zecora telling Zircon about why she was banished.