The Life of Steven

by Lunatic Cake

Prologue

In a small town in England there was a boy named Steven living. He had a really nice family which would have supported him with anything he was doing, no matter how weird it seemed to them. However Steven was not such a child. He was doing his homework everyday, never complaining, he was an overall nice and polite person.

The only thing he was bad at was making friends. He never felt like talking to his classmates, only if he really had to, he ended up talking to them. His teachers told him to befriend them because they thought Steven might be lonely but that was not the case.

Steven had a lot of friends, not in real life but on the internet. He surfed on various sites and was quickly accepted by many people who shared the same interest as him. That interest was playing video games.

Steven was a gamer, not to say the least, quite a "Hardcore Gamer". He played 8 hours straight a day sometimes or was being on several forums about games. Nobody really minded it however as Steven was keeping up with his studies. He was not an A-Student, however he was quite a good B-Student.

The only thing that bothered Steven was that this life didn't feel real to him. His everyday routine, waking up, taking a shower, going to school, coming back home, playing games all day and having breakfast, lunch and dinner, only to go back to bed and start his everyday life all over again. This just felt so wrong for Steven.

As time passed, Steven started becoming depressive, he neglected his studies, was starting to become rude for no reason and ended up crying himself to sleep, knowing that everyday would be the same. He tried breaking out of his daily routine but he couldn't, until one day a package arrived.

Little did he know about the sender or the content. As he opened the package, he pulled out a game called "My Little Human". He was slightly confused. He never heard of this game. He knew about a TV Show called My Little Pony so he figured it might be some kind of joke from a programmer.

He started up his PC, put the CD into his disc tray and installed the game. Once the installment was finished, the game loaded up. On screen there were two girls standing, one of them having rainbow-colored hair and another one behind her, as if she was hiding, having long pink hair. While the first girl looked rather boyish, the other one behind looked more like a typical girl.

"What's this? Some kind of Sim Dating game?" Steven wondered, hitting the start button. It did not react. He tried exiting the game but he was unable to, no matter what he tried so he decided to turn off his PC completely. As it got dark outside, Steven got really tired and decided to go to bed after taking a shower.

"What time is it? It's so dark, I can't see anything, what time is it. If I only had some light to see the clock." Steven mumbled to himself, wanting to light up his lamp. However before he could reach it, the lamp was already turned on.
"Here you go!" A girly rather quiet voice said.

"Thanks...wait a second..." Steven opened his eyes. There was a girl standing in front of him, around his age. "Is this a dream? I guess puberty hit me with everything it got now."

"A dream?" The girl asked.

"What are you talking about, get up, we're here to get you!" Another voice said.

As Steven looked to his feet, he noticed another girl sitting on his bed. He remembered her, it was the girl from the game, no way he wouldn't have noticed that rainbow-colored hair. Rubbing his eyes, he looked at her again. "What's going on here? Who are you girls?" turning his head back to the other girl.

The girl then suddenly blushed and turned her head down to the ground. "It's Flutters..." her voice lowered.

"Pardon?" Steven replied.

"It's Fluttershy" her voice can barely be heard.

"Okay, Fluttershy, my name is Steven, nice to meet you. And you are?" Steven turned his head to the other girl.

"Name's Rainbow Dash, best athelete there ever was!"

"Well, that sounds quite arrogant." Steven added "So you were saying that you were going to get me? To where?"

"Duh, to Equestria, silly! After all, you started the game!"

Steven didn't know what to expect as he noticed a no was out of question. What will he be experiencing? Will he be alright? But most of all, is this a dream?

Before Steven was able to make sense out of this situation, Rainbow Dash dragged him to his PC. The same screen as this afternoon showed up, the only difference was the females being gone. "Have they really come out of this game to get me?" Steven wondered. "But that's nonsense, there is no way in life, something could be coming out of a monitor!" As he said that he noticed Fluttershy going through the screen. Steven's eyes widened. "Alright, this just has to be a dream! I'm 100% certain now!"

Rainbow Dash giggled as she pushed him into the monitor. As Steven got through, turning around to see what this "Portal" looks like from the other side, he saw his own room from the perspective he would have if he would be standing where his PC was. After Rainbow Dash entered the window, the Portal started to shrink, until it vanished.

"This is Humanville, there are a lot of fun things to do, I'll introduce you to our friends and show you around town tomorrow. However let's get you a place to sleep first, it's night after all. I'm sure Big Macintosh wouldn't mind another guy sleeping in his room."

As the girls went on ahead, Steven looked at the beautiful scenery as he got lost in thoughts.

"Hey come on, will ya?! We can't wait all day!" Rainbow shouted, turning back at where Steven is standing.

Steven rushed to the girls, eventually catching up with them. Starting his new lifestyle in this strange world.

Author's Note:

Thanks to Steven for letting me use your name in this story. I'm sure I'll make you a brony eventually hehe... :3

Comments

[Warren Peace]

You qualify for a Warren Peace review. Prepare yourself...

[Warren Peace]

Okay, so already you're not promising an interesting or original premise when it's another teenage kid who goes to Equestria through some technological device. It's been done a million times before and it'll be done a million times again. Unless you can provide something new or interesting to this genre I wouldn't try it.

Steven is a timid 15 fifteen year old who likes playing games.

Great, so in other words he's a wimp that you're probably going to try to make us care about and, judging from the L/D ratio, failed to do. Additionally, write out all numbers less than a thousand. It looks more professional and less lazy.

Now, onto the story...

[More or less the whole chapter, but mostly focusing on the first many paragraphs]

This is telling. While telling is needed in fictional writing, it should always be used less than showing. Telling is something that textbooks, on the other hand, should do and textbooks are usually long winded and very dull reads because of it. That said, it makes logical sense that if you write a story that is all tell and very little show it's going to be one thing: boring. The best way to fix this is to read, read, READ as much good fiction as possible to get a feeling for balancing the acts of show and tell.

"What time is it? It's so dark, I can't see anything, what time is it.

Why the hell did he say this twice? It makes no sense. Don't believe me? Read it OUT LOUD (heavy focus on those two words) and tell me I'm wrong without lying.

"It's Flutters..."

Among other things, you need to work on dialogue. This can also best be done by studying how other great authors do it. The problem here is the fact that she's saying what she is without the proper beginning piece from mister Living. Using the phrasing present would work only if either A: he'd known her name already and mispronounced/spoken/etc it, in which case she would be using the present phrasing to correct him. On the flipside, B: he asked her what her name was. Even in this second case however, the use of the word: I'm is usually the go-to word for this situation.

[His reaction to the humanized ponies]

Girls from a video game or not, this ain't the reaction that a normal human being goes through when he wakes up to find two people waiting for him to wake up. Perhaps things are done differently across the seas, but here in the states, we call that home invasion and we usually freak out because people don't normally break into our houses in the middle of the night. Either way, it'd make a far more interesting scene if he did in fact freak the shit out and the human-ponies had to drag him to Equestria. As well, the dream excuse is bullshit in real life. You can tell when you aren't in a dream, if you can't then you're insane. So, in short, he's not a believable character and that's no good.

As the girls went on ahead, Steven looked at the beautiful scenery as he got lost in thoughts.

What beautiful scenery? All I see are boring and dull words on a page of a story that I'm reviewing because it has a crappy L/D ratio. Point being (again): you're telling us bullshit instead of showing us bullshit. Potentially poor wording on that last sentence aside, as a writer you need to paint us a picture with your words of the world that you wish to create. Settling for: beautiful scenery won't cut it. Ever.

So yeah.

You need to work on showing versus telling, dialogue, and character creation. All of these can be done with both help from editors, reading good (and maybe one or two pieces of bad) fiction, and (rather important) reading out loud when (not: if) you edit your stories.

Questions or concerns? PM me. Otherwise good luck and farewell...
/)

[Lunatic Cake]

I'd love to thank you for your very detailed review about my story. Telling you the truth, I did not expect anyone putting this much effort into telling me how bad I am, it actually started making me laugh.
I am well aware that I will probably never be a good writer as I'm doing it for fun and maybe share a few laughs with friends while talking about my story.
Oh and to all these other people rating my story, feel free to comment and tell me what you didn't like about it