Common Thoughts

by PonyIcarlyCraze

3. Normal Ponies

“Mom!!!!! I think I’m in love!” Crystal Heart half-screamed to her mother.

“That’s great Chryssie! Now, who is the lucky unicorn?” Princess Cadance said, eager to know more about her daughter’s crush.

“U- unicorn?” stammered Crystal. Unicorn? Who said her crush was a unicorn?

“Yes darling. It says in law that a princess can only be with a wealthy Canterlot unicorn!” Cadance said. Tears welled up in Crystal’s eyes.

“Well, my crush is a poor Ponyville earth pony. You’re the princess of love, you understand… right?” Crystal said, half-crying. Cadance shook her head. Crystal ran to her room, crying. What? She was basically the crystal heart in pony form.

“It- it’s not fair! Why shouldn’t I get to be with who I want?” she said into her pillow. 'I know! I’ll ask dad!' She thought. She flew into her father’s room.

“Dad I have a crush on an earth pony so…” she paused, “should I follow love or law?” she said.

“Honey Bun, you’ll get over it. It’s just a schoolgirl crush, nothing more.” Shining Armor said. Crystal stomped out the door, bumping into the captain of the royal guards, Evergreen.

“Hello, my dear. Having a bad day? Perhaps my good looks will help.” he said.

“Out of my way, Nevergreen.” Crystal said. For some reason, she had never liked that self-centered pony. She flew out of the castle. “Why doesn’t anypony understand me?” she said. She knew she would visit Seed Sprout the next day. Yes, Seed Sprout. He was the one, the one for her. Crystal just couldn’t help but start singing.

I never got why they don’t let me choose
The one that is right for me
I can make my own choices
I thought that I was free

They urge me to take
That self-centered Evergreen
But I just don’t think
That he is right for me

They just don’t understand
That love breaks all laws
And Seed Sprout is the best colt
I have ever saw

I’ve just never seen why
They don’t let him in
While to me above all others
He will always win

Why does law say the stupidest things
I want to bring that law out of the ring
that stupid unreasonable law
the worst thing I ever saw

She cried herself to sleep that night, not wanting to go back inside.

Comments

[Celestias Paladin]

Oh Lord...OC Alicorn, at she isn't coming off as a complete Sue so far

[dream1990]

i like it and i got a question are you going to be able to making for this story and make episodes chapters for your another story that is incomplete at the same time

[The Orange Nebula]

OH SHIT! ITS AN ALICORN OC!! DUCK IN COVER!!!!!!!!!!!!! GET THE FUCK DOWN!!!!!

[The Guardian and Friends]

Why? Why does this exist?

[ShadowblazeCR]

so why does she feel so happy around Seed Sprout?

Now, I may be wrong and correct me If I am but I bet it's because she...*pauses for dramatic effect* loves them!

I know. I know. It's crazy and not possible, but hey you never know.

[hailspider]

You know, if you replaced your OCs with Twilight and Applejack, you would get less backlash. (And the other love interest that the story seems to mostly be ignoring would be Flash Sentry.) It would still be full of problems, but hey, you could probably get some upvotes out of it.
Yliad: No! Don't give this guy any ideas!
It's too late for that now.

[Glimglam]

derpicdn.net/img/view/2013/10/29/459805.gif

[Hatty_Hattington]

So, it's another run of the mill "Mary-sue-alicorn-OC". But this time it's different!
This time you're insert your OC into the place of an already established and much liked character, Your OC is fundamentally the same.

[Mix-Tape Mare]

Pinkamena is disappointed.
i.imgur.com/TPaSwQl.png

Seriously, though -- the idea's not necessarily bad, in and of itself; from what I can tell, the OCs are meant to be the children of the main characters in the MLP series. (Sort of a "My Little Pony: The Next Generation.") But the sudden insertion of an alicorn OC, without any explanation or setup, is going to attract a lot of negative comments and downvotes, because that sort of thing is almost always a sign of an author putting an idealized Mary Sue version of themselves into the story, and that's pretty universally considered Bad Writing.

Part of the problem here, I think, is that your chapters are far too short, and lack sufficient detail or explanation for the readers to be willing to take the idea seriously. Having Crystal Heart be the alicorn daughter of Princess Cadance and Shining Armor could be made to work, but you have to explain it. Your "prologue" needs to be a couple of thousand words long (not hundred, thousand), giving a time-capsule explanation of how we got from where the show currently is, to where you need it to be for your story to work. (In other words: explain when and how Crystal Heart was actually born, where this Soil-Down Farm came from and who runs it -- and why is Crystal Heart, all the way in the Crystal Empire, responsible for sending seeds to a farm in Ponyville, and why is Seed Sprout writing to her? Shouldn't he be petitioning the princess who actually lives in Ponyville first, if his situation is that dire?)

Carrying forward from there -- again, aim for chapters that are thousands of words long, not hundreds. Describe what the characters look like, what they're doing, and where they are. A lot of this story might as well be taking place in an empty white room; there's just not enough here to let the reader visualize the scene.

Slow the action down. You're speeding through things much too quickly. Again, writing longer and more descriptive paragraphs will help you a lot here.

The characters' motivations are a bit questionable here, especially Cadance. She's the Alicorn of Love, after all; the idea that she'd react negatively to her daughter having a crush on an earth pony seems out of character for her.

It says in law that a princess can only be with a wealthy Canterlot unicorn!

Really? First off -- whose law says this? How did a ridiculous law like this ever get passed in the first place, and how can it possibly be justified within the MLP universe? Neither Celestia nor Luna would've had any reason to allow such a law to be passed, and there's surely no reason why such a law would even apply to princesses of the Crystal Empire to begin with. And why Canterlot unicorns, specifically? Wealthy unicorns from Manehattan or Fillydelphia are just out of luck, then?

You can't just pull stuff like this out of the air and plunk it down in the middle of your story to force the plot in the direction you want it to go, love. You have to think about these things.

Your characters aren't very well developed, either, I'm afraid. They mostly feel like cardboard cutouts being pushed around a board; none of them really seem to have much depth, or any real motivation for acting the way they do. Again -- more detail, more explanation, longer chapters, and think about who your characters are and what role they serve in the story.

Also: your dialogue punctuation has problems. When you have dialogue followed by a dialogue tag (a description of who said the dialogue and how), you must end the character's dialogue with a comma, not a period, and do not capitalize the next word outside the quote marks unless it's the speaker's name. Like so:

“You know even after all… this, I still like you a lot.” Said a neon green colt named Evergreen.
“You know even after all… this, I still like you a lot,” said a neon green colt named Evergreen.

“Out of our way, Nevergreen.” Crystal Heart said.
“Out of our way, Nevergreen,” Crystal Heart said.

If the dialogue ends in a ? or !, you would still use those as normal, but you still don't start the dialogue tag after the closing " mark with a capital letter unless it's somepony's name.

Only if what follows the dialogue is not a dialogue tag, but is a separate action taken after the character stops speaking, do you end the dialogue with a period and start a new sentence. You don't really have any samples of this in your story, so here's a sample of what I mean:

“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm pretty well off.” Twilight tapped her forehooves together nervously. “I could probably buy most of Ponyville, hypothetically.”

In this case, Twilight speaks, then taps her forehooves together, then speaks again, so all three things are separate actions and written as separate sentences. If you did it this way:

“Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but I'm pretty well off,” Twilight said, tapping her forehooves together nervously. “I could probably buy most of Ponyville, hypothetically.”

Here, the hoof-tapping is an action occurring simultaneously with her speech, so it becomes part of the dialogue tag, and Twilight's dialogue now ends with a comma so as to connect it to the dialogue tag.

The first step towards improving your writing, is to read others' stories to see how it's done. Let me steer you towards a few examples of what you should be aspiring towards:

A Taste of the Good Life, by Eakin
Breaking the Sound Barrier, by SusieBeeca
Letting Your Mane Down, by TheBandBrony
Light the Sky on Fire, by EquesTRON
The Monster in the Twilight, by Georg
Moving On: Silver Spoon's Story, by Hollyfern
On The Application Of Time And Motion Efficiency Studies To Initial Relationship Formation, by Estee
Past Sins, by Pen Stroke
Princess Luna and the Cotton-Candy Sugar Rush, by TheSlorg
Quizzical, by JMac
Triple Strength, by Cirrus Tail

Not only are they good reads in themselves, but they'll provide excellent examples of how engaging dialogue should be written, how to describe a scene so that the reader can visualize it, how to make characters come alive through descriptions of their thoughts and actions -- and most importantly, how to structure a plot so that it actually makes sense, and how to make your characters and situations believable.

Do that, and then you'll have a chance at writing a story like this without getting swarmed with downvotes.

[chaos maker]

please this is a good story

mewhile to the comments:

YOU ARE STUPID HER OC CAN BE A ALICORN STOP HATING AND ENJOY THIS STORY

[Hatty_Hattington]

5012746
reactiongifs.com/r/h00k.gif

[chaos maker]

sed what mean

[null_name5656]

5022146 m.quickmeme.com/img/df/df9514222dd43aa54f08b37483f214921d2722d3362b3ca5be2075c726d12018.jpg

[null_name5656]

Love how there was 3 - 5 people defending this story even though it only has one like.

[null_name5656]

Just noticed that after 6 weeks. Im not the most perceptive person around.

[Fallen Prime]

5615764 The like was probably either the author's own or dream1990's. I've noticed in my badfic travels that dream pops up a lot; she's startlingly and depressingly easy to please in the fic department.

I'm willing to bet, based on the creation date and apparent lack of activity, that chaos maker is the author's alt. If that's the case, then at least PonyIcarlyCraze knows better than to use said alt to inflate the story's rating. A lot of authors people think are GOOD have been caught abusing alts like that.

I'm not finding the third, unless you mean that first guy who started off with their disappointment in the alicorn OC.

[deadpansnarker]

There's ALWAYS at least one sympathy vote...

[null_name5656]

5797226 Chaos Maker could be the authors alt, but I'm not sure. Chaos Maker has very little grasp on English while the author seems to at least understand the basics. Dont see much point in talking about it, the authors account is dead anyways.