As a genetic experiment gone right, Ember must survive in a new world where fiction is reality, and apparently friendship is the strongest force there is.
Warning! If you don't like morphs (half-human half-animal/mythological beast (a Centaur counts as a morph to me)) and/or herms (both male and female at the same time) then this story probably isn't for you.
If you feel like I'm missing a tag, please let me know what I'm missing and why. If I agree with your reasoning I'll add it.
Please stay with it till the first chapter, MLP comes into play there...
If you downvote please explain why in the comments so I can improve!
Thanks to Requiem17 for pre-reading, editing, and helping me come up with a better name for this story than "Ember", go check him out!
Your story needs more tags. "Alternate Universe" tells potential readers that the setting is different, but it doesn't really say anything about the type of story. Is this an adventure? Is it a romance? Is it dark? Is it a comedy? What's going on?
5108937 Thank you for the feedback, it is greatly appreciated!
For some reason under the statistics tab it says that there's only 5 likes... hm...
One of the first things I look for in a story, does it start off strong? Does it instantly catch my attention? The first sentence of the story has to grab my attention. This story opens with a very basic opening. Granted, it is better than “The sky was blue over Equestria” but it still didn’t catch my interests. It was just a basic opening.
Now, if you had moved the “Where are you?” line to the beginning that would have been stronger. Start off by saying something is going on or something has happened or did happen. When I think of a strong start, I instantly think of Charles Dicken’s a Christmas Carol. It starts off with “Marley was already dead.” It’s just a good start to the story. It instantly draws you in. It gives the story the right punch it needs to grab your attention.
I’m noticing a lot of inconsistencies with the spelling, like I’m looking at the first draft. There are places where ‘shi’ is spelt instead of ‘she’ and other times when the spelling is correct only a sentence or two later. It feels like this is the first time you’ve looked at it sense you wrote it. It feels like that this didn’t get looked through by yourself before you posted it. I don’t know if you had proofreaders or not, you probably did and it’s a shame they didn’t catch them.
One thing I always do with my writing is, I take my time with it. I will write it and before I post it, I will take a week or two to let it fade from my memory, meanwhile I’m writing other things. Then I come back to it and look at it again. That way I have a fresh, clear new look on the story. I’m seeing it, sort of how your audience is going to see it. Spelling inconstancies stick out and ruin the flow of the story.
And I know that, this character is supposed to have characteristics of both male and female, and that the ‘shi’ and ‘hir’ lines are supposed to represent that. I know it is seen in the author’s note and on the website.
Me, personally, I would either call them a unique name like an inter or a herma, and stick with that when you aren’t saying their name or pick a side. They can still have the male/female aspect to the character, but pick a gender that the character prefers to be called. Again, this is a personal suggestion. But doing it this way, made me mistake it for spelling errors, which, again, breaks the flow of the story.
If you are keen to do it this way however, make it clear that ‘shi’ and ‘hir’ are how she prefers. My only complaint with this is unless she plans on spelling it out when she talks about herself, there is little to no point of this. She is spoken the exact same as shi. And her is only slight different from hir. I don’t feel that it is necessary for the story to have this element, when most of the time she won’t be talking about herself in ‘hir’ or ‘shi’.
Also, I’m seeing a lot of grammar errors. Missing commas, periods not where they need to be and capitalization errors. Again, this goes back to the thing I was talking about earlier. It looks like this is the first draft. It’s very sloppily put together and it, again, breaks the flow of the story. This story needed to be seen a couple more times before posting. It needed to be sat through with a solid proofreader (which I know are hard to come by). Or grammar rules needed to be researched in order for them to be fix. Here is a link to several grammar sites, which I routinely use in my own writing. Link
Okay, now onto the story aspect, it’s an incomplete story, so I can’t tell what you are saving for later and what is an oversight, so I will do the best I can.
So, even if you miss it, you’ll have enough food to last you a few months? Then why are you panicking? You have enough resources to last you a few months. If you miss it, you have another chance and this time you’ll be more prepared.
The problem is we don’t see many of these memories that she’s supposed to be pondering on. We are told about them and they are very vague, but they are never mentioned in this chapter. I assume that you are going to bring them up in later chapter, but I feel like if you are going to mention them here, you need to build on it. Have her think about her time there and what they did to her. How did she feel? Was there anybody nice or were they all mean? Was she taken care of? Did she ever try to escape before? Were the procedures painful? These are memories that should be covered or even hinted at if they are to be mentioned.
You need to elaborate on the shapes that she is seeing. I don’t see what she is looking at. Describe what she is seeing. Are they trees? Plants? Animals? Rocks? Ponies? Squares? There needs to be description of what she is looking at.
The problem is, I don’t see the water. I am told that it is clean, but there is never any evidence of what the creek looks like. What is around it? How is it flowing? What is her reaction to water she can see through? This is her first time out of her confinement; there should be a lot more description than what we are getting. What is her reaction to the soft grass beneath her feet? What is her reaction to the birds in the air? What is her reaction to the tall trees? How does she know what these things are? Did the scientists read her books while she was experimented on? Are they memories? Has she been there since birth or was she abducted at a young age? Does she wonder about her past?
Then we’ve got the flying scene. It really need to have something there. She just discovered she has wings, but never used them. So, there needs to be a combination of fear and exhilaration that we are just not seeing here. The character needs to show us her excitement and fear through actions, through movement, through thought, through doubt and debate. This would have been interesting to see who she is as a character when faced with something new. Does she look over the edge and have second thoughts? Or does she take a couple test flaps before jumping off? Or she impulsive and just jumps off without even thinking about how to do it?
She just does it without seeing what is really going through her mind. That takes away the interesting points that could make her character.
It’s obvious she’s a character that never gives up and that’s great, but was it out of frustration? Was it out of an urge to prove herself? Curiosity? Self-worth? Or a desire?
This action scene needs to be more actiony. Don’t tell us what happened. Show us what happened. I don’t see the fight. You need to describe all the actions taken in a fight scene or action scene. That’s what makes the action. How many wolves attacked first? How did she get out of it the first time? What happened next? Did she try to fly? If so, how did the wolves pull her down? How much pain was her body in? How did the sounds of the wolves make her feel? How did she slash at them? Did she hit one? If so, how did it make her feel to attack with her genetic enhancements?
Again, action needs to be a lot more actiony. Describe what she is seeing. How are they trying to beat back the beast?
I almost feel cheated here, but I guess three action scenes in one chapter would be overkill.
How does she have medical knowledge?
Overall, this story feels very rushed. It has a lot of points that I felt could have been expanded upon and moments where it needed some clarification. How did she appear in Equestria? How is did the portal she entered allow her from the human world into Equestria? Did ponies dress up as human and just drop food down the portal every month so she thought she was in the human world?
There is a lot of talking head syndrome scattered throughout. Mostly what that means is the characters have dialogue, without really taking any actions. Mostly during the Twilight and soldiers point. Also, we don’t really get to know any of the soldiers very well. I assume that they will be more fleshed out in the rest of the story, but at the end of the story, one of them freaks out that their friend is missing. This isn’t really relatable since we never see the friendship between the two.
I’m sorry if I sounded harsh, but those are my honest thoughts on this story. Please know that I don’t want you to stop writing, I still want to see where this goes and I want to see you improve. All I want is for you to know how you can improve your story and improve the quality that your audience receives.
That’s all I’ve got for now. Thank you for allowing me to read it. Have a good day.
5186906 Thank you, I will be using what you said to improve, if not the current chapters, then those in the future.
I have to agree with the action sequences, I tend to have trouble with those...
5187955 You are welcome.
Action is tough, but you'll get there with practice.
Also, if you want to do me a favor, if you would click on one of my story links and give me a review. Just pick the one that sounds interesting to you, I would really appreciate it.
The Longest Night. - The Cutie Mark Crusaders have been invited to a mansion for the weekend with the promise of it being the best weekend ever. ... So why does it feel like it might be their last? (Rated M for gore)
Royal Day Off - Princess Celestia and Princess Luna just want to have a day off. And they make it the best day ever. (Rated E for everyone)
The Daredevil Cutie Mark - The Cutie Mark Crusaders meet with two colts who promise to help them find their Cutie Marks. But are they as trustworthy as they appear? (Rated E for everyone)
MORE NOW!!!
5385329 Done
This is most interesting.
I have not seen anything of this sort in the HIE genre.
To my displeasure I do not have the necessary knowledge to tell you what you could improve but only that I cannot see any obvious errors nor anything I find displeasing in your style of writing.
Please do continue. I would like to request for more chapters.
I apologise for my inexperience of reviewing as I often do not review and prefer to observe at a distance. Did everything I said make sense?
Like a dragon,
Breathing fire for the very first time,
Like a dragon...
Is Corporal AeroSmith a good singer?
I don’t like how there’s no more.