If you're living on borrowed time, do you have to return it?
Artie's dad, Chopping Block, has settled into his new life as an earth pony. Christmas Eve, Artie invites him over for a talk and explanation of matters. The next day, Chopper gets to meet the whole fam damily at the Christmas party.
A Ponies after People story, as started by Starscribe.
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After having finished this story, I asked myself 'what was the conflict?' How did the characters grow and change as a result of what happened? I was unable to answer any of those questions.
Remember that any narrative can only go as far as the challenges the characters have to overcome. Family times are fun but they're like being forced to sit down and watch the home videos of someone you don't know and aren't related to at all. They're fun for the family and nobody else.
You mentioned not knowing what to write next. My advice would be to find a challenge to overcome--an enemy, be it a villain, or merely a force, or anything really. Anything that we as an audience believe should easily beat your characters. Then convince us that your characters just barely scrape out a victory by the skin of their teeth. That is a narrative.
It seems this story is taking every opportunity to remove conflict. It gives characters super overpowered abilities that violate the normal magic rules of PaP, without any weaknesses that might be a source of potential drama or story down the road. It even goes out of its way to make sure we know how much the ability can be passed down, so there's no chance that someone in the family getting jealous could be a source of drama either.
Any time I'm about to write a story, I ask myself: Why do I want readers to read this. What adventure do I want them to have? If I can't answer that question to my own satisfaction, I keep twisting and making the situation harder until it seems like seeing them overcome that difficulty might be hard.
And the drama could be anything--a villain would work, but so would a character's alcoholism, or poverty from not being able to find work. Hell, even loneliness could be an antagonist, so long as it seems like our main characters have a real chance of losing to it.
Following from what Starscribe said, one possibility might have been to make the whole thing around the poker night. The "villain" would be the game; go into detail about the plays and the bluffs. You could then still have your aim of heartwarming family talk by interspersing it through the banter in the game.
Or something that would have been a different story but still a tribute to your dad, perhaps you lived a full life and you're on your deathbed surrounded by family in the post-event Earth, but you lament that you never will get the chance to see your dad again in life. Then in the closing paragraphs, he walks through the door a relatively young 76 year old stallion.
love it a grate follow up story.
8482636
I thoroughly enjoyed this story, as it reminds me of my reunions held by my extended family. From my time earning a degree in journalism, I know that a creative nonfiction story is someone doing something for a reason. Thus, this is a story of Artie reconnecting with his Dad, as well as exploring Artie’s family genealogy with some world building. I loved it and hope to be able to read more stories like this one.