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Vinyl nodded her head to the music only she could hear. She wove through the thick crowds of Manehatten, narrowly fitting between a large mare and a skinny stallion as she just beat the light. Her anxious steps carried her forward, head bobbing.
Note: This is a personal challenge, from me, to me, to do a story without any dialogue. I will focus on describing things, not words. How'd I do? Lemme know!
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And it never comes up till the end that there even *was* a contest... well played.
8717709
Priorities! Music first.
Can you just add 3 more words?
8717733
Just for you.
I think it went pretty darn good!
This was a fun read. I would love to see a longer sort of story written out in a similar manner but I do understand that is a difficult undertaking and would require a bit more practice making small stories like this one first. Keep up the good work.
This was a music-filled adventure from the very start. Without using dialog, you managed to get so much detail across in the story. It's just so amazing and I love it a lot. Really is a good story you've got here, sir and I look forward to seeing more from you.
Vinyl lives for her music I see. Now I wonder how her music and Octavia’s interact with each other when they are fully in sync on more then a wedding piece?
8717861
Hello and thank you! I haven't seen you on my stories before, but glad this one poked you in the right spot. I had fun writing this and will try to incorporate its lessons into other stories.
Not entirely sure what you're saying here. It's early here though and I might just be dumb.
This was definitely interesting to read.
...That's really all I can say about it. I'm no critic, I just point out obvious errors. Good job on this, though.
8718495
Rephrased for hopeful clarity, thanks for reading!
Incredible job in capturing the world Vinyl creates for herself, both the ecstatic highs and the sacrifices she makes in terms of connecting to the world most ponies inhabit. Great work!
I think you did a good job overall, though I also think that there's still room for improvement.
As a character, Vinyl lends herself to stream of consciousness-style writing, where you can have long sequences of her simply observing the world around her. In that regard, you did a good job of creating a narrative sequence that flows smoothly (though I felt that the word "music" was slightly overused; you could have switched it up with related terms like "rhythm," "melody," "bass," etc. more). Reading this felt very true to what we've seen of her in the "Music to My Ears" video.
However, this felt like only a small step forward in terms of your writing getting inside a character's head, rather than simply focusing on their actions. You do make sure to give Vinyl's inner feelings a voice, and do so very well in terms of having her feelings color the description of what's going on around her. Again, that makes for great narrative flow. But in terms of understanding why she does what she does, there's very little here. The sequence of "character witnesses/partakes in event; examination of how they feel about it; (optionally) examining why they feel that way/contextualization with their personality and circumstances; character reacts to it," isn't being fully explored in this story. We know what Vinyl is doing, and how she feels about what she's doing, but we don't know why she feels that way beyond the vague implication that she's getting a rush from it.
Again, I want to stress that this story, specifically, doesn't suffer from this particular omission. You've very cleverly crafted a narrative that's deliberately limited in scope and presentation, and so the absence of deeper characterization becomes a feature, rather than a bug (particularly given that Vinyl, as a character, has no past and very little personality within the context of the show anyway). The result is a story that very much has its own "voice" in terms of stylistic delivery, and it's stronger for that. But if your goal was to go further with presenting characterization in your writing, there's still more that (I think) needs to be done.
8718799
Curious phrasing on your part, since the idea was less character, more description. More scenery. More things happening around the people who may be communicating. More details on what's actually being done, where it's being done, and what being there is like.
8718740
Thank you kindly! I tried to use some of it in today's update.
8718978 I thought the idea was more description of the character(ization).
8719000
My stories tend to have a lot of--
He said a thing
She said a thing
He said a thing and crossed his arms.
She pouts and says a thing and maybe turns away.
Nothing happens around them, and they could be in a perfectly black room so far as it matters.
8719007
(Since you are looking for a critique, here goes . . .)
I have definitely read stories where I wished the main character would look around, but I don’t specifically remember feeling that in any of your stories. The last story I remember being that way had the main character going a bit loopy and they kept interacting with things in the environment out of nowhere.
This feels like a story about somebody looking around. Unfortunately, it’s as exciting as that sounds. The plot of the story isn’t particularly exciting, so we’re left with character development. Oops, not much there either, so, er, an exciting environment? Well, Vinyl isn’t really interested in her surroundings, and that indifference is conveyed to the reader. Some sort of bird, something said, I dunno. There is some excitement when she is playing, though the outside world seems to flicker by still as she focuses on her internal world. And then she loses interest again - import pony? meh.
If you are going to have the environment carry story, then the environment must be exciting. I think an example of what this could have been is the old Apple commercial where the main character travels around taking pictures and videos with an iPhone, and then goes back to their desktop and sets the whole thing to exciting music. In that case, the main character is excited about their environment, and uses music to accentuate that excitement.
Give it another try. Once more, with feeling!
8790413
Thanks for the detailed analysis! I appreciate it.
Great story. Fitting that a story involving Vinyl grooving to the beat like in the EQG short would lean heavily on descriptions of the surrounding more. Nicely done.