Some Secrets

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Celestia and Luna are a pair of sisters. They have always been known as a pair of sisters, since the time they went to study under Starswirl the Bearded himself. Yet perhaps over a thousand years ago, this wasn't always how things were. Sometimes, you have to keep secrets about the ones you love, even if you wish things could be different.

For the sake of the future, of course.

Entry for the April 2019 Incest is Wincest Contest
Art by Robiin

Chapters (1)

Comments ( 3 )

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xRei

xRei #1 · May 1st, 2019 · 2 · ·

Contest judge chiming in with some notes.

So I like that you have something that tries to rely more on a story scene than simply sex. But, to that end, the quality of the fic is going to rest on the quality of the story being presented.

I think you had some good ideas for themes here. I think exploring the complexities of incest and the impact it has on the lives of family members is an underutilized theme. However, in tackling such a large and heady subject, you've not given yourself a lot of breathing room considering the time constraints you were under.

Put simply, the story is rather short, and the pacing suffers a bit for it. The prose is trying to convey a lot of thoughts and ideas very quickly, where I think a slower pace would have worked better. In addition to that there were some issues with show/tell, filtering words.. to show a single example:

“Yes, but that will be outlandish enough. And… it’d be easier for us to be accepted as leaders, especially as young as we are, if we don’t have another strike against us.” Celestia said slowly, feeling her ears now flatten against her skull...

'Feeling' is a filter word here, and it's not needed in the slightest. And, in fact, it detaches us a bit from the scene to have the feelings of characters explained rather than shown. Also, a minor point, but I really try to show when a characters voice has changed volume/pitch/whatever as early as possible in the paragraph. This helps the reader imagine the voice in their head correctly.

"Yes, but that'll be outlandish enough," Celestia said, her words slow and measured, "It'll be hard enough to be accepted as leaders without having more strikes against us, especially considering our age."
Luna snorted and turned her back to her.
Celestia's ears snapped back against her head. "Haven't we already talked about this?" she asked, taking a dangerous step forward, "We decided this together!"

Generally speaking, you can ditch any words which don't directly show the actions being taken in a scene.

"Celestia felt her ears and neck burn with repressed anger." becomes "Her ears and neck burned with anger." Which could potentially even be distilled further to "Her ears and neck burned." We can infer that her ears and neck burning is due to her rising anger in the scene.

These sorts of edits will help pare down your story and make it tighter and snappier.

Anyway, this is really just a single, small part of writing.

I do congratulate you on keeping the point of view focused. That helped a lot. I recommend you continue doing so.

Amber Sun

Amber Sun #2 · May 1st, 2019 · · ·

9598625
Thank you so much for all these comments and suggestions! They're really helpful, and I'll be sure to incorporate and keep in mind such things for future works of mine.

MixMassBasher