After the death of his mother SkyBreaker must leave his home to find a new one, but after a run in with some bandits, he is left badly injured, but luckily a stranger comes along and returns him to good heath, but is this pony say who he truly is?
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Right, so, here's the idea. Just some suggestions on improving the readability of this chapter. Just some story tips, if you want them.
First and foremost, split paragraphs when the person talking changes, I.E. '"Whats yer' name son?" A voice said sternly "M..My name?" I asked as I waked from a sleep I don't remember entering. "Yes, Yer' name!" the voice said again but this time more irritated."S..Sky...SkyBreaker...sir." I said as I opened my eyes that were only greeted by a flashlight to be shined in them.' Would become.
"Whats yer' name son?" A voice said sternly.
"M..My name?" I asked as I waked from a sleep I don't remember entering.
"Yes, Yer' name!" the voice said again but this time more irritated.
"S..Sky...SkyBreaker...sir." I said as I opened my eyes that were only greeted by a flashlight to be shined in them.
Secondly, I know that I would enjoy an actual chapter title.
I'm seconding N64's suggestions above.
(spoilers for the rest of chapter 1)
I would also perhaps try to set up your characters more. Why would a character as apparently nice as Juliet stage a horrific prank on a colt young enough to not have their cutie mark yet like that? It doesn't seem true to her character. If she's supposed to be a bit of a light-hearted prankster, perhaps something that isn't so cruel. This colt left home after his mother died (which she wouldn't know, but you can assume that a colt who is travelling without their parents and isn't clamouring to go back to them has some sort of sad backstory), and was then saved by HoofWheel from a horrible fate. A normal, caring person wouldn't then make him thing that he was in a room with someone who'd died a horrible death... And think it was funny? Of course Skybreaker was angry. I'd be furious. Who does that?
"She said lovingly" is also a little weird... Ignoring the prank she pulled, she's spoken to him twice or so at this point. She could say it softly, or warmly, but 'lovingly' means she loves him. And he's pretty young?
'Not walking for two months can really change you' - How? How did the enforced idleness affect him? Was he bored? Did he learn more about the ponies around him? Did he learn he was on a circus train? This seems like a great opportunity to explore your world and characters a bit.
And then they just kill her? It seemed really out of left field. Did she discover something that was really going on? I'd tie this into just why they had such a huge amount of valuables in the back of the train in the first place. Maybe she didn't know that HoofWheel was EEEEEVILLLLLL and can't stand it?
The contract also seems incredibly unlawful. For one thing, he's just a kid. (AFAIK) A minor can not enter into a contract, it's illegal. I would assume the same holds true for the Equestrian legal system, because if you can't trust a minor to drink, how can they make decisions about the rest of their lives?
However, being young he probably wouldn't know that, so he'd feel trapped anyway. There would be steps taken to keep him from talking to other ponies outside of the circus, so he couldn't reveal the terms of his contract, which would be interesting.
Who was pulling the train before?
How could a single pegasus colt pull a train that we see takes four huge earth stallions to pull?
Who on earth was this new pony, Moonsketch? He just appears out of no where, and then is killed right off the bat. Why did he join the circus? Why didn't Skybreaker try to warn him before signing the contract? Why could Skybreaker kill him in one punch, and not notice the *brains* all over the front of the locomotive? Was it dark?
Running away with a train car is pretty silly... I guess the circus didn't have anyone to pull the train to go after him, but a train car is pretty stuck on the tracks. There are only so many places he could go... And ponies would probably remember a lone blank flank pegasus colt running hell bent for leather pulling a caboose. He could just loot the train for all of the best stuff, but how he would know about that is also a good question. I would keep him isolated, so he would have to sneak around to learn about their valuables.
Having him steal the cicus money is a good idea, since it gives them an actual reason to search for him... But why would a circus have so much money in the first place? Why wouldn't they have it in a bank, or at least have a guard on it? Are they into illegal things?
I'm assuming the rest of this story is going to be him living in Ponyville, meeting the mane 6 and repaying Applejack for her kindness, while trying to avoid paying for his crimes and the circus searching for him.
You do have an interesting start here with someone with a shady past that wasn't their fault trying to live in a normal town... But I think you could expand it a bit more.
1104803 Thank you soooo much for giving me feed back, I really appreciate it. To answer a couple of questions of yours, if you read the reeeeally bad story before this HoofWheel left home, never to be seen again, mostly because he had found out.
They are carnies, and a band of thieves, murderers, and also (I didn't mention cause it's for the chapter) cannibals, and yes even Juliet, and she knew HoofWheel was evil, because she was almost exactly him. there is an even darker side to this but that's for the next chapter.
MoonSketch was actually a shape-shifting carny, who was put there to keep SkyBreaker in HoofWheels clutches.
SkyBreaker was able to kill him because he had been pulling the train, also, this isn't much of a train, like I said it was basically as if they had taken a striped train, and put trailers on it.
SkyBreaker isn't only a Pegasus, he's an alicorn like the Princess, and I know I will get crap for that I don't mind much.
Juliet was kind to only him, and you have to remember this was in SkyBreakers point of view, he thought she was a kind person when she really not.
This was a coal powered train, no one pulled it before him, if so, why did he make SkyBreaker pull it? Because HoofWheel is insane, and he killed Juliet because she was going to tell SkyBreaker about what HoofWheel was.
I think I should expand on what he did when he was left immobile for two months, well after he was hit by the solid piece of sheet metal, it dislocated his right shoulder and hip, I didn't mention the hip, because SkyBreaker didn't notice it, he could only feel the pounding of his shoulder as blood was opening up the trapped blood vessels in between his shoulder blade and his humerus, and again they are carnies they have no idea about how to treat a dislocated shoulder.
He knew about the loot car, because before he was pulling the train, he was stealing bits from purses in the crowds, robbing people dry from their stage coaches and other means of transportation, and put the loot in the back of the train.
Like I said, HoofWheel was insane, and it was SkyBreakers job to guard the loot.
1105038
'He had found out', what did he find out? XD That he was a nasty cuss underneath it all?
I took a quick read through the other story, and there's one situation that didn't really feel real. When the narrator falls in with the wrong crowd, it feels like her mother turns on her in an instant. While I'm lucky enough that I haven't gone through that, I do know that it would take a lot for my mother to decide to chain me to anything, and even more for her to cut me out of her life. We just don't get a sense of what the character has done that's so bad. In my mind, she'd basically taken up smoking and some petty shoplifting, or something.
You might have intended for other things to be hinted at, but giving more information is important to letting us know what's going on.
Like how the carnies are evil in this. Perhaps if when Skybreaker was still drifting in and out of consciousness he overheard some of the other members of the group talking. Something like:
'Why did the boss take on this scrawny kid?'
'The boss is a smart pony, he always gets the most out of any situation. If he picked this kid up, he's got a plan.'
'Haha, you're right. Whatever his plan is, I'm glad it's not for me!'
Which shows that there are other people in the group, they are aware that the boss is sketchy, they know that he does bad things and that he doesn't want the best for our protagonist. The protagonist might not remember this, since he was drifting in and out of consciousness and all.
You could also have a neat conflict if SkyBreaker is confronted with who Juliet really is. Right now she is coming off more as an inconsistent jerk/good guy than a horrible pony who just so happened to nurse SkyBreaker back to health... For nefarious purposes? Having him need to come to terms with the nice mare that he's eternally grateful to for saving him to the callous mare who... Oh, stole some poor stranded people's last food when they weren't looking, or knocked over poor joe shmoe's bowl of soup or... Okay, it must be supper time, all of these involve food.
MoonSketch is... Oh! Okay, so he hasn't really done anything terrible, this was just to make him feel bad? That could work... Maybe if we see a little more of MoonSketch? Like, he's mentioned more and earlier? Because he basically just shows up and then is gone. It doesn't feel like it's a plan of HoofWheel's, it just feels unsupported. It also feels like it could be a bit of a cop out, at the end. "Don't worry, everypony, he's not really evil! That was just a plot of HoofWheel, the pony is totally fine! <3" Depending on how it's handled.
After this, does he take a more active part in the gang? Does he just give up that last little bit of brightness inside of him, because he's a horrible murdering pony who is just like the rest of these other evil ponies that he's around? That could also be interesting, him finding out that MoonSketch is fake and he never hurt anyone... And he never needed to dip to the level of those ponies around him.
If Skybreaker is an alicorn, that should really be the first thing anyone says about him. There are 3 alicorns in all of existence, it would be really weird to see one pulling a crummy train for a group of violent ponies. Maybe you could pull the last unicorn trick where they disguise him so he looks like a normal pegasus, but with a fake horn.
Unless your world has lots of alicorns everywhere, but I think you'd need to let us know that.
Did HoofWheel recognise who Skybreaker was? It seems like he's the kid of some of the people that HoofWheel went to school with. Wanting to grind him into the dust because of something his parents did to HoofWheel is a better motivation than pure insanity. People don't usually do things for EEEEVIL reasons outside of a Saturday morning cartoon. Even Chrysallis was looking to feed her people.
It's never mentioned how he was hurt, I didn't know it was a piece of metal that fell on him. I thought the group of ponies who had originally caught him had roughed him up some.
I'm pretty sure that he would notice a dislocated hip, seeing as how he would be walking on it. It's supposed to be pretty excruciating, so I'm not sure how he would have failed to notice it... Unless he was under some pretty heavy medication. But with the 'carnies' not being able to treat a dislocated shoulder but being able to treat a dislocated hip, which I'm assuming they popped back into place, it wouldn't make too much sense for them to have lots of medication.
I'm pretty sure a band of ponies who need to survive by themselves for periods of time would be able to do all the basic sort of first aid stuff, splint a bone, bind a wound, pop a shoulder back into place.
HoofWheel would *have* to be insane to have a pony who's chained in place guard the loot. I'm sure the other members of the team would have a fit at that... It's their loot too, after all! They would probably not let HoofWheel stay in charge if he endangered all their money by putting a pony that they can't trust as the only guard.
You've got answers to my questions, which is great! But I should be able to get some of these answers from the text, or at least see enough depth to let me know that there are answers coming. This feels like it's still a draft, but if you can work in a few of the answers you gave me, I'm sure it'll be much better.