Sunset Shimmer agreed to take someone to Equestria. Eventually, she got Princess Twilight to allow the trip by claiming it was a date to go see a play. This was their experience.
A great many thanks to Winternacht for editing.
Edit: Done as a challenge from Moonshot to write in 1st person without using any dialogue and with a 2nd character involved.
Take a look into the Kaleidoscope.
9967796
Why did everyone respond to your comment saying "okay boomer"? What does that even mean?!
9967992
Will PM an explanation.
9967992
I don't know myself. Something between the lot of them is my guess. I'm going to delete it all because none of it has any relation to the story written.
As for the point brought up the idea for the contest was one picture with multiple items in it and each person was to write a story based on whatever inspired them from that picture. Hence the same picture (which was the picture used for the contest) and name referencing that idea and showing what was the relationship between the stories.
As for posting all at once? Ideally, we would have done it at a more discreet time if possible but the limitations of not being able to set up a story to appear at a given time in advance prevents that.
Edit: For future reference. Any personal squabbling is going to be deleted from comments to my stories. Personal back and forth spats are not what the comment section for the stories is for.
Riiiiight. I don't like it (for personal reasons, that is to say), but I'll also be honest, in that I don't think your prose, while fairly competently written, is good enough to support a no-conflict, no-dialogue story. It could've probably been entertaining enough with dialogue, but as is, it just fell flat for me.
Right, like I promised, I gave this a fair shake as both a thanks for being the first person to really explain the situation and for actually understanding the frustration of others and not trying to excuse, brush aside, or mock them. You’re good people.
That being said, like 9968905 said, I don’t think that this story really works without some kind of dialogue or conflict (I know, the lack of dialogue was part of the challenge). You mostly resorted to describing the setting, but the thing is that it’s a setting I’m already familiar with - I didn’t really need to have such an in-depth detailed description of the castle library, for example, I’ve been there (well, seen it - you know what I mean).
It might have been better to focus more on the Protagonist’s reactions to things that we’re not so familiar with. For example, I actually really liked his self-description of being a horse and figuring out how to walk again, and other sense-based descriptions.
All in all, this wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great - but I get that it was mostly hamstrung by the challenge you had set for you so I’m not going to hold it against you. If you were to expand this into a story with dialogue and maybe just a minor conflict, you’d really be on to something here.
9968905
Thanks for the honest take. What you said helps me. The no dialogue challenge and the limited word count (no greater than 2,500) made this difficult to make good. As for a conflict, I couldn't think of one in time that fit the limitations given to me.
9968916
Thanks for giving it a fair chance and for sharing your thoughts as well. When putting this together I debated on if I should describe the castle or not and focus more on other experiences. I tried for a mix but I didn't think I balanced it well enough. The reason I decided to was to truly illustrate a new person experience. I could have short cut it and added in a silent scavenger hunt from Twilight that I ended up cutting (which looking back I think would have been better) but at the time of writing, I thought that a new person to the place made more sense.
I'm not trying to argue that how I wrote it was right. I'm simply explaining why I went with what I did. If I were to rewrite it I would definitely take what you two said to change the story for the better because looking back, I agree. With that said I might take what you said and use a retake version in another story if the opportunity presents itself.
Again, thank you for reading and sharing your thoughts. I really appreciate it.
9968982
Oh God no, you have nothing to excuse.
I love talking shop about stories, figuring out what makes them tick, looking at structure, plot, characterization, morals, themes, discussing what works, what doesn’t, etc.
Looking forward to seeing more of your work!
This story does a great job of describing the whole process of the main character turning into a pony. I really felt every step of the adaption process, from seeing his body transform to him getting used to walking on four hooves.
If there’d been more time to write, I’d say this story could have benefited from another line editing pass. There are a lot of long, hard to follow sentences which could be rewritten. For example, this:
could be written to be shorter and (imo) easier to read like this:
Of course, style and voice are things, and sometimes a character needs to be wordy, but I felt like the story can express the same ideas more clearly.
I enjoyed the interlude about the main character’s dad going through physical therapy. It helped show what kind of effort this transformation requires while also giving some good characterization. If this story were longer, I’d love to read more about the main character’s human life.
9970690
Thanks for for reading the story and the awesome feedback.
This one didn't really work for me. A large majority of it was just descriptions of places, and that's the kind of thing I skim in most stories anyway. I just found myself losing interest by the end. Your prose is technically fine, but it's not evocative enough to carry the story on its own. It's a cool experiment, and kudos for going through with it on top of the contest prompt, though.