Mercenaries

Raymondash Pie

Raymondash Pie #1 · Sep 10th, 2012 · · ·

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please leave comments on what u thought.

Lolsternater

Lolsternater #2 · Oct 23rd, 2012 · · ·

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Well, quite a few mistakes that you may want to look at. You need to start a new line with each pony talking.
Add more paragraphs to explain the area and things they are doing. Over all not bad for first try. I will follow to see where this goes, but do a fix up first.
Good luck out there! It's a tough crowd.

Raymondash Pie

Raymondash Pie #3 · Oct 23rd, 2012 · · ·

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I will do that, thanks

Mudpony

Mudpony #4 · Oct 23rd, 2012 · · ·

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Okay, quick pass, not too in depth.

First off, you're missing the alternate universe tag. Three of the mane 6 as mercs, m-16s, holograms, acting a bit out of character... not the regular one.

Next up, description:

Money is tight(,) contracts are long. 3(Three) ponies are finally allowed to return to their lives. The cider squeezer, cupcake maker, and dareing(daring) dreamer, try(trying) to hide (from )their past(,) are called back ("offered one last job" instead of "called back"?) and accept because they all need some (I'd go with "the" over "some") money.

You only use numbers for big numbers, not something small like three.

On to the story:
Some repeated issues:
Darkmoon covered the speaker paragraph issue. Be sure that you treat them just like you treat your other paragraphs as well. In your case, that means an extra line break between them.

In conversations, periods right before the end quote that is followed by an attributor (said and such) get replaced by a comma.

"I wonder who it's gonna be." said Rainbow Dash.

should be:

"I wonder who it's gonna be," said Rainbow Dash.

When you address someone, commas before and after. "Hey, Bob." "Hey, Bob, how are you doing?" "Get out of here, Bob."

"Wow(,) Dashie, I see you haven't lost your touch!" commented Pinkie.

Bunch of cases with missing quotation marks:

"Well,(") he nervously chuckled, (")you got me(.)"

Individual things:

This mug of cider she brought to Sugar-Cube(Sugarcube) Corner(,) however, was all business.

This sentence doesn't make much sense. The previous sentences don't build up any sort of link between non-business and business. Just suddenly a sentence that says that this cider is business.

Pinkie Pie, like Applejack, also had a bandoleer~~. B~~(, b)ut instead of throwing knives(,) she had grenades of nitrous oxide, laughing gas. Pinkie Pie also had a(n) M16, if(in case) things got hairy and the team had to stop being stealthy. She wore a gas mask with a smiley face painted on it,(lose this comma) and a black stealth suit. Pinkie Pie was also packing enough C-4 to make the most structurally sound buildings cringe.

Also, also, also. It should only be used once. The first one is redundant with the "like AJ".

most guards we're(were) taken out

the guard(')s head

~~And when~~(Just as) Rainbow was about to pull

Shouldn't start sentences with "and" or "but" if it can be avoided.

"What? We don't have a chocolate fountain here.(comma, not period)" the guard responded(.)

Extra spaces between chocolate and fountain.

Pinkie took out her M16, there was no need for stealth now, and began shooting, and in Rainbow's case stabbing, their way out of the building.

This sentence is a mess. Your subject is Pinkie, yet you reference Rainbow. You've got a comma splice in there (after M16). Missing punctuation. Just bad. I'd suggest rewriting this as several separate sentences.

There's other errors and issues as well, but I'm done for now, figure this is enough

Overall, not too bad. Other than the repeated errors, which shouldn't be as big of an issue now that you know the right way to do it, you have some comma use issues. Comma can be a pain. Worth brushing up on how to use them properly.

Beyond that, mostly you need to proofread to catch errors as well as some of those clunky sentences. I'd suggest reading your story several times. Then wait a day and do it again. Possibly wait yet another day and read it some more. That should help you catch a lot of the little errors and fix up the clunky bits. Then and only then send it off to an editor/proofreader or publish.

horizon

horizon #5 · Oct 23rd, 2012 · · ·

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I agree with Lolster, this shows some promise for a first fanfic. It's not polished yet, but you clearly have some creative ideas, and your grasp of vocabulary and spelling are good. The grammar and formatting could use work -- I specifically mention these because bad formatting will disproportionately drive away readers, way out of proportion relative to the amount of effort it takes to correct.

Put each line of dialogue in its own paragraph (spaced the same way as your other paragraphs are). When you end a line of dialogue with attribution -- for example,

"Hi," Rainbow Dash said.

-- turn the final period of the quote into a comma. (While you're fixing all those, check and make sure all your quotes start and end in the right places.) Finally, re-read and make certain that all of your verbs are in the same tense. Flipping back and forth between past and present is a common new-writer problem.

Other than that, my best recommendation is to team up with some friends or fellow writers -- you can find them here via the site or in communities like reddit's mlpwritingschool -- and have another set of eyes check over your story before you post it. There are a lot of things in this story that aren't wrong in the same way that spelling or grammar can be wrong, and yet make it difficult for readers. You have the benefit of reading your own story with a vivid image in your head of what you meant when you started typing; none of the rest of us do. So, for example, a pre-reader can ask you questions like "What does the D.D.W.A. stand for?" or tell you "I don't understand this scene" and give you a chance to clean things up before posting to the whole Internet. A good prereader is worth their weight in gold.

Finally, I do like the Charlie's Angels vibe you've got going on here, though it makes me wonder whether it might work better as direct homage. Their AI Jeremy is pretty inventive, but it would have been even more clever to have them taking orders from a mysterious Charlie Horse.

Best,

- H

Raymondash Pie