No pony knows how, but one day, the world froze... Petrochemical is the only unicorn born to a village of earth-ponies, living out in the frozen wasteland, and one day, Petrochemical goes out into the snowy wasteland to find something to save her tribe from the bitter cold and toxic snow.
(I wrote this story as a way to recycle old OCs, featuring characters I originally made for cancelled or unposted fics. Inspired by a mixture of Fallout Equestria, Half-Life, Stalker, and Frostpunk. PS. I have new Cover Art yey!)
Chapters (6)
It's a very enjoyable concept, I'm fond of post-apocalyptic Equestria fics.
I find the structure is off many times, and some things could be worded better.
You seem passionate about engineering but go over the top in some areas outside of Petro reading a book or Ethylene listing information.
But it has promise. I personally think that Ethylene too-constantly switches between 'BEEP BOOP I AM ROBOT.' to 'Oh hey there I'm a cool robot that can have feelings and stuff.' It seems odd that she should find she hasn't been credited with a name in old Equestria or that having one is unthinkable when she has such a personality as to lightly engage in bantz with Basalt, so that tone needs sorting IMO.
On the whole, it's nice. I would suggest an editor to help you cut things down and put them in the right place.
11115927
Yeah, an editor would be really nice, unfortunately, I have really shitty luck trying to find editors who will actually help me in a timely manner. And yeah, I am REALLY into engineering and physics so expect a lot of that. Also, partial spoilers for later on, but the reason why everything froze and the cause of the apocalypse is a really unique one that I've never seen anyone else try before.
11115931
Well I would suggest trying to curb your enthusiasm and keep things steady within the fic. Try to keep the tone even, go over it several times to ensure all structure and grammar is in place. Extending words like 'Wooooow this place is huuuuuge' can very fast become an annoyance when the story has a semi-serious tone to it. Using emphasis with italics is far better than using CAPITALS as that implies shouting rather than a stressed word.
I would also recommend not spoiling anything.
I don't often offer advice as I kind of hate everyone and everything that isn't me or things I like, but I like what you've done and you don't seem completely hopeless. Just a tad more improvement to structure, flow, and punctuation, and I think you'll do rather well for yourself.
I'll follow this too as the concept grabs me a little.
11115938
Well, I do try to justify my enthusiasm for science by having Petrochemical and Ethylene being really smart and curious ponies who like to inspect every bit of machine they come across, but I will try and keep my explanations of stuff limited to only when the story demands it.
As for my lack of grammar... I've never been good at that, (you can blame an absolutely horrible childhood where I never went to school or was taught anything for that, my first ever English class was when I was something like 12 or 13, so I missed a bunch of stuff I should have learned when I was younger and have had to haphazardly learn it second-hand... So.)
11115941
I think you have an issue with over-sharing, but I'm glad you'll take what I've said into consideration.
Also it may just be a 'me' thing, but I'd suggest another title for your story, possibly based on the entire thematic of your story. There's no issue in having your main character be your titular character as well, but the title and initial chapter name are mostly the same, and I think it works best for the chapter, as to introduce Petro beyond just the synopsis.
11115931 Try https://www.grammarly.com/ It's not as good as a human editor, but it's passable. The pro version is almost as good as a human editor.
11116177
I have it... It doesn't help me much with punctuation, and sometimes it actually gets in my way as it tries to correct words and sentences in ways that just don't sound right to me.
11116180 Yeah you need the premium version and have to select "tell a story" and "Creative" in the settings for that to work perfectly.
Well that escalated.
Also, the Chief doesn't blink when Effy introduces herself, but then freaks out about her talking when she says one small thing after about her suddenly talking.
Punctuation is a bit off, but it's readable and you're doing well.
11117866
Yeah, realized that error there. I'll fix that. That problem was because I took a break between writing and kinda forgot that Ethyl had already spoken.
It did feel a tad rushed.
Honestly, don't feel like you can't have longer chapters, and more descriptive segments. Consider the environment your ponies find themselves in, consider the 5 senses if it would fit the part. What they might smell, see, hear, touch, taste. Sometimes one or two of those can help you think about other things to describe. Giving ponies that aren't major characters to the story even a basic description can go a long way as well to immerse the reader.
11119348
The next chapter is much better, I'll probably come back to this one in the future and make it more descriptive at the very least.
Welcome to frost punk pony addition
You're getting along well, didn't see many if any spelling errors.
Structure and pace seem fine.
Now all that's needed is to work on your punctuation so you don't have as many run on sentences and endless commas where they're not needed. Read your work back to yourself by seeing how far you can get in a single breath, put semi-colons where you need to emphasise or continue a line when revealing something. Although that's not the case every time.
As a probably simple example:
"Petro glanced around into gloomy pitch black. She felt like it was safe to go deeper, but she knew had to be careful as she walked down the frozen corridor, and careful to keep her torch steady; the last thing she needed was to drop it and let it go out."
It would work to use full stops to let the reader breathe, but you can also use the semi-colon to run the sentence on in the same manner.
The only other thing is that the chapters are a bit short.
11121006
Yeah, I've written up to Chapter 6, but that's where I'm stopping, for now, to rewrite all the chapters. Making them longer, more detailed, generally better in pacing, character, and story. As well as trying to be a bit better about grammar. One thing I've noticed myself is how I really don't give the characters enough depth... Petrochem is supposed to be near-suicidally curious, throwing herself at every machine, location, and anything she doesn't know about. Basalt is supposed to be pessimistic, a bit of a pushover, but mentally unstable and violent at times. And Ethylene is supposed to start out being completely emotionless, but slowly develop to be sassy, sarcastic, and a little mean. And while you do see a little bit of that so far, I really should do more with the characters to give them that characterization. Plus, I can go back and add a bit more worldbuilding, lore, and foreshadowing, while also making the world a little more internally consistent.
I'll continue to release the chapters once a day, up to 6 of course, but then expect a bit of a small hiatus as I rewrite chapters 1 through 6 and write chapter 7, updating all the chapters and uploading chapter 7 all at the same time.
11121183
Sounds like a good plan, my guy.
11121196
Girl*
11121206
There are no girls on the internet, everyone knows that.
“The Hunters have us cornered in the old Royal Guard Station by the entrance to Tunnel Twelve, we cannot fly out, they have the skies covered, and we can’t retreat underground-”
I see you, LOTR reference.
Necromancers?
11122561
Magical radiation... Sort of a combination of the Anomalies in STALKER, and Wild Magic in D&D/Pathfinder.
11122622
Alright
Interesting world you're creating.
Seems to be a mix of a lot of things.
This a rough day for them