All at once, Fluttershy's friends come to her door to ask her to take care of their pets which all got sick/injured at the same time coincidentally. Being as kind as she is, Fluttershy obliges to do this but she soon learns that it is a lot harder than it seems. Her friends insist that she let them help or just take the animals back as soon as they discover what they've done but Fluttershy is determined to do it. Things get worse and not even Pinkie's super-duper extra-energizing coffee helps...
June 22 - September 17, 2012
Chapters (6)
Hmm, the story isn't bad, but it could use some work with the whole "show vs. tell" thing, as much as I don't really like using that phrase. The action tended to be presented in a rather matter-of-fact undetailed way, like "This pony did that, causing X event to happen, because of Y." This paragraph is a good example:
"Rainbow Dash then flew overhead and grabbed Twilight’s hoof she was holding up and pulled her up, but Twilight lost her balance as soon as Rainbow started to pull her and slipped and fell down which caused Rainbow to fall down with her. They both landed with a thud and slided forward toward the bucket of water that Applejack was using and knocked it over which made the floor even more slippery."
There's not much actual description there, just a series of very direct events that makes the action feel kinda flat. Plus "slided" should be "slid" but yeah.
1319909
I never thought of it that way. How would you redo that paragraph?
And Word didn't auto-correct me with the 'slided' part yet somehow Firefox does?
1320499
Oof, I was afraid you might ask me that. I'm not really a writer myself, so this is gonna be tricky. Recognizing something that could use some improvement and actually being able to fix it are two different things, but let's see if I can figure something out. Okay, here goes...
"Her hooves doing little good on the slippery floor, Twilight raised one toward the approaching pegasus as a look of mild desperation crept across her face. Quickly clearing the space between them, Dash wrapped her own legs around the proffered purple limb and gave a forceful tug backwards, allowing Twilight the briefest moment of relief as she felt her body beginning to slow. Unfortunately, the unicorn's other three hooves decided they preferred the direction they'd been traveling and continued on without her. Unexpectedly burdened with Twilight's full weight, Dash gave a surprised squeak as she was yanked from the air to join her friend's journey across the floor. The colorful jumble of flailing limbs and confused shouting careened past Applejack, crashing into her mop bucket and spraying another flood across the floor, just in case any spots remained that weren't quite soaked yet."
Might not be perfect, but that's what I came up with. It's a fair amount longer, but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Anyway, I don't know if that was helpful or not, but hopefully it was.
1321626
Whoa!! No offense but that really isn't what I was expecting. I mean thank you for your input but that kind of writing is really not me, it's way too poetic and I think it would only confuse people if I wrote like that, I actually got lost while reading it. My current style might be kinda boring but I definitely cannot start writing like that. I would like to use a bit of that writing but I can't do the entire thing like that. Maybe mix my current style with what you just gave me and even it out a bit...
Yeah, I might have gone a bit further than necessary, but just as a general idea of putting actions less as a simple statement of fact. But anyway, write however works for you, of course.
“HEEEEEEEEEEERE’S FLUTTERSHY!!!”
Poor Angel is gonna be trumatized for life.