You know how annoying it is to fall asleep in a bed that isn’t yours? I don’t know about you but it bothers the crap out of me, I just notice every single difference between my bed and the other one. Like this one for example, my normal bed, which technically isn’t my bed it’s Ami’s guest bed, but I’m usually the one who sleeps in it and I’ve put the most work into decorating the bedroom and I’ve gone off on a tangent. Sorry, I do that sometimes when I’m tired.
Anyways, back to the bed. There are all these little things that annoy me, the pillow’s a little too soft, the mattress is a bit too hard, the blanket’s made of some weird material, but those aren’t the things that bother me the most. No, for some reason the thing that kept me from falling asleep for a really long time was that the bed was just in a really weird place. My bed is pressed up against the side of my room, but this one is right smack dab in the center. It feels so weird. And it’s only with beds that this problem comes up, I can fall asleep anywhere else no problem and usually quite comfortably too. In chairs, sofas, up against the wall, no problem. That is until someone tries to wake me up.
See, I’m the type of person whose body takes a long time to acknowledge that I’m awake. A fact that Silver, my big brother, is well aware of. Silver can wake up all at once, his eyes open and he’s ready to go. I got my sleeping pattern from Shade, my other brother. Well technically he’s not my brother, but he might as well be- right, right, rambling, rambling. Where was I?
Oh yeah, waking up. Well, it so happened that when Silver rushed me onto the boat we were taking out of Oka to this place, I wasn’t fully awake, and really how could he expect me to be it was only 10:30, so I quickly fell asleep in my seat. I slept for the entire time until we crossed over Equestria’s borders. The instant we were in Equestrian waters, Silver teleported us to this town. Now being a unicorn, teleporting usually doesn’t bother me very much, especially teleports as smooth as Silver’s, but being teleported when sleeping has roughly the same effect as getting shaken awake while simultaneously having a bucket of ice water tossed on your head.
“Oh good, you are up,” Silver said nonchalantly as I jerked awake. “How are you feeling?”
I glared at him. “You couldn’t have woken me up first?”
“I could have.”
For someone who’s job revolves around being polite my brother can be a real asshole. I glared at him for a little while longer, but it wasn’t bothering him so I gave it up. “Where are we?” I asked, noticing that we were on a path right next to a dense forest. “I thought we were supposed to be in a city?”
“I decided that I should put away our luggage first, and I can not teleport any closer to the manor. If you want, you can go explore around town.”
“Okay.” Wandering around towns while I waited for something to do was nothing new to me.
“Are you sure you will be warm enough in that?” he gestured at my black hoodie.
I nodded yes, my hoodie has gotten me through much worse then a few centimeters of snow. Anyways he wasn’t one to talk, he wasn’t wearing anything. I turned to leave, but he stopped me.
Here,” he tossed me a small bag that jingled when I caught it.
“What’s in this?” I asked as I slipped it into my pocket.
“Bits.” I had forgotten that I didn’t have any Equestrian money. “Town is that way. Go, have fun. Just meet me here at sundown.”
He levitated our luggage off the ground and headed off into the forest. I saw that the sun was on its way down, so I figured that I only had a few hours of time to kill. While I was wondering exactly how I should commence the grisly murder of a few innocent hours, my stomach made itself known.
*Growl* it said. Fortunately, the many languages I speak include Stomach, so I was able to translate that into, “I’m running on empty so if you wouldn’t mind moving in the general direction of food, I would be most grateful.”
A very efficient language, Stomach is.
Well, after an argument as persuasive as that I decided that maybe I should actually start heading towards the town while I thought.
Speaking of thoughts, the first that I had upon entering the city, actually thinking about it now I can’t really call it a city it’s barely big enough to qualify as a village but back to the point. The first thing I thought when I entered was how tall everything was. The last time I was in a purely Equestrian city was when I was eight and sure, thinking back everything was tall back then but I chalked that up to me being so small at the time. When I say tall, I mean the doors were a good two feet bigger than I was used to, and the windows were all a bit higher up as well.
I guess it makes sense. I spend most my time in the Okan Empire, the kingdom of wolves, and as such I’m used to the way wolf houses are built. On average ponies are about a foot taller than wolves, so I guess everything was built to accommodate but it still threw me off.
I wandered around the village, trying to go in a straight line and failing horribly, until suddenly I detected the scent of baked goods.
My stomach made itself known again and repeated its request, this time emphasizing it with a small blast of mild discomfort that totally did not make me cringe. I heeded it once more, and went off in the direction of the smell. I eventually came across a building with a roof made to look like gingerbread, a violent contrast, though not an unwelcome one, to the brown-yellow thach of every other roof I had seen.
When I got closer I saw that it was a bakery and went inside. I placed my order, a lava fudge cake, and decided to take a seat at one of the small tables while I ate to avoid going back out into the snow. Apparently I wasn’t the only one who had that idea as most of the tables were full. I saw that there was one with an empty seat, but there was already someone sitting at it. A gray earth filly, with blue glasses, who looked to be around my age.
Well I’m nothing if not sociable, so I walked up and asked if she would mind if I sat across from her.
“Huh? Oh, sure.”
She seemed a little preoccupied, and kept on spinning her spoon around in her hoof. My cake had yet to arrive, and I really hate awkward silences, so I decided to make an attempt at small talk.
“My name’s Guile. What’s your’s?”
She jerked a little, like she had forgotten that I was there. Still she managed to respond.
“Silver Spoon.”
Now it was my turn to be taken aback. “You’re kidding.”
“Uhh… No?” She raised her eyebrow and gave me a funny look. “Is there something wrong with my name?”
“Oh, no, not at all, it’s just that my brother’s name is Silver too.” Whenever I get flustered, I do this thing where I kinda wave my front hooves really quickly. I only bring it up because that’s what I did when I was saying that and she apparently found it funny, so now she was giggling at me. This did nothing to make me any less flustered.
You know, I really hate the color I turn when I blush. It’s this really ugly, sick-looking, orangish-brownish thing that I have yet to see anywhere else but on my face.
Anyways, I was saved from my embarrassment by the arrival of a waiter who put my cake in front of me and a slice of pie in front of Silver Spoon. I quickly dug in to distract myself. Looking back though, yeah, that was a mistake. It was a really good cake, I should have savored it.
Eventually, I could feel that my blush had subsided enough that I could look up again and I decided to restart the conversation.
“So, what is there to do around here?”
“Honestly, not much. There’s a bowling alley, which I like but I pretty much have to because there is nothing else.” She sounded really exasperated.
“Really?”
“Yeah. Why did you even come to this nowhere town?”
“My brother dragged me along. One of his friends is throwing this really big new year’s party and I had to come. Don’t see why, it’s not like there’ll be anyone my age there.”
“At least you’re going to a party. My parents are going out of town to a party one of my dad’s co-workers is throwing, and they won’t bring me.”
“That sucks. None of your friends are throwing parties?”
“My best friend is off with her parents on a cruise. They won’t back until school starts.”
“That really sucks.”
“No duh.” She sighed and her head fell. It was only for a fraction of a second though, before she decided it was her turn to ask a question.
“So, if you’re not from Ponyville, where are you from?”
“All over the place really. My brother moves around a lot for his job, so I have to go with him. But right now I spend most of my time in Terasubarre.”
“Terrasu…, what? I’ve never heard of that place.”
“Makes sense. It’s the capital of Oka, the Wolf Empire.”
She looked taken aback. “Wow, really? You live with wolves? What’s that like?”
I shrugged. “Normal, I guess. I don’t spend a lot of time in Equestria honestly. But you know, there is one big difference I noticed.”
“What?”
“The smell. Wolves can smell really well, so everything in their cities has to smell good. Not just that, but every shop and restaurant tries to smell distinct, so that people get curious enough to walk in.”
“And what, Ponyville smells bad?” She looked like she trying to act insulted, but it was ruined by her small smirk. Still, I felt the need to alleviate her concerns nevertheless.
“Not bad, it just doesn’t smell. It’s kinda weird honestly, in Oka you can navigate some of the busier districts by smell alone.”
“Wow,” her eyes were wide, “I can’t even imagine what that’s like. I’ll have to visit someday.”
“Just make sure you learn the language. Some of those wolves are really stuck up, and refuse to speak in any language other than Okan.”
“I’ll be sure to do that.”
By now we were both done eating and I got up to leave.
“Leaving?” she asked, a little note of disappointment tainting her words.
“Yeah. I was wondering if you could show me where that bowling alley is.”
In the span of about a second she sat up in her chair, got a full smile on her face, teeth and everything, brightened considerably, became shocked and embarrassed, I assume due to the sudden realization of what she just did, and leaned back in her chair and tried to play it cool, inspecting her hoof as she told me that it’s not like she had anything else to do.
In the face of such a display, I gathered up all of my strength, called upon the years of mental and physical training my brothers had put me through, summoned all my self control, and I managed not to laugh!
What’s so funny?
Oh, uh, sorry, don’t know how I got up on your table, uh.
A-hem. Anyways.
We left the bakery behind and we made some idle chit-chat while we walked. I learned that the reason she looked like she was my age was because she was my age. Also her parents were apparently well-off, but they decided that the one of the bigger cities was no place to raise a child so they moved to this village to give her a quieter upbringing, a fact about which she was greatly annoyed. Overall she struck me as one of those noble’s kids I always run into whenever my brother takes me to court, regardless of what country it is. Kinda stuck-up, a little egotistical, and convinced that things were better everywhere that she wasn’t. Still not really bad, just kinda self-important. I dunno, I liked her. No not like that.
So naturally we made our way to the bowling alley without incident right? Just a simple trip across town? Ha. I’m never that lucky.
We were walking along what I think was supposed to be the main street but it was still so small I couldn’t tell, when we walked in front of an alleyway where I could see what looked like the start of a mugging. I stopped in my tracks.
“So the waterballoon- Huh? Why’d you stop?” Silver Spoon said. She looked down the alleyway and saw the action. She bit her lip briefly, then said, “Come on, let’s go,” in a really quiet voice.
As I looked, I could make out that it was three ponies, two pegasi and an earth pony, who looked about sixteen or so picking on a little orange earth pony who looked about my age. It was so obviously unfair.
“Guile? Come on,” she gently tugged my hoodie.
To make matters worse the foal wasn’t just standing there mewling and whimpering, so I couldn’t just turn my nose up and walk away in disgust. She was actually fighting back, standing her ground and responding to their insults with a few of her own.
This didn’t involve me. I had no reason to step in. It wasn’t my problem.
“What’s wrong?” Silver Spoon asked, looking really nervous.
I sighed. I tried to keep on moving, really I did, but…
“Nothing, it’s just…,” I sighed again and pulled up my hood. “I really hate my brother.”
She said something to that, but I couldn’t hear her because I was already heading towards the bullies.
“Excuse me gents,” I said.
One of the pegasi, he seemed to be the leader of the bunch turned to face me. “What do you want?”
“I want to know what you’re doing.”
“None of your beeswax. Scram,” he started to turn around to go back to harassing the filly.
“I’m making it my business,” I let a little bit of edge into my voice, made easier by the fact that nothing bothers me more than those who try and swap words with other words that only sound similar so now I had a reason to hate him.
He became defensive, motioning for his friends to come back him up. “What do you care? What are you, her colt friend?”
I shot him Shade’s patented look number 3, I can’t do it anywhere near as well as he can, of course, but it got the job done, he and his friends looked unnerved. “As a matter of fact, yes. Yes I am,” I said. I radiated a small bit of bloodlust, and that did the trick.
He and his friends immediately started apologizing and tripped over themselves as they tried not to run out of the alley. I glared at them until they were gone, and then I immediately turned around and started apologizing to the filly.
“I’m really, really sorry that I called myself your colt friend, I know it was rude of me but I couldn’t think of anything else that would make them leave as quickly. Sorry,” I said with a bow.
“I could have dealt with that all on my own!” she said as she marched up to and got in my face. Now that she was closer, I could see why the bullies were picking on her. She wasn’t an earth pony, she was a pegasus. Her wings were just so small, that I couldn’t see them.
“Sorry, sorry.” I kept on apologizing, but not bowing because if I had bowed I would’ve headbutted her, until Silver Spoon spoke up.
“What are you apologizing for?” She walked into the alleyway, glaring at the filly before addressing her, “He just helped you out of a bad spot, you should be thanking him!”
“I had it all under control!”
“Yeah, clearly,” Silver Spoon rolled her eyes, “So, what part did you have under control? The part where they were all bigger than you, or the part where you couldn’t get away?”
“I wasn’t trying to leave!” the filly- Okay look, later I learned her name was Scootaloo so I’m just going to call her that, it’s getting really annoying calling her ‘the filly’- so Scootaloo said that and moved to get all up in Silver Spoon’s face. “You ruined everything!”
I put up my hoofs, trying to separate the two fillies. “Wait, wait. What did I ruin?”
“They took my scooter!” she pointed up to a building, and I saw a small, wooden scooter on the roof. I guess one of the pegasi flew it up there. “I was trying to get it back! Now what am I going to do!?”
Since it was technically my fault that she couldn’t get it down, don’t ask me how but I’m sure it was, I decided that I needed to be the one to bring it back to her and I told her so.
“Oh, what are you gonna do? Levitate it down?” she said sarcastically, and I didn’t blame her. I wasn’t nearly old enough to have the type of magical power or training to lift something that big from that high up, and she knew that. Good thing I didn’t need it.
It wasn’t a very wide alley, only around seven or eight feet, and the two buildings on either side were only about two stories high and pretty old. Lots of things jutting out from the side once you got high enough off of the ground.
I ran up the wall of the house opposite the one with the scooter, and when I felt I couldn’t run up any farther, I jumped across and turned around to grab a part of the house on the other side of the alley. Once I had the hoofhold, It was easy as pie to climb up the roof and retrieve the scooter. I carefully lowered it down to ground, my magic is strong enough to do something like that once I touched the thing and held as far down off the roof as I could, and then jumped down after it, making sure to roll when I hit the ground. When I got up from my roll I noticed, after brushing some snow off my hoodie, two faces looking at me with a mixture of shock and awe.
“What?” I asked.
“That was sooo cool!” Scootaloo said as she ran up in my face again, “How did you do that?!”
The fact that she was literally about an inch from my face made me a little uncomfortable, so I was really relieved when Silver Spoon shook her shock off and pulled Scootaloo away.
“There, he got you your dumb scooter back, now are you going to thank him or what?”
“Thanks!” Scootaloo picked her scooter back up and started checking it over for damage.
Silver Spoon looked like she wanted a little more, but I nudged her.
“Come on, let’s get going,” I said.
Silver Spoon sent a last glare at Scootaloo, now standing on her scooter and giving it a few test rolls, and then started leading the way to the bowling alley again.
For a couple of minutes we walked in an awkward silence. I would’ve broken it, but I had no idea what to say. Fortunately, Silver Spoon did.
“You shouldn’t have done that.” She had a weird look on her face.
“Done what?”
“You shouldn’t have helped Scootaloo.” This was when I learned her name by the way.
“Why not?” Personally I could think of a few reasons, but I was curious which one she choose.
“Because they’ll come back, again and again. You helped her once, but in the long run it makes no difference.”
That… was actually a very good point. In fact, it was a good point that I had heard many, many times, every time my brothers argue. Which meant I knew exactly what to say in response.
“It made a difference that time.”
Silver Spoon mulled this over for about twenty steps or so. “Yeah. I guess you’re right,” she paused for a little bit, before looking at me out of the corner of her eye and saying, “You know,” her voice had changed to be this weird tone of playful, I don’t know what it’s called but mares and stallions seem to use it around Shade a lot. “You looked pretty cool saving her.”
My blush was back, and I started stammering, “Oh, uh, you really think so?” Yeah, I don’t take compliments well.
“Mm-hm,” she had this little smile and slowly nodded. “Especially when the big one tried to stare you down.”
“R-really.”
“And then those tricks you did to get up to the roof. How did you learn how to do that?” she moved a little bit closer to me, a fact I was very aware of.
“Oh, uhm funny story actually. You see, one of the ways my brothers like to hide things from me is to put them up in really high places, and over the years I got really good at reaching those high places.” It wasn’t the whole story, but it was enough.
“Interesting. We’re here.” She suddenly stopped and I noticed that were outside a building with a big sign that had bowling balls and pins on it. “Come on in.”
Inside we rented our balls, got a lane and played a few rounds. She was really good at it too, almost every frame she had was either a strike or a spare. I fared much worse, bowling not being one of my strong suits. I’m good at throwing things, but I’m a lot worse rolling them. She tried to help me out, which helped a little bit but it was terrible for my self esteem. You see, every time she positioned a part of me, she would touch it for a little longer than I thought was necessary, and it me feel like she thought she needed to make extra sure I didn’t mess it up.
Still, I had a lot of fun. Silver Spoon was very good company, and I didn’t notice the time passing at all until I looked out a window and saw that the sun was about to set.
I told her I had to go, and she looked a little sad. I decided I wanted to see her again, so I invited her to the New Year’s party. She said yes, and we arranged that I would get her at nine o’clock on New Year’s eve at the bakery where I found her.
With all of that settled, I made my way back to the edge of the forest. Silver was there waiting for me he led me into the forest and to the Manor. That’s all that happened until Dinner. Can I get back to my dream now?
Well that's new. Great Chapter. IS this the longest one yet?
Hey there, the name's alexmagnet, and I'm a reviewer from WRITE. First off, I want to apologize because I've been sitting on this story for awhile, but haven't gotten around to reviewing it until very recently. Second, I want to warn that I won't be pulling any punches here. You can expect this review to be brutally honest, though only if it's justified. I won't be unduly brutal if I don't need to be. So, with that being said, let's get started, shall we?
Oh, actually there's one more quick thing I wanted to say before we dive into this thing. I'm going to be honest with you and tell that I did not read the entire story. I read the first few chapters and saw a lot of systemic issues that need to be addressed, and decided that reading the entire story wasn't necessary for the purposes of this review. However, I'll note that I also read the last few chapters to see if the issues in the beginning still need to be addressed. I'm happy to say that your later chapters are much improved, but they still contain many issues to discuss. Anyway, enough faffing about.
This review will be broken up into three sections: Grammar, Style, and Story. In these sections, I'll give examples of things that need to be fixed and how to fix them.
GRAMMAR
Onomatopoeias
>*Knock Knock Knock*
>*BANG BANG BANG*
>*Yawnnnn*
etc.
All right, so the first thing to understand is that, in general, you want to avoid using onomatopoeias whenever possible. In fact, as a rule, you should just never use them. The reason is because using them is lazy and easy. Sure, you could say “BANG, BANG, BANG” to describe someone knocking on a door loudly, but that's the cheap way out. This is a form of “telling”. In other words, while it may be easier, it's far better to describe the knock growing louder because this is a more powerful image overall than just BANG. A possible way to change the above examples is as follows:
>Three knocks came at the door. After a pause, three more followed, but louder this time. The knocks grew steadily louder until it sounded like someone was trying to punch through the door.
>Twilight let out a long yawn, stretching out her hooves and cracking her back.
Direct Address Commas
>"Hey Twilight, open up."
>"mmmh... five more minutes Princess, then i'll go to sleep..."
>"Okay, okay, I'm up Spike,
Having read some of your later chapters, you seem to be better about this now, but I still feel it's worth bringing up as this is a pretty basic grammar rule. Direct address is when a character, you guessed it, directly addresses another by either their name, or a title, or whatever, so long as they're speaking directly to them. For example:
>Hey, what's up, Rainbow Dash?
>It'll be done at once, my queen.
>Of course I've heard of taxidermy, Rarity, what makes you think I haven't?
And so on and so forth.
The basic idea is that word or words that are being used to directly address a character must be set apart by commas. This is done for the sake of clarity, and so as to avoid confusion. The popular example that I see frequently used is, “Let's eat Grandpa!” as opposed to “Let's eat, Grandpa!” See, in the first example, it appears as though I'm saying that we should eat Grandpa, and in the second, I'm saying that we should eat to Grandpa—a subtle, yet important, distinction.
Comma Splices
>I'm up Spike, what do you need help with?
>"This is my house, why are you reading here?"
>You're in the right place, it's just that you’re
A comma splice occurs when you combine two independent clauses with a comma but no conjunction. There's a really easy way to check whether or not you've spliced a sentence. Take a look at either side of the comma and see if either side can't stand on its own. If it can't, then comma away. If both sides are complete sentences, then you need a period (or a comma with a conjunction, or a semicolon). For example:
>Yo, Twilight, I heard you like books, I also heard you like magic.
>Yo, Twilight, I heard you like books, and I heard you like magic.
>Yo, Twilight, I heard you like books. I also heard you like magic.
General Comma Usage
>I swear if he’s gotten his tail stuck under
>Wait, if he’s banging on my door then he can’t be trapped.
>Shame that she didn’t though, because if she had she probably would
>I just started to think of it as home after a while." she said
>Spike was holding a large fishing net and as he leapt, he swung the net down, hoping to
You seem to have a somewhat decent grasp of comma usage as you get it right most of the time, but there are enough mistakes to warrant me giving you a brief explanation of comma usage just to be sure you fully understand them. All right, so, to make things easy, I'll go through each example and explain the issue and the solution.
> I swear if he’s gotten his tail stuck under
All right, so what we've got here is an introductory clause/phrase, being “I swear”, and all introductory clauses/phrases must have commas after them when the appear at the beginning of a sentence, hence the “introductory” portion of the rule. For example:
>I swear, if he's gotten his tail stuck under
>While I agree that Trixie kicks ass, I disagree about the amount.
>Because Trixie is best pony, I can feel confident that she's my favorite character.
See, words like “while”, “because”, “if”, and “when” are common starters for introductory clauses. However, that does not mean that you always put a comma near them. Take the following example:
>Trixie's horn began to glow an angry blue, while Twilight merely smirked in cocky arrogance.
This is incorrect because the “while” is acting as a conjunction for the following dependent clause, and while is not a conjunction. As an exception to the rule, you can use comma in cases of extreme contrast.
>Trixie raised her hoof in victory, although she had lost the battle.
>Wait, if he’s banging on my door then he can’t be trapped.
Here we've got an interesting example where you've actually used two introductory elements in a row, which is fine, but it means both need a comma. See, the “wait” gets a comma because it introduces the thought, but then you also have an “if/then” statement which also needs a comma. Here's how you'd fix it.
>Wait, if he's banging on my door, then he can't be trapped.
>Shame that she didn’t though, because if she had she probably would
Occasionally you'll find yourself creating parenthetical elements even if you don't realize that's what they are. Now, a parenthetical element is information that is not essential to the sentence for proper understanding. It's basically the extra stuff you add in for more clarity, or better imagery, but it's not something that the sentence necessarily needs. In this case, that element is “if she had”. A good way to decide whether or not a clause like that should be set apart by commas is to look at it and see if the sentence makes sense without it. If it does, then there's a good chance that you should surround it with commas. Also, make sure it doesn't interrupt the flow of the sentence when you put commas around it, though that's more of a stylistic choice than a grammatical one. And for one final test, see if you can move the element somewhere else in the sentence and have it still make sense. Let's look at the example I pulled.
>Shame that she didn't though, because, if she had, she probably would
This is how it would look with commas around it. Now, this isn't the greatest example because it does mess with the flow a bit, but it's still technically grammatically correct to do this. As proof that this is a parenthetical element, let's move it somewhere else in the sentence.
>Shame that she didn't though, because she probably would have noticed the [books] if she had.
>I just started to think of it as home after a while." she said
All right, this section will be short because I'm pretty sure you understand how attribution works, but I'll go over it real quick as sort of refresher course.
>I just started to think of it has home after a while,” she said
See, the reason you put a comma before/after dialogue tags like “said”, “yelled”, “whispered”, etc, is because you're attributing that dialogue to a specific character. Without that, it's unclear. There are many ways to attribute dialogue, and not all of them include tags. For example, you can also use actions to indicate who's speaking, and really, that's usually the better way to go about it as it's a bit more elegant than just, “he said, she said”.
>Trixie shook her hoof in anger. “Damn you, Twilight Sparkle! I'll have my revenge!”
This could also be written as:
>As Trixie shook her hoof in anger, she said, “Damn you, Twilight Sparkle! I'll have my revenge!”
The important thing to remember, is that if you're going to use a dialogue tag, then you need to have a comma either before or after it, depending on where the dialogue comes in.
> Spike was holding a large fishing net and as he leapt, he swung the net down, hoping to
This is just another example of a parenthetical element, though it also uses a conjunction to link an independent clause: “Spike was holding [...]”, and a dependent clause: “as he leapt [...]”. However, in this example, you'd want to put “as he leapt” in commas because it's a parenthetical element isn't necessary for understanding of the sentence.
Em/En Dashes: A.K.A. Don't Use Fucking Hyphens/Actual Hyphen Usage
>I will- Wait,
>half-smile.
>Sp- Spike?
>“What kind of a na-"
>"Uh-huh.
Look, I'll be honest, this is a bit of a pet peeve of mine, so don't take it personally that this seriously pisses me off when people use hyphens instead of dashes, or, alternatively, misuse hyphens when they're actually supposed to be hyphens. You see, when you want to create a break in the sentence, stop dialogue, or set apart some extraneous information, you use dashes. There are two types of dashes, em (—), and en (–). They're called that because that's the length of space they take up (m and n). They aren't characters you'll find on your keyboard, but you can generate them by pressing Alt +0151, and Alt+0150 respectively, and there's really no excuse to not use them besides laziness, which is a terrible excuse. Hyphens are meant to be used to conjoin two words into a single word, a compound word, not to create a break. Let's look at those examples, and then I'll explain the difference between an em and an en dash.
>I will—Wait,
>half smile
>Sp—Spike?
>“What kind of a na—“
>”Uh huh.
Okay, so this is what those examples look like fixed. You'll notice that I used em dashes as opposed to en. The reason for that is purely personal. I just prefer using em dashes over en because I like the way they look. You can pick either, but remember to stay consistent. If you decide to use en dashes, then don't switch to em halfway through your story. Also, if you use em dashes, you don't put spaces on either side. For en dashes, however, you put a space on both sides. You never have a space on just one side, though. So, the first example with an en dash would look like this:
>I will – Wait,
Different people will tell you different things, but generally if you're using American English, then you'd want to use em dashes, and en if you're using British English. That being said, you can use whichever, so long as you're consistent, and it's not really an issue. Oh, and one more thing, dashes function also as commas, so if you remember the parenthetical elements from before, then it's good to know that you can use dashes in place of commas, depending on how hard you want the break to be (commas are soft, and dashes are hard). For example:
>Trixie—being the most powerful and awesome unicorn in the land—was unmatched in skill.
You can also use dashes to break up dialogue with an action, though you'd only want to do this sparingly:
>”You think this—“ Trixie rattled the annulment papers “—will just make everything better?”
Now that we've talked about dashes, let's look at hyphens, mkay? Hyphens are delightful little bits of punctuation, and they can be your best friend, if only you know how to use them correctly. I'll admit, the rules can be a bit weird, and many people don't know them fully, so I don't blame you for misusing them. Hell, I used to misuse them all the time as well until I decided to go look up the actual rules one day. To paraphrase, hyphen rules are as follows:
1. Use a hyphen to join to words into a compound adjective before a noun.
>show-stopping ability
>hair-raising skill
2. Use a hyphen for compound numbers.
>sixty-six
>fourty-two
3. Use a hyphen to avoid confusion with repeating letters.
>re-enter
>semi-incoherent
4. Use a hyphen for prefixes, and figures or letters.
>ex-wife
>mid-December
>T-shirt
Okay, that about wraps up the grammar section. Now, let's head on over to the Rarity's place for the style section of this review (I take full responsibility for any groan-induced injuries sustained from reading that joke).
STYLE
Style is a nebulous concept, but it can be boiled down to: writing well. There are many style guides out there, and they'll all tell you different things, but there's always some overlap in certain departments. For example, showing is always preferable to telling. I'm sure you've undoubtedly heard the ubiquitous saying: “Show, don't tell”. It can be a complex issue, but really, it's just saying that you should always allow your readers to see things happening for themselves.
>"What!" exclaimed Twilight, "How dare he." She had spent the better part of a week getting all the shelves straightened up and organized properly!
Two things: First, you've narrative clause that ends in an exclamation mark. This is a huuuuuuuuuuge no-no in third person narration, and even in first person as well. It's a lazy and cheap way to give a statement more punch. Second issue here is that you're just telling us that Twilight spent a week straightening shelves, but we have to take you on your word that she did. A better way to do that would be to have Twilight say it, or, alternatively, let us see her straightening shelves. As Twilight being asleep when this guy shows up feels both odd and unnecessary, you could easily have it so that Twilight is in the middle of fixing up some books or whatever when Card busts in through the door and starts tearing it apart. It'd certainly make Twilight's anger feel a lot more justified, because right now she just comes across as being unduly bitchy.
Just as general sort of explanation of show vs. tell, here's some examples. Red will be telling, and green will be showing.
>Twilight was sad.
>Twilight's eyes were wet with tears.
>Trixie had spent all morning baking cookies, and she was very tired.
>The oven timer buzzed, waking Trixie from the kitchen floor. Wiping the flour from her forehead, she heaved herself up and pulled the last batch of cookies out, adding them to the massive pile on the counter.
Now, you may look at those examples and think that “showing” just means using more words, but that's not the case, and it really oversimplifies the issue. You can have a long sentence that's very “tell-y”, and a short sentence that's still better because it “shows”. It doesn't matter how big your sentences are, or how flowery your wording. Showing is more about letting the reader see things for themselves than it is about being overly magniloquent. If “telling” is spoon feeding, then “showing” is handing your readers a knife and fork.
Moving past all that showy stuff, let's talk about sentence flow. You see, sentences should flow like a river, gently undulating one into the other, never really feeling too abrupt or too sluggish as they transition. Often you may find yourself using many clauses, perhaps some long ones where you add some extra words and emotions that suggest a deep thought and introspection, or a short one that ends as suddenly as it begins. But, if you use too many compound sentences, it can leave the reader feeling exhausted. Sometimes it's better to be short. It's really dependent on the situation.
>Twilight leapt out of her chair.
>Twilight tried to run.
>Twilight fell flat on her face.
Ignoring for a moment the fact that splitting this into three separate paragraphs was wholly unnecessary, and that there's no reason for Twilight to run to the door in the first place, let's take a moment to understand why this is a boring progression of sentences. I understand that you're going for comedic spin, what with Twilight tripping for literally no reason, but lemme tell you why it doesn't work. What you've got is three sentences that follow the exact same incredibly basic structure. They all go: subject, verb, preposition, object (with the exception of the last sentence which includes an adjective before the preposition). When you do this, have several sentences with the exact same structure in a row, it can get pretty boring to read. It starts to feel like “Fun With Dick and Jane” after awhile.
>See Twilight jump.
>See Twilight run.
>See Twilight fall.
This is basically what you've done in a nutshell. I can see where you were going with this, but the way the sentences read, it feels as though there's a pause before every action. For better flow, you'd want to reword it so that her actions all lead into the following action, like in the following example.
>As she leapt out of chair, Twilight started to run towards the door before she tripped and fell flat on her face.
This sentence flows better, but it's still not very funny, but that's more of a problem with the scenario than it is with the sentence itself. I mean, why would Twilight have any reason to be so excited about talking to Spike? Even accepting what you've told us and that she's been bored to death for the last few weeks (another example of telling the readers rather than showing them), I find it hard to believe that she'd be so eager to open the door that she'd literally sprint across the room. It's just a scenario that doesn't make sense, so it's not very funny when she falls because you created urgency where there was none. Anyway, the point is that mastering sentence flow is invaluable. You're honestly not that bad at it, but sometimes you have overly long sentences where there should be several short ones, or several short sentences where you should combine them into one or two compound sentences.
Before I wrap up the style portion of this review, let's look at a few things I've seen crop up that I have an issue with.
Ellipses
>I guess that I had... Well..."
>"mmmh... five more minutes Princess, then i'll go to sleep..."
>Twilight opened her eyes..
Ellipses are great, and there's no problem with using them. But, what you shouldn't do is overuse them. Much like exclamation marks, or semicolons, ellipses should be be used sparingly and only when necessary. You don't seem to have too much of an issue with overuse, except in the few instances where you use more than one in a sentence. That's generally something you want to avoid if you can. Also, an ellipsis always has three dots, not two. Double also, you seem to have forgotten to capitalize the “I” in “I'll” in the second example. Oh, right, and also don't ever use ellipses in narration, much like you should never use exclamation marks in narration. Again, it's a lazy and cheap way to create a pause.
Scene Breaks
>-----Five Minutes Later-----
>-----Seamless Transition-----
No... just no. If you're going to use a scene break, which is perfectly acceptable by the way, then for the love of god, don't make it something silly like “Five Minutes Later”. This isn't a movie where you can just have a title card pop up to explain that time has passed. When you create the break, leave it as something simple, and afterwards, just continue on like normal. People understand that a break means that you're switching to a different scene, and you can imply through the narration that time has passed if it has. Doing shit like “Seamless Transition” just makes it look like you don't know what you're doing so you're trying to compensate with jokes.
Capslock and Absurdly Elongated Words
>"WHAT!!!"
>DODGE!!!"
>>“OHMYCELESTIAITSYOUMRSTRANGERIDIDNTGETYOURNAMEBEFOREORYOURADDRESSSOICOULDNTTHROWYOUAWELCOMINGPARTYWHENISAWYOUBUTYOUWERENICEENOUGHTOCOMEFINDMENOWICANTHROWYOUABIGPARTYWITHSTREAMERSANDCAKEANDBALLOONSANDCAKEANDCONFETTIANDCAKEAN-”
>“WILL YOU PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP, AND LEAVE ME ALONE YOU ANNOYING, IMMATURE, LITTLE BRAT!!!!!!!!!!!!”
Okay, so lemme be real with you for a second. When I came across those really long and fully capslocked clauses, I was about ready to throw my hands up and quit right then and there. This is the kind of thing that makes people like me leave a dislike without any explanation. Using capslock is an easy, but highly ineffective, way to make a sentence feel more powerful, or loud. What it tells me, the reader, is that you don't have the ability to show me someone being loud and annoying, but that you know how to lean on capslock like a crutch for a lack of writing ability. Now, given that I've read some of your later chapters, I'm not sure this is still an issue you have, but it's something that you should never ever ever ever ever ever ever do... ever. Oh, and the same thing goes for using multiple exclamation marks. One is often more than enough. Three is just plain overkill, and anything more than that and you're just wasting space. Last but not least, don't let words run together like you did with the Pinkie Pie thing. Not only is it incredibly annoying and far too much work to read, but it's again a sign of lazy and inept writing. You can show Pinkie talking so fast her words blur together without actually writing it out like that, and it'll be all the more powerful for it.
>*HHHAAAAHHHH*
>“BBBBBWWWAAAAHHHHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhaaaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaaahahahahahaaaaaaahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaahahahahaaaaaaaaaaahaaaaaaaaaaahahahahahahaha!”
As I said in the previous paragraph, if you respect your readers, don't subject them to this nonsense. This is just baby town frolic right here. If I can be honest, you're far from the worst author I've ever reviewed a fic for, but it's things like this that really get my goat. I mean, there's absolutely no reason to have a guy laugh in one word that lasts for nearly two full lines. It's just completely unnecessary. Also, don't use asterisks to show an action. This isn't an IRC chat. You have a whole page to describe an action, rather than just lazily type in *sigh*. Not only is it very amateurish to do, but it's also a lot less meaningful if we don't actually see the character sigh, or yawn, or laugh, or whatever. The point is: don't do crap like this.
All right, so the last thing we're going to talk about in the style section is awkward phrasing. It comes up a lot, and I've sort of talked about it already, though not in the context of awkward phrasing. See, in the sentence flow section, I brought up some issues I had with wording, but this section I'll go a little more in depth. There's a lot of instances of this, even in the later chapters, so I won't be able to pick them all out (otherwise this review would be even longer than the ridiculous length it is now), but I'll try to give you an idea of what to look for so you can fix things yourself, and keep an eye out for it in the future. Rather than my usual thing where I give a bunch of examples up front, I'll do one at a time and talk about each example individually. Also, there'll be some random examples of sentences with non-phrasing related errors in them as well.
>After Twilight had gotten her legs back underneath her, she informed the stallion that he was going the wrong way. He then promptly stopped, let go of her hoof, and turned around so fast that she had to slam her back hooves into the ground so hard that she made grooves in the road in order to stop herself from crashing into him.
Okay, so there's a lot of things wrong with these two sentences, but I'll break it down bit by bit. First things first, this bit:
>After Twilight had gotten her legs back underneath her, she informed the stallion [...]
You're referring to her legs as if they're a separate entity, and it sounds weird because of it. Also, on top of that, the two clauses have nothing to do with each other, so it feels weird seeing them together.
>He then promptly stopped, let go of her hoof, and […]
Let's talk about the first half of this sentence first. See, what you've done here is switch perspectives from Twilight, to Card, and it's kinda jarrring. Since Twilight, and has been, the perspective character up to this point, it's a little odd to suddenly switch to Card's point of view. Also, continuously referring to him as “the stallion” for two whole chapters is really grating. If you really don't want to reveal his name (for whatever reason) until the end of the second chapter, then you can still make it less annoying by using pronouns in place of needless repetitions of “the stallion”. Just call him him, or he. But anyway, on to the second half of the sentence.
> turned around so fast that she had to slam her back hooves into the ground so hard that she made grooves in the road in order to stop herself from crashing into him.
This sentence is an absolute mess. There's so much happening, that it's really hard to keep track of it all. In an instance like this, you'd want to break this up into one or two smaller sentences, rather than make one big, long sentence that leaves you winded if you read it out loud.
>"I honestly enjoy all manner of stories, even childrens books. though I would have to say that my favorite genre by far is science fiction, or speculative fiction as a whole.
Right off the bat you didn't make “children's” possessive, which it should be since you're referring to “children's books”. Also, you have a period, which is correct, but for some reason don't capitalize the “though” afterward. I only really noticed this issue a few times in the early chapters, so I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it's just a typo. Just remember, you always capitalize the first word after a period. Anyway, this sentence isn't particularly awkward, but it does feel awfully self-inserty. Like, I feel pretty strongly that if I were to ask, your favorite genre would be science fiction. In general, these are things you want avoid, attaching your own personality traits to a character, I mean.
>All the possibilities boggle the mind, don't you think."
Again, this is one of those weird things where I only see you do it occasionally, but for some reason you don't have a question mark here. I mean, I feel like you probably understand what a question is, but you made the mistake enough times early on that I'll go ahead and explain it now.
>don't you think?
This is a question because Card is asking Twilight what she thinks. He's not stating that she thinks, or telling her that she thinks, but asking her what she thinks.
>She then turned them onto the correct path, ( or what she thought was the correct path,)
Okay, so two quick things here. One, don't use parentheses in prose. Technically, you can get away with it sometimes, but it's nearly always preferable to use commas instead, so you should just not use parentheses as a rule. Two, if you must use parentheses, then you don't use commas as well, because you're using the parentheses in place of the commas. Putting the comma inside the parentheses is also doubly wrong.
All right, well I think that's about all I'm going to bother with for the rest of this style section. I could go on for a lot longer, but frankly I don't want to make this review any longer than it is. So, an easy and simple way to go about fixing stuff yourself is to read what you've written out loud. If it doesn't sound like something a normal human being would say, chances are you need to fix something. The important thing here is to READ IT OUT LOUD, because if you don't, you'll just glaze over any issues or weirdness that might pop up. Anyway, I think it's about time we move on to the story.
STORY
I'll be completely frank here... there are enough issues with grammar and style, that the story is the least of your worries. Imagine, if you will, that you've built a really beautiful house and filled it with tons of cool shit. This house is your story (though not specifically this story, and I'll explain why in a minute). The house may look really cool, and have some pretty neat stuff inside, but you've built it without shoddy support beams, and the superstructure is made of low-grade plywood, so the second you start putting too much weight somewhere, it's all gonna collapse in on you. See, you can have a great story, and populate it with cool characters, but with poor grammar and bad style, it really doesn't matter how cool it is because the poor grammar keeps distracting people from your awesome story. So, before you really worry about fixing up the issues with the story, of which there are many, you should really sit down and work out your grammar issues and style issues. It's something that takes a lot of practice, and a lot of hard work, but it'll pay off in the end, because even a mediocre story with good grammar is infinitely more readable than a great story with poor grammar. That being said, in the interest of completeness, I'll talk a bit about the issues I had with the story, or what little I read, because again, I only read the first few and the last few chapters since I realized early on that the story wasn't where your main issues lay.
Okay, so the actual plot of your fic seems to start with pretty standard, “Oh no, a stranger suddenly showed up in Ponyville and now everyone has to figure out what's up with that shit” fare, and it doesn't really do anything new or interesting to capture my attention. I find myself completely disinterested in Card because you've given me no reason to care about him. He's unrelatable, kind of a douche, and apparently has no motivation whatsoever. I mean, in the first few chapters, he's basically just hanging with Twilight, who apparently likes him immediately for no reason, and we have no idea why or what for. If you want people to be invested, then you need to give them a reason to be. Show us why he's in Ponyville. Maybe have him talk to Twilight to give some exposition about why he's here and what he wants. To be fair, I don't know whether he does this later on because I didn't read to check, but it doesn't really matter since this is something that we should see nearly immediately. As long as you at least hint at what his motivation is early on, then you can leave the full explanation for later. You don't have to spell things out in the beginning, but you have to give the readers a bone they can chew on while they wait for further explanation.
You said in your review request, I believe, that your character (Card, I assume), is a bit of a Mary Sue on purpose. Allow me to explain why that is a bad idea and you should never do that. Mary Sues are, by definition, unlikeable, and unrelatable characters. They usually have very few flaws, if any, and are liked universally. The only ones who don't like them are usually the bad characters and are generally portrayed as being “wrong”. Having an OC as your main character in fanfiction is difficult from the beginning because you're relying on people who came to read stories about characters they like to also like and want to read about your character. It's hard to do that when you make a character who's only relatable to you, the author.
But anyway, another issue I saw is that in the later chapters you apparently have switched to first person narration. Now, I don't know when or why this happened, but it doesn't really matter since you should just never do that. If the beginning of your story starts with third person omniscient, then you stick with that. Don't switch to first person later on, and especially not with an entirely different character from the main one. Also, Card being a dick to Pinkie Pie feels wholly unnecessary and pretty assholeish to me. Oh, and saying “fuck” for no reason just makes your story feel immature. For what little characterization there is, Card doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who'd yell at an annoying, yet friendly, pony.
That's all I'm gonna say about the story because, again, that's not really where your major issues lie. I'd like to go more in depth, but frankly... I don't have the energy to continue this review any longer. As it stands, it's nearly 6-friggin'-k, so going on from here is pretty pointless.
I hope this review helped you in some way, and I hope you take the things I said to heart, or at least think about them a bit and try applying them yourself. Anyway, that's all for me.
~alexmagnet, WRITE's resident Trixie fanboy
(P.S. Check out this guide by Ezn. It does an amazing job of teaching you nearly everything you need to know about writing.)