Rainbow Dash tore the poster down off the school building, as an orange Pegasus filly watched in awe.
"Rainbow Dash!" yelled Scootaloo.
"Yeah, kid?" Rainbow answered.
"Are you signing up?"
"Maybe," Rainbow answered seriously.
"Cool!" Scootaloo said excitedly.
"Look, Scoots, I'd love to stay and chat, but..." she held out the poster.
"Okay, I've got to go back inside, anyway," Scootaloo said.
Right on time, Cheerilee called to Scootaloo. "Scootaloo? Are you coming in or not?"
"Sorry, Miss Cheerilee! Bye Rainbow Dash!"
"Bye Scootaloo!" Rainbow yelled as she flew off.
You may be wondering something. As in, what the poster says. I'm here to tell you. Here it is:
It's the Equestria games! Anypony can sign up. (No experience required.) It costs 30 bits for one pony to compete. You will get a trainer for your team if you sign up. There will be earth pony, Pegasus, unicorn, and everypony games. You can also sign up for the chance to be an announcer! You may also sell refreshments (or anything else, for that matter). The maximum members of a team is 5. We wish you luck. Let the games begin!
(Go to our desk outside Sugarcube Corner for more details.)
That had been all it took for Rainbow Dash. She knew this was her chance to impress the Wonderbolts. Of course, she didn't want to do it alone, she wanted her friends to do it with her. (She did not see the part about only 5 per team.)
On her way to show to Applejack's (for that where she was heading; she wanted to show her friend the poster), she bumped into another Pegasus.
"Oops, sorry, Rainbow Dash," Derpy said.
"That's okay, do I have any mail?" Rainbow asked the gray mailmare.
"Not that I know- oops!" For Derpy had dropped a piece of mail.
Rainbow Dash dived for it. "To Miss Rainbow Dash," it read.
"I guess you do have mail," said Derpy, surprised.
"Thanks," Rainbow called as she zoomed away.
"Wait, Rainbow?" Derpy called. Rainbow halted.
"Yeah, Derpy?"
"Would you like to be on a team with me at the Equestria Games?" Derpy asked.
"Maybe, I was going to go ask Applejack (and maybe Twilight and Pinkie and.. well, you get the idea) to be on a team with me," Rainbow explained.
"Okay. I'm always available to be on a team with you!" Derpy said.
"Thanks, Derpy. Look, I've got to go. Bye!"
"Bye Rainbow!"
Applejack was leaving the post office when Derpy came crashing in.
"Rainbow Dash is looking for you," Derpy said.
"Well, I want to ask her if she'll be on a team with me at the Equestria Games," explained Applejack.
"I'm always willing to be on a team with you, too!" Derpy said. "You know where to find me."
"Thanks Derpy. Got to run!" Applejack yelled back. In Applejack's hooves was an Equestria Games poster.
Fluttershy was peering at the sign frightenedly. What if her friends wanted her to be on a team with them? She relaxed a bit when she saw the 5 per team thing. Maybe they wouldn't need her? She took the sign to look at and walked to the desk. She had a few questions.
Applejack saw Fluttershy walking toward the Games desk. "Fluttershy? I wouldn't think of her in this sort of competition."
Fluttershy saw Applejack walking towards her. "Of course, she'll want to talk with her friends about making a team right away. After all, the first poster appeared only this morning."
Rainbow Dash saw Applejack and Fluttershy walking towards each other. "There's Applejack! Finally! I've been flying into pony after pony who wants to be on my team. Finally, some real competition."
Applejack saw Rainbow Dash flying towards her and Fluttershy. "Rainbow!"
Fluttershy saw Rainbow flying over to her and Applejack. She hid. "After all, if she can't find me, she can't ask me to be on her team."
Derpy saw all 3 of them (including Fluttershy). She felt kind of sad when she saw Rainbow asking Applejack to be on her team, and even worse when she saw Applejack accept. No pony was on her team. Whenever she asked somepony, the answer was always the same: I'll think about it. And every time, they found a teammate, other than Derpy, and left her alone.
Fluttershy saw Derpy and felt bad. She decided something. She came out of her hiding place and whispered something to Derpy.
"Sure!"
And for Fluttershy, it was a very brave thing to do. She had decided to sign up for the announcer drawing, with Derpy as a team. That way, if she was picked, she could be right with her friends without having to compete! (And later, when she went up to the Games desk outside Sugarcube Corner, she found out if you weren't chosen, you got half off your ticket to watch the games. It assured her that this was the right thing to do.) Derpy was thrilled, too. Finally, she had a team!
Twilight Sparkle was in her library sweeping, when Spike came bursting in.
"What is it?" Twilight asked, dropping the broom. "Did you get a letter from Rarity or something?"
"No! It's this!" Spike held out the Equestria games poster as Applejack walked in.
"Oh! Is that the poster someone put on the library?" Twilight asked just as Applejack said. "Twilight! Look at this!"
"I've already got one," Twilight said, unrolling the poster. She quickly read it and looked up. "So I guess you want me to be on a team with me?"
"Yep," Applejack said. "Rainbow's already on a team with me."
"Well, in that case- wait a minute! It says 5 per team! One of our friends can't be on our team!" Twilight said.
"Fluttershy signed up for the announcer draw," Applejack explained.
"Really?"
"She signed up with Derpy."
"Oh," Twilight said. "Well, let's go ask Rarity and Pinkie!"
"Absolutely not!" Rarity said, shocked, looking at the sign. "You know I don't like getting my hooves dirty, and there will be a lot of icky mud."
"But Rarity! We need somepony to supervise the Cutiemark Crusaders! It's a rule!" Sweetie Belle exclaimed.
"Well, I'll supervise you, I just won't play," Rarity said.
"It's- the- rules," Sweetie Belle said.
"Rarity, Rarity, Rarity!" Twilight called.
"Yes?" Rarity answered. "I'm in here!"
"Good. Would- you- like- to be- on a- team with us?" Twilight tried to catch her breath.
"I told Sweetie Belle n-"
"Please?" Rarity saw Applejack and Rainbow in the window.
Rarity sighed. "Fine."
"Whopee! Of couse I'll do it! It sounds fun!" That was Pinkie Pie's reply when her friends told her about the games. "Let's go!"
"Um, Pinkie?" Rainbow said. "It's not until 2 weeks from now."
"Okay, you want some cake?" Pinkie held out some cake.
"No. If you want to compete, you have to exercise. You have to work together. Be prepared. And no sweets," Rainbow said.
"No sweets? I'd only do it for my friends!" Pinkie said.
"Good- wait a minute, you are on our team, right?" Rainbow asked.
"Yep!"
"Good. See you tomorrow bright and early."
As Rainbow left, Twilight whispered, "Don't worry, you can have sweets." Pinkie smiled.
"So will you?" Applebloom asked. The Cutiemark Crusaders looked up hopefully. "PLEASE?"
"Eeyup." Big Mac said.
"Yeah!" the Crusaders high-fived each other. This was going to be fun!
"Cutiemark Crusaders Equestria Games winners!" The Crusaders yelled happily.
Diamond Tiara snickered. "We're going to beat those babies," she said to Silver Spoon.
"We sure will!" Silver Spoon answered.
"Yes, you will, girls," said Diamond Tiara's father, Filthy Rich (he was their supervisor). "Yes, we will win!"
Feel free to give me advice to make the story better!
So the cutie mark crusaders are here? This only brings one question!
Babs: Where dah heck am Ah?
Okay, there's still a LOT of room for improvement, but I know you're learning.
I really recommend you to find a guide on how to write novels, because if I explain about how to make a good story I could go on for a long time. Plus, I think they can explain better than I do.
Here's a link to a guide provided by Equestria Daily.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1WMMs8H-GpFIXPsQeC0RNu8V-Cq6uyGl_UERpOUK_6KY/edit#heading=h.6qkzsww2jkrr
A link to some guides about writing good characters:
http://www.darcypattison.com/characters/5-tips-on-character-descriptions/
There's plenty more online; look up 'writing guides' on Google if you want to find more.
Just some personal taste, but I'm not that fond of how the narrator addresses the reader directly. It can take people out of the story's world a bit too much, and it's not a common format when writing something like a novel.
But, it's just personal taste. While I think some people might like it more than I do, I think using the 'storyteller' narration relies way too much on 'telling' rather than 'showing'. I've already previously pointed out the problem of 'telling' too much in a story, as it doesn't make the story seem that real or rich. For example:
There's some 'showing' here, particularly the last sentence when describing that Derpy had asked everypony about the competition. It's good, but this part could be a bit better. If you're showing that Derpy is all alone and is sad, show that she's sad. Imagine how she feels when she sees the three ponies; how she wishes that she was part of their group, how she asked everypony to let her help with the games and yet she never gets a 'yes' in reply. Then write those feelings down.
The way you write the story, it seems to simple, and because of that the scenes are way too short. It makes the pacing too quick throughout the entire story, and because of that it can bewilder readers enough to have them stop reading. Plus, there's so much opportunities to show each pony's personalities through their actions and reactions to things and other characters, especially when this is the beginning of the story.
You have to keep asking yourself the same questions the readers would ask about your story, or you'll leave out important information that will make readers confused. Why do Rainbow Dash and the Mane 6 want to compete? What's the prize of the competition? If they're doing this just for fun, why does Rainbow Dash want to push the group so much? Why is it called the Equestria Games when most of the ponies are just from Ponyville? Is this competition like the Olympics? And if so, why are fillies allowed to compete? Why would Fluttershy be near the Games Desk if she doesn't want to compete?
If you ask yourself these questions and can't find an answer from what you've written, add it in. Don't just tell the audience though, show them through specific details, speech and thought from the characters, words from books, signs and posters, etc.
I think a lot of these scenes can either be merged together or removed entirely. You don't have to show every single pony finding out about the Equestria Games separately at a different location; maybe you can have Rainbow Dash find out about the contest and tell about it to her other friends when they're together. You can show in a separate scene that Fluttershy doesn't want to compete.
When putting a scene in a story, make sure that each one gives new information to the reader and moves the story forward. In most scenes where you're featuring the characters, make sure at least one of the characters (usually the main character) has a problem that needs to be solved, a goal he/she wants to meet or a conflict over something. Otherwise, there's no point putting in a scene for it at all.
The speech between the characters don't come off as real. While conversations shouldn't completely be like real life, it shouldn't sound too fake either. Conversations in real life don't always go to a specific point, and they often play out different if someone starting it has urgent business, or if they have a different relationship with the character. The responses are also going to be a bit longer than what you have in your story.
If two close friends (let's say Twilight and Rarity) meet each other one day for a lunch or just some chit-chat, they're might start off with some basic questions ("How's your day?" / "Had a good morning?"/ "Eat breakfast yet?"), followed some responses ("Oh, good so far. I finally finished those three dresses for that Party in Canterlot."/ "I woke up with Owolicious on my head" / "Sweetie Belle made me pancakes. I was surprised; she only burnt three of them this time around."). The questions and responses are going to be different depending on who's being involved in the conversation
If one of the characters is supposed to bring up something important to the story, like telling her about Rainbow going off to Cloudsdale for some unknown reason, she's going to talk about it after this starting chit-chat. If she has something particularly important to talk about, they might skip to talking about it right after greeting each other.
In a good story, it's very important to give the main character a goal that he/she is willing to follow, and show why the character wants to follow it, and how he/she does it. If you're going to have Rainbow Dash as the main character, show why she wants to organize her friends into a team in order to win the competition, and why she's taking it seriously.
The main conflict of a story shouldn't just be about winning a competition, but also the development of the main character. In the first Star Wars film, the main conflict was that they had to stop the Death Star, but it's also about Luke Skywalker leaving his familiar life on his desert planet Tatooine and becoming a Jedi like his father. Same with this story, we need to see how Rainbow Dash grows from putting herself and her friends into this competition. What problems come up from pushing her friends to compete? How does she learn from them and fix the problems in the end?
Ultimately, nearly every story you ever read is about a character maturing in some way or form, or sometimes (if it's a tragedy) getting even worse.
Because much of a story involves focusing on a character's development, if you're writing a story with so many characters (and you don't want the reader to be absolutely muddled) you have to focus the story on only a handful of them.
Look at The Avengers. There were 6 members of the Avengers, three members of S.H.I.E.L.D. and one villian. They had to set the backstories of each character through several different movies just so the audience can know them by the time the The Avengers came out, and even then the main story focuses on the Avengers themselves. It was very hard to fit all the characters in a single movie while making each one involved in the plot.
And these are the characters you listed being involved in your story.
That is a lot. If done wrong (and the more characters there are, the more easy it is to get it wrong), a story with so many characters can be horrible. It's not good to have a story with a bajillion characters and expect the reader to care for every single one of them, especially when all the characters aren't particularly good. The reader won't care for any of them at all.
So make sure you focus most of the story on only a few of the characters. I recommend focusing only on Rainbow Dash and the Mane 6 (minus Fluttershy, since she's not even competing). You might want to rethink adding the Cutie Mark Crusaders into the competition; maybe you can have them watch the Mane 6 in competition, but if this is Equestria's equivalent of the Olympics, there's not going to be kids involved in the games.
Maybe you can add a rival team who are opposed to the Mane 6 (maybe Trixie or the Flim Flam brothers). For most of the secondary characters like the CMC and Spike, give them their own little problem to solve but don't make them the center of the story too much.
Also, there's some problems when you're describing the part about Fluttershy.
For one, the way you describe it, the movement doesn't seem natural, and the reader is going to find it repetitive.
There's more than one way to describe characters and their actions, like "Rainbow Dash saw her two friends walking towards each other", "the cowpony saw Rainbow Dash flying this way", "Fluttershy made a panicked squeak as her pegasus friend came closer". Try making your word choice a bit different each time you describe an action; that way the reader won't find it dull.
You don't have to mention every single action that the characters take or every thought they make, because the readers can fill bits of it with their own information. They can connect different sentences together to form an active scene in their head, sort of like how they can piece two still frames of a comic together to tell something is happening.
Still, you should give enough details to give them a sense of what's going on, without being too exact. Where did Fluttershy hide (it's not as if she suddenly made herself invisible)? Where exactly is the game desk? Where did Derpy see the three of the Mane 6?
As I mentioned before, I'm confused why Fluttershy would be walking towards games desk if she doesn't want to compete. And while I know that Derpy feels lonely that she doesn't have a team, why does she want to be in team of the Equestrian Games in the first place? Make it more clear for the reader.
And then there's the way you write sport in. When people watch sports, they do care for the points and who's playing, but what they pay the most attention to is the action. When you wrote about the card-sleigh event (I think card should be replaced with 'sled' because cards aren't exactly a common sports equipment) you take too much time explaining the character names and points, and absolutely nothing about the action involved in the event. Can you imagine football and soccer if all you see is the points and names? It's not going to be interesting.
There's so much you can show the audience with how the sport works.
And like I said, showing a competition itself doesn't create an interesting story. The competition should just be a backdrop of the story around Rainbow Dash and the Mane 6, and how RD learns to led a team on her own while the Mane 6 work together. That means we don't have to know every single name, point and number about each contestant of the competition; not if it gets in the way of the story of the main characters. Does it help with the setting and immersion? Yes, and it's important, but add something if it hurts the story.
One further thing I noticed is that you seem to be afraid that the audience will forget details, and sometimes you keep reminding them of a point immediately after it's noted.
You don't have to do that; the audience isn't that forgetful and can can always look back to see the details they missed. If important objects/characters/places that were introduced earlier in the story are about to be brought up again, that's when you remind the audience, but only shortly before they come up again.
Also, use less parenthesis' (). Every time you use them in your story (aside from the poster or any written letter or form), there's likely a way to rewrite it so that you can drop the parenthesis competely, like this:
In terms of the writing itself, I found some grammar problems around the story, and you might want to fix them up. I also think you're using too many adverbs (angrily, seriously, happily; a lot of words ending with '-ly'). It's usually discouraged in writing because they're too vague when used to describe things.
Also, one more nickpick:
Ponies don't have thumbs. Look through your story again and adjust moments where ponies are doing actions only possible with hands and fingers.
There's probably a lot more I could mention. Read the guides I linked to you, it'll help.