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No. 103219
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Okay, Markarian, here's what's up. I ratcheted my pickiness way up for the purpose of making line-by-line comments on Brony. As a result, they're taking forever to complete. I'm almost through chapter two at the moment. So here's what I'm gonna do.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1my_OWPQt8mYvO_SoXG88tMF2TU9Zpx3PdWTON0ZDxxs/edit
I'll enter my notes for chapter one into the above google doc as soon as possible, and then I'll add my comments on the other two chapters as I complete working on them. Meanwhile, I'll give you the big impressions I got from your story, and my general advice, right now, so you can chew on the really important stuff for a while before we get down to the details.
And now, time to put on my :seriousface:
***
I want to start out by stressing that story reviews are not handed down from on high by seraphic reviewers who spend their time playing harps in golden mansions. Reviews, like stories, are products of thought and effort. Therefore the proper way to receive a review is thoughtfully and carefully. Uncritical acceptance of a reviewer's opinion is just as bad as thoughtless rejection. I have seen many instances in which a writer, tripping over himself to implement his reviewer's suggestions, will put far too little effort into crafting the revised text. The result is that the story is transformed from one which, despite the author's efforts, contains some errors, into one that just feels half-assed and schizophrenic.
Judging from your writing, however, I don't have any reason to think that you will be one of those authors. So I'm encouraged. But this is so important, that I feel like it bears endless repetition: think about my (or any reviewer's) suggestions, and recognize that the ultimate responsibility for making all the decisions about your story lies with you.
And don't try to make those decisions too quickly. Give your revisions the time and respect they deserve, so that your story can shine across Equestria!
Moving on. Your story (so far) is probably within the top 25% or so of all pony fanfiction in terms of quality, and probably within the top 5-10% of authors' first stories. It's also in the top 5-10% in terms of how well-written it is (meaning spelling, grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, etc.) You do, in fact, have a pretty nice story here, and I think you must have at least suspected as much before now. My criticisms, therefore, are (for the most part) not with the sorts of obvious flaws that characterize amateurish fiction. So, you shouldn't let any of the negatives I'm about to point out trick you into thinking that your story isn't good. It is. Believe it.
***
The story is structured so that it doesn't skip anything, really. It shows just about everything that happens to Caleb, from the time the story begins, in a calm, paced manner. Further, the prose is quite even-handed, remaining stylistically similar throughout the story. These qualities heightened the immersion for me, by making the story-reading experience more like a moment-to-moment living experience. However, I still think there were some scenes that ought to have been sped up or skipped but weren't, and some places which needed a subtle stylistic shift but didn't receive one. In those places, the style felt cumbersome and inflexible, and was much more of a liability than an asset. At any rate, I also felt like I was being carried along by the stream of the story's narration in a sort of weird, passive way that some readers might not like, and to which I was largely indifferent.
Maybe that effect was also partly due to Caleb (the main character) being left largely a blank slate. Caleb doesn't actually do very much in this story; he gets led everywhere, first by fate and then by ponies. As a result, opportunities for you to characterize Caleb by his actions don't come around much. And you haven't done a whole lot of characterization by other means, either. I can't figure out if you intentionally made Caleb an indistinct character, in order to try to allow more readers to relate to him, or what. If that was your intention, then I think it's misguided, because it's one of the paradoxes of fiction that the more specific and idiosyncratic fictional characters are, the more sympathetic readers tend to find them. (I'm pretty sure this is because such characters tend to be vivid and easy to imagine, and thus light up in the reader's mind more brightly.)
As an illustration, let me describe myself as follows: I'm a male brony, a Christian, 20 years old, and I enjoy reviewing fanfiction. I like video games and music. I'm unemployed.
Am I a boring, generic brony, or what? But that's about equivalent to the sort of characterization you've given Caleb.
Now let me try to describe myself again, more interestingly: I spend about eight hours a day listening to music. My conscience constantly reminds me that wasting so much time is probably immoral, but I drown it out with more music. I've never had a job, and I'm insecure about that, because I feel like I'm mooching off my family's goodwill; so I'd like to have a job. But I also have long, messy hair and a ridiculous beard, neither of which I've cut since I started watching MLP in February of 2011. (I think of this non-cutting of hair as almost a religious sort of commitment.) I can't imagine anyone would hire me with the way I currently look, but I really don't want to cut my hair, because that would "break the commitment". I spend hours every day thinking about this issue. I drink the salty juice from olive jars and eat kiwis with the fuzzy skin on. I drink about a gallon of tea every day, and brush my teeth about once a month.
Isn't that a bit more interesting? It's less flattering, definitely, but I think I made myself seem like a living human being. Now, is there any good reason for keeping Caleb as generic as he currently is, rather than making him more vivid? There are a lot of opportunities for characterizing him. For example, you made Caleb know about the symptoms of hypothermia. Why not give him an interest in some related field that could explain that knowledge? Such knowledge could even come into the plot of the story later on, if you desired it to.
I don't think that this is really just a matter of "making the character more interesting". It's more than that. A character's experiences, attitudes, and interests will literally shape the entire way he sees the world around him. Consider this scene from Brony:
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>But Caleb didn’t answer. His gaze was drifting skyward as he heard a rushing of air far above his head. Some of the remaining clouds that had remained from the evening chill were moving seemingly on their own accord, away from the town. And as the clouds parted to let in more light upon the village, he saw the slowly beating wings of the brown pegasus, silhouetted momentarily against the brilliant sun before the winged horse streaked away toward the next patch of clouds.
>“Oh, my God,” Caleb softly whispered. He had stopped walking, staring upward. He was awestruck, his breath was caught in his throat. Now another flying equine joined the first, and then another, and another.
>The white pony’s eyes followed Caleb’s toward the sky, watching the beginnings of tears welling up in the man’s eyes.
***
Reading this scene, I can learn that something about Caleb makes him particularly emotionally vulnerable to the sight of pegasi moving the clouds. But exactly what is that? Just "his brony-ness"? But that's not true-to-life. (People become bronies for personal reasons, not just because MAGIC.)
For example: Personally, I think the concept of pegasi moving the clouds is incredibly reminiscent of the traditional Christian depiction of angels. And the strongest mental images I have of pegasi are from the video of the Winter Wrap Up song. The "Winter Wrap Up" symbolises Baptism, and all that jazz, to me; the coming of spring symbolises hope, purity, and regeneration, as a sort of counter-argument to Eliot's The Waste Land (which I memorized in a depressed obsession a few years back); and the combination of the singing and lyrics hits me hard in several very sensitive spots, which all have their explanations and roots in other experiences I've had and desires I've cherished.
So when Caleb said, "Oh, my God," I was right there with him, and I felt like I would have said exactly the same thing, and that it was exactly the right thing to say.
But that's not quite the same as knowing why Caleb would say it, now is it? Because I'm not Caleb. And I don't want to be Caleb, and I shouldn't have to be Caleb in order to enjoy Caleb's story.
Anyway, if you want to see just how indistinct Caleb is, read over the hospital scene in Chapter 2. In that scene, it's very difficult to distinguish different voices for Lily, Nurse Redheart, and Caleb. That conversation basically sounds like a conversation that might take place between me and my imaginary friends, where I know the outcome of the conversation far ahead of time but feel obligated to at least symbolically imitate real dialogue.
Which brings me around to dialogue... actually, my main complaint with respect to dialogue is what I just said. A lot of the dialogue feels like an imitation of real dialogue, created more to satisfy propriety than to tell a story. For one thing, many of the character voices are too similar, as I mentioned. For another, real dialogue is always at least moderately surprising. The biggest reason people ever talk to each other is to hear something that they couldn't have predicted they'd hear. But in Brony, the written dialogue remains almost entirely "safe"—in that it contains 'no alarms and no surprises.' And, as a reader it feels vaguely like you're giving me 'a handshake of carbon monoxide' with this sort of dialogue.
To put it another way: Human-in-Equestria is a genre which is renowned for its authors' seemingly endless capacity to indulge in boring, selfish wish-fulfillment. You've avoided that soul-killing trap, mostly; but out of all the elements of Brony, your dialogue comes closest to being typical of HiE stories.
Next, I guess I'll mention your style. I'll have a lot more to say about this in the line-by-line, so a summary should suffice here.
You abuse these words a bit: "the," "so," "well," "really," "immediately," "though," "at least," "already," "again," "obviously." I don't mean that you use them too often. I mean the way you tend to use them detracts from the beauty and vigor of the prose.
Some of those words, well, you sort of use them to attempt to make statements less, um, straightforward than they could otherwise be perceived as being... I mean that you're watering down your words. You're making strong sentences weak. You're making statements of fact seem tentative. You're leaving your characters spineless.
Also, you're very fond of sentences of the form "Subject verbed, verbing." Naturally, you've committed some barbarisms with those sorts of sentences. But you seem to also tend toward long sentences in general. This confounded me in places. I found quite a few XXL sentences which would have worked better if you had chopped them in two, or even amputated a clause or two from them.
Try to keep in mind that long sentences force the reader to slow down. But bad stories are generally more entertaining when you read them faster. (Proof? I knocked out Past Sins in a single sitting, and I considered it a great read.) My point? Most fanfiction is bad. So most fanfiction readers will default to reading quickly. When readers try to read long sentences quickly, though, their comprehension suffers. So, you should at least try not to bury any important plot information at the end of a lunker—there's every possibility your readers could skim right over it.
I noticed that your paragraphs, especially in the first chapter, were of an unusually uniform length. I got a vague, cynical feeling that in certain paragraphs, you only kept writing in order to reach the 4-5 sentence standard paragraph length, no matter whether the subject matter of the paragraph actually called for more or less.
In a related note, your depiction of the passage of time left something to be desired. I have no idea how long Caleb lay in the icy stream before getting up; I figure it was either around 5 minutes or around 2 hours. Also, when Caleb is on the bus: he's on there for quite a while, right? But that fact isn't acknowledged by (for example) making the paragraph where he's on the bus a little bit longer than the surrounding paragraphs. It seemed to me like a perfect opportunity to go a little more in-depth on Caleb's character. But then the bus ride ends abrubtly, and I'm left feeling like the ride only took minutes, even though I know it took much longer.
Your depiction of spatial details was quite a bit better than your temporal details. The only point at which I really felt disoriented was during the car crash scene. I couldn't figure out exactly how Caleb's body was positioned against the car, and I couldn't figure out how fast the car was going, either. (I'm thinking it was going really slow.)
Now what, now what... structure. This relates to conflict, too. Chapter One was structured admirably. Caleb had several problems, they overlapped and interacted in interesting ways (Caleb didn't want to go to the hospital if he could avoid it, because it would financially break him? Brilliant!), it began with a great hook (the stupid Christian woman on the phone was hilarious) and ended dripping with potential and making me really interested.
But after that? I'm going to call what your chapters 2 and 3 have, "one-problem-at-a-time syndrome." In chapter 2, Caleb and Lily meet, they walk, they're at the hospital, they walk, they're at the Apples' farm, and Caleb falls asleep. No one section of the chapter has any larger conflict than "We need to get to the next section of this chapter!" It's like Caleb and Lily are playing Super Mario Land. They play through World 1-1... in order to get to World 1-2. And so on. You really needed to introduce the main conflict of the story with Chapter 2, at least in an outline clear enough to give the reader something to look forward to. You mentioned the Summer Sun Celebration being two days away; I assume that it will come into the story. But you only mentioned it once, in passing. So even though my personal favorite scene in all of MLP:FiM is the scene in "Cutie Mark Chronicles" where Celestia raises the sun, I'm still not able to really feel any anticipation about seeing the Summer Sun Celebration in your story, because you put zero emphasis on it. And so on. The only reason chapter 2 succeeded in making me anticipate chapter 3 was the sentence at the end:
> Meanwhile, all of Ponyville was abuzz with the news of the strange, half-dead creature who had befriended Lily Lace.
I'm not opposed to starting off a story slowly and building up, but with this line, you sort of promised a ratcheting-up of the plot in chapter 3—something to raise the stakes, and raise readers' interests. Instead? Chapter 3 is just more point-A-to-point-B motion, but instead of physical motion, it's Caleb's relationship with the Apple family that moves. And here's the thing: you introduced no new plot elements in chapter 3. Nothing to raise my interest and keep me wanting more. You just slapped the promise of Twilight Sparkle onto the end of the otherwise self-contained chapter. And at this point, I'm starting to see a pattern, and my cynicism sets in: "This author is just going to keep writing simple story parts for every single chapter, and slap cheap lures onto the ends of them, as a substitute for establishing an immersive, satisfying plotline! I have no reason to think that this story is going to get any better than it already is! What a bust!"
Have you read the first chapter of "Background Pony" by short_skirts_and_explosions? It's an example of the sort of complex, interesting plot that I'm really hoping to eventually see from Brony. (My knowledge of pony fanfiction is sadly limited, so that's the only decent example I have to give.)
Anyway, I'm feeling pretty clueless as to where the story is going to go next. I have nothing to anticipate except Twilight Sparkle and maybe the Summer Sun Celebration. Your synopsis doesn't sound anything like Brony so far, so I assume there'll be a twist soon, which is something I have to look forward to, at least. I'm also kind of wondering how these chapters are going to tie in with the rest of the story. The first three chapters feel a bit like a visual essay about how much better and cooler Equestria is than the real world. Honestly, I'm cool with that theme, but your synopsis seems to undercut the entire notion. Surely you're not going to cynically twist some aspect of Equestria to make it out to be a horrible place? These first chapters just seem too... sincere, for that to happen.
...Hmm. Well, at any rate, color me puzzled. I think you should find some useless scenes (or hell, random weak lines or fluffy bits of dialogue work just as well) in these first three chapters—scenes which just aren't pulling their weight in terms of adding meaning to the narrative—and re-write them to include some hints as to the bigger plot. You don't need to change the tone or theme. Just include some stuff that will be interesting, by giving the reader things to look forward to, things to speculate and wonder about. A good scene to start with might be the hospital scene in chapter 2. (What exactly does that scene do, anyway, besides putting some bandages on Caleb? It accomplishes next to nothing in terms of characterization, and only minimally moves the plot along. I initially considered advising you to omit it altogether, and replace it with a quick summary of its events.)
Okay, what next... I guess that's about it, for now. If I think of anything I forgot to say, I'll put it in the google doc I linked above. Oh yeah! I think you should consider putting some section breaks within your chapters. I think section breaks look neat, and your story occasionally lends itself to them (though if you end up changing it a lot to make the plot more complex, that might not remain the case). Your choice, though.
Aaaaaaaaaaaaand I'm out. I hope my thoughts were worth the wait. I'll try to type up some DLC into that google doc for you pretty quickly, though with my time management, who knows how that'll go.
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