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No. 111696
>>111306
TL;DR: A cute, fun and simple concept, marred by awkward phrasing and unnecessary repetition.
Full version
Well, you've certainly improved since I read First Dawn. Nevertheless, you have serious problems with this story.
1) Telling
This is one of the most irritating and rampant problems in literature, and it's present in your story. A vast amount of your narration is straight telling, specifically when you discuss Rainbow's reactions to various events.
Basically, you're explicitly announcing what Rainbow Dash is feeling or thinking during a lot of the story Observe:
>I hope you’re happy, Fluttershy.
>How could I forget about you guys? Even for a moment?
>A bleak wave of loneliness suddenly swelled over and cast its shadow onto Dash.
You need to understand the difference between complex narration (the above) and showing. While the above sentence is certainly complex and well written, it's still telling. Complexity isn't the solution to telling; showing in literature is all about implication, or in other words, giving a broad statement and letting the reader figure it out.
The simplest solution to telling is to read over and story and identify the sections that are directly revealing information as opposed to implying it. Bear in mind that not all telling is bad; sometimes, you just need to give information without dancing around it, but the majority of your narrative should be showing.
2) Repetition
You reuse a lot of the same descriptive terms. Examples:
a) Rainbow or Fluttershy exhaling
b) Rainbow's heart doing something
c) Rainbow's jaw dropping
And many more like that. I understand that certain authors have a "niche," so to speak, but be careful not to let any of those become catchphrases.
3) Fluttershy and Rainbow's meeting
This was ridiculously drawn out. You repeated a lot of the same information multiple times. Rainbow asks Fluttershy if she's okay. That repeats several times. Fluttershy asks Rainbow if she's okay. That happens several times. Rainbow realizes that Fluttershy is a different pony. That happens several times. See what I'm getting at? That whole exchange could have been half as long, and all the necessary information would still have been there. It was just really off-putting.
For that matter, if you cut the section to be a lot shorter, you could illustrate just how much Fluttershy and Rainbow have grown apart. For instance, if the conversation is really awkward and surface level, and if Fluttershy kicks Rainbow out after only a little while, it would have a lot more emotional impact.
Basically, the potential for emotional impact is all there. Fluttershy and Rainbow have clearly grown apart. You just need to capitalize on that and make it the focus of the conversation, because I know where you're going with that.
4) Purple prose
A huge problem throughout your story. Using big words does not equal good narration. Simplicity can create amazing fiction; see Filler's Beyond the Wall.
Purple prose basically means your narrative is overly complex or flowery. A lot of your writing can be condensed into half the length.
5) Too little and too long
This more or less ties in with #3. You spend more than 6,000 words in this chapter, but almost nothing happens. There's very little emotional impact over a huge amount of story. Seriously, entire stories of mine are close to this length, and they contain a lot more meat. Learn to sum more information up in less time, but do so cleverly.
Final thoughts
You have a lot of potential here, and your grammar is excellent. You just need to learn to avoid repetition, because repetition is repetition and that makes a story repetitive if you have repetition.
Furthermore, flush out your emotional impact. By truncating Dash's visit with Fluttershy, you can illustrate just how different they are after all these years have passed. You can apply this concept to basically your entire story.
Righto, good work; I'm excited to see where you take it.
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