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No. 128809
>>128026
>>128032
We have left extensive comments both in thy story and outline documents, so here commenceth Our final comments and closing remarks.
We will first say that We understand thy intent is to submit this story to Equestria Daily anon. Well, We would recommend that thou waitest until thou hast at least one more chapter. This is for two reasons. For one, there is no indication of where the story will go (yes, thou hast an outline prepared, which helpeth), but more indicative of true direction and writing ability is to have those chapters in hand. Normally, this would not be so much of a concern, but as thou art also below the word count threshold for Equestria Daily (3.000 words for an installment of a multi-chapter story), thou hast already handicapped thyself. Stories below the minimum word count can be accepted, if their quality standeth out, but 'tis double-edged sword: thou canst be rejected on that basis as well, and as We understand that thou mayest be on thy last strike, 'tis folly to stack the deck against thee, We would think.
So, to the story itself. There is simply not enough here yet to remark on your characters and events, other than to say that what thou hast so far maketh good enough sense, except for the comments We left regarding Willow's reaction to being questioned.
Now for the writing issues. When We look at overall counts, thy use of 'to be' verbs doth not appear excessive, yet thou usest them in clusters. Beware of these. While eliminating them entirely is not necessary, thou shouldst always strive for more interesting word choice. 'Tis a more enticing read without them raising up their little trollish heads. Also beware of repetitive sentence structures. While leading with the subject will certainly be thy (heh!) workhorse, vary it from time to time in order to keep from getting a lumbering feel, especially when such sentences have similar lengths. We shall briefly address the final three points, and then paste in some material to illustrate, conveniently borrowed from he who asked Us to perform this review.
We have cited thee for telling instead of showing in a few places as well. Thy pasted lesson on this topic:
'It's better to get the reader to interpret a character's emotions than to tell them outright. Devices for doing that include body language, reactions, facial expressions, actions, and sometimes speech and thought. The three biggest red flags are outright naming an emotion (sad), -ly adverb form (happily), and prepositional phrase form (in excitement). The last one in particular is almost always redundant with an action it follows. You'll bore the reader just throwing cold facts at him. You don't always have to show, but it's a good idea at critical plot points, emotional moments, and where you want the reader to feel something along with the character. You got it right in some places, so I know you're capable. Find areas where you did and give it some thought as to whether you want to make a closer connection to the reader there, or if it's just a minor instance. You got this right often enough that I know you can do it.'
A few of thy conversations exhibit what can be called 'talking heads,' in which dialogue is broken by little more than speaking actions, which leaveth thy speakers as floating heads in a void. Pasted lesson the second:
'There are several conversations where the dialogue is back and forth with little to no character action. They might as well be statues. Use the same techniques as show-versus-tell, and consider that what's said is only half of a conversation. Give me more of the nonverbal bits.'
Lastly, thou hast consistent problems with using commas where a conjunction setteth off subordinate clauses. The final lesson:
'Here's a common comma mistake, but really, all you need to do is look for subjects and verbs. Use a comma with a conjunction when your're separating clauses (separate subject-verb pairs) but not when separating two items in a compound structure. Here are the most common examples:
He performed this action and that action.
He and she performed this action.
He and she performed this action and that action.
He performed this action, and she performed that action.'
We have spared thee Our mood swings, as We have been called in for a special assignment on this.
Write thee onward, citizen!
Last edited at Sun, Oct 6th, 2013 21:59
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