- Member Since 17th Jun, 2014
- offline last seen May 25th
Nugget
"Hi! I'm Nugget, and I'm your friend to the end. Haydeeho! Ha ha ha!"
Nugget
Joined 17th Jun, 2014 ·
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So, first of all, I'm very sorry. This is not going to be a positive comment, or particularly positive feedback. I want to stress that it isn't because I think your experience that drove you to write this story, whatever that experience was, is fake or not worth writing about.
It's because you have some learning to do as a writer before you can really translate that experience for others.
I'm sorry.
I'd accentuate the positives of your story, but honestly they're a bit hard to talk about because everything I did like was buried under the voice of the narrator. And the narrator's voice is... awkward, to say the least. Sugar Lily doesn't talk the way children talk, she barely thinks the way children think, and she has an unusual amount of hindsight for someone in the middle of an abusive cycle. At one point you have her self-psychoanalying why she's introverted, and she's making that judgment call based on information she'd really only have with hindsight unless someone else explained it to her.
More than that, the story is confused. You're trying very hard to convey an abusive family situation where both parents are on some level culpable and where the things Sugar Lily loves about them are obvious, but you don't have a clear emotional arc for the reader to follow. You put the "roughhousing" and games-with-toy-guns segment at about the midpoint of the story instead of the beginning, which means that Sugar Lily's impressions of her parents -and thus, the way the readers see them - are colored by their worst attributes first, which means the readers don't really share Lily's desire for them to get 'better'.
I'd also like to talk about language and dialogue. The way characters express themselves is extremely important in building them up in the reader's mind. Lily expresses herself like this:
This is a problem a lot of people who don't speak English as their primary language have, and if that's the case with you then, well, there you go. What you're doing here is having Lily speak way too formally. "Where my mother now lies dead" is antiquated, formal language. It's the kind of thing you'd read in a poem or say as an adult, not the kind of thing a child says when they see their mother's corpse. Children have familiar names for their parents - Mom, Dad, Mommy, Daddy, etc. - and they're prone to using more simple sentence structures. Lily reads subtly "off' through the whole story because of this.
The finale of the story feels... odd, as well? ignoring the fact that guns don't seem to really be a thing in equestria, why did her father have real guns that he pretended were toys? What is the point of that? Were they loaded? Is he the worst gun safety instructor in history? Is this a detail cribbed from a song that made no sense even there that now makes no sense in your story? i don't know, but I do know that the emotional 'reveal' is less tragic and more confusing, which is not the effect you want to have on a reader.
Finally, a note on the prescription drugs and alcohol abuse of Lily's parents. While I suppose this could be Lily's perspective, the alcohol and the drugs are described as being a cause of all the problems, not making problems that already existed worse. It makes the story feel a bit more flat and two-dimensional - "these two would have been fine if only they hadn't done this stuff." It's not really an exploration of how broken they are, it's an idealized view of the situation. A story like this should read like a punch to the gut. This one reads more like a confused description of the one time you saw someone else getting punched in the gut. It's too distant, too clinical.
I wish you good luck with your future attempts.
8573346
From the bottom of my heart, I want to say thank you for the long response and the kind words. However, I do wish to clear up some misconceptions that you've perceived from the story.
The protagonist in this story isn't a child, but a teenager. I placed her age roughly around 16 while giving her the same qualities that would make her seem a bit smarter than normal, such as the formal talk. She takes after the same ideas of Twilight since that's the only idol she does look up to. Could I have explained all this better? Certainly.
As for the confusing aspects and other narrative issues, I will say that guns have been confirmed to be in Equestria, but they aren't prevalent. I should have explained why the father had them in the house and why he lied about them better, and they weren't loaded when she played with them. As for the songs, it was explained why she sang it to her mother. There were a lot of other explanations within the narrative as well, but it seems like it didn't stick to the reader (you) like I hoped.
That was my intention. They were their to be a cause to the problem... The guns were went to make the situation worse.
If you didn't catch it in the story, the explanation of how broken the family was is done symbolically with the picture frames. I mixed in some of those elements within the story to paint it poetically along with linear narration.
One can actually assume the father explained it to her in the narrative...
Lastly (and I'm sort of upset over this - I know you said it wasn't fake or a false claim... but....), this story was based around my perception from personal experiences of mine. I had a mother and father before that argued countless times while I hid in my room and pretended to ignore their screaming. I hated it and told myself over and over that it was only temporary and would never happen again. Unfortunately, I didn't stop until they finally moved away from each other. However, the memories still burn within me... This story is just a dramatic representation of how bad it could have gotten.
8573346
Aww, thank you for your detailed review. It shows how much you care to see Nugget do well. You really want to see him do well, don't you?
8573406
Very certainly. For one thing, a teenager would be smart enough to have caught that dad's toy guns are not, in fact, toys. Not even Twilight talks the way Sugar Lily does, and at sixteen she'd be less likely to be fantasizing about fluffy clouds - just me? - and more likely to be hiding herself in music, or schoolwork, or. Well. A lot of things.
The confusion in your story isn't helped by a decision to try and break from linear narrative. Symbolism and subtext are valuable tools, but they're tools best used to accentuate a clear text, not to hide away story information from all but the most observant readers. There's a real danger that when you rely on semiotics and symbolism to impart key narrative information to an audience, a portion of the audience won't make the trip. The more information they're being told to absorb by the rest of your story, the less information they can reasonably absorb. I admire your ambition, but I think in this case it was badly placed.
Sometimes it's easiest just to show us things about characters than to force us to intuit them based on what's ultimately a pretty esoteric element of the story itself.
Lily literally says that her father told her she inherited her introversion from her mother, which isn't true. She drew her conclusion based on reasoning that really shouldn't be possible except in hindsight or from a source other than her father.
Once again, I appreciate how personal this story is to you, and I'm sorry that I'm treading on sacred ground here. Personal experience translated into a story in the way you've done here just doesn't read as well as I think you wanted it to, though. Writing requires practice, effort, and a lot of hindsight. You're clearly putting in the effort, which is why I'm commenting at all: I think you want to be a good writer, and I can tell you wanted this story to result in an emotional reaction from your audience. As it currently exists, though, it's not going to reach people the way you want it to.
8573426
Very definitely. I always want to see people do well.
8573429
Thank you.
That's all I can say for now.
This was beautiful.
Now, unlike the other reviews, I have no experience as a critic, and I'm a fairly amateur writer myself, so I'm not going to do all that exposition-analysis stuff. Not too much, anyway.
The story was interesting, and had a unique view on this. Now, I know how awful it can be when parents argue, but in my case it never got to that. However, the divorce was a bit messy.
Now, here, I have to admit, only around the end it really hit me, for emotional impact, when all the gunfire was exchanged. However, there was a very good buildup to it.
Sugar's point of view does seem to jump a little, but not too badly. Though... I think something was up with present and past tense? I read through it like it was present for some reason. That was the jumping.
Sorry that you had to endure something like this in your life... I'm thankful it all got better in the end.
8573906
There were a few tense issues I've picked up on and will fix later.
...and thank you. I'm glad it's behind me. This story was sort of meant to put those problems to rest.
8573944
Thank you for the comment.
It's an issue I had in my past as well (and yes I'm doing fine). I can recall happening in my early high school years, when my mother was married to an asshole of a man I'll never forget. When he came home after working for months in the field, arguing always commenced until he left. Usually it was him who started it, and my mother would have to shoo me away from the fighting in order for them to settle it between themselves. I always hated it, and I channelled that anger and sadness into this story. I wanted it gone, that way I can move on with my life.
Also, I wanted to reach out to readers like you as well and say that you aren't alone with this issue. I'm happy you found the courage in this story to tackle the same issue I had with your own story. Therefore, I say thank you for sharing your comment and I hope you feel better as well.
uh....what? I am very curious when this was ever in the canon.
Ì can see why this was a difficult story for you to write, Nugget. I think it's brave to share something like this with the world. It shows your strength. Actually, I did exactly the same (sharing a dreadful moment, not write about domestic abuse) in my story, 'A Story Worth Telling.' I hope writing this story made you feel better, and maybe even made a difference in the lives of others.
Now for the actual feedback on the story (it feels strange to treat a semi-autobiographic story as a 'story'), one of the saddest moments was where the filly claims that the fights are routine. Nothing is sadder than getting used to domestic violence. I know that better than you'd think. I liked how you wrote about positive memories with both parents as well, so the contrast between the fight and the happy memories is huge. Also, the 'fake' guns where a nice piece of foreshadowing. You might say that the shoot 'em up game was giving too much away, but I would never have guessed that the story would become so dark, so I was actually surprised when her mother got shot. That's why I think the gun was still a good plot twist.
I also like the buildup. You start out with the filly describing the violence, then the happy memories, and then you actually show the violence. By showing it, it isn't that abstract anymore and it is easier for the reader to get into the situation, if you know what I mean. It's also very sad that Lily said her father wasn't a father to her anymore, because now she will think it was her fault the stallion killed himself. I wonder if she can ever forgive herself.
Those are my thoughts on your story. I hope by writing it, you have taken a load off your shoulders. If there's anything you want to talk about, regarding stories or not, you know where my little cabin in the woods is. :)
Love,
Elkia