The Life She Never Received

BronyPonyMan #1 · Mar 6th, 2015 · · ·

can we get an optional sequel, or maybe an epilogue, where rainbow manages to get the letter into a readable condition, and decides to give Derpy a chance? this just made me feel so bad for her....

VampDash

VampDash #2 · Mar 6th, 2015 · · ·

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5703890 This guy. ^

Silver Letter

Silver Letter #3 · Mar 6th, 2015 · · ·

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5703890
We'll see. Thanks for reading though. I hope you like my interpretation of Derpy, at least.

BronyPonyMan

BronyPonyMan #4 · Mar 6th, 2015 · 1 · ·

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5704700 I did, very much so! just feel bad for her is all....

BubblePuff

BubblePuff #5 · Mar 6th, 2015 · 1 · ·

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I really enjoyed this. It was very emotional

Silver Letter

Silver Letter #6 · Mar 6th, 2015 · · ·

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5705149
Thank you.

Taialin

Taialin #7 · Mar 7th, 2015 · 1 · ·

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Because you asked for it! Oh, and if you haven't read the story yet, herein be spoilers.

————The Life She Never Recieved————

Grammar 50%
This story is actually quite baffling to me. Parts of it are written in perfectly, whilst others . . . not so much. Say this sentence:

It was Hearts and Hooves Day, a time that ponies always expected to be cheerful; even the weather was made to look perfect.

This bit is perfect. You seem to be one of the few who knows how to use a semicolon correctly! And yet, I also see things like this:

“Hello, Derpy. You’re a few minutes late” he jested.

To me, at least, it's a rather obvious error when the comma at the end of a quote is omitted. There should be a comma after "late." In general, all the punctuation about quotes is a little bit off. Reading up on grammar guidelines should help. The FiMFiction writing guide, in particular, is a great resource for these things; it's actually got a section devoted solely to dialogue punctuation.

+ Plot
The plot for the entire story is actually quite brilliant. In particular, I liked the way that you chose to subvert the popular conclusion of "happily ever after" and wrote something different instead. It has power in its uniqueness, and it makes this story stand out from the rest.

+ Ending
This relates to the plot, but it's significant enough that it warrants its own bullet point. The most powerful part of this story, by far, is the ending, both the false and real one. Personally, I cringed when I reached the false ending; romances never turn out that serendipitous! Luckily (or unluckily), this isn't the case for Derpy. People may disagree with me on this fact, but I'll take realistic over "happy ending" any day.

+ Show vs. Tell
Show vs. Tell is a concept wherein an author should, for the most part, stick to showing events as they occur, rather than telling readers directly what happened. You accomplished this brilliantly in this paragraph:

Frustration boiled to the surface and her things took a beating as she took out her feelings upon them. Now desperate to find it, she knocked chairs over and tore the place apart. It couldn’t be possible that she lost it. If somepony found it, it might be the end of her.

Some may say that this paragraph is out-of-character; I say that it just underlies that turmoil that Derpy is experiencing and emphasizes how important it is to her. This kind of stuff is what turns good writing great, and it's something I'm, in fact, still struggling with to this day.

– The Letter
I don't really buy into how the letter is weaved into the plot; it seems to make a plot hole in your story. Derpy wrote the letter to proclaim her love for Rainbow Dash; then she discovers that it's missing. There's no real reason for her to immediately suspect that it somehow fell into her mailbag, and somehow made its way to Rainbow Dash. Yes, it works, but it's not realistic. This is what I would call a contrived plot device.

– Tense Changes
I recognize that this story is written in past tense, and for the most part, it is. Paragraphs like this one, however, are particularly jarring:

When Derpy flaps her wings, they move about and jerk like a dog paddling in water. Her left shoulder still dragged down, even from a weight that was no longer there. More often than not, she almost causes accidents. She had to train herself to be extra careful, to make sure to scan her surroundings twice over. She eventually spotted the columns made of cloud and the gleaming flow of rainbow that splashed down to the earth.

I don't quite see a reason why this entire paragraph should not be written in past tense as well. Even when establishing prior knowledge, in this instance, I don't believe it is necessary to switch into present tense.

– Run-on Sentences
This may seem like another minor grammar issue, but I feel the need to make this a discreet point, as it actually can interfere with comprehension of prose significantly. Take the following paragraph:

She could tell a visitor the name of every resident of town and where they lived along with every street name too. But her mind was blank as her attention was so heavily focused on the pony that could turn flying into an art form and had shaken the sky before most other Pegasus foals even left Cloudsdale. This came at a painful cost as she went straight into a metal pole, a sign which proclaimed that the Everfree Forest was only 10 km away in the other direction. She had been listing to the side and she didn’t know it until she was walking on the left. Striking it with her head rattled her vision and almost made her slide on the mud and fall. Her front hoof pressed her bag to her chest so she wouldn’t let it drop.

Not every sentence in this paragraph is run-on, but quite a few of them are. When sentences go on and on like this and when they are uninterrupted by commas it's very easy to skim through the sentence and not read it fully.

– Oddly Specific
This actually is minor, but it's a problem with an easy fix; try not to be so overly specific with trivial details. Bits like "10 km away" and "half-liter of milk" really don't give any sense of scale, and they're unneeded in fiction, for the most part.

– Concision
The pace of this story is good, but it's bogged down at times by unneeded details and description. I come from a science background, so I may be biased, but concision has a lot of value in writing. Details such as Derpy's preference for fatty foods are not quite needed in this story and just add complication when it's really not needed. Even a fact like Derpy's incoordination is not entirely needed in this story because it's not immediately relevant to the plot. You shouldn't get rid of it entirely, but continuously referring back to it creates something of a Chekov's gun that is never shot.

————————

Enjoy your review! Feel free to reply or PM me if you have any questions or disputes.

Batbrony

Batbrony #8 · Mar 7th, 2015 · · ·

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BUMMER ENDING!!! Aside from that, this is without a doubt your best story to date, and I don't just say that because Derpy is my best pony. Your grammar is better here than ever before, your use of 'show vs. tell' was very good, and most importantly of all, you told a self-contained story that wasn't too ambitious, and that made for a more effective story than your previous entries. Like I said, that ending was a BUMMER, but your story MADE me feel that because it drew me in and had me invested. Admittedly, there were a few moments where Derpy's physical condition approached borderline-absurd levels, but that's mostly because it's in violation of my head canon for her, and everyone's open to their own interpretation of what life's like for her, or any other character for that matter, so I won't knock ya for a creative interpretation. All in all, thanks for the touching entry to our contest, Silver Letter, and awesome work on continuing to improve your writing!