~ ~ ~ ~ they/them
Coco Pommel is going to a new city, a surprise at first, taking time to process. But something serious has been going on around Canterlot High; An anonymous person going by “Cupid” has been terrorizing the mane 7 but most importantly... the entire school! These seemingly harmless pranks and inconveniences soon unravel to be something much bigger. Something... personal and only she can make sense of. To top it all off, she has a week before she moves away forever. Can Coco uncover this mystery in time and get to the bottom of this? Or will this young lady be forced to depart, leaving this heartache... unsolved?
Cover art is made by me.
If it's your birthday today, well- happy birthday!
Chapters (2)
this is awesome!
10755145
cking comment as well-
Thank you
for my first b
Yeah this one's a slow burn until the first day is over, that's when it picks up. Bear with me.
Well, I definitely didn’t see that ending coming... and neither did Coco, apparently. Great hook there!
The chapter is quite dynamic and fast-paced, though one needs a faster pace to give the scene a sense of urgency. Still, you need to strike the right balance between a fast pace and the amount of information conveyed, so it wouldn’t hurt to slow down your narrative a bit in some parts. Such tense moments also need some time to sink in, so showing the characters running, then throwing in a quick summary and then showing again doesn’t allow the tension to build up properly and make the readers to feel as if they are a part of the scene. It’s also good to throw in some extra information to allow the audience realise that something is wrong with Roma. (Right now it’s just Coco plainly telling us without any noticeable hints that Roma indeed acts sus.)
Watch out for tense inconsistencies. This is a very noticeable and very annoying error that tends to break the story’s flow pretty much instantly. You should write your story either in past or present tense, but not both (especially not in a single scene). It doesn’t matter which one you choose, so go with the one that you feel fits the story and your style better. Avoid mixing the two like the plague, it’s a major turn-off for many readers. Here’s just a small example of mixed tenses. Past tense is in bold, present tense is underlined.
Furthermore, regarding some other technical issues, I’ve noticed some recurring problems in direct speech and associated dialogue tags. However, for the sake of keeping this comment moderately short, I won’t elaborate on these here. However, I can send you a short guide on how to deal with these, if you want.
Also, hyphens should be used only to connect separate words, such as in forty-two. If you want to convey that a character abruptly stopped speaking, use an em dash (—) or a double hyphen (--). Some manuals of style prefer an en dash in such instances, but I suggest sticking to em dashes on this site. And, lastly, if you want to convey that a character shouted, then the dialogue tag saying so and an exclamation mark are more than enough. No need for CAPS and bold lettering.
And that’s pretty much all I wanted to say about this chapter. Anything unclear? Any additional questions?
10762462
Thank you for some tips and point of view,
However, I chopped up the first day to make it easier to pay attention for those with a short attention span- like myself, to introduce the characters and overall premise. This will happen within the first few chapters. Once the mystery element of the story kicks in, you bet this will explain things in detail (not all the time) and slow down. Coco isn't focusing on her surroundings and prefers short conversations because there's no need for her to be concerned or suspicious of anything yet, later I'll make these small pretty noticeable without directly telling the reader.
But I agree with you, 100%, setting this story like it's in the past is simple and easier to describe... though I feel explaining things as they happen make everything more tense. I'm trying to work on that, don't worry.
Sometimes I feel annoyed too.
Speech is a little difficult for me, I'm working solo and wondering how one might talk is coming from one mind. But nobody is good at writing dialogue, it's just too easy to nitpick someone for it but tough to write it yourself.
And you just insulted my flavour of writing- I like hyphens and I enjoy SHOWING THIS AS SHOUTING! No other writing site I use gave me this feature.
I've changed how I write enough. I'm tired of altering how I make stories to please people, I'm going to stand out instead of being a doormat to critics. Will it effect my likes/dislikes ratio because I've disappointed someone. Yes. But I don't want to lose my writing identity and style.
“I'd rather die standing then live kneeling”
You already made a longer review than I hoped. This tells me I'm doing something wrong. Maybe I will be a failed author writing stories that nobody reads; just know, I'm going to be proud while doing that. Thank you for taking the time to help me.
edit:
I will take what you said to consideration, and try to do things your way but make it comfortable to me
10762842
To be fair, you don’t need to slow down and prolong this as much as you might think. If you elaborated on the spots you skimmed and added some extra details here and there, then I think the chapter would end up in the ballpark of 700-800 words, and it’d already do much better job at introducing the characters. That’s still a very short chapter that should take just a couple minutes to read through. (That, and you can also make sure that you keep the readers interested and focused. You know, some people are able to go through a large novel in a day not because of long attention span, but because they cannot stop reading it.
)
Great.
However, know that the tense you use doesn’t say anything about the story happening in the past or right now. It really doesn’t matter which one you use (pick the one that feels better), but make sure that you keep it consistent. Yes, I’m repeating myself, I know.
Oh, your dialogues are quite fine, actually. The issue I mentioned is purely technical in nature and concerns punctuation and capitalisation. In other words, it’s not a matter of style, but rather of a couple rigid rules of grammar. (It’s also really rare to see somebody get these right on the first try.)
You’re welcome, I try to help wherever I can. As for you being a failed author, I don’t think so. You definitely have what it takes to write a good story, judging by the almost in media res opening and the cliffhanger of sorts at the end. Also, improving doesn’t mean that you need to sacrifice your writing identity and style—quite the contrary, in fact. All you need to do is hone and polish your style properly. Also also, most of the things I pointed out are not really a matter of style, but formal rules of grammar that shouldn’t be broken.
10763157
Ohh you just had grammar issues and felt everything was rough and unpolished? Don't all stories start out like this? When I'm well done with Cupid, I will go back and touch up on it. I read it three times before publishing the chapters. But I promise once it's finished I'll fix the jankiness of it. Also I meant
TALKING IN THE BIG SIZE WHEN SOMEONE IS SHOUTING! and making the text tiny when someone is whispering. I just think it's fun to do that! Anyway, thank you for reading, I'll improve over time but for now... poor quality content
10763179
Well, not exactly everything and it wasn’t just grammar issues, but more or less, yes.
Not really. It’s normal for a first draft to be rough and unpolished because you should write first and edit later. However, editing should still come before publishing, and so readers should see an n-th draft as the finished product. Publishing an unedited story is like walking outside before putting your trousers on. The disadvantage of publishing an imperfect story is that you have only one chance to impress the potential readers. They’ll likely never return, even if you improve the story later. However, what’s done’s done
Still, it’s praiseworthy that you read through it a couple times. You might also want to pull it through some spellcheckers such as Grammarly (even though it doesn’t really work well with stories) and ideally look around for a human editor. They might be able to catch issues that slipped you, plus they can often point out and suggest things that you can then use to improve the story or at least get some inspiration. (I stress that a good editor just suggests changes, points out the issues and explains them. Some editors tend to just rewrite the story how they’d like it. These folks are not really good at their job.)
10763337
Alright, I'll work on making sure it's better to read. I'm still a little sad how this looks as if it is lazily written- I really try. Some stories are structured perfectly without any grammar problems... their narrative falls flat and poorly executed. Some are the opposite; where they have an amazing story but present too many grammar issues. I bring this up because... I don't know know where this story will fall on, and it is making me nervous how pressured I am to aim for perfection.
10763362
If it assuages your worries a bit, it's clear a lot of time and care still went into this. Seriously, I've seen many stories in my lifetime, and I can tell when the author just threw a couple sentences together and deemed it passable. That's not really the case here. The issues that I pointed out here don't stem from laziness, but rather a lack of information on how to do these things properly.
Oh, I apologise for stressing you out. And to be honest, it's ideal if a story doesn't fall on anything. That's another advantage of showing your story to a few beta-readers and an editor first. They help you make sure that everything is fine with the story, so you can be sure that it's good and you gave it your best.