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>>TitaniumDragon
>>Pascoite
>>Xepher
>>CoffeeMinion
Time for the explanation.
I didn't mention Flurry's age because I had no idea how old she could be. I'm not sure when you start feeling embarassed by your elders' behaviour, so I left it blank. I guess that, like time, it's relative.
What I should have mentionned and insisted on is that it's been a while since Flurry had been carried by Twi on her back, so her request at the end is supposed to have it both ways:
- Flurry wants to ease her Aunt's feelings by doing again smth they were used to do when she was a toddler
- Flurry is torn between her desire to grow and to become an adult, and the simple joy of feeling loved that comes with these embarassing behaviours.
And if it wasn't clear enough, Flurry's doesn't have a crack in her hoof at all.
The point with that was more or less to emulate what happened with Rarity and Sweetie Belle, when the former has a hard time to accept that the latter has grown up.
And honestly, I'm surprised that I passed the prelims. Voting and its mysteries.
>>Pascoite
>>Xepher
>>CoffeeMinion
Time for the explanation.
I didn't mention Flurry's age because I had no idea how old she could be. I'm not sure when you start feeling embarassed by your elders' behaviour, so I left it blank. I guess that, like time, it's relative.
What I should have mentionned and insisted on is that it's been a while since Flurry had been carried by Twi on her back, so her request at the end is supposed to have it both ways:
- Flurry wants to ease her Aunt's feelings by doing again smth they were used to do when she was a toddler
- Flurry is torn between her desire to grow and to become an adult, and the simple joy of feeling loved that comes with these embarassing behaviours.
And if it wasn't clear enough, Flurry's doesn't have a crack in her hoof at all.
The point with that was more or less to emulate what happened with Rarity and Sweetie Belle, when the former has a hard time to accept that the latter has grown up.
And honestly, I'm surprised that I passed the prelims. Voting and its mysteries.
On tonight's very special episode of Doing Hurtful Things To Your Waifu Theatre, it's:
Mai self-review (>>CoffeeMinion) pretty much sums up what I think this needs: a better/stronger resolution. I feel like this mostly worked at 750 words, as I tried to pick an idea that would truly fit within that limit and I only had to do a slight bit of sentence-jockeying to stay inside it. With that said, I'm pretty sure that rehydrating those few awkward sentences, plus adding a more fit conclusion, can get this up to 1000 without it feeling bloated.
(Oops, hit "post" before I was done...)
A Retrospective Asunder
Mai self-review (>>CoffeeMinion) pretty much sums up what I think this needs: a better/stronger resolution. I feel like this mostly worked at 750 words, as I tried to pick an idea that would truly fit within that limit and I only had to do a slight bit of sentence-jockeying to stay inside it. With that said, I'm pretty sure that rehydrating those few awkward sentences, plus adding a more fit conclusion, can get this up to 1000 without it feeling bloated.
(Oops, hit "post" before I was done...)
...continuing with fresh post so people get noted...
>>TitaniumDragon
I can see how a better wrap-up would make Granny's perspective pay off more. Thanks for commenting!
>>Fenton
I agree that it's currently heavy on setup. Having more words on FimFiction to flesh the later bits out should help. Having a long description on FimFiction to help establish the context should also help.
>>Xepher
I'm glad that this felt realistic. It's based loosely on a real experience I recently had with a now-former friend. It sucks because this sort of thing leaves lots of room for doubt about the friendship that came before. But in the context of this story, I think your thoughts about what Granny can offer are pretty apt; the Apple family is clearly pretty large, sprawling, and supportive, if not fully concentrated in or around Ponyville.
>>Pascoite
I've gotta say, it's awesome hearing this from you in a proverbial blind taste-test. ^^
>>TitaniumDragon
I can see how a better wrap-up would make Granny's perspective pay off more. Thanks for commenting!
>>Fenton
I agree that it's currently heavy on setup. Having more words on FimFiction to flesh the later bits out should help. Having a long description on FimFiction to help establish the context should also help.
>>Xepher
I'm glad that this felt realistic. It's based loosely on a real experience I recently had with a now-former friend. It sucks because this sort of thing leaves lots of room for doubt about the friendship that came before. But in the context of this story, I think your thoughts about what Granny can offer are pretty apt; the Apple family is clearly pretty large, sprawling, and supportive, if not fully concentrated in or around Ponyville.
>>Pascoite
I've gotta say, it's awesome hearing this from you in a proverbial blind taste-test. ^^
>>moonwhisper
Nice job with the medal.
I did want to reply to one specific thing in your discussion, and that's the fact that you intentionally left lots of things vague, like what happened to Fluttershy and what the relationships between the various characters are. It's easy to say you won. and thus you must have done everything right, but I'd call this a mistake. There are good and bad things to be vague about, and I'd have to count these as detrimental.
If you just want the story to have a cool twist to it, so that all that information is tangential to the plot and isn't critical in defining the story's power, that'd be fine. But you're writing a very emotional piece here. The whole point is to delve into what emotional investments the key characters have so that the reader will develop the same investments and empathize with them. But I don't know what to feel about any of this, except the default generic level of sad that comes along with a character death. Twilight's obviously broken up about it enough to go to these lengths, but I don't know why. Did she have a particularly close relationship with Fluttershy? You've singled her out, so either she was lost in a uniquely tragic way, or she was unusually close to Twilight. Does she get Thorax to impersonate the others at times? How close of a friend is she to Thorax? He seems nervous, so I can't imagine he's done this much before, if at all, but he's not treating it as if it's a chore, so at least you have a little there.
This just felt like one of those shipping stories where I have to take it for granted that two characters are in love without the story doing anything to demonstrate or justify it. So you're right that there are no answers as to what happened (less important unless that's what makes Fluttershy's death noteworthy) and what the relationships are (more important), in that the story doesn't even hint at answers to them. But I think this weakens the story, and there are ways to address that without much word count.
Still, it's a strong concept, and I ranked it pretty high on my ballot.
As to setting up the clues, this is a good strategy. Whenever I have a story that makes a gradual reveal like this, I do a very short-form outline where I lay out what clues I want to give the reader, then decide in what order it makes the most sense to give them. Ideally, you'd start with the most mundane ones or the ones that a reader is unlikely to catch the significance of until they see it in retrospect (though if you make those too fleeting, the reader will have forgotten about them by the time they could have understood them), then progress to the most shocking or context-changing.
Finally, a bit more about my misinterpretation of what was going on. I'm not that good at picking up subtleties, so if you think I'm an outlier on this, fair enough. But I thought Twilight was the fake one, because Fluttershy's initial worry was if the party wouldn't be good enough for her, and since I couldn't imagine Twilight ever getting upset about quiet, one-on-one birthday wishes, my mind immediately went to "that's not Twilight." It might help if you fine-tuned what Fluttershy's fears are so that it does sound in character for that to be a potential conflict with Twilight.
Nice job with the medal.
I did want to reply to one specific thing in your discussion, and that's the fact that you intentionally left lots of things vague, like what happened to Fluttershy and what the relationships between the various characters are. It's easy to say you won. and thus you must have done everything right, but I'd call this a mistake. There are good and bad things to be vague about, and I'd have to count these as detrimental.
If you just want the story to have a cool twist to it, so that all that information is tangential to the plot and isn't critical in defining the story's power, that'd be fine. But you're writing a very emotional piece here. The whole point is to delve into what emotional investments the key characters have so that the reader will develop the same investments and empathize with them. But I don't know what to feel about any of this, except the default generic level of sad that comes along with a character death. Twilight's obviously broken up about it enough to go to these lengths, but I don't know why. Did she have a particularly close relationship with Fluttershy? You've singled her out, so either she was lost in a uniquely tragic way, or she was unusually close to Twilight. Does she get Thorax to impersonate the others at times? How close of a friend is she to Thorax? He seems nervous, so I can't imagine he's done this much before, if at all, but he's not treating it as if it's a chore, so at least you have a little there.
This just felt like one of those shipping stories where I have to take it for granted that two characters are in love without the story doing anything to demonstrate or justify it. So you're right that there are no answers as to what happened (less important unless that's what makes Fluttershy's death noteworthy) and what the relationships are (more important), in that the story doesn't even hint at answers to them. But I think this weakens the story, and there are ways to address that without much word count.
Still, it's a strong concept, and I ranked it pretty high on my ballot.
As to setting up the clues, this is a good strategy. Whenever I have a story that makes a gradual reveal like this, I do a very short-form outline where I lay out what clues I want to give the reader, then decide in what order it makes the most sense to give them. Ideally, you'd start with the most mundane ones or the ones that a reader is unlikely to catch the significance of until they see it in retrospect (though if you make those too fleeting, the reader will have forgotten about them by the time they could have understood them), then progress to the most shocking or context-changing.
Finally, a bit more about my misinterpretation of what was going on. I'm not that good at picking up subtleties, so if you think I'm an outlier on this, fair enough. But I thought Twilight was the fake one, because Fluttershy's initial worry was if the party wouldn't be good enough for her, and since I couldn't imagine Twilight ever getting upset about quiet, one-on-one birthday wishes, my mind immediately went to "that's not Twilight." It might help if you fine-tuned what Fluttershy's fears are so that it does sound in character for that to be a potential conflict with Twilight.
So, I was an idiot and spaced out on creating this round's folder over in the FIMFiction Writeoff group. I've fixed that now.
If you kept editing your story and it grew in size enough to migrate from here to FIMFiction, please add it to the group so that your fellow authors can check out your final draft!
In order to add stories to the group you need to be a "Contributor", which just means you have to have written a story for the Writeoffs at some point. (We locked it against random submissions a while back due to spam.) If you have any problems adding your story there, PM me on FIMFiction and I'll get you hooked up.
If you kept editing your story and it grew in size enough to migrate from here to FIMFiction, please add it to the group so that your fellow authors can check out your final draft!
In order to add stories to the group you need to be a "Contributor", which just means you have to have written a story for the Writeoffs at some point. (We locked it against random submissions a while back due to spam.) If you have any problems adding your story there, PM me on FIMFiction and I'll get you hooked up.