[FFML] [MLP-FiM] Pinkie's Secret

[Brian Randall]

Hmm....

On Thu, Sep 13, 2012 at 9:43 AM, Mythril Moth
<mythrilmoth at mythrilmoth.net>wrote:

>
> Random, pointless, utterly too short...this didn't feel like a finished
> story. It felt like an IDEA for a story.
>

Actually, for Fox, this was a cut above the rest for all those standards.
 It's longer than the typical Fox fic, has more solid grammar....  I
couldn't guess on the content, since I don't watch the show in question,
but it's a 'masks' fic at a glance, so that's hard to judge anyway.

And unlike most Fox fics, this one implies more without actually needing it
to be written.  I would tag it spamfic, personally, just on length and the
general 'shock' value it's meant to invoke -- but rather than just bash on
Fox, I'm going to point out that this _is_ an improvement.

So, Fox, some quick grammar pointers; I'm not offering a line-by-line, but
when you lead into dialog/narration, you seem to use periods when you
should connect the two with a comma.  Here's some examples:

A) "I can say something in dialog and do something else in narration, if
they're distinct sentences."  Demonstrating the truth of his words, Saotome
Ranma effortlessly backflipped to the dojo rafters to dangle by his ankles.

B) "Wow, more example dialog," the middle Tendo sister, Nabiki, sighed.

C) "Now, now," the eldest Tendo sister, Kasumi, chided gently.  Smiling
softly, she reminded her younger sister, "We don't get much work these
days, so even this kind of role is better than nothing!"

D) Rubbing her forehead, Akane groaned, "Is this what we've come to?"

E) "So I'm just," the pig-tailed martial artist said slowly, swinging from
the ceiling and narrowing his eyes, "going to hang here for the entire
scene?"

So--  A demonstrates dialog and narration as complete (separate) sentences,
so the dialog ends with a period.  Ostensibly, either sentence could stand
on its own.  B shows how the two are entangled; the narration is an
incomplete sentence, but that's okay because it's attached to the dialog
(which also is incomplete, but that's okay, since it's spoken).  C is just
another example showing both leading into narration from dialog, and then
the opposite.  D exists just to show narration leading into dialog only.  E
shows the dialog being split into two parts with the narration in the
middle.

All should be valid, but note capitalization (I used somewhat clumsier
wording just to avoid having proper nouns -- so it would be clearer).

There's a bit more to it than this, but these examples should give you an
idea.

-- 
Brian Randall
--
Yrne awaits those with the courage to seek it.
--
I write fanfiction. Too much of it. You can read it here, on my terrible
webpage:
http://www.soulriders.net/brian/
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