Title:           Blank Book
Author:          notkickass222urmom
Pastebin link:   http://pastebin.com/mMHgRSA8
First Edit:      Tuesday 5th of August 2014 01:43:08 PM CDT
Last Edit:       Tuesday 5th of August 2014 01:43:08 PM CDT

http://www.fimfiction.net/story/188766/blank-book
 
 
>blinking at the pages of the blank book. It was an odd book, completely blank
Is your average follower so stupid you have to mention twice that the book is blank?
>completely unreadable due to the lack of text
Scratch that. Thrice.
>She turned another page—yes, it too was blank. An empty, boundless, blank expanse where beautiful black bunches of text should have been.
2deep4me
Is this what you call purple prose? Genuine question.
 
Twilight examines this book to find out whether it contains anything. If Twilight is not certain, why do you state at the beginning that the book is blank and still focus so much on describing the blankness of every single page? Doing both is too much.
I am bored so far but out of respect I will try to properly read the story instead of just skimming through it.
 
>Other than that, it was undamaged, completely devoid of marks, scratches, or burns.
I am not a native English speaker and not very good at it. Still, I feel like there are too many commas in this sentence.
 
>Its leather cover told Twilight where it was from—only the Griffon Empire bound their books with leather.
The language is good so far. It could be better stylistically.
 
>No one answered her. She heard a shout for another bucket of water, which she dismissed right away.
This makes the entire scene unnecessarily awkward. Talking loud is still believable for her but expecting a response? You hint that there are ponies nearby but this is not the type of question you would ask someone else.
Water buckets... Damaged books... The type of foreshadowing I like. I have already a few ideas.
 
Why would Twilight care so much for a blank book?
>Its being empty made it a curiosity, one that she needed to explore at all costs.
Good timing, albeit not a believable motive.
 
>the alicorn
I should be optimistic. You didn’t write ‘the purple alicorn’.
 
 
 
>Nothing grandiose, though—she would have noticed a particularly strong aura emanating from it by default.
You sure love the dash. I know, terrible joke.
The language is good and enjoyable to read. The story remains dull.
 
>Still, curiosity gnawed at her. She had to check, just to be certain.
The anticipation translates well to the reader even though I obviously expect the page to be blank.
>Predictably, the pages were still bare of words
Good, no asspulls.
 
>“Twilight?” she heard Applejack’s voice say to her. “Ah think it’s safe to go inside now.”
The plot reveal begins.
 
I do not like the dialogue. Let me give you two examples:
>“Did... did you find anything? Any books, I mean? Safe books?”
This does not sound much like Rainbow Dash to me. Too cautious and timid.
>“What’s it about?”
I would imagine Rarity pronouncing the is. Her language is formal, elegant and refined. 'what's it' sounds too blunt.
Perhaps you should invest more time in the dialogue.
 
 
 
Honestly, I am a bit confused. I assume this is after Tirek burned down the library. Why does Twilight wait so long until 'it is safe to go inside', spending the entire time searching for undamaged books outside and analyzing the only one she finds? As a powerful alicorn who represents the element of magic and has her ability in the field plastered on her flanks and when taking into consideration her love for the library I would expect her to be active instead of waiting until 'it is safe'. Keep in mind that after the destruction of the library she spent quite some time fighting, returning magic and most importantly singing and celebrating. The flame was small. There are absolutely no reasons why she would wait outside. The entire scenario just doesn't make any sense to me.
Well, not the entire. At least I can come up with possible explanations why this is the only intact book and she never noticed it in her library. It is not hers, someone else brought it after the destruction.
Hopefully you will prove my doubts wrong. Hopefully I am an awful reader instead of you being a bad writer.
 
>“While I was looking at this blank book,” Twilight told her friends as they gathered around her. “I had something of... an epiphany, I guess you could say. I don’t know how this book came to be in my possession, nor do I know what its purpose was. For everything I know, it was just a blank book that a careless griffon printer accidentally boxed with a bunch of other books. I do know one thing, though—I need to move on. We need to move on. It won’t be immediate, and it won’t be quick, and it certainly won’t be easy...” Twilight paused, and took a breath. “And it needs to start sometime. So how about now?”
Yes, work on your dialogue. This sounds like a Regidar who tries hard to write correctly and not use a swear word in every single sentence, not like Twilight Sparkle.
 
 
 
>“Chapter one...”
I am in fucking tears now, what a masterfully crafted story, deeper than the Mariana Trench. Decent but rather generic end in the sense that this is one of the first possibilities I would think about myself.
 
Overall the story is decent. I would give it a 5/10. The strongest point was its language, the weakest points were the dialogue and that the story did not make much sense to me. It seems to be written not for the sake of telling a worthwhile story but for the sake of writing something. Something people would care about, therefore it deals with a contemporary popular subject. The story still failed to be memorable.
