Gilda’s Trial

By Duke of Canterlot

Reviewed by Rinnaul

This one is very short, so I’ll be skipping the commentary. Some spoilers in the Mood section.

Execution/Presentation
Point of view drifted in a strange way. While the story was predominantly third-person with a focus on Gilda, it also inserted Gilda’s thoughts directly into the narrative. While a third-person limited viewpoint will often include private thoughts with attributions such as “she thought”, this instead simply flows directly from Gilda’s actions, to her first-person thoughts, and back again.

Very little attention is given to setting the scene. In fact, I don’t recall any scenery beyond the brief descriptions of the basement Gilda wakes up in. Enough was said that I could still follow the action, however.

The flow was very choppy. There was very little variety in sentence structure, and every sentence expressed single thoughts. This writing style can work well in action scenes, where you want simple, rapid-fire pacing. However, in a longer narrative it will clash with the story’s overall pace and make it difficult to read.

Mood
This being a fakeout story, the goal was to establish a dark mood which threatened a gore/grimdark conclusion, and then subvert that during the climax by going for something more lighthearted. Unfortunately, the choppy writing and tendency towards “telling” makes it hard to invest myself in the initial setup, while the final scene comes off too harsh for the intended effect.

Grammar
Score: C

While there are few places where the spelling or grammar are outright incorrect, the entire story suffers from very weak grammar usage. Little sentence variety, repetition, and simple sentences combine to make an overall awkward structure. Let’s look at one section that really highlights the problem here (emphasis added):

Gilda was flying quickly out of Ponyville. Gilda wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. A few moments after she started, Gilda felt a sting on her neck. Gilda could no longer fly. Gilda felt herself fall but must have gone unconscious before she landed onto the ground.

Gilda woke up, where was she, the ground was made of stone and felt cold. Gilda certainly was no longer in the air. Gilda opened her eyes.

Eight sentences in a row, seven of which begin with the construction “Gilda (verb)”.

Tips
Work on your sentence variety and structure, and be aware of showing versus telling. Those will in turn improve your pacing and ability to deliver a mood. You have a good idea, it just falls short in its presentation.

If you’ll indulge me, as I’m hardly a master of the written word, here’s the quoted scene as I would have written it:

As she left the sham of a party, Gilda leapt from the ground to a house’s rooftop, sprinted for the peak, and took a leap as she crossed it. She spread her wings as she reached the open air, flapping them heavily to gain altitude and leave this stupid town behind as quickly as possible. But before she could get more than a few body-lengths above the ground, she felt a sharp prick on her neck. She started at the sudden pain, and then tried to right herself to have a look for who’d dare attack her, only to realize she was having trouble moving her wings. As numbness overtook her body, she fell to the ground, but was already too far gone to feel the impact.

When Gilda woke, she found herself lying on a cold stone floor, a far cry from the warm air or even sunlit ground she’d been expecting. With a groan, she opened her eyes.

With more variety in sentence structure, and longer sentences which better fit your pace, the story is a smoother read. Additionally, rather than simply telling the reader each thing that happens, we allow them to experience it, which leads to more investment in what’s happening and a stronger connection to the mood the story wants to establish.

Rating
Needs Work.

The story seems to have been a quick exercise in Slice of Life/Comedy with a Dark fakeout setup. It looks as if it was written quickly, with little effort going into proofreading or editing. However, it has the potential to be a really great little fakeout story that, while it might wind up rehashing the final scene of Griffon The Brush-Off, could also build upon it.

I’d actually really look forward to seeing a rewrite of this.

Thanks for the review!
I will likely edit this someday.
Admittedly, I spent about an hour at most writing the story.