Tinted Glass

Sunset Shimmer6,767 stories ·4,929 members

A young filly from a small town in the countryside travels to the capital to take the most important exam in her life. But what happened to inspire Sunset Shimmer to reach so high? She thinks she only needs herself, and perhaps that is true.

Chapters (1)

Comments ( 5 )

Viewing 1 - 50 of 5
- Newest First
- Oldest First

LiterallyAL

LiterallyAL #1 · Nov 5th, 2021 · · ·

This is a little short story to explain Sunset's mirror obsession... Made to be a one-shot.

EverfreePony

EverfreePony #2 · Dec 31st, 2021 · 1 · ·

I have to admit, I'm torn on what to think about this story. The ending and the whole premise of Sunset being corrupted in this way is great, and so are the little tidbits of lore here and there, such as the part about Sunset hatching a phoenix. However, it's clear you bit off more than you can chew when it comes to the execution of the story as a whole. In short, it's chaotic, and it spends very little time on the themes that it advertises.

You start of nicely by showing Sunset lost in the castle. It provides a good hook, sets the scene and does everything a finely-crafted opening should do. However, the second paragraph suddenly takes us back to when she first arrived to Canterlot to take the exam. It may confuse some, but in and of itself, it wouldn't be too much of a problem, even though a better transition or a line break wouldn't hurt.

However, you then proceed to do another jump and start expositioning the history of Sholes. Sadly, you do so in large blocky paragraphs that are very hard to look at, and this part takes up a good chunk of the story. Furthermore, most of it is an info dump. That is, exposition where the readers are flooded with so much information that they cannot remember anything, and the story suddenly completely shifts its focus, tone, and pacing. It's not that the information isn't interesting, but keep in mind that prose can convey only so much information at a time. You need to carefully choose what you want to convey and when, otherwise you obstruct the story's flow. In this case, the atmosphere you managed to build up is quenched by a history lesson. Another thing about info dumps is that they are pretty much emotionless, so despite all the space it takes up, the lengthly part doesn't make the audience root for Sunset more than a few sentences summarising her background would.

From then on, you kind of meander between Sunset taking the exam and between her history with Gilded till you settle back on the mirror part. For future reference, avoid info dumps and structure you stories better so that you don't need to jump from one thing to another just to get across what's at stake. And also, keep an eye on how your story is formatted.

Regarding some smaller errors, I didn't encounter anything recurring, though there's still quite a lot of random errors, including the occasional missing word or possessive, missing or incorrect placement of spaces and punctuation marks, and some inconsistencies (e.g. sun princess/Sun Princess). Most noticeable of the bunch are some typos and mixed-up words (composer/composure, Tardaus/Tartarus, remissness/reminisce, et cetera).

Also, watch out for the use of numerals in stories (50 foals). While there are some exceptions when numerals should be used (e.g. years, ammo calibers, names like DJ Pon-3), they are considered incorrect and distracting in most cases. Convey numbers using words instead. Also, I have to wonder where did so many orphans come from in such a little hamlet... seems pretty dark.

And this is all I wanted to mention. Let me know if anything was unclear or if you want me to elaborate on something.