Editing completed · 10:12pm Jun 5th, 2016
I have finished a large round of editing on my story Second Chances, Many Changes. as I stated before, those who have already read the chapters likely don't need to go back and read it (though since this was based on some critical feedback, it would be nice if those who made those comments could peruse them and see if there is any improvement). This does not change the plot going forward, so if you don't re-read them, the rest of the story will still make perfect sense.
Here is a summary of the edits: WARNING: MAJOR SPOILERS up to and including chapter 35 abound here, so you may want to skip this if you are a first time reader and not up to chapter 35 yet.
The edits were largely in chapters 30 to 34. This was to improve on the lead-up to the Sweetie-is-a-changeling subplot. The main issue I tried to address was that it was too easy for the reader to guess Sweetie was the changeling. The initial argument I had made was that so long as it was logical for the characters to have to figure things out, it was okay for things to be more obvious to the reader. The more I thought on this, the more I realized that this can pull some readers out of the story. Many readers like to solve the mystery along with the characters, or simply feel awkward when they know a main plot point and have to wait for the characters to catch up. So the edits were made with this in mind:
Chapter 30: Tweaked the conversation between Sweetie and Candy near the start and did an overhaul of the conversation between Candy and Cheerilee.
Chapter 31: Adjusted the conversation between Sweetie and Candy near the start.
Chapter 32: Very minor tweaks. Also made a minor wording change to better reflect canon.
Chapter 33: Adjustments to Sweetie's dialog in various places. Also revised the conversation with the Crusaders.
Chapter 34: Minor canon adjustment in opening scene with Candy, Rarity, and Sweetie. Adjusted the final scene at the castle.
I also made this unrelated adjustment: a sharp-eyed reader had pointed out that back in chapter 4 I had claimed Rachel had moved into the city before she was born but in subsequent chapters she states she was very young instead. The latter is the correct version and I have edited chapter 4 to fix this.
