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Summary

While staying after school, Sunset Shimmer encounters Babs Seed, who has fallen into a rather problematic predicament.  She cajoles Sunset into absurd and comedic lengths in order to get herself out of trouble.

First Impressions

The story gets off to a rough start with two very unnecessary paragraphs, but then quickly jumps into the main conflict.  One of the first things that becomes immediately evident, though, is the constantly switching verb tenses from past to present.  It is always present, and just when the reader is starting to get really immersed in the action, it shows up again, like a bright frightening neon sign.

I feel like the inciting incident for the conflict (a case of mistaken identity, with Babs being at the wrong place at the wrong time) was perhaps a bit cliché, but it doesn’t bother me too much because of the comedic nature of the story.  From there we get into Babs’ utterly silly plot to get out of trouble.  The comedy here works, escalating very quickly into the ridiculous.

Ultimately, though, I have to ask, why these two?  Why Babs, and why Sunset?  Why is Babs even there?  What brought her from Manehatten?  And from a literary standpoint, what does she bring to the story that couldn’t be filled by any other character?  The entire story could still happen if it were, say, Apple Bloom.  Or Silver Spoon.  Or Snails. Or a completely original character.

Ratings by Category

Characters: 3/10.  I honestly felt like the choice of canon characters here was a bit of a waste.  Why Sunset Shimmer and Babs Seed, if we weren’t going to explore the things that make Sunset Shimmer and Babs Seed unique?

None of Babs’ amusing physicality is present in the story; not once does she blow a puff of air to knock too-large bangs out of her eyes.

Ultimately, this entire story could have been told with any two combinations of characters, without a major change in the plot itself. That tells me the author missed an opportunity to showcase these two characters’ uniqueness.

Setting: 5/10.  The setting neither adds to nor detracts from the action.  It’s not a distraction, which is good, but it does nothing to add to the tension or conflict.

Dialogue: 5/10.  The comedy elements of the dialogue actually work, though there are some pieces of dialogue that come off as a bit awkward and clunky.  The entire scene with the police officer is pretty funny. 

Plot Structure: 7/10.  The beginning of the story is a bit rocky (consider starting right when the action starts with Babs entrance, rather than putting in a few awkward paragraphs before Babs bursts in) but then slowly ramps up to the climax.  The entire encounter with the police officer grows more and more ridiculous, with Babs playing the ‘yes, and’ game with every objection the officer comes up with.  Ultimately, the pacing works well.

Grammar: 3/10.  There is a single, glaring error that stands out and ultimately distracts from true enjoyment of the story, and that is tense switching.  Every few paragraphs the characters time travel from the past to the present (once even to the future!).  It’s so jarring that it detracts from the otherwise solid elements of the plot.  I’ll put a longer note about tense switches below.

In addition, the structure of several sentences is confusing and flawed.  Consider:

  It was clear just by examining her, she had run all the way if the hands planted along her legs didn’t give it away or that she was panting heavily trying to catch her breath.

I get what this sentence is saying, but it’s just confusing and all over the place.  There are sentences like this throughout.  I would strongly recommend that the author read the entire story out loud before finishing editing.  When a sentence makes no sense out loud, in spoken dialogue, it makes no sense while reading. Reading out loud also makes you slow down and consider each word more carefully. It’s an effective technique for catching stuff like this.

Total: 4.6/10

Final Thoughts/Feedback:

Let’s address the biggest issue first.  I believe the author desperately needs a second editor.  I have noticed that the same editor works on each of the author’s stories.  I don’t know what value the editor brings to each story, and I would never suggest the author dismiss their editor.  But this story desperately needed a third pair of eyes, specifically somebody who is technically adept at grammar and other structural elements.  The author clearly needs to work on sentence structure and verb tenses.

I don’t know if it would help to be more specific, but here is an example of the problem.  This is the second paragraph:

It started off with Sunset Shimmer of all people, the first student to enter the band room. After school, the band room would be used by none other than the school’s top band: The Rainbooms, consisting of Sunset Shimmer and her best friends (Though Rainbow Dash insists she remains the band leader, much to the chagrin of the others). Sunset Shimmer was just answering a text from her friends, which she wanted to inform them she had the room reserved for them, when suddenly…

There are several tense switches here, from past to present and back again.  I recognize that grammar may not be the author’s highest priority, but as a reader, this is jarring and difficult to read.

If you’ll allow me, I’m going to rewrite that paragraph without the tense issues: 

Sunset Shimmer was the first student to enter the band room.  After school, the band room was often used by the school’s top band: The Rainbooms.  It consisted of Sunset Shimmer and her best friends (though Rainbow Dash insisted that she remained the band leader, much to the chagrin of the others).  Sunset Shimmer was just answering a text from her friends, informing them she had the room reserved.

Beyond that, a more technically minded editor would also serve to catch the odd sentence structures and other misspellings/misused words throughout.

Other than that, the story was fun and funny, but difficult to read.  I honestly couldn’t recommend it without significant structural changes, which would be fairly simple to make with a little time and effort.

Dear author, if you have further questions or would like further examples of what I’m writing about, please feel free to DM me.  My only goal is to see you succeed as a writer, and give you the feedback you need to do so.

Best Part: The amusing escalation in the conversation between Babs, the officer, and Sunset.  The conversation just keeps getting more and more ridiculous, and Sunset has to struggle to keep up.