TA Class to remember

• MLP: FiM
• Romance
• Slice of Life

A short jaunt through a long life

• Sex
• Profanity
• Alt. Universe
• OC

Shirlendra · 2.8k words  ·  11  0 · 284 views

A Class To Remember

by Shirlendra

Summary

A short tale about a mare who finds her way through it all. Along the way, she might even find that elusive thing that many search for.

Initial Thoughts

An OC Romance story. One with Profanity and SEX.

This one has a lot going against it, if I’m being honest. It looks like it’s 100% OCs, so without the benefit of regular show characters, it’ll be entirely up to the author’s skill to carry the weight. On top of that, multiple red tags. Usually, a bad sign just in general.

Let’s see if they can pull this off.

My General Reaction

Even after reading this story, I don’t know what to think of it. It’s taken a month for me to fully digest it and come up with an opinion. The real problem with this story is its length. There’s so little story that there’s just not a lot to say about it.

But, alright. What is it? What happens? What’s this all about?

Gloryhorn is a mare going to school. School of Friendship? Regular school? Unknown. She has two friends who make appearances in the story. The first is a dragon named Infernus, and the second is a zebra mare named Umbana. Gloryhorn seems to be in an off-and-on-again relationship with Umbana, which rapidly goes off-again as Gloryhorn says something insensitive… I suppose… which causes Umbana to leave her for a couple of years.

Yes. Years. Despite being so short, the story covers years of time, and it’s just as jarring as you think it sounds.

Eventually, they get back together again, and have the courage to face Gloryhorn’s parents with their relationship. And that’s it. That’s the whole story.

There’s a lot of little things that bug me about the story. The dialogue is really rough, on a technical level. Almost none of it is properly tagged, or what tags exist are misused or put together with bad use of commas and periods. An editor would do good to take another look at this one.

The characters are… fine. Just fine. They exist, and they have some character to them, but they are STRANGLED by the brevity of the story itself, which is my biggest criticism. I might make a stink about the use of profanity and sexual innuendo/language as well. Not because I’m a prude, but because they add nothing to the story.

And that’s it. This is an outline of a better/longer story.

Technicals

3/5 – Dialogue Tags Need Work
Almost every single piece of dialogue needs work. If the tags aren’t missing, they are misused. It’s very consistent across the entire story. There’s some very awkward paragraph structuring as well where the main character’s thought process shifts, leading to several incomplete and confusingly-worded sentences.

Story/Plot/Pacing

3/5 – Pacing oddly rushed and slow
The story takes place over the course of an indeterminate number of years, but at least a few. And yet, despite the time span, it’s only about two-thousand words long. The truncated timeline takes away much of the buildup and drama of the relationship at the heart of the story.

Characters

3/5 – One note characters
There isn’t much to each of the characters, but that’s honestly a major fault of the pacing. There’s signs that each of these characters have character, but they don’t have anywhere near the time necessary to actually show us this.

Final Word and Rating

A Class To Remember is, ironically, an unmemorable outing best used as a skeleton for a longer, better story. There’s little here to do more than distract for the ten-plus minutes it might take to read.

To the author: Doublecheck your editing, especially dialogue tags. Those were the most obvious fixable issues I found while reading, and those are always the kinds of mistakes that take me out of a reading experience. The best advice I can give in general terms though is to WRITE MORE. This story could have worked if it was about ten times the current length, and gave the characters more time to breathe and develop. Writing prompt or no, quickwrite or no, there really is a kernel of a good story here that just dies because it needed further development.

I want that to be the takeaway here: This story is a good starting place. It is a foundation you could build from. But, as is, it leaves something to be desired.

Feel free to comment below.

<For Archive Purposes: 4.8/10>

Thanks Ninja!

I'll discuss this more in depth with you soon!