A longer, better explaination of the Do-Over · 5:09pm Jan 23rd, 2013
I’ve deleted A Canterlot Gift and A Canterlot Tea Party from my FimFiction archive. There are a couple different overlapping philosophies that made me really decide to sit down and pull them.
The thing is, as any kind of artist, you’re going to make a ton of stuff that you’re not completely happy with. Part of creation is accepting the fact that you will not work to a hundred percent efficiency as making every single thing an absolute masterpiece. You have to try your best when you’re not operating at your best. You have to be able to work without being inspired to work. You have to accept failures as part of the learning process. Get through the bad days with the hope that you’ll eventually hit the good days.
Gift and Tea Party were both my bad days. My off work. the stuff I felt like I had to get through to get to the good part. I thought around and around and around them for months, trying to perfect and refine them into something presentable. I was locked into the mindset: “this is what has to happen. I have to do this. There is no other way around this problem. I have to suck it up and swallow the pain.”
The result was those two chapters. Both had their own merits, but both just existed because they HAD to.
Not because I wanted them too.
I realized the other day that I had become so obsessed with doing things “right” that I had forgotten a much more important thing about storytelling. About the way that I approach a story, and how I work to make things fun and interesting.
You should not sit down with the mindset “I have to come up with a creepy scene so I can come up with a rescue scene.” When you sit down at the computer, the first thought should not be “I want to build a good structure.”
When you sit down to write, your first and foremost thought should be “I want to write a good story.”
Writing a story, to me, is finding the love and connection you have to what you want to say. It’s not about clicking facts off a checklist. It’s not about this happening, that happening, and then also this happening. Everything that happened in Gift and Tea Party is technically ‘canon’ and a ‘fact’ of the story. But if I wasn’t interested in telling the story, then why in the world would people be interested in reading it?
So I stopped. I stopped right dead and told myself no. It shouldn’t and doesn’t have to be like this. Total do-over. We’re skipping past the bullshit and getting right to the stuff I want to say. I took down the Gift and Tea Party so the pacing didn’t shit itself as we went a completely different direction. Because once you have the story you want to tell, there’s no reason to kick all of structure in the teeth.
Canterlot Gift and Tea Party can still be read, if you’re still interested. Gift can be read here, and Canterlot Tea Party can be found here.
As long as they're still up to read, I'm down for this. It's always a shame when good effort goes to waste.
You've kinda got off topic with the story. I mean, first the were running away, then searching for the elements, then trying to find ways to defeat the Shadow Stallion, and now they're having tea parties and being all royal and stuff. It's confusing!
Teacher, teach me about structure!
Alright, that's fair.
That said, I have a lot of catching up to do... Oh mai...
743847
But, written well enough, an author could get away with any and all complete topic changes.
Yeah, there was all those problems too
744265
Um... like, what about it? It's a pretty broad topic, lots of way to approach the discussion.
744340 Potato.
747777
NEVER
*smokebomb*
mspaintadventures.com/storyfiles/hs2/05533.gif
748048
GIVE ME A POTATO! (or meatball).
Just a question, did you change any other chapter to fit this new strecture?
I do like those chapters. I understand why you thought important to show this characters reacting to such a big change of environment. This idyllic Canterlot shows how complex your world is, makes sense. But yeah maybe you overdid it just a bit.