Well, I sure hope he's right · 1:03pm Mar 16th, 2012
Let me put one thing first: I am not happy with the second chapter of Dude, We're Ponies. At all.
I always thought that the first chapter was the hard part. That you only need to get a good premise in place and that the plot would logically follow from it. Oh, boy, was I wrong. Chapter one was the easy part.
The lack of quality for chapter two was not for a lack of trying, let me tell you that. I had six pages. I hated four of those, so I rewrote them. them I hated the whole thing, so I rewrote the whole thing. Then I tried to take the plot in a different direction, which also didn't work out.
I sort of panicked, as I felt like I was letting you all down (which, admit it, I did). But a good friend of mine, an experienced Pokemon fanficcer, told me that the second chapter always sucks, as that's the boring part where you map out the direction the actual plot will be taking for the next few chapters.
So I just went with the version I least hated, tried to polish it a little, and published it. It's not great, but at least I have the plot going where I want it to go, and I'm pretty sure I'll be able to make it up to you on the third chapter.
I've learned not to publish a single letter before I got at least three good chapters in place. Your faithful student, Kayeka.
What I usually do is I just keep writing until I can't write anymore. After I just spur out EVERYTHING, I go back and fix EVERYTHING. A good tip I received a while ago is that you should just keep writing and don't look back. Your first draft will always be a piece of crap, but that's okay; I guarantee you Charles Dickens didn't write Oliver Twist in one go. Just write what comes to you and fix it up later. I usually just do that, and it ends up to be about two chapters anyways, I just have to split them up.
What you may need to do is completely map out where you want to go, seeing as you wanted to change the direction of the plot. If you know where you're going before you write. It will save a lot of frustration for those times when you can't seem to get something to sound right, which will usually be in your second draft! Isn't that swell?
If you'd like some more tips, or just want to bounce things off of someone, I'm always just a PM away. Good luck!
33663
Thanks for the encouragement. I did the whole writing/rewriting part, but it was after three rewrites that I still wasn't satisfied that I started considering taking the plot in a different direction. I eventually decided against, as I actually liked my old idea, but I still had to get this scene out of the way, which I just couldn't do well, it seemed.
Well, I learned from it, at the very least. That sure was the very last time I ever tried to juggle more then 4 characters on a single stage.
33667
Glad to help. I've yet to read the chapter, as I'm working a story of my own at the moment as just a warm up for when I get my planned 200k story started, but once I get a moment I shall. I'll give some constructive ciritism to keep in mind for your next chapter.
I know that feel bro. I have to agree out of the chapters I have done for my story, the second chapter is ALWAYS the hardest to write.
33675 I can always use some constructive criticism.
33730 Well, that's good to know. I'll see about it after the weekend, 'cause frankly, I'm exhausted and I'm going to need at least three days to recuperate.