Building stories - Helping

Okay, I just don't want to work. When I'll come back here in two weeks or two months, I'll remember that I was just desperate not to work [yeah, I remember... and kinda getting in the same situation again]. Maybe I just can't do what I'm supposed to accomplish.

...

Okay, "Helping". Why try to analyze it? Three reasons:
- the whole things was built out of a whim.
- it's still fresh in my mind so I might find some sense inside.
- I just want to do it... best reason ever.

Let's try to make this short.

CONCEPT:
The whole thing began with that sentence from someone (I know who):

Anything I can do ta make it better, ya just let me know.

I already wanted to write a story named "the help that never comes" about a pony asking for help, but not having any problem.
So mixing the two thoughts and willing to do anything but the real life work that I'm supposed to be doing to pay the bills (just telling myself in the future: I know you hate me, I hate you too, deal with it [edit: I do hate you... why do I have to live with all the bad decisions you made before?]), I decided I would write the story.

So the concept is:
"A pony asks for help, Twilight wants to help, being pretty powerful now, but doesn't understand why that pony needs help. The pony needs help because he is alive."
In order to try and make it easier to understand, I decided to add a story that would be the exact opposite. The first one would be about the one who needed help, the second one would be about the one who didn't.
"A pony doesn't ask for help, Twilight wants to help anyway, being pretty powerful now, but doesn't understand that that pony doesn't need help. The pony doesn't need help because the problem she is facing is natural and cannot be avoided."

In both stories, Twilight can't help. In the first one because it's the pony's job to help himself and in the second one because there is no problem to solve. In fact, in the second story, Twilight is the one who needs help (mostly accepting the loss of her friend).

***

FIRST STORY:

STRUCTURE:
- Twilight knocks at the door, asks for her way in town, goes away, ignoring the pony asking for help.
- Twilight comes back and asks what is going on (stolen from a doctor who episode "lazarus experiment", just couldn't obtain the same timing)
- Twilight is confronted with the fact that this pony has no problem she can understand (and therfore help with)
- Conclusion and explanation (every living thing needs help)

INTRODUCTION:
It's always hard to know how to begin a story. In this case, the perspective was the biggest problem. At first, it was supposed to begin with the stallion hearing someone knocking at his door. This would have provided a much better understanding of the character, but would have taken way too much time and useless exposition. The rythm is way better with Twilight's perspective, because we already know her.

DEVELOPMENT:
So, after having stated the core idea of the story (a pony asks for help but has no problem), I had to put a reaction for Twilight to try and overcome it. I used a simple caneva taken from a french rap group "sniper" from the song "Pourquoi". They say (if I make a raw translation): "What is life? Is it working for money, believing in heaven or fuck women?"
So I took that and made it into the caneva:
- work
- faith
- love
My problem was that I couldn't talk about faith (because Ponies don't have a religion, at least I don't want to enter the debate). So I had work and love. As the human mind work in three, I added health in the mix and obtained my guideline:
- love (family)
- money
- health
- pretty much everything (adding a fourth one, a three plus one, should give the impression of "a lot", even more while stating four (three plus one) possibilities in one sentence.

Little trick (always the same): acknowledge what the reader must be thinking:

She was more than confused, but totally utterly lost in an ocean of idiocy.

Just noticed how wrong that sentence sounds. Oh well... Just wanted to tell the reader I knew it wasn't going to make sense without a lot of thinking (and even so, it may not make sense anyway for pretty much everybody).

CONCLUSION:
Back to the general. He was just an excuse at the beginning, but he appeared as a good opportunity to achieve my goal (again, not planning ahead). So I had to change the "boring dull useless general proud mouth (sums up most of the officers I've met in my military days) that even Celestia doesn't like" into a wise and actually relatable guy.

Then, I couldn't just bluntly say:
"Being alive is hard, even in a semi perfect world. You will always feel a little bit alone, or a little bit sad, or have to face the fact that you're weak, or not very important in the grand scheme of things, or the fact you're going to die and that your disappearance won't change anything. Or just the fact that you're hungry sometimes, or a little sick, or worried, etc..."
Even more, I can't just try to impose what I'm thinking because it's very probable that I'm wrong. So just use an open ending:

Twilight tried to think about it, didn’t understand it and decided she would have her whole life to decide if it was making sense, if she wanted to agree about it or not and, if she would want to agree about it, what to do with it.

Still, I like having been able to sum up all the paragraph above in:

“Because having problems is what defines being alive. Or because being alive is what creates problems.”

It's dangerous because the second part could be interpretated as "you don't want problems? Just suicide.". Maybe, but if someone decides upon that interpretation, it means that someone is pessimistic and considers problems in a negative way. The whole half empty glass thing.

WHY THE STORY DOESN'T WORK:
- Biggest point: I didn't take the time to explain everything and make sure I was talking about something I actually had any idea about. But as I didn't have that time and as it is about a subject where there is no objective saying, because it's all a question of point of view (paradigm), I just don't care.
- The stallion isn't described. We know nothing about him and we can't identify. It's a problem. Still, I feel like we don't need to identify with him or understand him. Twilight is having a crisis, not him. It could have been anypony.
- It's dull! Normally, I try to put a first degree that is entertaining enough to make the whole "dull" thing go away (mostly after "Pinkie's bad joke"). Here, it's probably possible to put a lot of jokes to make the whole thing better, but that would have taken a huge amount of time I just didn't have. And quite honestly, it would have been so far apart from the message of the story that writing the story would have lost any sense whatsoever. So here, I decided to go for the core idea directly, assuming the fact it was going to be hard to understand and heavy to follow. At least I made it short too... and before the second story was up (which is a little more entertaining), I put up a warning.

HIDDEN THINGS:
Not much here.
- Spike refers to the time all the way through. Because time is pretty much the measure of life. We have so much long to live. every minute that passes is a little life left for us. (and to quote the lord of the ring: all we can to is decide what we do in the amount of time we are alive).
- I say the stallion has a cutie mark, and not try to imagine a problem about it, because I wanted to avoid discussing the problematic of cutie marks.

***

SECOND STORY:

STRUCTURE:
- Twilight comes back from her journey (after having seen the general) and finds out RD is going to die
- Twilight offers her help even if RD doesn't need it. RD accepts and asks for crazy things.
- In the end, RD gives up and accept once again that her life is over. Both her and Twilight discuss a little.
- RD dies. Twilight discusses with Celestia for the answers.
It didn't went exactly like that structure, but that's what I wanted to work with first.

INTRODUCTION:
Knowing how to being isn't always enough. Here, I had to know when to begin too. Because at first, I was supposed to say Twilight came in the train station, she got received, explained everything, etc... It would have been so long and so boring and so hard and boring to write. So I decided to cut the thing and go to just saying the two only important things:
- RD is about to die (important detail: the blind deal)
- Twilight is sad about it.
Not going into too much details here, but even if it's quite common for an introduction, I still think it works pretty well in such circumstances. It allows to ask the question "who really needs help? The one who is about to die, or the one crying about it?"

DEVELOPMENT:
Here, I had to put the crazy wishes of RD. I hadn't had much time to think about them (I had already spent the whole day trying to put a consistent story together). The mountain of chocolate with a slide came from "the last pinkie promise". Painting Ponyville in pink was just a whim (would RD even like pink?).
Then I just lost control.

The idea of that part was to follow a logical evolution:
- Twilight feels guilty about RD (because she wasn't there and because she wants to help and is a princess and should be able to do something)
- RD first wants to live (even if it kills her).
- By living, she is going against the fact she has to stay quiet (blood pressure) and thus, hurt her friends who would like her to live as long as possible
- RD realizes slowly that none of what she could wish for will bring her what she wants (which means, making her life worth dying... or something among those lines). Unable to accept the fact, she asks for the things she had never wanted (trying to find what she searches where she has never looked, for good reasons) and the most impossible things (mostly to try and break the circle).

Normally, RD was going to ask for something, then go away as Twilight was doing it, and then they would just discuss together under the stars.
However, as I had no idea for RD wild wishes, I got trapped with only one possibility, having RD asking Twi to lower the sun and create the night (be a god...). At least if offered myself a transition (Twi fainted, RD brought her back to the hospital).

CONCLUSION:
RD and Twilight apology (of course) and RD dies (using the blind deal as a cheap trick).

The conclusion here is more straightforward, because the whole thing is easier (normally) to understand. It can be summed up in:
"How would you want to help someone who is about to die and has accepted the fact? Just be there for him/here".
That's the "because she..." of Luna. "Because she didn't need any help."
And of course, Luna tries to help the one who really needed some (Twilight).

WHY THE STORY DOESN'T WORK:
- I'm speaking about death while trying to avoid the subject. Good luck with that, I clearly failed.
- RD wishes aren't respecting the logic of the situation. Only the two first wishes (the dessert and going out) are. The others do not directly make RD's heart beat accelerates, therefore do not put her in more danger. The whole thing just looks like a big mess.
- RD would have wanted to fly. She never flies in the end. Even if I could try to explain it, it doesn't make sense in an instinctive level.
- Many other reasons I probably don't see.

***

So, what should I learn from the whole experience (writing a story on a whim, on a subject I don't understand anything about, without having planned enough ahead and without the needed time to write it) ?
That I'm not a writer. But as I already know that...

I need to take my time if I want to be satisfied with the last eight stories I've got to write. Which means there is no way I can be finished before season 4 starts (obviously).
But I'm actually satisfied with what I've written here. It's not very good, but so is 80% of what I've written (the rest being acceptable).

I just need to go back to reality and do what I'm really supposed to do. Let's stop avoiding things.
Funny thing, I think I wrote those stories because I just wanted to say out loud that I feel like I could need help right now (actually, the word miracle would be more precise), but I wanted to make me accept the fact that I'm the only one that can help me accomplish what I've got to accomplish.

So let's go do a tiny miracle.

[edit]: I fucking did it! Whoohoo! It's rushed, it's badly made (even worse than the stories I write here), but at least I did it (and ten hours before the ultimate deadline).