Behind the Scenes · 5:16pm Oct 11th, 2013
Since I'm between... everything at the moment, thought I'd throw some trivia everyone's way. Maybe this'll give you an insight into my creative process, maybe it'll just tickle ya a bit. Either way, here's some behind the scenes info on the stories I've written thus far.
- Every story I write has a song or songs attached to it. It just happens. Maybe I'm listening to it when I start the chapter, maybe I had something in mind, but I inevitably have a song that plays when I look at that story. For instance, Blossoming's is "Walk" by Foo Fighters and When The Mare Comes Around is, well, "When The Man Comes Around" by Johnny Cash. Don't try and guess songs for the other stories. It's a slapdash process. Except, Dreaming's Night is pretty obvious what I was thinking when I wrote that.
- Speaking of Dreaming's Night, it is one of the few stories not edited by my eternally patient shieldmate and editor, Jess. That thing was written in a delirium of inspiration where I had to get it out right then and couldn't wait.
- Actually, up until recently, the one-off shorts and Blossoming were the only stories Jess didn't edit. I didn't want to bug her, but she's said she wants to help so since Two Years Before Harmony, Jess edits everything except Blossoming.
- My favorite scenes I've written so far are the soldier salute and Rarity's commentary in Just A Dream and Rachel talking to Cassie about her mom. They both were homages to people who've I've known who are no longer with me. I can't really look back on them without getting teary.
- Despite being about my partner and I turning into ponies and going on adventures, Blossoming is bizarrely autobiographical and helped me work out some of my personal relationship concerns. Jess doesn't edit Blossoming because she's in it and I want to surprise her, so after some chapters, Jess and I have to talk so I can assure her that I'm just mining my personal life for drama.
- AJ's the most fun to write, followed closely by Celestia.
- The easiest to write is Pinkie Pie, followed closely by Twilight.
- Just A Dream feels like two stories because I ran out of steam with the "real world" stuff. So, I moved to big adventure and decided the first half was tight, "everyday world" drama that would contrast the second half, which was big adventure drama. I felt like I was hanging lampshades all over the place.
- The split in Dream came about because I couldn't figure out where to take the characters when they got to Rarity/Keiko's apartment. As they were sitting there I realized, "This is where the big adventure comes in" and I needed a villain. I thought of the scariest thing I could and recalled The Smiling Man, who came from a suicidal period in my life. I turned him into the Smiling Pony, loaded him up with all the menace he instilled in me and turned him loose.
- Initially, I was never going to post Blossoming. I wrote nine chapters thought, "That's it" and put it away for a while. Then realized I still had ideas and nothing else going, so I figured I could pretend to be Blossom in my own little canon. Glad I did post it though because it got me the When the Mare Comes Around gig.
- Diana in Blossoming is Wonder Woman. I just gave her a fouler mouth and made her a cop.
- Ann in the WtMCA bar fight is played by Jess while Jay is played by our friend Jay who is that giant and a bouncer. Jess had to keep reinforcing his bigness in editing because I've only known Jay a little bit and forgot how positively huge the guy is. To give you an idea, he has to make his own Renn Faire boots because no one carries even remotely in his size.
- Two Years Before Harmony is my unofficial prequel to WtMCA. It initially came out of a paragraph that didn't make it to the final edit of the bar fight. That paragraph mentioned Dash, so I wrote up a thing to check with the Dash player about their canon. Once I'd finished it though, I realized I had a full story and while it's canon to the AJ I'd been writing for PEV, it works well on its own. So once WtMCA was wrapped, I handed it to Jess and we got to polishing it.
- When I made Bright Shade and Star Cloud I felt like a for-reals writer who could make for-reals characters. That was a special moment.
- Rachel Shelton was actually created by Hope when AJ's story looked stagnant and that got the ball rolling on a person becoming a pony as a means of surviving some horrible accident. When I got my idea for WtMCA, I asked to keep using the name with Rachel's depiction very loosely based on a friend of mine. The rest is history.
That's all for behind the scenes. I have to get back to writing. I'm slowly, but surely, getting back in the swing of things.
Also all of us in the PEV are incredibly lazy, you forgot to mention that.
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Eh. I'll get around to it later.