I Win/Author's thoughts · 7:31pm Mar 22nd, 2014
Yeppers, just yesterday I received word from fellow Cool Guy Extraordinaire Shinzakura that my story The Long Arm won the March Story Challenge over at his group! Sure, only two of us actually submitted something for it, but I still feel like I accomplished something. At the very least, I got to put this nifty badge on my story!
Now, in the author's notes of The Long Arm, I mentioned that I would be making a blog at some point so I could talk a little bit about writing it, and now seems as good a time as ever to do so.
So, when Shin first announced the contest I immediately knew I wanted to do something with the guys who killed Cinammon's parents in the original story. I thought that having a jurisdiction battle between the pony authorities and a human who's kind of a dick. Of course, I realized I'd need more than that to create any substance so I decided to turn it into a story where the protagonist (who was initially going to be the mage Golden Rule) had to face a moral dilemma that puts their integrity as a law enforcer at risk. My biggest inspiration for this kind of story was the film Gone Baby Gone by Ben Affleck (based on a novel by Dennis Lehane). It's an alright movie, definitely worth the watch if you want something that'll make you think a bit (and Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman makes everything better!)
As soon as I started doing the research, I knew that this story was going to likely be my least popular one yet (but that's what I get for writing recursive fan fiction featuring almost entirely OCs). In particular, I knew that people like Shinzakura and the other wonderful AAG admins who have a great wealth of political knowledge would likely tear it apart for all of the inaccuracies that unfortunately I knew would be inevitable even with all of the research I did. Perhaps if I had more time I might have been able to do more thorough research and even have gotten some form of consultant or something but as it was, writing the actual story itself proved to be the more important and more trying task.
Out of everything I've ever written, The Long Arm might have been the story that went through the most changes from inception to final draft. As I mentioned earlier, the protagonist changed from Golden Rule (who was a naive idealist before I changed her to a much more morally dubious character) to Shining Badge (who I pictured as like a pony version of Tommy Lee Jones in No Country For Old Men). I felt that having an older character who'd already faced the same moral dilemma in the past made the story much more poignant.
Lots and lots of little things changed over the course of writing and revising old drafts. Shining's wife was originally a mere footnote and the teacher Shining talks to in one of the flashbacks was a completely different character. The Delford brothers' involvement with the mercs and smugglers was something I added to give the human agency a reason to want to apprehend the brothers themselves without coming off as unrealistically petty. Some new scenes were added, like the little talk Shining has with his wife near the beginning after I promoted her to a slightly more important character. Other scenes were dropped entirely, such as one taking place from Frank Justus' perspective after the Delford brothers are hijacked. That one was the hardest to cut, but the fact it had been the only perspective change in the entire story made me feel it kind of messed with the flow and ultimately didn't reveal much more about Frank's character than what was seen later on.
On that note, I just want to say that writing Justus' scenes were probably the most fun I've had writing this thing. I kinda wish I'd had more time with that character, I think he had a lot of potential that I simply didn't have the time to fully explore. It also helps that I ended up mentally casting him as James Spader (aka my grandpa's clone).
In closing, I feel that I should clarify that The Long Arm wasn't really intended to have a "message." Shining's ultimate decision in the end wasn't intended to be a lesson in morality or a conveyance of my perception of what's right; merely a means for my protagonist to overcome his conflict and grow as a character. This is why in one of the last scenes, Twilight says "to Hell with the law" and lets Shining Badge go on the basis that he's a good guy (completely going against what Shining learned at the climax). I guess the real message is that there isn't any one easy answer to those difficult moral dilemmas. Different scenarios call for different solutions.
... Yes, that was my intended message all along!
Yay and nao moar editz!