• Member Since 8th Nov, 2011
  • offline last seen March 11th

Cast-Iron Caryatid


More Blog Posts91

  • 13 weeks
    Merry Christmas, all!

    My track record with Christmas releases is no longer perfect, but I do try! Only one 5k chapter of Sharing the Nation this year, though I'm hoping to have 5k more out before the new year. To make up for it, though, I've also brought out the Harry Potter crossover that's been languishing in

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    4 comments · 171 views
  • 117 weeks
    Nothing this year, sorry

    Man, this has been… a year. Shortly after my last blog post, I had some (non-covid) medical issues that somewhat took over my life for a while, and while that's all in the past now, I'm only back where I was beforehand—completely unproductive. I was determined to get back into things at NaNoWriMo, but work steamrolled those plans and I just haven't been able to find the words to write something

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    16 comments · 825 views
  • 157 weeks
    More burned out than I thought

    Jeeze, it's been four months since I decided not to force myself to generate updates for the sake of Patreon and gave myself the freedom to write whatever I wanted… but I haven't really written anything. I've done a thousand words or so here and there to play around with other fandoms, but nothing of significance.

    Shocking, I know.

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    9 comments · 859 views
  • 170 weeks
    Tis the season for status updates. Not as much the other kind of updates as I would like, though

    It wouldn't be Christmas if I hadn't been completely incommunicado for at least a month or two beforehand, right?

    Unfortunately, I don't have chapters of Sharing the Nation to post for Christmas this year. I do have some Equal Opportunity Ascension chapters that only Patreon has seen, and I'll post those, I guess, but it's clear this… isn't working.

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    2 comments · 561 views
  • 222 weeks
    Christmas Updates!

    Merry Christmas!

    As I've done every year since I started writing, I have updates here for you on Christmas day.

    ( It might look like there's a missing one, but the chapter for Sharing the Night that year was taken down and reposted)

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    2 comments · 409 views
Jun
9th
2014

Wordcounts / Original Characters / Planning And The Lack Thereof · 7:23am Jun 9th, 2014

Wow, so, chapter twelve—the real chapter twelve, not another delay—is officially 5k words as of tonight. Normally I'd call that half done, but... no promises. I haven't made a secret of the fact that big things are going to be revealed, and they will all be revealed, no matter how many words I have to write to do so. Chapter eleven was the longest chapter yet, and that was just... Twilight's parents bookened by a couple scenes and some Celestia in between. Have I written half of what I think needs to be in chapter 12? ...not hardly.

Still, at the same time, I don't want to get people's hopes up for a 20k chapter or anything. I'm not sure people want a 20k chapter if the middle 10k is a flashback about OCs. It's a hard thing to manage, really. I can't rush things or the OCs will feel flat, but at the same time I very much realize that the story isn't about them. It annoys me so, so much when books have huge chunks of text about characters that I don't empathize with. The Song of Ice and Fire series (Ie. Game of Thrones, etc) was a big offender in this, which is one reason why I gave up after three books. Doing a huge aside in a flashback to another age entirely is only going to be worse.

My goal for the flashback is about 5k words. I think I can do it, but frankly? I am playing this whole thing by ear. One of the reasons this section has been so hard to get working has been that very fact. I don't have pages and pages of OC backstory that I think is way more interesting than my A and B plots—one page at best, really, and some of it contradicts itself. What I'm saying is, basically, the section of my outline for this section has basically always said <insert story here>, so putting a word count on it is really, really hard.

As frustrating as it can be, though, I don't really regret it. That's how I tend to work, really. The things I do plan rarely happen as such, and I come up with some of my best ideas just going off on wild tangents that then become absolutely crucial to the story. Starbeasts? Not planned. Dragons? Not planned. Librararchy? Not planned. Four alicorns? 100% intentional not committed to until I made a blog post about the subject.

I think I said in a comment or blog post recently that the sheer length of time it has taken me to write Sharing the Night has not been wasted, and that if I had been granted the magical ability to instantly transcribe my thoughts to paper in perfect form, then Sharing the Night would be much, much shorter and less grand. Now you have some idea just how different it would be. Can you imagine it? I can't.

Of the 5k words I have down for chapter twelve, 1.2k of them are in the flashback, meaning I have a good solid start and a direction to go on, so I should be beyond any real blank-page anxiety. Hopefully, all will be well and I'll have a middle and end for the flashback before the chapter hits 9k, and then another 3k or so should wrap it up. If not, though, I'm curious...

How much do you want to know about the past, and do you trust me within ten yards of four OC alicorns*? :trollestia::rainbowlaugh:

* I promise none of them are black... anymore.

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Comments ( 11 )

How much do you want to know about the past, and do you trust me within ten yards of four OC alicorns*? :trollestia::rainbowlaugh:
* I promise none of them are black... anymore.

Trust you? More than most but not completely. My gut instinct, based on previous experience is that it will probably turn turn out good.

Same as ForSpite, I think. You have generally put out good quality work, so I trust that whatever comes out will not be a steaming pile of apples.
You can only do what you can do; the good news is, you can probably do great.
Have a great time!

How much do you want to know about the past, and do you trust me within ten yards of four OC alicorns*?

Really, the stigma around OC alicorns or OCs in general stems from most people not knowing how to come up with characters of their own; making them alicorns too just serves to magnify the issue of not having a fleshed out character.

Actually, with a bit of thought, I'd like to amend that. It does put extra hurdles in the author's path. Let's take the hypothetical character of an earth pony who is good at controlling plants. After years of practice, meditation, and study, this character can exhibit large-scale manipulation of plant life. Had said character been an alicorn, that opportunity for characterization would not exist; they would just have the skills without having to work for them.

However, it does open up different opportunities, like exploring how that character deals with having power for which she/he may not be prepared (I'm lookin' at you, Twilight.), or how living with such power makes her/him disconnected from others… or possibly hyper-sensitive to them, for fear of becoming a tyrant.

Basically, a well-realized character is a good character regardless of what race you make it.

If a big problem with the flashback is that it's a big scene that doesn't include Twilight and Luna at all, that can be fixed. In Fallout Equestria fics, there's a plot device called a memory orb that lets characters learn about pre-apocalypse Equestria. They're basically first-person flashbacks in a can, but the trick is that instead of it being the audience that's watching, it's the present-day pony using the memory orb. During these sequences are usually a few lines where the character 'watching' will comment on the proceedings or be a little confused and surprised at what they see. Basically, this example works, and if you feel that the flashback you want to write moves too far away from Twilight and Luna you can have them comment/observe the flashback, or be actually present in the flashback, or have them eat popcorn, or really anything else too.

Bah! BAH! Only four OC alicorns!? HA! That's small potatoes! I'm writing a scene at this moment that has no less than... Uh... No, it's only got three of the OC alicorns... Hmmm... And I'm using an established character as a lens on events... :twilightblush:

Writing stuff that involves so many OCs without a SC (show character) to serve as an anchor point for readers can be difficult. But I trust you can do it. You certainly take you time and consider all the angles and repercussions for what you write. :twilightsmile: I look forward to reading Chapter 12 of Sharing.

2190560
True, Twilight's parents were pretty much OCs and they turned out okay (if not very well fleshed out).

2190998
That's kind of just the thing. If I were trying to introduce protagonist OCs, then I've have a laundry list of ways to get the reader on their side. I don't think it's much of a spoiler to say, though, that these are basically gods at the height of their power, and while I do want the reader to empathize, the story of their fall is not an entirely flattering matter for most of them :trixieshiftleft::trixieshiftright:

2191080
Twilight is involved in the narration... a bit. I've actually had a bad experience with telling a story through a character, though, in that the resulting story was just way, way too tell-y. I don't normally subscribe to "show vs. tell" as a strict rule to follow, but even I had to admit that introducing major concepts and character traits needed a more hands-on approach.

Then again, I suppose there is a difference in a narrator telling the story and a narrator reacting to it. Without going too deep into spoilers, this case is kind of weird because Twilight is kind of... both. :twilightoops:

2191476
Well, if you wanted to get technical, no part of the flashback will have four alicorns in the same scene at the same time. :scootangel:

>>Everyone
It's good to know that people trust me to do a decent job of it, but why is it no one actually answered my question about how much they're actually interested in finding out about the past? :twilightblush:

2191743

I dunno... Backstory is fun and all, but I've discovered it tends to be the author who cares for it the most. :facehoof: Not to say I'm not interested, mind you. I'm more curious though if this 4th alicorn is Cadence's progenitor. Yeah, yeah, no Cadence in Sharing, but I don't put it past you to work her in somehow. :raritywink: Unless I missed some comment/blog along the way about her... :derpytongue2:

2191754
Well, I did claim in this blog post that Cadance was negative-two years old in Sharing the Night, but that was just a reference to the stuff I was writing in chapter eleven at the time about Twilight getting a younger brother/sister :scootangel:

As I said above, though, I'm mostly playing the flashback by ear (I do have the arc planned out now), so it's not like I have this one shot that I've been dying to shoehorn in. I'm honestly just as worried that the flashback will be too short to have the necessary effect, or that I won't really get to introduce certain facts effectively—there's already one thing that I'm waffling on holding off revealing until the end of the flashback as it is.

In the end, that's what this whole thing is about: revealing... just about everything regarding alicorns, how the current set came to be what they are and pinning down the final shape of everything that they have to deal with. Epic story of love and loss? I already have one of those, I don't need another* :pinkiecrazy:

* No really, I don't. If anyone asks me about doing a separate story with more of the old alicorns, I will be at once amazed, proud and running for the hills.

2191807

I smell a prequel in the works! :yay: As someone with a habit of writing side-quels and prequels, I have this advice to give; Do it! :trollestia::moustache:

Also, d'awwww! Wittle baby Cadence! Now I have a picture in my head of Woona and.. Candy(?) playing pirates together with their little paper hats on.

I want to know all of the details and trust you with as many OC alicorns you want to add. Shining/Cadance the baby alicorn, go!

Though I will be disappointed if the former alicorn of the stars isn't jet black with sparkles.

2191743
Twilight's parents were in something like half of one chapter, there's no way you could or should have fleshed them out all the way in that.

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