Rambling: Evolution as a My Little Pony Writer · 1:52am Aug 20th, 2014
What is it about this world that makes me so inspired to write stories about it? I don’t think I could ever really answer that question, but I am feeling reflective at the moment, so I thought I’d write about how I first got into this whole pony fiction thing.
When I was first getting into the show, my usual tendencies were definitely starting to crop up. I’d written fanfic in the past, I’ve talked about that before, but I hadn’t done so in a long time. To be honest, I think I’d gotten out of the creative process. My brain just didn’t think that creatively anymore, and I’m not sure why. I think it’s like your muscles in that if you don’t use it, you lose it. I’d been into anime heavily for a long time, and that had sort of relegated me to an observer rather than an active participant. Back then, I didn’t have much confidence in my creative abilities, anyway. I’d tried to draw comics back in 2003 or so, but those never came to fruition. At the time, I had a girlfriend who was an artist, and I honestly couldn’t figure out how she managed it. I always said I wanted to get into art, but never ended up doing anything with it. Later on, years after she and I had ended our relationship and I was on my own again, I thought about giving it another try. I went all out and even bought a tablet for my computer. However, having all the equipment in the world can’t save you if you have no drive and no patience. The tablet collected dust until a fateful day in 2012.
So, it’s 2012, somewhere around late April or early May, and I’ve watched both seasons of Friendship is Magic. I regularly browse the net looking for pony stuff, and have discovered Equestria Daily, MyLittleBrony, and Deviantart. I am a rabid consumer of fan art. I eventually find reddit, too, and all the MLP subreddits. I start to look at guides on how to draw ponies. I watch some videos on drawing and coloring techniques. This doesn’t feel like another passing interest.
I begin to feel something inside of me. It’s small at first, but it grows as days go by. It’s like a buildup of energy. It eventually comes to a point where it feels like it might physically burst out of me.
Creativity, I guess it could be called. Like a hunger.
Before we get too deep into my foray into visual art, this is supposed to be about me as a writer, so let’s get back to that.
So, when I first got into the show, I discovered the fanfiction pretty quickly. For the life of me, I didn’t get it. I had not thought very deeply about the show at that point. To me, then, it was a simple show that was fun to watch. I didn’t even bother reading any fanfiction. I thought none of it really had any merit. I’d already noticed some stuff about shipping back then, and that sort of made me confused, so I just figured most of the fanfic was going to be shipping, and that was it.
But then I found Rainbow Factory. The song, mind you, is what I found. It led me to the fanfiction, though, which I also read. Now, as I said, I had read a lot of fanfiction from other shows, games, and such in the past, so the content of the fanfiction didn’t really shock me or anything. If anything, it was right up my alley since it was pretty dark and gory. It had a nice sense of hopelessness. I thought the story was kind of boring for the most part, though, and I didn’t really like it all that much. It stuck with me, though. Like it or not, it stuck with me. After reading Rainbow Factory, I think I went on to read CHeerilee’s Garden, which is another dark and gory fanfiction in which Cheerilee kills everyone. Anyway, I liked that even less, despite that the content didn’t shock me or turn me off from it or anything., It just bored me.
I was convinced that these characters weren’t actually that interesting to write about.
Time goes by a bit, though, and I find a post on reddit about some people who are watching some episodes on a streaming site. I join them just in time to see A Canterlot Wedding. In the episode, someone has edited the ending so that it ends with ADecoy’s now-infamous “VICTORY!” video.
I just about fell out of my chair. That’s how hard it hit me. This was it. This was what I’d been waiting for, whether I knew it or not. I am pretty sure I didn’t know it at the time, though.
So, at this point, it was early July of 2012. I had started to do some pony art, I even had my own Deviantart profile.
I watched ADecoy’s video again and again and again.
I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What had happened to have the ponies end up in cocoons like that? Why were they in the cocoons? What would they have to do to escape? I wanted to make a comic about it, but knew my skills weren’t up to snuff. I opened up Notepad and just started writing, just off the cuff, the first thing I could think of. It ended up being the situation from the video from Twilight’s perspective. This would end up being the first chapter of The Conquering of Love.
I kept going, too. I wrote chapter two, chapter three, chapter four. I was just streaming brain-to-keyboard at that point. It was about halfway through writing book one that I stalled out. Why did I stall out? Because I started actually thinking of how I wanted the story to go.
Since I’d stalled out after a few days of writing on and off, I decided to go ahead and upload the chapters to FImfiction. On July 19th, I created my Fimfiction profile and uploaded The Conquering of Love. It was sloppy and full of errors, but I didn’t care. To me, this was now an obsession. I also thought that it was surely one of the best ideas out there, too, even if it was based initially on a situation from a video.
I kept going over the next month, writing and uploading chapters, until I was finally at chapter five or six. I knew at that point it was going to be an epic saga. I had seen stories being updated on Equestria Daily, and I wanted to share my story with the world, so I submitted it.
They came back with a strike. “Pre-reader who likes sky pirates” had read the story and decided that it wasn’t up to snuff. He told me a whole list of problems he had with the story, so I went about trying to fix all the errors.
A second strike came my way when I resubmitted, and I knew a third strike meant permanent disqualification. I had to get it right this time, so I went out and found an editor who was willing to comb through the story. This whole time, I’d been releasing new chapters still as well. Book one was complete, and I was thinking about what I wanted to do with book two.
There was a jumble of stuff going on inside my brain, I tell ya.
I envisioned a scene with Rainbow Dash trying to save Scootaloo and not able to do so. I decided that this would be something that happened in RD’s dream. Maybe her dream could be something like her ambitions getting in the way of friendship, and she loses Scootaloo in the process. This scene evolved quickly, though. The feelings from it stuck with me, and I wrote an initial version of it. Then, for whatever reason, I started writing about it like it was reality, rather than a bad dream. I started writing about Sweetie Belle and how it would affect her if Scoot died. This all eventually became “Hush, Now, Quiet Now”. SO, now you know… HNQN was originally a scene from Rainbow Dash’s dream in TCoL, but it became its own thing. Besides, I have better ideas for RD’s dream, now.
Around this time, I sent TCoL off to EqD again.
I got back my third strike. I was devastated. The pre-reader said that the fic was so close to being acceptable, though, that he was going to give me one more bonus chance. I’d like to think that he actually enjoyed the story and wanted me to succeed. As sad as I was, I pushed myself even harder, and asked for help once again. The fourth time, the story got accepted. On August 14th, it was featured on Equestria Daily.
My reader count absolutely skyrocketed. I also got my first “Thumbs Down.” I guess that’s to be expected. If you don’t believe in the “EqD Bump”, trust me, it exists. Subsequent updates will bring in even more readers, but it does eventually plateau.
By this time, I was thinking more about how to handle future dreams. I already knew RD’s dream was gonna be big. I knew that was going to be a goal and a turning point in the story. With my brain once again full of RD, I ended up writing “Wonderbolts… Yearh, Right”.
So, as you can see, but this point I had already written multiple stories, done fan art, and basically gotten into full gear with the creative side of my brain.
So anyway, that’s the story of the big turn-around. I went from someone who thought writing about ponies was pointless to someone who had so much creative juice oozing out that I wrote multiple stories. Kind of funny, that way. It’s almost like the longer I stay in this fandom, the more open my mind gets. It started out pretty closed to where I didn’t like fanfiction or shipping or anything that was too against the grain. Now I’ve written a lot, gotten into shipping, even dabbled in clop… who knows where I’ll end up.
I could share anecdotes about the writing of TCoL for ages, mind you, but I guess I won’t. Perhaps that would be too rambly. :P
DAT wall of text.
s.mlpforums.com/uploads/post_images/img-1556531-1-TL%20DR.gif
I'll read it after work.
I hope you brought enough crumbs.
Interesting. I like how the tangent ideas of TCoL ended up as different stories. Never would have guessed.
I'm also a rabid consumer of fanstuff. Heck, I bought a Kindle just so that I will be able to read more Fimfiction stories (reading on computer screen/tablet tires my eyes and I also can't read them in sunlight). I seriously think that some fan stories are far, far better than the show itself (example: The Counquering of Love.
). Heck, I think that the show itself is actually kinda medicore; I prefer Avatar: The Last Airbender like 10 times over it. I just love when episodes are chained together, forming a great story arc, which MLP almost entirely lacked until Season 4.
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I'm with you on the original Avatar, but not Korra. I've found Korra to be rather bland and formulaic.
Also, I totally do the same thing with an eReader. I have a Kobo Touch. I LOVE ePaper, and I tend to download a lot of fanfiction and read it on there.
2386043 I didn't like Korra at the beginning, then as I kept watching it, it started getting better. By the near end of Book 2, I was considering to make it my new favorite, replacing The Last Airbender.
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Oh, also, I think one of the big points I wanted to make in this blog post, but I somehow didn't get around to is that back when I thought this story "had to be one of the best ideas ever" I was pretty full of myself. I think it's safe to say that I've improved as a writer as the story has gone on, but looking back at those first chapters, I am pretty shocked at how bad I was.
I hope someday I look back at book 4 and think it's bad, just like that, because it will mean I've improved even more.
I don't know when that will be, though, because last night I re-read one of my favorite chapters (Book 2 chapter 7), and it still excites me and affects me emotionally. I used to think it was weird that I would be so affected because I had written it, so it shouldn't affect me so... but that's not true, it probably affects me more since I wrote it to give as big an impact as possible from my own perceptions. So yeah, I guess it makes sense that I tear up when reading that and a couple other chapters.
Anyway, point is, I don't look back on book 2 as bad, yet, so I still must have a long way to go.
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Crumbs?
I guess I could bring some crackers to crumble.
2386061 I think the writer is always more touched than the reader, since words are only tools that you use to communicate what is in you, and communication is never perfect. I don't think I can count how many times I was in tears while writing my stories. I got so carried away in Healing Smiles: Genesis, that I almost decided to let Fluttershy die in cancer instead of unlocking Pinkie's healing abilities, making it become my first tragedy story. Looking back, I think my story would have been better that way.
And Book 2 Chapter 7 made me cry. When Pinkie Pie broke, I broke too.