The Failings of For Want of a Dawn · 3:46pm Nov 14th, 2014
So I've been sitting at my computer for a while, doing more work on Mezza Voce when I hit a part that allows my mind to idle. Specifically, I think back to the biggest undertaking I have ever done; the 225k words of For Want of a Dawn and I realize some truths and remember some things I had planned out to be, which never came either because I forgot about them, or... well, I shall get to that. For now, have the list of things I wanted to do that came off the top of my head.
(Spoilers beyond)
- Every General of the Equestrian Armed Forces was to have a chapter of development and with each one the war would take a turn for the worse. Only a tiny part of this became reality in the opening of Chapter 20 (Siege of Manehattan) with General Portland
- Gilda was supposed to be the prime antagonist to the generals, along with a dragon that never got written at all and any plans have been evaporated.
- The turncoat Huffington Crusaders (Chapter 6 - Wanted) were supposed to become a less-than-noble alternative to Vinyl Scratch when it came to hunting down Twilight Sparkle. By accident, or design, they would have been killed by the time of Chapter 11 (Battle of Appleloosa), which in itself was supposed to have more going on in it, but I forget.
- Governor Ironhead was supposed to be given a chapter of character development explaining his origin, a brief touch on the other golems created by the Queen and his own budding concerns and reservations about his monarch's declining mental state.
- The Party Poppers would have been responsible for several 'accidents' that would have been blamed on Twilight because convenient scapegoat.
- Rarity, Pinkie, Fluttershy and Applejack would have each received big sections, or a whole chapter for the four of them, going into better detail about their operations and ways of thinking. Pinkie's made it in during chapter 20 (Siege of Manehattan).
- Twilight was supposed to find a journal Zecora kept while in the Canterlot dungeons better explaining the breakup of the Crusaders and Derpy's demise.
Beyond those omissions there were a couple of other problems...
- Bad planning: How do you think I forgot all of these? And these were just the major ones.
- Scale: I'd never tried to do anything even half as expansive and intricate as this.
- Time: After the initial fervor wore off, it became increasingly less about writing it as I envisioned and more about just getting it done. It even got to the point where I cut out half of that stuff thinking they were superfluous and that the plot could hold without them. It does... but not well.
So, in short: to me For Want of a Dawn is a failure of a story from my perspective because of what it could have been had I known what I was getting myself into at the time. You, the readers, might have had fun and enjoyed it, and that's okay. I just wanted to share would could have been now. Will I ever make fixes to it, like Mezza Voce? Right now, no. It'd be a huge project and Mezza itself is a can of worms from just changing around ONE concept and it's only a little more than a tenth of the length of For Want right now! The omissions are easy to fix, but the other more subtle points? Maybe in the future, but I have other things I want and need to do first.
I hope you all enjoyed reading this... and I hope you can forgive me for not making For Want of a Dawn as good as it was supposed to be. v.v
I'll forgive you if you fix this minor typo in your short description of Mezzo.
2594579
Done.
Unforgivable! !! 1!
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Nu~! !! 1 !
I'll forgive you when you start writing the big sequel
I have to admit that those are some interesting unused concepts.
But I'm more happy that you focused on finishing For a Want to Dawn. Not to sound mean but something I immediately dislike about a story(be any kind. From books to tv shows to fanfics) is when it drags itself out. In that it becomes so long, ridiculously convoluted and unfocused that it looses the charm and appeal.
And while the unused concept sounded really interesting what's more important is what comes on the finished product.
Then again maybe you could explore the unused content in a Extended cut of For a Want to dawn. In that we could see your story as you meant it to be. I mean if Peter Jackson, Richard Donnor, Ridley Scott and George Lucas managed to make different versons of their films(and or extended version) then you can too. Then again that's just me.