Gilded Lily Commentary · 12:36am Dec 3rd, 2014
Spoilers ahead!
Gilded Lily started out with the star OC, Lily, about two months before I decided to actually put her story into writing. I think I had just read a story making fun of OC's, or a guide giving advice on how to make a good one and avoid cliches and stereotypes. I hadn't even considered writing anything of my own yet, but I sat down and made up a random character. She was originally going to be green with a white mane (or perhaps the other way around, the color scheme of an actual flower), and I had her as Mayor Mare's receptionist/secretary.
She was supposed to be much more shy and MUCH more sarcastic. Most ponies weren't going to like her. The idea to make her a blank-flank came after I colored my first sketch of her and realized I forgot the Cutie Mark:
When I realized I could do that, it came with the first sense of real creativity I had felt in a very long time, and I was really excited to expand her character and her story. At first she was going to have a rare syndrome (that I made up) that meant she wasn't capable of getting a Cutie Mark. Then when I was fiddling with her design in Pony Creator (v3, by GeneralZoi), wondering if I should make her mane or her tail white, I decided I didn't like the green:
I thought about how there really aren't any white manes in the show (that I'm aware of), and the thought came to me to make her an albino. The very next thought was "that solves the Cutie Mark problem!". I almost died when I fit those pieces together.
She was starting to really come together as an interesting character, but some things still didn't fit. Why doesn't every pony in Ponyville know about her, if she works in Town Hall every day? Why hasn't she shown up in any episodes? (I really wanted a reason for that, so I could make her canon-friendly)
I decided she needed a different job, something she could do from home. The idea to have her write an advice column came without much fanfare, and it worked so well I didn't really do any brainstorming beyond that. I had picked the title of the story as soon as I started thinking of this as a story instead of just an OC, and I kind of had a goal to work the story around to fit the title later. So for the name of her column (since, of course, she had to write under a pen name) I ran "gilded lily" through Google Translate for Latin, didn't like what I got, and used "gold lily" instead, which became the column's title, Aurea Lillium.
At first I was adamant about keeping the Cutie Mark Crusaders out of the story. I really didn't want to deal with their reaction to this mark-less pony. The main conflict was going to be the growing popularity of the column, requiring her to be more social and eventually abandon her anonymity, maybe moving to Canterlot or Manehatten. She was going to have one friend she could confide in, either Pinkie Pie, Mayor Mare, or Mrs. Cake, and a major plot point was going to be her decision to finally attend a party, and another where she tries a fake Cutie Mark. After some time of just refining the story in my head without writing anything down at all, I realized I couldn't quite fill up a story with that outline, and the Crusader path was much easier, since they're kind of predictable.
I wrote the prologue about a month before I wrote the next chapter, and I was very worried that I had lost all my momentum. I found an editor, Cherry Frosting, after I began Chapter 1 (if I remember right), and I was very glad to have a second opinion on this stuff I was making up. I still think of myself as an editor first and an author second, so it was kinda different to be on the author side for once.
A lot of readers probably find the chapter titles confusing. They're all flower names, even the weird ones. That was something I did without much careful planning. I was hoping to pick flowers that matched the theme of the chapter in their nature (like flowers that do best far away from other plants, or are rare, or prefer shade), but that sort of thing turned out to be really hard to research, so the flower choices are a lot lazier than I had hoped for. Most of them still fit the whole story to a degree, but I couldn't match them chapter-by-chapter.
I don't know how other authors write, but I tend to have a lot of major points or little events I want to get to, and close the gaps with carefully-aimed filler. In Chapter 1, for instance, I knew I wanted Ditzy to show up with the mail, and I wanted to introduce the column and the infamous "Nearly-Desperate Mother" letter. So, how should I start the chapter? She's waiting for the mail, so she's doing something to pass the time. What's she doing? Reading, since it's something I can identify with, so I can write convincingly about. I knew no one would want to read about her actually reading, so I started at the end of the book, and pretty much described how I felt after finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows for the first time. You know that feeling, don't you?
Lily was actually a lot like me in that first chapter. When she was really bored, she started being proactive about her chores, but when her real responsibilities showed up, her chores became means of procrastination. Her interaction with Ditzy is probably how I would have acted and felt in her situation. And the late-night scene when she reads and answers the Cutie Mark letter might as well be a straight recording of me when I wrote it, very late at night and very sleepy.
I actually meant to put Pinkie Pie's invitation scene (where she shows up personally with the mail) in the first chapter, but I totally forgot until a few minutes after I published it. Now I think it works better where it is.
I put Lily in a cloud house to isolate her further from the community, and she ended up living a lot farther away than I originally imagined, mostly because of the way I described it in the narrative. I think the idea of parasprites eating her old house was inspired by the story Background Pony, by shortskirtsandexplosions.
Ditzy's spaciness was pure laziness on my part. I couldn't think of good answers to some of Lily's questions, so I just had Ditzy ignore them. It became an interesting character element, I think. I've seen a lot of weird quirks different authors give her, but I think this is a new one. I like it.
I haven't gotten any feedback about the "Equiwolf" thing yet. That's a not-so-subtle "reference", I guess, to my real OC's story (Aurora's), which will never see the light of day because it sucks and I don't want to have to change it :P. Future stories will likely reveal more of it, by the way, as easter eggs. I keep it all in my head as a sort of modular "pet" story, and it actually helps me a lot as a writer, I think. When I'm bored I re-imagine fics I've read to insert Aurora in as a character, to see what would be different. It makes me rethink the plot and the characters of the story, and consider what elements are important and whether or not things would work as well if they happened differently. It's a fun little exercise. Hopefully you don't think I'm too weird now.
After I had written and published the first couple chapters and outlined the story up until the first contact between Lily and the Crusaders, I realized it was going to be really annoying to have her live and work somewhere only accessible to pegasi, because I really wanted to do a scene (or more) with Lily answering letters with Applebloom, and maybe her friends as well, explaining the process to them. I couldn't do that if she was still living in a cloud. So I decided to have her move. At first I wanted her to move about halfway through the story (which I hadn't nailed down an ending or an expected length for, yet), and continue on in the new house. I wanted the town to come together and build her a house, but I didn't have a good idea why until much later in the development process. I realized that would have to be a really big plot point and I couldn't just throw it in to have a better setting, so I made it the finale.
In a cascade of inspiration, I realized Applebloom could be really involved in the new house, planning, building, and rallying the townsfolk. Maybe they could make the clubhouse into the new house for Lily? Wait- what if Applebloom gets her Cutie Mark out of this?
My heart froze as I typed that in my notes. Can I do that?
I didn't want to for a while; I felt like I didn't have the right. Eventually I just went with it because I knew I wouldn't come up with a better ending.
What is Applebloom's Cutie Mark? Heck if I know.
I'm also going to start doing an Aurea Lillium Tumblr blog soon. Stay posted.
I ended up having to take that still from "Pooh's Grand Adventure" myself. I'm surprised no one else has done that yet.