ETurning Over a New Coat
MLP: FiM
Comedy
Slice of Life
After getting kicked out of Ponyville again, Trixie paints herself lavender in an effort to finally make friends.
Trixie
Main 6
cheezesauce · 8.4k words · 24 0 · 1.2k views

Turning over a new coat—behind the scenes · 4:23am Jan 1st, 2015

A disguise was essential, and especially a lavender one.

“Purple is a special colour, you know. Only like, one point oh oh percent of the population is purple—at least that’s what Twilight said, or was oh oh point one? oh point one oh?” Pinkie shrugged and smiled. “So, who are you actually?”

In this blog post, I’ll discuss the writing process for Turning Over a New Coat.

Please read the story before continuing on, as a large section of this blog will contain spoilers.

Inception
This sweet little story was largely inspired by a single, offhand remark in one of WRITE’s skype chats. It was a funny comment, likely made before ‘Magic Duel’ was aired, about how Trixie would one day resort to painting herself purple in an effort to make friends. Before I knew it, I was jotting down a simple outline of a story that revolved this.

It turned out that several people in the chat really liked the idea, so I carried it to the next level and began working on the fic.

Now, I’m a very, very slow writer, and it didn’t help that I loved to procrastinate too. In fact, I probably took about a year to get the first draft done, probably because I left it to rot for months among my other documents, but in the end I did it! And everyone knows what a glorious moment that is, even Trixie.

A plan that took many months of pacing around in her cloak and hat and muttering to herself in bed. A plan so devilishly devious, so cunningly cunning, and yet so splendidly simple. Why, who else to think of it, other than The Great and Powerful Trixie?

So after I did some final polishing up of scene linkages, I took a great step back to admire my supreme masterpiece. I gazed over it with loving eyes; I read its beautiful words in my mind, over and over again like one of my favourite bedtime stories, and then I realised a simple truth that every writer probably has to hear every now and then:

It was shit.

It wasn’t just shit, it was boring shit. The mane 6 were flat copies of themselves, simply reacting to Trixie’s presence. They had no goals, and were merely stations for Trixie to score her friendship points at. Trixie herself was no better off. Her emotions were volatile—one moment she would be angry and angsty and another moment she would be caring and concerned, simply because I needed her to be in order to achieve goodwill to earn enough friendship points to justify the conclusion.

The once well-known and powerful Trixie, now covered in a cheap layer of paint and under the disguise of a pony that never existed, could only admit to a simple, painful truth.
“I have no friends.”

So I stumbled back from this terrible, terrible truth, and I fell to the ground. I held my head in my hands as I mourned the loss of such a great masterpiece. Woe is me! After such a tragic event, I took much time ~~procrastinating~~ recovering from my great loss. At last, I managed to pull myself together, under the simple delusion I formed—that the story could be saved.

“I do have friends,” Patty Cakes grumbled. “Imaginary ones.”

With nothing but shreds of hope clutched against my chest and a ‘dummies guide to rewriting’ by my side, I bravely took a step toward the abomination I had created, and then charged ahead.

Nothing would stop me this time.

And nothing did. I never released the first draft, after all, so there was no one to urge me to ‘Kill that shitfic with FIRE!’

So I furiously worked on major changes to the story. I needed the characters to have goals; I needed more interesting, high tension scenes; I needed Trixie to be more believable. I wrote these down on scraps of paper, and began thinking of ways to solve them. The result of which was my second draft, which I sent to Ponychan for reviewing, and after making some final edits, it was ready for the public eye.

The next section would discuss some of the changes that I’ve made, and would focus on the story’s plot.

[spoilers]

“She paints herself and returns to Ponyville, under the disguise of ‘Smoochkins’. The first pony she sees is Pinkie, and Pinkie doesn't recognise her. Or at least, that's what she thinks. She takes a walk to the park, sees Fluttershy with her animals, decides to help out for a bit, walks around town, sees Twilight screw up a spell, offers some advice, walks around some more, probably interacting with each of the mane 6 in one way or another. And then something screws up and they all realise Patty Cakes has been Trixie all along. And then Pinkie would be like, "huh, I thought you all knew and were playing along too!" And because she's been so nice and all, they forgive her and welcome her as a friend. THE END.” -cheezesauce

Plot

The opening scene was pretty much the same. I imagined cutting to the part where Trixie had already painted herself and was just beginning on her adventure would be the most exciting, rather than giving a long narrative on how she prepared for all this.

In my first draft, there was still little bits of fluff that I decided to cut out, mostly to do with scene description and other non-essential-but-nice-to-have stuff.

She walked along the street, lined by shophouses of various sizes and selling a multitude of things. Clothes hung in neat rows behind the glass, some suited with bowties and other fancy stuff, and a pair of fake alicorn wings and horn hanging by the wall.

I also cut out a few sections of dialogue in order to smooth things out. I felt a bit reluctant to throw away large sections of completed dialogue, but I think it was for the best. I also squeezed a mention of a beaver as a Chekhov’s gun that I’d use later.

Trixie’s original cover name was ‘Smoochkins’, but it was later changed to ‘Patty Cakes after a suggestion.

“Smoochkins.”
Applejack looked at her. “Smoochkins?”
“Yes, Smoochkins.”
There was a minute of silence.
“It’s my name.”

“But it’s such a funny name!” Pinkie insisted. “Hey, you know what? I just thought of somepony with an even funnier name! He’s called Grumpy Pumky. I don’t really see him very often now, because he moved to another town. He said it’s because he didn’t like me giving him nicknames! Can you believe that? Nicknames!”
“I don’t have time for this!” Trixie snarled.

Pinkie plays a much bigger role after the rewrite. Initially, the plan was for her to be more as a passing character to Trixie. Pinkie offers to take Trixie around town, and she brings Trixie to meet up with Fluttershy and Rarity, thus linking the two scenes together. After finding the beaver, Trixie learns a thing or two about friendship, and is heartbroken when she realizes she has no true friends. With that, Trixie leaves the three ponies, going to a bakery where she meets Applejack, which carries on to the next scene.

Trixie was the main character driving the plot, but as she wavered and became uncertain of how she was achieving her goals, it became more and more difficult to justify her helping other ponies out. As a result, I needed Pinkie to step into the picture.

So, what’s up with Pinkie now?

“That’s great! I was actually here to pick up a beaver but then—” Pinkie Pie was cut off as she bounced up in the air, her hooves flailing and her body undergoing a series of spasms before she landed as if nothing happened.

Pinkie knows what’s up. Her Pinkie Sense gives it away. Still wary of Trixie but deciding to give her a second chance, Pinkie Pie hastily makes an excuse to reject Trixie’s friendship—due to her being purple. With that, Pinkie begins to set up a battery of tests to see how far Trixie would go for friendship—the first of which involved Fluttershy’s beaver. Pinkie Pie had originally gone there to search for the beaver, before she bumped into Trixie. Instead, she waits for Trixie to volunteer to carry out the search.

As this scene wraps up, there was a final twist in which Fluttershy decides not to take the beaver along with her. It was removed after ponychan’s review.

“Oh yes, and I’m also not going to be taking Mister Beavertins back with me because he says he’s much happier staying here for the time being,” Fluttershy said as the beaver cradled in hooves gave a firm nod.

“If I see that pegasus again I shall destroy her,” Patty muttered darkly.

The next scene involved Rainbow Dash and Applejack.

In my first draft, Trixie was supposed to play a friendly game of horseshoes with AJ and RD, sharing a few light-hearted moments, which fell apart as the subject of Trixie’s past misdeeds was brought up, causing Trixie to leave in anger.

I decided that playing a game of horseshoes, though quite fitting for the SoL genre, was rather mundane and uninteresting. As such, I changed the activity to something of greater significance—fixing up a new barn for Applejack.

Finally, as the scene drew to a close, I added a final few paragraphs after Trixie’s exit, risking a change into an omniscient perspective in order to build up tension and foreshadowing. The purpose of this was to lay down goals for AJ and Rainbow, so that they wouldn’t be simply ‘reacting’ to things, and I revealed Pinkie’s role in the whole plot. This section was the final edits to the story, as I was really unsure if I should have added it in, so feedback on this would be great.

Lastly, I introduced Twilight’s scene to round up Trixie’s interaction with the mane6.

‘Oh hey, you’re purple!’ Twilight said brightly.

This scene was also mostly unchanged, despite ponychan’s review. I did add in some interaction and dialogue between Twilight and Trixie to smoothen the process before Trixie takes a spell to the face. Originally, there was no interaction, and Twilight accidentally shoots a spell to Trixie’s face as she passes by.

With all the encounters with the mane6 complete, it was time to round up the story.

Trixie had to reveal herself, and there would be some discussion among the mane6, and then there would be reiterating of the lessons Trixie had learnt in her encounters. I was afraid there would be ‘talking heads syndrome’ during this part, because there was no change in scene and no actions going on. I added in a break of description to ease that up.

Finally, I linked the discussion up to that final moment where they all have a group hug or something. It made the story wholesome and satisfying, and I felt that it ended off on a nice and strong note.

I could have extended it to show Spike coming back, but I felt this would be less impactful.

Spike ran as fast as he could on his stumpy little legs. “Rarity! I was out searching for the doctor like you asked me to, but I had forgotten the way to the clinic!” He let out a gasp, pointing a claw at Trixie. “What’s she doing here?”
“Oh Spike,” Twilight let out a warm giggle, levitating the baby dragon onto her back. “You’re so behind time.”
All the ponies shared a light-hearted laugh, and even Trixie felt a smile appearing on her lips, which blossomed into a chuckle as she laughed along with the rest.

[End of spoilers]

This rounds up the discussion of Turning Over a New Coat.

I think my biggest takeaway from this story would be that I need to set clear goals for not only the main character, but for the side characters as well. Once they’ve got their goals set, their actions would follow through, creating tension and carrying the story along. And this, I say, has made me grow as a writer.

Do chip in in the comments and let me know what worked and what didn’t!

Acknowledgements:
Proofread by Csquared08
Ponychan’s review, by Doseux.
(can be found here: http://www.ponychan.net/chan/fic/res/128937+50.html#131362)
Original prompt by Ottermatt