How I should have written Heart of an Author · 3:56pm Dec 4th, 2015
You ever have an epiphany right before you fall asleep that changes how you look at everything?
Something kind of like that under the break.
(Also spoilers for The Heart of an Author, if you haven't read it yet. Which you should.)
So, I've recently been rereading Umineko No Naku Koro Ni again. Mostly because I'm showing it to my girlfriend for the first time, which is a lot of fun. In any case, reading it again has renewed my appreciation for the depth of foreshadowing and theming that Ryukushi07 wove through the story masterfully. My own humble attempt doesn't come anywhere near the same heights.
Anyway, yeah. Had a thought last night on how HoaA could have been written instead.
Namely, instead of Fluttershy asking Twilight to read her story, Twilight finds the story left anonymously on her doorstep. She reads it outloud with Spike (To preserve the Real-World Meta Banter). She's appropriately horrified by the contents, and disturbed because it contains a lot of intimate personal details about the mane 6 that only one of them could know. After the first novel, she'd start on some hardcore sleuthing, talking to all her friends to see if they know anything or have been telling massive details of their personal lives to anyone in particular. Twilight would be torn as to whether or not a friend wrote this, or it was the work of some crazy stalker.
And the mystery, of course, both inside the book and out, would be just who wrote the story?
... I'd have to write the in-book stuff better, with a lot more foreshadowing and personal touches of authorship, but would totally work.
Shame I can't go back in time and slap 2014 Oroboro with this idea instead.
Anyway, just felt like sharing.
That could've been interesting. I do like the actual way you wrote the story, though. It feels more intimate that way.
These aren't spoilers (fortunately for myself).
I think I'll read this next.
Man, that does sound good. Adds an even deeper level mystery, because Twilight wouldn't know who wrote the story in the first place.
But oh well, we can't change the past, only move forward.
This does sound like a good change, but maybe due to how tags can help bring people to a story it was for the best.
The tags, picture and description kind of told me this as I was searching for twishy stories, and kind of gave it away what the end goal was. The main attraction to me was watching how twilight would discover this herself.
So the tags kind of gave it away, but without them I probably wouldn't have read this glorious story, or umineko which was also amzing