Writing is Dumb - Part Two of the Story of the Story of Spring is Dumb · 9:55pm Aug 31st, 2017
Once upon a time, I started a full making-of-style commentary of the creation of Spring is Dumb. The first part describing the prewriting of the story looked like this. Now, about two hundred years later than I intended, the second part is here. I don’t remember why I started this project, or what we were all supposed to get out of it. But life only gets busier, so if I don’t finish this now, it’ll never be done.
This is a complete exhibition of the writing of Spring is Dumb, from the first word written to the final period. Also included is six thousand words of narcissistic self-hating post-commentary by me describing what went right, what went wrong, and what could have been done better.
A note about structure before we begin: This section is made up to links to google docs which present the story-in-progress at each stage of its life. Every doc is dated, with new text/revisions colored green to indicate what was written and when. All of this was dug up from the Google Doc revision history, which keeps a log of all changes made to a document.
Forewarning: This one's long. Like, really long.
So let’s go!
Writing Is Dumb
On April 17, 2014, I started. I rolled up my sleeves and dove head first into the glorious struggle of the artist at work. Specifically, I wrote three paragraphs consisting of two hundred words of clunky phrasing about how Rainbow Dash isn’t an idiot. Then I rolled my sleeves right back down, congratulated myself on doing some honest hard work, and called it a day.
This is actually still how I write all my stories. I write a couple hundred words to set the tone and voice, figure out a little character, establish the basic situation, maybe work some setting in. And then I let it gestate for another day or two while I figure out what the hell the story actually is and whether I even want to write it. Most stories I drop at this point, because most of my ideas are caca, and I don’t realize until I’ve written at least a little.
This is also why I find timed writings like the WriteOff so impossible. I’m supposed to write the story all at once? Like the whole story? In just a day? And it’s supposed to be good? That’s insane! All my best stories are ones I started writing years ago, that have been torn apart and stitched together half-a-dozen times. Timed writings are crazy, and as good as they are at motivating people to finally sit their butts down and get to writing (which does feel like the hardest part of the whole deal sometimes) I’m not sure how they can make people into good writers. Because that isn’t how good writing happens.
Fan fiction has a similar but different problem. It’s too damn easy to hit submit. Publishing is nearly instantaneous, and it’s hard to resist hitting that button and started to get views and responses as soon as a story feels done. But all stories can benefit from more time soaking in the crockpot. Even a distance of a week or two can be enough to come back at a story from a new direction. Distance also makes it easier to recognize a story’s weaknesses.
But this isn’t about write offs or submission guidelines. This is about my nostalgic trip down the narcissistic brick road. Braggarts, smuglies, and shame, oh my!
Onto April 18. On my second day of writing, I workshopped those first three paragraphs a bit and wrote nothing new and that’s it. Exciting stuff.
April 21. Three days later, I decided to actually start writing the story for real. Scene! Backstory! Character! Dialogue! It’s all there! A thousand whole words of it!
This section, Dash’s conversation with Rose at the flower stand, remains pretty much unchanged from the time of first writing to publication. A shame, it could have benefited from some serious revisions (or honestly, a total cut). The dialogue is super punchy, but there’s not much being said, and as prereader Silvernis would later point out (and be ignored) the joke about the rule against buying all the flowers isn’t funny and doesn’t make any sense.
The first deviations from the outline are already occurring. First, is the background addition that Rainbow Dash brought in spring early for Rarity. She gave her girlfriend the entire season of spring as a gift. That’s romantic and cute as all get out. It’s also something that can only happen in an FiM shipfic. I mean, not really, but sort of. You won’t find that kind of cute and whimsy in much other fiction.
Second big deviation is that when I finally got Rainbow Dash to buy the flowers, we all realized that she had no way to carry them! That’s the kind of insurmountable literary roadblock you run into when you don’t properly plan and outline. So I put the whole story on hold while I figured out what to do.
April 22. The next day, and I still haven’t decided what to do about the too-small-saddlebag and too-many-flowers problem. For now, we’ll call it the Small Saddlebag Knot. Hopeless writer’s block! The fate of the story is in jeopardy! What are we to do?!
I don’t know, but I do spend some time workshopping what’s already been written. This is actually the most interesting part of the writing process to me, and my favorite part of writing. If I could spend all day long just making unsubstantial tweeks and line edits to already finished stories, I’d be in bliss. I’d love to discuss every single small change I made here, but then we’d be hanging out at April 22 all day. For the most part, I’ll let you examine them at your leisure.
Now though, let’s look at the new inclusion in this draft of the line
“Well, a whole lot of thanks, actually. An early spring had earned her entire evening of personal thanking. The morning after, too. And the night after that.”
A backstory is being developed that was wholly absent from the outline, a depth beyond the shallow ‘Rainbow Dash buys Rarity flowers and then they make out’ is worming itself in, and it’s the backstory that yanks this story out of the depths of shmuck into something maybe-respectable.
All of the sudden, with the inclusion of that line (which was just written as a bit of humor) Rainbow Dash and Rarity have done it. Done what? What is ‘it?’ I don’t know. They don’t have genitals! Hyper-aggressive cuddling maybe? But that little bit of extra humor is important, because it ends up underpinning the whole story.
Spring Is Dumb’s backstory, the story behind the story, ends up being:
Rainbow Dash and Rarity have been dating for an undisclosed period of time. Rainbow Dash is worried they might be friends just fooling around, so she doesn’t commit herself to the relationship or let herself hope it might become something more. Then she and Rarity do it. Rainbow, understandably excited that her feelings for Rarity have been vindicated, tells everyone. Everyone, which includes all their friends and Rarity’s family. The telling includes prepared sound effects. Rarity is understandably embarrassed and upset. An argument ensues. An indeterminant amount of time later, Rainbow Dash is stomping around buying flowers and chocolates and she doesn’t even know why.
It’s no DiCaprio tossing Kate Winslet over the side of a boat, but there’s romance here, there’s vulnerability, there’s some real emotions and doubts, there’s conflict and character development, there’s gossip and drama. And none of it was in the outline. Most of it still isn’t even in the story.
This is the advantage of that organic ‘write it while you write it’ style of story writing. The benefit is that stories better than the ones you planned are able to creep in. The disadvantage is that these organic additions don’t have any structure. They grow in all willy-nilly and out of shape like weeds. Useful weeds sometimes, lovely weeds even, but they don’t match the feng shui. Even when weeds are lovely and brilliant and you want to keep them, you still need to prune them into shape, which never happened to Spring Is Dumb. It was all organic, which is why it’s good and why it’s bad.
A quick note: I know this is how I write, but I have no idea how anyone else writes. I might be explaining something that everyone knows and everyone does. That’s the problem with hiding all our creative processes behind the scenes. Nobody knows what anybody else is doing back there.
April 23 - 12 AM. This day is being divided into two, because I wanted to separate original writing from revisions of that writing.
The Small Saddlebag Knot has been untangled! How? We gave Rainbow Dash a cart! Who gave her a cart? Applejack!
This is the first big deviation from the outline, an additional scene and character. Structurally, this scene is really weird. But it’s important for the story, though I’m not sure I realized why at the time of writing. I’m pretty sure I was just trying to get Rainbow Dash a cart, but I also accidentally gave the story some needed outside perspective.
The narration of this story is stickily stuck in Rainbow Dash’s head, and she’s acting unrelentingly ridiculous. The whole deal threatens to become overbearing. But here we get an objective third party to say, ‘Hey, Rainbow Dash, you’re being pretty silly, but that’s okay. Romance and dating and falling in love are all pretty silly, too.”
Applejack is an early grounding presence in the story to keep the pegasus from reaching atmospheric escape velocity.
This is another fun bit of organic storytelling. You get to throw in scenes wherever you want, and then figure out what they’re actually adding to the story later. Once you’ve got it figured out, revise and refocus. Or if you realize new scenes aren’t adding anything—cut.
This Applejack scene messes up the story’s structure. The overall structure ends up becoming: Rainbow thinks about shmoopy relationship stuff while pretending she’s still mad>Rainbow Dash buys something for Rarity while pretending it’s not for Rarity>wash, rinse, and repeat until Rainbow stops acting the doofus.
But the structure here is: Rainbow grumbles around about Rarity>Rainbow does a gag at the flower stall>Rainbow leaves and meets with Applejack for two seconds>Rainbow moves on and Applejack gets forgotten.
As is, Applejack is just sort of dangling in the middle without much to do or say. Her presence adds, but it also distracts. The thing needs retooled. Did I really have to halt the whole market scene to run off and give AJ three lines? Why couldn’t Applejack have already been at the market? Why couldn’t she have had more to say about Rainbow and Rarity, so we could find out what other characters think of their relationship? Why didn’t Rainbow go to AJ’s apple stall first, demand flowers, and get helpfully informed by AJ that the Apple family doesn’t sell flowers, because they sell apples. It’s right there in the name, goddammit! What did Rose’s presence add to the story that wouldn’t have been better off being cut to give AJ more screen time? Why give so much space to a non-presence like Rose when we’ve got a fantastic personality like Applejack applebucking in the wings?
I don’t know, but I wish I would have thought more about all this before hitting the submit button.
A final note on this draft, notice the lines
Applejack stared at her for a long moment, and then a smirk appeared on her face. “Is this about that little spat you had with Rarity this morning?”
“No,” Dash answered quickly. “And you aren’t allowed to ask me what it’s for. And how do you even know about that?”
Applejack shrugged. “It’s a small town.”
In the final version, Applejack will have been present for the ‘spat’ along with everyone else. But not yet. In this earlier version, she only knows about the fight because ‘it’s a small town.’ At this point, I haven’t figured out what the fight was about or who was there. That background story behind the story is still early in its development.
April 23rd - 10 PM. Only changes made here come in the form of some very minor workshopping on the Applejack scene, mostly in that first paragraph. If line edits are you jam, spread some of this junk on your toast and stick it in your stupid ugly face.
April 24th. More workshopping the Applejack scene.
I’d originally thought to drop Rainbow Dash back by the flower stand after her visit to Sweet Apple Acres, and write out a whole second flower stand scene. Luckily, I realized a redundant second Rose scene couldn’t do anything that Rainbow Dash popping up in the next scene with a cart full of flowers wouldn’t accomplish.
It’s something I have to remind myself of all the time. Don’t waste the reader’s time moving characters around. Just plop the character down where they need to be and already doing what needs done. If you give them enough information, readers are smart enough to fill in the banal details. Leave the banality in the wings.
April 26th. Some writing gets done! Just a little.
Lots of long introspection, but you’re allowed to write lots of long introspection sometimes. Just so long as your character’s got a vinegar-smell-strong voice and is going somewhere with the introspection. Here, Rainbow Dash’s feelings for Rarity are being developed a bit, and Rainbow is figuring out those feelings.
One of this story’s strengths is that is does have a simple, but solid, character arc that consistently moves forward from opening line to closing remark. Rainbow Dash goes from still upset and refusing to accept blame, to ready to meet Rarity and admit she messed up. It works.
As a bonus, something I pulled out of a conversation with Grenader about the RariDash in progress, written on the same day:
I've hit 2k words on the RariDash, and I don't want to jinx myself by judging anything too early, but
Oh my god! I love this story so much!!!
I haven't had this much fun writing something since I wrote Lick back in... freaking November, was it? October? It's good to be writing something I like again. Of course, it could very easily fall apart like the last few did, but for now, this story has resparked my love for writing.
Reading through old conversations is weird. But that sort of enthusiasm… I don’t know, but I think if you’re not that excited about something you’re writing, or just anything you’re doing, why are you doing it at all? If you’re not feeling that kind of excitement for a project, maybe it’s time to put it away and move onto something else?
In the same conversation, I do a lot of moaning about how even with significant revisions and cuts, Art of Falling (a smutty story I was writing at the same time which was published a long while later) was just an impossible story to make work. The story ended up being finished after an eight month hiatus, and the final product is pretty bleh. But I was never excited for Art of Falling the way I was for Spring Is Dumb, and the latter is noticeably better than the former.
Food for thought.
April 28th. Workshopping, wrokshopping, workshopping.
These additions also feature my argument for RariDash. If you’re writing an unpopular pairing, you need to make an argument for the ship in-text to win over the nonbelievers. A lot of people have told me they never considered RariDash before reading Spring Is Dumb, but came away fans of the ship because of this story. I’d like to think this passage is part of the reason why.
Rarity’s dresses fascinated Rainbow Dash. Well, not the dresses, Rainbow didn’t care about dresses, but the act of creating dresses fascinated her. Rainbow’s artistic ability had begun and ended at stick pony drawings. But with nothing but a little inspiration and some fabric, Rarity created art. Every day, from nothing, Rarity created beauty, and did so with confidence and poise. Sometimes, Rainbow Dash wished she herself could be as confident and poised while performing stunts as Rarity was while designing dresses.
A lot of the fun in shipping is discussing the why of the pairings. You can mix and match the ponies in any combination you want, but the question is always ‘Why would Applejack want to be with Fluttershy? Why would Twilight want to be with Pinkie Pie? Why would Rainbow Dash want to be Rarity? Where’s the attraction?”
It’s a bit strange, because these questions never come up in real life romance. Why go on a date with her? Why not! Go on a date, things work out, go on another. Things don’t work out, what have you lost?
But why her? Because she’s cute. Because she swiped right. Because she just happened to be around. Who cares? It’s a date, not a marriage.
And friends can be attracted to friends. Physically, emotionally, whatever. It doesn’t matter.
In fanfiction and shipping, attraction and dates are something that always has to be justified. But that’s okay, because it’s fun to think about how characters mix and match, where their personalities overlap, where they fit snug together, where friction and tension occurs.
Here is where I threw in my justification for RariDash. Why would Rainbow Dash want to be with Rarity? We’re talking just the first little nugget of attraction.
Rarity is good and she knows she’s good. Full stop. She’s got unshakable confidence, and she doesn’t have to prove herself to anyone. She’ll keep making her art regardless of what anyone else thinks.
Rainbow Dash is good and she knows she’s good. But’s she’s desperately worried she’s actually not. She has to prove it to everyone all the time.
Rainbow is attracted to what she doesn’t have. She’s attracted to who she wants to be. And that’s Rarity.
On Rarity’s end, she’s a romantic. She wants a Prince Charming to her Sleeping Beauty, a knight in shining armour to her princess in the tower, a Rhett Butler to her Scarlet O’Hara. She wants to be rescued, swept off her feet, taken on adventures by a dashing reckless rogue. And that’s Rainbow Dash.
May 6th. A full week later, I get back to work. In the interim, the deadline for the RariDash contest was extended, so I didn’t feel the need to rush (as if I’d been rushing).
Rainbow Dash’s visit to Sugarcube Corner is easily the weakest scene in the story. It’s and almost an exact retread of the market scene. The worst offender is this bit of dialogue between Rainbow and Mrs. Cake.
“All of them,” Rainbow Dash said.
Mrs. Cake’s smiled faltered again. “All of them?”
“All of them.”
“You mean you want a sampler?”
“No,” Dash replied. “I mean I want all of them.”
“One of everything?”
“All of everything.”
It’s pretty much word for word the conversation she had just a page earlier. Points to myself for realizing that a second flower stand scene with Rose would have been superfluous. Take all the points back for not realizing the same thing with Rainbow Dash repeating the scene anyway at Sugarcube Corner. The whole conversation is redundant, makes no forward progress, and accomplishes nothing for the story.
A lot of the humor in this scene really falls flat, too. Let’s look at
“I’m feeling hungry,” Dash said. “And especially for any of those Hearts and Hooves Day chocolates, if you still have any of those left. Double especially if they’re heart-shaped. I’m feeling really hungry for some hearts.”
And
Mrs. Cake laughed. “Dearie, no pony buys Hearts and Hooves Day candy for themselves.”
“Well, it’s for, um, my chinchilla.”
“What’s a chinchilla?” Mrs. Cake asked.
“A carrot-shaped dog.”
I mean, what? These jokes are nonsense, not funny, random, and have no setup or punchline. She’s hungry for some hearts? What the hell does that even mean?
The scene’s third and probably greatest problem is Mrs. Cake. She’s boring. She has no character. I remember I didn’t want Rainbow Dash to meet Pinkie Pie in Sugarcube Corner, because I wanted to work with underutilized characters instead. I wanted to work with background characters like Rose, Mrs. Cake, and Flitter, as both a challenge to myself and an opportunity to write with new characters.
Flitter, thanks to some good character work, ended up working out. The others didn’t, because Rose and Mrs. Cake are totally flat, have no personality, and they flatline both of their scenes.
Mrs. Cake could have worked as an overbearing over-sharing mother figure, doling out sound relationship advice that Rainbow has no choice but to politely listen to even while she inwardly rolls her eyes. It could have worked with a substantial rewrite. But I wonder if just going the easy route and throwing Pinkie Pie instead would have been better. Pinkie could have added some natural humor and energy to the scene that it sorely lacks as is.
I will say, though, this scene has my favorite joke in the story.
She pushed through Sugarcube Corner’s front door, dragging the cart behind her. It took a while to get the cart through the doorway, but luckily, Rainbow Dash was at least ten times smarter than the average doorway, and after a little straining and a loud scraping sound, they were both inside.
Gets a chuckle out of me everytime.
May 9th. Some decent workshopping of the pre-Sugarcube corner scene, and then some more long introspection from Rainbow Dash.
These verbose internal monologues from Rainbow are probably the strongest parts of the story. They’ve got a strong voice, they’re constantly revealing backstory and character, and they’re consistently pushing the story forward.
Some development shown here. At the start, Rainbow Dash is so upset she can’t even think about Rarity, or admit that she brought in spring early just for her girlfriend. Now she openly comments on it, no big revelation or realization, just slowly cooling from a boil to a simmer. Simple, but sweet.
Also
Rainbow wasn’t entirely sure what Rarity meant by ‘tacky,’ but it didn’t sound very appetizing. Not the way Rarity said it. Rarity’s voice could make anything sound appetizing. Rainbow Dash imagined Rarity saying things to her, like ‘grilled cheese’ and ‘giraffe,’ in that singsong, laughing way she did. And suddenly Rainbow Dash really wanted to eat some grilled cheese and giraffe.
is the cutest thing I’ve ever written.
The backstory is coming into greater focus with
As she played pretend, Rainbow Dash realized a third and final life-defining principle. That was that she definitely shouldn’t have told everypony that she and Rarity had slept together, especially since Rarity had specifically asked her not to say anything about it to anyone, because they had only been dating for a couple of weeks and she didn’t want them to think of her as ‘that kind of mare.’
Now, the cause of Rainbow and Rarity’s fight has been decided and revealed. It still needs some work, some more detail that will come later, and the exact circumstances haven’t been worked out yet, but it’s finally in there.
Final note: Where I choose to stop writing is really perplexing all the way through this thing. Sometimes, I stop when I reach the end of a scene, and that makes sense. But sometimes, like here, I stop not just right in the middle of a scene, but halfway through Rainbow Dash’s internal revelation.
I don’t have any real point here. It’s just a weird way to write.
May 11th. And now the backstory is all there. The sex, the excitement, the dinner, the sound effects. The whole shebang.
Not much to say here. Sometimes you write something and it works right from the get go, and this is one of those times.
I would like to note that as silly as it is, I’ve always liked Dash physical progression in this story. She starts out stomping, scowling, and glaring, then drops off each cartoony expression of anger one by one as she thinks through what happened. By the time she accepts that she messed up, they’re all gone. Silly, but hey, sometimes a cartoon pony’s gotta be a cartoon pony.
I do have to question this story’s obsession with sex. It’s otherwise pretty cutesy and silly, but sex is really at the center of the plot. With paragraphs like
Why wouldn’t Rainbow Dash want everyone to know what she and Rarity had done together? Rainbow wanted to tell as many people as possible. She wanted to write it in cloud letters in the sky. Because she was dating Rarity! She was dating the hottest, smartest, most talented mare in all of Ponyville. Probably in all of Equestria. Rarity didn’t date just anyone. She had standards. And somehow, of all ponies, Rainbow Dash met those standards! It hadn’t even been a one night fling. They had been dating for weeks. Rainbow met Rarity’s standards so well that Rarity had even slept with her. Rainbow thought it might have been the most exciting thing that had ever happened to her. Of course Rainbow Dash would tell everyone she knew the next morning exactly what had happened, and prepare sound effects to go along with it. Just like she did with every new stunt she learned, and this was better than any silly little stunt.
it starts to feel like a little too much. But Rainbow Dash’s excitement in having been able to express her feelings for Rarity in physical intimacy, and what she thinks it means for their relationship, is still pretty damn cute.
May 12th. With the backstory figured out and about half the writing complete, the story finally finds its legs. I get Rainbow Dash all the way through the snooty jewelry story and to Flitter’s first appearance. It’s almost like I’m a real writer or something. Or maybe I was just nearing the deadline and had to get to work. Either way, a lot of new writing here.
In spite of being the third retread of this basic scene, I think Rainbow’s meeting with Snooty Booty is actually all right. Partly because Snooty Booty’s got a much more distinct personality than Rose or Mrs. Cake. Even as a cliche, it lends itself well to some simple humor, and because Rainbow has a back and forth rapport with Snooty Booty that’s missing in the previous two. Contrasting personalities knocking heads gives the dialogue a good energy and humor.
With that said, this scene feels like a wasted opportunity.
Low vs upper class, low vs highbrow, grit vs glitter is, to an extent, what makes Rainbow Dash and Rarity a fun pairing. That duality makes possible all sorts of melodramatic conflict, silly gags, and romantic tension. It also makes for the most compelling argument against the likelihood for any sort of healthy longterm relationship.
Here, Rainbow is confronting another member of that upper class, and there’s an opportunity for her to confront that challenge head on. I don’t have any concrete ideas how that could have been practically written in, but it feels like this scene could have been something more than just humor.
I do love that Rainbow ends up giving a Rarity a reject sapphire, all the more beautiful for its flaws. I don’t know if that’s a symbol, or a metaphor, or what. But I do know that it’s cute.
Afterwards, Rainbow Dash finally realizes what she’s done, what she’s doing, and what she needs to do. It’s a simple realization, with little fuss. It’s what every previous monologue has been building to, everything has been written but realization itself. Until now. Simple, but sweet.
This day’s writing also included the first appearance of Flitter, which is probably my favorite scene in the story.
Now we push through Flitter to the final scene. We’re nearing completion! Which is good, because I was supposed to finish this dumb egomaniacal project, like, months ago.
Let’s get this out of the way right up front—Flitter is awesome. She’s the best thing to come out of this story. The scene is perfect, and I’ll nitro-squirt Elmer glue up my ears before hearing any different.
A list of things I like about Flitter:
I like that Flitter is silly and fun, the only character besides Rainbow who gets any good jokes. She’s so ridiculous she almost normalizes Rainbow’s earlier absurdity. Almost.
I like Flitter as a foil to Rainbow Dash. Flitter is a totally unselfaware Rainbow Dash. Flitter is Rainbow at the start of this story, bitter and lovelost and blaming everyone but herself for her broken relationship. Rainbow’s spent the time inbetween going on a little introspective journey and learning to accept blame. Flitter spent that time gathering rain clouds.
I like that, while Flitter’s appearance is sudden and maybe not so properly foreshadowed, her involvement still makes all kinds of sense. Of course Rainbow Dash doesn’t complain silently. She’s a loud pony, and of course she complains loudly about Rarity to anyone and everyone who’ll listen. And of course everyone realizes she’s just being silly and upset. Except of course Rainbow spouts off to at least one pony who is just as silly and stubborn as she is. Rainbow Dash effectively rains on her own parade. This, like everything else in the story, is her fault, and her only option is to give up or deal with it.
I like that Flitter stops Rainbow Dash buying Rarity’s forgiveness with gifts. Not that Rarity ever would have been down with that anyway, but it’s good that Rainbow doesn’t get the option. The gifts are too shallow, too commercial, and too physical. It doesn’t matter that Rainbow bought gifts. It matter that she realizes she made a mistake and making some effort to redeem herself. It also makes Rarity accepting the ruined gifts cuter.
I like that Flitter puts one last obstacle between Rainbow Dash and Rarity’s reconciliation. It reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut’s sixth rule of writing.
Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them-in order that the reader may see what they are made of.
Rainbow Dash has conquered all of her inner demons and is ready to confront Rarity. Everything has fallen into place, the journey is nearly complete. All she has to do is walk over to Carousel Boutique and deliver the gifts.
And then the rain starts and ruins all her plans. This is a pretty mild version of what Vonnegut was describing, but it’s always good to throw a farewell banana peel at your characters’ feet when they’re sprinting down the homestretch. It tells a lot about a character if they pick themselves up one last time.
So Flitter’s awesome. Game, set, match. Now we move onto the final scene, which overall, I think is pretty good. But like so much else in this story, a couple more passes of the editor’s pen wouldn’t have hurt.
There’s a weird cliche in shloppy romance stories which is prevalent in, but not limited to, fan fiction. That’s characters sitting in the rain/cold outside their significant other’s door following a breakup or fight. It’s weird for a lot of reasons.
For one, it usually ends with the rainy-blubber refusing to leave unless they’re let inside to talk, and being left outside means getting a cold/sick/being self-harmingly stupid. The party inside is effectively guilted into letting some rain-soaked freak, who they have made clear they don’t want around, into their place.
As a general rule, if someone tells you they don’t want to see you right now, go ahead and fuck off. Don’t prowl around their doorstep like some kind of murder-sex-dungeon stalker. I guess the act of putting the chance at being with a lover above one’s own health is supposed to be romantic, but in reality it’s clingy and unhealthy. No means no even when it’s just a request to talk.
Rainbow Dash’s arrival at Carousel Boutique does avoid the worst of that cliche. She rained on herself, she doesn’t wait outside all that long, and when it seems clear that Rarity isn’t interested in talking Rainbow turns to leave. But the echoes are still there, and man, let’s just leave the rain storms out of our breakup stories already.
Beyond that, the rest of this is pretty good. Rarity’s physical introduction to the story was very important and easily could have been done poorly.
One of my favorite ways to analyze stories is to guage major characters’ presence. Presence has two sides. First is the obvious physical aspect, when a character is physically present in a scene, dialoguing and emoting and actioning around the stage. The other side is much more interesting, and that’s a character’s nonphysical presence. How often they are spoken of by other characters, how often they’re thought of, how much their decisions affect plot, etc.
A good example might be Eddard Stark from A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones. In the first book/first season, he is the most present character because he is the most physically present. However, even though he never physically appears in any of the following seasons or books, his presence isn’t lessened. He’s thought of and mentioned by nearly every character at least once, often much more than once. His actions at the start of the story and even before the start affect everything that comes after. He has a presence that just won’t die.
Compare that to any number of guards and minor characters who have physically appeared in every book/season but whose name no one can remember. Even when physically present, they have no presence.
Bringing this back to Spring is Dumb, a lot of people have described this story to me as a Rainbow Dash fic instead of a RariDash fic. I couldn’t disagree more.
Without Rarity’s presence, physical or otherwise, there is no story here. This is a Rainbow Dash and Rarity story, because Rarity’s presence is at least equal to Rainbow’s. Rarity is all Rainbow Dash thinks about. Every decision she makes is related to Rarity. And Rarity’s actions, even before the story begins, affects everything about the plot. This is a breakup and get back together story, and there’s no breakup if it’s only one character.
Rarity in this story is a character with lots of presence and no appearance, and that’s a difficult situation from a storytelling perspective, especially when it comes time to bring that character physically on stage. Writers, especially shippy romance authors, have a habit for melodrama. It’s easy to turn these reunions into grand passionate affairs full of drama, punctuated either by heartfelt snuggles or heated arguments.
But that’s what the audience expects, and that’s what makes that sort of melodrama boring. It’s always boring when what happens is exactly what you expected to happen.
I think the meeting between Rarity and Rainbow Dash is a good example of why a low-key casual reaction can be more interesting than a shouting match. Rarity takes Rainbow Dash’s appearance in stride and shows affection without theatrics.
The ‘good linen’ thing is pretty dumb. I mean, why wouldn’t Rarity have, like, any other towel available? But this is shipping, and sometimes you gotta take the dumb with the cute.
This is it. Minus later revisions (which, as I’ve mentioned again and again, were minor), this is the end of the writing of Spring is Dumb.
Rarity and Rainbow Dash talk things out, and then partake is some unusually aggressive bathtime snuggling.
I don’t really have much left to say. This is all pretty childish and romancey, but assuming this is a story about cartoon ponies and first-time love, the shoe fits. My only criticism might be that cartoon ponies and cartoon love don’t mix super well with the sex. More than that, sex is like a farewell kiss that it’s a little too easy a conclusion for a romance. I would have liked something a little more interesting, but sex works because it works.
Rarity looking through the gifts is some decent payoff to a long-building plot thread. Rainbow’s monologue about her and Rarity’s relationship is appropriately cute, and Rainbow’s self conscious sensitivity combined with Rarity’s blasé confidence and acceptance is appropriately shippy.
I do wonder if Rainbow’s “That’s all you’re going to say?!” Rainbow Dash cried. “You’re gonna forgive me just like that? Aren’t you going to yell at me?” is a little too childish. I can’t hear that sentence being uttered anywhere but from a children’s show character. But considering the source material…
And then they bang.
Some more writing did happen, and discussions with prereaders, and revisions based on those. But not really. I finished principle writing on the 13th and published on the 17th.
That’s a stupid fast turnaround time. Self publication is bad about that, especially on an active site like fimifc. It’s too easy to hit that publish button. You just finished, you’re excited, you want other people to read it, you want to see what readers will say. Why wait?
The answer is, waiting makes for better stories. No story should be published four days after the first draft is completed. Even a month is way too fast.
In conclusion, Spring is Dumb is good, but desperately rushed (ironic, because a month is a very long time to write nine thousand words). The writing did have a lot of energy and excitement to it, which I think is easy to find in Rainbow Dash’s bombastic inner monologues, but no amount of energy can substitute careful revisions.
But I’m a hypocrite, because I finished writing this today, and here it already is. Guaranteed, though, if I put away for a month and came back to it, you’d be reading a better Story of Story of Spring is Dumb.
So, yeah. That’s that.
I feel like I should have a more dramatic relationship with Spring is Dumb. It’s my most popular widely well received story, and is likely to remain so for a very long time. Maybe forever.
But I just… don’t.
Three years isn’t very long, but I can barely remember the time of my life when writing these stories, and the votes and comments, was one of the most important parts of that life. I doubt I look very different to anyone else, but I don’t recognize much of myself in this story. I don’t think, at least. I don’t really know.
Again, this seems like it should be more dramatic. This is more or less a farewell to a weird and wonderful chapter of my life, and maybe the most significant product of that chapter. I do worry I may have been a little disrespectful to my past work. There’s some pretty damning criticism in here, and I suspect I would have broken past-me’s achey breaky artsy fartsy heart.
But I don’t know.
Hope you enjoyed it. Both the story and the retrospective.
See ya around.
Man, I've been waiting for this!
I love getting this peek behind the curtain, especially as I'm working on revising my own story -- there's something heartening about seeing someone else's struggle to compose a tale worth telling.
It's also super-interesting to see you criticize yourself. For example:
I'm perfectly fine with having Rainbow do the exact same thing with a new vendor and a new item. She's still being stubborn and obstinate about her feelings, relationship, and situation, so it feels thematically appropriate to me.
It probably also helps that something about the line "All of everything" really tickles my fancy.
This joke that "really falls flat" probably got an audible snort or chuckle from me when I first read it, if not an outright laugh. It's just so ridiculous! I read something earlier today about how humor should surprise the audience, and a love-sick candy-colored marshmallow pony stating in oblivious straight-faced earnestness "I'm feeling really hungry for some hearts" is absolutely surprising.
I agree that "carrot-shaped dog" is... a weird choice.
This did make it a tough story to read aloud to my wife, because she hates even having the words "sex" and "pony" near each other, let alone in the same thought, but I bravely soldiered on and she begrudgingly admitted that it was funny and cute anyway.
This is definitely killing me right now.
Honestly, it just sounds a natural extension of the "let the story sit for as long as you can" philosophy. It'd probably be interesting to see a version of the story edited now, taking into account all the criticisms and addressing all the weaknesses you've outlined. Not worth the work, maybe, especially since you don't have that relationship with the story, but still... interesting to think about.
Thank you for taking the time, and for, mmm, exposing yourself to us like this.
I am impressed as this is more detailed an explanation than I was expecting. Thank you for the insight.
Not to derail the comments into Writeoff talk, but it's useful to keep in mind that the Writeoffs are basically first-draft competitions. Some people are good at writing more coherent first drafts; some people need to pound their first drafts into very different shapes to make the story work. If you're the latter, then at least the Writeoffs can be useful for external feedback on ways to pound the story into a different shape.
The first-draft effect is a lot clearer in the Original Fiction competitions, because there's so much more to juggle when you can't lean on established setting and characters. Typically even the winners of OF rounds have some major rough edges to polish (this round was something of an outlier).
And for the record, while normally I do pretty well with the first-draft thing, I've had Writeoffs where I just hit the wall of a bad idea and charged on through and ended up with weak crap. For example. So I hear what you're saying about needing more time to redeem those things than the Writeoff gives you.
Having been on both sides of that divide, though, there is a skill you can sharpen to compress your timeframe: outlining. Or mental outlining, at least, which I do a great deal of in Writeoff contexts. I loathe developing actual outlines, because writing down everything that happens in a story kills my desire to actually write the story, but I simply won't write the first word of a story unless I know where I want it to end and have some landmarks for it to swing past along the way.
A lot of the fits and starts I see in your retrospective seem to be places where you're essentially stopping and checking the map, and figuring out the best place to proceed from where you are. If you front-load that work, the actual writing goes much faster -- you have to work out problems along the way as you run across river crossings or briar patches, sure, but you know to climb that ridge ASAP, wander down the trail for a while, and then go cross-country east to that cool peak for your lunch break, rather than trying to figure out from the middle of the forest what might be a cool place with good views because your stomach is already rumbling.
I typically spend about 1/2 of my Writeoff weekend time in planning. Even on weekends when I've got momentum rolling on Friday, it's very rare for me to have 2000 words (out of a maximum of 8000) done before Sunday day.
It is always very interesting to see other people's writing processes, and I understand what you're getting at a lot. In particular, some of your notes about a few of the jokes and scenes are sensible - the chinchilla thing was particularly weird.
Though the other one - the one about hearts and hooves candy - made perfect sense to me, as she was so transparent. It could have possibly landed a bit better than it did, but I think that the thrust of that joke actually worked well in that scene.
I really adore this story to this day, though. I think that the central thread of it is very powerful, and it works excellently, doubly so with your comedic writing style.
That's one of those things that make what you're doing here great. The detail you go into with your process here is probably unmatched by anything I've ever read. It reminds me that one of the things that really helped me get into drawing was watching art livestreams, and seeing that the initial sketches that people started with were just as messy as mine, they just had the patience and the process to turn them into something impressive. Also getting to see just what that process was turned out to be very instructive as well.
Putting aside 'things that have to be done for survival', it seems like things that spark that level of excitement are few and far between. Certainly make the most of the opportunities, but by no means can you expect to spend all of your time in a state of maximum arousal. I think the far better takeaway from this is that if you encounter something that excites you this much, do not stop. You don't know how long your brain will deign to give you the positive vibes for that thing, so you better to make the most of it.
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While working on this, I came this close to doing just that, but man, I have so little time and so many other things to write. Maybe someday.
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No, thank you!
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My general rule is not to waste other people's time with a first draft, and I get miffed when other people waste my time with them. Putting aside the write off's problems with just not giving people a lot of time to formulate criticism and having so many stories that few of them get any real attention, if you wrote a story in a day, you're still better off putting it away for a week than immediately shopping it around as soon as it's done. In a write off, I can't think of a time when I didn't get more ideas for rewrites just from rereading my own story than I did from people's responses.
I've always been both very appreciative and impressed with how much work people put into criticism over there, but it's not a good format for that stuff.
The write off is a contest first, good motivation second, and a vehicle for decent feedback almost never.
Maybe. Most times I have a detailed plan in place, then about an hour into writing I'm already doing something that is both completely different than the plan and way better. I never start writing without a finished outline anymore, because I've never managed to finish a story that didn't have start-to-end plan beforehand. But I've also never actually written to an outline.
I'd guess those false starts are more a result of an inability to keep a consistent writing schedule, which is still my biggest problem, and one that only gets more difficult the more real-world responsibilities I take on.
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4654186
You people have a weird sense of humor.
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That's sort of a weird takeaway considering how many times I stopped. :P
But 'Do not stop' is probably the second most important thing when it comes to writing, right after 'Start.'
4674021
I feel you.
I mean... you're not wrong...