Writing Stuff · 6:33am Oct 1st, 2017
September has always been something of a stressful month for me. Back in 1998, I joined the US Army and shipped out to Basic Training in September. That set the course for a lot of major changes in my life falling in September, culminating in finishing that first four years of active duty service in 2002, in September. 9/11 2001 happened during that span too. Even today, some changes in job employment took place in September for me. Not all of these things are related to each other, and many years have managed to produce an uneventful September for me.
2017's stress involved me writing. Something I've been rather unmotivated to do for awhile. On a whim, I decided to take part in a contest I saw advertised over in The Diamond Cutters. The result is the linked story, Bleached Blondes Beach Bond. If it looks to be interesting, by all means give it a read. The purpose of a story is to entertain, and if it entertains you then I've succeeded.
Rather than go on and on about the story and pat myself on the back for it, I'm more interested in sharing my thoughts about the process that led to the story existing to be read and enjoyed, hated, or ignored by any of you.
At this point, I forget what the original spark of inspiration was for it. I get ideas for stories constantly. There are days that go by where no ideas happen but those are rare. Usually several ideas come to me. One of my favorite activities is to inflict those ideas upon a few of my regular friends and conversation partners. I say inflict, because most ideas are bad. I know it, they know it, we all have a good laugh. Other ideas are pretty mediocre. They could be worked on and possibly become an interesting or good story. Most are not worth the kind of effort it would take to develop them though. Other ideas, I write down. I have a folder of scraps of ideas that constantly gets new additions to it.
Ideas are cheap. Despite what usually happens here on Fimfic, ideas are not stories either. "What if Mayor Mare and Princess Cadance were in love and totally made horsekisses with each other?" is an idea, but not a story. No, literally, it isn't. 
Not exactly intense shipping in the art, either.
Obviously someone is going to see that as a challenge. Knock yourself out, dude.
Back to BBBB, as I've come to mostly think of it from my gdocs folder for the story project. I spent a good portion of the month from the time I decided to move forward with the idea and use it for the contest, to the point where I did any actual writing, on design. Some writers claim to just hammer away at a keyboard and publish whatever comes out. I believe there are a lot of those authors, and it shows when they do. You see a whole lot of incomplete stories produced by that process. You see a lot of short, unsatisfying, and poorly crafted stories due to that process. Some people have hammered away at the process enough that they can force out something passable. The bar is pretty low and when you get a lot of feedback telling you that you're the next J.K. Rowling for your 1k shitfic, there is a certain kind of fun to be had I suppose.
Real stories are designed though. There are archetypes and frameworks. Good stories follow structure. This isn't to say that you must follow some kind of template to write a story, filling the blanks in on a giant Madlib. Like a tree has a trunk and branches, your story needs to have some general and high-level form to it. The exact branches and leaves, fruits and flowers, and size, shape, and color of your tree are unique to you and your ideas. But if it lacks a trunk and branches, it's just a pile of leaves. Regardless of how cool your pile of leaves may be, it simply isn't a tree.
Another part of the design process is logic and realism. No matter how magical and fantastical your ideas and proto-story concept are, you're going to have real human beings reading it. You have to bridge that gap between the vision in your brain to the eyeballs and thinkmeats of your readers. When you pulls the strings on your puppets, they have to move in a way the audience can recognize as deliberate and meaningful. If you just violently ragdoll your puppets around, you're not going to convey your story very well. When writing, the design portion is important for ensuring your idea gets communicated.
There are a lot of things that happen in the design process. Every project is different. Every writer is different. Even the "authors" who just vomit words on the page and hit send, there is a process. You get your idea down in front of you and look at it. You think about how that initial idea could happen. What would be needed to make it happen. What happens after. A thorough brainstorming session can explore several possible branches the idea could follow. Flowcharts can help make this mess easier to observe. Some people like spreadsheets. I happened to use a nested bullet-pointed linear depiction of ideas and dependent/supporting ideas. I'll probably try something else for my next project.
The "wordvomit" method essentially translates to: Here is idea. What happens next? What happens next? What happens next? Repeat until you run out of nexts. Done. The big hazard being that it doesn't explore branches. It also doesn't do a good job of deciding where the beginning would best be. It can be fast, but only because it cuts a lot of corners and decisions out of the process, and it is nearly impossible to wind up with the best possible story for your idea with this method.
So I'm a really big advocate of pretty much any other method there is. If you are willing to go back to the start, and explore options at the front end, you can sometimes figure out a better way to start up and lead into your idea. If you are willing to examine some different possibilities instead of just the first that comes to mind, weighing the pros and cons of going left or right at the fork, then you can decide for your self which one best suits your story. More options take more time, but you're the final arbiter over what is the best. I find the process a lot of fun.
And you do a lot of pruning. You need to be savage with this part. Your idea following the left branch produces a different story than following the right. If you decide both branches are really good, it can be hard to let one go. I'm not talking about options in a story where you might be able to combine or merge them. I'm talking about mutually exclusive options where you must let one go. This does happen a lot, and you have to be willing to do it. No matter how nice a set of events the pruned branch can be, if the chosen branch is better, stick with it.
Once you have this process explored (it never really is completely finished) you have to pick a point where you're satisfied that you've examined all the important options, picked the best ones, and decided on a start, end, and the path between them.
For me, I came up with a series of "events." The characters arrive at a certain location. They do some stuff. A story is a series of events, and the transition between them. The series of events can also be considered your plot. You have the event that introduces the conflict. You have the event where the conflict is resolved. Some other events happen along the way to complicate the path. Some events may be red herring sidetrack sorts of things. New characters being introduced is an event. Whatever fits for your story, if you think of it in terms of events, you can basically write down, draw, diagram, or depict them as manageable chunks. You can move chunks around, decide which ones belong in which order, and it can be easier to think of what connecting stuff is needed to get from event A to event B.
Cadance is in the Crystal Empire. Your story has her and Mayor Mare kissing in Ponyville's City Hall. One obvious event is the kissing scene. Introducing us to Cadance and why she wants to go to Ponyville is an event. Once you have her there, what kind of event gets the two interested in each other? So you have three chunks already. When you have them visible in front of you, you might think of other events that help. Cadance is in Ponyville, so Pinkie Pie greets her and throws her a party. As she does. Mayor Mare invites herself to the party, to schmooze up to the princess. So you have an event where she learns about the princess's arrival and the party. Keep on thinking up events that fit into this growing web!
Once you have a string of events, you've pruned out the ones that don't help your story, and you have a clear path from start to finish, you have all the complications and side quests you want, and you have a strong concept of what your overall story looks like, it is time to dress it up. It is time to play the director and camera operator. Picture your event. What point of view would best work for it? Do you want to closely follow behind the shoulder of a particular character, give a higher up bird's eye view, or something else? Do you want to convince your reader that a character from the story is telling them things happened or maybe you want to convince your reader they're witnessing the events themselves. Do you want to emphasize the setting and locations, the characters, action, dialogue, monologues, or something else? Mix and match these things. Consistency is often a good thing with some parts, variety is good for other parts.
Think up scenes. Often times one event = one scene. Sometimes multiple scenes might be needed to fully show off an event. A scene is basically a chunk of real writing. It is essentially a transition phase between designing your story and telling it. A scene is the thing that will contain all your wordvomit. That wordvomit needs to accomplish the goal of showing part or all of an event to your readers. It needs to not only be entertaining to read, but build up information in your readers' heads that will let them move on to the next event, and so on all the way to the end.
All too often, as the result of the wordvomit-publish method, there is no story. Someone takes an idea, builds one scene to show off the idea, then calls it good. Occasionally that process produces a few scenes. If you followed this method, and you decided to make Cadance and Mayor Mare kiss in City Hall, you might be tempted to just write out that particular scene and hit send. But if you followed the design process and thought up several events, you may decide that having them kiss at the party is better. One method produces just a quick and dirty, "here is what City Hall looks like, Cadance is there, they're totally touching their hooves on each other, and like, horselips to horselips. Wet sounds. The end." The other lets you know that, hey. There are other ponies there. Pinkie, other guests. Maybe Twilight sees her sister-in-law kissing someone not her brother. Suddenly the scene is much more interesting. When you go to write it, you have a lot more stuff to depict in your prose, but you have more purpose. What happens next? Flip the page and find out.
Sometimes the writing process, as a creative endeavor, involves spur of the moment stuff. You might decide, as I did above, that "holy shit, Twilight being there would totally make sense, and it would make for one hell of a important set of consequences!" but you didn't include that in your design process. Well, maybe you should have thought of something that obvious, but you didn't. Now you have though. So you see what this does to your idea. What events would happen as a result? What events on your old design just don't work any more? Make your changes! It isn't set in stone. If it makes your story better, great. If it makes your story worse, then cut it. Figure out why Twilight isn't at the party. Since it feels like such an obvious thing, you can have Pinkie being a bit sad at the party, because Twilight couldn't make it.
Writing a story is a project. Writing fanfiction is done, usually, at your own pace with no deadlines other than self-imposed ones. So there is nothing wrong with going back to the drawing board. That is part of the project. Maybe you happen to like that experience of just hammering away at your keyboard, letting the words vomit out, and then reveling in the pile you made. But if you're interested in entertaining others, making your idea the best it can be, making your idea into a story, then you have other parts of the project to play around with too. The project is finished when you've crafted the best story you can, and only then is it ready for your audience.
A final consideration. A lot of people, myself included, don't embrace this concept when popping out every story/pile. A lot of people are just interested in that sort of interactive community aspect of putting out some horsewords, getting nice feelings when random strangers on the internet praise them, and playing the Fimfic game of metadata (upvotes, feature box, etc.). It can be tempted to skip to that end. It can be tempting to publish an incomplete fic (not to be confused with a staged release). It can be tempting to just put out a poorly designed idea, and hope that feedback from the site's users will illuminate what direction your idea should go in. These are not good choices for producing good stories.
So, this September had me designing the hell out of a story. It had me with a strong picture of what the complete thing should look like before I wrote down a single word that wound up published. I wrote it under the deadline of the contest, which meant I had to be extra savage in cutting stuff. It meant I had to spend less time polishing it than I would like. I'm still not particularly happy with how many scenes turned out. I know I can do better. After the judging process is over, I plan to do another blog releasing some of the design portion of the story for interested folks to look over. Some of the research I did for various details. I'll probably polish it a bit more too. Maybe expand on it here and there, redo some scenes.
For now, I'll leave you a picture of the character I came up with for BBBB, Cloud Weaver. Thanks to Jondor for taking the time to produce this art, as my skills with drawey-stuff is pretty damn awful.
Well, now I feel like absolute crap about the writing process I generally think of myself as using.
Thanks, I think.
In the words of HK-47, In fact, that is the worst thing you can do.
By following a defined formula deemed profitable, companies have churned out books, movies and even video games with the same basic story skeleton, leading to a saturation in that market which is more then likely to deter customers from being invested in their products.
I think I'll need to read this once more, later. It's a bit of a long read.
One thing I picked up was the part with logic and reasons behind things.
This is one thing I agree on, everything has to make sense at least in the context of the story. Whenever it doesn't this really bums me out.
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The flip side of this is that literature has been created by human hand for about four thousand years now. Nothing is truly original today, and understanding what form you are using (rather than deluding yourself into thinking you've managed to invent a new one) lets you see the pitfalls, shortcomings, and limitations of said form.
You can read twenty different versions of "the hero's journey" and be satisfied twenty times. The level of design represented at this point in the construction of a story is not so concrete or defined that you could ever say, "read one, read them all." A trek through the frozen wastes of the crystal mountain ranges by Daring Do, seeking to recover the lost "Crystal Heart," years before the return of the Empire in Season Three would be very different from the elaborate and trap-dodging tale of cookie acquisition starring Pumpkin and Pound Cake. Both could wind up as tragedies, the protagonists doom to fail their goals despite every effort made. Both could encounter twists and turns, run afoul of the machinations of some antagonist (Sombra's ancient left behind traps or Mr. Cake's locked cabinets).
Some of those "overused" formulas may seem tiresome. Some may be deliberate decisions to "use what worked." Others may well be coincidentally similar, as writers behind each of those productions just simply tries to make the best story they can, and incidentally wind up with similar/popular forms.
It is but one aspect of writing. It is but one aspect of making a good story. It is better to be aware of it when writing, to understand this tool in your toolbox, and use it as well as you can.
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I often make people feel bad. If you use that to make yourself improve, and come out more satisfied with your endeavors, we can agree it was worth a little discomfort, yeah?
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The value of this format is that the words are there to be read as many times as you need or want, at your own pace.
Internal consistency is indeed super important. You can make a gritty, near-reality piece, or you can write a comedy, a piece of high fantasy, or some poetic journey of symbols and impressions. Whatever you are depicting is, in your imagination, a thing. It exists in some form. You are telling others about this thing and attempting to recreate it in their imaginations. Even if that thing is itself formed from contradiction or inconsistent parts, the stuff of Discord's dreams, you need to understand it intimately to be able to convey it correctly.
In addition to the world/overall story being consistent, it is important to use characters well. As fanfiction, some characters are partially done for us, and we need to be consistent with their canon portrayals. Other characters are less defined (background ponies/original characters), and we have more freedom, but when we establish our take on these characters in a story, they need to hold true to that increased definition.
The most important part of a story is in revealing this idea, and being consistent with all parts of that idea can be thought of as just doing a better job of understanding your own idea and communicating it more successfully to your audience.
Just to toss out a counter-point, I offer up two words: Stephen King.
His method of writing is to come up with a situation and characters, and then let it organically evolve, with the characters doing whatever they do that feels right to him. He's written a lot of books that way, gotten a lot of fans, and earned himself a lot of cocaine money. I think that there is a certain strength to writing that way, in that it allows the characters to drive the story, rather than be driven by it, and so, provided you have some talent and the characters speak clearly to you, you can get some very compelling characters.
But even writing that way isn't fast or easy. While for me, my typical second draft consists of making the story 20-50% longer (show vs tell is my weakness), King's method is to make the story about 20% shorter. Think about that. That's his aim, to trim a full fifth of what he's written. Probably more, if other parts wind up getting expanded a bit. And I think that is a key thing to do if you do write that way. You've got to go through and trim things that aren't necessary, where your spewing of words took an unnecessary detour, because you do want to stay on track, and you do want a certain pacing, to keep the reader gripped. There is a sizable time investment in that trimming, and a lot of skill required in knowing what to trim.
Of course, I think that this helps to explain why the endings are often the weakest parts of his stories... To quote Princess Leia: "You came in here, but didn't you have a plan for getting out?" It often seems like he doesn't, so at some point, something shifts as he pushes the story towards its conclusion. Or basically, he then blasts his way into a pile of garbage. And that's not counting the number of abandoned stories he has, or stories that wind up sitting in stasis for quite a while until he comes up with an idea that allows the story to go toward a conclusion.
Still, his method works for him.
Now me, like you, I'm a planner. I outline my stories. Some parts in detail, so that every beat is laid out, planned. Other parts are just a single line that can wind up being a full page of text. The parts where the story hinges on are usually the former. And the other parts are not that important... My planning might say "Princess Cadance goes to Ponyville." The why isn't really important for planning the story, not unless I intend to make it a subplot. So that bit will most likely organically evolve. But the scene that sets up why Princess Cadance will end up locking horse-lips with the Mayor, that'll be broken down pretty specifically. And like you, if the story demands to go a certain way, I'm generally willing to adapt my outline to allow for it.
But to say one must plan, well, I don't think that is the way for all people. But regardless of the method used, time must be invested. If you're a planner, then in planning. If you're a "let the narrative evolve" type, then in abandoned stories and post-first-draft cutting.
Is there a word missing in the first clause? Maybe a "there are"?
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It's the opposite, actually. People generally like familiarity. There's even a name for it: The Mere-exposure Effect. That's why sequels and name brands are a safer bet than an new IP. It's why trailers for movies have the same beats. It's why the millennial whoop is so prevalent currently. It's why almost all the YA franchises consist of teens who for some reason matter more than the adults, and also are involved in a love triangle. It's why certain events in a movie will tend to happen at relatively the same time into the movie as it does in others. It's why so many romance stories consist of an amazingly modern and independent woman who meets an arrogant and rich guy, with whom she will first bicker, then fall in love, only for some event to see them fighting again, all before a resolution that has them ride off into the sunset. Same characters, same plot, just with some window dressing, over and over again.
Now, sure, sometimes something comes along and breaks free of the mold. Sometimes, it destroys the old and forges a new, like what tends to happen with music every decade. Other times, it can't really be copied, and so the mold continues to be used, though inevitably, some attempts to copy the new thing still happen. But regardless, people like familiarity.
That said, I think there is a lot of room within the known formula to play with. That's what makes the difference between something that stands well on its own, as opposed to something that is obviously X with a different coat of paint slapped on it. And there's definitely nothing wrong with subverting a trope or doing unique things. Just saying that the formulas are used because they work, and often work for quite a while before a switch happens to a new formula.
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Thanks for spotting the typo. I fixed it.
Interestingly, the sentence right before it works into the response to your counterpoint:
By your own description, Stephen King may not pre-plan his stories like I advocate and you also prefer. But he most certainly doesn't just faceroll the keyboard and publish it. He still has a process that fulfills my suggestion that more steps be taken than just the wordvomit phase. He does his after, I like to do mine bother before and after.
The other part of it is that Stephen King is one smart cookie. He has experience. Mountains of it. Not only has he personally written more than the most prolific person on this website, he's educated, and has gotten professional feedback through editors, publishing process, and marketing feedback from those fans you mention who voted with their dollars, rather than lazy upvotes. He has learned from all of that, and grown as an author.
He can pull off some things intuitively that lesser mortals like you and I need days of careful thought to do. But he still does them. When he's hammering away at his keyboard, you can be sure that there are some elements of objective creative writing, archetypes, structure, and so on rattling around in there somewhere. When he gets to his pruning phase, you can be sure he knows of those things and some of the cuts and decisions he makes are to those kinds of ends.
Despite the fact that his method is, due to some adherence to design, vastly superior to the average Fimfic output, you can see and already mentioned some of the weaknesses to his method that mirror the typical Fimfic shitfic.
And we both already incorporate some of the benefits of that method in our own styles. There is nothing stopping either of us from opening up a blank page and throwing words at it until steam runs out, then deciding what to do with the resulting goo. Starting that "organic" (read: vomit) spew cold vs doing it with some purpose in mind vs doing it with a vague idea are all the same process, just with a different "seed." I just advocate that planting that seed in your brain to kickstart that process with one selected from a planned story concept generates better stories. You can have your organic character interactions still. Indeed, I would say those are a necessary and important part of writing a story even if plot demands they go left instead of right. If an organic process would result in them going right, something was missed in the design process and logic. The two are intertwined, not separate. They both help refine that imaginary thing in your head, not dictate it.
But the main point is that succumbing to that itchy finger and hitting publish just because an automated site like Fimfic lets you instantly get from idea to gratifying feedback doesn't mean you should skimp on the design work. By all means try out different methods. By all means, pick one that works best for you. By all means do the parts of the writing process that are most fun to engage in, and shun the parts you dislike. We're writing for a hobby, not pay. But if you're like me, and you're focused on producing a story, there are parts of the process that don't involve wordvomit, but involve the things you learn about in school.
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Yeah, Stephen King does have the benefit of being a professional author, and of running things through that process even from a relatively young age. But his process has pretty much always stayed the same, so even before he had the full benefit of experience he has now, it's always been his method. And what he advocates in On Writing, as well. A part of the book I didn't agree with ;)
But , yup, to produce the best story possible, investing the time in things beside churning out the words is important. Which is mostly why I brought him up. As an example that shows you can go at it without lots of pre-planning, but that you still need to invest time regardless.
Adding to what Mudpony said, look up the 'save the cat' beat sheet, if you haven't already. It's the not-so-secret template for modern script and novel writing.
The trick with it is to be self-aware, don't have to follow it beat for beat. Just like audience expectations and what you've said about subversion, it's a secret sauce in the mix of what makes things entertaining.
I think it's a bit too cynical (but understandable) to say nothing can be original. The details are what make it original. Your journal post is very interesting and full of some great discussion starters--because it's very abstract, hardly any concretes. I'd love to share my thoughts on the details of your Bleached Blondes Beach Bond story in regards to this topic. Nothing mean or anything, just honest fun shop talk.
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Always down for that. Be mean if you like even. My worst fear is becoming the sort of person who sits in an echo chamber. If I make shit, I want people to tell me I made shit.
Up to you how you wanna do that. As I mentioned, I was avoiding going too deep into BBBB itself while waiting for the judging process to happen. Seems like it would be a good idea to let the judges form their own opinions on it, rather than rattling on about the ins and outs of my story like I was trying to unfairly influence them.
If you want to put your own thoughts out though, that's fine. If you want to do so on the story comment section, here, in PM, or wait for my post-judging blog, those are fine too.
As for originality: That's really its own can of worms. Our language on the topic is imprecise. I doubt we actually disagree, just have different emphasis. My more blunt version is in reaction to the sorts of bright-eyed youths thinking they can invent something entirely new and fresh, and who rail against the idea of using the old. My disagreement is with those people who are wrong due to ignorance and misunderstanding. You and I seem to both understand how things really are, and seek out ways to innovate within the old and still make something our own.
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Yeah, was hesistant because you did mention you'd talk about BBBB later, which I'm very curious to read. And don't like filling a story's comment section with walls of text--just have too much respect and appreciation for everyone taking the time to share their stuff, only want to encourage.
Or I guess, not distract or mess with potential reader's expectations. I remember looking at the comment section of another applebloom fic that got into the use of 'yall', and while amusing, just felt like... someone writes a piece of their soul and others just want to laugh and talk about a funny word they used
it's all fun though
Found a lot of your choices in BBBB odd. For example, having fun with the setup (promise of the premise) at the start of the second chapter, my guess was you were going to take it where they would decide to date/meet each other for the first time or some setup like that, not lead strangers on. It was different, and I got into it, updating my guess about the conflict as it being a very DT thing to do and AB not feeling comfortable, but then AB seems to be more or less OK.
Just a lot of odd choices given the audience. I liked Cloud Weaver, fun character and neat setup of what it'd be like to live in a vacation partyland, but was getting into territory where, and this is all me and i can respect an author's preferences, I needed more focus/setup/exploration/payoff on AB and DT spicing up their life like that. Sort of got away from strictly shipping them into some other kink.
Really enjoyed the setup of the Apple family's status with the Silvers. The thought given to the setting, could picture the place, which is always a nice bonus. During the early middle part, kept wondering what they were doing, as they came there to have fun, AB had already wandered around and found lots of partying, but then they decide to spend their time looking for souvenirs for friends and tricking others to find things to do.
My guess would be, if you were to have somehow merged Cloud Weaver's character into AB or DT, or given it more setup, would have hit audience expectations more. I loved the initial setup of changing appearance, but then it kind of wandered around after that into unexpected territory that felt like it was a separate story.
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Obviously things are less odd in my head, and make way more sense to me as the storyteller. Part of the effort of telling a story is to get those things to make as much sense to the reader as possible. Doing a bad job means the audience is left confused rather than entertained. As I said, I wasn't really satisfied with the result, and know I can do better. A lot of things didn't get quite as much polish or expansion as they needed due to deadline concerns. My hope at this point is that those flaws don't ruin the whole story so much that it can't take first.
Going into explanations for specific choices within the story doesn't quite fit the blog topic, even if they might be a fun discussion. One I'd rather have later after the judging process is over. For now, feedback that my story didn't quite come through was expected, if not very reassuring. Deadline limits and all that.
That I came up with several things you did enjoy (and hopefully many readers will) is what I'm mostly banking on. I can't help but notice that my story is many times longer than the rest of the competition's offerings. At 30k words, BBBB is a little bit shy of a novel, though if I did get to spend unlimited time writing it, I don't doubt it would pick up another 10k+ words and slide right into at least a short novel's worth.
The other thing I was hoping to create for the readers is a sense of a real, living setting. With real, living characters. Going through a real couple's concerns. The story bears the slice of life tag for a reason. It does sound like I hit close to the mark on that, if not a bull's eye. I'm glad you enjoyed the setting and hopefully that winds up being a high point for others too.
That parts of it were unexpected or felt odd I think is fine, even desirable to some level. As long as the journey from cover to cover for a reader is an entertaining one and enjoyable. A lot of my goal was to give more of that journey to read and offer a nice, broad experience compared to what I usually see churned out on Fimfic. It is a risk, like any creative effort. Putting more material into a story means more chances to be offputting, create and fail to meet more expectations, or succeed and be entertaining. More things you need to keep track of and balance. A lot of the design ideas I advocate become more critical with a larger story.
Unfortunately, an expectation that has been pushed about due to what usually goes on around Fimfic is a sense of compactness. I've seen this concern voiced by readers of other stories, such as my friend Carapace's story, Glow. Using his story as an example helps avoid going into specifics on BBBB at this point.
The concern, or complaint even, is that some things don't get enough setup. It can be a valid concern. It can be an unreasonable one. The story can only have one beginning. You only get one first chapter. You only get one first paragraph. A story is allowed to introduce more things than just what makes it into that coveted first point of the story. A longer, more complicated story will have to weave things in later on. The complaint treads on unreasonable when the reader starts expecting everything to somehow fit in the beginning. Structure simply cannot support such demands.
One similarity between my story and his is that both take place over a fairly short period of time. BBBB happens in two days, with the first one being partway over with before the story begins. Several chapters go by covering events in a single day. While we do get to spend nearly a novel's worth of wordcount getting to the end, the characters day is being told in fairly close, zoomed-in focus. The complaint might be that certain things don't happen sooner, when it would be physically impossible for them to do so.
In Glow, one such complaint was about Celestia, and why her part wasn't brought up and/or dealt with sooner. While chapters had gone by covering other material, very little time had passed for Celestia since she was last dealt with in that story. The main characters have more information than Celestia. The readers, having followed along with them, know more. But if you think of things from Celestia's side of the events, she had no way of knowing. So the complaint feels less about Celestia behaving a certain way, and more on the readers for not taking into consideration how much less she knows of the situation.
Hopefully that makes sense. When it comes to BBBB, the timeframe involved is very much part of the story, and how "fast" characters are getting into various decisions and situations is in fact part of the story. How much or how little they know when making their decisions is part of the story. How much focus/setup is available for some things is again, in limited supply.
When a story is very compact (less than 5k words like the bulk of Fimfic's offerings), you only really get to express one idea. You get to introduce it at the start, expand on it, explore it, then end. A story like BBBB has to juggle a lot more parts in an effort to give a more complex, more meaty experience. That doesn't necessarily mean it has infinite wordspace to devote to every idea within, and some things being not focused on can be a required consideration just due to the medium and the nature of the work. So a comment like, "this thing didn't get a lot of focus or leadup, and I wish it had more" is very spot on for a discussion on structure and design. But it isn't always an easy one to answer or satisfy.
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Makes sense. Keeping it to purely structural talk... hmm
Ideas in term of story length can be seen as plot threads. The well known template is about making sure there's always an A plot and B plot to switch back and forth through. The two plots come together eventually, and this is where the payoff and meat happens, as two (or more) parts become a larger whole. Each plot thread can have beats and a progression, with minor plots being introduced and resolved within it to beef it up.
There's also the well known setup->payoff beat, or foreshadow somethings so that when it's introduced or happens, it feels right at home in the idea or plot.
And those two things are usually all that's meant when someone says they desired more setup. Either the later beat wasn't brought up in theming or foreshadowing in the plot, or plot A was switched to a new plot B, and the story never returned to plot A. Or, they were never really merged and only one was resolved. Those types of stories have a vibe of 'stuff happens'. And they can work, usually by masking it as beats in a larger meta plot. Or just having a great stuff/hitting audience expectations (ie the talk about this being fanfics)
Personally, I've always liked to view it in terms of theming. Characters, scenes, setting, actions, even individual phrasing and key words--all tied to a theme. Theme can be any concept: feeling, idea, moral, question, etc. With that, can get away with anything as a writer, only drawback is having to be careful and avoid being heavy handed.
So structurally, felt like it could have been stronger by cutting the first chapter (removing the A plot) or by setting up with theming or foreshadowing what would happen later (keeping it a single plot thread or idea).
Appreciate you humoring me, really don't want to be frustrating. It's so rare to find someone cool enough to talk shop like this.
This was a good read