Problems and Fixes · 12:01pm Jan 17th, 2018
Hi all, first thing, thanks for reading Hell Yeah and leaving your wonderful feedback for this story.
Because of the feedback I've gotten I've been deliberating the dilemma of pursuing a sequel versus fixing current problems in the story. The current problem(s) highlighted to me were these:
1. The ending was rushed and as a result it got convoluted and suffered mechanically.
My comments: Super fair and quite obvious in retrospect. This, I believe, was primarily due to my self-imposed insistence to end things on thirteen chapters without writing quite possibly a separate story per chapter. The only reason for this was because my pics tend to sprawl out a long time and aren't as tight as I like them. To combat this I imposed a hard ending where I tried to tie everything together. The result: Kind of a miss mash. It kinda makes sense, but it's not up to the quality you expected from previous chapters. I'd like to apologise for this sincerely.
2. There were a lot of loose ends left over anyway.
My comments: Yes, and this was partially planned since I actually wanted to make a sequel as soon as I finished my other stories. I wanted to leave room, as it were, to add and expand later. The problem is my inexperience shows that I didn't adhere close enough to the Chekov's gun rule, where everything in the story should have a reason for existing. Using a sequel is cheating a little and all stories, even in sequels, should be constructed to the extent that it's very clear that it is a self-contained beginning, middle and end to achieve reader satisfaction.
3. The villain at the end sucked.
She did. I'm going to fix her. She's a flat villain and Lex is more interesting anyway. Sorry.
Now there are two ways I can approach this:
1. A rewrite of the story, which will address these problems and still try and setup a way to continue for the sequel. Actually, the sequel was planned to to have Morpheus appear in Twilight's future when she's an alicorn princess and drag her into a battle with another magus.
2. Write the sequel as a sort of 'fix fic' that addresses these problems.
To be honest, I'm leaning towards 1., but I'd like to hear your opinions on this decision since this affects you all as readers.
Good points indeed. This won't be helpful, but I'd be fine with either approaches.
I'm a simple man to please
I didn't consider the ending bad. More rushed than the engaging, paced out nature of the rest, but not bad.
If re-writing the story came at the expense of a sequel, then I say NO to option two.
Or you could say
to Hellto Tartarusto The Other, and just write a sequel.Option 2. I've always found it helpful to simply move on once I've completed something. Sure there may be problems with it, but the more important thing for me is that I got it done. I've just found it better to try and do better next time than to keep stewing over and over again on the same thing once its done. If this were a case of an incomplete story then that'd be different, but here you're completely done with the story and have left room to improve. You can always go back and rewrite any previous works should you feel they need it, but sometimes it helps to simply move forward. But that's just my way of looking at it; I'm sure you'll make the decision that's best for you.
Either way, looking forward to more from you.
I'm always against a rewrite, it does not matter if there is some sort of problem with the material. As for a "fix it" extra chapter or short story, I don't really like those either. Basically I'd say just leave it as is and move on. Sometimes things that appear as mistakes lead to better things down the road.
I vote for 2.
I'm not sure a rewrite would be worth the effort, at least if you don't expect a lot of new readers.
I'd say at most a rewrite of the ending, and then onward to the sequel. Else, just go for the sequel, rewrites tend to spend more time than they give back. Not only that, take what you learned with this and go forward, don't keep revisiting the past. Everything we do can always be better, but if we don't learn to let go we'll never finish anything, searching for perfection.
It wasn't a terrible ending. I mean big boss lady could realise she failed and come back to finish her work. Lex was a great "villain." I like both options. Write a few fixes into the new story.
I would go with #2, and just focus on cleaning things up with the ending.
You have enough threads from this you can weave in a why to twilight, or morpheus respectively, just cleaning up the nature of his being sent back.
I don't think I have ever bothered to reread a story just because it's been revised. If I go back to a complete story it's because I'm in the mood for that kind of story. If it's had a polishing pass since that's nice but doesn't really affect my decision in any way.
I think a fix-fic is the wrong way to go; it rarely ends well.
If you were doing this professionally, then you'd have an editor forcing you to write and rewrite until it was as good as you could get it. The closest you'll get to this in this case is to rewrite the end.
On the other hand, you're not a professional writer, so there is merit in taking it as a learning experience and moving on. Whether that means writing the sequel you'd intended to write or moving on to other stories, is up to you.
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Okay, looks like everyone is in favour of me doing the sequel and no rewriting. What I'll do (for my sanity's sake) is polish up the ending a bit (add some meat) but nothing fundamental will be changed. The sequel will try and tie up some loose ends, but I'll approach it in a kind of new way, taking lessons from the past.
I really, really, super appreciate all the feedback and getting back to this post so fast! Thank you all for taking the time to write in. I will try my hardest to meet your standards.
Definitely would prefer a sequel over a rewrite (I like sequel option 1) really can't wait to see what you write next.
the sequel idea sounds amazing, reading about Morpheus's reaction to Twilight being an alicorn now would be all kinds of hilarious!
While i agree the ending feels a little rushed....this is a fan fiction so no one should expect perfection from every writer. I think you should take it as a learning experience and move on to the sequel. When that is done polish the series as a whole. beside its always encouraging to look at where you began and physically be able to see how you've improved since then. Its about the journey...not just of the story but of the writer as well...So definately would rather see a sequel before a polishing/rewrite.
On another note...i like the idea of him being reintroduced after she becomes an alicorn but him just popping up out of no where would be weird so i was thinking "how could it be done while still following the lore of the first story?" ...from the explanation of why demons couldn't be summoned twice, it could be said when she became an alicorn she gained the strength back to survive a harmonic resonance cascade again. You could put it in the tirek arc when she has 4 alicorns worth of power in her...and maybe tirek is a demon that was summon and imprissoned in tartarus a long time ago and his domain was the absorption of magic and since twilight was the pony who altered all their true names she in theory could recreate a summoning spell for demons because she alone has knowledge of their true names. In a desperate atempt at help she tries to summon morpheus again for help(since his domain is to commandeer other demon's domains)........
This just my thought on how he could be reintroduced...i really thought way to much into this.....however you go about it i eagerly await the sequel.
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Will you notify us when you do the update? I stopped reading with 3 chapters to go to wait and see your decision.
4776554 4777362 4778633 Thank you for your replies, sequel is looking most likely. Yes, the ending did feel rushed, but I think a rewrite is not what most are looking for here. I'll try my best not to mess it up too much in the sequel! Meanwhile some minor amendments may be made to the ending for mostly my satisfaction, but it won't impact the core story.
4780218 I don't think I will give a notification via the story, because that requires deleting and resubmitting chapters. There's not much to change (core-wise) for the main story so the overall experience will be very similar with the pacing changed to include maybe one or two things.