Behind the story: Broken Promise · 4:04pm Feb 17th, 2021
Hello everypony, similar to how I did with Try, this is a behind the scenes to the writing of Broken Promise. It will contain massive spoilers for the story, so um, if you are reading it, and don't want spoilers come back here later.
I never expected to write a Lightning Dust story.
Yet, here I am, writing a Lightning Dust story. Let's start with acknowledging that Broken Promise was originally a speedwrite of 1.2k words in it's most original form. The prompt was "Never should've come here."
Immediately, I thought of Lightning Dust, and how she'd return to Ponyville to try to talk to Rainbow Dash to be able to move on from her shattered past, to start anew, only to not be forgiven by the very last pony who would give her a chance.
It was way too bold of me to try writing such a story in an hour, but I never do anything half-hearted, so I went into it, prepared that I might not finish. And having to wrap it up way quicker than I would have liked, but still have the ending make sense.
Needless to say, Broken Promise is now "planned" to be a 25k story about Lightning Dust's redemption.
I considered a lot of things when I sat down to write this. I wanted to further show Lightning Dust as a character, she sort of got screwed over by the show and making her out to be nothing but a "lesser" Rainbow if you will, but there's so much more to her than that. Lightning Dust didn't have the right approach, but she still had goals, motivations, and aspirations. She wanted to be the best, and sometimes being the best means putting others behind you.
Of course it was wrong for her to endanger the lives of the acedemy recruits for her goals, but this story focuses on her after all of that has happened, she's a shell of her former self. She's traveled around Equestria, searching for anyone willing to listen, only to have said doors slammed in her face, repeatedly. In a last ditch effort, she goes to Ponyville, to talk with Rainbow. Of course it doesn't go over well, and Lightning Dust is forced to endure the meaning of what it means to be truly, and utterly alone.
I knew going in, I didn't want this to be a "sad" story, I knew there would be aspects of sadness/bitterness within Lightning Dust's character arc, but it was also required for the story as a whole to make sense. So when I was figuring out how to tag it, I immediately thought of "Drama"
Drama is NOT an easy genre to write, believe me, I've scratched my brain trying to figure out the best way to express all the emotions within, without being over-dramatic. Which is something you have to be wary of when you seek out to write a story like this. I would like to think, I've succeeded in crafting a good Lightning Dust story, I'd like to think that all the favorites, upvotes and comments aren't for nothing.
But yet I keep questioning myself, is it good enough? Am I good enough to tell this story?
Sometimes I feel like I don't have any right to even be writing this. There's so much emotions, so much strife, so much struggle that Lightning goes through, throughout the story, but will she regret her Broken Promise?
If you read this far comment your favorite line of the the story so far, mostly to see if you actually read this. Lastly, thank you for taking the time to even read Broken Promise if you have, truly... it's hard for me to describe just how much passion I've tried to put into it. <3
Can't say I know what this feels like. Nope. Not at all. Sweats in 10k of mostly (incomplete) outline for the first act of a story that started as a six-hundred-word vignette with a throwaway punchline about necromancy.
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*pets* You can do it!