I Had To Murder A Darling · 7:43pm Mar 17th, 2021
If anyone's curious, I do have an idea of where The Long Eventide is going.
I have the ending scene pictured in my head and the broad strokes of how to get there. I told myself I wasn't going to commit to sharing the story unless I did know how it ends, because to not have a destination in mind is to guarantee meandering. It's the same reason I have a scripting phase; I write out some lines and "stage directions" of a scene before I do full prose, and while there's polish, added lines, and various other changes by the end, I know what notes the scene starts and ends on and what the beats are before I start writing out the details of book excerpts or musing on the logistics of commissioning the lunar throne.
There's disadvantages to it too, and I'm probably going to look back at earlier chapters and wince as I get better at translating script into finished product, since if you write a script, your characters can start to sound like they're reading from one. But I promised myself no rewrites after publishing, beyond fixing editing mistakes that are caught, until I'd written it the first time. To do otherwise lays the path of a dozen iterations of a first chapter while the last chapter never comes.
And there's still a chance that I'll get through script, start working on the prose, and still realize I need to axe something. There's a scene that was going to be in the second chapter that's been shuffled into the third, and I think the pacing of showcasing the strangeness of Eventide is better for it, as well as it leaving the Deimos off on the correct note. But, in the case of this particular darling, it needs to hit the cutting room floor entirely.
For a portion of her life, the palace had been another home for Twilight. She'd had her dorm at the Gifted School, and holidays at her parents' estate, but she'd spent so many days walking the marble halls, curling up in the age-appropriate sections of the royal library with a good book, and occasionally being tucked into bed in one of the guest rooms when she stayed up too late, or wore herself out too much practicing spells and needed a nap. She hadn't been the most gregarious of fillies, and she was far less inclined to look upon that fact with approval these days, but she'd always been polite to the staff, and learned the names of several of Princess Celestia's longterm employees.
That was why she recognized the office even before the door opened.
It was not unlike the one she had spent part of her fillyhood in when she'd gone to Celestia for her private tutoring, everything scaled up to suit its occupant, but that occupant was not an alicorn at all, but a donkey. The largest donkey she had ever seen, before or since, who looked no different from her filly years, save for a hint of extra grey to his brown coat. Tall and broad both, he looked like he could have stepped onto Sweet Apple Arces, shoved Big Macintosh aside, taken up the old plow, and pulled it with ease for hours, but instead he was as he'd always been, sitting quietly behind his desk.
He spotted them, nodded, and cracked a smile. "Your Highness. And, well, if it isn't the young Twilight Sparkle."
That's a small chunk of the scene in question. This guy? I like him. He's got a name, he's got a small amount of backstory that's solidified, and he's a non-pony of a species that, at least in my experience, doesn't get a lot of focus in fanfic. But the original characters I've introduced so far have threads planned to weave through the story and play off the Mane 6 and Luna. He does not. He's extraneous, and I think there's a more streamlined way to grant the information he provides without planting him there like a Chekhov's Gun I'm not going to fire. And if I try to force a firing, the results will probably inevitably be messy.
So a new scene needs some scripting to take that one's place, to make sure all the appropriate pieces are on the board when all is said and done, and I have this scene saved elsewhere. Because murdering your darlings doesn't mean throwing them away entirely. They're darlings for a reason.
Who knows? Maybe someone will be interested in reading a story about an elderly donkey who's on the Crown's payroll sometime. He's got some adventures in him, I think. He just doesn't quite fit into this one.
It’s always hard to do, though. Good on ya for realizing it’s the right thing to do and doing it! He does sound like a cool character.
It's tough, but it's a sure sign you're growing as an artist. You wrote something you liked and was good, but you realized it didn't serve the story, so you cut it.
Ah yes, that inevitable moment when you write a whole sequence that turned out really great and you just love to death...only to find out it's not working in context with the rest of the story and you have to weigh either revising it entirely or just flat out scrapping it and it potentially never seeing the light of day. 'Tis a tough time to face, but that's writing for you, and every writer's gotta learn to step up and make the sacrifices that's sometimes needed for the sake of the story.
But yes, do still hold onto the idea. I can't tell you how many of my own stories are, in reality, just made from recycled bits and pieces that didn't make it into other stories. It may not be right away, but I've found there's often a good chance of finding a new home for cut bits of stories like this eventually.
I'd gladly read about this gentlejack and what he does for the palace, if you ever write more about him.