Hello,

This is the thread for my stories and what's behind them. Essentially, I came to FIMfiction because while approaching my fiftieth birthday I resolved to begin doing the things that I felt I might enjoy, but had put aside in the pursuit of career, marriage and raising a family. One of those things was returning to doing something I had enjoyed as a teenager and had wanted to do again: writing fiction.

Having developed the ambition, the problem became where to start. Even though I'm a voracious reader, I don't have any formal education in writing. Still, I can tell the difference between good prose and "not good" prose, and I thought perhaps one of the fan fiction (out likely one related to science fiction) might just provide a platform from which I could develop my writing skills and access a community that could provide the constructive criticism than would help me gradually improve them.

Just as all of these thoughts were circulating in my head my adult daughter introduced me the MLP:FIM. The rest, as the saying goes, is Dafaddah's story! (The handle is a variation of how my son and daughter address me when texting.)

You can go to my author's page for more details.

So the rest of this thread will be dedicated to entries regarding the background of my stories. As final point I want to thank Phantom Dragon for clueing me into this group!

Dafaddah,
July 11th, 2016

I'll start with Filial.

This story is particularly meaningful for me as I wrote it not long after my mother passed away from pancreatic cancer. I know that this sounds like a horrible experience, but I and my siblings were given the chance to do something most people could only wish for: a chance to make sure that a person who is dying knows exactly how much you love them before they expire.

Of course during this period, the second season of MLP:FIM, the idea of filial love (from a child to a parent) was always on my mind. It came to me that the relationship between Twilight and Spike, although obviously an adult/child bond, is something that had never been fully explored on the show. As I wrote the story, it gave me a lot of comfort personally to offer Spike and Twilight a chance to voice the sentiments that I don't doubt for a second are there in their hearts.

Write what you had to do when you wrote your fan fic.
At the time I was travelling back and forth to my home town periodically as each of my siblings and I took turns being with our parents. This gave me a lot of time to write.

What were your influences and inspirations?
This story was prompted by a challenge to write a story involving sea-ponies, which dictated the setting. I decided to add Trixie to the story as I felt she and Twilight had unresolved business, also something on my mind during this time. However I didn't want them to come to a full reconciliation yet as I figured the show would at some point bring Trixie back on for an episode, soI showed them as having much in common with some grounds for eventual rapprochement.

What did you have to research in order for something to be in your narrative? Did you have watch a movie? Read any books? Did you play any video games or a watch any certain MLP episodes? Did any other TV shows play a part in writing said fan fic?
Read MLPWiki and look at some sea-ponies artwork. I DID remember the sappy "shoop-shoop-shoop" song from when I was a kid and my sisters watched the show! For the story I played the sea-ponies straight, which I felt was more true to my impression of MLP:FIM.

How many times did you have rewatch, reread, or replay to get the correct and accurate details?
I rematched the initial Trixie episode twice to make sure I didn't get any particulars of Trixie and Twilight's interactions wrong. More specifically, I had to tone down Twilight's reaction to Trixie, and in the show she really tried hard to play fair by Trixie.

Were there any ideas that failed or drafts that were scrapped for whatever reason?
The whole story was done in three major rewrites based on feedback from my editors. Also, I have to credit much of the emotional impact on Twilight of Spike's admission that he considered her his mother to some very good advice on that dialogue from one of my editors: Chatoyance. I also had to do a lot of polishing up based on feedback from pre-readers at Equestria Daily, mostly asking me to significantly put in more descriptive text to set each scene in a very visual fashion, something I try to employ in all my writing today. Following this, the story was featured on EQD.

Write about that, and anything else you can.
I'm quite happy with this story overall. Along with Elementary Dragon, it is one of my stories most structured like one of the episodes from the TV show.

5353697

I've never had much formal education in writing myself, aside from the lessons in grammar, structure, and the reams of completely uninspiring gradeschool "research" "reports".

However, I did read a lot of books.

Over the years, I started to think of writing as something one does with a paintbrush rather than a pencil. I had a discussion with Archonix about this sort of thing, in that I never actually wrote anything worth a damn until I started treating writing as an interpretation of what I could visualize.

And visualize I could.

The hot humid musk of Baltimore suffocates you like God's enormous unwashed ballsack the moment you step out the door. A sea of brick beckons the journey of a thousand steps between the gleaming glass zoo of migratory humans and the organic hive of stone and streets known as Charm City. You put your best foot forward, feeling it stick slightly against the pervasive brownish ichor of regurgitated alcohol and caramelized human waste. Once more unto the breech, you think sympathetically of your emaciated wallet. Once more, we shall feast together, guided by the electronic whim of our silicon leash, boldly striding forward with your compatriots in tow, ignoring the predatory growls of the steel beasts that sit and swelter in furious impotent rage. The group trails behind like the stretching swirling arc of a doomed star orbiting the cusp of matters doom. They will find their way regardless, driven by primal urges more base than feeding or fornication. The final hours are at hand. The sixty dollar meal is but a garnish next to the consummation that will slake our true hunger. We take our seats at the table in the same manner of fish returning to spawn and mate. We are an eclectic orgy of Venn diagrams. Minds fertile, with ideas ready to pollinate.

"Hey, I was wondering if you want to read this story I wrote."

5354131

And just as with the crawling alcoholic, his body and spirit shedding rancid fragments of decaying health and spirit, is driven from all comfort by the need for one more drink, so to the author his thirst to write fulfilled, finds that thirst not slaked but transformed by hubris into sharpened edges ready to cut and rend. "Stage two", says the hollow voice of ambition: "editing".

At the end of the paragraph add: "It was a good day in Baltimore."

:twilight blush:

Edit (of course there has to be edits!): I'm glad you had a good time at Bronycon!

Heh. Did you make it out there by chance? Would've been nice to meet you there.

5354317 Wow, you're proabily the only person, who take the time answered all the questions in the discription of the group. When you wrote about the tibit in my page I thought maybe you to share about that in this group. l'm glad you decided to join.

5354472

Nope - I was busy helping my daughter help a friend of hers move. But as I have just done two months of almost constant travel for work I wasn't planning on attending Bronycon anyway!

5354930

My pleasure. The group is a good idea!

5354957
My wordcount has been pretty abysmal this past year, but I'm definitely feeling a bit hyped up after a 3 day bender with a bunch of drunken miscreants constantly whipping their gdocs out :)

5354958 Oh thank you if you like to know, how the group came to be it's written in it's own thread the link is below.

https://www.fimfiction.net/group/208337/behind-the-fics/thread/238411/the-origin-of-behind-the-fanfics