Well, I said I'd be doing this for every fic I completed...

I just got a reply from EqD today about A Romance in Twelve Scenes, which I'd been waiting on to see what I'd have to fix up and post this blog...

Well, it's not gonna be featured anytime soon, so have this anyway:

Title: A Romance in (N) Scenes

Synopsis: [Adventure] [Comedy] [Romance] [Random] Hey you.
Yeah, you.
C'mere, sugarcube.
Lemme tell ya a story.

Chapters:
• "It's about a mare I saved the world with... over and over again."
• The (N)th scene.

Notes:
• AJ gets progressively drunk as the story goes. This could be reflected in how well written the narrative is, and how frequently she goes off on tangents.
• Additional tags: Short romp through whimsical romance.
• Inception -> Acceptance -> Confession -> Dating -> Proposal -> Marriage -> Married Life
• AJ's quirks:
o -ing -> -in' (for anything longer than 1 syllable)
o you -> ya (only when it sounds right. For example: "Good on ya!" Not: "This is for you.")
o you all -> y'all
o is / am / are not -> ain't
o about -> 'bout (on very specific occasions)
o around -> 'round (on very specific occasions)
o because -> 'cause
o beneath -> 'neath
o until -> 'til
o it's just -> s'just
o what do you -> whaddaya
o old -> ol' (only when it sounds right. For example: "Big ol' dragon." Not: "I ain't old.")
o little -> lil' (size) / mite (quantity)
o got to -> gotta
o kind of -> kinda

Scene 1 (opening scene):
Must've been 'round ten years ago when it started. We didn't have many moments of peace and quiet no more. They'd gotten so rare that we might as well have just called 'em breaks from routine.
I didn't have much time to spend 'round the farm either, but that was okay. Apple Bloom had picked up the slack, and it didn't even cut into her job that much. She called it a "flexible schedule".
Gotta say, I didn't see myself savin' Equestria every other week while I was growin' up. Not even when we first met Twilight. I just figured the adventures would eventually peter out and we'd all settle down as we grew older.
Nope.
They just kept gettin' more and more frequent.

Scene 2:
It weren't so complicated after all. I'd still have to tell her if anythin' was to come of it, but I'd also have to wait 'til the best moment to do so.
~~<>~~
"I love you!"
That was not the best moment or the best circumstances. In fact, I'd probably describe'em as the worst seconds of my entire existence, but they were also sure to be some of the last, so I had to let it out before it was too late.
"Y-you... what?! This is—"
The wall blew up into wooden splinters next to her, the cuttin' edges barely gettin' caught in her magic before causin' her any harm. I could see the giant, bloodied fangs on the other side of the hole—heck, I could probably see what the darn thing had for breakfast, what with how big its mouth was.
"This is a really bad time!" she screamed, over the creature's ear-splittin' roar.
"I know! I just had to tell you before—"
"If you so much as hint at this thing killing us right after I've heard the first confession of my life, you've got another thing coming!"
~~<>~~
"You know, they say that relationships started under strenuous circumstances don't last long."
"Sugarcube, our live's are kinda full of stren—uh... those kinds of times."
"Yeah. Buck statistics." She smiled and shrugged, right before locking lips with me.
As we kissed, I looked behind her at the moon, fallin' closer and closer over Equestria. The view from the top floor of the Crystal Palace was a great place to see the world off.
Of course, that wasn't what we were there for.
With a high pitched sound, the thingamajig we'd set up beside us began to glow. A ray of golden light shot out from the highest tower of the Palace, meetin' several others that were comin' from different cities all over the land. Together, they formed a stronger beam that blasted up against the moon, stoppin' it in its tracks and then pushin' it back towards the sky.
No matter how bad the odds may be stacked against ya, there's one thing you can count on:
Your friends will always come through.

Scene 3 (2nd chapter):
Applejack snored with her cheek against the bar's counter, a puddle of drool starting to form under her as she kept her last bottle in a firm grip.
The sound of approaching hooves and a loud sigh drew the dumbfounded colt's attention.
"I'm sorry about this," Twilight said, giving the colt an embarrassed grin. "I guess she couldn't wait for me to celebrate."
With a light glow, Applejack's body floated over onto Twilight's back.
"Come on, dear. Let's go home."

Scene 4 (revised opening of the second chapter):
The fetching young pony sitting next to her beloved—still nursing an untouched mug of cider between fidgeting hooves—turned to look at her as she approached.
"I'm so sorry about this," Twilight said, wearing a guilty grin. "I guess I was too late to hold back her celebrating."

Self-imposed post-publishing analysis (things that are wrong with the story):
• Emotion. Yeah, she's drunk, but that doesn't mean she can't express her love for Twi more consistently. Usually, she takes a more "detached narrator" approach, and the times when I tried to make her attachment obvious come off as somewhat forced (though, I guess you could chalk it up to her being drunk… but that's a bit of a cop-out).
• Consistent tone. This is more of a "missed opportunity" point. I wish I could've slowly added a slur to AJ's narrative, showing how she becomes more and more drunk as the story moves forward. However, this would've made it distractingly hard to read combined with her accent, especially as the first chapter neared its end. I also really wanted that last part to be completely understandable, since it's the whole explanation of why AJ's in a bar getting drunk, instead of with her wife—as well as her feelings on their adventure almost coming to an end. If I was more flexible with my writing, I might've been able to pull this off properly.
• Framing device. I didn't really notice this one until the EqD pre-reader pointed it out to me. The whole narrative style, which allowed me to tell the story how I wanted to tell it, is at odds with the fact that this is AJ telling the story. In a more realistic scenario, AJ wouldn't be telling you what every character said, and she'd be more focused on the general feel of each scene and location, instead of detailed interactions. This is also the reason why I won't be resubmitting this story, since fixing this would mean rewriting pretty much the entire thing (and that's not something I'm willing to do right now).

I kinda changed up the ending as a spur of the moment thing, which is why the planned scenes for the second chapter are completely inconsistent with what ended up in the finished story.

Also, for those of you following WWW, I am in the middle of writing the third chapter, but it's starting to look like it'll be pretty damn long (unless I leave several scenes on the cutting room floor). So that might still take a while

Comments

[HoofBitingActionOverload]

Jeez, you take pretty detailed notes.

It's been a while since I read the story, but the criticism concerning the framing device doesn't seem right. No, in a real life scenario, Applejack wouldn't have bothered, or have been able to, transcribe exactly what every character said and did so precisely. No person could realistically provide that level of detail straight from memory, especially while drinking. However, those details are necessary to the story you told. As you said, leaving them out, or writing it in a different way would make it something totally different.

If you label using that amount of detail (though, you probably could have presented the information in a more conversational way) as a mistake, then you're also labeling a huge swath of literature written in first person as mistakes. Even novels narrated by conversational, subjective narrators who participated in the events they are narrating still include much of that detail, detail that said narrator shouldn't have been able to remember (like Fight Club or As I Lay Dying).

While your story is more specific on where and how the narrator is telling their story, the framing device (Applejack telling the story to her drinking companion) only sets up the story. It doesn't entirely dictate how the story itself can be written. Authors often interject their own voices in place of the narrator's in stories like this, where necessary, as long as it remains believably in character for the narrator, which you did.

[WovenWord]

1115574

Heh, you should see my notes for WWW. They're currently over 85k words long

Yeah, this one will probably stay in its current form—I was actually pretty happy with how it ended up. I might give it another pass in the future, but right now I'd rather spend any time I have to write on WWW or one of the many one-shots I have on the back burner.