The Making Of: An Earth Pony Thing

This will contain spoilers, so if you haven't read the story, would suggest doing so first.

I don't really expect people to read most of the attached stuff. The idea and rough outline one, sure, but the actual drafts? Some might skim them I guess. Just thought it would be interesting to post some things showing how one of my stories progresses.

Like most stories, it started with an idea. The idea in this case from a thread in The Diamond Cutters group. The thread has since been deleted, for good reason, as it was one of those that never turns out well, plus it was not really relevant to the group. In the course of the thread, however, the topic of earth, pegasi, and unicorns came up, and I mentioned something that had occurred to me a while back. That thought is what I had on my userpage as the note for the story while I was writing it:

We often tend to judge ponies by our standards and think they act like we do. We overlook that they are driven by forces we are not, like their cutie marks. We look upon the earth pony and think, "I have no interest in growing plants, therefore if I were an earth pony, their racial perk would be worthless." But if one were an earth pony, would one think the same?

We also tend to ignore plants in our stories about earth ponies. If we write about a pegasi, there will most likely be flight. If it is shipping, there is a decent chance of some allopreening. A unicorn story will tend to include the use of magic. But growing stuff? Most earth pony related stories do not touch it. Makes sense, since to add it in, you sort of have to go out of your way. It would feel a bit forced. Though perhaps ship stories could include flowers and petals a bit more. Some do work it in though, like mature+gore "Cheerilee's Garden". Still, on the whole, we tend not to think too much of what growing things might mean for the non-farmer earth pony.

So I decided to write a story about that, and cover it in some cuteness.

For the story, I needed an earth pony one would not expect to have a garden. I quickly decided that Diamond Tiara or Octavia were the best choices. Octavia would have given a pony that is generally considered to be classy, as well as Vinyl to say something stupid. However, not a character I know well. I like the idea of Octavia, but I cannot say I have ever really been interested in reading stories about her. Diamond Tiara is one I enjoy both reading and writing about. So I went with her. Will most likely mean a lot less views, plus no chance of making EQD, but oh well. Ultimately, its success or failure hinges more on how well I write than anything else

First thing I did was jot down some ideas. That morphed into a rough outline. Those two can be seen here. From there, writing started.

It was also at this point that an artist I follow on dArt, FlyFar7, opened up commissions, so I decided to get some art from her. In a way, sort of wish I'd held off a little on that, as at this point, didn't have the whole Alula is touchy, DT blushes like mad at PDA bit. Having Alula hugging an embarrassed DT would have been cuter. That's timing for you. Got lucky in having her become available at a time I could use some cover art, got unlucky that my idea was not quite well enough developed yet. Not Fly's fault, in the slightest. Nothing but love for her. She gave me what I asked for and added great touches like the Heart's Desire plant.

The first draft came in at about ~3200 words. Gets the basic story there, but light on show, and was not particularly happy with the after school part. You would be able to see that and lots of other notes in the comments, but sadly, for some reason when you copy the file in Goggle Docs, it does not copy the comments. Which is too bad, as seeing what I've flagged would have drawn attention to certain parts, made it easy to focus on small bits.

And so onto the second draft. Now up to ~4,200 words. Like the first draft, sadly missing my comments. I wound up deleting the last 700 words of the first draft and rewriting the ending. Was an improvement, but not quite where I wanted it yet.

From there, more reworking. Then brought in Telaros to help me identify and improve certain things. And that results in the published form, clocking in at 5,353 words. Yup, FimFic's word count says more, but that is because it counts quotation marks as words.

So there you have it, one fic, from start to finish.

Comments

[Silvernis]

Interesting. I can't help feeling that earth ponies are unfortunately seen as a bit "boring" compared to pegasi and unicorns (no flying, no magic), but there's a lot more to them than meets the eye. I like the idea of earth ponies having personal gardens, even ostensible spoiled brats like Diamond Tiara that you wouldn't expect to putter around in the dirt. (And props for using DT instead of Octavia and Vinyl. Much as I love those two, it is nice seeing some less-popular ponies take center stage.)

Yup, FimFic's word count says more, but that is because it counts quotation marks as words.

Really? Huh. I guess that explains why I always seem to pick up some extra words when I copy my stuff from Word to the site.