Interview: Sharaloth · 4:00pm Jul 19th, 2013
Sharaloth is best known for his dark, epic, and highly original AUs. In this interview, he gives some advice on worldbuilding and explains the process he used to create The Heart Thief, part of his Fallen World series. We also talk about his most recent story, Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, and his writing outside of the MLP fandom.
Amacita: What inspired you to write Lavender Unicorn Syndrome?
Sharaloth: Well, there's this thing that the MLP fandom calls Lavender Unicorn Syndrome, where an author overuses race-colour descriptors in place of proper names or pronouns. It gets annoying when used too much, but the backlash against it was rather furious, to the point where ANY instance of a race-colour descriptor would be called out as 'bad writing'. I have a tendency to include such descriptors, but only sparingly, as I know how to properly use a good pronoun.
Sharaloth: I've been meaning to write a comedy story for a while, simply to stretch some of my little-used writing muscles. Most of my stuff, especially in the MLP fanfiction community, tends towards the epic and dark, I do don't want that to be the entirety of my repertoire. I've had several comedy stories bouncing around in my head, one of them is even half-written, but since I focus a lot of my energy on the aforesaid big projects I've not had the time to write them. I was working one day when an idea came to me, the idea of taking the overreaction to LUS and turning it into the central joke around which to base a comedy fic. So the inspiration, you could say, was spite. Spite and sleep deprivation.
Amacita: LUS was your first attempt at comedy?
Sharaloth: In the MLP fandom, yes.
Amacita: Okay, so you've done writing outside of MLP? Can you tell me about that?
Sharaloth: I write mostly original fiction, I've yet to be published, but I've written one complete book and am working on at least two others. I have a couple short stories and a vast backlog of story ideas. This is only counting the stuff that I think is publish-worthy, I have quite a bit more that is unprintable or deeply, deeply flawed.
Sharaloth: In terms of fanfiction, I've written a few things. Most of what I've done in fanfiction was many years ago. I wrote a Buffy story that I never finished, and an embarrassingly bad Sailor Moon / DBZ crossover that I hope will never see light on the internet again.
Sharaloth: More recently I did a couple stories in a series for the Whateley Academy group, but they might as well have been original fiction, considering how that group works.
Amacita: Cool. So what has your experience been like trying to get your original fiction published?
Sharaloth: Frustrating. Most publishers do not accept unsolicited work, and finding an agent has been trying. I have many other options, but financial considerations have forced me to move slowly on getting my work out and selling.
Amacita: I think you're a really talented author, and I wouldn't be surprised to see your stories on the shelves in a few years.
Amacita: In fact, whenever I need an example of how to do good worldbuilding, I point people to your stories.
Sharaloth: Thank you.
Amacita: What's the trick to great worldbuilding? Do you have any advice for other authors?
Sharaloth: The trick to great worldbuilding is to actually build the world. It has to be real, not just a backdrop for your characters to do their thing in. It has to live and breathe, it must have its own trajectory.
Sharaloth: To worldbuild properly there must be a dozen things that never get mentioned for each thing that is. Everything that you put on the page must have a logical cause, an origin and a system that keeps it in place.
Sharaloth: Castle Dreadskull didn't build itself (or did it? and if it did, how? and why?), most places have reasons for being the way they are, and those reasons will shape how people live in them, think of them, refer to them, etc, etc, etc. Basically, don't half-ass it. Think of the world you're building as if it is real, and make it consistent. Not necessarily completely explored and explained, but consistent within itself.
Sharaloth: Then, and this is crucial, be parsimonious with that same world. Everything is interesting to you, but most things will not serve the story. Mention facts about the world when they are important, or when they come up naturally in the conversations your characters will have.
Sharaloth: Lord Doom lives in Castle Dreadskull—this is important information and should be given to the reader as soon as possible (either at the beginning of the story before the action happens, or when your POV character learns of it for the first time). The viscount of Simperville has a world-class sommelier in his employ: this is not important information unless your characters really, really need to know something about wine. However, it will inform the character of the Viscount. He will be fond of fine wines and have a stock of the best, and will likely expect the best compliment to any meal he has, and will react accordingly if it does not meet expectations.
Sharaloth: The world informs the characters, the characters experience the world.
Sharaloth: So the most important thing in worldbuilding is not how complete your world is, but whether or not your characters live in it like it is.
Amacita: One thing I've been told is that worldbuilding needs to serve multiple purposes if you want to include it in your story. If you have some part of your worldbuilding you want to show off, you have to work it in so that it reveals character, advances plot, raises the stakes, sets up conflict, makes the reader laugh, etc. The more it can do, the more worldbuilding you can put into your story.
Sharaloth: This is good advice.
Amacita: Can you talk about the Fallen World for a bit? Where did you get the idea?
Sharaloth: Well, the original idea was from the picture CDRW posted, along with a request to create a fic from that picture. I thought about it for a good few hours, then decided to have a go. I had a picture of Lyra standing upright and holding a bow with magic fingers that I'd gotten... somewhere. I decided that the two would go quite well together.
Sharaloth: The genesis of the idea was basically D&D with ponies, but I quickly abandoned that as a better one began to form. I basically needed a reason to get smithing pony and shooting pony together, and so Lyra shows up at the Shaper's door looking to get a bunch of metal arrows made. Why? Dragon! Why dragon? Fallen world!
Sharaloth: I wrote The Archer and the Smith over the course of a day and a half, maybe 12 total hours writing and revising.
Sharaloth: The whole Fallen World scenario took shape during the process.
Sharaloth: The process is different for different stories. The Archer and the Smith is one that took shape so quickly the process was essentially ongoing as I was writing it. Another Fallen World story, The Heart Thief, was a much more involved process, with actual stages to the creation of it that might serve as a better example of a process in motion.
Amacita: Okay. Can you talk about that?
Sharaloth: Sure. After the success of The Archer and the Smith I promised further stories in the Fallen World. I hadn't decided at the time whether The Shaper was Applebloom or not, but popular opinion and the hints I had already woven into the story kind of made that decision inevitable. So, I had one Crusader doing something in one story, and I said I would write more, why not do the series on each of the Crusaders?
Sharaloth: So I started thinking about it, and poking at the world I created to see where a good story would fall out for one of the CMC. There was speculation about the Rulers, which of the Mane 6 was which and all, and I wanted to showcase one of them, to show the readers what had become of their beloved characters to turn them from the loving, happy ponies we all know and love into the oppressors of Equestria. Especially I wanted to show how they were still the ponies we knew, but also not. The best place to show that was with Fluttershy, whose dichotomy of character would be the most shocking.
Sharaloth: I decided that the next story wasn't going to be an adventure. I've done adventures, and they're my favourite types of story to write, but TAaTS was something of an experiment in writing succinctly (which I have difficulty with) so I decided the next story was going to be a Tragedy. Once that was in place I knew exactly what I was going to do. There is only one way to go with a Tragedy figuring The Tyrant. Since I knew that none of the CMC were going to get pulled in by one of the Mane 6 that way, I had to create an original character to be the center of the hubristic fall. That OC was Steady Hoof, a thief who would be drawn into the Tyrant's power because he's seeking the love of a mare he can't have. In this case, the best bet for that was always Scootaloo.
Sharaloth: So, I had a protagonist, a conflict, and, finally, I built the setting. Fluttershy's domain, the City of Gardens and Cages. This was all setup. I hadn't even finalized the plot by the time I'd gotten this far.
Sharaloth: The next step was in plotting everything out. I needed to introduce the setting, and the easiest and most natural way to do that is to have an outsider be the viewpoint character, so Steady Hoof became a refugee from the Heartland. He had to fall in love with Scoots, and I also had to establish that the Tyrant was pretty evil, and having Scootaloo save Steady from interfering in an execution served both purposes.
Sharaloth: Steady has to have time to become stupidly enraptured with Scoots, so she's now a thief too, and invites him to her gang. There's a ton of backstory that I built for Scoots that was once in the story, but later deleted because it just didn't work with the rest of it, but it explains why she lets him stay even though Steady's a godawful nuisance.
Sharaloth: Steady has to have a reason to meet Fluttershy, so now comes the quest to steal the Tyrant's heart.
Sharaloth: What happens after that is entirely due to the way the characters are. Their own faults and hopes and blindness.
Sharaloth: Actually writing it took awhile, mostly because I wanted to keep a consistent tone of bleakness underlying Steady's singleminded drive. No one expects him to succeed. Everyone thinks it's a bad idea, even Fluttershy. This is a harsh world and he is doomed from the moment he set hoof in it, only drawing out what little comfort from what others give him. So I had to maintain that right up until the point where he meets Fluttershy, at which point the narrative changes. It's not about Steady's obsession, it's about Steady's fall. The truth is staring him right in the face from the moment he first meets her, but he won't know the truth until the very last sentence.
Sharaloth: It had to build slowly, then burn cold at the end.
Sharaloth: Then, of course, I had to edit it.
Amacita: Why was Steady Hoof a thief?
Sharaloth: Because I came up with the title first. :P
Sharaloth: Really, because it gave him a reason to be anywhere I wanted him to be.
Amacita: What do you mean?
Sharaloth: A thief can be anywhere. In the street, in a dingy cellar, in the royal bedchambers. Anywhere.
Sharaloth: And they have reason to move. If their identity is discovered, they can't stay in the same place, so they can be a new person in a new place, just learning the ins and outs of the city, and they will learn, as they must know the pulse of their surroundings to know what to steal from who, and how to avoid the guards, etc, etc.
Sharaloth: A thief can be anywhere, be anyone, be anything. It's a really versatile character type.
Amacita: I've never thought of it like that before.
Amacita: What did you do in editing The Heart Thief?
Sharaloth: I read it over umpteen-hundred times and tweaked it over and over again. Sometimes only a word here or a sentence there, other times entire passages. As I mentioned, there were whole paragraphs on Scootaloo's backstory and cutie mark that got excised for not fitting well enough.
Sharaloth: Once I was satisfied with it, I got pre-readers to look it over and catch all the things I inevitably missed. Then I edited it again, then once more for good measure. Then I posted it.
Amacita: Well, you've gotten three stories posted by EqD now. Do you have any advice for other authors who want to get posted?
Sharaloth: Edit your works, and get other people to edit them, too. Then be patient. Then take your rejection with good humor and fix the stuff they tell you to fix. At least take a good look at it, I mean most of it's just good advice. Some is stylistic and you can take it or leave it, but EqD has a style guide or something (a writer's omnibus, at the very least) and if you want it on their site you have to at least pay lip service to following their rules. Then, once you've done your best to address their concerns, try again.
Sharaloth: But, seriously, edit your freakin' stories.
Amacita: Personally, I try not to take style too seriously, and if I say something and the author chooses to ignore it or offers up a good reason for ignoring it, I rarely ever argue.
Sharaloth: *shrug* Some stuff is more important than others.
Amacita: My philosophy is that the author knows their story better than I do, and anything I look at, they've probably thought about a lot harder than I have. But first I have to trust that an author knows what he's doing before I get to the point where I'll let just about anything slide.
Sharaloth: That's a good attitude, I think.
Sharaloth: That being said, an external perspective can see things that someone mired in the middle of the story might simply be unable to see. Forest for the Trees problem and all that.
Amacita: Is there anything you'd like to add before we finish up?
Sharaloth: Nope. It's been a pleasure talking with you.
Amacita: Same here. Have a great night!
Quite an interesting interview!