Interview: TheBandBrony's Letting Your Mane Down · 12:23am Oct 3rd, 2013
“Letting Your Mane Down” impressed me by telling a funny story about Twilight getting a manecut. If that’s not slice-of-life, I don’t know what is.
How did TheBandBrony make it interesting? It wasn’t about the manecut; it was about Twilight’s anxieties about being Equestria’s newest princess. After all, a princess’s hair has to be perfect, right? And if the hairdresser slips up even a little bit, she’ll be a laughingstock.
The story is mostly just Twilight sitting down at the barber shop, getting a cheap haircut, and worrying about things. It’s hard to imagine why this could possibly be interesting, but for me, Twilight’s anxieties were concrete and immediate, and that, plus some humour, was enough to sustain my interest over a 5,000 word short story.
In this interview, I talk with TheBandBrony about “Letting Your Mane Down”, slice-of-life in general, and his impressions after getting his tenth story posted to Equestria Daily.
Bold is Amacita; regular text is TheBandBrony.
What inspired you to write “Letting Your Mane Down”?
The inspiration came in a singular moment during my most recent haircut when I swore the barber was attempting to chop off my face with his scissors. Last time I ever trust a five-dollar haircut.
What was the hardest part to get right?
The ending. Mercy, mercy, mercy, the ending. As far as fics go, this one was one of the ones I sat down to write at eight in the evening and didn't stop until I finished at one the next evening. I had gotten everything down in one take—except for the ending. I came back to it the next day, then the next, then the next, for about a week, thinking that a nice conclusion would just slide right out of my head and onto the screen. Finally, I got frustrated and just pounded out the little, "Just a manecut?" bit and called it a day. Applejack didn't do much, Twilight didn't learn her trademark Very Important Lesson, and I felt frustrated.
If I remember right, the ending was the biggest problem you found in the fic structure-wise. In a way, I'm glad you made me nix it and do it again.
One thing I noticed about your story... it's all internal conflict. We just have Twilight sitting around, getting her mane cut, and thinking about things. How did you write that and make it interesting?
Your guess is as good as mine!
I tried to write it in such a way that there were no terrifyingly long stretches of internal dialogue, that all the thoughtful, slower bits were offset by more whimsical, comedic action to keep things from getting dull. I tried my best to play Twilight's thoughts off the actions going on around her.
That sounds pretty reasonable. And it wasn't all getting her mane cut. 2,800 words getting her mane cut, 500 adjusting the front, 600 getting Clean Cut to take her money, 700 trying to sneak home, then talking to Applejack. And each of those allowed you to explore your theme in a different way.
Did it really take six hundred words to convince Clean Cut to take the bits? Goodness, perhaps I should have just used the "shut up and take my money" meme.
No no, it was fantastic. I loved that part. It's some really great insight into Twilight's character and princesshood.
Why thank you!
You've written 40 stories. 18 of them are slice of life. What makes a good slice of life story? What does slice of life even mean?
Wow, forty already? How the time flies.
Lots of people like to define slice-of-life because it's seemingly easy to define. It's a story that features everyday adventures where characters don't really wander all that far from the norm, and that's that, right? The thing is, the best of those everyday adventures, no matter how seemingly mundane, will still leave you feeling like you've scaled Mount Everest or tamed a wild lion in the plains of Africa. That's what I aspire towards when writing slice of life stories: to make the reader feel like, through doing something simple, they can achieve something extraordinary.
For me, the best slice of life stories have some kind of character growth at the end. If you can write a friendship report about it, you've probably got a good SoL story.
That's a good indicator.
What are your thoughts on Twilight?
Purple Smarts is, as far as characters go, a pretty nifty one. I find her compelling to write about mainly because when I write about her, I find myself writing about me. The morals to her stories (the one about rejection in “Letting Your Mane Down”, especially) will often mirror the morals to mine. Writing about her learning things often leads to me learning things.
Plus, purple's my favorite color. I can't go wrong!
Like Equestria Girls, “Letting Your Mane Down” deals with Twilight’s feelings about suddenly being a princess, although in different ways. Can you talk about that?
From what I've seen in Equestria Girls, Twilight seemed almost reluctant to accept the crown, not because she was afraid of the responsibility it entailed but from the ostracization that wearing it might cause. She's not afraid of running a nation—she's afraid of not being able to walk around town without being bowed at a million times and offered preferential treatment. I did my best to play off that point as humorously as possible so as not to crush the point (the, "As princess of Equestria, I command you to take my bits," line comes to mind), though at some point it took on a life of its own.
You've gotten at least 10 stories posted on EqD. Do you have any advice for people trying to get their stories posted?
Don't think of blunt critique as negative, because it isn't. If someone types up even a single sentence showing you how to improve, odds are they care about your story enough that they want to see it shine.
Also, PRACTICE. Holy Gosh, practice.
I don't know where people get the ludicrous idea that writing is somehow separate from any other skill-set, in that it doesn't require practice in order to improve. Just like you can't hit a double-high C the first time you pick up a trumpet, you won't be able to write The Great Gatsby Two: The Return of Owl Eyes the first time you put pen to paper. Writing talent is not inherent. Only dedicated work and practice will make it better.
That's some really good advice. What has your experience been like working with EqD pre-readers?
I've been utterly terrified every time of getting a pre-reader that conforms to the ugly stereotype of being rude and dismissive. So far, I have found none like that. I've worked with... gosh, I want to say around fifteen of you guys in my time, and I've never gotten that fabled "bad pre-reader" experience.
It's intimidating, to be sure—after all, they're a large group of experienced writers who are absolutely better than me in most every way—but I've found that they challenge me to rise to the occasion and improve myself to meet the standards they hold.
Pre-reader quotes—what do you think of them? Are they important to you? You've had a few stories posted with a quote and a few without.
Pre-reader quotes do a great job of highlighting the best qualities of a fic they're endorsing. Often times, I'll be drawn to a story by the pre-reader quote more so than the actual description. I like to think of them as an extra stamp of assurance that, hey, this story's really good.
Plus, they give me a nice little confidence boost whenever they end up on my own stories. You know you're doing something right when you get a pre-reader quote.
A nice read! Thank you for doing this, the both of you!
Nifty!
Nice, Bandy!
Thank you Amacita for exposing a really great little fic folks may not necessarily be aware of and congrats Bandy on a great interview and an even better fic.