)Story: "Pinkieviduality" - Help needed. · 1:01pm Aug 6th, 2014
Remember "Pinkieviduality", the 'other project' I was working on?
No?
Without getting your hopes up just yet, let me refresh your memory.
"Pinkieviduality", in five words: Mirror-Pinkie joins the circus. 
I don't have a catchy "book back-cover text" at the moment, though the general summary is this:
One of Pinkie's clones randomly wandered out of town and stumbled into a traveling circus.
The ponies there had never met the original Pinkie Pie, and pretty much treated her like any normal pony.
Well... relatively "normal", anyway.
And thus begins a tale of fun, friendship, and basic lifelessons, such as, but not limited to:
"Breaking other ponies' stuff is bad", "Eating cake that doesn't belong to you is also bad", "It's more fun to share the fun", and "Oh for the love of Celestia, Pinkie, what are you doing in the manticore-cage? ...Again? Get out of there!"No existential angst or preposterous accusations of "you're just a copy" here, no siree!
A few months later, she returns to Ponyville...
Woops.
In a way, this character is "Pinkie Pie"... and at the same time, she is not.
"C... Cupcakes? For me?? I've never eaten those before! Do they taste fun?"
"Wait... so you're saying that having fun is fun, but if I don't mind other ponies I might ruin *their* fun?! GASP! That wouldn't be fun at all!"
"I... I didn't mean to make a mess... I ... *sniff* I just wanted to have fun..."
D'awww. 
When did I start working on this? Oh, about a month after the episode came out. December 2012, I think. On and off (mostly off to be honest), but still, I never did give up on the project. I can be quite persistent. 
I'm about 50+ pages in by this point.
Not 50 pages counting right from the start, more like "all over the place", written out of order. About half of that is actually from the second act.
Thus, it is still an <indeterminite amount of time> till a proper release - but YOU can help change thathelp turning <indeterminite amount of time> into <slightly less indeterminite amount of time>! 
Problem #1:
I don't know how to structure the narrative properly.
Whenever I look at it, I don't see "wow, I've written so much already", it's more of a "oh god, there are all these gaps that I need to still fill and all those crucial scenes I still need to write".
And then there's the issue that the first act (= before Mirror-Pinkie returns to Ponyville) needs to cover a timeperiod of several months to sorta-catch up with the show, at least to a post-Twilicorn point. It wouldn't feel "realistic" otherwise.
What I've got so far covers a few days. 
It'll be jaring if there's so much stuff that takes place "at the beginning", and then suddenly in one chapter there's a jump over several weeks...
Writing "Daring Do", I've basically never done more than a "few hours" timeskips. Between chapters. After over 2 years of writing, I literally don't know how to write proper timeskips. 
Help. 
Problem #2, that is keeping me from just posting "chapter 1" and going on from there:
I also keep getting ideas out of order. As in, I have a lot of ideas à la "Mirror-Pinkie does X for the first time".
"Mirror-Pinkie eats a cupcake. FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HER ENTIRE LIFE." 
You get the idea. ;-)
So let's say I wrote chapters 1, 2, 3 (purely hypothetically). And then I get an idea that requires me to write "chapter 2 1/2". And then "chapter 2 3/4". And so on.
Because "X" is already established in chapter 3, so "chapter 2 1/2" can't take place after it.
Urg.
Again, help.
Thing #3:
Also, it'd be cool if I could brainstorm some scenes with somepony. 
Since this is mostly a "slice-of-life comedy", you can't exactly get spoilers in the same way as in a "mystery adventure" story like "Daring Do and the Secret of the Fourth Wall".
Which is to say, I could give you a random scene from the middle of the story, and the only "spoilers" you'd get would be for that one scene, not for anything before that.
Hm. Well, I'm not sure how much direct help I could be (I do do some editing, but, even disregarding time problems, it sounds like the sort of editing I'm good at is not the sort you need), but I'll try spreading the link to this.
Of course, I've mixed feelings. While I quite want to read this, I also want to read more of DDatSotFW, and you can't work on both at once. :)
So I've heard that you may require help of some form or another with your story?
Well, I'm bored, and this seems like it might be -fun-.
If you want to play idea ping-pong, I can be a sparring partner. Just send me a PM if you're interested.
It's less of an "editing thing" and more of a "brainstorming thing" at this point in time. Though for that I could send you scenes to get an insight into characters or situations.
2349101
"DDatSotFW" ...
I've never heard it abbreviated like that before.
I had to genuinely think for two seconds to figure out what you meant.
Ehehe, I sort of got stuck. ...In the scene I had previously posted a blog about getting stuck in. But don't worry, now I'm stuck at a different problem than the one I had before. Yay, progress!
Eh, it's always better to have something else to fall back on when you get stuck. That way, you can come back with fresh eyes / mind and new ideas.
Plus, I have to at least try other writing styles / stylistic choices.
I've been writing for over two years, and I don't know how to do timeskips.
This might even improve my general writing abilities in terms of "different ways how I could write a scene", and "Daring Do" may also benefit from that. Somehow.
2351511
Ah, sorry. :)
2349175 Okay-dokey-loki, note sent!