This entry contains spoilers for its corresponding chapter of At the End. Be warned...

I have no conscious thought as to how At the End came about. I love My Little Pony and Minecraft with equal fervor, so I guess it was just a simple event where the two come together. I just remember having the idea and no more.

When making the first chapter, I started with the end and made my way backwards. Honestly the only reason why is that writing “casual” dialog is really hard for me. I’m rather antisocial by nature and don’t have many friends, so I can’t simply imagine how the dialog would progress. I need a goal or action of some kind to have the motivation to write. Casual dialog, however important, is boring and not common to me and thus extremely difficult to write.

So my thoughts for the chapter would be the Mane six would interact with each other one by one throughout the day until Rainbow Dash meets with Twilight to complete the circle. At that time, the Portal would open, injuring and startling the citizens of Ponyville. The Portal deactivates, unknowingly dropping off the Crafter. Luna and her entourage witness the event and send a messenger, whom later informs Celestia and Shining Armor. A simple enough chapter made balls hard for me because I suck royally at making the casual dialog.

How the chapters would be structured was something else I had to ponder for quite some time as well. I could always just explain it as the hand of god above, but from the start I did not want the Crafter to speak. I thought that he could speak in his backstory, but you, the reader, would never see him do that, even in a flashback. So I came up with an idea that the chapters would alternate, switching back and forth between the Crafter so he would explain details that the ponies couldn’t quite figure out just yet. It worked well enough.

But I needed fear. Not fear of the Crafter, but fear of the unknown. I wanted this to be a collision of two worlds that are so vastly different from each other that the fear of eyes in the dark would make the others worry. The Crafter is in a world he does not understand and the Princesses can’t help but fear the worst. That tension would set the mood.