My plan for A Dream of Sunny Days · 6:48pm May 23rd, 2015
I was talking to a friend recently, and the topic of long fanfics came up. We talked about what works, what doesn't, and why so many readers seem to dislike them. Two major reasons came out. The first one is that a lot of longer stories are abandoned by their author before completion. The second is lack of planning on the part of the author. A lot of multi-chapters stories have little to no plan, so they eventually lose themselves, getting confused in plot holes and diverging storylines.
I decided to make a blog post to address those issues, reassure you guys, my readers, that I'm not going to betray the trust you placed in me by following my story before it's completed.
For the first point, finishing the story, there really isn't much I can do outside of promising I do intend to finish writing A Dream of Sunny Days. Comments are always a good motivator to write, so don't hesitate to nag me about when the next chapter will be out, let me know what you liked, what you didn't like, or ask me to put your OC in there (I won't, but it shows that you enjoy the story, haha).
What I mainly want to address here is the second point, having a plan. Without giving out spoilers, I'm going to let you guys know what it is. How I planned out the story, where I'm going, what my timetable is like. Hopefully it'll erase the doubts some of you may have about where I'm taking it.
Early on, right after writing the prologue, I made a list of planned chapters. While I will sometimes adjust this list, it tends to stay pretty stable. It describes the major events in each chapter, the characters present, any detail that needs to be mentioned, and any other information I don't want to forget about. I also keep a timeline of the entire fic, with each chapter placed on it in relation to the other. This way if I'm writing, say, an Applejack chapter, I know where Shining Armor is at the same time and what he's doing. I can make sure everypony reacts to major events at the right time this way.
I keep a second document where I list what happens to important non-pov characters in bullet point form. While readers never see what goes on in Blueblood's life, for example, he's still very much active. His actions are documented this way, so I can be sure it'll stay consistent.
Finally, I keep a detailed spreadsheet with every single character in the story, major or minor. This helps keep track of things like eye colors and cutie marks, but also allegiances and where ponies are. While it's fine for the show to have multiple Bonbons living in each city, I'd rather only have one, and clear notes about where she lives. I also use this spreadsheet to keep track of my progress on chapters, it's how I calculate the completion percentages I have on my user page.
I often feel like proper planning is very much overlooked when new writers are introduced to the craft. I see a lot of guides about portraying characters properly, how to write dialogue or descriptions, grammar, and other very important stuff, but without a clear plan and knowledge of the middle and end of a story, a long fic is doomed to fail.
So while I will not reveal how many chapters I have planned, I will promise you guys that I know exactly where I'm going, and what every stop along the way will be. I even know what I want the very last line to be.
I am glad to hear that you have a plan as you are certainly correct about that being a reason for some stories that fail. I don't however believe that is a primary reason why longer stories aren't as popular. A lot of people who use this site likely aren't serious readers, sure they may read but there is a major difference between checking out 1-3k word short stories and a novel length project. Due to this short stories have a much much easier time accumulating the stats needed to hit the featured box.
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You make a good point. As a serious reader who hangs out with a lot of other serious readers, I admit I haven't looked at it this way.