So, a day or two ago I submitted a story to FiMFiction for a contest. Now, in this weird tradition of fanfiction everywhere, I'm going to splurge my thoughts on it.

It isn't very good.

~

Title
"Pinkie Shy"? Really?

Well, it's not that bad: the story is all about Fluttershy being shy of Pinkie. So it's only mostly a copout. Still, someone's already suggested some alternative names. I'll think about it.

Hay, a new title. Not a lot catchier, but it'll do.

Plot
It does the job. Sort of. I spent four weeks doing nothing but try to figure out what the plot was (I wasn't slacking off! Honest!), and it's still very clumsy. The last (and most important) chapter is just one big cliche which, despite my best efforts, I basically lifted wholesale from a much better fic.

Actually, I take that back. It doesn't do the job at all. The first rule in the contest prompt was:
A completed story that goes through the initial "falling in love" period. No being a sneaky cheater by having them already in love. That's a fine story, but not what I'm after.
And the first clause in my fic's description?
Fluttershy has a crush on Pinkie Pie.
Yeeeeah.

Dialogue
You might disagree, but I actually like the dialogue for the most part. I feel like I have a reasonably good grasp on character voice. Problem is, I used it as a crutch. Much of the story is little more than talking heads. Action? Description? Introspection? Almost completely absent. If you could look through my plot notes, you'd essentially see "X talks to Y about Z." Of course, shipping is all about character interaction; I've just yet to learn some other way to achieve that.

I get most of my writing practice through roleplaying, which is dialogue driven, so I guess this should be an expected problem.

And you know, my favourite dialogue was between Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash. Pretty unfortunate in a FlutterPie story. I guess that's some of my recent influences showing through.

Comedy
I'm not funny. I tried to make the story funny. I can't tell if I succeeded. In the end I chickened out of even using the [Comedy] tag.

Revision
Gigantic problem here: There was barely any revision. I ran out of time (see above, re: four weeks of planning). Most of chapter 2 is actually in its first draft, which is why the interaction between Fluttershy and Twilight is so stilted, for example. Not a word of the fic has been formally revised more than twice.

I'm itching to revise now, but I won't. Not for a while at any rate. That would defeat the purpose of working to a time limit. It's a contest, after all. (Though I was never after the prize. The point for me was just to buckle down and write something.)

Character focus
Whatever happened to Pinkie Pie? In earlier versions there was pretty much equal weight between the two ponies, but that was tied up in this stupid subplot about dark pasts and Pinkie's family and such. I had real problems writing that half of the story, which was just as well, because it didn't belong in the first place. So I excised it at the last minute. Unfortunately, I lost almost all of the Pinkie-focused scenes in the process.

Which is why there's now a single lonely Pinkie scene (with a weird pseudo-fourth wall break) in a story otherwise told from Fluttershy's POV. I considered flipping the POV on some of their shared scenes but it never really resonated.

There was one other Pinkie scene I intended to add, but I didn't have time. I had to redistribute what plot elements I could into the surrounding text, which, among other problems, exacerbated the deus ex machina. Oh yes, that reminds me.

Deus ex machina
I remember thinking at one point, "Griffons! They're mobbed by griffons that Rainbow knows! That's perfect!" It wasn't until much later that I realised the "perfection" was a warning sign, not a stroke of luck. Bleh.

Pacing
There isn't any. There's a climax somewhere near the end of each chapter, yes. But there's no real progress or emotional acceleration. Each chapter is its own thing. (Even Rarity apparently gives up on matchmaking Fluttershy with Dash? She was supposed to but it never crops up again.)

The conclusion is much too rapid. I'm acutely aware that I'm bad at endings; this was actually pretty good for me. It ended at a reasonable scene break point, and the last line echoes preceding plot, and points vaguely in the direction of Pinkie and Fluttershy getting along. Nevertheless, it all happened too fast. What I really needed was an epilogue.

Pinkie Pie
Gods I am bad at her. Why did I decide to write a ship about a character I can't emulate?

~

Despite all that, I'm sort of proud of this story.

I have plenty of experience in writing, as a general thing, but I've never written a fanfic before. I've never written romance or comedy before. I've never written anything worthwhile about a character like Pinkie Pie before. And I've never written a coherent story longer than, oh, about three scenes before. This story was so far outside my comfort zone it's hilarious.

I am not creative. I enjoy creating, but I find even the most basic of ideas very hard to come by. Which is why, when kits posted that contest and I saw a spark of potential in FlutterPie, I knew I had to seize that rare, precious idea and do something with it. Finding all the sub-ideas to turn it into a (simple, cliched) story took me a month, and then I had to push myself pretty hard to piece together all those sentences in the time remaining. Especially when like half of them were struggling through with that subplot that I ultimately binned.

And, surprise surprise, the product that emerged isn't great. But I think I see nuggets to improve upon.

Other things I learned:
- that detailed plans are really useful, even if they do take ages.
- that if a scene is particularly hard to write, it might not be a good scene.
- that stories can indeed consist mostly of scenes that really resonate in my mind. I always feared that with a story of any length, most of my scenes would need to be filler, "bleh" in concept (not just in execution), in order to tell all the plot. Not so!
- how stories get a lot of attention when a talented and popular author like kits posts about them. Which makes contests like this a good way to get feedback. So, um. I guess I should go look at my feedback now. And then...

...then I've got some rare ships to read.