Midnight’s Shadow: Midnight Begins- Complete · 1:05pm Nov 12th, 2015
Whew! So Midnight’s Shadow: Midnight Begins is finally finished. The first major story arc, book, whatever you want to call it of Midnight Sparkle’s saga is done, done, done! And boy what a journey it has been. It’s a bit nuts to think about, but it was over two years ago since I first posted the first chapter of this story, and now I’ve completed it. As of the date of this blog, this is the longest story I have completed, and so I can say pretty confidently this is no mean accomplishment.
First off, I would like to thank my wonderful team of editors and prereaders for helping me on this 155,000 word journey, and Midnight Begins simply wouldn’t be what it is without you. I learned a learned a lot of grammar lessons from you guys, as well as took my licks over various issues with my writing. I would also like to thank Chengar Qordath for letting me play with some of his toys during this story, and giving me some material to build off of.
For a lot of my life I’ve wanted to write an adventure story. Adventure stories, whether they be high fantasy, military sci-fi, or whatever other form they take, have often been my favorite to read. I love action, adventure, intrigue, and world building. So it has been something of a fantasy of mine to put some ideas in my head and put them down on paper, but I could never really bring myself to actually write an adventure story for a variety of reasons. Whether is was the belief I wouldn’t be any good at it, or that I didn’t have the skills, training, or experience, or there wasn’t much of a point considering no one would read what I wrote anyways.
I consider myself very fortunate to have the medium of fanfiction with which to bring my words to electronic paper and tell a yarn for all of you. After writing a few other stories here on FIMFic, I felt I had gained invaluable experience at the craft of writing, and at the encouragement of some of my friends here on the site, I started work on Midnight Begins. Writing Midnight’s Shadow has been a great pleasure of mine. It has been a blast developing Middy and the cast of characters surrounding her, and it has been really encouraging to see all of you like this story. Especially when it was a bit of a risk on my end to write, considering it does possess a number of things that would be considered red flags for other stories on this site.
Now I’m sure plenty of you have a question or two in mind, so let me answer them for you. Yes, I have every intention of continuing with Midnight’s Shadow, and writing more stories with everyone favorite morbid dark horse.
So the second question will naturally be when I will start writing Midnight’s next tale? Most likely I will get started on that after I finish writing Study of a Winning Pony. Study was the very first piece of fiction I ever wrote, and woefully, it still isn’t complete. That is something I really want to correct. I’ve got about another five chapters of that story to write, and it would be a huge relief to be able to put the complete tag on that story. I also want to write and publish some short stories in the near future. Something I haven’t really let myself do for the last year due to wanting to complete Midnight Begins and Study.
But boy do I have some plans for Midnight’s next tale when I do get around to writing it. I can promise more warlocks, more action, more intrigue, more mystery, more monsters, more ravens, and more Middy being her creepdorable self as the whole world comes down on her.
The future is looking pretty bright to me.
If you have any questions about Midnight's Shadow, feel free to ask, and I'll be happy to answer them to the best of my ability.
Interesting, I wasn't really expecting the end of Midnight Begins to be the end of Midnight's Shadow too. Figured it was going to be multiple arcs with separate names like the mainline Rebellion fic has.
3537593
Given Rebellion is about one big event, it makes sense to be one big story with multiple arcs within.
Midnight's Shadow is more of your classic adventure story so putting it all into one huge fic would probably be a bit much for most readers.
3537714 Honestly, considering the scale of Lunar Rebellion, it'd be a bit much for most writers too.
It's nice to see something I've helped work on finally come to its conclusion, even if that's just concluding the first part. Most of the stories I edit for tend to be really long works, so seeing one of the big ones come to a close is a really cool feeling. Thanks for the ride, Poni!
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You'll be back. The ride never ends.
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3537593
As Jake alluded to, it's a matter of the length of the story and how it's organized. It can be a bit rough on new readers to look at a story and see a 500k impenetrable wall of words. Each of the major story arcs of Midnight's Shadow was intended to be a bit stand alone as a separate adventure.
All of the future stories are going to have some name like Midnight's Shadow- *Insert Subtitle*. Don't worry, we'll still be following our favorite creepy dark horse on her crazy adventures.
3537714
Pretty much that. From everything Poni's told me about his story plans, the next Midnight's Shadow story will be its own standalone tale. There's all the continuity one would expect of a sequel, but it will be its own story.
By comparison, I don't think anyone could really enjoy Rising Shadows or Ascendant Shadows unless they read Gathering Shadows first.
3538953 Maybe I wasn't clear. All I meant is that the chapter naming scheme of Midnight's Shadow reminded me of Rebellion. It just seems a little odd that they have the Midnight Begins prefix if there's never going to be a different prefix with reset chapter numbering.
3539448
Now I understand what you are getting at. That would be because I did plan on posting each story arc/story under the original Midnight's Shadow story in the same vein as Lunar Rebellion. But that plan changed a few months ago when I thought over what I planned for Midnight's adventures and decided I preferred the idea of post each story arc as its own individual story. I though it made the story more accessible, but took nothing away from what I was writing.
So take that as either poor planning or a writer following his muse and what he thinks is best for the story
3539655 I was kind of suspicious that might have been what happened. Plans change, that's how it goes.
I also happen to highly approve of the split-up plan, for more or less the same reasons. I've championed the same thing for a number of other stories.