Writing Advice: “How NOT to Write” 2

A while ago, I posted a blog covering one of my unpublished stories; the ideas that spawned it, aspects of the writing process that did not work, and why I ultimately chose not to finish it.

Today, I hope to do the same with a different story. Each story presents its own challenges and eccentricities. Today’s story is different enough that I hope it will teach different lessons from the previous one.

With that out of the way, let’s move on to the fun part.

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The story in question is called An Insistence of Idealism (a working title that I never found a better replacement for). You may find the parts of the story that were finished in my scraps collection, and the first draft on Gdocs.

The story began with a very short snippet; I was contemplating what denominations ponies use for their money, and wrote a brief scene to illustrate the idea. Later (because my muse is pushy), I extended that snippet to a slightly longer piece and liked the result.

Eventually, this grew into an actual story with a rough outline. They story focuses on a pony ambassador and a griffon bodyguard traveling to the griffon capital. Along the way, the griffon kills some bandits in self-defense, and this seriously damages the pony’s worldview.

But what problems prevented this story from being published?

Characters

The story’s first issue comes from its characters. As the description above shows, the characters were created to fulfill very specific story roles from the get-go. They fit very specific archetypes and character arcs; the naive ingenue and the world-weary military veteran.

The problem, however, is that they lacked defining traits beyond this. They were so tied to their story roles that giving them concrete personalities was difficult.

This is something I’m still struggling with in my current writing projects. As a writer, it can be easy to get very defined ideas about how we want a story to go, and to force it to move along specific lines to reach predetermined goals. This has the unfortunate side effect of placing more emphasis on the plot than the characters, and characters in such stories tend to be bland or hard to believe.

Editing/rewrites

Related to the previous point, this story went through a major rewrite. Originally, the griffon was the viewpoint character. This made the story awkward, however, because the griffon didn’t have a proper character arc. Forcing development onto her at the end of the story highlighted the issues with characterization it had.

The rewrite turned the pony into the viewpoint character, since they actually had a character arc. The rewrite also added other changes, though. Things like changing the pony’s gender (from female to male, in order to further emphasize the differences between the pony and griffon), adding a new character (the pony’s girlfriend, in order to help give the pony someone to vent to), and adding more detail the opening.

This abundance of changes made the rewrite more tiring than it should have been. Rather than editing things by degrees, the story needed a major overhaul, and it was much more tiring than my usual writing style. The new elements also didn’t quite gel as well as they should have; introducing so many new elements meant there were more new interactions to keep track of, and that also made the writing process more difficult than it needed to be.

Connection to the FIMfic World

The third major problem with this story (I won’t say “final”) is the relation it has to its setting. Some of fanfiction’s greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses come from its preexisting setting. The fact that readers are already going to be familiar with most of the setting’s trappings and characters gives the author more freedom to focus on other aspects of storytelling, yet also makes stepping beyond those things much more difficult.

This story stars Original Characters, and takes place in a locale that doesn’t exist in the show. This was an intentional choice; I wanted to practice writing original characters and locations in order to try and ease myself back towards original fiction. In hindsight, however, constructing the story this way doesn’t play to the strengths of the medium.

Celestia does play an important role in the plot, but her role is ultimately fairly small. The mechanics of the universe and the familiarity of the setting aren’t used to their fullest, and it inhibits the story, since it is being presented as fanfiction.

In Summation

So what lessons can be taken from this story?

Ensure your characters and plot work in concert: there are some stories that intentionally focus on the plot over the characters. There are others that focus on characters over plot. This story was meant to be a character piece, which means that the characters are supposed to drive the plot, but it ended up being the other way around.

Try and avoid rewrites: rewrites have their place of course. Sometimes they can be a good way to get additional perspective on one’s story. They take time and effort, however, and ultimately are something to be avoided. One should examine their story—in all aspects—as much as possible beforehand. Rewriting something as a way to compensate for lack of planning is a good way to get burnt out.

Fiction should play to its strengths: Original fiction and fanfiction each have their strengths and weaknesses over the other. In this story’s case, it was trying too hard to bring the sensibilities and mindset of original fiction into a fanfiction medium. This hampered the storytelling and also might have alienated a large portion of the potential audience if it were ever published. One needs to keep an eye on their ideas, so that they are delivered in the way that best emphasizes their strengths.

This story is not without some good qualities, but hopefully this blog post illustrates some of the mistakes that prevented it from completion. With any luck, you can learn from my mistakes, and go on to make your own, new mistakes.

Thanks for reading. As always, comments, questions, and insight are welcome.