Celebrating 2 Years of 'A New Sun Rises' · 4:08pm Dec 11th, 2016
Okay, technically it's been two years and a month, but it's close enough and I'm never on schedule anyways.
Nonetheless, in November of 2014, the first chapter of 'A New Sun Rises' and it's been one heck of a ride hasn't it? As far as a singular project, this has arguably been the longest I've stuck with. I thought it'd be nice to do something to mark the occasion, but then I realized there's not much I can offer to my fans/regular readers/people who put up with my vocabulary vomit [choose appropriate] other than to just keep writing and deliver the next chapter.
I'm working on it, I swear! Might be a bit delayed sadly - finals week so my editor is a bit indisposed (lazy *@#&%... focusing on school work and studying like a responsible and productive member of society).
There is one thing I could offer, granted something I keep telling myself I need to do but keep neglecting, is interact with people here.
Here's your opportunity: ask away whatever questions you want of me pertaining to the story, the writing process, or whatever the heck you've got on your mind and have been meaning to ask. I promise I'll do my best to answer each and every question posted, just so long as it doesn't result in any spoilers.
So have at it! Do your worst! I fear not your questions. Here be CommissarAJ's first and probably only Q&A session!
Have you been reading others' stories involving Sunset Shimmer following the first Equestria Girls film, seeing ideas and wishing that you'd come up with them yourself? I know I have.
Had the introduction of Timber Spruce caused you to change plans in any way? How about Sunset telling Flash to move on from Twilight?
Where's my Appledash?!
A big thank you for starting the project. I really enjoyed "New Sun Rises" and your Sunset, Celestia and Luna have pretty much become the de-facto representation of characters as they should be.
In this line, my question would be: how far do you intent to go? How much are you intending to line up EQG interpretations and your own story? Especially the end result in terms of characters (Seems by EQG 4, Sunset has pretty much solved most of her problems unless we count future after CHS and focused on empowering her friends)?
For aspiring writers, are there any major pitfalls we would only know to avoid with experience that you would be willing to point out? Especially for longer stories? Similarly, for you, which way(s) worked the best to get a very detailed idea down on paper? Did the story's concept, premise, or whatever, ever go through a major change midway through writing it or plotting it out?
On a different note, and I understand if you don't want to answer this question, but is there any chance at all of the two Twilight's ever meeting, even if it is just a deleted scene or a dream sequence?
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Quite the opposite actually; I've been avoiding reading such stories (at least the long ones) in order to avoid polluting my thought process with other people's ideas. Not that I don't think they'll have good ideas, but I just can't bring myself to use them knowingly. I went into this project knowing that big, popular stories like 'Long Road to Friendship' were already out there, and if I wanted to succeed I needed to be 1) damn good and 2) unique in its own right. First one is obviously up for debate but the second one means I have to use my own ideas and avoid intentionally using anything that other stories have used.
Even in the best case scenario, I was still going to get compared to things like Long Road; best to make sure those comparisons don't include 'you totally copied him'
4336584 Ah. Well, good on you for that. I wish I had such willpower.
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Well there's also a dash of 'ain't got time for that!' helping things out.
Barely got enough time to write, let alone commit enough time to reading other people's stuff.
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As I had already planned to start diverging from the canon storyline after Rainbow Rocks, the events of Legend of Everfree aren't really go to change any of my major plans. It does offer the back-up plan that I can always resort to the 'just move on' if I need to put an end to the Twilight/Flash happenings in the story. I do plan on visiting the issue in later chapters, but it is still a bit up in the air how it'll conclude.
Honestly, 'just move on' felt a bit undramatic. Necessary for the movie, but I've got the time and opportunity to flesh things out properly.
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You know, I had honestly thought about including it, but keeping it in the background since this is a Sunset Shimmer story. I'd just sprinkle it throughout the narrative of having AJ and Rainbow Dash heading off elsewhere together, with Sunset Shimmer constantly observing it, maybe making an idle comment, but otherwise ignoring it. For example, Dash was going to be part of the county fair arc, and when Twilight Sparkle showed up, Sunset Shimmer was to panic and shove AJ and Dash into a nearby tool shed to keep them out of sight. And then promptly forget she did that and leave them in there the whole afternoon. They were to emerge 'flustered and sweaty,' leaving Sunset commenting about the afternoon heat.
And then somewhere near the end of the story, the other girls would wonder about the Dash and AJ's absence from a particular scene, and Sunset would make an off-hand remark 'they're making out in the closet.' Skepticism abound, Sunset would open said closet to prove her point, and then wonder why none of the other girls noticed them always sneaking off for the past few months.
Whole idea got scrapped for being a bit too unwieldy to implement, not to mention if it's not in the spotlight as a major part of the story then I shouldn't really be including it. Appledash deserves to be celebrated, and I can't do that with this story.
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I tend to prefer trying to keep things as aligned with representations in canon material as best as I possibly can, especially when it comes to characters. I want to keep Sunset acting like how Sunset would in the movies, and I want to keep those parallels as intact as I can. The advantage, of course, is that the movies only show the end results whereas a first person narrative can show her thought processes, so I can cheat a little and still keep my own little unique flavors of interpretation, while maintaining the outward appearance that remains aligned with the show.
She's smart, she's observant, she's sassy... I try to keep these things, but maybe also turn them up a little bit more, or at least given more opportunity for these things to shine. When Sunset say 'hooves' by accident in the 'Science of Magic' short, I was immediately reminded of the common habit of people slipping into their native tongue/accent when flustered, upset, or panicking, and I thought that was something that I had to use more often. A little little dash of flavoring that shows Sunset will still think things like a pony when she's distracted.
But things will inevitably diverge, and that's unavoidable as Act 5 and onwards branches away from the movie timeline. Sunset will faces challenges and problems that never had in the movies, and those will change her in their own ways. I hope that by the stories conclusion, which will include my own stab at the Friendship Games, that she'll still be fairly similar to how Sunset Shimmer was at the end of the Friendship Games movie, albeit with a few little extra quirks from these divergent events.
It's hard to believe that it's already been two years since I hopped on board this train. Almost to the day, too. I've had a lot of fun working on this, so I'm thankful I took that chance when you were looking for editors, or I would have missed out on reading a heck of a great story. Thankful you accepted me as an editor too, but that's a given. It's been a fun ride so far, but I'm looking forward to all of the crazy antics you've got in store for Sunny and Co. Also:
You know it!
~SolidFire
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You know, it's funny you say all that and here I was just wondering about whether I've appropriately expressed my gratitude for all the work you've done over these past couple of years. You're the first editor I've worked with on a major project that I didn't know personally already so I've never been quite sure how the whole writer-editor relation should behave. Needless to say, I'm immensely grateful for your efforts in cleaning up all the messes I leave behind.
A good editor is worth their weight in gold, and I've worked with a few... I don't want to say bad, but 'less capable' editors in the past and it really does show when somebody is half-assing it.
Well, here's to many more months of fruitful labor together. I know I'll be keeping you in mind for any future pony projects I take up.
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Hoy boy, I could probably write an essay or at least a whole blog post on this subject matter, though I do worry that it would come across a bit as 'old man yells at clouds.' I mean, I certainly can't claim to know what's best, and even after some fourteen or fifteen years of writing experience I'm still learning how to improve my craft.
So I guess my first bit would be 'learn from your mistakes.' Because your first projects, your first few years' worth of projects, will suck. Horribly and without a doubt. Very, very few people start great and they probably won't be wasting their time with fanfics. And I should know, I went to school with such a person. Pretty sure he's published a bunch of novels already in the decade or so since high school. He was a fantastic writer and everyone could tell from the start.
Anyways, point is, for the rest of us plebes, writing is something that we have to work hard at in order to get better at it. Don't be afraid of your shitty stories because a shitty story is only a failure if you don't learn from it. Best ways to learn from your mistakes is to get some honest feedback and/or have a good editor. The first one is honestly difficult when you're doing ponyfics in a place like FIMFiction. For all the advantages of its wide-spread audience, most people don't bother telling you that 'such and such' is a bad story unless it is really, really terrible. Which is unfortunate because it can lead to a lot of inflated egos (he says realizing that the same could apply to himself... no this fear does not keep me up at night).
Ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect? In a nutshell it's what happens when somebody is so bad they can't even recognize how bad they are. It happens everywhere, but you can certainly see it here, and as I said, this place can amplify its effects.
Anyways, getting a bit off-topic there. My second piece of advice would be 'exercise restraint.' It's a surprisingly understated trait in my opinion, and it's definitely something I've once had to rewrite the ending of an entire chapter over and has been responsible for plenty of 'I wish I had done this better' moments in my writing career. Be it plotlines, characters, or just the general scope of the story, a lot of inexperienced writers fall into the pitfall of going overboard on something.
Characters is often the biggest victim of this, and it's that lack of restraint that often leads to the memorable Mary Sue characters we love to make fun of. We want our characters to be awesome, so we write about all the things about them that are awesome - like how strong they are, or how fast they can fly, or all the famous people that absolutely love them as well. The problem is, you don't need to be awesome to be a great character.
I mean, take a look at our lil' Sunset Shimmer in the story. She's pretty awesome, isn't she? But at the same time, you could rename my story 'Sunset Shimmer Makes Another Poorly Thought-Out Decision.' Her being such a broken, messed-up character is what I've always found so endearing about her. Certainly makes her more relatable than some long-lost alicorn who's stronger than Twilight, Celestia, and Luna put together, faster than Rainbow Dash, and is totally adorned by all your favourite characters.
At the same time, of course, don't make characters too broken or you're just swinging the pendulum all the way in the other direction.
And as I said, it applies to more than just characters. When you're approaching a story from the planning stages, don't try to aim too big. I mean, you can dream big, but be realistic about it. I've seen plenty of writers who think they're going to write the next Fallout Equestria or Dangerous Business, and then they just wind up with a huge mess on their hands that they can't cope with. It usually just becomes a puddle: a mile wide but an inch deep.
This can lead into the next point, which would be 'have a clear end goal in mind.' Know what kind of story you want to tell, know how you want it to end, and work your way towards that. Who here has heard someone else talk about a fanfic and then remark about 'oh, it's sooooo long as well' like that's a major selling point? To be honest, I see some of these stories that are near half-a-million words and growing and I'm wondering if the author even knows how to end a story. For me, a story without an ending is empty because it's the conclusion, wrapping everything together full circle, that gives a story the most fulfilling aspect of it. Maybe some people just have big ideas, but sometimes I wonder if its because some people just like the attention that comes from it.
Still, not knowing where the start and end point can cause you a lot of heartache in the writing process. You run the risk of your story becoming aimless or the pacing falling apart.
Be prompt, but at the same time, don't be a damn rush. Whether a scene or a chapter, take the time you need to set things out, paint a narrative, and then wrap things up. Don't rush through it, but also don't drag on for too long, which I guess ties back into the whole restraint part from earlier. Useful tip for writing scenes - start late, end early. If a scene involves a person having a phone conversation, don't start with them walking into the room, the phone ringing, and then having the whole conversation from 'hello' to hanging up. Start the scene in the phone conversation, and end it once the scene has delivered everything it needed. The story flows more smoothly and you're not wasting time grinding out a scene longer than necessary.
Anyways, I think I'll leave my tips for aspiring writers at that since I don't want to drag on for too long. Like I said, I could probably ramble on about this subject for a long time, and it'd probably get whiny and preachy.
As for planning and plotting things out, that's a bit of a trickier proposition because it's not something that has hard and fast rules about. Everyone develops their own methods of planning a story, and every writer needs to work out for themselves what works best with their style of writing. Some writers are very meticulous in their planning, down to the finest details. Others will play a bit more fast and loose with the planning stage, such as myself, and we'd probably be described as reckless amateurs for it.
I work a bit around the snowflake method when planning, in that I build up the large-scale outline of what I want the story to accomplish; in 'A New Sun Rises' it meant planning out that I wanted Sunset to go through a redemption story, with the first leg of the story focusing on learning several of the key qualities from each respective member of the main cast, and then culminating in utilizing those lessons to solve major issues facing her. Then I start building on the details of major significant events in the story I want to cover, such as 'Sunset needs to move in with Celestia' and 'overcoming issues with her birthday.' And then from there I'll work out the fine details of who's involved in what, and the minor events happening in between scenes and secondary plot arcs.
I've been playing a bit faster and looser with this project than I have in the past, if only because of personal time constraints and overall impatience (planning can take a lot of time if you do everything before you start writing, after all). I'll leave most of the plot in broad terms until I start getting closer to it, at which point I'll start planning in more detail. I've been able to get away with it because 'A New Sun Rises' is nicely divided up into Acts that revolve around a particular story arc. In essence, they're self-contained so I can plan out an arc in fine detail, leave the next Act in moderate detail, and then following acts in very broad details.
Is that a little lazy? Quite. Of course, I could've ditched the 'act' labels and kept things as chapters and things would've flowed the same, so at least I'm being a bit honest about it. Not that things from one Act can't carry over into another, but I usually try to leave an Act with most things resolved. A more advanced author could be juggling multiple arcs at the same time, but I don't feel quite up to that challenge at the moment, not to mention it can make things a little confusing and convoluted or even just result in one issue distracting things from another. You'll see it a lot in television series, referred to as 'A Plot' and 'B Plot' and it's something I'm still learning how to wield proficiently.
An advantage to improvising more as you go is that it's a little more flexible. During a long project it's very easy to think of a 'oh, that'll work much better' moment, but depending on your level of planning, it could be harder than you'd like to fit that moment in. Or maybe something suddenly feel like it works anymore and now you gotta ditch the idea altogether. Prime example of that is playing out right now - most of Act 5 was actually supposed to be Act 6, but I brought the whole Yearling thing in as part of Act 5 and realized I shouldn't leave it in the background for the next several chapters while Sunset focused on other things. So Act most of Act 5 was shoved to Act 6 and it's contents came into Act 5.
All of this was realized while I was writing Act V-II. Needless to say, there was a lot of last-minute revisions to be made as a result. Still, in terms of the flow of events, it felt better and now doesn't rely on 'hey remember that one scene from eight chapters ago?' In a traditional novel that might not have been an issue, but this is an online fanfic and eight chapters ago could mean something like half-a-year ago or longer.
Honestly, my 'plot notes' documents goes through as many revisions as the story does. After Act IV, I sat down and looked it over just to see how much I had ignored or tossed out while writing, then revised and a wrote an updated outline for the remainder of the story.
It's a messy and chaotic method of planning, but it works for me. Had I more time to dedicate to writing, I could be more meticulous. Something else for me to learn, I suppose.
And to answer your last question; yes, they will meet. I think I've had Sunset Shimmer fret over keeping Sci-Twi and Equestria separate that it's a foregone conclusion that the two worlds will collide. It'll be a fun adventure when the time comes, I promise.
4336620 You probably could've included it easily enough. Just really needs a sentence or two scattered around the occasional chapter. Small things, really. I have faith in you!
I totally get ya on that though. Fair enough!
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Thank you! It means a lot to me that you took some time giving a thought out response to a total noob. I have already saved the web page so I can find it again later for reference.
Hello. Maybe I'm a bit late for this?
First I'd like to thank you for the story. I started reading Sunset fics during September (LoE may have had something to do with that), with that I mean a TON of them in only a few months, and I can confidently say yours is one of the best Sunset redemption flcs in here, kudos.
There's jus one thing I've been wondering: What made you decide to continue the story after Rainbow Rocks instead of end it? And why continue in the same story, and not start a sequel?
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Well the plan had always been to continue on after Rainbow Rocks since I didn't feel there was enough time between the first and second movie to cover everything that I wanted. Once I saw Friendship Games, I knew I had the end point that I wanted to aim for. I did a fair bit of mental debating between whether to continue the story or start the post-RR portion as a new story. Ultimately, it just felt disingenuous to claim the post-RR portion as a 'sequel' since the story by the end of Act 4 had hardly been resolved, and the 'sequel' would just be carrying with the same trends and themes of the first.
4337730 Coolio.
It's good to know we can expect the first three E.G. movies as part of this story.
It just feels weird when authors separate chapters with a big "Insert movie you must watch here". But you seem to have planed things very well. Thanks for your answer. Good luck with this great fanfiction.
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In retrospect, it might've been a better idea. It felt less jarring to me, but then again I'm the author so of course everything feels perfectly normal and makes complete sense. Not sure if it'd be proper to try and fix it at this point, as it would reauire taking down the last six chapters. And there still would be the 'you need to read the sequel plus watch the movie.'
4337813 I hear you, by now may be better to leave it, and do the same for FG. It's not so bad, a little odd, but it is quite common in fanfiction. I just wondered why you decided to do it the way it is. Thanks again.
I started reading on this site back in May, and I've seen a lot of stories, some pretty darn good, some kinda lacking. I can say for sure though that "A New Sun Rises" is by far the best story I've seen so far. The whole evolution of this character has been fascinating to watch, and your story has done a wonderful job of filling in the holes in the story that the movies left open. From the first, your portrayal of Sunset Shimmer was somewhat sympathetic, but never gave her an excuse for her bad behavior. And I can certainly relate to some of the lessons she has had to learn. I hope that this story continues on, both for its own sake, and because it is a prime example of what fan fiction can be when done right.