Merry Christmas! (Plus story updates + news!) · 1:48pm Dec 24th, 2016
Merry Christmas to all of you from the ass end of the world that is New Zealand! As one of the first countries in the world to experience this momentous date, I just wanted to take a moment to wish you all the very best of holidays and a happy new year to come! Here's hoping the new year will bring a brighter year than this, whose story starts with "Well it all began with this fucking gorilla..." All jokes aside, heh, I hope you have a good time over these coming holidays.
So, I just wanted to begin by saying that I'll be away visiting family for a week beginning the 28th, or the 27th for some those who are overseas. I get back the following week on the 4th, so I don't know how active I'll be.
On that note, I have been chipping away at the next chapter of ANCTL, but regarding the story we're at least four chapters away from the ending, if I can make the chapters long enough, that is.
When this story comes to it's eventual conclusion, there's three things I can do, two of which concern the story itself. It also gives all of you something to look forward to over the coming months.
1: A sequel
I've already got a vague outline and setting planned for the first half of the sequel, none of which I've actually committed to writing down. More like formulating a plan on what I could do. Events will be directly related to the first story.
2: A complete and total rewrite
There's many, many things that I don't like about the story. Most of those problems stem from the fact that when I first published the story, I had no concrete direction where I was going to take it; I basically wanted to improve on the potential of Admiral Q's original. Along the way i tried developing several directions where the story could go, which resulted in a sort of mixed-up series of events that have no real elation to one another.
Rewriting will allow me to do several things:
- Breathe new life into Joseph. Since he's British, I missed out on a golden opportunity to use British slang and colloquialisms. I really need to give him more character depth and personality.
- Change the perspective. I can either completely change to first person perspective, which would require heavy rewrites, or simply keep the third person. This is completely optional.
- Cleaning everything up & reformatting. If you read this story, you'd likely grasp I have a huge hard-on for italics when it comes down to distinguishing who talks and for individual word emphasis. It's an option to use simpler methods to distinguish who's talking, such as colouring the text blue or purple to indicate when Nightmare Moon is talking.
- Streamline everything. The narrative is all over the place because of the 'direction' issue I mentioned, so once the story comes to a close, I can go back and make events related to one another and keep the narrative smoother in transition etc.
And finally, if you've taken the time to read this whole thing...
3: A brand new story
There's this one story I have actually began planning in terms of note taking, but more like good ideas I wrote down so I didn't lose them. The story itself will involve per-Nightmare Moon Luna, Celestia, and other characters such as Starswirl. Basically it's set 1000 years before the beginning of the show, giving an additional year or so for events to transpire up until the Celestia vs NMM incident. It'll be an AU story, too.
So, guys, help me choose! If you guys help me make up my mind, I can put more focus on finishing ANCTL and putting proper planning efforts into whatever option gets chosen. Think of it as my holiday gift to you 
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays from the land of the sheep-fuckers! (That also applies to you, too. You know who you are... 
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Well, the comments you make about a rewrite would be good if you can pull that off. I think stories always benefit from the author having a coherent direction for the story before they write it. However, I would not want you to get bogged down in a rewrite if it would cause you to lose interest buy having to go through the whole story again. If you could do it I think it would benefit the story, as you said thing are a bit all over the place at times. However, I like the story so far and would not be opposed to a sequel, as new material is always nice to see. I would probably be less interested in the new story option, but it's hard to say as that description is not a lot to go on.
So, I would say if you are up to it do the rewrite, it may even help you solidify you ideas for the sequel while you are doing it. If not, I would say work on the sequel, and use what you have learned from writing the first story. Or if you have lost interest in the story move on to your new idea for now and come back to ANCTL later. After all, this is a fanfiction site and you should most of all be doing this for you own enjoyment.
Merry Christmas to you too. Also if you end up in my area, just remember, MY sheep are for MY PERSONAL use, not yours. And I prefer to think of us as the head of the world rather than the ass, everyone else can learn a lot from us and our sheep.
4353423 With all that in mind, do you think changing the tense to first person rather than streamlining everything in the third person would somehow be better?