New story: Project Sunflower · 5:45am Feb 4th, 2012
Well, with much trepidation, I've just submitted the intro and first four chapters of my newest story, Project Sunflower, for moderation.
I really, really hope people like it. And, if you don't, please tell me why. What could I make better? How could I change things to make them more interesting/fun/exciting?
This is going to be a relatively long story, for me. I plan on getting one new chapter up a week, until it's done, and they will all be around 5k words in length (I'm guessing). It's another "humans meet ponies" type of story, but with a little twist, though one that I'm sure isn't all that unexpected or unusual.
To be honest, this one had me banging my head against the wall for weeks. The Black Tide, the sort-of "villain" of the work, is a heavily modified version of something that I had been using for another story that I was writing years ago (which fizzled out and eventually went nowhere). I decided to re-use it for this story, because I needed a desperate situation and grave threat that would push people in the direction I wanted them to go. I started out by trying to describe, in some detail, what the Tide was, what it was doing, and humanity's efforts to fight it. And I got nowhere, weeks of spinning my wheels as I discarded draft after draft of the first chapters of this story.
Finally, I realized what the problem was. I didn't want to write about the Tide. I wanted to write about ponies. I had to get past the Tide and get to the meat of the story that I actually wanted to write. So, how do I do that, and still let people know that there is a dangerous threat facing the planet?
Easy. I cheated. That's what the "memos" are in the introduction. That's me cheating, so I can drop a ton of exposition to get it out of the way as soon as possible.
In previous drafts, at my worst, that first part, just the introduction, took up three chapters and close to 20,000 words in itself. Thank Celestia I scrapped that. If I didn't want to write all that, why would you want to read it?
Once the story (hopefully) gets passed by the mods, I hope you enjoy the first few chapters. I'm really happy with that last chapter, though I think the first three are still a bit too "talky". And, obviously, chapter 5 is where things are going to start getting really fun!
Have a good one!
~Hoopy
