Final Thoughts on Changeling Queen, Book 2 · 10:14pm Jun 3rd, 2017
There are those who feel that my stories might be a little bit rushed, that the pacing comes a little bit too fast. To those I say:
You are not wrong.
More thoughts after the break.
I feel like my strengths include dialogue, description, shipping, and character development. My weaknesses include finishing stories, staying focused while writing, slipping into telling instead of showing, using adjectives / adverbs slightly too liberally (if not excessively), and, of course, pacing. I have an old story from 2012 that has over 60k words (and a lot of old headcanon, like Pinkie's sisters' names being Baralinka Marie 'Blinkie' Pie and Ignacia Josephine 'Inkie' Pie) that has just languished in my drive because I couldn't get the scene of the suspect into the interview room to flow like I wanted it to. Talk about a bottleneck
What does this all have to do with Changeling Queen Book II? One of my writing methods is visualizing, as if it were a movie. Or, in this case, a music video. For a long time, when I've seen this ending scene / these last two chapters in my head, the song Reise, Reise by Rammstein has played in my head. Since it's a song, there are some parts where the action is faster, and some parts where it's slower. If the pacing seems off on this closing scene, this is why; I'm basically extrapolating from this mental music video. Now, if I had unlimited money, I'd totally commission an animation for it; but since I don't, the best I can give you is approximate timestamps to go with the song.
0:38 Scene opens with drum, starting at the sky.
0:47 Camera lowers to griffons
Pan across group
Prisoner stand
0:54 Expression reads, "Here they..."
0:56 Binoculars passed to Griffith
0:58 "come?"
0:59 Every drum hit is a quick angle change, changeling hooves, changeling carapace, changeling fang, changeling horn
1:01 View from the front as Twilight Sparkle marches at the head of her army. It's over-cranked, so it looks like they're marching in slow motion.
1:10 side view of changeling hooves marching in perfect lockstep
1:13 Brief shot of griffons looking fearful.
1:14 Side view, prisoner stand on the left, Twilight on the right. Marching closer,
1:16 Twilight stops and holds up a hoof, and the changeling army stops.
1:21 She walks forward on her own.
1:24 Camera change to angled down, above the prisoners. Twilight nears, disappears from view under the stand, then
1:30 teleports on top of the stand
During the lyrics, Twilight and Griffith speak.
1:45 Knife to the chest, Twilight drops back.
1:47 ponies gasp
1:48 Twilight looks up and grins slowly. Camera tilts, showing army fade from view
1:52 camera facing Griffith, trying to understand. Over his shoulder, slow motion Ithir diving
1:53 bites him, taking Griffith down with the weight of his body. He hits the ground and twitches. Camera raises up, showing the changelings decloaking among the griffons.
Changelings biting
Dodging
Griffons hitting the ground
2:08 Twilight drops chains
Fight continues around them
2:22 New army coming
Twilight's eyes narrows, she flies up
Shot of the ponies looking shocked. "Twilight!"
2:30 Lyrics; camera slowly pans across captive ponies walking, ending at Twilight in a cage
2:45 Lookout watching, sees procession coming, turns and waves.
2:47 From behind, camera facing city door, door opens, revealing the sun shining through
2:51 use bright light shining through as scene change
2:52 Army marching triumphantly through the streets
Winking at griffonesses
Ponies head down
3:03 Shot of balcony as Grinda walks out
3:05 closer view, Grinda smiling
3:07 Twilight's cage marched up the side stairs, up onto balcony
3:11 Unceremoniously dumped out; she's sprawled on the ground. Looks up.
3:15 Grinda there. Sunlight poking around her head.
3:17 Twilight bows her head.
3:19 Grinda smirks, hefts axe
3:22 Axe comes down.
Ponies flinch on impact (second cymbal crash). Fluttershy buries her head in Rainbow's shoulder.
3:23 Maids rush out and clean blood up as Grinda leads the griffons in cheers, and then turns and returns into the throne room.
3:27 Sits on throne. Motions for curtains to be closed
3:29 Brief pause, Steps down into the center of the room.
3:31 Starts chuckling, camera slowly starts circling.
3:36 Burst into flame and starts laughing, head thrown back. Camera slowly circles around. Griffon guards behind her start transforming back into changelings, the camera tilts up slightly and the false ceiling fades away; by the time the camera has made the full circle around the room, Twilight (still laughing) is surrounded by changelings and the cocoons are all visible.
3:51 She jumps up, her hoof flares green, gleaming like a scythe, she slices the stem connecting the cocoon to the ceiling and lets it fall.
3:53 hits the ground
3:55 Twilight, her hoof still in a scythe, splits the cocoon and lets Grinda flop out. She struggles to extricate herself
3:58 Leans in her face
4:02 She sings along as she spins once, disguises herself as Grinda.
4:21 She walks out the door, followed by some of the changelings as guards.
4:28 Grinda, struggling, finally extricates herself from the cocoon, chases her down
4:33, gets to the door, guards and rush ahead
4:36 Rounds corner, camera shows her, guards behind, all skid to a stop.
4:43 Camera tilts down, focuses on dying green flames dancing on the stones
Fade to black.
And, while I think breaking immersion is the cardinal sin of fanfiction, had this story taken place in a setting with modern technology, Twilight would have probably ensured compliance by filming a music video, with her disguised as Grinda, dancing her little heart out as best as she could (which is still really bad), eventually joined by many of the other leaders in conspicuous palace locations, to this song.
Book 3 sometime in the future.
That's how it works for me. The problem is then translating that mentally constructed scene into coherent English.
Okay I get it. Thank You for the good read. Good luck for the next book. I will bei there.
Seeing as I now finished Book II finally I'm not poking around for related blogs.
I'd like to say thanks for writing the story as I've enjoyed both immensely and also your not the only one who writes to music, a lot of times I'll think of a song for a scene and then play it in a loop as I write that scene.
And I'll admit there are a couple parts that are a bit rushed but over all its not too bad.
If you ever want to talk shop drop me a line here or on Discord and I'll be happy to help you out as best as I can with things
4557556
The downside to that approach is that film and prose, as media, have different strengths and weaknesses, so it's easy to write something which leans toward the bits which prose is weak in (eg. jokes and impressions that depend on condensed, punchy timing that a stream of words is too drawn-out for) and misses opportunities to really leverage the stuff prose is better at (ie. stuff that can't be represented visually in an efficient way, such as abstract concepts with no clear visual metaphor, directly conveying characters' thoughts, feelings, and impressions, etc.).
The main way I see that mistake in fanfiction tends to be people who don't grasp that, if you try to just write out a movie-style fight or sports scene in prose without adaptation, it'll feel boring.
4565875
Well, downside or no, that's my approach because that's just how my brain is wired. Probably has something to do with my pathological inability to write an essay to save my life.
4566451
Fair enough. We make do with what we have.
I'm a whiz at non-fiction like essays and articles but still working to break through a block on writing characters other than "me, right now, in my current emotional state" with any degree of efficiency which limits me to helping friends with the high-level planning and beta-reading phases of the process.
(I can evaluate already-written prose pretty well, but writing characters myself takes 15-30 minutes per paragraph, so it's not really a productive use of my time.)
4566460
Thing is, characters can't feel for themselves (being fictional and all). If you want them to think and feel realistically, you gotta let them use your brain to do it. That said, it might be easier for me since I've had a whole bunch of other people running around in my head since I was a kid. (I don't mean that in a DID sort of way, just in a "had a lot of imaginary friends" kind of way.) It's always a treat when one of your characters does something unexpected, even when you technically hold all the strings.
4566732
I've been professionally diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. In layman's terms, that means that my brain repurposed the circuitry for social intuition (ie. simulating other people's actions to anticipate their behaviour) to bolster other tasks, so I had to learn to consciously watch the flow of a conversation and build up an understanding of what cues to watch for and what they mean.
I have to reverse-engineer things further if I want to understand how people think well enough to predict them with a great enough degree of efficiency to be suitable for writing.
*nod* Everyone varies in terms of where along the spectrum they are from my position to "would be schizophrenia if it weren't controllable".
I have a couple of friends who are really good at that, so I tend to work with them to shore up their weak areas. (That tends to make you a "ground-level thinker", which means that you're good at writing engaging characters, but prone to getting caught up in things and forgetting the high-level overview of how the plot should be moving... resulting in things like "I wrote 700,000 words before my muse died and the plot never really moved much... but man, what a ride it was!" I'm great at developing and working from the high-level overview.)
4566841
Oh hey, me too!
While I'm fairly decent at social intuition when it involves fictional characters (especially the ones living in my brain), I'm still pretty hopeless when it comes to real people.
Oh, I just had an idea on how you could improve on your character problem: Play roleplaying games. That should give you some practice in rearranging your thoughts to think like one of your characters instead of yourself.
4567474
I prefer to focus on writing-related stuff.
Pen-and-paper RPGs feel like the worst aspects of video games and collaborative writing smushed together. (It's like a computer RPG... but with slower turns and no graphics. It's like collaborative writing, but more mired in rules that get in the way when the participants' goals are to think outside the box and collaborate to come up with clever plots.)
A big part of my problem is simply that I need more time. For the last while, writing-related stuff has been on hold while I work on other things in my life.