Stories I Won't Write · 8:00am Oct 13th, 2012
Quick round-up of stuff before I get to the meat of this post: here's a reading I did of Rainbow Dash Watches Clouds, here's an interesting-looking, not-fueled-by-drama group for helping folks polish their stories up for EqD or showcasing the stuff that's not really EqD-type content, and here's my new group for collecting "Character Verbs Object" stories, because why not.
I think a lot of us probably suffer from having more story ideas than time and inspiration to actually write stories. I've written well over a hundred thousand words of ponyfiction, but if I had time to do everything that came to mind and seemed interesting... well, I'd probably forget to eat or sleep and then die. And that "tagged stories" thing under this blogpost would be even more of a mess.
So, in the style of this, this, this and this (but not really that first one), here are a bunch of stories I've thought of writing but very likely won't.
Tree of Leaves
[Comedy] [Crossover?]
Spike finds a door in the library that wasn't there before. It freaks him out at first, but then Twilight explains that it's the result of a spell she cast on the library when they first moved in – because the tree is still alive and growing, she thought it would be interesting to make it grow extra rooms with magic.
In any case, a recent delivery books, coupled with some very generous donations of the same, have got the library shelves overflowing, so Twilight and Spike decide to use the room for extra shelf-space. They go inside and find shelves already set into the walls, which is good, but no windows or lighting, which isn't so good. It's a problem easily solved with spare torches, though.
When the room is lit up, Twilight and Spike note that instead of being brown and wood-panelled, the room is completely black. The walls, floor and ceiling are all made out of the same coarse, black material. Twilight conducts some scientific tests on it, but results are inconclusive – she's got no idea what the stuff is.
In any case, they move some books to the new room and everything goes fine – they make it a foal's book section. Patrons come to the library and take out books, and then a few weeks later, Twilight gets a complaint.
A confused earth pony mother brings in a copy of "Plum Pudding's Perfect Picnic" and asks why such an advanced and confusing book was placed in the foal's section. Twilight is equally confused about the situation and takes a look inside the book.
"Plum Pudding's Perfect Picnic" is a 500-page-long non-linear narrative incorporating meta elements and containing copious footnotes and references to non-existent studies. It's the story of an odd unicorn who discovers and collates an old griffon's hefty pseudo-academic analysis of a surreal novel about an earth pony planning a picnic.
A bewildered Twilight apologises to the earth pony mother and writes a letter of complaint to the company who delivered the book. They claim to have no records of ever sending her the book described, and enclose photographs of the "Plum Pudding's Perfect Picnic" they stock, which is a traditional, short foal's story for first-time readers.
Twilight is stumped by this, but soon realises that the book came from the library's strange new foal's section. An investigation of the other books confirms her suspicions. Even "Daring Do and the Liar's Labyrinth" has turned into a mess of self-referencing footnotes and crossed-out red text.
With Spike's help, she moves all the book out of the room and seals the door, vowing never to open it again. Everything's fine from then on, and it feels like the nightmare's over, until she finds an out-of-place green word in one of her favourite books.
This escalates and things get real for a while, but then I troll everyone by revealing that a bored minotaur author was living in a second extra room, behind the shelves of the first one, and using his magical writing powers to vandalise the library's books. Twilight suggests he write his own book instead, but his powers don't allow him to create new books, just to change existing ones.
She thinks for a while and then gives him a blank diary.
It works.
Why I'm not going to write it: It's a one-joke story, even the few people who would get the joke wouldn't really find it that funny (I don't), and the ending's pretty awful.
Trixie in Zebrica
[Slice of Life]
[This is an old one – many moons ago I had some vague idea about writing and releasing it as a sort of interlude between Long Distance chapters 7 and 8.]
After managing to recover her Ponyville losses, Trixie realises she's made everypony in Equestria angry with her and travels to Zebrica to get away from it all. She sets up her first show in a coastal city and gives her usual haughty, audience-shaming routine. To her immense satisfaction, the audience loves it. She feels like she's finally found people who get her.
Everything goes swimmingly until she invites a member of the audience up on stage and tries to involve her in a magic trick. Weird, unexpected things start happening, and the zebra uses her far superior power (think potions and runes and stuff) to make a fool of Trixie. The audience goes wild.
Once the show's over, Trixie is thoroughly shamed and embarrassed. However, she discovers an enormous amount of money in her tips jar. She's momentarily staggered, then joyful, then guilty. In a sudden flash of morals, she runs after the zebra who stole the show and offers her the money.
The zebra declines. All that's important to her people, she says, is that they get to see a good show.
Why I'm not going to write it: I really am not a fan of Trixie. I could probably do something pretty interesting with this idea if I thought about it a little more and maybe did a little research, but I really don't like Trixie.
Newcomer
[Adventure] [Human]
Once upon a time, I thought it might be fun to try to write something for the Mary-Sue X Prize. Could I write a story where my self-insert goes to Equestria, turns into a pony, turns into an alicorn and has one of the mane six fall in love with him and have it not suck – maybe even have it accepted on Equestria Daily and get a five-star rating.
Two pages in I discovered I couldn't. Writing these kinds of stories is dangerous – the act attracts stupid clichés like a stupid cliché magnet (one of those red horseshoe ones with the white tips). Those two pages of generic "human wakes up in Equestria as a pony" will forever remind me of my many shortcomings. I mean, I had some vague ideas about worldbuilding and character growth and quests and stuff, but starting in an utterly generic way is like taking your inspiration out behind the shed and giving it a shotgun shell to the face.
Why I'm not going to write it: Fifty dollars just isn't enough, man. It isn't enough to get me through the horror of staring into the black abyss that is my unoriginal, self-indulgent soul.
There Came a Bump, And Then a Second Bump
[Adventure] [Human] [Alternate Universe]
What It's a Dangerous Business, Going Out Your Door is to The Lord of the Rings, this would be to The Chronicles of Narnia. I never really cared much for LotR (or fantasy in general), but I loved those Narnia books like nothing else when I was a kid.
In this Equestria, Nightmare Moon won, all because Twilight didn't make the crucial connection and realise that she and her friends were the real Elements of Harmony. Since then, Equestria has languished under eternal night.
Worlds away, two children – a boy and a girl – while away a boring day at school. The girl tells the boy about this book she read recently – a book of fairytales about a faraway land populated by colourful ponies. Before the boy rolls his eyes too many times, she mentions that the land is also populated by fire-breathing dragons and griffons. She recounts a story about two sisters we all know very well.
The kids wonder about what happened when the younger sister returned on the longest day of the thousandth year. The girl explains that that was the last story in the book.
Cut to somewhere in Whitetail Woods, Equestria, where the two children inexplicably fall out of the sky and land with a bump and then a second bump. They eventually find out that they've been summoned to help lift the curse on the land, and set out on a quest to do what Twilight and co failed to do – find the Elements of Harmony.
There's a twist, of course.
Why I'm not going to write it: Time, mostly. I just can't see myself getting enough time to do the planning and writing necessary to do any kind of justice to this idea. That, and I'm kinda iffy on the thought of Equestria having to summon kids from Earth to fight their battles for them. I'd have to handle that very delicately.
Still, of all these ideas, this one is my favourite.
Everyone Is Discord in Purgatory
[Comedy]
After his defeat and reimprisonment, Discord wakes in a big room filled with cordoned-off lines wiggling towards teller booths. The lines are full of shuffling, featureless grey ponies, all talking in low, incomprehensible mutters.
Discord takes an immediate dislike to the place – its plethora of straight edges and rigid adherence to Euclidean geometry makes him uneasy. Distressingly, he finds himself unable to use any of his powers. He notices a white pony in an official-looking outfit standing by one of the lines and demands answers from her.
She smiles and helpfully explains that “we just need to consolidate our records” and “you'll be out of here in a jiffy, just grab one of these forms and stand in that line.”
Still perturbed, Discord follows her instructions, but after waiting in the line for what feels like hours, the pony at the window tells him that there's been a policy change and not only does he actually need two extra copies of the form he only grabbed one of, but he also needs to stand in another line to fill out a prerequisite form.
You can see where this is going. Discord is tortured with the worst kind of rigid, pedantic and generally unexplained order. There would probably be a twist at the end where he realises it's not that different from chaos.
Why I'm not going to write it: I don't have enough jokes, and as far as bureaucracy-mocking ponyfiction goes, A Pun Too Far does a pretty decent job already. Also, there's just something about being trapped in stone that doesn't quite mesh with going to purgatory. I don't think there's a way I could really reconcile those two things to the point where they wouldn't nibble away at the corners of my mind.
Feel free to use any of these ideas as starting points for your own ideas, or as writing fuel in themselves.
Hmmm... I quite like that last idea. If I had any time at all for writing these days, I might have stolen it.
Group joined, but I already resubmitted Shades anyway, so we'll see.
Not liking the ideas other than the Narnia remake, but I entirely get why you might not want to commit to planning it though. I didn't like the books, to be honest, but I could dig it being ponified!
I'm so glad that I'm not the only one who itched to take a crack at the Mary Sue X Prize challenge. Not that I gave a crap about the prize mind, I was just taken with the idea of attempting something because it was claimed it couldn't be done. I could totally do it. Making sense of that kind of mess is my forte, it's just a matter of whether I could live with myself afterwards! I've seriously considered trimming out the less savoury elements and doing the basic plot in principal, but I think my self-esteem is still too low to do a self-insert this early
If anyone wants to egg me into it, I'm definitely close enought to have my mind changed. I figure there's gotta be major kudos for taking a serious crack at it.
-Scott
405805
Time makes fools of us all.
405816
Someone really does need to write it, prize or no prize. Only when someone executes that Mary Sue deathtrap of a concept well can we truly say that there's no such thing as a bad idea, only bad execution. If you feel you can pull it off, I'd certainly encourage you to take a stab at it, but I guess it's not without its risks. I mean, make it less than a really, really good story and you'll have to live with the knowledge that you've written run-of-the-mill self-insertion. It was a bit too much for me.
No pressure, of course.
Yeah, that Tree of Leaves idea is kinda incoherent. It starts off as a simple 'retelling with ponies', then turns into a meta riff about the original, then devolves into a 'monster of the week' that winks knowingly at the original but doesn't really have anything to do with it.