Writing Lessons: Blood and Ponies · 4:22am Feb 1st, 2018
...This fic exhausted me.
If there is one over-arching lesson I learned from this little crossover is that having a plan for your story, even if you end up deviating from it, is important. It gives you at least a loose guide that you can follow and for someone with ADD having something that can help keep you on focused and on track ends up being really important.
And Blood and Ponies was the first time that lack of focus hit me on the chin. Up until this point, I've kind of been able to coast by with my passion, but this crossover had a hell of a second trap that I feel into. The bane of the crossover. The thing that I feel kills so many of them in the crib or that leaves them bland messes.
Being way to damn impressed with your own cleverness when it comes to combining universes and letting the story suffer because of that. And it hit me hard in the original run. There were way to many scenes in those first rounds off chapters where exposition took center stage so that I could show off the neat ways I turned the classic World of Darkness into Equestria. Hence the tearing down and starting over.
But even though I like the new version a lot more, it has some issues of its own.
In retrospect, Twilight and her friends didn't need to be there.
There's sometimes a desire to keep the cannon characters relative in these crossovers as they're the big names on the fandom's marquee. But looking at this story objectively, having Sun Shang just interact and try to solve problems with Deep Digger, Sea Breeze and Fluttering Posey would have worked just as well, if not better. Deep Digger and Sun's relationship could have focused around that loose blood bond and Digger's desire to help and Sun's guilt at giving her. Sun would want to protect Sea Breeze from Sugar Shine, but would also be worried about being around her and possibly flying into a frenzy. That same fear would be there with Fluttering.
Ah well. Hindsight is 20-20 after all.
So that's what I learned from writing Blood and Ponies. Always interesting to look back on your previous work. Maybe I'll do this after I complete my next fic too. We'll see.
I worry about falling into the same trap with Ex Sanguis. It’s almost a double whammy there though because cleverness is almost required: Bloodborne provides so little in the way of solid background that I’ve had to invent a good portion of it so far.
Same problem with The Velveteen Hunter, and I want that to be completed before I even think about publishing it.
Think there’s some magical crossover formula out there that’ll make this easy? I’ll share it with you if I find it, even!