What to Write? · 10:24am Apr 7th, 2018
One of the trickier parts of being a writer is to decide what you should write next. Overall I say I’m doing pretty darn good with churning out horsewords this year. I’ve completed writing three short stories thus far, having published three stories already this year, and with a new story coming out each month through June. But with my publish pretty much set through June (barring unforeseen complications), it’s making me consider what to potentially write for the second half of the year.
So I was curious what type of stories all of you would like to see in the future.
-What genres do you like seeing the most from me? Slice of life, adventure, comedy, romance, drama, mystery?
-Do you want to see more Winningverse, Freeport Venture, or Lunar Rebellion/Midnight’s Shadow stories? Perhaps some AUs, more historical, or crossovers? Something original? Or just some general FIM stories?
-Are there any specific stories or stories ideas you’d like me to follow up on/write?
I can’t guarantee what I’ll end up writing, but I was a bit curious about how all my followers feel. Especially when I like to think well ahead of time what I’m going to write in order to make the best stories I can for all of you. Besides, I might as well put this blog to some good use.
Maybe a story where you meet your favourite pony.
I'd especially love to see more Ongoing Storm stuff, though I'll read just about anything you write.
more winningverse from star,storms perspective XD
Freeport Venture for me, please.
hmm, maybe an EQG story?
Pony Sunset , whos childhood was in orphanage before becomes Princess Celestia's personal student , after was banished from Castle and went through the portal mirror ,she meets human Sunset and Principal Celestia is her mother.Your Freeport Venture stuff is my favorite!
Weeeell... Since you DID ask, and I'm on a huge Naruto jag at the moment as I catch up very very slowly... (And once again regret that Chengar's Cutting Loose - which stood out as being one of the best Naruto stories ever - is likely to never get finished, since he started on pony - along with lots of others...) And you DID mention crossovers...
I always did like the idea of KaDashi Hatake of the Share-ingarn.
Yes, yes, I devote far too much thought to these things, but we all know by now that I'm a terrible person...
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I second the motion :D
Freeport Venture and Lunar/Midnight is also a good idea.
Freeport Venture
Celestia pick Twilight as her new pupil.
Sunset doesnt like that.
More of Midnight's wondeful life.
Love to see you tackle a story from Shadow's perspective sometime. I'm also a big sucker for AUs. Those statements aren't related necessarily, but they could be. If you were into that.
I'm a fan of Puzzle perspective too.
Freeport Venture. Can we get a side story about the civil war in Zebrica?
+1 Vote for all of these. Midnight is fun to read, Freeport is an interesting place, and like I said over in WECGW seeing Sparkler find out that she has a relation to Vinyl would be hilarious!
I like anything with Pinkie Pie and to be honest we do not have too many stories with her in the Winningverse anymore despite being one of the original characters from those stories.
more lunar rebellion and free port i love lunar rebellion cause it is historical i love history and i love free port cause it is interesting how free port itself is the atmosphere and the characters are amazing lunar rebellion midnight's is my favorite sunbeam than gale than shadow im always happy to see more middy i think we need more sunbeam maybe a prequel we don't have any gale yet maybe see how she got adopted and shadow is awesome maybe a prequel for her to and free port more sunset shimmer is a given but i also like strumming
i have had an idea for the past couple months its similar to the incredibly crazy days of a little sparkle by bronywritter but in this one both gale and midnight get sucked into the present as adults really this would focus on their relationship and how modern pony's perceive it
Maybe something with clouds mom maybe the kid cloud incident from her perception just a idea
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i agree with that it could be cool
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I've considered doing another Oncoming Storm/EQG fic. Granted, my first foray into that world resulted in the least popular story I've written thus far. Though that might just be that the story itself didn't work as well as would have been desired, since it was intended to gauge interest to start with. It might help if I try and put more of an A-list story instead of an interest test fic.
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More Star and Storm is always fun, and there are definitely more stories to tell with each of them.
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Good to hear that's there's strong interest in more Freeport Venture stories. I've definitely got some ideas floating around for what else to do with the series besides City of Giants. Among them are doing a couple more prequels like City of Giants to show him exploring the world, going into his actual origins in Freeport, doing some mystery/adventure stories to show what type of jobs he does on a regular basis in Freeport, and some future plans that I'm going to keep under my hat for the moment. I could also write a story or two from Sunset or Strumming's perspectives for something a bit different as well. There's plenty for each of them to do in Freeport.
I can't go into details, but there are plans in the work for that.
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My rule of thumb is never to ask questions you're afraid of getting answers for. I'll admit to being a Naruto fan back in the day, and I've been planning on returning to the series someday to see how things ended up going (especially now that I can skip the capricious amount of filler that bloated the series). Just have to get through Dragonball Super, check out this My Hero Academia thing, Mob Psycho 100, and--oh God, it never ends!
A couple of crossovers that have intrigued me was one with Star Trek or XCOM, and there are probably more out there to be done that I might consider for the future.
This pun, it hurt me.
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Staying the course works for me.
There is a fun thing or two to do with that. Granted, I would probably need to build up an entirely separate conflict from that meeting in order to turn that into a whole story.
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I have plenty of Midnight planned for the future. It just takes time to get through those long stories I have planned for her, though I'm having a lot of fun writing her, so no issues there. I'm also considering doing a story where Midnight comes to the present as an adult for an adventure.
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A story from Shadow's perspective could be fun, especially with The Lunar Rebellion now being done. Since there are either stories to be done before LR, after it, or during the same time as Midnight's Shadow. I'll think it over for some possibilities to pursue.
AUs can be a lot of fun, depending on what I would want to pursue. One idea I've had is a story where Nightmare Moon ended up killing her sister, and exploring the wide ranging political and personal ramifications of that act. And there's always just rebuilding everything from the bottom up into a more involved story, and creating a whole other range of issues.
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Pinkie has been sadly underrepresented in recent stories. It probably has to do with her being a tricky character to write, given her eccentric nature, but it's always possible she might show up again in a story.
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I have considered doing a prequel Sunbeam story at some point. There's a particular story idea that's been bouncing around in my head for a while now, so I might write that once Tainted Legacies is over. And I've got an idea for Midnight visiting the future that I'm considering doing after Tainted Legacies.
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do you think tainted legacies will turn into another 2 to 3 year story
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I doubt it will take more than 2 years, and preferably it would be done within one or a little over twelve months. I'm predicting it's going to take 15 or so chapters, though that's only a rough guess. It, depends on how long the chapters are, if I can keep up my current writing pact, and how long it is between updates. I've been writing on average between 7000-9000 words a week for everything, and I have five chapters of Tainted Legacies written already.
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im just worried im going to be 18 this year last year of high school is next year and if i don't get a job or go to collage i don't know what the hell im doing and i don't want to not have enough time to read fimfiction stories
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I work a fulltime job where I often work overtime and the odd Saturday, and I'm still able to write stories for this site. It takes a lot of time and dedication, but I do it.
My recommendation is to look at potential jobs, keeping an eye on benefits, the type of work done, pay, the future outlook in that profession, and what type of education you need to do that job. Go to school to pick up the skills you need to do that job, and you should be alright if you've chosen well.
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ya its just harder cause i cant really do that many psychel jobs i have cerebral palsy Evin if its not that bad i cant stay on my feet that long and my writing is horrible my grammar sucks
I'm all for more Winningverse and Freeport stuff.
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Yeah, sorry about that. Honestly, at this point if I tried to go back to it I’d probably end up either completely scrapping and starting over from square 1, or there’d be a titanic disconnect given how many years it’s been since I touched that story and the multiple massive shifts in my writing style. It’s been years since I even touched 3rd person omniscient PoV, and I’d probably need to over the story a couple times to recapture the voices of the characters and my ideas for how I was writing them and where they’d be going.
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I am one of those strange people that likes the vast majority of the filler, actually. (I drew the line at the four-episode entire series recap they did at the start of the 4th shinobi war, though.) Watching all the characters frack about (often in different combinations) I find terribly fun.
Though it is quite a lot to go through. I stopped following the show for a couple of years and I follow it on UK DVD releases, so you can imagine how far behind I am. I worked out that I was just over half as many released volumes to catch up on as there were left in the series...
DBS is on my nominal eventual get list, though again it'll be on DVD. (Because I am one of THOSE people who insist on watching things in English dubs!)
*tips helmet*
Once a terrible idea gets in my head, it bounces around for a long time.
You probably don't even KNOW what happened in regard to pony when someone mentioned in passing that Northern Spy was a type of apple...
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Ah well, that's the way it goes. As I have observed before, Naruto's loss was pony's gain.
(Heck, at least I know you're still around! A lot of stories just.... stop with no warning and you have no idea what happened. The worst case where I did was a year or two ago, I found a Naruto story called Momentum that was really good, but it wasn't until I reached the last chapter and at I looked at the author's page I discovered that, tragically, he'd taken his own life just a few weeks before. That was a very sobering and sad day.)
I will have to content myself with the dream of "maybe one day" (and maybe the dream of an aforementioned silly crossover!)
Say this much though - I've been well spoiled by Fimfic and the quality (i.e. submission requirements) and functionality compared to Fanfic... In my recent Naruto searches, on top of even the usual unmoderated dreck you get, I've seen at least one "story" which was actually a request for someone to find them a story and one person submitting apparently a second chapter as a seperate story!) It's also interesting in the way there's a appreciable difference in the sorts of stories you get. The Naruto fandom has a lot more "redo with difference" sort of stories and fewer entirely new stories or stuff threading between the canon gaps. I wonder whether that's due to the arc verses episodic nature of the series, or just a broad fundemental difference in the author fanbase and the way stuff feeds into each other in a single community.
Also, this exchange has allowed me to discover to my horror that Oncoming Storm: Smoke and Lockers exists and that I have not read it (I can only imagine I missed that one while I was on holiday or something...), so it's all to the good!
*tips helmet*
I'll at least check out pretty much anything that pops up in the feed. The Midnight stories are my current favorite, however. I say current as you may come out with something else that displaces it.
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I suspect arc vs episode and having a definitive main character are the two big things that drive it. There’s also the fact that there are a ton of easy “For want of a nail” scenarios to come up with between all the different team arrangements and a main character who is in desperate need of a good mentor figure at the start of the series.
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If the filler makes you happy, then have at it. Though I think we can both agree that recaps are the worst.
FIMFic is definitely blessed with a lot of very good writers. I suspect the Naruto fanbase probably has its good writers, it's just extremely difficult for them to get noticed given the way you have to shift through a lot of crap on Fanfic. That probably doesn't help encourage the good writers out there, since it's easy to get discouraged when no one's reading your stuff and you're not getting any feedback. There are at least methods by which you can find good stories on FIMFic, and while not every quality story on the site gets the attention it deserves, a lot of good stories do get noticed, and it's easy to follow a favored author here.
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Sadly I agree with you that Pinkie is very difficult to write and for many even to understand an that makes her more rare than some other major characters. It also makes her less likely to get ship than some other characters which is really too bad.
I thought you did a goo job with the mailbox story and the story about Dash's parents. Those were a lot of fun.
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Yeah, it's just a matter of getting the right story to have her in. I enjoy writing her, but I like for her to have a purpose in the stories I write instead of just having her around for the sake of it.
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It is a little odd that despite the very first Winningverse story being about Dash's relationship with her, Pinkie doesn't really show up a lot. Someone should fix that.
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I think there's several reasons as to why, but a big one is that Pinkie stories have a... unique flavor to them, that is quite hard to nail down. You either write a wacky comedy with her, which is problematic because good comedy is hard to achieve well, OR you write a more serious story. The issue with the latter is that Pinkie is a pony of very high highs, and extremely low lows. For any writer, trying to channel all that energy into an entire story where she's the focus is challenging to say the least, not to mention likely tiring.
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It's probably not helped that there haven't been many Rainbow Dash related fics as of late either, and you really need the right story for her to be around and fit. Otherwise you get situations where she's only around for a gag line or two when you have a Mane 6 roundtable discussion. Not to mention the challenge issue you brought up.
So I'll give it some though on what could be done with Pinkie, since it's been nearly four years since I wrote a story with her being a central character.
I'll read whatever you put out, honestly. My favorite stories to read however are the Rebellion-era ones. I like learning about the intricacies of life and politics back then, especially when it concerns Sunbeam and Celestia. They have a great dynamic when they are interacting with each other and I always like to see that.
Amazingly I lack that. Much of my writings are easy to do: the characters here are well known, the world is fairly laid out, and its usually easier to play in another sandbox.
My problem is... well, I know where I'm going, what I want to write, and have an arch laid out. But somehow, as I'm writing, it turns out completely different. For example, I started out with a story that was meant to be a comedy. Freeport needs some coin, so a Striker and Freeports answer to Tokyo Rose begin to campaign and push that an island paradise swarming with sell swords, pirates, inscrupulous magic folk, and all flavor of depraved tosspot is the ideal place to bring the missus and kids. Watching the good captain Iron Will rip a boarding pirate in half builds character!
Somehow it became an Ulysses esque Striker making an open invitation to certain individuals.
I don't know... Maybe a bit more into the personal lives of Shadow and friends. I mean, snowball bout aside, we really don't see much in the way of a day in the life of. Or how they interact outside of a political or dire setting. Maybe Sunbeam and Shadow have a meal or something. Or you could delve into Midnight's and Shadow becoming closer.