Hey, everyone, remember that time I made Rarity a dragon and Twilight an arrogant little shit of a thief? · 6:59pm Aug 25th, 2018
Good times, those were. So good, in fact, I started mulling the prospect of doing a bit more fantasy writing and adding some more worldbuilding to my alleged stories. Thus how we got Long Road for Love and Best Served Cold, the latter of which ... well ... if I only had time to brain some misadventures for Chrysalis, Flurry, and the Royals, I would be all over it.
Back to the point though, about those dragons and thieves ...
I made a rather grave error in falling head over heels in love with the idea of the verse as a whole and started prodding along something bigger with it. An overarching story featuring Twilight and each of the girls on this lengthy, winding adventure to get back to Equestria so she could be done with it all—all the while, getting into all sorts of trouble, pissing off more monsters, running into old enemies, and facing off with even older enemies of Equestria and ponies as a whole. And also, focusing on her inability to retire. But she's trying so hard to just go home and fling that crown at Celestia's head so she can go "here! I'm done! I quit!" and enjoy life being spoiled and teased senselessly.
All this about a day after I posted it and talked with a few friends. I think one noted that what I was describing was a sort of Odyssey like construction of the story. I won't pretend it's quite that epic, but, that is the basic framework I'm working with.
I'm babbiling. Anyway, the point is that there's more thief words coming. In fact, I've written up to four tales from the epic misadventures of Twilight Sparkle, Princess of Thieves, already.
Which brings me to a bit of a pickle: how to structure the damn thing.
I wrote them initially as individual stories, but I do rather wonder if they should all be grouped together under one and just treated as arcs. I guess that kinda speaks to how I should've waited to post In the Hall of the Mountain Queen or written it more in depth as I have with these, but oh well.
So, I'm sorta batting it around. I'm rather curious what you guys think: one big story with of arc being the standalones I've written, or keep them broken into oneshots/4-5 chapter fics?
Hmm! I sorta think the numerous shorter fics thing would work better, but really, any stuff about Thieflight (and maybe Smaugity!) would be good.
One big story.
It'd be much easier to read them together as one story.
Sounds like you have an anthology in the making.
```and teased senselessly.```
My dirty mind went places.
I’d try having them as one story.
Write a novel. You have one overarching story "Twilight tries to get home, and the world doesn't exactly cooperate." Each arc is a step along the journey. She makes some progress between arcs, but each one more or less side-tracks her or presents a barrier in the way, or even backwards progress. She wants to go in a straight line, the story forces her to adopt a squigly one. That's your framework/structure.
By splitting it off into various sequels or whatever, you're diluting the big picture. By keeping them together, not only can you emphasize each encounter/character exactly as you would in split works, but you can put in material for the journey itself. Less important side-quests/characters if you want, red herrings, cameos, and so on. Short stories have to be concise and trim. A novel has room for such things.
I'm okay with whatever, but personally I think the anthology format (one story) works better for the kind of style you're trying to portray.
It would depend on what you want to do with this story or series of stories, I suppose.
If, on the one hand, your goal is to explore the setting, an episodic "sampling" of the world and the characters' lives might be best -- sort of "dipping" into things here and there to show bits of the world and interesting episodes in the characters' personal histories. It would be a good way of exploring whichever parts of the world and its timeline you want to look at, if your goal is to indeed looking at and developing the broader setting.
If, on the other hand, you want to tell an overarching story -- which is what I think you're saying here -- then a single, structured novel-type narrative would be the better option. Something like the Odyssey, as you said -- containing a series of events and stories that can be told on their own, but connected by a persistent narrative and presenting a specific message, tone and storyline. Splitting it into lots of smaller stories and one-shots would fragment the narrative and hurt its effectiveness and, likely as not, its overall quality as well.
Do they fir as individual stories set in the same universe, or as parts of one whole?
You could have them all in one fic as different chapters, as the collected tales of said verse'. I for one am happy to hear there will be more tales of the prettiest dragon and her smol pone.
I’m stoked, so totally stoked
Aside from twilight being princess of theives any changes to the rest of the mane 6 and their archytypes?
Gonna say one big story for ease of keeping it all together.
4925591 I've been sorta mulling it over a bit because all the stories are very closely related and I want to have those relationship building moments between characters, so I'm thinking one big thing might just work better.
I just need to suddenly come into a lot of money so I can get art for each big tale clearly.4925601
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Yeah, having them all as one big story has been what I've sorta been leaning toward. Technically, yes, each tale/arc could be its own short standalone fic, but a lot of the ideas I have for character relationships developing don't really do that. They'd sorta feel out of place on their own and really only function as an "in between" for each of Twilight's misadventures. And as fun as it is to have Raridragon and Flutter[redacted] having a conversation about certain details regarding how they feel about their silly pony friend's antics, I don't think it would fit in the middle of a fic about, say, Twilight racing against time to free a village from a wizard's curse or whatever. Which Cryo and I did sorta talk about last night.
4925860 In the same vein as Rarity being a dragon a la Smaug, yeah. That's about all I'll really give away tho.
HYPE
Seriously though, I've been keeping an eye out for a follow up since I first read Hall months ago. Really excited to see what you come up with!
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What about your story "Between Us"? Will you be writing a sequel to it?