Twilight and the Door: How and Why I Wrote It

This story was an exercise in writing, particularly in the process of writing. I've written several stories on this site, and so far I am satisfied with none of them. I don't consider myself a real writer, in part because I've only ever been able to finish short, one- to three-chapter fanfics. And I know why that is (aside from the fact that I'm a terrible procrastinator).

Too often, in my writing, I start a story with a very specific idea of how things should go—only to find that it doesn’t work that way; that the character would react some other way than I had planned, or that I had no real justification for someone’s actions, or that there were simply too many trains of thought running in my head at once, and I just couldn’t jump around like that on paper. Conversations get increasingly forced as I try to hit every single point and cool phrase I’d thought of, and the plot quickly disappears or gets too confusing while I spend too many moments on banter and not enough on developing a plotline.

I know that many authors like to extensively plan their stories, and I know that for many genres (especially mysteries), it couldn’t really work any other way. My impulse, too, is to plan and plot, having important character moments laid out before I know how they get there. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work for me on a scene-to-scene basis: because I make the big important moments first, I have to retrofit the actual storyline to fit those scenarios... and then I start writing, and present my character with a goal and a problem, only to realize that the path she thinks is most logical takes her in a completely different direction than what I’d wanted. So I contrive reasons why that couldn’t work, and before long you have a labyrinth instead of a maze, where I’m directing a character’s path by finding external excuses to make them go a certain way so I can leave their actual personality untouched for the big, important moments I’d originally visualized. And that’s just a bad story.

Maybe if I were a better planner, I could sort things out the way I believe these master planners do. Maybe I could figure out exactly how everything goes, before I put it into words on a moment-to-moment basis. Maybe, if I took the time to sit down and think about how each character would react to the situation presented to them, I could come up with a timeline that could actually work from scene to scene—where and how to plant the information the protagonist needs to get them to go where I want, how to justify why the antagonist lets that information slip or where the hero gets it, and so on and so forth. Maybe I could contrive a plan, based on my intellectual knowledge of a character's personality and thought process, that would be correct in its theory about how a given character would actually act and which conclusions they would reach because of that.

However, my mind just doesn't work like that naturally. My understanding of a character comes more from seeing and feeling and thinking like them than from thinking about how they would feel and think; and that requires me to be in the moment with them, experiencing a scene right along with them. And that means the scenes have to come first, or I'll get them wrong... which, in turn, means I can't plan ahead for how a story is supposed to go. I might be able to force myself, through a whole lot of mental discipline, to sharpen up my mind and write a good, solid, character-accurate outline. But it's not in my nature, and if there's an easier way of doing this "creative writing" thing effectively, I think I'd better try it out first and see if I can get it to work.

So, this story was an attempt at that: practice in writing something natural and genuine, arising from the circumstance of the moment rather than from cool-sounding bits and pieces I roughly patched together into something resembling a linear chain of events. I decided to follow a philosophy of writing I've had in my head for a while, one that I have heard some of my favorite authors describe using. This philosophy is the idea that an author’s job is to set up a character, give them an objective, put obstacles in the way, and then press “go”—allowing them to find their own way towards their goal. The characters will write the story themselves, simply by being themselves, and all the author has to do is record it and make sure that their antagonist, whatever form that takes, gives the protagonist a hard time on their way. In short, I was trying out “discovery writing”—going into a story with only two things, a character and their goal, and letting events progress in a natural and logical order by putting obstacles in Twilight’s path and letting her attempt to overcome them.

I went into the story, as usual, with too many ideas. I had plans of specific things she was going to do to try to get through the door, but I didn't have a means of connecting them. This time, however, I repressed it all. I started off with a character, Twilight, and a goal, getting into the kitchen. I justified that goal with an explanation that I think sounded reasonable (though, in retrospect, it is still a mere justification; a circumstance I forced into being for no other reason than that I needed an excuse for the story). Come to think of it, my justification may have been a bit overboard, raising more questions than answers; but it works, all the same.

Next, once Twilight's goal was clear and her investment in it was established, I gave her an obstacle. A physical obstacle in this case, because I thought it would be the simplest thing I could do, and I really wanted to stick to what was simplest and most logical. Start introducing more complicated things, like other characters with motivations, histories, and established relationships, and my brain quickly clouds and overloads with trying to keep too many things straight. I'm trying to think too much, too fast, at that point, and I lose the clarity of character-->objective-->obstacle. My story reflects my confusion, and, well, we end up with a hot mess. Hence, the door. It was Discord's doing, of course—another justification—but since he wasn't present, I only had to deal with Twilight's thoughts. The door, from the start, was set up to block and not respond to magic. So the challenge was clear, and all I had to do was follow Twilight's journey to discovering the key to opening it.

Which is what I did. I let Twilight encounter the door's enchantment (or anti-enchantment, as the case may be), and figured out how her thoughts would progress. First thought: the door isn't opening, so it must be stuck. Solution: push harder. When that doesn't work, try the next most obvious problem: it's a "pull" door, not a "push" door. That doesn't work. So try pushing again. Twilight wouldn't think to push with her hooves, since she knows her unicorn magic is stronger. That, and she uses it instinctively anyway; it probably wouldn't even occur to her to use her body to push the door, since a) she's never encountered this type of problem before, and b) what good would it do? If her magic isn't strong enough, her body certainly won't be. So she pushes harder and harder with her magic, and eventually gets so frustrated that this is now a personal issue: it has progressed far past just getting the brownies. Maybe this isn't a logical thing, but I doubt there's anyone in the world who hasn't at some point gotten mad at an object for getting in their way in some manner (except for a newborn infant, but you know what I mean). So I'm certain it would happen to Twilight. I know it would happen to me, if I were in that position.

Having been defeated by the door, after pouring all of her magic and all of her anger into bashing it down, Twilight kind of breaks. She can't handle the idea of it being more powerful than all of her Alicorn powers combined (even though she hasn't thought to use anything more than her magic on it; this, I justify because Twilight seems to think of Alicornhood as "more powerful unicorn with the bonus ability of wings" rather than "pony with all the powers of the three tribes united into one". I blame habit—a lifetime of being a unicorn—and ignorance—again, a lifetime of being a unicorn, wherein she only understood "magic" and "power" to mean unicorn-style spellcraft). Therefore, having no way to explain the door's continued resistance, she sets aside her rage for the time being, and returns to her original goal: getting the brownies. She can't open the door (and she refuses to think about why that is, because she has no explanation for it and no way to vent her frustration about it without going insane), so she calmly decides to bypass it. And the door, with its Discordian enchantment meant to keep anyone from magically entering the kitchen, blocks her teleport.

That's the point at which Twilight finally snaps. Knowing that her magic can't harm it, she loses all of her self-control—all of her dignity—and begins screaming at the door. And when you get that mad, even if you have more powerful means of harming the source of your frustration, all you really want to do is hit it—really hard. It's like this physiological urge that defies all logic, explaining that if your mind and your words aren't working to bash your opponent, at least exerting force on them will release some of the angry tension you've built up. (Don't quote me on that. It's not based off of any psychological research; just my own opinion and experiences.) So, of course, out of pure anger, Twilight kicks the door. She doesn't expect it to do anything; she just really wants to hit something, preferably the thing that's causing her so much grief, and feel the force of her impact—the physical power of force she is capable of exerting, just to prove that she exists and is powerful.

Much to her surprise, the door opens. It reacts completely naturally to a very powerful buck. And thus she has discovered its secret: just to prove it (to herself AND to the readers), she tries to move the door again, once with a light application of magic, once with her hoof. And, as she has now stumbled upon the correct reason for the door's resistance, the door reacts as she would have predicted: it will not budge to her magic, but her hoof can move it as easily as ever.

Now, you may be wondering why I didn't explain the door's enchantment early on, perhaps by showing Discord placing the enchantment or reacting to Twilight's predicament. The answer is simple: I wanted you to empathize with Twilight. I didn't want you sitting there and thinking, "Twilight, you idiot, try opening the door with your hoof!" or, "Why doesn't she press on the door? It would make sense for her to throw her body into it along with her magic; this is a character inconsistency, since Twilight's logical enough to put all the force she can into opening the door if she really wants to open it." I also didn't want you being detached enough to think through what was going on and figure out the door's secret before the "big reveal". No, I wanted you to feel all the frustration of the moment; to follow along with Twilight's train of thought and, even if you yourself would make different decisions, understand why she was making hers. After all, when people are frustrated by a problem, their first reaction is going to be to attempt to solve it, not to think through every possible reason for that problem's existence. Even someone like Twilight.

Also, what I did to her is really quite mean, and poor Twilight didn't deserve to be alone in her suffering.

Once again, feedback is appreciated! Feel free to PM me if you'd rather keep it private. And with that, I will bring this to a close! Best wishes, everyone, have a good day/night, and I'll see you around! (Probably.)