The difficulties in writing your first stories · 2:07pm Nov 18th, 2018
Especially when your a perfectionist it can be difficult. Particularly when your stuck on the naming of your characters with one story. I'm behind where I would ideally like to be with my two stories. One I've done a semi major rewrite. It was needed and I'll get to that later because with the other story I'm hung up on the naming of my 2 OCs in them. Which is ridiculous! The bigger problem is that with my job being what it is any time working on these stories is going to all but disappear for the next month and a half and my goal was to have one story at least ready to go by the start of the New Year. So I'm going to go ahead and give a picture of where I am at with the two stories.
The work in progress name for the first is "pony stuck in time." This is the story where I'm having a hard time naming my OCs with another issue. Otherwise it is pretty much ready to be written in full. Honestly it has been for a while and very rightly it could be argued that I should have been and just place the names in when I finally decide on them. However figuring out a name that would be befitting of a Kirin isn't that easy with such a short name list to go by. Maybe I'm over thinking the names. The other issue is that my second OC is the antagonist and I've yet to come to a decision as to what they are physically. Its not nearly as big a deal in the long run either, yet, but I'm not sure if I want them to be a pony or some other creature. So what is this story about and what will it feature? Its really hard to know how much to put here without potentially spoiling the story. The OC is a Kirin from circa about 1,000 years ago who is forced to take on the antagonist who, through mind control in the past No mind control is not as funny as a particular episode may make it out to be., forced the Kirin to do something the Kirin can't forgive them self for and which the antagonist got their Equestria counterpart banished. What will it feature? A nod to SFS animation's Snowdrop, which so long as I credit them it should be fine according to their YT. My thoughts on what may have happened to Bright Mac and Pear Butter. A bit of my take of history exploration of the Kirin. The possible answer to the question of what does a Kirin look like in human form. The Mane 6 and Starlight's group Do they have their own name? having to work together with the Mane 7. Fizzlepop Berrytwist showing up again.
The second story is an attempt to tell how Kkat's "Fallout Equestria" would fit into RQK's "Reflections" universe. It's WIP name is "Fallout Equestria Windup." Windup is the nickname of the main character which is again a Kirin. So why am I doing this story? Well Kkat's Fallout Equestria never officially gets to the requirement of Sombra being defeated and thus Shining Armor and Cadence having a baby that is the requirement for RQK's Crystal Faire to be able to go there. That said this story will not be Kkat's Fallout universe though I will still give Kkat's story credit for inspiration as I will RQK with his "Reflections" universe. Thus its completely unexplored so far as I can tell and this story is simply my take on how they connect. It was just too difficult for me to work in Kkat's Fallout Equestria universe to tie into RQK's "Reflections" as the former is written hence the semi major rewrite going on here. That said the only thing I may need to ask about is if I decide to include RQK's Crystal Faire character. It definitely isn't necessary to include the character but there are a few idea's I would like to run by RQK in regards to possibly doing. One is a brief cameo of Crystal Faire while there are a few others with full on interactions. As of posting this I haven't even contacted RQK about the possibility yet as I'm not anywhere near ready for it with the current status of the story. That said I have a few concerns with this story. First is the fact that for what amounts to the entire first part of the story its just introduction of the history of the character and jumping through to key moments up to a big event/fight. There is no overarching theme between the moments. Its just world and character exploration. The simple idea would be make the world and character exploration be vignettes with the big event/fight being the story however there is the option of just having the first chapter or two either being or in some way incorporating those world and character exploration moments.
That said I have a 3rd story that has been buzzing in my mind for quite a while itself. The premise behind it is a human to Equestria. Yeah I know its been done but how many have done it Earth to Canterlot High to Equestria? Ok at least a few I am willing to bet however it seems to be a relatively easy write compared to the other two and making a name isn't too hard here. I have 3 go to names I use for human character creation. Marc-Antuan Vasher-Reye, Tobias Zimmerman and Willard Merlin. One of those names looks like it would translate nicely onto an Equestria character does it not? Stephen King said in his book "On Writing" that it shouldn't be but 3 months at most for a story to reach its first draft. While I have been working on the first two combined over the last 4 months with the first being more or less ready to be written into a first draft form I feel confidant enough that this third story I could easily do that. I know I shouldn't be splitting time on 3 stories much less 2 but its pretty clear that I have already given this story some thought. With the 2nd story in a complex situation it may be worth setting it aside for the time being just to work on a less complex story like this third one and to get the first story fully written out because honestly I've put more time into developing the 2nd story than the 1st.
Well, if you do, you have my blessing! I'd be interested to see what comes of it.
Something I could mention is that, while Sombra being defeated is a constant, and Flurry is conceived, she might not necessarily make it to birth in all timelines. Stuff can happen, and whatnot. I was careful to state that much in Reflections proper.
Writing a first story is hard. But I will say this: you don't need to force yourself to get it out too quickly. I'm barely working on my own stories right now because of school! (and stuff). But you can always knock some ideas around; you're bound to find something that really clicks at some point.
Good luck!
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Your an inspirational genius you may not yet understand. More on that later.
I caught your rules by which you stated Crystal could appear because you made it perfectly clear in Reflections. Thus finding a way to get the timeline to allow her wasn't hard. That said I wanted, with your permission of using Crystal in the story beyond a cameo, to have her interact with her counterpart in this timeline. No more elaborating in this post to avoid spoilers but I will message you with my ideas involving your character and why I would like at least a bit of your help in getting Crystal Faire right.
As for you being an inspirational genius your reply got me thinking on what was hanging the story up. How to change the timeline around in a way as to prevent Twilight from becoming a princess and becoming the Princess of Friendship. To me that is what is meant by Crystal's line of "everything going wrong to get here." Well, at least its a key part. The issue I was having was creating a change that worked in making the changes that I needed to make for things to go a certain way. For the longest time I was stuck focusing on changing something in season 3 but nothing was sticking as a convincing alternate without a lot of running in circles that I felt was unnecessary. The cleaner and more straight forward the alteration the better I think we would agree. Well a particular conversation in Reflections got me thinking about going outside of season 3 and I found a very direct option that works brilliantly. Now I think it is just a matter of making everything line up and I think this story will actually be ready to write. Given the upcoming holiday season and work leaving me with less than 3 hours of free time during the week it might take longer than a week to get everything lined up and ready to write. That said it will be in 3 parts. The first is a series of stories, likely mostly slice of life style stuff, that explains the backstory of the world and the main character that leads up to the main adventure of the main character and the 3rd part is the search of what happened to the Crystal Empire in the Fallout Equestria universe to explain its absence.
So thanks for your blessing and your inspiration.