My writing process, and what I am doign diffrently this time. · 2:45am Dec 5th, 2018
Some people in my discord were interested in how I write my stories, and I thought it would be better to answer in the form of a blog so everyone can read it if they want to.
My normal process for writing is almost identical to my process for DMing. I come up with a basic idea for a story, setting, rough idea of "This happens", then I come up with characters who fit the setting and work out who they are in quite a bit of detail. This is key to my process.
For almost every single character in my stories which has a name and any impact on the plot I can tell you at least where they grew up, how they grew up, and how they live currently. For main characters and villeins I could (If pressed and feeling up to writing it all down) tell you a goo chunk of their lives, who they were friends with, what they did to gather, and so on. If written down my main characters woudl likely have 3-4 pages of notes on their lives in general.
This is important because when I write a story (for ponyfics at least) I do so by asking one question "This happens, what do you do?" I do this for everyone, even villeins. "The heroes have done this, what do you do?" is how I decide what the villein does next. It's just like running a game of D&D, except I'm controlling the heroes in addition to the monsters and NPCs. In some cases this is literal as I will roll up character sheets for everyone for use in fight scenes if I want the fight's results to be more organic.
This method has plenty of advantages. For example, if you need the layout of a building to help visualize and action scene you can pop over to donjon and use a random floorplan generator. Or say you need to know how many mooks that guy brought with him and their approximate strength. Donjon again, use the random encounter button.
Of course there's major disadvantages too. FIrst and foremost is something I recently forgot... DO NOT use this method and run an actual D&D game at the same time. You'll start confusing things. THere's a lot of info you need to hold in your head and for me at least things blend together. Then suddenly Dash's characterization is inconsistent because you're asking "What would Dizzy do?" instead of "What would Dash do?" (Yes, this is why I am mused out on Dash to the Stars. It got blended with my Starfinder game and I'm trying to straiten things out. It's extra bad because the SF game is in the same setting...)
While this method works for me as long as I dont run any tabletop games, it rarely means I tell the story I wanted to tell. Often it means the story is a bit unfocused, since it's basically being made by the characters and not me. I enjoy that most of the time since it's just a fun writing exercise for me, and you guys seem to like them.
But that's not what I can do right now. I am running that Starfinder game and I kind of have too because Kaily's mental health depends on having a PnP as an outlet and her prior gaming group disbanded a month ago. Gotta keep the roomies happy, they pay the rent you know.
Fortuantly, I am not limited to my usual storytelling method! I did graduate college with a minor in Creative Writing after all 
For my upcoming Fallout Equestria story, I am doing what I was taught in school. This is how you are "supposed" to write a story, according to English Professors. It lets you tell a much better narrative via letting you plot out the whole story in advance, but it takes a lot of time to do.
- Figure out what story you want to tell. The basic idea. Genera, setting, narrative style, formatting, first or third person, ect.
- Decide upon a 3 or 5 act structure.
- Write a series of 1 sentence descriptions of each event that will link the beginning to the end.
- Double check the sentences from step 2 for appropriate pacing.
- Write everything down as a series of 3-5 paragraph long descriptions of each scene.
- Group those scenes into chapters, each chapter should have a mini 3 or 5 act structure (If your narrative is 3 act, pick 3, if 5 pick 5)
- Develop your characters, however many is required by your notes.
- Rewrite the scene descriptions to include character arcs and specific characterization.
- Check the scene descriptions to make sure everything fits your story's basic idea.
- Write the story, following the template you created ans extrapolating outward to get the story on paper.
- Polish your first draft into a second draft.
- Edit your draft yourself.
- Put it down for a while. Come back to it in a few hours, read it for yourself. If happy with it, go on, if not, rewrite what needs be rewritten.
- Edit again. This time by someone else.
- Give to a beta reader, listen tot heir feedback and tweak as needed.
- Submit to publisher.
- Get rejected.
- Cry a little.
- Submit again.
- Get rejected again.
- Maybe submit again if not totally crushed.
- If published, be happy with your accomplishment.
- ???
- Profit.
And that's how you do a story properly. It sounds simpler than it is. Want to see where my FoE story is right now? Here's the timeline:
And here's the scene list.
Note how that pdf is 15 pages and we're only through the first story arc. Scratch that, we're at the 75% mark of the first arc. THis is why novels take forever to write people. This is why I super appreciate comments. Even with my other method for writing stories it still takes about 10-12 hours all told per chapter to get a story to you guys.
I hope you like this behind the scenes peek at Meep's Horsewords :3
... This is why my attempts at story writing have all ground to a halt and died. I could never really pull off either of these methods successfully.
4976660 You totlay can! Anyone can do either. First method gets more and more easy with practice, just find a physical in person gaming group and learn to DM. For the second method, simply take your time with it. THere's no rush, no crunch.
interesting, maybe put down the story of the D&D as it happens for a story.
4976768 Could you rephrase this? I don't understand what you meant.
yes! finally!
That explains a lot, actually. I think one of my earliest comments on your fics was that it felt like a table top, or something to that effect. Thank you for sharing that with us all, Meep. DM to DM, I hope that's going well. If it's half as good as your stories, I'm sure it's pretty amazing :)
4976797 Finally, what?
4976802 It should be better, actually. But I am rusty with this method as I haven't used it since 2012 when I wrote my final project for school.
Huh. That's way more than I absorbed about writing fiction.
4976779
Looks like they were saying you should write out the Starfinder campaign you're GMing as you go.
4976768
Hope I'm not missing something there?