Director's cut: A Giant Adventure to Equestria, chapters 7 and 8 · 2:51am Jan 22nd, 2019
In chapter 7, Eric Reed was originally going to go to Sugarcube Corner riding on Pinkie Pie, and something would surprise her, forcing her to accidentally throw Eric off her. What would've happened, if I'd kept it, had been similar to what could've happened in the scratched chapter 3 plot, including Twilight saving him at the last second.
But I cut it out once I thought about Pinkie's "big hug" scene, replacing that part of it with the Gummy almost eating Eric scene. The end result would've been very similar even if I kept my original idea, so it wouldn't had effected the end of chapter 7 much.
All of chapter 8, for the most part, stayed the same before and after editing. But what happened shortly after "the shake" was originally a bit more intense. After Twilight saw Eric's reaction to her shaking him, she was going to be so surprised by it, she'd accidentally drop him from her magic, and Rarity would've caught him with her magic. He would've also been so scared of Twilight after that, while quietly freaking-out, he was even going to beg her not to eat him, while she was trying to apologize to him.
With Eric's reaction being that bad, Fluttershy would've then took him to her house on her own, instead of Rarity first telling her to do it. Rarity even telling her to take Eric away in the finished version, was something I did as a remnant to the original idea, when she caught him from falling.
But I thought that might've been a bit too much, so as I was still writing it, I toned it down a bit to what it is. I kept the injury to Eric's arm the same, since that was there in the original idea too.
I was thinking of naming chapter 8 "Fear of a Princess", but I made it "The Shake" instead to not tip off too much on what happened in it, and yet still make the name make sense.