Magisight: Chapter 13 - Behind the scenes + Updates to schedule · 4:13pm Jun 2nd, 2019
Good morning! (or afternoon or evening!)
tldr: might change update day from Thursday to Friday. minor continuity error correction in chapter 12. original draft was too shippy because I wrote this back in September and had no idea what I was doing. praise be to my editor
POSSIBLE SCHEDULE CHANGE
First thing's first. I am highly considering moving my update day from Thursday to Friday. After a few weeks of pushing chapters back a little bit, I feel like moving to Friday would greatly benefit all parties involved. I like having it on a Thursday because that means people can enjoy it Friday afternoon when they get home from work or school, but I feel it's becoming too difficult for myself, my editor Ember, and my proofreader Denzy. It was rare for me to do any updating on Friday after work as well, since I had came off of editing and publishing the most recent chapter, so I would instead just flop over and play video games. I have Saturdays off, so I will likely be able to get into editing and writing on Saturdays with no issue, so I think moving to Friday will be a huge benefit.
I have not decided yet, however. I am leaning towards changing, but I will make another blog post later in the week if I do make the change, and update the story description accordingly.
CHAPTER 12 CONTINUITY CORRECTION
So, it turns out I goofed when finalizing chapter 12. When I published it, it said that the festival was "tonight." I'm not sure what happened, but this was never supposed to be the case. It was always meant to be "tomorrow night," as Twilight and AJ were meant to rest in the village's center tree for the night. I have corrected all instances of the festival's start date in chapter 12. Whoopsy.
EDITING CHAPTER 13
Writing chapter 13 was definitely an editing challenge for both myself and my editor, Ember. Parts of the chapter are almost unrecognizable when comparing the partially edited draft with the final product. But, this isn't a bad thing! Sometimes things change as you read them with others and you decide on things that are unnecessary or even worse, hurt the story.
The initial descriptions of the bedroom they stayed in were a bit longer-winded than what was published, so we trimmed that down a little bit and made it more streamlined. I cannot give Ember credit enough for doing a lot of re-writing for the first half of the chapter. He helped trim out a lot of unnecessary fat and expanded on things I kind of just left dangling.
Something fun to note, that little drowning scene? That wasn't in the original draft at all. The original scene (heck, the entire chapter honestly) was unintentionally somewhat "shippy" between Twilight and Applejack. I got a little too overindulgent with writing a separate room to function as the bathroom, equipped with showers and the pool/tub that they ultimately wash up in. I was drawing inspiration from a Japanese bath house where one would shower and wash up first and then use the bath to relax. Parts of it were too playful (when really it wasn't my intent, but Ember smacked me upside the head to keep the story moving), with light teasing on tiredness, splashing water, things like that.
There was a bit in the shower scene where Twilight's new powers activated on their own due to the water running through the pipe system. She saw faint blue auras running along the walls/ceiling where the water was flowing from. It was meant to showcase her abilities continuing to grow, but it didn't really accomplish much and just kinda hung there. It didn't fully take advantage of Twilight's character, it didn't utilize Applejack at all, and it didn't really further along Twilight's arc in the story in dealing with the strange powers. However, the idea of the scene was repurposed and retooled to become the drowning scene, which Ember helped me write.
The second half of the fanfic, after the bath scene, was also heavily gutted. It initially had a recap, but it honestly was way too exposition heavy and focused too much on recapping stuff that honestly the reader should really know already. It hinged too heavily on Applejack not knowing about specifics from Amethyst Hollow, how it all began with Twilight, etc, but it's not necessary important for her to know absolutely everything in this moment, when she's there because the map sent her there. Obviously, she might be curious or worried for Twilight, so it's possible Twilight explained it "off-camera," but for the flow of the story itself, it wasn't really necessary.
Unfortunately, it also meant cutting a 3D map spell of Twilight's, similar to teleportation magic, just without the teleporting. Think like that grid-thing she used in the S4 episode Bats! to explain what happened to Fluttershy, or a 3D hologram map from Star Wars. It was a cool idea, and I'll probably recycle it way later in the story, but a big exposition/recap scene was not appropriate. Instead, it was better to just cap the chapter off with a few pages of Twilight updating her notes of what was happening right in front of her, some predictions for the future, and a brief reflection; not several pages worth.
All in all, the original draft of the chapter was 4500-5000 words, so a LOT was cut, but for the better! It is VERY easy to get stuck in the mindset of "What's wrong with it? I wrote it, and I know my story better than anyone!" when writing something long. Sometimes you lose sight of the smaller details and forget how they make the big picture work. It's important for a story idea to come from a creative spark, but when something gets big, long, and complicated, it helps to have someone temper things before they get out of hand. You can really see this when you read up on behind the scenes footage for the original Star Wars, where older drafts had Luke as a 60 yearold general and Han was some weird frog man with gills and green skin. Imagine if we had THAT movie.
May the stars shine until the end of your journey!
-PK
