The Making of: My Little Student

One year ago today, June 30th, 2018, I submitted my first story to FIMFiction: My Little Student. It's a lighthearted, canon-compatible take on the period between Twilight Sparkle's entrance exam and her entry into Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. And it's still one of my favorites among the stories that I've published.

As a way of marking the occasion, and since I haven't yet made use of the site's blog feature, I thought it might be of interest to write a "Making Of" blog post that presents the story's original, unvarnished outline, together with some commentary on the story and how I came to write it. My outlines sometimes contain concepts and scenes that I considered but ultimately didn't use, or decided to do differently, and hence they provide a window on the creative process that might be useful to other writers. Also, the process of writing the story may be of interest to anyone who's curious about where these crazy ideas come from.

So... let's do this!

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The Making of: My Little Student

First, a tiny bit of history on how I came to the series...

I started watching MLP:FIM back in May, 2018, while I was on vacation. The previous year I'd brought along Gravity Falls, and was looking for a new series to work my way through as a way of winding down at the end of the day. Having heard about MLP:FIM, and wanting to know more about the series and why it was so popular, I brought along Season One. And I pretty much got hooked on the show right away.

The show already has a lot going for it: great characters, witty self-aware humor, a respectable willingness to not talk down to its audience, and a refreshingly positive and optimistic take on friendship and relationships.

And then there's Twilight Sparkle... seriously, if you want to hook me on a series, just hand me a main character I totally identify with: nerdy, surrounded by books, obsessively organized, borderline neurotic when she feels she's forgotten something. And on top of that, she's not a side character, not the stereotypical awkward nerd presented for laughs, she's the nominal star of the show, leader of the group and the voice of reason (often long-suffering) amongst her friends. What's not to like here?

Twilight also has a strong connection to three other important characters in the series. Princess Celestia, her teacher, mentor, and more than a little of a mother-figure to her, who on top of that just happens to be the most powerful magic-using royal in the world. Yeah, talk about having connections. And Spike the dragon, who's a loyal sidekick and also a bit of a worldly-wise conscience for Twilight. And then there's Cadance, who's pretty much the baby-sitter any of us would have wanted when we were young: caring, understanding, and insanely good with children, even given how little we see of her early on. Twilight's interactions with all of them bring out aspects of herself -- the need for reassurance, the occasional myopic obsessiveness, and the uncertainty of who she's meant to be and what she's meant to do -- which make her character even more believable and likable. Not to mention, hilariously adorkable at times!

Having worked through the first two seasons on DVD, I decided I wanted more of the whole MLP experience. So I picked up Elements of Harmony, The Journal of The Two Sisters, and other books on the series' characters and lore. I browsed the fandom wiki. I read some of the comic book omnibus collections. I bought some of the collectible card decks. I played the mobile game for a while, until I hit the Farmville curve and it stopped being fun. (Which was a disappointment. I'd gotten to like hearing the Smile Song when the game fired up, long before I knew that's what it was.)

And yeah, I bought a few ponies. And they're like potato chips. You buy one, you have to buy the other five, just so the first doesn't seem lonely. Although I also discovered a practical use for them: they're handy when writing a story with a larger cast, since you can use them to keep track of who's where, and which pony's "turn" it is to speak next.

So, after all that, I found myself looking around for something else Pony-related to do, which might be fun and creative. And I happened across the fan-fiction community, and FIMFiction itself, which looked astonishingly professional. Having done some tech-writing and hobby sci-fi writing in the past, I thought: "Hey, writing... I know how to do that!" Having recently watched "A Canterlot Wedding", I was already thinking about the semi-canon backstory for Twilight, Spike, and Cadance: how Twilight was given Spike to care for when she was a student herself, and how Cadance was Twilight's baby-sitter even before she was Celestia's student... which is how she met Shining Armor, and so on, and so on.

And the more I thought about it... the more it didn't add up. It made much more sense for Cadance to become Twilight's sitter because of the incident at Twilight's entrance exam. And for Spike to team up with her later on, when she had at least some amount of control over her magic. I also wondered how it would have been for Twilight, being handed over to the local equivalent of a demigoddess of magic for her lessons, and only gradually earning the care, trust, and love the two of them show each other in the series proper.

So I set out to turn that headcanon into a story, starting with the initial interview with Celestia, then Twilight's lessons (which were a nice opportunity to review the possible kinds of "good" magic in this world), and Twilight's interactions with Celestia and Cadance, and between the two Princesses themselves. And then later, Twilight's teaming up with Spike. As I mention in the Author's Notes on the story, the scenes with Spike pretty much wrote themselves, particularly the Real Cool Spell gag and The Story of the Dragon and Daring Do, where Spike pledges himself to Twilight's service according to the Dragon Code of Honor. Which Cadance had only just invented, whole-cloth, as part of a bedtime story... funny how these things work out...

All this was great, and I had a blast writing it, thinking up new parts of chapters as I walked back and forth between the train station and work. But then I realized I needed to wrap this up somehow.

All along through the story, I'd been hinting that Celestia was under pressure from the impending return of Nightmare Moon, and also feeling some amount of guilt for having been unable to locate and train a student who might be capable of finding and using the Elements of Harmony once Celestia herself was out of the picture. And Celestia had just shown Twilight a "memory palace" spell. So I thought, what if Celestia was having a guilt-wracked dream about Nightmare Moon, and accidentally trapped Twilight in a memory -- not the memory palace spell, but a memory of the old Castle, and Luna's old room. And then Twilight had to try to figure out where she was, and how to get back. I felt it might serve as a kind of "final final exam" for Twilight's time with Celestia. And also as a way of helping Celestia finally see what her obsession with her sister's memory is costing her, and those around her.

As a side note: at the last moment, while writing the end of the scene in Luna's old room (near the end of the chapter And Get Her Back), I took a line Celestia was saying to Twilight and hinted instead that it might be Luna speaking it -- or rather, Celestia's memory of the pony that Luna once was. This was Celestia's memory, after all, and it was a nice way of suggesting that Celestia was coming to terms with Luna's loss and return, with Twilight's help. It's a subtle thing, but I found it very moving when I wrote it, and I still do. I call back to the line in the story's follow-on, The Night That Luna Returned, and it still strikes me the same way.

So... I finished "My Little Student" off, obsessively tweaked it for a few days like I usually do, then nervously put it up on the site. And it got 700 views and 7 likes right off the bat, and also started getting a few comments from readers, which was way more attention and feedback than anything I'd ever written had ever gotten. And over time, this story proved to be the most steadily-visited of all my early stories. Why? I'm not sure. It might be that it's about Twilight. Or that it was my first story, so readers start there. Or maybe -- or so I've kind of hoped -- there might still be a market for feel-good early-series headcanon stories like this.

And 24 stories later, the story is still #11 in terms of likes and views among those I've published, so I must have done something right, starting out. And that was a good feeling to have, at the very beginning. It encouraged me to keep going and publish more stories, to find out what really appealed to readers.

So here's to a great first year, with a lot of ups and downs. And hopefully another one up ahead, in which I'll do my best to entertain you. And, occasionally, inflict on you a story or two I feel the need to write because it appeals to me, much as "My Little Student" did when I first wrote it.

Thanks much, everypony!

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My Faithful Student -- Outline

Note: The working title for this story was originally "My Faithful Student". I decided at the eleventh hour to tighten that up a bit, and make the connection with My Little Pony stronger, hence it became "My Little Student". Yeah, I know that some readers find the "My Little X" pattern hackneyed, but this was my first story, so I wanted something concrete and recognizable for the title. The roman numerals are my original notions of where the chapters would fall, and the [x]'s are checkboxes I was using to keep track of what I'd already written.

I

[x] meeting with Celestia about Twilight's enrollment
- her parents, Twilight, Celestia
- introduce Cadence
- cameo for Shining Armor
- origin of Welcome Spell (Sunshine, Sunshine...)

[x] Cadence shows Twilight her room
- scene with toybox
- cameo for Smarty Pants

[x] Celestia and Cadence discuss Twilight

II

[x] Twilight's first lesson
- getting into the classroom
- understanding her magic
- getting out again

[x] Celestia's workday, and evening conversation with Cadence

III

[x] Next lesson
- spell types
- Cadence shows Twilight her "firefly" spell

[x] Picnic with Cadence
- Twilight asks to be taught "feely" spells

IV

[x] Celestia's Very Bad Day
- Twilight learns to control her power

[x] Celestia decides Twilight is ready for advanced lessons

V

[x] Twilight bumps into Spike, invites him to dinner

[x] Celestia and Cadence discuss how Twilight and Spike get along

[x] Twilight moves to quarters at the School, with Spike as her assistant

[x] Cadence reads bedtime story to Twilight and Spike
- Cadence reads story about dragons, mentions "dragon code",
which prompts Spike to swear himself to Twilight's service
- discussion of Cadence not being Twi's foal-sitter when she's at School

VI

[x] Celestia shows Twilight her "memory palace"

[x] Celestia's sleep is disturbed, and Twilight's as well

[x] Twilight wakes up in strange room, which looks like a palace bedroom

[x] She and Spike explore, pass through entry hall with Elements tree,
find throne room with two thrones
- Twilight believes they're in Celestia's memory palace
- "Oh no! She said she doesn't come here any more. What if she never does?
What if she never finds us! I don't know the way out, only she does!"

[x] Celestia and Cadence can't locate Twilight, even in "Princess space"
- Celestia is inconsolable, fearing she's lost Twilight just like she's lost Luna.
- She can't sleep, conjures up memory of old palace and visits Luna's bedroom

[x] Twilight decides that they're going to make a list of every room,
every object in the palace, and try to figure out Celestia's usual path.
"Okay, okay! But we're gonna need a lot of paper! Where are gonna find some?"
"The room we woke up in. It had tons of paper. Hang on!"

[x] They return to the bedroom, and find Celestia standing outside of it, crying.
She is shocked to find Twilight here.
"I'm so sorry, your Majesty! Somehow we got stuck in your memory palace,
and I was afraid we'd never get out!"
"This isn't my memory palace. Though it is a memory of a palace."
"I'm sorry, Twilight. I've been having upsetting dreams about someone I knew
and loved very much a long time ago. My memories of her were getting tangled up
with my memories of you. You're a lot like her, in some ways.
So you wound up here, in her room."

[x] They return to the entry hall, where the Elements tree is.
"As long as you're here, Twilight," Celestia suggests. "Why don't you help me
brighten the place up a bit?"
Twilight adds stained-glass windows with beams of sunlight filling the hall.

VII

[x] Cadence and Twilight say goodbye, now that Twilight is living at the School full-time.
Celestia sends Twilight a message and a small present by way of Spike.

"So, we gonna hit the Library, Twilight?"
"You know it, Spike! Let's do this!"

Comments

[Turquoise pony]

Forget me this comment does not fit the post.
Tomorrow is February, 2023, I'm a little concerned about not seeing any news stories, or new blog posts. In the last few months.
Is everything okay in your life?
Sorry. I don't know if you have Twitter, or a discord server.