A Series of Great Ideas (Or Not): Writing · 11:22pm Aug 12th, 2019
Writing "Great Ideas" has been quite the interesting experience.
As a writer, you typically plan out an entire story from beginning to end. Sometimes, you don't fully have the middle, but at the very least, you have a clear starting point and ending point.
That wasn't entirely the case with this story. Most of it was planned out ahead of time. The beginning was planned, the "A Night in Shining Amour" chapters were planned, and most of the trials and tribulations that the Unicorn Squad faces were planned. The ending, however, wasn't set in stone until around Chapter Ten.
Part of the challenge I set for this story was making it highly improvisational. I ran with a basic outline, and then a lot of the comedy, dialogue, and such was written in the moment. A lot of it got changed in the editing process (ex. there originally was a NSFW joke in Chapter 15 that I removed for obvious reasons), but about a quarter of the meat of the story was written as it came to me. In fact, that's the whole existence of the Boomer character; he wasn't planned, but once I started writing the Canterlot scenes toward the end, I noticed how I had made a Royal Guard present in most scenes, so I decided to give him a name and larger role in the story.
It was nice and freeing as a writer to be able to just put down what comes to mind, edit it, and then publish. Of course, there was still a lot of planning involved, but doing some improvisational, on the spot writing was a fun exercise.
The story is coming to a close soon. Hope everyone is enjoying!
