A New Story For an Older Time · 1:28am Jun 23rd, 2020
I tend to let story ideas percolate for a long time, often just letting them exist as a quick conceptual sketch so I don’t forget them entirely in the intervening years (yes, plural) before I get around to writing them. Between my family, my job, and my other (languishing) hobbies, that’s just how long my queue has become between having an idea and writing it.
Except when contests are involved.
For better or for worse contests tend to accelerate the whole timetable. Case and point:
Jake the Army Guy’s Horseword Extravaganza 2: The Paths Beneath Us
Everfree Northwest Iron Author: Where We Belong
EFNW Scribblefest: The Root of the Problem
And of course the cadre of stories forged in the writeoff crucible, including Friendship 101 and Apple Knots.
And so we come to the latest, born from an idea that I originally had before even hearing of Friendship is Magic:
I’ve waited a long time to tell this story, and to show you this particular rendition of everyone’s favorite wall-eyed pegasus. There have been shadows of her in a couple of my other stories (one of which could technically be within the same universe), but this is the real deal, this is her story. It’s also the story of a seemingly random background pony with no canon personality. Not that I’ve ever tried that before…
You must be reading my mind, because that's what I tend to do as well. Take ages to tackle my own projects, annoyingly enough, but leap at the chance to compete in something I just found out about. I think part of it is that contests throw a gauntlet down right in front of me, and the hunter in me can't say no to a challenge. Heck, it can even help independent projects sometimes by kicking my brain into gear for a good long stretch.
Unfortunately, it tends to backfire if I don't wring some kind of victory out of it. I know it's not a healthy mindset and I try to either keep it down or channel it more constructively, but achievement-seeking comes with a gloomy price when it goes wrong.
Anyway, I think the approach is neither consistent nor reliable enough in the long run. I'm trying to break the habit and get stuff done under my own steam more often. Self-reliance and self-motivation need stronger foundations, though, than what I've currently got. Hence the work goes on.
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I hear that. I hear all of that! My contest participation has slowly morphed into an excuse to finally write a particular idea before the deadline, so I'm competing mainly against myself. Placing in the contest is a definite bonus, one that I always try to remind myself is not the end goal.
In the long run I wind up happy if people (including me) enjoy the story, within the contest or not. That's one reason I spent most of a year turning the original 2k version of Where We Belong noted above into the 46k behemoth it is today. I was a sad the original version didn't place in its respective contest, but the end product I published here is one of my best stories (in my humble opinion). We've just got to remind ourselves that writing a great story and getting to share it is the real prize.
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Yeah, it's a beggar, all right. These days, I tend to be more selective about what contests I sign on for, and even then it usually starts as a more tentative "I might compete in this, but then again I might not". I don't usually go all-in until I'm positive I can make - or I am making - something of it already.
It's the "great" part I tend to have trouble with. The last person to ask about the quality of a story is the person who wrote it. Asking parents to grade their children, and all that.
By the way, how do you go from a 2k to a 46k? Even I'd find it hard to go above 10k, and I have a bad habit of writing stories that blow out of all (previously planned) proportions.
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That was a very special case. I didn’t set out to make the story X times longer, just to tell it in full instead of abbreviated. It’s an alternate timeline (one of the canon-established ones from Starlight’s time travel shenanigans) and involved a fair bit of world building in its own right, so by way of adding more detail and characters to the plot I had to add more to the world. So overall I would say:
- expand the basic premise with more detail, twists and turns
- flesh out the world itself by necessity
- tell the ‘full story’ the way I wanted to
Maybe it would be easier to say the 2k version was a summary of the real thing?
The original version is actually a bonus chapter on the posted version here if you want to keep dive. Feel free to PM me too; I don’t want to venture into story spoiler territory on a blog comment