Writing 'Not My Rescuer'; Extensive Author's Notes · 9:28pm Jul 2nd, 2020
Howdy folks. I've recently published a new story that went through a very different writing process than what I'm used to; it's called 'Not my Rescuer (but not bad either)', and focuses on Rarity going on a blind date. I actually had a fair bit of fun writing it, even though I didn't really do any of the things I typically do when writing stories, and I wanted to discuss them, because I quite like talking about my experiences writing when they're particularly noteworthy (I wanted to do this for Versus Jet as well, since that was an idea that I actually had in some form or another since 2016, back when it was tentatively called 'Versus Light'). The story itself seems to be doing fairly well for itself (even getting a rec' from Present Perfect early after being published, which was a very nice surprise so soon after it went live!), so do check it out if you're interested in shipping.
Mild spoilers for Not My Rescuer below!
Typically when I write a story (particularly a contest entry, which this story is), I start up pretty methodically, trudging through my backlog of ideas and fit them together within the constraints of the contest in a way I find exciting. That's partly why I like contests; usually the hype of competition sparks some pretty rad ideas, or provides incentive to adapt old ones in new and exciting ways. However, in this instance, I clocked on that there was a contest on only about a week and a bit or something before the deadline, and with a lot of science-related work on the horizon, I simply didn't have time to spend outlining or pondering various iterations of a story.
Versus Jet, for context, took me two months to write, as did Titanium Jack. Pony Peace is Dragon War also took a month. After clearing my schedule up a bit I had about a day and a bit, so the way I was going to work was necessarily very different.
For starters, I scrapped the possibility of a big story, because I'm not fucking insane. The story was going to be 8K words tops, and that would have been pushing it. I also planned to reduce perspectives to keep things from being confusing. Most importantly, though, I didn't outline or prepare. I entered directly into the first-draft stage with only some nebulous, general ideas about what was going to happen. That was partly why the premise was quite general and vague; just a 'blind date'.
I used the first-draft process to brainstorm ideas. After writing about 1.5K words, I pretty much was able to figure out my conflict and driving force of the story, and major beats that I thought would be interesting in that context. By this stage that meant having to throw away about 1K of that 1.5K words, but it was I think a pretty sensible sacrifice, since I wouldn't have the time or ability to try a variety of different approaches from an outline or plan.
I also had to pick my perspective well. The reason I had to get rid of so many words early on was because I had been using Spitfire's POV, and her characterisation was, compared to her portrayal in Versus Jet, a lot more muted and quiet, and since a lot of the major story reveals were from her, I needed to keep her a bit more distant. I switched to Rarity, which was great. I really enjoyed writing her inner voice. Rarity is good fun in general, frankly, and is low-key one of my favourite characters in the show.
In order to keep things simple and efficient I kept the whole story structured around one date, so that it'd have a natural beginning and end without, well, really having that much of a conflict. The draw of the story would have to then be the voice of the characters and the content. For that reason I let myself get a little saucy. I'm not a saucy man by nature, despite frequently being sauced, but I wanted to take a different angle on romance that I normally do, and a lot of my romantic scenes are very, very tame, especially with my AppleDash stuff. Because Spitfire and Rarity don't have much (any) interaction, this left a lot of room for their interactions to be very flirty and intimate without needing to build up to it from an established baseline.
From there, once I identified the guilt complex as being the central theme of the story, the rest of it pretty much just wrote itself, bearing in mind the restrictions I kept in mind all the while.
It felt rather exciting writing by the seat of my pants, since I'm typically very methodical and ponderous when I come up with concepts for stories, plan them, and write them and edit them. I'm a little keen to try this sort of thing again, frankly. My main worry is that it was almost impossible to edit; I was barely able to take a quick glance at it and run it through a spellcheck three times. Usually I like to spend at least a week letting the story sit and my brain reset, and even read the whole thing aloud to really catch all the little things that bug me without skimming. No such luck here.
In short, it was an interesting way to work, using the writing process itself as a way to brainstorm ideas and prepare what happened with minimal editing later. It was a very minimalist way of working and thinking and it was certainly rather exhilarating. Pretty sure that says something very bad about how dull my life is if I find writing a little choppily to be exciting, but there you go.
We'll see how the story performs in the contest, but for certain I had a lot of fun playing with it.
Don't get used to it, that was a one-time kinda thing. XD
5299562 I noticed. Sounds like you've been having a bit of a grim time, but perhaps that's just me projecting.
Regardless, it was still a nice surprise. Usually it takes a while before really any kind of review, rec', or whatever comes through, if only because it takes a certain amount of time for a story to get read.