Chapter 16 is finally up, chapter 17 due out in a few days; sorry for the long wait. · 3:14am Sep 6th, 2022
Hi everypony!
This story is just too freakin' big! This new chapter (Ch.16) just posted was one of most important chapters I and my former editor had worked on before our separation. Wanting to have a story with something of a contemporary feel to it, there were specific moments and instances she and I incorporated into the original out of 2019 that we both were eager to highlight.
But having to do this chapter and the two following chapters all on my own without my editor has made it very time consuming. Originally in my outline, chapter 16 was supposed to contain all of 16, chapter 17 and 18 rolled into one and be much shorter. But because I had to make several adjustments to the storyline and change some of the character's importance to the flow of the story, it has been a massive undertaking for me to redo.
For chapter 17, I need one more read through for mistakes and any last changes I think I'd like to make before posting it. I could have kept 16 and 17 together but that would have meant a chapter of over 100 pages and that's just too much for a chapter to read in one sitting. Hopefully splitting it up makes it more manageable to read.
These four chapters; 16 to 20, have the heart of what I wanted this story (and my ex-editor to some degree) to have when it came to reflecting some of today's social issues but done in a way that didn't turn readers off and allowed anyone reading it think 'what would I've done in that situation?' rather than the story getting on some metaphoric 'soapbox' and preach to the reader about this or that. That was a point of contention I had with my ex-editor. I wanted to create scenes or situations for the reader to think and react to, then come to their own conclusions of how to respond to 'X' happening in the story rather than my ex-editor's way of thinking, which was to dictate to the reader how to think, feel and react to 'X' happening in the story. And if the reader didn't agree with that interpretation, then there must be something wrong with them.
Here is an example of what I mean. A serious point of contention came between us over the last member of the BFFs to join them, Razzle Dazzle. This mare's character was truly a group creation effort between myself, my ex-editor and Kitty Sapphire (my pony artist). We were all firing on all creative cylinders at this point in the story when and it was coming more into focus. At one point in the outline writing, I thought Razzle Dazzle was going to 'steal the show' away from the two primary characters, Silverstream and Gallus because she was fun and different to write her dialogue for and how she got to fit in with the other BFFs. My biggest fear for Razzle Dazzle was getting compared to Pinkie Pie, much like Izzy Moonbow in G5 has gotten compared to the pink earth pony. I REALLY wanted to avoid that comparison. And this is where the problem came in.
When I came up with the idea for Razzle Dazzle, my basic take on her was she was that sort of 'funny, silly, off-beat, quirky, kooky girl' that always seemed to be on cloud 9 all the time and nothing really ever got her upset or angry. When Kitty came up with Razzle Dazzle's color scheme and the first sketches of her, I could already 'draw' on her personality and flesh out who she was more. Like the earlier characters I came up with, she was no longer just a name and some color swatches on a piece of paper; she was 'alive' in the story.
My ex-editor, The Fic Doctor, at one of our meetings told me and Kitty Sapphire that the story didn't have any 'diversity' in its characters. This made no sense to me. I had worked very hard at trying to come up with original characters that were diverse and had diverse back stories. At the time, I had NO IDEA of what any of those back stories were, but I knew each one would develope over the story arc either by my direct creating or through various story situations that would let it happen organically and only when the story required it.
But that's not how my ex-editor saw it. She saw Razzle Dazzle as an opportunity to inject 'representation' in the story by insisting that Razzle Dazzle be shown as autistic. When the three of us discussed Razzle Dazzle's character and how she approached things, two of us felt that it was not the right way to describe her. Kitty and I felt Razzle Dazzle might be more of an ADD type character, perfectly fine at social interactions but just very unfocused and easily distractible.
This irritated my ex-editor immensely, blithely carping "See, I knew you didn't want diverse characters; you don't want any gay characters, just more fuckin' cardboard cut-out white people!" This insult angered both I and Kitty.
"I do so have diverse characters. Look," I pointed out to the first drawing Cloudy Sky Kitty had made, "the 'plucky underdog' character," I then pointed to the drawing of Solar flare 'the quiet confident character'," I then pointed to the drawing of Nightflight 'the one guy in every group that always seems to snag the cute girls so easily," I was trying to make a point, but it just went past my editor's head.
"That's not diversity!" She proclaimed angerly. When we asked my ex-editor what she thought would make these characters 'diverse', it was not in any way what I was suspecting to hear. Even Kitty was not taking to the suggested changes being made by my editor.
To my ex-editor, 'Diversity' really meant 'sexual diversity' and 'sexual orientation' first, last and always about the characters and weather they were being shown in a 'queer positive' light. To her, it was NOT about characters that came from different backgrounds or who had different reasons for wanting to get in to the Wonderbolt Academy. Those points didn't matter.
Kitty made a good point. "Um, we're kinda already into the story as it is. Isn't it sort of late to start introducing these changes after already establishing the characters?"
At that point, my ex-editor slammed the notebooks she was working from closed and loudly announced, "Alright, you know what? I'm done with these stupid fuckin' pony stories! You two can go figure out what the fuck to do with it because I don't want any fuckin' part of it!" With that, my editor quit working on this story and chose not to work with me any longer, storming out of the meeting and never to be heard from again.
Having to pick up the pieces of the story from that point forward is where I have been since January of 2020. Chapter 17 is going up soon and I'm long into working on chapter 18 as well.
I've also started writing out longhand the dialogue and scenes for my first Sprout Cloverleaf story; the first half of it is planned out but I'm still a bit stuck on the second half. I've got some of it worked out but not enough to bring it to a conclusion I am satisfied with. Once chapter 18 gets posted I will get more focused on the G5 material I have sitting on the back burner for now. But, until that time, please keep reading and keep an eye out for the next chapter drop.
Sorry to hear this happened, her loss!
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It made me very sad to lose a partner in something that made all of us happy to work on together.