Starlight Glimmer found Twilight awake earlier than usual when she ducked into the kitchen for breakfast. Twilight was even humming to herself, and she’d taken the meal into her own hooves, preparing a fresh batch of pancakes topped with fruit and whipped cream. That was how she knew that something was going to be different about today.
“You seem like you’re having a good morning,” Starlight said, sidling up to the kitchen counter and giving the pancakes a glance over. She couldn’t help but lick her lips at the smell of the towering stacks in front of her. “I guess I should assume you had a productive session with the story last night if you’re doing breakfast instead of Spike.”
“It was certainly something,” Twilight said, floating another stack of four pancakes to a plate. Like what always happened whenever she cooked, Twilight’s coat and mane were covered in random splotches and patches of batter and other miscellaneous ingredients. Starlight had to wonder how a mare so proficient at magic could fail at something like using her telekinesis to make pancakes.
“A good something?” Starlight pressed. “It sounded like you and the other five were practically at each other’s throats over this last night.”
“The original draft of the story they assembled was... messy, to be honest,” Twilight said. “Absolutely nothing made sense. So, I tried to sit down and straighten it out after I discarded what was left of that miserable first attempt. I ended up with an entirely new outline that seems much more promising. I’m having them over for breakfast and we’ll review it there!”
“Hence the abundance of pancakes,” Starlight surmised. “I guess there’s nothing like good food to smooth over any ruffled feathers after last night.”
“That’s what I’m hoping!” Twilight dumped the final stack of pancakes on a plate and lifted them all with her magic. “Do you mind grabbing the silverware? I haven’t set the table yet.”
“Only if I’m allowed to sit in on the workshop,” Starlight said, already snatching forks and knives in anticipation of Twilight’s acceptance. “This sounds like a fun project, and I’m interested to see how it shapes up.”
“Of course! You can give us your feedback as well! It’ll help to have an impartial third party for the review session.” Pancakes in tow, Twilight ducked into the map room and started laying plates out around the round table. “I... well, I hope you’re not insulted that we didn’t include you in this little project.”
Starlight waved a hoof while her horn guided the forks, knives, and napkins to their proper places around the crystal table. “Oh, it’s nothing. Storytelling isn’t really my thing, I’m not any good at it.”
“The best way to improve at something is to try! Failure is an important part of the learning process!”
“I think I’d rather spare you all the sheer amount of failure I’d bring to the table,” Starlight said, chuckling at her own expense. “I’ll leave the heavy lifting to you six.”
Twilight shook her head and smiled. “Don’t worry, Starlight, there’s no possible way you can be worse at it than Rainbow Dash. All she wanted to add to the story was explosions and thrills-a-minute ludicrosity all underpinned by an egregiously awful self-insert barely masked by the name ‘Painbow Smash’.”
That got a giggle and a snort out of Starlight. “That’s more creative than I would’ve given her credit for. I assumed her self-insert would be named something like ‘Dainbow Rash’.”
“Thankfully it wasn’t that awful. I might have forced her to leave the moment she even floated that name my way.” The alicorn fluffed her wings and climbed onto her throne, adjusting the pillow placed on the hard gemstone seat into a more comfortable position. “They should be getting here any minute now. Feel free to start on your pancakes if you want!”
“Oh, good, I was worried I’d have to wait!” Brandishing her fork and knife, Starlight began to slice through the pancakes and flipped the first morsels into her mouth. “Mmmm... they’re good!”
“Thanks! I’m certainly no cook like Spike, but I at least like to believe I’m competent.” Twilight’s eyes darted to the doors as they parted and a big grin crawled across her muzzle as her friends trotted in. “Good morning, girls! I made us breakfast before we got started today! We have a lot to cover, and I think we’ll have a wonderfully productive session!”
Their friends’ moods, however, were decidedly more muted. The five ponies entered the map room not in a gaggle of excited besties, but in single-file with averted eyes. “Great, another day of yelling at each other,” Rainbow muttered as she made it to her seat, summarizing the collective feelings of the other four.
“Forgive me if I ain’t all that hopeful ‘bout this, sugarcube,” Applejack said, sliding into her chair. “We spent all day on this yesterday and all it did was trample a buncha hooves and hurt a lotta feelings. We didn’t even have nothing close to a draft for this thing.”
Rarity climbed into her seat as well and mercilessly hewed through the pancakes stacked on the plate in front of her. “While I appreciate the breakfast, darling, please do tell me now if we’re simply going to be wasting time on another exercise in futility. It has become apparently obvious to me over the past day that not all of our interests are conveniently aligned to create anything close to a coherent plot. I’d rather simply have the pancakes and save myself the frustration if it can be helped.”
“Well, it’s a good thing I’ve already done the hard work for everypony!” Twilight said, and with a flare of her horn, several thick stacks of paper dropped onto each pony’s lap. While her friends regarded the piles of paper with suspicious glances, Twilight proudly shuffled through hers and prominently displayed a few pages of notes. “I took the liberty of staying up until five this morning putting together an entire draft for the story! Important characters, major and minor plot beats, setpieces, morals and themes, even the progression of foreshadowing and clues that need to be worked into the text before the big reveal! All that’s left to do now is flesh out some of the more important settings and write a little bit of ourselves into the main characters!”
Pinkie Pie giggled and inhaled her entire plate of pancakes to clear space for her copy of the outline. “Wow! You did all this, Twilight? That’s amazing! You must be super-duperty-duper tired!”
Twilight abashedly chuckled and rubbed an eye with a wingtip. “There’s no magic like the power of caffeine...”
“Um, Twilight?” Fluttershy flicked through the pages of the outline with a wingtip, largely leaving her pancakes untouched. “It... well, it seems like you’ve already written most of the story for us.”
“Yeah!” Rainbow exclaimed, dropping her copy onto the table with a reverberating thud. “This is nothing like what I want to write! Where’s the action? Where’s the chase scenes?! Nothing blows up in this!”
“I left plenty of room for that!” Twilight protested. The pages of her outline blurred by as she sought out a relevant annotation and, upon finding it, spun the outline around and pointed directly to the page number. “During the Dodge Junction arc, there’s a scene where Silver Wind has to stop a train loaded with dynamite from running off the rails, and—!”
“That has nothing to do with explosions! It’s about preventing explosions! The train doesn’t even blow up!”
Starlight’s horn sparked to life and she firmly pressed both ponies back into their chairs before the argument got any more heated. “Oooookay, let’s try to keep it under control, right girls?” she asked, laughing nervously. “This is only a draft, and Twilight worked really hard to have it ready for you all today. It can be changed and revised as you like! It’ll just give you a frame of where to go to see this story through to its conclusion, right?”
Rainbow sighed and snatched her utensils in her wingtips, forgetting about the outline in favor of breakfast for the time being. “I guess...”
Twilight smiled at her student and set her own silverware in motion with a thought. “Thank you, Starlight. You’ve really grown in handling things diplomatically as my student. I’m proud of you!”
Starlight rolled her eyes and went back to her breakfast. “Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Twilight. I just want to see what you guys come up with after all this hard work, though, so don’t mind me.”
“We’ll ask for your opinion on things if we need it,” Twilight said. “But do feel free to speak up whenever you like!”
“Sure. Sounds good to me.”
“Good.” Setting her meal aside in eager anticipation of making progress on the story, she floated pencils out to the other five collaborators around the table. “Then I suppose we should get started! We have a long and productive day ahead of us!”
Starlight looked up from the corner of the kitchen as the doors opened and shut to the throne room. A chorus of angry, scathing voices burst between the seams for only a moment before Twilight Sparkle shut them again. Groaning, Twilight immediately sought out the nearest counter and slammed her forehead against it.
Starlight winced at the resounding thwack. “I... take it it isn’t going so well in there.”
“What gave you that idea?” Twilight grumbled, forehead still attached to crystal counter.
“Oh, you know, the angry yelling, the piles of crumpled paper, you and the kitchen counter getting intimate.” Starlight shook her head and maneuvered a few bottles of around a cocktail glass. “Things seem like they’ve gotten even worse since I stepped out to run some errands quick.”
“You have no idea,” Twilight said. “I was able to keep most of the outline, which is good, but they’re gutting it again because they all think the characters should do different things at different places. And of course, once you change one thing about a character’s actions, that could change something later, which starts a cascade of different permutations throughout the chapters all the way until the finale! Meanwhile, I’m just trying to keep track of everything, and I’m pretty much out of stamina to deal with all this bickering! Rejuvenation spells and coffee can only get a mare so far!”
“So that’s the only real problem then?” Starlight asked. “The characters?”
“If we could get everypony to agree on how they should act and what they should do, the rest of this would be smooth sailing, I’m sure of it.” Twilight rubbed her temples while she used her head to support her torso. “It’d be so simple...”
The volume in the map room took a remarkably strong uptick as some new argument broke out. Sighing, Twilight reluctantly raised her head and grimaced at the doors. “I guess I should put a stop to that...”
“You’re the Princess of Friendship!” Starlight remarked with a cheery voice and a wink. “It’s your royal obligation!”
Twilight simply glared at Starlight and poached the drink she’d made for herself. The glass floated up to lavender lips, and Twilight drained it all with a toss of her head. Licking her lips, she shuddered at the warm spike of alcohol and set the glass aside. “What was that?”
“A ‘Stalliongrad Winter’,” Starlight said, taking the glass back. Her lips turned down into a frown. “My Stalliongrad Winter...” she pouted.
“Well, it was good, and I really need it,” Twilight said. “Think you can make five more?”
Starlight chuckled and leaned back against the counter, crossing her forelegs. “I guess everypony would need a drink after all this, huh?”
“Oh, no, just for me,” Twilight said. “The others can get whatever they want.”
Starlight blinked. “R-Right...”
She watched Twilight march up to the map room doors, fling them open with her magic, and march inside before slamming them shut and adding her voice to the argument. Within a few seconds, everything quieted down again, but Starlight doubted it would last. And damned if she wanted nothing to do with the arguments on the other side of that door. Applejack’s brutal honesty could be downright vicious if she let her temper get the best of her.
So instead she prepared herself another Stalliongrad Winter and took a few gulps. The six of them weren’t getting anywhere in a hurry, and if they kept this up, it’d be another night of shouting and another night of bruised egos and hurt feelings. There had to be a better way to go about this.
Before she even realized what she was doing, Starlight’s eyes had wandered off in the general direction of the library, where Twilight kept all her best spellbooks. Smirking, she grabbed her drink in her magic and set off in that direction. “When things don’t work the hard way, we make an easy way,” she mused to herself. “That’s what magic’s for, right?”