//------------------------------//
// Appendix I: Self-Critique 
// Story: Not My Destiny 
// by Smayds 
//------------------------------//


Not My Destiny
by Smayds

Appendix I: Self-Critique



Hi there, everypony. 

Let's get this out of the way first: I can't write. I'm not a professional writer. I don't even think I qualify as an amateur writer. But I do has prettie drarn gud spellung and. grammar, which'll be fairly helpful to me if I decide to bash out fanfic after fanfic.

I started writing this story around the premiere of Season 2 last year, but whether it was before or after The Return Of Harmony aired, I couldn't tell you. Basically, I was looking for fanfics of Twilight suddenly getting wings. I don't know why that is so relevant to my interests, but if I had to hazard a guess, it would be because Twi's my favourite character and I really wanted to see her with no physical or magical limits. I couldn't find any, not one! I'm sure there are loads of them out there, but the only other two I've seen to this date are The New Princess and Responsibility, and before I found either of those, I decided that if I wanted to read about Twilight as an alicorn, I'd just have to write it myself.

This story is essentially one enormous wish-fulfillment fantasy. It's far too contrived. There's really no drama aside from the constant cliffhanging, the big world-ending plot-point (which was conveniently resolved with no real effort), and Twilight having something in her head that keeps trying to get her to kill her friends. I think I only started writing this story because I really wanted to see Fluttershy flying into battle on the back of a dragon. And as for THAT scene... There was no reason for Pinkie Pie to have flown back with Rainbow Dash at all, she just got to sit on the third dragon for the hell of it. Kinda stupid too, as Pinkie hasn't got wings herself, and the back of an airborne dragon, even a temporarily tame one, is no place for a pony that can't fly.

And the dialogue. The dialogue! Of all the worst things that could have been written! This! Is! The! Wait, wait, my fainting couch is in the shop getting a service. Moving on. A very wonderful anon called Anon pointed out to me the obvious word for multi-party dialogue: polilogue. A wonderful word, and I just can't write it. (Well, I can write the word itself, but not polilogues in the abstract. Good grief). In conversations between groups of characters, most of them tend to get forgotten or given out-of-character lines just so they have something to say. I am TERRIBLE at this. I'm surprised I never put in a few lines like:

"Hey, we're here too!" Dash exclaimed. "Don't forget about us just because you're shit at polilogue!"

"Yeah, ya schmuck! What are we, invisible or something?!" an out-of-character Rarity agreed, gently and bloodily inserting her horn through the fourth wall and up the author's left nostril.

So I'll have to work on multi-party dialogue. I'll have to work on it a lot. I should watch some of the better "everypony says something" scenes in the show itself...

But I guess the real, real reason I started writing this is because I've always wanted to write... something. Somehow, I found the motivation, I dreamed up a crazy story that could never work, I threw in every single cool thing I could grab from the show so I wouldn't have to come up with my own cool things, and then decided to never, ever post this story anywhere.

And then, reading Responsibility by GaruuSpike just before Christmas, I saw a story that I considered to be far, far better than my own. "Someone else wrote my story!" I whined to myself. "They wrote it far better than I ever could!" Then I calmed down and stopped being a selfish little twat, and decided that I would offer my own take on the "Twi's got wings, woo!" story. Perhaps because I had no idea where Responsibility was heading, but I was sure that it wouldn't be "end-of-the-world."

Anyway, this is my little story done and dusted. There are two alternate endings still to come. One's a gag ending, so we'll all see if I'm better at comedy than polilogue (answer: almost definitely yes. That doesn't mean I'll be funny, though). The other one is the grimdark end-of-the-world ending I originally had planned out, but then couldn't write because it was too depressing, but then wrote anyway, because the idea of what would have happened in the library if Applejack had actually hit the wall at nearly a thousand miles an hour was far too tempting not to explore.


And on a personal note:

I have to admit that I was completely blown away by the response that this crappy little fic received here at FiMFiction. In fact, I'm rephrasing that. To say that I have been blown away is an understatement, a vast, gaping monstrosity of an understatement. I like this place, it's comfy and cozy and you can put your hooves up and enjoy a cup of cocoa any time you want. I really think I'll be staying.

You are, all of you, the most incredible and amazing people I've ever come across online.


-Smayds

January 2, 2012