Before I really get going on this author’s notes, I have some thanks I need to pass around. First, to Brilliant Point, Coandco, Ekevoo and Merlos the Mad, thanks for being wonderful editors, keeping my writing honest, and catching my many, many mistakes! Ludicrous Lycan, thanks for pre-reading and being an ideal audience surrogate!
And, of course, a huge thanks to everyone who read the story. It’s you guys that I write for, after all. There would be no Cinnamon Swirl without all of you!
And now for some notes on this story. Oh, this story. This extremely problematic story.
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoyed writing it. But I had intended from the start for this to be a slightly gritty but still lighthearted comedy with an underlying core of drama than anything else. Big tough guy gets turned into a little filly? Hilarity is bound to ensue! I learned that from Ranma ½, and anime has never lied to me, not even once!
That’s when I noticed the comments about how horrible it was what Cinnamon was going through, and how messed up his relationship was with his mom.
My thoughts upon reading those comments went a little something like this:
“What? But it’s just a fun comedy! Sure, his mom is messed up, and she basically kidnapped her own child after he’d been rendered nearly helpless by a magical plant that robbed him of his identity, and dragged him back to his badly neglected childhood home, after which she forced him to go to school and pretend to be a little filly, causing him nothing but humiliation after humiliation while being eaten alive by frustration and self-identity issues… Hmm… You know what? I think I’ll add a ‘Dark’ tag to this.”
So, yeah. This ended up getting darker than I’d intended by a fair amount. I realized that, while I could have backed off and written this as a goofball comedy with some drama and action thrown in, it would have felt very fake. Cinnamon’s situation just felt like it deserved better treatment than to make a flat-out comedy out of it.
As for the other dramatic elements, believe it or not that was all planned out from the beginning. Tapioca’s illness, the smugglers, Almond having basically lost herself after both her husband and daughter died within weeks of each other, that was all planned from the get-go in my “lighthearted comedy”.
Yeah… sometimes I really don’t think things through all the way.
There is one thing I did change, and that was a little tweak to the ending, after Filli Vanilli came out. I hadn’t thought of Zecora being able to make a potion that could re-inflict the poison joke effects on a pony, and I thought it really applied well to Cinnamon’s situation. Being able to disguise himself as a small child might come in handy as a police officer, after all. Other than that, though, the ending was pretty much the same as what I’d planned when I started this story. Cinnamon had changed back to a stallion after about a year as a filly, at his mother’s insistence. And, while things aren’t perfect, they’re sure a lot better than they were.
The best thing about this story, for me, is how it stretched me as a writer. While my other stories have occasional moments of drama and emotional tension in them, they pale in comparison to this one. I’d never written a story anything like this before, and it was equal parts frustrating and satisfying the whole way through.
School of Hard Knocks is also where I started really relying on editors, at first Brilliantpoint by himself, but bringing in Ekevoo and Coandco later on, and finally Merlos. There was a marked improvement in how polished each chapter was once I started getting editors. Not only that, but our comment strings would sometimes go wildly and hilariously off-tangent, causing no end of fun.
So, that’s it for this story. And you might ask, “what next?” Do I have any plans for Cinnamon and Plum after this story? And the answer is yes, but not for a while. I’m planning on working on my other stories for a while and letting this particular cast of characters rest for a bit. But, if I have my way, Cinnamon and company will be back in glorious style!
And now some notes from the editors:
~~Ekevoo~~
I keep telling myself I should write more, but truth be told, editing is what I actually love doing. All I have to do is get to other people stories before publishing, conceitedly declare all my likes and dislikes and watch them struggle and squirm to accommodate my yellow highlights! BWA HA HA HA!!
*ahem*
This isn’t technically my first story I edited for Hoopy; Daring Didn’t happened in the meantime, and there’s an unpublished thing (which was okay, but not nearly as good as everything else that Hoopy has published, and really dated by now) before it all. School of Hard Knocks, however, was the first story that had more than one chapter, and I actually could watch something great being built, and how it feels working with the rest of the team.
I work with many authors by now, and Hoopy is one of the authors that takes his editors’ opinions in most equal measure, which invites me both to be bold and to be careful (as they say in the other wiki). The result of that is incredibly prolonged debates that actually do result sometimes in entire sections being rebuilt into something better; something that makes more sense, and that (we hope) ultimately entertains you all more. Something that’s worth the wait. Not that it wasn’t already fantastic, awesome, radical, and brilliant when it was only Hoopy and Point Brilliant in the team.
Battling Brilliant Point in comment threads has been a load of fun. Frustrating at times, but it’s the good kind of frustrating, the kind that made me learn; and I appreciated being called up on my mistakes so that I don’t make them again. That privilege is normally reserved only to the author. I also battled a bit with Coandco and Merlos, but not as often as I’d have liked. Yes, that’s a nudge. ;)
For your amusement (because Hoopy teased), here’s a recent HEA tangent that’s a favorite of mine:
Brilliant: Zecora! Oh wait, rhymes.. Fuck my life as an editor… (I suck at those)
Hoopy: When I write Zecora scenes, I feel like a dope. A rhyming dictionary is my only hope.
Ekevoo: Don't worry, it's working out fine. You can always iterate your next line.
Hoopy: Unfortunately, I'm inclined to whine when I trot out these rhymes of mine :)
Ekevoo: Whine your frustrations away. Rid yourself of their weight.
~Ekevoo, the banana hat editor.
~~Brilliant Point~~
Becoming the editor for School of Hard Knocks was never one of my goals. I was quite happy with being Hoopy's editor for his stories taking place in the Sunflower Universe. But alas, life has a tendency to throw a wrench into the plans you have. This one was called Hoopy McGee and was armed with puppy-dog eyes. Who can say no when he asks like that if you want to edit other stories?
Anyhoo, this led to me checking out the other stories he was working on. The first one I picked for reading was School of Hard Knocks. An easy choice as I already was familiar with Why am I Pinkie Pie?, so a spin-off is easy to evaluate if you want to edit for (I always do this to see if I'm a good match as an editor).
Why am I Pinkie Pie wasn't one of his stories that I truly enjoyed (sorry Hoopy...). It was a well written story and quite entertaining, just a tad too slapstick like for my tastes. It just wasn't my cup of tea. So I expected something similar with School of Hard Knocks.
But what I encountered wasn't that. Instead of seeing Cinnamon the side gag I found a fully fleshed out snarky stallion in a fillies body. Who faced all kinds of interesting issues because of it. The story also explored the less savoury parts of Equestrian society. Now this was a story that was unique, well written, and I knew would take me and the readers on an interesting journey. I was sold.
Looking back I never regretted the choice of editing for this story. One factor was of course the exceptional story I had the honour of editing for. The other factor was Hoopy himself as he's a joy to work with. He can take a joke and isn't afraid to butt heads with his editor.
But no matter how silly we got we never lost focus on the story. Polishing it where necessary and enjoying the tale of the stallion Cinnamon Swirl turned filly. Which now sadly has reached its end. I'm going to miss editing for this story.
PS,
With all the teasing Hoopy did about our editing shenanigans it’s only fair to share one of my favourites. So without further ado another Hoopy’s Editing Adventure:
I told you, I’m not a therapist but not a doc— oh my sweet stars!
Brilliant Point: So he's a completely unqualified quack?
Hoopy McGee: Not sure dual masters counts as "unqualified", but only time will tell if he's a quack or not :D
Brilliant Point: Looks like I was a tad too subtle. ;) You're saying here that he's not a therapist and also not a doctor. I think you meant to say that he's a therapist, but not a doctor.
Hoopy McGee: Oh, whoops. Heh, now I see it. Will remove that "not" and mark this resolved.
~~coandco~~
I was brought on as an editor for the story fairly late in the cycle, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed proofing for Hoopy. My approach to editing is slightly different than that of Ekevoo or BrilliantPoint; while they thrive on making structural observations, I’m mostly putting a mild case of OCD to good use and catching all the details, only commenting on the overarching story when something particularly egregious is going down.
...so between the two of us, you see, we lick the platter clean.
I started reading Hoopy’s stories just after Why Am I Pinkie Pie was published, and have loved every minute of them since. I tend to view writing style as the key component that draws me in, and Hoopy’s got the magic touch: his stories consistently display a refreshing level of genre/trope-awareness without constantly pushing it in your face. In School of Hard Knocks, this is mostly accomplished through the vehicle of Cinnamon’s policing instincts; either way, I greatly appreciate just how adroitly Hoopy avoids the use of the Idiot Ball (warning: TV Tropes link).
Thanks again to Hoopy for creating such an amazing story, and thanks to my fellow editors for livening up the proofreading environment!
-- coandco
~~Merlos the Mad~~
Well then, hello other story pokers, I’m Merlos.
Honestly, other than Brilliant, I wasn’t aware much that Hoopy even had other helpers. If I had been I might have attempted conversation on some small scale. Well, my apologies for that, but nevermind.
Editing for Hoopy was great, and I think I’ve discovered I mostly prefer editing to writing. This, however, comes with the clause that the writer isn’t infuriating. Hoopy definitely fits the bill there. He’s a very open-ended sort of writer. By that I mean his work is easy to sort of… see the big picture, and work things in your head around. I don’t want to say simple, but maybe that’s a fitting word, too, but in a good way. Ekevoo said use the word ‘clear’, lol, so I’ll go with that.
So, helping with his stories was a lot of fun, certainly, though I wonder how much he actually needs our help when he says that his writing has improved because of us all mucking about. :P
Heh, still I owe writing anything at all to Hoopy’s stuff, so I’ll be happy to lend a hand in his work in future days, even if I’m not really working on my own stuff much at the moment. I think that says a lot about his writing. (at least for me) Thanks to both him and the other editors for being great!
Oh.
I just learned that this is actually getting posted, too. Well, hello fimfiction! And from an avenue I don’t usually get to speak from, ie Hoopy’s account! Hah. Man, I’m like the closing statements or something. Ah geez, what should I say? I could write anything here at all and no one could stop-
~~Ludicrous Lycan~~
My turn! Hi everyone, I’m Lycan, and I’m the mediocre writer that got really freaking lucky.
I really haven’t been around here long at all. I think I become a Brony sometime late last August. And then a writer late October. Most of October was spent on Fim Fiction, just reading and enjoying everyone's writing.
That changed sometime after I sent a fan letter to Hoopy. I read his Fic “Why am I Pinkie Pie!?” and had sort of a fan spaz attack. The length of said letter shall lie in the darkest reaches of Fim Fic’s mail software. Moving right along, Hoopy responded to me faster then I would have guessed, let alone expected. He even carried a conversation or two over the course of a couple weeks.
At some point, I got the gumption to try my hand at writing for myself. Bet it’s no surprise my first fic idea ever was a self insert HIE. That was canned for obvious reasons, but made way for several other fic ideas. Some I have yet to start, and others that have started and need a total redo before I even consider letting them loose.
Anyway, Hoopy’s support and his stories are what got me into the idea of writing my own fics. In that regard, I suppose me and Merlos have a bit in common. Speaking of, I also owe a great deal to what I have accomplished to Merlos. He helped me get started. He introduced me to several really cool people that showed me the do’s and don'ts of a good fic, as well as gave me a chance to practice my writing and instruct me on how to go about it.
A week before Halloween, he actually let me co-write his story Once Upon a Fright. I was uber excited and stoked throughout the whole thing… even if it didn’t do as good as we hoped. Sorry, Merlos. I’ve been helping with his stuff long enough now that he’s called me a “co-writer”, though I don’t feel I deserve that credit. Working with Merlos has gained me a lot in regards to the people I’ve met on this site and the skill in which I can write my own stories, although I’m still nowhere near as good as anyone else here.
Actually... Hoopy called me something in one of his recent School of Hard Knock’s chapters that I thought hilariously appropriate. What was it…? ...It seems he changed it when I wasn’t looking… No matter, he wrote something similar in this very document! “Being an ideal audience surrogate.” As that may imply, I love to pre read and comment on Hoopy’s work. While I‘m a pretty cruddy editor, I guess I make up for it in the comments I leave. Story inconsistencies, character flaws, or just random ideas and jokes apparently merit a pass on this ride. Not that I’m complaining mind you. If you think reading his stories when their finished is great, then you have no idea what you're missing behind the scenes.
Hoopy’s fic’s are the ones I’m always waiting for more of. Unfinished or not, they’re always a blast. Unfortunately, Hoopy will clam up fast if you ask him anything that falls under the spoiler department. That isn’t to say I’ll ever stop trying, his new stuff is gonna drive everyone crazy with anticipation.
It sometimes feels that helping in other peoples work is more fun than working on my own, but finishing your own chapter is pretty great too. I finished a story a while back and felt fantastic afterwards… But I think the high messed with my motivation. Now if only I could do something else besides pre read and edit! All well. I have plenty of ideas, I just have to get them down.
But this is supposed to be about Hoopy and his story. Both of which are awesome. This story might be over, but he still has several other projects I’m excited to see. Some he’s already revealed, others still in the wings that he’s proving stubborn to talk about. Yes... From the looks of things, he has a lot more to show us, and I’m sure everyone is looking forward to it.
On an out note, this is the part where I would love to share something silly or funny involving my time spent with Hoopy, Merlos, Brilliant Point, and everyone else. Unfortunately, I don’t have any such thing on hand at the moment. Well, nothing relevant to Hoopy or isn’t outright embarrassing for certain people… So very tempting… N-no, I will resist. Umm… Heavy is a magic pink horse? No wait, I wasn’t supposed to talk about that either… I think I’m done here.