Now that everyone has presented a basic concept for their chapter (and I did my best to provide some substantive critique about each one), now comes the next step of planning. Determining chapter order and story progression. Obviously, this is still pretty loose, and nothing will be set in stone for some time. But that doesn’t make this step any less important, because it is going to determine the direction of future development. Even if you don’t have the time or inclination to read all the initial concepts, try and read everything here, to get a basic idea of what other people are doing for their chapters!

I have provided a few-sentence-summary of everyone’s concept below. For the most part, they aren’t in any particular order.

The current scenario is that the Amulet is locked in a building and ponies are being allowed in to see it. But perhaps a less rigid setup is in order. Perhaps the Amulet is loaned out to ponies, after they pass a stringent security check. Perhaps there is some trackers and devices stuck to the Amulet itself. Given the variance on display, I think the scenario should be less rigid, and I’m certainly open to discussion.

Style sidebar: if you’re referring specifically to the Alicorn Amulet, remember to capitalize it (“the Amulet”). More style elements TBD.

Prologue (cleverpun): TBD

Moondancer (A Grand Wizard): Moondancer takes the Amulet home, and it tempts her with friendship and companionship. She manages to resist it, but when she returns it to Twilight, she is perhaps not entirely honest about what the Amulet showed her (particularly how it preyed on her feelings about Twilight).

Cadance (cleverpun): When Cadance takes the Amulet, it presents her with an elaborate mental scenario: Shining Armor is dead. When Cadance goes to his grave to dig up his remains and confirm her disbelief, Amulet!Celestia appears and offers her the Amulet in order to revive him. Cadance rejects it, but only just.

Twilight (Titanium Dragon): The Amulet appears directly to Twilight (currently as a gray Alicorn, but I think Starswirl or Celestia or some other guise might be more appropriate). It tries to debate her into thinking that it is just a tool, and that anyone who uses it for evil is misusing it. Twilight rejects it.

Carrot Top (Chris): The Amulet tempts Carrot Top, but is rebuffed continuously. After all, Carrot Top is perfectly content with her lot in life, so the Amulet has nothing to offer her. But perhaps it still finds a way to tempt her into giving it to another pony.

Rarity (CCC): The Amulet shows Rarity a vision of rejection and despair. She comes dangerously close to putting it on, but then changes her mind. After all, its color scheme is simply too garish.

Rainbow Dash (Kai Creech): The Amulet sticks her in an empty room, and tells her that she can’t leave until she agrees to wear it. Rainbow Dash reacts to this.

TBD Pony (possibly Pinkie Pie?) (Kai Creech): A chapter that involves a pony trying to tempt the Amulet to give up its ways, rather than the Amulet trying to tempt it to wear them. This is more tenuous than the previous concept, since it may require altering the metaplot and defining the Amulet’s nature more thoroughly. (This would, oddly enough, fit in with the ideas I was considering for my Luna chapter.)

Starlight Glimmer (Winston): The Amulet offers Starlight Glimmer the ability to see the future, and the act of doing so also causes the future to become deterministic and unchangeable. Starlight considers all the ways she could use this to make the world a better place. But then she realizes that choosing ponies lives for them is something that she already did, and rejects the Amulet.

Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo (Sollace): The Amulet tries to tempt them with various promises, but, being children, they shoot its offers down with obvious logic.

Derpy/Ditzy Do (FanOfMostEverything): The Amulet shows Derpy an elaborate fantasy where her child is taken away by the authorities. The Amulet promises her the power to get her daughter back, but Derpy proceeds to take the illusion to its logical conclusion, defeating the authorities through proper procedure and defeating the Amulet’s machinations in the process.

Chrysalis (nioniosbbbb): The Amulet offers Chrysalis power, and Chrysalis is more than willing to pay any cost to get it. But the Amulet’s temptations and whisperings offend Chrysalis’ pride, and she discards it.

Doctor Whooves (Moosetasm): The Amulet tries various temptations: the wonder of science, using it to help other ponies, and eventually his relationship with Derpy. It fails, but comes very close to success.

Limestone Pie (Ceffyl Dwr): The Amulet helps LP make the farm prosper, but she is only doing it to avoid her fear of failure, and as a way to delay Marble Pie from leaving. Eventually she comes to terms with her feelings, and the Amulet has nothing to offer her.

Applejack (cleverpun): A transitional chapter covering what happens when the Amulet wins. AJ wants one thing above all else: stability. Financial, familial, comradely, whatever else. And there’s nothing that could provide that better than the Amulet. After all, nothing needs to change.

I intentionally did not mention this idea yet, because I wanted to wait to select its protagonist until everyone had already made their choices. Figures AJ is the only main six member who didn’t get picked (poor predictable AJ...). I’m still not sure about it, since I want failure to be believable, not a contrivance of the plot.

Luna (cleverpun): Luna confronts the Amulet when it is on the last dregs of its power. It summons an illusory Nightmare Moon to try and tempt her (the exact content of its arguments will vary depending on preceding chapters). Luna tells it that it has nothing to offer her; after all, the last time she acquired power at the cost of her sanity, it wasn’t worth the trade. The Amulet appears to die.

Celestia (Morning Sun): Celestia confronts the Amulet alone, and when she comes out she is wearing it, having seemingly fallen to its influence. She proceeds to act like a bratty teenager. TBD whether the Amulet is actually broken and Celestia needed to blow off steam, or it isn’t broken and tempted her with the absence of power.

Epilogue (cleverpun): TBD

Now that's a text wall!

I was figuring Dr. Whooves' chapter would be directly before or directly after Derpy's chapter. They're at least close friends in cannon, and much more in a lot of headcannons, so I figured they would go together to offer each other moral support before and after. I like the current placement closer to the end, but I'd definitely be fine with going one slot earlier to have the immediate proximity to the Derpy chapter.

I'd vote for the Amulet remaining locked up. The dangers of somepony making off with it and wreaking havoc are too great if they just loan it out. It would be completely reckless of them to allow this plan to go off unsupervised. If a pony succumbs to the Amulet, nopony would even be there to know what was going on or that the plan had failed.

5930394 So aside from the prologue, which looks like it'll still be happening, I'll be going first.

Shit.

Not really, I think I'll be good.

5930525 5931717 I said "For the most part, they aren’t in any particular order." The order is one thing we need to be discussing.

Do I need to put some bold underlines on it or something?

5931727 I was tired!

5931727

I wasn't critiquing the order? I was just saying that where it is in the list is about where I'd like to see it? That's the whole "discussing the proposed order" part, right?

5931937 Sorry, I thought the raritydespair emoticon implied a lot more sarcasm.

5933393

I always thought it was for legitimate complaining... Or even illegitimate complaining.

Either way.

To get back on topic, I think the order begs one major question. Which is more important: the meta-narrative about the Amulet's waning power level, or ensuring that the chapters have an actual story arc and a balanced mood?

Example: I think that my planned Cadance chapter is a bit too grimdark and severe to be one of the opening chapters. It fits more as a climax or a rising action than an introduction. Yet, if it would require such power to create that scenario, then it would need to be closer to the beginning.

Now obviously, we can make whatever rules about the Amulet that fit the story, but there do need to be consistent rules. Perhaps it only resorts to illusions when it is weaker, because those take less energy or something. But then what does take a toll on its power?

With this in mind, I think it might be worth considering to place all the lighter/comedic chapters near the beginning (following the First Law of Tragicomedies), to ease readers into the story. Alternately, it might be worth spreading these chapters out, to give the story a more varied mood.

This raises another issue: how much deference do we pay to the thematic/emotional arc and to the plot, respectively? Which should dictate the story's order, and can we find some way to make them mutually inclusive?

5934795

I thought that your Cadence chapter was a very good intro. It gives us a real idea of just how nasty the Amulet can be. It also showed a very blunt use of its powers. There is an entire scenario created, using a kind of mind scan to choose what the amulet believes to be the best chance of temptation.

The Amulet may then realize that the methods it has used in the past may need to be revised. Or it could have used such a large amount of power in that first attempt that it decides to cut back until the chapter where somepony gives in, making way for more dark chapters again?

I think that it makes sense if the very act of reading the pony's mind and then manifesting the temptation is what causes power loss in the Amulet. The stronger the willpower of the pony read, the more power is spent, and the more complicated or forceful the illusion used for the temptation, the more power is used as well.

If a pony gives in, they freely give power to the amulet, recharging and even increasing its power. If a pony does not submit, then the energy expended does not get refilled, and the amulet would eventually run dry if unable to find somepony willing to refill it.

Keeping a more steady mood might be more appropriate. It can be more jarring to start soft and then plunge into the darker stuff. I'm always a fan of ripping the band-aid off quickly, so to speak.

5936190 I suppose that's true--that the current version of the Cadance chapter sets a mood--but it is also bland. I don't think the Amulet being uncreative means the writers should be. Matching the Amulet's characterization (if it has any), isn't worth boring the reader.

5930575 That's a good point. Considering two of the main six may not get chapters at all, however, putting focus on them as a group when some of them are missing might create some awkward questions. Obviously, we can imply more turns happened than are being shown, but if we do that too much it might disorient the reader.

5930525 5930575 There are certainly pros and cons to both approaches (Amulet in lockup and Amulet freeroaming). I do kind of like the idea of switching to the latter after the former fails; it would show that the princesses are not completely dense, while still allowing some variation in the chapter structure.

5936295 5930575
I think the idea of the Amulet being able to implant it's magic into a recipient is ingenious. A pony might touch the Amulet, not get tempted, and that could cause the assembled research staff to pull a collective "wait, it's choosing ponies now?" Only for the effect to manifest later.

I do think that there is a great deal of trust being placed in ponies just to go through with this project in the first place. There is cannon to support this style of action (Discord's reformation) but there were also controls in place as well (the bearers all had their elements.)

The initial effort of having the Amulet contained wouldn't really have anything to do with the character of the ponies being exposed to it, but everything to do with the malign effects of the Amulet. It'd be like sending somepony home with a crate of plutonium or something.

If the security is eventually proven to be pointless, due to empowered ponies just obliterating the enclosure, etc, then they may very well decide that the effort to contain the Amulet with such a strict setup is not going to be as effective as just having a fast response team just in case of failure. In that case, the secure facility may end up being delegated to only be for storing the Amulet between attempts and for the pony scientists (or just book horse) to study the Amulet in its current state.

5936842 Naturally, I'm open to whatever makes the story flow most smoothly. It seems like we'll need a clearer idea of which order things should happen in for that, however, and we can't get that without more replies. I'll start bugging people about it later this week

5940701
5936842
Moondancer having a delayed reaction to the Amulet would make more sense than Twilight letting her study it unsupervised.

5930394
Rainbow Dash's chapter needs to be after at least a few others; it isn't used to being rejected, and Rainbow's chapter is one of the first where it try's something new.
5934795

To get back on topic, I think the order begs one major question. Which is more important: the meta-narrative about the Amulet's waning power level, or ensuring that the chapters have an actual story arc and a balanced mood?

It shouldn't be impossible to prioritise both. The only chapters that hinge on jokes are Rarities and Celestia's, and Celestia's is after everyone else. IF I had to pick one, I'd like to focus more on the Amulet itself, partly because I don't think anyone has done that before, and partly because he's the only person that's in every chapter. Maybe we could pick a more famous charator (Loki, for instance) and base all of his scenes on that person.

I feel mine should be somewhere near the middle. Best Pony is basically baiting the into committing to a sunk cost fallacy, which means it needs both a decent reserve of power and a degree of desperation for the story as intended to work. Definitely fine with Carrot Top's feeding into it.

Honestly? I really like the Cadance chapter as is.

Consider : The Amulet isn't used to being thwarted, as normally those who find it are seeking it out - so initially it just goes for the brute approach.

And when that fails? It tries something new. Again. And again. And so on.

5951370 I agree with much of this, too.

5951366 I think the idea for Moondancer's chapter hinges on her being alone. How that solitude happens is less important than how it is portrayed and what it means, so I'm not too fussed about it.

5951370 I've grown attached to the idea of portraying the Amulet only in disguise. After all, it's an inanimate object. Why would it create a ponysona for itself, when that would only hamper its ability to manipulate others? It would be more likely to appear as someone the pony trusts.

Making the Amulet a manipulative doppelganger also allows more room for reader interpretation. It creates another layer of mystery over it. It also creates some room for more drama or characterization: after all, if Celestia or Rarity or whomever has a slight red tint to their eyes and is acting off, it creates a signal to the reader and the characters.

5952435 The revised version of the Cadance chapter will still involve the Amulet trying to brute force her, it will just do so more subtly and be written in a less mediocre way. Maybe after she digs up Shining Armor's grave and Amulet!Celestia tries to tempt her, Chrysalis shows up to antagonize her, just to really show the Amulet pouring it on thick.

5951795 I suppose that makes sense. And remember, there is some room for fudging/inference of the Amulet's power level, so I don't think it needs to be the final dictator of order.

5953716 Now that school is starting to end for a lot of people, assuming it hasn't already, I think a deadline for rough drafts of our chapters might be in order. Again, under the assumption that continuity may not be such an issue except for chapters that may be explicitly interconnected, getting the ball rolling on me and the others will probably not be a bad idea. We already have a few chapters, yours and Titanium Dragon's, and we don't want to stall out now. (I'm also not sure about posting the fic with all its chapters at once. That would be a lot to take in, and it would basically mean we have one chance for this thing to get noticed and then it's gone.)

5960210 Yeah. This is actually my last week of work (since I'm a teacher I follow the school schedule), so I've been a bit swamped meself. I'm going to start PM'ing people who have not replied to this thread tomorrow, then I'm hopefully going to create a written outline and chapter order next week.

5930394 I am ok with this... Not much I can say.

I'm alive!

Read the whole thing, and now to read the comments. So far it looks pretty solid.

5934795

Which is more important: the meta-narrative about the Amulet's waning power level, or ensuring that the chapters have an actual story arc and a balanced mood?

Ideally you would want to balance both aspects. The tone and arc, in my eye, is the most important part, but a we have to consider continuity and ensure there's a reason for the Amulet's power rising or falling. Perhaps it naturally an affect of the time of day, or month, or it's power regenerates between usages?

The latter would actually help add a bit of urgency to the whole thing, that they would have to get a lot of ponies in and out to properly wear down the Amulet.

I also like the idea of having it be taken out of the room with guards, perhaps carried in a gilded, locked box to its next destination as they seek out ponies to help with the Amulet's destruction. That also opens more story oportunities such as, I think someone mentioned a pony stealing the it at some point.

I think that Starlight Glimmer's chapter would make the most sense coming somewhere later in the progression, possibly near the end. In her case the Amulet doesn't use the brute force of a threatened fear of loss, or the temptation of direct power through the Amulet itself, but something more subtle by offering simply to reveal magical knowledge that will more or less give Starlight just enough rope to hang herself (were she to yield to the temptation).

This is a much less forceful effort and suggests waning power. It also helps keep the narrative fresh rather than repetitive so that reader interest is held to the end of the story to have the amulet shift tactics to something more subtle and inflection-provoking after all the attempts it makes early on to just club people over the head with threats or promises of power.