Thank you guys for the sound advice, as ever. I'm being overly cautious again. I just need to slap a big finished sticker on FF and move on.

The plan is to make the six crew then build the story around them. Fancy Free (emphasis to force myself to stay with that) is like...90% done. The others are like...20-50 a piece. But I'll get there.

Anyway, I've an early start tomorrow so, goodnight.

Annnnnnd the momentous moment has passed. G'night Apps.

Would it help if you deliberately try to write something that you're not going to post? Maybe if you know you won't actually post it, it would help get rid of the inhibition.

It probably would, I just have a hard time going off the rails.

Much of my character-building comes from actually writing the story, rather than pre-planning. From the beginning, I had planned a scene with Ditzy Doo and Carrot Top eating lunch together. It wasn't until I actually wrote that scene and had to come up with real words to put in Carrot Top's mouth that I realized what her personality—and the sort of friendship she has with Ditzy—should actually be.

Much later, there's a scene where Constable Peeler has a run-in with Dr. Hooves. When I was planning the scene, I thought Peeler would be cowed into submission by Hooves. But when it came time to write the thing, that plan no longer felt right—it was suddenly plain as day that Peeler should go Obstructive Bureaucrat on Hooves instead.

I've found that no matter how much work you put into planning out a character's personality you can never really figure them out until you've started writing them. Characters really do develop in ways that even surprise the author.

I'm just not sure what story I want to tell. I'm scared to write mane or the more noticeable backgrounds in fear of going ooc and messing up.

What's the worst that could happen? Seriously, even if you write a terrible piece of trash, you'll learn from it. Writing is never a waste of time, you always get something out of it even if the final product sucks.

There's also editing. The majority of first drafts are going to turn out not-so-great (I usually revise a document twice before I consider it ready to get external feedback, myself).

You guys are right. I just need to start somewhere. Though the question lies in what that is.

Infiltration.

McIntosh makes poor choices.

Pony names written in Gallifreyan

@Dark: Just pick a random story and roll with it. RD and Applejack order a pizza. What happens?

An idiotic comedy story that'll get an instant Fimfiction feature?

They get fat?

@JT:

they argue over toppings, or where to order from.

RD tries to make the guy late on purpose to get a free pizza, and AJ tries to stop her.

pizza guy gets abducted by aliens on AJ's doorstep, and the two stage a rescue.

really, anything could take off from a premise like that.

edited 19th Aug '13 5:15:43 PM by crimsonstorm15

A philosophical discussion about the fragility of equine life as compared to pizza, for some reason.

@Mio: Only if you write it badly but have a really funny cover image.

My point is that preplanning can only get you so far, and that at some point you just have to put the characters in a situation and as "what would they do?" and then write that.

Thread jumpin'! Speaking of fanfics, do I need to worry about scenarios for mine? I'm wondering if I should write descriptions on what the scenes will be like and what the characters will be doing but of course some serious tweaking on my part both story and character wise. But do you reckon simple descriptions of the scene or what?

They get a pizza and eat it.

OK then, AJ and Dash order a pizza. I can work with this.

The equine equivalent of My Dinner With Andre?

Better yet, the equine equivalent of Waiting For Godot. Waiting for Pizza.

darkabomination then proceeded to vanish for six months before emerging with a 40 chapter epic that rivaled Fallout Equestria in scope. When asked about it, he broke into sobs, saying "it was only supposed to be about pizza!"

One of these days I gotta actually write the second chapter of my Mr. and Mrs. Cake spy fic. Then again, my original IP novel kind of takes priority.

I think my interview went reasonably well. Should be hearing back for a second interview by the end of the week.

^ As a former pizza boy, I take offense at "only." :P

edited 19th Aug '13 5:48:11 PM by Wryte

For a while, I was thinking about writing my chapter of the fanfic from the perspective of a giraffe who doesn't know much about ponies. But I decided that would be too silly and hard to pull off.