Back in 2015, after conversation with The Coffee Pony on Skype, I decided to revive my idea to give the Equestria Girls franchise a full-blown rewrite under my own vision, which I conceptualized in 2013. Although I really steamed forward with two drafts, I stopped in the middle for nearly a year while only peaking only a few updates here and there.

For those who’re reading about it for the first time, here’s the full synopsis:

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Sunset Shimmer was a unicorn capable of harnessing and learning some of the best magic, but is unfortunately able to harness it in the daytime. She was accepted into the School for Gifted Unicorns under Princess Celestia’s teaching and mentoring. Unfortunately, she really struggled keeping up in her studies, and being bullied by students and teachers due to her magic controlling issues caused massive chaos. During her second year, Sunset reached her boiling point after the abuse turned violent, and she let her magic spiral out of control, causing massive destruction of Canterlot Castle. With prior permission by her parents, Celestia locked her horn (in other words, she can’t use magic at all, a major violation of ponies’ trust and personal boundaries in my canon). Feeling betrayed, she ran away by entering a large magical mirror in the passageway a few floors underneath Celestia’s study. Celestia searched for her, but couldn’t find her and was forced to leave her behind as the mirror was only open for two weeks every eleven years.

As she was stranded, she was adopted by the Pie family there, and one of the sisters (Pinkie) was the one to help give her the most training, help, and practice. As a result, both of them become very close to the point where Sunset calls her “Pinkie-Mommy.” In short, the two became inseparable.

Eleven years after she ran away, the mirror opened again, and this time Celestia was prepared to rescue Sunset and bring her own, this time with Twilight Sparkle’s and Spike’s help. But how can Sunset want to go home when she feels like Pedestria’s home, and what can be done to ensure that she and the Pies don’t separate?

 

If you want to read the process, feel free to read them all. I recommend going in order, though.

A really good thing about drafting these stories is that you can come up with ideas and not be conservative like a modern-day Republican about it. Have an idea? Put it down! If it works, great! If not, no problem. Go back and find a new one.

Spending hours on this draft was an experience. I haven’t written a fanfic of any size since 2012, so this was a good way to get that rust. At the risk of being hypocritical, I’m not a big fan of having my work criticized. Your work is your baby, so it feels natural to protect it no matter the cost. Even the softest constructive criticism can sting like hell. That’s me in a nutshell. While much of the feedback wasn’t public, it doesn’t change the fact that it was very valuable, both the praise and concrit, and helped me want to improve upon the idea.

Simultaneously, it’s even more difficult to observe your own work and pick apart the very problems. Sometimes when writing fanfic, you work in a vacuum. You get so caught up in what you do that you don’t actually see the flaw until someone points them out for you. To go back several months later gives me a fresh perspective of what I did right, wrong, and how to make it better. Yet, often, your harshest critic isn’t an unsolicited reviewer, but more often yourself, so you get to think whether you’re really overthinking it.

So, what problems did I come across?

1. Sunset’s growth from getting trapped in Pedestria to who she became today’s mostly confined in exposition. When you’re trying to create a very believable world and conflict, telling what happened wither via prose or character dialogue doesn’t help. Exposition goes through one ear and out the other. You need the audience to visualize what’s going on so the audience can believe everything they’re reading.
2. Just because Sunset Pie Shimmer and Pinkie Pie are closest doesn’t mean she can’t be so close with the rest. For the first half of my latest draft, she showed to be close to Pinkie only while being somewhat distant of the rest. Hell, the rest don’t have an impact until after she returns to Equestria for the first time.
   
   What I want is for the audience to believe Sunset’s as much a part of the family as the others. This direction doesn’t cut it: If you’re gonna treat much of the family as an afterthought, what’s the point in them existing at all?
3. The repair of Sunset’s and Celestia’s relationship was too rushed. You had chapters highlighting the strain (along with Sunset calling her a monster for violating her, running away from her home after her secret past was found out, glaring at Celestia during an important meeting with everyone, and kissing Luna on the cheek to reassure Luna and spite Celestia), but it changed in one chapter midway. It’d take three chapters for their relationship to fully mend.
   
   This isn’t like what happened with Starlight, who was both a villain and crying for help at the same time, and needed someone to be treated as an equal to see the error of her ways. Sunset’s feeling of betrayal runs well beneath her skin to the point of not wanting to return to Equestria, both because she saw herself as an embarrassment to the Shimmer family and (during their first encounter since running away) realize that her dad Dawn Shimmer and mom Sunrise Shimmer had been raising a brother (Solstice) five years after leaving. It’s gonna take time to repair suppressed heart-deep pain.
4. Way too much crying.
   
   a. Both Sunset and Pinkie following their big fight.
   
   b. After Sunset calls Celly a monster one chapter later.
   
   c. After Pinkie and Sunset reunite.
   
   d. During a hug the night after reuniting.
   
   e. Dawn and Sunrise after meeting Sunset for the first time in 11 years.
   
   f. Later that chapter, when Sunrise admits she can’t look at the sunset because it reminded her of her daughter too much.
   
   g. After Sunset admitted to two close friends (OCs named May Z. Acres and her sister May Flour) that she still hates Celestia.
   
   h. A couple of chapters later, Celly and Sunset quietly tear as they embrace.
   
   i. At the end of the second-to-last chapter after discovering the rewritten spell worked.
   
   j. The very end when everyone surprises Sunset with a celebratory party in the CHS gym.
   
   And there’ll likely be even more than that.
   
   As you can see, at least ten scenes of characters crying. When characters’ first instinct is crying, it makes the emotion and characters very one-dimensional. Everyone responds to emotional events in their own way. Relief, despair, sadness, fright, and happiness can be relayed without shedding waterfalls of saline. And I’m sure no one wants the characters to fry readers’ comps as they read the fanfic.
5. Although I can critique what makes jokes work or fail, I suck at writing jokes.
   
   Here’s an example of what I mean:
    

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   Canterlot High. Back where the quest began. She heads to the school and sees the base. Nothing to disturb it. She reaches inside and feels her hand transforming into a hoof. Then she looks back; there's a security guard (Old Iron). She asks him where this thing called a basketball court is. He points to the entrance's right: "One block." She heads over and piers through wired mesh from above. Below, AJ and Dash were playing a game on the basketball court.
   
   Twilight smiled evilly.
   
   Rainbow Dash was attempting a free-throw—
   
   "Hi, Rainbow Dash!"
   
   Rainbow flinches and shoots an air ball.
   
   "Rainbow Dash, that attempt's as bad as your wardrobe."
   
   "Don't blame me, AJ. I haven't found anything comfy to wear and play sports. This is the best I can find." (Dash is wearing a neon yellow tank top, thigh-length neon green shorts, and white sneakers.)
   
   "Only 'cause y'haven't washed yer best clothes in a fortnight and three days."
   
   Twilight grimaced.
   
   "Says an awesome cowgirl who likes to take mudbaths in her free time."
   
   Twilight chuckled, walking down the stairs. "Rainbow Dash, Applejack, you two fight like an old married couple."

   
   Two major problems with this joke:
   
   a. It’s OOC of Twilight. To intentionally distract Pedestrian!Dash (who she doesn’t know at the time) while she attempts a free throw makes her mean and cruel.
   
   b. Applejack and RD are completely oblivious to what caused it, where her voice came from, and her presence. This makes them look like OOC idiots.
   
   When it comes to fanfic, my strength is slice of life while keeping everything mellow. Drama is my second-biggest strength. Humor isn’t. But it wouldn’t be FIM without some cartoony comedy, and the humor can make the drama more impactful. (See The Force Awakens.)
   
   In short, try to make the humor make more sense and in character of the characters. And since FIM and EQG run on some levels of cartoon logic, don’t be afraid to bend the rules when necessary.
6. Cut down on the tangents. Conversation never operates in a straight line. Tangents can and will happen, and I want dialogue to feel real, hence my insistence of originating my dialogue in script format. With all the prose out of the way, I can focus on the meat of the story and then work the prose in later.
   
   But when many dialogue scenes have them, the tangents can become predictable and kill the mood. In the span of a few chapters, I came up with three scenes containing with tangents, one of them with two found here. The last one (supposed to foreshadow Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep? in season five) doesn’t add to the story or the scene itself. It’d work just as well, if not better, without it.
   
   In short, be more careful not to go off-track too often.
7. Pre-plan my worldbuilding. As I developed my second draft, I also had to begin focusing on creating the piece of lore in order to tie it together. Remember, this isn’t the only chapter in the D’EQ-verse. Rewrites for RR, the Holiday Special, FG, and LoE will also be a part of the story, and I may add in the three 20-minute specials. In order for everything to even make sense, my background must be pre-planned.

   That’s the problem. I didn’t pre-plan it very well, and the more I wrote down my lore, the more complicated it became. When you have to plan your lore, you risk creating plot holes that you must solve. With there being four TV movies, some comics, short stories, and three TV specials, having lore and a timeline be constructed on-the-fly may do more harm than good for my rewrite.
   
   One goal I want to be consistent: No Pedestrian can become bearers of Equestrian magic or trigger Equestrian magic of any kind without a plausible reason.
   
   So, ideas to fix this problem:

   1. Write my chapters as bulleted points. Get what I needed in my chapter to go from Point A to B.

   2. Write a timeline of events. Lore’s very important in my EQG1 fixfic, and it’ll be doubly so for my RR idea. Later on, Equestrian lore become less central to the story. The timeline of events will also give me a guide to come back to in case I forget about my worldbuilding concepts and logic.

Spending months and hours on draft #2 was a blessing. It helped me put my ideas down and in public. It allowed me to look at what succeeded, what failed, and how to hopefully correct them.

This’ll be a big job, but I feel I’m up to the task.