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Chengar Qordath

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Everything posted by Chengar Qordath

  1. Chengar Qordath
    And when it comes to writing, never let the perfect become the enemy of the good. If you decide to not put down a single word until it's absolutely 100% perfect in every way, you're gonna spend a long, long time writing anything. It's usually better to just write something that's good enough, then go back over it later to fix any issues. Don't over-plan your stories, or else all you'll ever have is a bunch of plans, but no actual stories. And yeah, looks like that's a wrap. Thanks for all the questions, everyone.
  2. Chengar Qordath
    It wasn't a very good episode. Comma and Poni also brought up a couple other episodes that are on my bad list, alongside this season's "Princess Spike."
  3. Chengar Qordath
    I don't think I have a favorite season, since seasons are a mixed bag of 26 episodes. I mean, Season 2 has several of my favorite episodes (the premiere and finale, plus Hurricane Fluttershy) but also two very strong contenders for the worst episode of MLP:FiM. If I had to pick one, I'd say Season One. Though that's probably just nostalgia speaking.
  4. Chengar Qordath
    Nimbus probably isn't quite as much of a closed-off nag as Cloud thinks, either. After all, a lot of what we see of their relationship is after the falling out, when Cloud is very bitter. I think a lot of the problems ultimately stemmed from Nimbus not being prone to showing overt affection plus being "Tiger Mom" trying to constantly push Cloud to be the best she could. She saw it as pushing her daughter to success, while Cloud saw it as being unpleasable. Every time Nimbus tried to push her to do better, Cloud just heard "You're not good enough." And once things hit a certain point of bitterness between them, it got way too easy for one of them to get angry with the other about things that really shouldn't have mattered in the grand scheme of things. I do think she learned from her mistakes with Cloud, and was probably doing a better job with Alula. The problem was that by the time she realized her mistakes, Cloud was out of West Hoof and things got bad enough that reconciling would be difficult. And then she died before she got a chance to do so. Yeah, the simplest scene to write is two characters sitting down and talking to each other.
  5. Chengar Qordath
    No surprise, it's the same authors I listed in my "writers I really like" question. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
  6. Chengar Qordath
    Well, technically the second chapter of New Life of a Winning Pony mentioned Twilight discovering the portal to something implied to be the Equestria Girls dimension. Of course, then she smashed said portal and both she and Storm agreed to never speak of it again. I'm not too inclined to work the world of Equestria Girls into the Winningverse, mostly because connecting the two has generally been a clumsy and messy process even for canon. Plus it would mean Sunset would need to stop having her Venture stories in order to go be generic high school bully. Which just seems like a waste of way too many fun story possibilities.
  7. Chengar Qordath
    I've definitely gotten a good number of reviews on my longer stories where people mentioned that they didn't want to read them until I'd finished.
  8. Chengar Qordath
    I'll often do the same thing of "I will add at least one page to my story today." Sometimes I'll just barely get that done, and sometimes I'll get some momentum going and crank out several thousand words.
  9. Chengar Qordath
    I am looking forward making use of that character in the Venture stories. One advantage of having a series set a good decade+ before the show's canon is that I can play with a character we killed off canonically.
  10. Chengar Qordath
    I'd say the key is to always keep your own fallibility in mind and stay open to constructive criticism. I will always write the story I believe in, but that doesn't mean I can't be persuaded to believe in something else. If I see a comment pointing out a legitimate problem/weakness in the story, I'll work to fix it.
  11. Chengar Qordath
    Personally, I'd rather take a chance with a story and have it fail than feel like I always have to play it safe... And now I'm tempted to go find a YouTube clip of that awesome speech by Q in "Tapestry" In fact, I think I will: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeLrqLP1DJk
  12. Chengar Qordath
    Generally, the line with creative formatting is that it shouldn't become a hindrance to reading the story. If my eyes water every time I see the glaring yellow font someone put all of Fluttershy's lines in or I can't follow the dialogue because it's so chopped up, I'm not going to keep reading.
  13. Chengar Qordath
    I do like that song. And Gurren Lagann for that matter. Blossom and Cloud they started off as the classic "The Crazy One and the Straight Man" duo. Cloud was there to be zany and lovable, while Blossom was the more grounded and serious one who suffered through her antics. Derpy was pretty close to her usual fandom (and now canon) portrayal as a lovable clumsy goofball. From there, a lot of their characters just kind of grew organically as the story progressed. Once I started filling out background information like "Who were their parents" and "Where did they go to school" a lot of other things started taking shape, which helped really flesh them out. Cloud being from a big family with a massive legacy formed a big part of her character, after all.
  14. Chengar Qordath
    By starting a new chapter. It gives a nice, clean break.
  15. Chengar Qordath
    Write the story you want to write, and let people judge it how they will. If you're not having fun writing it and don't believe in the story you're creating, then you're a lot more likely to burn out and have the quality plummet as a result. Even if you manage to keep up the quality and hold the fandom's interest, you'll probably end up as one of those writers who ends up hating their story and characters, and wishing they had the guts to just kill off the entire main cast and close it all out.
  16. Chengar Qordath
    Sometimes you do need to just take a day off. A big part of why I always try to have an unedited chapter or two in reserve is so I'll have that buffer for if I hit a slump, get sick, have RL stuff, or anything else that would keep me from writing for a while. That said, often the solution is to just sit down and make yourself write. In my experience, writing is all about momentum. The hardest part of any story is when you're sitting there staring at a blank page and trying to figure out how to start it. Usually the further I get into a chapter/story, the easier the words come.
  17. Chengar Qordath
    Trinary is an awful writer, and you shouldn't read anything he writes. Ever. Not even the guest chapter he did for Tales. Or all the awesome stories he wrote that I helped him with.
  18. Chengar Qordath
    To an extent, yes. The fact that I use first person PoV probably contributes to that.
  19. Chengar Qordath
    I get a fair amount of mail. Usually a couple pieces a day. It can range from fanmail to people wanting me to write stories for them to a few things I forwarded to the FimFic mods. Generally, I'll take a few days after getting an idea to mull it over, hammer down the details, and bounce it off a couple people to see if they can add anything to it. Though sometimes I do just immediately start cranking out words within minutes of getting the idea. As already mentioned, Jim Butcher is on my favorite authors list. I'd also mention RA Salvatore, Dan Abnett, and George RR Martin. Classical and classic rock. Mixing Aerosmith and opera on the same playlist makes for a fun experience.
  20. Chengar Qordath
    With a crossover, the trickest part is probably balancing it out and making it approachable. A crossover should be approachable for people who don't know about what you're crossing over with; otherwise you end up with a story that only appeals to people who are fans of everything you're crossing over with. I like to think I did a good job with that in My Little Denarians since so many people told me they'd never read The Dresden Files/watches MLP before reading my story, and the story convinced them to try out canon. Fittingly, I was actually introduced to the Dresden Files by a Dresden Files/Harry Potter crossover. The best types of crossovers are ones that blend the two universes together reasonably well so that they compliment each other. If you're gonna use material from two fandoms, make sure it all works together instead of conflicting with itself.
  21. Chengar Qordath
    Hmm. I really liked Ponibius's Haunted Mailbox and I also quite enjoy Midnight's Shadow. With Comma, it's hard to beat the gut-wrenchingness of "From the Mouths of Fillies."
  22. Chengar Qordath
    Not counting the ships I've already written? Hmm. I've always been a bit tempted by RariDash. It's underexplored, since RariJack takes up a lot of the same conceptual space (The Tomboy and the Girly Girl). Also, Sunbeam/Celestia could be fun to explore, since on account of Sunbeam's massively complicated love/hate feelings towards her monarch, and Celestia's struggle to make her a better pony.
  23. Chengar Qordath
    Unspaced em-dash. Who doesn't love—as a dash?
  24. Chengar Qordath
    Lunar Rebellion or Freeport Venture, probably.
  25. Chengar Qordath
    There's no quick and simple answer to this. The best answer I can think of is to come up with a good premise, then execute the story itself well. And honestly, it's more about the execution than the premise. I'm reminded of a fun story about one of my favorite writers, Jim Butcher. He was in a debate with another writer about whether the idea or the execution mattered more. Butcher believed it was all about execution, the other guy believed some ideas just couldn't work no matter how well the story was told. Eventually, Butcher claimed that good enough execution could make any idea work, no matter how bad it sounded. The other guy responded by saying that nobody could make a good story out of "Romans with Pokemon versus Zerg." Butcher accepted the challenge. It's a six book series called Codex Alera, and it is awesome. Anyway, my point is, making a good story is all tying everything together. Plot. Characters. Actions. Get the reader to care about your characters, whether it's enjoying Cloud's antics (or sharing in her misery and fears), wanting to see if Shadow can stay true to her principles in a civil war, or trying to figure out if you hate or love Sunbeam Sparkle.
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