Dear Princess Celestia,

This last month has really opened my eyes to potential; and I’m talking on multiple levels. I’ve come to realize that Everypony has the potential to become the stuff of their dreams, and with a little patience and practice, anything can be achievable. As living proof of this proclamation, we have Mozart. He dusted up wonderfully after being rigorously taught by Pinkie, Vinyl, and Octavia… to tell you the truth; I thought any attempts to turn Mozart’s musical life around would be in vain, so I was deeply pleased with the outcome.

But I also think I should mention that I learned about a different potential. That is, the potential to do great harm or great good. The six of us had acted irrationally, thinking that we could solve our problems only through violence. How wrong were we! I think I know why the elements never fired now. When a pony is in need, try talking it out first and attempting to help… you never know what could come out of a little generosity!

Your faithful student,
Twilight Sparkle

Before I get into the meat of this, I’d like to mention something real quick.
One might have noticed the quicker pace that my story implied... this was intentional.
I formatted the story as though it would be converted into an actual MLP episode, and therefore had to structure the story so that it could fit into a twenty-five minuet long span. I do have plans… but momentarily they are only speculations, so I’m not going to express them.

I’d love to know in the comment section if the pace of the story was too fast!
Anywho…

Bear with me as I drop an analogy.

For those of you that have been in a theatrical production, you’ll know how much goes on in the background to make the play successful. You have your Grip, your Tech crew, your Stage Managers and Prompters and Ringers and… well, you get the point. However, all the audience sees is the actors onstage.

This is just like story writing. The readers only see the polished results, and never really get to know all the effort put in behind the scenes to make it possible in the first place!

I’d like to expose my own background to whoever has taken the time to read this section.
The idea for Tune-Your-Tone developed and changed drastically throughout the whole process of development. Initially, I had an idea of some cool, extremist ruled, alternate reality Manehatten, where Vinyl and Octavia were featured as the main characters. They find a way to harness musical sound waves and transfer them into physical power.

I remember sitting on the city bus with a friend, bouncing ideas off of him to get feedback. Between the two of us, we came up with a believable theory behind the whole sound wave-to-energy deal. But I digress…

It was when I tried to find a main antagonist that my idea took a turn and began traveling down a completely new path. The name Offchord came to my mind, and that reminded me of Discord, and that reminded me of the MLP episode. Sparked by that notion, a fresh idea came to me and I pulled out my notebook and scribbled down the soft outline.

I was at a relative’s house at the time, and it’d been the morning after I came up with the soft outline. The rising sun had woke me up at 6 in the morning, and this damn TV my uncle fell asleep watching kept me up till 3 the night before. Unable to fall asleep and running on 3 hours of ZZZZ, I looked back at my soft outline and started to write a more in-depth version.
This took me about three days.

When I began to write the rough copy some of my concepts changed… ultimately leading to a more refined version of what I’d initially thought. For an example, Offchords name changed to Zartmo (Mozart all scrambled) and then finally, Mozart after a friends gave some good advice. I also cut down some of the extra plot I didn’t think was needed (One where Vinyl and Octavia had some time to shine)

Things were looking good, and I spent a week and some being antisocial and writing the whole thing out.
My final copy had three drafts before it, because each time I vigorously re-read (Guided by the Editors Omnibus), I picked out new errors. However, now that I’m done, that extra 2-3 hour session of self editing has paid off!
I suppose that concludes it!

The rest is history, and when that history occurs… I shall add it below!

(Edit)

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