Warning! DO NOT READ unless you have either finished reading “The Empty Room” or you have no intention whatsoever in reading it at all (which makes me wonder why you’re here) not only do these notes contain spoilers for EVERYTHING, it will also make more sense if you have read the story.

Whenever I write a story, I usually also write a “process of writing” side-document with it. Some are pretty in-depth, like the one for Myst and Leaves, or Magic Knight Pokemon, and some are not. I don’t know how long or in-depth this one will be, but I will keep writing it as the story goes, then come back and re-edit. I warn you, dear reader, this is by no means going to be very organized...

While I could go for a more formal style, since this is a candid written account of my thoughts I don't think it will be necessary to follow the academic format. Besides, who wants to read that? I don’t. And even if somepony did, I don't want to write it. So, there!

If you take a look at the picture above, you might notice that point #6 says “Chapter 1 of 6.”

And this is how we begin.

THE PLANS

On June 15th, 2011, I found myself finishing writing the first chapter of what I thought would be a six-part story. How wrong I was.

My first hint should have been the scope of what I was trying to achieve. Just about EVERYTHING in the story had already been planned, except for a couple of details which I will mention below.

So, what were my intentions with the story and what was the original plan?

Well, I was trying to tell the story of a mother and child that were separated for years and had unknowingly been close to each other, already seeing underneath it all, the strong bonds they had together. (I have issues with adoption, okay? Even if I’ve been over it for a loooooong time, it keeps popping up in my freaking stories... I should talk to a counselor about this.)

And I wanted to show that Celestia had been thinking about her sister when she named her daughter “Twilight” thinking of her as the bridge between Day and Night.

By the end of it, Celestia would have her daughter back, Twilight would be her “true” self and they would be able to live together with Luna and the others as a family.

The story was planned out in my mind as follows:

* Luna finds a mysterious room right next to Celestia’s chambers.
* It turns out that it belongs to Celestia’s daughter, but nopony can remember who she was or even that she existed at all.
Twilight Sparkle is Celestia’s daughter.
* Celestia herself cast the spell on the room with the aid of her mages to protect twilight from her enemies, hiding the memories in a secret room/vault under the castle.
* Celestia’s enemy is The Guardian, an entity that feeds of the pain and fear the existence of Nightmares causes.
* Trixie awakens the guardian and gets eaten, but she is somehow tied to the spell in the vault, so she becomes an intangible ghost.
* Trixie travels to Canterlot in search of answers, drawn there by the spell.
* Celestia gets the help of Twilight and friends to find out what happened, but the Guardian’s followers attack and kill Twilight.
* Celestia becomes a Nightmare between the pain of Twi’s death and influence from the Guardian who talks to her through mirrors.Celestia resurrects Twilight, but she is corrupted. She used twisted memories of reports and her own experiences with her daughter to bring an incomplete version back.
* Twilight gets resurrected along with Trixie by the memory spell.
* Together, with the help of Luna and the Elements, they confront Celestia and evil Twilight, releasing her from the Nightmare.
* The Guardian reveals himself, a battle ensues in which not everypony survives... but in the end, the good guys win, even if it was with a heavy cost.

As you can see, the story was waaay beyond 6 chapters even without thinking about characterization, conflict, aesthetic, sub-plots, twists, hints, references and new characters.

The sad thing is that I should have noticed that from the get go... Chapter 1 is not exactly light, and I’ve written enough stories to recognize a long one from a short one. I should have known that it was going to take more than 6 chapters to tell it...

And yes, even more than ten. Poor Seth, I kept sending him stuff like this.

By the time I had sent chapter 2 I had already realized that I had to re-think my story. There was so much to tell and I had already opened the proverbial can of worms. The protagonists were beyond a simple, straight-forward resolution, because the story called for more.

Thus I sat down and thought about where the story was going.

Again, I didn’t want to change the main plot... that was the story I wanted to tell, but I had discovered that I would need to do more to tell it than anticipated. And so, I laid back and told myself the story as I saw it.

In that moment, while my mind followed the story, several things became clear. I needed to cement the Guardian’s agents in it. I had to add conflict, figure out how Twilight would die, who would kill her, how many enemies would come into the story...

The Guardian

Guardian is a creature/villain following the precept that the less you know about it (other than it corrupts and its powerful) the better. It remains behind the scenes, and yet you can sense its presence all along the story, but for most of it you really don't get to see him/it... you just meet his emissaries, sort of like Morden and the Shadows in B5.

This allows you to do a lot with this sort of villain because, being behind the scenes and knowing much more than the reader, his influence and apparent knowledge is increased tenfold by little details at the right time.

This is a technique used in Code Geass by Lelouch at the very beginning of the series.

The Council of Nightmares

...was born right then and there, including the back-story about the medallions, as I reasoned how they would add members to their group. How they would be hidden and betray those they loved. And with that, Midnight (Twilight Sparkle’s adoptive father) and Spitfire came to the forefront.

These two would be good antagonists. I could play a bit with the fandom’s support for a Spitfire-Rainbow Dash relationship and really mess up Twilight by having her own father attack her, lowering her defences and kill her.

Yes, it sounds evil and I felt like a bastard for doing it, but it worked.

Then the logical conclusion that Nightmare-Celestia would not be driven by the same boring idea of keeping the sun up all the time. Luna had wanted appreciation and recognition and love when she had gone Nightmare... but Celestia’s interests were not the same. Celestia was turning Nightmare out of a desire to keep her family protected, and that included Luna and Twilight.

Thus the idea of Twilight Spark evolved. There were several key elements to this character.

Concept art by the awesome Crimson Valor, who made my day when he drew this!
First: She was childish. The reason behind this being that she was based on Celestia’s fondest memories of Twilight, which were her younger years. This also made her cruel and unable to understand how much she was hurting others.

Second: She was powerful. For obvious reasons.

Third: She had a crush on Applejack due to Celestia misreading a Friendship Report. The evil twist made this “crush” an obsession to the point of harassment, but, despite a lot of ponies out there thinking it, not rape.

Fourth: She would only have the memories that Celestia knew about, causing some memory lapses and a bit of confusion.

Twilight Spark gained a lot of popularity to my surprise (and secret delight) and her interactions with Applejack were both funny and disturbing, making it very interesting to write. This could have deviated into clop-fiction at any point, but I managed to stay with the story.

So, how to get Luna in on it? Well, Nightmare Flare knew that her sister would not go along with this unless she did something drastic, like returning the Nightmare to life then giving her the same amount of control over the celestial bodies.

The reasoning behind this is that NMF’s objective was to her family, no more, no less. She had no interest in the celestial bodies themselves, so, giving Nightmare Moon something like that was not much of a problem.

However, Luna had already been there, she would not fall as easily and so, the little remnants of the Elements helped her remain mostly herself. The Nightmare affected and changed her, but she did not overwhelm Luna as she had before, the Elements allowed her to become a true amalgam of both ponies.

At this point I was debating what to do with Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Rarity. Since Celestia would see them as a danger, she would not allow the Elements to survive.

But I had plans for Rarity already. My mind had thought upon a certain comic by Exploding Guy I had seen before of Rarity using her magic to shoot arrows... I deviated from The Empty Room to give some thought to that... I love Rarity, so I wanted her to have a cool, active part in the story that when it was revealed would create a reaction.

Thus, with that image in mind, I thought up Jade. Rarity the Assassin’s background is a story that I have yet to write, but I know how and why she got to be that and it allowed me to use her in The Empty Room.

I wondered how she would use a dagger and as I thought about assassins I started thinking about Azrael, from the Batman comic books, and I remembered that he had these cool blades that would pop out of his armbands, and gave her those (sans the flames), thinking how clever I was and how cool assassin-ponies were and how Jade was the only one so far! Mwahahaha.
(Then, on a fateful 16th of July, literally month to the day after TER was published in EqD, Brotherhood of the Moon came out showing me that yes, it was indeed cool and that there were a lot of stories with pony assassins to be told. Plus... Rainbow Dash assassin? Awesome!)

As her background was created, Jade took a step into the front-line. Nightmare Moon would acquire her loyalty, first by manipulating her devotion to her friends and her need to distance her assassin persona from Rarity the Fashionista, and then by slowly proving that she actually had everypony’s best interests at heart.

It was interesting to see how as readers slowly realized Jade was Rarity, her popularity grew and also their respect for her.

Before, she was (supposedly) just an OC (Which was accused of skirting on being Mary Sue Really? I mean, for the most part she did... well, nothing!) but once it became mostly clear she was one of the mane cast, that turned into complaints on how it wasn’t possible and demands for explanations... never mind that since she was keeping the secret from just about everypony, those explanations would not be forthcoming.

Seriously, you don’t have to explain the origin of Every. Single. Thing. in a story!

Regardless, I always thought it was blatantly obvious who she was after Sweetie Belle defended this mysterious mare. Then again, I knew all along so...

Nightmare Moon herself was a challenge to settle into a single entity. I imagined Luna as being playful at times but secretive about her thoughts as well as slightly resentful that she was still feared because of Nightmare Moon. I wanted her to be the Nightmare but have the others see that she was not a monster... (And on a fateful 18th of July Past Sins came up dealing with *almost* the exact same thing, go figure. At least by then I had established my NMM and Pen Stroke’s approach was completely different than mine. And I am really thankful that Dragryphon’s NMM is also completely different than mine given how scarily similar some ideas we had were!)

She’s all-seriousness when we meet her, but as her restraints were removed by her change, she was able to let go a bit and let her humor surface. Luna was (ironically) also able to start relating to other ponies while in this guise, but she also another plan...

My portrayal of this mare would get several interesting comments, including:

“I swear, NMM shows all the concern/emotion of an exasperated supervisor sometimes.” ~UnderstatedHyperbole (While editing)

With NMM, the Guardian, The Council, NMF and Jade established, I went into full sub-plot mode.

Trixie’s story became more involved. I could not simply have her turn up in Canterlot, thus I turned her trip into a journey of self-discovery, and my conduit to achieve that was... you guessed it: Big Macintosh.

What I did not expect was the Trixie-Big Mac (Trimac? Trixmac? MacTrix? Matrix? Trixmax? Macxie?) relationship that flourished out of it. It was a welcome surprise, to be honest. The process of those two communicating and delving into Trixie’s mind helped me really get to know her and actually like her, I started reading more Trixie fics due to that and enjoyed more stories than I would otherwise have read.

Although The Empty Room itself wasn’t intended as a shipping fic, the way those two got together was through a life of its own and I was there to just put words to it.

Would it have ever happened without Trixie dying? Probably not. However, as I pondered the idea of Trixie’s personality, trip, romance and eventual resuscitation, I discovered her family. A stern (but loving) father, a caring mother and most importantly, the little sister she never knew.

While I didn’t know how that would turn out, the idea was already embedded in my head. The result was better than I expected.

The rebels was another thing that popped up in my musings, creating a slightly more complicated plot since it became 3 groups acting instead of two; The Nightmares, The Council/Guardian and The Rebel Alliance.

The Rebel Alliance got a lot of comments about suspension of disbelief... to you, who claims that it was too much I remind you... the original story had a comedy tag, and although I asked Seth to remove it because it was not as strong as the Grimdark, I always intended to write this story with little comedic snippets.

Lyra was a character I wanted to use for a while, I just didn’t have a story exclusively for her, although I had thought about her life being what I described in my story... kinda sad, made better by her leaving Canterlot and meeting/living with Bon-Bon.

She was a tragic pony from the beginning. I knew she was going to die playing Mime’s theme. It was just too perfect.

(Why, you ask? Well... Saint Seiya, I’m not afraid to admit, has got more manly tears out of me than any other anime/movie/TV series/song/anything; from the battle between Seiya and Shiryu, to the Crystal Saint, to just about EVERYONE in Sanctuary, the awesomeness that was the Asgard Saga and all of Hades: Sanctuary, especially Shaka Virgo’s death which was amazing beyond description.)

If I could make use of the amazing music and reference to give more punch to Lyra’s last moments, I would use it! And Mime’s tragic story lent itself to this. I was fortunate enough to have heard WhiteveilHarp’s rendition of Mime’s Harp (Although it’s really a Lyre) and immediately thought of her as the reference material.

I loved working with Lyra, which was a surprise, since I had absolutely no idea what type of pony she would be in my story. I failed her, I think, when I didn’t explore her more. I based her personality off of my own impressions from the show and what fics I had read where I liked her portrayal, but my duty should have been to really bring her best and worst out more, especially because of how important she became to the story.

I didn’t enjoy killing Bon-Bon, but it had to be done to bring out a more dark and resolute Lyra. There has been some debate as to whether it should have happened and on whether somepony would have saved her from her fate. I don’t think so, and let me explain why:

First, if we go by the belief that pony lives are pretty much as happy-go-lucky as they are in the show, the thought of betraying somepony and that resulting in an execution is something so alien and horrifying that Bon-Bon would not be ready, psychologically or even socially, to confront. The guild would drive her crazy, and without understanding of how to deal properly with such harsh emotions, well... letting go of everything seems like the most simple solution. We don’t have to be happy about it, and maybe she could have acted differently, but, well... she didn’t.

Now... about somepony saving her. Who? Let’s be completely and brutally honest. Who would save her? Who would be paying more than passing attention? Who would have the spontaneous reaction to jump after her or use magic when something so unthinkable happens? Have you ever had a gun pointed at your head? I have. At first, you’re not even afraid, your brain can’t process what is happening to the degree of performing appropriate action. It’s not until the gun is taken away and you’re not in danger that it actually hits you. If it has happened enough times, or you have special training, well then that’s another story.

But let’s say, for argument’s sake that all the ponies in Equestria somehow have the presence of mind to act immediately under normal circumstances. Well... these were not normal circumstances.

1) The sky was stuck in a permanent eclipse.
2) They had, not one, but TWO Nightmares running around.
3) Ponies had been murdered that morning.
4) All the mares of a certain age were being rounded up and taken to the castle.

So... who would be paying real attention to the goings of a distraught mare? Really? Enough to know what she was about to do? Enough to call the attention of somepony who could do something? No. Sorry, but no.

And then, there were Lyra’s parents... gods, her parents!

This is one of the moments where a more in-depth Lyra would have made the whole story better, not only because the readers would have connected even more to her, but the buildup would have improved the story considerably.

It was also one of the few times that Nightmare Moon completely used somepony knowing that their chances of survival would be minimal at best. It is the most cold-hearted decision she made in the entire fic, and something that haunts her in the Epilogue (and further).

REFERENCES

There were several references made through the story, here’s a list of them and what they were referencing.

Chapter 1:
* Celestia’s line when she starts crying without knowing the reason was slightly inspired by Mia’s reaction to Tsukasa giving her the “Aromatic Grass” in .Hack//Unison

Chapter 2:
*Mort, of course, I borrowed with permission from “Mort takes a Holiday” by Anonymous Materials.

Chapter 3:
* Spike was dreaming he was Boromir, from “The Lord of the Rings”. This was a recurring dream for a long time, as evidenced by the guards saying that the “ghost of a general” haunted the library.
* The unicorn foal, Six, was a reference to “The Sixth Sense”

Chapter 4:
* The whole chapter is written with the intention of making the reader think about Twilight, foreshadowing her death.Pinkie Pie is singing “In the Land of Twilight” by Yuki Kajiura from the series “.Hack”

Chapter 7:
* “Talking is a Free Action” is a reference to the D&D rule, as well as the TvTrope

Chapter 8:
* “Pavponian Conditioning” a poorly ponyfied version of Pavlovian Conditioning.

Chapter 13:
* I took the idea of hoof-language from the fanfic “Claro de Luna”And yes, the Rebel Alliance was a direct reference to Star Wars

Chapter 14:
* “it is better to live on your hooves than die on your knees. Which is what would have happened to you.” is an adaptation of a quote from the novel “Catch-22”

Chapter 17:
* The colt with the black speckled yellow bandanna is of course Ryoga Hibiki, who got lost again and ended up ponyfied in Equestria. We all knew it was going to happen, that guy is worse than Sweetie Belle when it comes to dimensional hopping.
* Eldritch’s name is of course, completely intentional as to the character being a mage, and also as a slight nod to Lovecraft’s fondness of the word.

Chapter 18:
* “Solar-Flaring Orgasms of Celestia!” is one of Little Pip’s many awesome curses in the story “Fallout: Equestria”
* The melody that Lyra plays to break through Nightmare Moon’s defences and reach Celestia is “Mime’s Requiem”, from the Anime “Saint Seiya”; it was an attack which he used to strangle/cut his enemies.

Chapter 19:
* Slight reference to the idea of “Princess Molestia”: “W-what is it about Nightmare Flare and turning ponies into perverts?”
* Magic Missiles: Dungeons and Dragons!

Chapter 20:
* If you look hard enough you’ll see the link to “The Sweetie Chronicles: Fragments': Chapter 18. (I guess that's a spoiler, huh?)
* Gilda’s fight directly references “Lethal Weapon 2”
* I didn’t do a good job at describing the place, but the area where Jade and Co. land was inspired by “The Crossroads” from “The Cat Returns”

Chapter 21:
* Pinkie Pie’s arrival with Ponyville in tow was intended as a reference to Gandalf’s arrival at the battle at Helm’s Deep in how it was presented, as well as, in a small way, Mimi’s and Joe’s last minute arrival with a tag-along-army in the last episode of Digimon Adventure... however... balloon.
* Fluttershy channels Willow from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer”

The Epilogue

It was surprisingly easy to write, in a way. I knew exactly what needed to happen, what each strand and plot I had to bring to a close; what to leave vague and what needed complete closure.

I think, overall, it was a very good ending. Some might disagree, some others will want some questions answered more clearly, I guess. But, that’s the story, and like Twilight learned, we cannot always know everything with complete certainty.

It was certainly bittersweet to write and each word just made me feel more nostalgic and grateful for all that happened with this story. I hope, that you, reader, found it entertaining and even engaging.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
All stories have things that the writer believes he/she did well (regardless of what others might think), things that the writer thinks should have been better and finally, things that the writer realized were completely stupid to do.

In hindsight, this is what I believe is appropriate for each category:

The Good
(Or rather to me it will be “what worked”, the readers can make up their mind on what parts were actually good!)

* Overall TER has helped me leap into better writing. Yeah, it’s not my best story but damned if it wasn’t done with intensive care for the most part. Not to mention that it’s thanks to TER that I’ve gotten back into my writing habit at all, and thanks to TER that I’ve really made friends in the Brony Community.

* I think one of the few claims I can make with a some certainty is that I managed to really get most readers to strongly react to what I write. There were manly tears, cries of outrage, some hatred, some loving, and a lot of ‘what a twist!’ thrown in there. Regardless of the reaction it was one in relation to what I wrote.

* If anything, I think that I was successful also in crafting the endings to really make the readers want to read more. Since this story is updated anything from a few weeks to a couple of months, I feel that writing each chapter end as you would in a running series in a newspaper back in the 20s is the right approach. If you don’t leave your readers wanting more, why would they return?

* It also proved that Editors are a must.

* Twists work. They really do, especially if they are not really that random. If you look at the story, every twist has a reason behind it, from RD’s sudden “betrayal” to Trixie’s death/revival. Some, if not most could be predicted in some way, I think, but what made them work really well is that when I wrote each chapter, I allowed for the twist to happen at the end of it, therefore creating a cliffhanger and giving it more strength than if it had happened in the middle of the story...

The Bad

* Chapters 1 and 2: They need to be better. They are not by any means worthy of being called “Purple Prose” but they are, I think, needlessly obtuse. I could have worked them much better, but I also blame (in part) my original plans of making the story a 6 chapter deal, as I was cramming way too much into very short chapters.

* The summary: It can be a bit misleading, and although it captures the attention of the possible reader, it also doesn’t give much information that might help understand what you’re getting into. However, this is not entirely a bad thing as it probably piqued the interest of some readers that might not have otherwise taken a look!

The Ugly:

* Those damned Alicorns (Winter and Co.). Honestly, I should have found a better way to do Jade’s reveal, Gilda’s last moments and give NMM & Celly time to fight the Guardian. While Winter and Fall were relatively interesting, I had lost all inclination to write about Summer and Spring by the time I needed to.

Let’s face the truth of it, they were an ill-conceived plot device that turned around and shot me in the face. If/when I do a rewrite, I’m definitely removing them or changing their roles completely.

It’s one of those early concepts that I planned for a while, even putting the seed of them in Midnight’s narration of the Guardian’s involvement with the world for centuries, but when the time came, I didn’t have the presence of mind to ditch it. It would have worked too, we had the information that the Guardian had messed up some Alicorns before, and they had been all but forgotten, it was a bit of background world-building that should have stayed as such.

I guess I also allowed myself to be influenced by the cliched “One more boss before the final battle.”

The only thing I achieved was dragging things longer than they had to and making myself really not want to write TER for a while. So yeah, the last few delays? *Points hoof at Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall.*

INFLUENCES

So, what influences did I have that really affected how TER was written? Some of them were from before I even dreamt about writing it, and some directly affected my story as I wrote it. I don’t remember all the influences I had for this, but, off the top of my mind...

1: My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic: It’s almost needless to mention. Where would this story be without this wonderful series? Nowhere, that’s where. This series, who we all love is full of so many details and character development that is fertile ground for fanfics to be born.

2: Babylon 5 - Yes, I always bring it up, ALWAYS I mean, I can talk about other stuff, but B5 is always present as an influence in just about everything I write, for better or worse. Why? Well, so many things! Characters, plot, secrets, JMS coined the term WHAM Episode... the scale!

The freaking scale of the story!

I will always think of B5 as one of the best pieces of storytelling out on TV.

It might look/feel a bit dated now if you’ve never watched it, but hell, it was the very first TV show to have CGI as a constant part of the series, it won so many awards, changed how shows on tv would be forever more... let me put it this way for those of you that doubt me:

Yes, while it is unlikely that B5 would exist without Star Trek, shows like Firefly, ST: DS9*, Lost, Heroes, Andromeda, Walking Dead and many others would definitely *not* exist without B5 having paved the way.

*While it is a contended piece of discussion, it has pretty much been established by the cast of DS9 that they all know B5 was the original idea. I am not putting down DS9; I loved it! I am just saying, without B5, it wouldn’t exist.

3: Fan Fiction: “Well, duh!” you might say. But, I might as well list it. Yes, fan fiction was an influence into writing this. There were a lot of works out there that got me thinking I could write a FIM story. I have already mentioned Sunset, but I should also mention Fo:E when it comes to Pony fics... I hadn’t read it when I started, I think I got to chapter 10 before I sat down and started reading it, but man, Kkat’s story was a pleasure to read and inspired me to write, even if it didn’t directly affect the story save for a couple of quotes... honestly, I read so many of them that I forget what was first and what wasn’t ^_^

Solar Flare/What Could have Been/Deep Dark: Dragryphon and I had chatted from time to time in both her story and mine on the google chat thingy. But it wasn’t until we started pre-reading for each other that we actually discussed what the hell was planned for each of our stories.

Oh, my. We had very, very similar ideas and were going to pull them off in very, very different ways. To be honest, working on Deep Dark really got me thinking and ultimately affected TER.

While there was nothing wrong with some important factors being similar, I realized that certain elements were not working correctly and could/should be changed, without really affecting the final outcome. Details, such as the nature of the Guardian... while my original idea was pretty much the same as Dragryphon’s, I soon realized that my villain was really not up to the task. Especially given my claims as to its nature, vs the actual capacity to perform tasks related to said nature.

And so, I changed who the Guardian was, for the better, I think. It makes more sense than what I had originally intended him to be, so, thanks Dragryphon! XD

4: My Editors and Pre-readers:

Stephen Cawking started helping me from roughly February 2011 NotAGoodUsername360 and Understated_Hyperbole joined in August, while Magical Trevor and Orpheus did on September 2011. Fifth Alicorn and Dragryphon joined the crew in October and well, the rest is history.

I cannot imagine writing a long story without these guys. I really owe them a lot, from how much I’ve improved (they all have their unique ways of chewing me out for something) to how better the story is told... I keep thanking them, but I don’t feel like I have done so enough.

Thanks guys.

IN CONCLUSION

These are my ramblings and thoughts about the whole thing.

I briefly considered writing a small section counter-arguing some criticisms, but well... everypony is entitled to their opinion, right?

True, some comments were hurtful, but the majority were positive, and even out of those “bad” comments I’ve learned a few things. (One of which is that TER needs an overhaul.)

Although I would like to point out to those that think I just grabbed a list of popular characters and threw them in for my convenience, that it’s not true. They all had a role to perform. :P So, there.

Anyway, I hope you had a mildly amusing time reading these notes, and thank you all for reading “The Empty Room”!

~WD