I Dream of Luna - Story Notes [SPOILERS]

I Dream of Luna - Story Notes

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[ WARNING: Contains Spoilers ]

 

Several of you have said that you were inspired to try writing because of this story.

I put together this document to give you some insight into how I approached each chapter and the story as a whole.

I have no idea if this'll help you as I'm a complete amateur myself, but who knows?

 

Chapter 1

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The idea for this came after watching Sleepless in Ponyville. In this episode Luna is shown to have the ability to "dreamwalk" and influence other ponies' dreams.

I thought this was a cool concept and being a fan of lurking Flutterrape I figured having her stalk Anon through his dreams could be funny.

This was only supposed to be a one shot so no further planning went into it.

 

Chapter 2

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People wanted more and I had some free time. I still wasn't sure if I was going to continue the story past this chapter.

The entire chapter was built around the premise of Fluttershy interrupting a tender moment between Anon and Luna.

I figured letting Anon fall for Luna and playing Fluttershy as a constant background antagonist opened up more story possibilities than having him avoid them both.

I also figured that since we don't know much about Luna she could be played as very mysterious, and still possibly have ulterior motives.

At this point I also established some ground rules for this and all future chapters:

 

 1) Every chapter must have Luna.

 2) Every chapter must have Fluttershy.

 3) Every chapter must involve a dream.

 4) Every chapter must be 5000 words or less. (Ha!)

 

Luna gets Anon into her dream in this chapter by having a special powder delivered to him. You'll see as things progress I had to get more and more creative when it came to actually getting the characters to sleep! It became a bit of a challenge as time went on.

 

Applejack's sudden appearance at the end was a surprise even to me. I needed some way to get Anon out of there by waking up so he wouldn't be raped, but then figured him escaping the dream only to be raped in the real world would be a funnier ending. Gotta love that >rape

 

Chapter 3

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At this point I knew this would be a series and established several goals for it.

 

 1) I wanted to try writing each of the Mane Six. Having never written for any of these characters before I saw it as a challenge to see if I could use them properly.

 2) I wanted to really play up the dream concept to do some crazy stuff.

 3) Each chapter should be self-contained, having an established beginning, middle and end while still providing material that could lead into story ideas for other chapters. I called this the "no cliffhanger" rule.

 4) I didn't want to plan future chapters in advance. In order to write a future chapter I'd have to pull something from earlier in the story as a base concept and go from there.

 

In this chapter I got to play with Pinkie (very fun to write in small doses) and a little bit of Rainbow and AJ.

I also got to throw around some crazy dream stuff with the office setting since this was Anon's dream. I figured Pinkie wouldn't really give a crap about weird human technology or even meeting other humans in the dream because she's Pinkie. I think throwing any of the other characters into this type of setting would be more difficult because they'd really get distracted by it, especially Twilight Spergle and Rarara.

 

Another interesting concept came up during this chapter. Even though this story is about Luna you'll find she's not actually around all that much but is still the driving force of the plot. She only shows up for like 2 seconds at the end of this one, but I feel that Mysterious Luna is Best Luna.

 

Chapter 4

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The basic concept for this one was that I wanted to write a Rarity focused chapter.

She's not particularly my favorite character so I really wanted to challenge myself here.

This is the first chapter of the story that I really, really liked.

I was very happy with how both Luna and Fluttershy were used here. Fluttershy is extremely cute in the opening with Derpy and I thought the monster Fluttershy concepts made a hilarious mental image.

We also got to see more of Luna's playful side. Prior to writing this I actually sat down and rewatched Luna Eclipsed to see how she behaved. Luna wasn't really one of my favorite characters prior to starting this but after rewatching her appearances in the show I understood why people love her. In addition to having an interesting backstory she's cute as hell in that episode.

This chapter also shows us a bit about Anon's character. While he's not as strong as the ponies he's very clever and resourceful. That's a very fun type of character to write IMO.

And, believe it or not, just like Anon I came out of this chapter liking Rarity a lot more than I did going in. Weird how that works.

 

Chapter 5

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This is the chapter that really kicked things into high gear for me. I had so much fucking fun doing this I couldn't believe it.

The goal was simple: I wanted to write a chapter with ALL of the Mane Six + Luna involved in it. I knew it would be set at the party referenced earlier but had no idea where things would go from there.

You'll see at the very beginning I gave Anon a list of equipment that he takes with him to the party. This list was set in stone once it was written - he wouldn't be given anything else nor would it be changed.

So basically I threw him into that situation with that stuff Castaway style and said "Okay, how will you survive?"

I decided to throw Luna into the chapter very early to up the stakes and that ended up working wonders because she then became the catalyst for the "Trial of Twos" dream game.

And holy shit was that game fun to write.

Pairing Anon with Rainbow was done because I wanted to try writing her and this seemed to be a great opportunity for it. Again, she wasn't my favorite going into this, but then she started falling for Anon and it was incredibly cute. I swear this was completely unintended but I ran with it.

I also got to pair the other characters for this. Once you write Applejack and Rarity together you instantly understand why the show pairs them so much. Their character chemistry is fantastic.

Twilight and Pinkie are also incredibly fun together. There's a definite parallel to Pinky and the Brain with them.

At the end of the chapter Anon asks whether Luna did all of it on purpose to have him kiss Rainbow and she refuses to answer. At this point I didn't know what the answer was myself.

That's when I learned that as an author not planning things in advance, while risky, really lights a fire under you to keep writing because, more than anyone else, you want to find out what'll happen next!

 

Note that I permanently revised my "word limit" rule from 5000 to 7000 here.

I discovered that writing scenes involving a lot of action (or detailed clop scenes for that matter) takes a lot of words.

I eventually learned throughout the process that 8000 is like the absolute max you'll want to use for a chapter of a greentext story on 4chan.

 

Chapter 6

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After Twilight's comment near the end of the last chapter it was obvious that this next one would be Twilight focused. Rapey Twilight focused, that is. As potential rapists go she's my second favorite among the M6.

I decided to go crazy with this chapter and said to myself "Okay, I'll start it off with a meteor about to destroy Ponyville and go from there."

The challenge then became figuring out: 1) How did the meteor get there in the first place? and 2) How do they get rid of it?

This challenge forced me to be extremely creative with the plot. Some major elements were introduced just resolve this meteor thing:

 

 1) The Forbidden Tome

 2) Fluttershy's Knight Armor is real!

 3) Luna can possess Fluttershy through the armor when she sleeps.

 

There was a nice use of the story's dream concept here. Since Twilight fails to put them in a dream, the character who actually dreams in this chapter is Fluttershy as she summons Luna. I thought that was a nice twist.

 

Upon completing this chapter I knew exactly where I was going with the rest of the story, though I purposefully didn't plan some specific things about how I'd get there.

Again, I feel NOT planning everything in advance worked wonders for the story as you'll see later.

 

Chapter 7

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This chapter was planned and executed around two core things:

 

 1) The song on the train.

 2) Introducing the concept of 'Nightmares' which would lead the story into the grand finale.

 

First, the song. Oh my God, doing that was so fun I can't describe it. The idea came about because Anon would be taking a night train to Canterlot to see Luna, and who can think of a train running at midnight without thinking of Journey? I did a LOT of singing using a karaoke instrumental version of the song, both of the original and the parody lyrics, to make sure things sounded OK. Fortunately the audio was never recorded and will never see the light of day, but it was a blast!

The scene on the train also involved all of the Mane Six, this time with the added tension of RD/AJ/Flutters going after Anon. When you get all 6 of them together they can be a lot to handle but it really opens up story possibilities because you never know when a particular character is going to chime in.

Although I don't think it's explicitly stated anywhere, at this point Rarity was shipping Anon + Applejack, Pinkie was shipping Anon + Fluttershy and Twilight was completely clueless.

 

Now, what comes next is probably my favorite part of the entire story: the comedy fight scene with Anon, Luna and the M6 VS Nightmare Derpy.

Originally I intended that the "Nightmare" version of a pony would become an alicorn, but I quickly realized that:

 

 1) That's fucking stupid (Note: This was prior to the Twilicorn announcement shitstorm)

 2) It greatly limited creativity when working with the characters

 

So after scrapping that idea, I decided the Nightmares would all have special powers relating to their cutie marks taken to their logical extremes.

No one really knows what Derpy's bubbles are supposed to represent so I decided they were 'time spheres' and BOOM, Derpy is Dio Brando.

 

This fight scene was so amazingly fun to write, especially the part where she OHKO's Celestia (cause if anyone can do that, it'd be Derpy!). I think it struck the right balance of being completely silly and ridiculous while also being somewhat intense too.

 

The scene at the very end with Anon and Luna in bed was not originally planned but made the perfect ending. I realized that there wasn't a dream in the chapter yet and it suddenly came to me that this would be the perfect solution. It's implied in several other places that the majority of Anon and Luna's relationship development is taking place in dreams which seems oddly appropriate. And who wouldn't want to dance through the night sky with Moon Horse, anyway?

 

Chapter 8

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Applejack is my favorite pony. There, I said it.

So yeah, I was really looking forward to this one. Now that the final arc had been set up by Chapters 6 and 7 my basic plan was:

 

 - Chapter 08: Applejack Chapter

 - Chapter 09: Rainbow Dash Chapter

 - Chapter 10: Fluttershy Chapter + Grand Finale

 

So in this chapter we got to see our favorite applehorse being her stubborn self as she tries to ignore her gradual transformation into a Nightmare.

Most of the comedy was packed into the first act because the second half, once they entered the dream, quickly became serious.

 

Now I should probably mention that I never really decided on who the Four Nightmare Ponies were going to be. For the other chapters it was a completely spur of the moment selection.

But for this one I quickly realized I wanted it to be Applejack. She's definitely the kind of pony that would struggle with this sort of thing and not tell anyone.

Plus, since she's an EoH she can't be defeated using the normal method, so it made for some good tension.

 

I was really happy with how Applejack's confession to Anon came out, especially the kiss. When I posted Chapter 5 someone commented that they were conflicted on whether they wanted AJ or Luna to win and it made me happy because I was conflicted too. If anything, this chapter definitely established her as a real rival to Luna, especially since she outright tells Luna that if she isn't stopped she'll win Anon from her. While a lot of girls would try to do things like this behind their rival's backs, a simple and direct statement of the truth struck me as something our little Element of Honesty would do.

 

Chapter 9

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For this one I decided I wanted to switch things up and drop the reader right into the middle of the Nightmare fight at the start so the story could be more relaxed and focused on other stuff in the second half. I spent a while thinking of which pony to use and then someone posted a pic of 80's Cheerilee in some thread and I had my answer.

 

I listened to tons of Top 40 80's music, watched a few quintessential 80's movies, and did a bunch of reading up on 80's slang it to try and get it right, having not been a teen during that time myself.

 

I think this fight was probably the most creative in its setting, the abilities used by the characters, and its ultimate conclusion than any other fight in the story. I wanted to go absolutely crazy with it and it came out just like I hoped.

 

But believe it or not I had even more fun writing the poker game in this chapter than the Nightmare fight. Kind of like playing poker itself with your friends with money on the line, there was a definite tension there, especially since I didn't know who I was going to win until near the end of it.

 

Just like with Applejack's confession, I was really happy with how Rainbow's came out. At this point she had gone from like the bottom of my favorites list to near the top. The super outwardly confident tomboy character who secretly is really insecure about certain things and also has some really girly tendencies that she'd never want anyone to know is really fun to write for.

 

Also, this chapter had a subtle joke that I'd been wanting to use for the ENTIRE story so far.

If you haven't figured it out, the story title "I Dream of Luna" is a play on the TV sitcom "I Dream of Jeannie".

In this chapter, Luna tells Rainbow that "We are not a genie, Loyalty." when she's asked to grant a wish. But Jeannie, the female lead of said show, was actually a genie who granted wishes all the time.

I guess that would make Anon Major Nelson in this case.

 

Chapter 10

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This quickly got out of hand, in a good way, kind of. I definitely bit off more than I could chew here.

Since this chapter was the finale I decided to toss the word limit restriction out the window before I even started.

If you view the other chapters as "Episodes" (largely self contained stories with an overarching plot leading into one another), this one would be a two-parter or possibly a movie.

 

For the first time I sat down and planned the entire thing from start to finish before I started writing. I had a bullet list of 60+ plot points that needed to be addressed in the chapter to do the story justice and end things the way I wanted. I should've realized that these 60 short points would require a shitload of writing to implement.

 

To put it in perspective, chapters 1-9 are about 50,000 words total. Chapter 10 by itself is 25,000 words. Alone it makes up 1/3 of the entire story.

 

In this chapter I had to:

 

- Introduce and give background to a villain.

- Have the villain confront and defeat the main characters. (Establishes how powerful she is, the nature of her abilities and weaknesses, etc.)

- Have the main characters regroup and attack the villain in their own territory.

- Have the characters grow throughout their journey while facing an escalating series of threats / traps.

- Have a final showdown and satisfying defeat of the villain.

 

In ADDITION to:

 

- Showing Fluttershy's character growth and giving her a confession scene.

- Allowing the four principle characters (Anon, AJ, Flutters, RD) to bond with one another and strengthen their relationships so the herd concept would be plausible.

- Bring Luna in and give her a shitload of character development that she couldn't have before due to me wanting to keep the final boss (while still predictable) a secret.

- Throughout it all, keep it light and funny while still having a sense that the characters were in danger.

 

As I was writing and checking my word count from time to time while cross-referencing my bullet points (which were only SLOWLY getting checked off) I quickly realized I had a problem and would need to split the chapter in half. I was okay with this because there was a logical break in the action after the first NMM fight where a split made sense, but I didn't want to split it any more because I felt it would lessen the impact of the finale and ended up sticking to my guns on that, which I think made for a better overall experience for the readers.

 

My only regret for not being able to post this in the thread is not getting to see people's reactions to Snails being the final Nightmare. I tried to figure out which character would be the most uninteresting and anticlimactic to use and settled on him. Hopefully a few of you were bamboozled.

 

Nightmare Moon was incredibly fun to write, possibly more fun than any other character in the story. She's one of those completely over the top 'queen' type cartoony villain personalities while still being incredibly powerful and threatening. She definitely likes to hear herself talk and I never had any trouble figuring out what she'd say at any given time.

 

The ending (and the revelation and specifics of Luna's plan) had been planned out since the conclusion of Chapter 6. Yes, I shed a few tears like a faggot when I actually wrote it, but I didn't feel so bad once I started getting feedback that some of the readers had cried a little too.

 

 

All in all, this story was kind of my love poem to what I see as the original 'triumvirate' of AiE / FR stories:

 

 - Applerape

 - Flutterrape

 - Rainbro (Though I felt her bro elements have been a bit overplayed in a lot of stories so I toned them down significantly in this)

 

Typically these characters would be played against one another in all the stories they appeared in. I'd sort of always wanted to see a story where all three of them got to 'win' and get a happy ending with Anon. No one ever wrote it so I decided to do it myself.

 

I can say with 100% confidence that I definitely enjoyed the ride and hope others did too.