Behind the Story: A Series of Letters

Yes, ThePinkedWonder does stuff like this. That’s exactly why I’m doing this. I’ll probably be doing this for future stories, as well.

It’s a good idea, what can I say? You might want to read the story before this though, because there’s a lot of spoliers.

So, for the 7 people who read the whole story through, whoever you are, let’s talk about this story.

A Series of Letters was kind of an idea I came up with for the Quarantine Writing Challenge. I developed the concept that way, and I’m glad it became a story of its own.

I came up with this concept that a military guy was sanctioned away from his family at home. But that’s a bog-standard story, and it usually ends with the guy dying (see Wake Me Up When September Ends’ storyline). So, I decided to invert that trope.

Now, I’ve never had a close family member die. However, I have gotten close, and as I said in one of the several author’s notes, Sittin’ On The Dock of the Bay (one of my best like-view ratios) was written as a sort of what-if scenario about that family member dying. So, I decided to endeavor down that path.

So, I kept brainstorming after chapter one, and that’s why you see a lot of not-so-subtle hints in chapter two.

I came up with the idea of an aggressive brain tumor pretty quickly, and planned the story around that. However, I was having trouble clearing the 1k word limit, because that’s a ridiculously long letter. So, I took my inner fanboy over Changelings, and had Corn Husk’s storylines revolve around starting to see Changelings as more than enemies. My recent reading of Meep’s stories and starting Conversations in a Canterlot Cafe likely had an impact there.

Chrissy’s stories remain relatively unchanged. That was going to happen regardless.

The kids’ stories changed about a half-dozen times, but I luckily was able to incorporate almost all of them into the story proper.

As for the inspiration, there wasn’t really anything like a campus cafè (The Endless Cycle), a song (Sittin’ on The Dock of the Bay), or a birthday party (The Meeting Place). There wasn’t really anything at all. I needed a plot for the Quarantine Writing Challenge, and I came up with one from scratch. I worked on the story on the fly.

However, the final letter was heavily inspired by the last couple chapters of Tangled Up In Blues, which is still one of my favorite stories ever. The letter panned out a bit differently (physical whilst Tangled Up In Blues was essentially advanced talking to yourself), but the ‘talking to a dead pony’ was definitely inspired by it.

Also, no character inspirations, it’s my truest form of OC. Most of my OCs aren’t based on anybody, but these definitely weren’t. I will note that True “Lance” Blue came out exactly how I wanted her to.

So really, not much else to mention. I don’t write with metaphors, the series of letters in question isn’t a stand-in for much else. It’s actually just a series of letters.

Hey, but my most popular story is metaphor free as well, and that didn’t stop people from reading it, so if you’re interested in this story, here’s the link.