Writer's Training Grounds #002: "Rarity Takes Manehattan"

Spike will be one for Rarity any day.

The best part about all this is that this tag has more than one image barely 24 hours after it first came up. This fandom's wicked crazy (or full of people who like transformation, I dunno).

We're not even halfway through Season 4, and this feels like the year we're really getting to tour Equestria. Practically every episode we've seen so far has taken place in some different part of the kingdom, and very little of it feels stretched thin or cut from cardboard. Deployed correctly, setting occupies a role as powerful (if not more so) than any character you put into a narrative, because any work of art only benefits from adroit framing.

Hit the break for the prompt, as well as all the rules you'll need to start sending stories in!

Manehattan leaves its hoofprint on everypony who ventures into it.

Think about the different takes on life we saw within the episode: there's going out of your way to be generous to others, and then there's looking out only for yourself. But that's not all we've seen of The City by far -- after all, Rarity's not the only one with The Big Apple in her history.

No matter who you choose to write about this week, be it Coco Pommel or Rarity's unseen costume designer, the time they've spent in Manehattan changed them. Maybe they start falling into song and dance at random but dramatically appropriate times? Maybe they put on business suits and do everything they can to pillage the middle class. Who can say if they've been changed for the better, but they've been changed for unsubtle references to one of my favorite musicals.

Now for the rules. You'll notice we changed something this week.

• Keep the content appropriate as defined by our submission guidelines.
• Keep it between 1,000 - 7,000 words. >Greentexts and doorstoppers should apply elsewhere!
• Keep it to two genres maximum. For the roundup, fics will be grouped by their primary genre.

When you finish working on your fic, use this form to submit it to the Training Grounds. However, we will require much of the same information as if you were submitting a regular fic as follows, and this document explains what these requirements are.

1. Story title
2. Author name
3. Story description (~1 paragraph maximum)
4. Word count
5. Genre tags (2 tags maximum)
6. Character tags (3 tags maximum)
7. Story URL (must be hosted on FimFiction, GDocs, dA, etc.)
8. Email address

The deadline for submission is Tuesday, January 7, 11:59 PM Pacific Time.

As always, please continue to leave us feedback with what works well for these events, what's not working well, your general satisfaction with these, etc. etc. and so on. Now get writing!