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John-Martin,
My commentary will be enclosed with square [] brackets.
Regards,
Don Granberry.
By the pool of the Drowned Sensei, part one
by
John-Martin Lotz
The steps up to the Tendo Dojo were miles high and tens of
miles long, there was a spotlight at the top shining on me, a
crowd of millions watching me and I knew that there was
gallows at the top. I smiled to myself at the vision of a
bad historical film popped into my head. This was Nermia
Ward, in twentieth century Japan, and I was under some kind
of weird curse. Shaking my head to clear it of the images, I
walked up the few steps that separated the real dojo from the
street and me from the young woman who had been standing by
the door watching my wool gathering.
[I suggest chaning the word "at" in the second sentence of
this paragraph to "as." This will fix the entire thing with a
minimum of effort. You otherwise will need to a lot of work
to fix the tenses and straightend out the flow of the story.]
"May I help you?"
[I suggest that you should describe Kasumi here. An anonymous
speaker does nothing for the story at this point and only
serves to confuse the reader. Speaking of confusion, a
completely original story the reader expects some mild
disorientation at the front, but with a fanfiction piece, you
should use an "alternate" tag when appropriate, and it is
appropriate in this case.]
"Yes . . . Is there a man, I mean boy, I mean girl. . .
person named Ranma here?"
The young women who stood at the door studied me, then asked
the last question that I expected to hear, "Excuse me, but
are you engaged to Ranma."
"Engaged?" my voice raised about an octave, then I calmed,
"NO."
"One more question, Do you want to kill him?"
[Kasumi is unlikely to ask a question this direct. It would
be far more likely for her to ask if the visitor had come to
challenge Ranma or Akane, given that the visitor appears to
be female.]
I took a step back, the first question hadn't been the last
question I had expected -- this one surely was, I had no
idea how meeting this Ranma person would be, but this was
NOT it!! Still I had to know the answers to my questions.
"No, not that either, There is something we share, and it
leads me to believe that there may well be more that we
share."
"Ranma NO BAKA, hit me. Please just try and hit me."
[Some form of reaction from our new character and Kasumi
would be appropriate here. Nothing extensive, just a minor
cast of a glance to ones ide or a quick smile from Kasumi or
some other briefly described action. This will greatly
enhance the affect of your dialogue.]
"Slow and clumsy tomboy, Nyah"
"Ranma, you have a guest." the girl standing in front of me
said.
[I will here screw up my courage and suggest a change to your
punctuation:
"Ranma, you have a guest," the girl in front of me said."
Actually, I think it better if you have her she call out to
some one or "...said in a voice raised enough to be heard out
in the yard."]
She looked at me as I reviewed our conversation. "I
apologize for not giving my name earlier, I am Kiratso Tomoe
"
She bowed, "Tendo Kasumi, and this is my sister Akane, and
this is Ranma" indicating a dark haired girl and the red
headed one I was seeking in turn.
********
As she made the introductions Kasumi studied her guest, The
girl in front of her was modestly dressed in an expensive
looking, loose dove gray kimono with a red chrysanthemum mon
design on it.
Tomoe took off her shoes and extended a bag to Kasumi then
stood studying Ranma quite frankly, a trace of slight
nervousness showing in her wide spread dark eyes.
[ This abrupt shift in POV is abrupt, disorienting, and only
barely accomplishes what you have in mind. The Tomoe knows
she's a girl so there is no reason not to have her describe
herself and what she is wearing. You could have had her do
this at the very beginning, yeilding a much better overall
result, but this point of the story would also work quite
well. For instance:
"Kasumi's friendly eyes gave me a thorough going over
as removed my shoes and handed her my bag. I was
wearing...the fit was loose but it needed to be...et cetera.]
*********
I handed Kasumi the bag of scotch I had brought, then studied
Ranma -- who was in turn studying me, "You wanted to see
me."
[Okay. Tomoe has already handed Kasumi a bag once, now she is
handing Kasumi a bag of Scotch? Scotch invariably comes in
bottles and is much too important to merely toss off as "a
bag of scotch." My gawd, man! Was it single malt? A blend?
How old is it? Why scotcht? The damned stuff is hard to come
by in 1980's Japan.]
I sighed and reached into my handbag, "It's easier to show
then describe." I pulled out two thermoses of water, one hot
and the other cold.
"Jusenkyo," he breathed, as the steam rose off the water in
the hot thermos.
Yes, he was the one. I poured the cold water over my head.
and . . . changed. In that other form I looked up into
Ranma's eyes and started to smile. That smile froze, just
like her eyes as she breathed, "You Bastard." She screamed
again, "You." and dove at me.
[The above exclamation by Ranma suffer from a paucity of
exclamation marks.]
I didn't think, I didn't have the time, I just reacted, I
found myself first in a courtyard, then 30 feet in the air,
slapping Ranma backwards into a Koi pond.
[Many comma splices! This should read: "I did not think. I
didn't have the time! I just reacted. In a blink I found
myself..."
I added the "in a blink," to give the reader some sense of
passing time, albeit a very brief passage of time. This
strings events together in a sequence. You needn't use that
particular wording, but you should do something to bring a
little order to this sequence of events.]
"Oh my." I heard Kasumi say as she handed me the hot thermos
and I reverted to my real self. Just about then Ranma
struggled out of the water and headed toward me. Next I
found Kasumi between us. "Ranma, stop!." Ranma halted and
she handed him the rest of my thermos, which she had grabbed
from me.
I cinched my disarrayed kimono tighter as Kisumi continued,
"Ranma,'hot' water changed her into a girl, 'cold' changed
her into that man."
Ranma, now male, gaped, and I had to ask, "Ranma, whose body
is this, Obviously you know it."
He looked half ready to hit and half to cry as he said, "My
father's and it's dead." He spun away from Kisumi and
stalked off.
[half-ready]
Before He got two steps, he halted and not facing me he
started talking. "I lost control, I apologize. You see, last
time I saw that body, I buried it."
I could see Akane, hands over her mouth, collapse against a
man who hurried out of the main part of the house. Another
girl hurried up, no doubt drawn by the noise of the short
fight.
"How did you trace me here?"
[Here you should include the phrase, "Ranma asked."
Otherwise, the reader must stop to ask himself who is
speaking and even though it quickly becomes obvious, it
interrupts the flow of what is otherwise a very dramatic
scene.]
"With all due respect, tracking a stacked red headed martial
artist across China to Japan is not really all that hard."
He snorted at that.
"Actually, the crazy guy who pulled me out of the pool told
me that the person whose body I at times wear."
[Huh? What did the guide tell Tomoe?]
He snorted again, presumably at my attempt at delicacy.
"Please. how is it that this body is so good at fighting. It
reacts before I can think. it also is not very popular."
[Needs a comma after "Please," rather than a period.
Capitalize the word "it."]
Everyone was staring at me, mostly and Ranma, some, as I
continued. "I spent a lot of time in this body. It a lot
safer being a man than a girl if you are crossing china
alone."
[It would help a great deal if you would adopt the habit of
beginning a new line of dialogue with a new paragraph. You
cannot always do this, but you could in the above passage.
Even though this is a minor detail, and not technically
necessary, it helps the reader a great deal.]
The other girl who had shown up was smart, she didn't ask why
a lone girl was in back country of china. I would have hated
to start off lying to them too early. instead she asked,
"Not popular?"
[There are several problems with this paragraph. First, we
need a period rather than a comma after "smart," then
capitalize the following word, "she." The word "China" should
be capitalized, unless you are talking about tableware. So
much for the mechanical stuff.
Now then, why does Tomoe think Nabiki is smart? You are
trying to jam ten pounds of story into a five pound paragraph
here. Have Tomoe give us her impressions of Nabiki and why
Tomoe thinks Nabiki is smart. The way this reads now, Tomoe
seems to think Nabiki is smart because she refrained from
asking a question Tomoe did not want to answer. How could
Nabiki possibly know that she should avoid asking such a
perfectly reasonable question? Tomoe might be relieved that
Nabiki did not ask such a question, but assessing Nabiki as
"smart" for not asking it brings the reader up short.]
"Yeah, the Abbot of the Wudong Monastery threw a dead cat at
me."
Ranma shuddered.
"And a number of shop owners demanded payment. I worked some
of it off and the rest, I'll send them."
Now he was definitely smiling, "How many of them died of the
shock?" there was a brief pause, then, "When I buried my
father, there was a postal card in his pocket, addressed
here. Tendo-san said I was to marry one of daughters. Do
you know anything about it?"
[It's "post card," not "postal card."]
I shook my head, "No, I seem to have some of the reflexes
that your father had, none of the memories."
[I think this should read as follows:
I shook my head.
"No, I seem to have some of the reflexes that your
father had, but none of his memories."
Putting the dialogue into a seperate paragraph helps a lot
and the period after head is required, unless you write
something like:
I shook my head no, then told him, "No, I seem..."]
[This story has intriguing possibilities. You have hit upon a
plot twist that I have never seen before. With a bit more
polish, it will go places.]
Regards,
Don Granberry.