Time for a quick C&C to celebrate the return of the list!
First comment: 8K is a little short for a first chapter if you really
want to grab people's attention.
Not very much actually happens in this chapter other than the bombshell
at the end.
Kinai wrote:
Nodoka was drinking tea quietly in the living room of the Tendo's house. Little volutes of
steam rose from the hot liquid. The warm cup laid between the delicate hands of Nodoka,
who from time to time, brought it near her lips and drank a sip.
Not a bad opening, although it could be bettered, I think. On the one
hand, I find myself wondering where Kasumi
is, why she's not keeping Nodoka company. On the other, you could fix
the readers' attention on your story
right from the beginning by adding just a bit of tantalization here.
Something like: "Nodoka was drinking tea quietly,
only the very slightest shaking of the tea cup betraying a certain
tension in her frame."
Having Kasumi query Nodoka on her apparent disquiet would serve to fix
in the reader's mind that
there is an unanswered question here.
room. A moment later the door opened and Ranma and Akane entered in the living room where
Nodoka was standing.
Standing? When did she stand up? The picture you tried hard to draw
for us is that she is
sitting or kneeling.
=93Good afternoon.=94 Nodoka greeted them with a smile while she stood up; however neither
teenager returned the greeting.
You appear to be using non-ASCII characters for quote marks, probably MS
"smart quotes", which get translated
into garbage in transit (in this case, '=93' and '=94' respectively).
Ranma stood by the entrance of the living room with his eyes fixed on the floor, avoiding
eye contact with his mother. At his side, Akane stared at him. Her hands, crossed in front
of her, held her school-bag with so much strength that her knuckles had turned white.
Given what happened, it strikes me that where R & A are looking is off.
I'd have thought Ranma would be either
darting glances at his mother or looking straight in her eyes; ditto
Akane. And why would Akane
be waiting for Ranma to speak?
=93You don=92t need to lie. Your mother was the one that invited me to the wedding. She told
me that you would be happy if, for any reason, the wedding didn=92t take place.=94
This is an excellent example of what the non-standard ASCII characters
do to your story.
This particular line if the first new development in your story, really,
and it's kind of hard
to read, minimizing its impact.
=93Now it turned out that you told Ukyo to sabotage our wedding. Why? Do you enjoy fucking
with our lives??=94
The 'f' word seems very out of place here, and it's not clear what its
use buys you. In the manga, Akane is normally
very polite in her speech. She has a temper, true, but it normally
manifests in violence, not obscenity. While
profanity may have a place, sparingly used, in writing, I think it's a
good rule to use it only as a last resort.
Consider the following alternative:
"Now Ukyou claims you told her to sabotage our wedding. Why? Why would
you do that?"
Akane stared at Nodoka wordlessly, her face white, as she clenched her
fist once, twice,
then collapsed to her knees, sobbing helplessly. "You- you're ALWAYS-
interfering in our
lives."
=93Because you and Akane are siblings.=94 Nodoka said.
Well, that's a pretty good cliff-hanger.
I'm somewhat curious where this goes, but not as much so as I could be.
If you'd given we
readers a second mystery in the first chapter, I'd probably be caught,
assuming that you, as
a writer, really knew what you were doing. But, as things stand, this
isn't enough to give
me that confidence; I feel that the second chapter stands a 50-50 chance
of being very
boring and derivative. It's up to you to prove me wrong.
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