Excerpts from mail.fanfic: 7-Mar-96 [FanFic] [Fan Fic] Experime.. by
Marisa Price@gladstone.u 

After thinking about what I'd written, I thought I'd be a bit more
helpful.  Here are a few more, more specific comments for you.

        Mousse had done it again. Shampoo sighed as she place a cool wet
cloth on his bruised and bleeding forehead and securely tucked the sheets
around him.

Try varying the way you put the clauses together in a sentence, like this:

    Mousse had done it again.  Shampoo sighed as she placed a cool, wet
cloth on his bruised and bleeding forehead, securely tucking the sheets
around him.

Notice the final clause.  It doesn't really change the story any, or
what you're trying to say.  But it makes the story flow just a little bit
easier, and makes reading it more pleasant.

        Mousse was knocked out cold; or else he would probably be raving
something
about her great beauty and his joy at her tender ministrations. Shampoo
sighed again, pulling of Mousse's glasses. She held them up to the light,
and the myriad of cracks and chips caused a prismatic light to glow through
the thick glass and leave a rainbow on the nearby wall. 

The formatting here caused problems for my email reader.  Try keeping your
line lengths at about 70 to 75 characters.  That way, they can be quoted
(with the "> " at the beginning of each line without pushing the end of
each line onto the next one.

Vary how you show things happening.  Telling cause and effect all the time
can get to be slightly uninteresting.  Try a different point of view
from time to time.  I'll illustate:

    Mousse was knocked out cold; or else he would probably be raving
something about her 'great beauty' and his joy at her tender
ministrations.  Shampoo sighed again, pulling off Mousse's glasses.
Holding them up to the light, she colored the wall with a blurry
rainbow, a prismatic effect glowing through the cracks and chips in the
thick glass.

Instead of saying that the "prismatic effect" was caused, I varied it a
little, and connected Shampoo with the effect first, explaining how
afterwards.  Things like this flavor the story for the readers.  With
stories in general, try to vary the way you tell things a little, paying
attention not only to sight, but to sound, smell, and etc.

I hope this helps.  And I hope other fanfic authors benefit, too.

Again, good luck.

Damon Casale, scyth@andrew.cmu.edu

				* Love *
                 Between two people, there is nothing that
                      can draw them closer together