On Tue, 19 Aug 1997 21:11:22 -0400, JOHN E TROMBLEY JR
<trom2@together.net> wrote:

This is something I thought about while just lying around.  It is a dark 
fanfic set in the Ranma ½ universe, while none of the major characters 
are represented in it except in a small scene.  Sorry for the content of 
this fanfic my mind is a little strange.

Around here, that's normal. :-P

Content-wise, this was a very interesting story. The idea of someone
using the Jusenkyo springs to build an army is (as far as I know) a new
one, and Madam Sercy made a frightening villain.

Some of the scenes with John and friends went on a bit too long, in my
opinion. I felt like I was being given a lot more background on these
characters than I wanted to know. It also didn't help that the most
important one had the same name as the author. (Author insertion fics:
BLEAH! But that's just a personal opinion.)

Overall, it's an interesting concept. I'd like to see you extend this
into a story where the Guide brings in Ranma and company to try to stop
Sercy.

Now, in terms of the way this is written, it needs some work.

I'd suggest getting rid of the script format-type descriptions. These
are the ones that say "We see...." as if we were the audience watching
the story. Describing things entriely from the viewpoint of the
character present (e.g., Plum in the first scene) would give your story
a better flavor, and would make us readers feel as if we were part of
the story rather than watching it. Tell us what Plum sees and feels, not
what we see.

On another matter, the right way to punctuate quotes where you tell who
said them is to change the period to a comma:

"Father, Father, there are customers coming,"  little Plum stated.

If it's an exclamation point or a question mark, it doesn't get changed:

"Father, Father, there are customers coming!"  little Plum stated.

Notice that little didn't get capitalized -- it's still the same
sentence as the quote.

Finally, this story suffers from what I call "Computer Spell-check
syndrome". There's lots of words in your story that are properly spelled
words -- but obviously not the ones you wanted. That's usually the sign
of someone who let the computer auto-correct a story. I understand that
some people are not good at spelling, that's okay, but you do need to
make sure that the right words get in there at the end. Look up
definitions for the words if necesssary, or ask someone else to help --
that's one of the things pre-readers are useful for. (I can point out
the instances in this story if you are interested.)

This is nitpicky stuff, but getting it right means people will be more
likely to keep reading your story all the way to the end.

Hope this helped,


Gary Kleppe
kleppe@execpc.com, Home page http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe
My fanfics and the FFML map are on my comics/manga page,
       http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics