"Mike " Ranmania " Lee" <ranmania@hotmail.com> wrote:
As usual, I really need honest, blunt C&C if I'm going to improve my
writing.
Okay...
First of all, formatting. It was so bad that I nearly didn't read the
story. Remember, ascii characters only, 70-80 per line. And I shouldn't
have to guess where paragraphs begin and end; skip a line, or indent, or
both. If in any doubt about your formatting, test-mail to yourself
before posting to the list.
Secondly, the narration. To be honest, I found the tone more annoying
than amusing. Part of the art of storytelling is getting your audience
to believe in the story, to think of it as if it's actually happening
rather than just being words on the paper. Addressing the reader
directly pretty much torperoes this out of the water. That's not to say
that you can't do fourth wall gags and such, but they should be put in
with care, only when you think of one that's exceptionally funny.
In particular, it's annoying when the narrator tells us things we know
already -- for example, that Kuno thinks he's chivalrous, but most
everyone else thinks he's an idiot. If this is important, SHOW it
through his behavior and others' reactions to him. If it's not all that
important, tell us, but at least tell us through the thoughts of one of
the other characters, not directly. In this case, you probably don't
need to do either, since your reader will have read some of the Ranma
manga and hence knows who Kuno is.
Try to be more descriptive if you're going to write in prose. Try to
describe the sounds in complete sentences as much as possible. "the food
sizzled on the grill" nstead of just "sizzle sizzle."
PROOFREAD. Lots of punctuation errors, misplaced words, and such here
that should have been caught before posting. There's places where. you.
have. periods. in. the. dialog. like. this. for. no. apparent. reason.
Things like this make it less likely that anyone will take the trouble
to read your fic.
That said... once I slogged past all of these technical problems, the
story wasn't too bad. The characters were handled well for this type of
story (well, I thought Akane was rather cliched, but apart from her) and
the story itself (in spite of the narrative style) had some amusing
moments. I do think you should've gotten to the meat of the story (Kuno
getting the drug) much more quickly than you did. Don't waste your time
with a lot of stock fanfic bits -- these only turn people off. Get right
into what makes your story unique as soon as possible.
Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics.html