On Tue, 11 Jul 2000, Miller, Bert wrote:
Long postings mean long waits for C&C, but I've finally gotten
around to it.
I really enjoyed this story a lot, Vince.
Oh, good. :)
Daylight filtered down into the bamboo grove, turning the
trail Ranma trotted along into a tunnel under the sea, green
shade dappled with brilliant flecks that rippled and danced.
Nice WUE-esque imagery here... maybe a bit much for a single
sentence, though.
I immediately thought of the way Alan starts his stories with
a stunner of a sentence. Yours is different, though: reading
yours aloud is soft and flowing, with nice imagery.
It took a while to get the opening I wanted; I could see it in my head,
but establishing the "feel" I wanted for this story (rather different from
my usual style) was harder. I did read it aloud a few times.
So far, it's sort of a Doctor Who plot. Ranma wanders into
something, and gets mixed up in someone else's schemes.
Yup. Or Burroughs, or Howard, or even Dumas... I try to
steal from the best. :)
ER Burroughs is who I thought of immediately. This is just like
the sort of adventure Tarzan and John Carter fall into over and
over again.
Right. See also "Chessmen of Mars" for an even more
outragous "prisoner-toys-with-guards" sequence.
Hmm... maybe I should try writing Barsoom fanfic... :)
Your resolution is not, however, and on this I agree
with Gary. The ending I was looking for was not a trial by
combat, but an elaborate trickery, whereby Helubor actually
confesses within Saffron's hearing.
Interesting.
Since your web page mentions it, sort of like a 'Toyama no kin-
san' plot.
!!!
There's someone else who's actually SEEN "Toyama no Kinsan"?! Where are
you getting it, pray tell? Please tell me it's not off of KIKU-TV...
You might actually think about having Kiima in a
drudge disguise, accompanied by Saffron and Ranma in maid
disguises [a little too farcical for your sense of humor,
though], sneaking around in Helubor's rooms and overhearing
Helubor make incriminating remarks. Then a judgement scene
later with Saffron revealing that he was the maid, in front
of a full court, by rolling up his sleeve and patting his tattoo.
hehe! Well, I'd have to finesse the tattoo bit, since we're seen at least
one of Saffron's bare shoulders, but that has possibilities. :)
The whole bit with Kiima and Ranma producing the Heart would be
just the first half of the resolution: they would sneak into
the mountain to see Saffron alone, and use the Heart to convince
Saffron into following the above plan.
Gotcha.
Or something. It sounds funny, given the length of your story,
but I actually did feel that the resolution was too quick, too
easy.
At that point in writing the story I was feeling... what's the opposite of
"rushed" and "cramped"? The story could easily have been twice the size
it ended up, four times the size I thought it was going to be when I
started it, just by allowing the sort of complications and setbacks that
Burroughs uses all the time. (That AWFUL cliffhanger at the end of "Gods
of Mars"! I'm surprised his fans didn't lynch him. :) So I went for the
quick and easy resolution, guiltily aware that it WAS a shortcut, because
I wanted to get to the Ranma/Kiima part... because RHP is really mostly a
Ranma/Kiima story, with the "adventure" partly (perhaps even mostly) a way
to throw them together.
In the aftermath of the release of AMAW, I realized that
there were several stories that could be told in that timeline:
* How it came about that Ranma married Kasumi instead of Akane.
* Ranma's first "training trip", to Kansai and China.
* The effects of Kodachi becoming Ranma's mistress.
* Akane and Ranma finally consummating their long-hidden love.
* "Ranma and the Heart of the Phoenix".
I expect to tell all of these stories eventually, and then the
original AMAW will be merely an epilogue.
Given these plans, there is a danger worth warning you about.
Almost always, when writers write backwards within a continuity,
the later-written but set-earlier stories spoil the earlier-
written stories, either by revealing too much, or by attributing
later characterizations to the characters at earlier stages.
Yes, I'm keenly aware of this. My only hope of pulling it off is that I
generally DO write non-sequentially; the first scene actually written in
Taming, for example, was the scene where Nodoka expounds her views on
concubines from Chapter 8! And then there were the chapters I added to
the middle AFTER I'd posted it to FFML...
In your case, I would urge you to continue writing, from this
point, with the earliest-set of the stories in your list,
presumably how Ranma came to marry Kasumi (and how the marriage
developed into the formal, traditional Japanese one we see in
AMAW).
That is my intention at this time. Kodachi wants me to write her part
next, though... :/
At this point, I guess it is inevitable that AMAW itself will
eventually become a pointless-seeming epilogue (and I hate
seeing this happen to stories that seem to be breaking new
ground when originally published), but the best way to make
sure that this doesn't happen to any other stories is to
write them in chronological order.
Understood and appreciated. Sometimes that's just the way things happen,
though. I could have held back AMAW once I became aware that it was part
of a much larger story, I suppose, but then I wouldn't have gotten the
feedback that persuaded me that other people actually wanted to READ it.
:) I could have started from the beginning, but the hold RHP had on my
imagination required me to get it written before I could write anything
else. I could have held RHP back until I'd written the rest; that's sort
of like what happened with Taming...
We'll see what happens. If necessary, I can try to rethink AMAW to make
it what it needs to be.
Sometimes it seems to me that fanfic is as much process as product. :)
I don't agree with most of the remarks by other C&Cers about
pacing. In particular, the scenes with Ranma in jail seemed
just right to me. Description and imagery in general were
exquisite. I had no feeling that Kiima was opening up to
Ranko too quickly, given her situation.
Oh, good. Thanks for weighing in! <marks tally sheet :>
Anyway, nicely told, Vince. Thanks for writing and sharing! ;)
Glad you enjoyed it! Thanks for your perceptive comments, particularly on
structure; that's something I always have trouble with.
Vince Seifert Fanfic Analyst FFIRC Frog
Prime: seifertv@csus.edu
Backup: seifertv@myrealbox.com
Techie: http://webpages.csus.edu/~seifertv/
Fanfic: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/seifertv/toth/
Ideas are worth their weight in gold.