Hey Don,
My sincerest apologies, Jiro, but it's your turn in the barrel. Commentary
enclosed in square [] brackets.
Appologies for what? Bring it on man, both barrels even!
[Ooh, boy!]
Down boy...
***
[Very nicely done.]
Thanks... I tried to use the scene to show that Ranma's skills have increased
to the point that his father can barely make him break a sweat. I would like
to ask if I didn't over-extend Ranma here, I'm not an Uber-Ranma fan and thus
wanted to make him as un-Uber as possible.
No, I don't think so, but opinions on this issue will vary markedly.
***
[POV established with Akane. Scene set up firmly in the first line. Very
good.]
Which doesn't mean I'm used to this POV thing... as seen later.
ara? I thought oden was some sort of hot-pot dish, (see Inu-Yasha, the
episode where Kagome returns home for the first time after tangling with Yura
the hair, she was thankful that she lived in a time where there was oden...)
Udon is noodles right?
[No, Udon is literally "something on rice", usually a piece of chicken,
pork, beef or any number of vegetables or seafood items. Unagi (freshwater
eels grilled over charcoal) is a favorite of mine. You might be right about
Oden, I was confusing the spelling with Odin.]
"D-d-daughter?" The other occupants of the table except Akane exclaimed.
[Well, he DID say "adopted daughter", right?]
Yes he did, indeed he did, but the r.5 cast has selective hearing, thus
hearing 'daughter' and not 'adopted'. Did it work?
[Yeah, it worked. I was popping off.]
[The verb "goggled" does not work here very well, but damned if I can think
of another word to replace it at the moment.]
Tried to think of another word but I can't either.
[I'm still chewing on this one. I know there is a better word or phrase, but
have not hit upon it yet.]
[Comma after "Akane-chan" instead of the period. I would replace "smilingly"
with "smiling brightly" or some other such phrase.]
okay... Changed this dialouge with this one below:
"Mother would be so proud, Akane-chan," Kasumi gushed with pride, her face
smiling benignly on her youngest sibling.
... any better?
[Yes, a great deal better.]
[POV seems to be that of an independent observer.] [Delete the "to" in "to
at".]
oops, forgot to delete that one... Larry pointed it out already.
[POV now given to Ukyo.]
yup, did the transition go smoothly?
[No, more on POV and errors concerning POV farther down in this response.]
[Comma after "Hon", take the capital "Y" out of the succeeding "You".]
noted... altered
[Drifted, rather than shifted to Ryouga, or perhaps back to the Independent
Observer.]
Is that a good thing or a bad thing? I'm not really a writer, just an
accountant passing time...
[Comma instead of the ellipsis after "floor" and insert another comma after
"time".]
noted and changed... should I add a Lime warning for this scene?
[I wouldn't, at least not insofar as I understand the uses for the tags.
"Lime" and "Lemon" are meant to refer to sexual content, not language. The
language, however, would probably get you at least an "R" rating at the
cinema.]
***
[Change in scene adequately dealt with. POV given to Yumeko in the first
line.]
Again I wouldn't know if this is a good thing or bad thing...
[It's a good thing, but there is more to it.]
[The cut back to Tendo-ke works nicely as well.]
I borrowed the style from an old movie I saw (couldn't recall the title for
the life of me) I just had to have Yume-chan say "He comes!" Good
cliff-hanger that way...
[Prose fiction, plays and cinema borrow a great deal from each other, and
rightly so. However, you must remember that they are not equivalent and no
one of the three can do everything the other two do in the same way. Here
you are writing prose, so you must remember that it is prose, and not a
screen play for cinema that you are writing. If you bear in mind that it is
prose that you are writing, you can deliver a story with just as much
impact, frequently with more impact, than can cinema or a play. Prose
fiction is very potent stuff.
So let me 'splain about POV and why it is important. The POV of a story is
the point of view from which the story is told. When you are making up a
story, you necessarily know what is going through the mind of every
character and why they acted and reacted to the events in the story the way
they did. It is impossible to make up a story in any other way. However,
writing from this "omniscient", that is to say "all-seeing and "all-knowing"
point of view is seldom the best POV from which to tell a tale.
The reason the Omniscient POV is frequently poor choice for relating a story
is because its voice is necessarily descriptive. With this POV, the reader
does not directly "hear" the thoughts of the characters, but instead gets a
description of what is running through their minds by this unseen,
all-knowing, all-seeing narrator of events. It tends to put a great deal of
distance between the characters and the reader, frequently making it
difficult for readers to identify with the characters.
Additionally, this POV's voice is difficult to sustain. It is always
descriptive in nature, reading like formal narrative most of the time. Some
writers can and have written from this POV without it seeming to be a formal
narrative, but that is a difficult thing to do and even after their best
efforts, the stories always strike me as being a bit too cold. I always lack
sufficient empathy for the characters of the tale.
A similar POV, I call it the "Independent Observer" is essentially the same
as the Omniscient Observer, save that the Independent Observer is incapable
of reading minds, nor can it see things happening off-scene. It's voice is
also rather too descriptive in nature, thereby insulating the reader from
the characters.
There is also the first person POV. This is where the writer tells the story
as though he were present during everything described. The voice is that of
a person relating their personal experiences, observations and opinions to
the reader. While this POV has a good deal more warmth than the first two,
it is also a very difficult POV from which to tell a story. It is very
limited in its scope and encourages the writer to indulge in entirely too
much narrative.
The best most flexible and warmest POV that does the best job of drawing a
reader into a story is the POV of a character in the story. In this POV, the
reader is made party to the character's thinking as it occurs and gives the
reader a sense of "being there" as the story unfolds.
Now, it is not necessary to tell an entire story from one POV. This can be
done and you will run across a novel or two wherein the entire thing is
written from the POV of a single character or one of the previous three
types of POV. This is not done very often, because it limits the writer's
options in telling the story.
Too often, on FFML and an increasing number of modern works of fiction,
author's shift POV at whim. This, to me, is an exceedingly bad practice. It
tends to kick the entire story out of focus for the reader and more often
than not, is horribly confusing. Shifting POV with great frequency hurts the
pace of the story because the readers is constantly accommodating him or
herself to the ongoing changes in POV rather than simply reading and
enjoying the story. Very often, an abrupt change in POV will simply kick the
reader out of a story, destroying all trace of both mood and verisimilitude.
So, I advocate the rule/method of limiting POV changes to one POV per scene
where ever and when ever it is possible. I have participate in other forums,
devoted to other types of fiction, wherein this is a hard and fast rule and
forum members will roundly criticize you for violating it. There are,
however, good reasons to change POV during a single scene:
1) POV must change when the initial bearer departs the scene or becomes
unconscious.
2) The story can only be told from multiple points of view.
This second reason seldom obtains. Almost any story you can dream up, can
and should be told from a single POV per scene, because the impact you are
trying to have on the reader is best delivered from a carefully controlled
POV.
Let's talk about POV and your story.
You open in the little teaser/leader with Akane in a scene by herself and
user her POV throughout.
The next little pieces is told from Ranma's POV and you use it throughout
that little piece.
Both of these little pieces work beautifully. The impact they have on the
reader is maximized in both cases.
The opening scene, where the story actually begins, starts from what appears
to be Akane's POV, even though the voice wavers a bit. This latter I did not
mention in my C&C, but it seemed to me inappropriate to simply burden you
with too much at one time. Now, however, I'll show you what I mean and how I
think you can further improve the tale.
Akane comes down the stairs and the action around the dinner table is being
described. As written, this could be either Akane, or that of an
non-omniscient, independent observer. But given the way you opened the
scene, with Akane descending the stairs, the reader's natural inclination is
to assume that he is seeing events unfold through Akane's eyes. This holds
up just fine until you reach this line:
"The little urchin known as Yumeko..."
See what's wrong? If this were Akane's POV we should have read "The little
urchin Akane knew as Yumeko..."
One method places the reader on Akane's shoulder watching what goes on as
the reader becomes party to Akane's thoughts and opinions. The other is that
of a third party, following Akane around with a camera and telling the
reader what is going on. Of the two, the first will always have more impact
upon readers because they can more readily identify with a single person
actually caught up in the events of the story, rather than following Dan
Blather or Walter Concrete around as they tell us about the evening news.
Distance and objectivity are a must in journalism, but they can be the bane
of prose fiction by putting too much distance between readers and the
characters in a story.
The scene where Ukyou and Ryouga are fighting, would have much more impact
on us readers if it were told from either Ukyou's POV, or from Ryouga's POV
and not drifting back and forth between one of them and the independent
observer.
The scene with Yumeko and Kasumi conversing is told almost exclusively from
Yumeko's POV and it has the most impact upon the reader of everything in
this particular piece.]
See ya,
Don Granberry.
Brang it on, Jiro. Looks like you gotta good one goin'.
I would if my Muse cooperates... she's a temperamental little thing, typical
of a red-head but... hey... ouch! No, stop! Not the face... Argh!!!
...anyway... thanks for the C&C Don, much appreciated.
(Jiro gets pulled offstage by an irate red-head)
__________________________________
www.edsamail.com.ph
CHEAPER than free email!
.---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
| Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
| Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
| Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject |
`---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'
.---Anime/Manga Fanfiction Mailing List----.
| Administrators - ffml-admins@anifics.com |
| Unsubscribing - ffml-request@anifics.com |
| Put 'unsubscribe' in the subject |
`---- http://ffml.anifics.com/faq.txt -----'