Overall comments:
Be sure to use MS Word's "Save as..." feature to save it as a text only
file. On non-MS software, all the "smart-quotes" and other
auto-formatted characters (like "...") turn out as a string of
unintelligible characters that /seriously/ impare the reading of the story.
Also, the scene changes are a bit awkward. "Later on, Nabiki was on the
phone with..." is much better than "Later in the living room" as a
header for the section. Doing the latter makes your story look like it
was /supposed/ to be script, but you changed your mind.
Other than that, great writing! I'm not a huge fan of non-Akane pairings
for Ranma, but this is pretty well handled, and TOTALLY believable for
the characters.
Item notes follow:
For one week, Nabiki was engaged to Ranma. Through the backfiring of a
revenge plot by Ranma, their engagement was broken off and he and Akane got back
together. What if things did not happen that way? What if Ranma's plan of
revenge actually succeeded as far as execution goes?
This section was unnecessary, your work (at least on this mailing list)
should speak for itself as to what it's about and where you're going
with it. Frankly, I didn't notice this section the first time through,
and I still liked your story. I look forward to Ch. 2.
Chapter 1: Be Careful What You Ask For…
I kept this line as an example of what I was referring to earlier. If
you are viewing this email in any non-MS email client or web-browser,
you'll see what looks like an accented 'a,' a Euro symbol, and a 'pipe'
symbol. (the vertical line above the backslash on your keyboard)
Avoidable problem.
Fingers of sunlight tickled the closed eyelids of Ranma. He grumbled as
<snip> No comments on all this, really! Good job.
The gravity of the word your wife threatened to suffocate the young husband.
should be;
The gravity of the words, "Your wife," threatened...
Small thing, but irritating to a punctuation freak such as myself.
This has GOT to be one of the fastest C&C's I've ever done. Very well done.