On 6/3/05, James M. Zema <zema@zema.info> wrote:

A very good story for the most part.  I don't have time to do a thorough
C&C unfortunately, however, I do have a few comments.  While the plot is
a great idea (and well executed), you do have some issues with dialogue.

 
Thanks for your comments. I am afraid that you are not the first person to
point out either problem to me. 
 

One of the primary problems is that in quite a few places you actually
added in too much punctuation.  Try reading through the sentences that
characters are speaking out loud and putting pauses in the places where
you put commas and sentence breaks.  If you do that, it should clear up
most of the problems in this area I believe.

I had hoped that I was getting better at the punctuation thing, but it looks
like I will have to go over this again. 

One other issue with the dialogue that you might want to alter is
actually using contractions.  While they should properly be avoided in
written work, dialogue is an exception to this.  Most people use
contractions in every day speech and it sounds a bit too formal when you
leave them out of normal conversation.  While Ranma's characters or
Shampoo might do this to represent being less comfortable with the
language, Akane, Ranma, and other characters who speak Japanese normally
should use contractions to make their speech flow more naturally.

That is another unfortunate habit of mine. I will go over Akane's and
Ranma's (whe he is not diguised) speech and insert some contractions
where appropriate.

Aside from that though, I didn't see many issues (that I'm remembering
in hindsight anyway).  I enjoyed the story once I got past some of my
issues with the dialogue, and as I implicated, in later portions of the
story I felt that it actually helped in some portions.  (i.e. Ranma
portraying foreign characters)  There might be a few issues with
stereotyping and the characters not acting quite to type, but I don't
think they were too severe either.

Thanks again. I guess I could blame any ooc-ness on Ranma and Akane
being under stress and Ranma's attempt at method acting, but I will see
if I can find anything to that I can improve without having to change big
parts of the story.
 

James M. Zema
  zema@lands-beyond-reality.com
  http://www.lands-beyond-reality.com

 {Loki-L}

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