Concritathon

[indri]

Text pinched from peasant_ and deadsoul820.

This is my post for peasant_'s Concritathon. Anyone who wants to give me public concrit for Descent is very welcome to do so here. Anyone who would rather send the concrit privately, my address is archaeoindri@yahoo.com.

According to the rules of the concritathon:

Concrit is Constructive Criticism. This means that it must point out at least one, preferably more, flaws in the story as well as at least one, preferably more, good points in the story. It must also be written so as to inform the author of your opinion without hurting their feelings.

Ta.

Comments

Re: Concritathon feedback!

[girlguidejones.livejournal.com]

Hey there...

Thanks for taking all the comments in stride. I certainly let out a breath I'd been holding, hoping I hadn't squished any toes.

Good to know the OED "jemmies"...and I'm glad to know I surmised correctly regarding the antimacassar! Hee!

Re: Emotional involvement...first, you have a tough challenge in this fic. There are generally two sources of emotion- from inside oneself, and from another person -or unknown circumstances- onto the protagonist. Since we already know Spike survives (and eventually gets an unorthodox sort of happily ever after), emotion caused by the reader's own uncertainties about the [hero's?] fate is nil. Therefore we need to get the emotion from Spike himself.

I think if you wanted to keep the gist of what you've got, you would need to expound on what Spike is feeling when he encounters the different versions of The First. His anger, grief, guilt, love, angst...oddly, I think you did the best job portraying a "typical" Spike with regard to Ford, arguably the incarnation he knew the least. Maybe if we could hear more Spike "language" in his own head. Spike always was a talker, including to himself.

"He wants to lock himself in the wardrobe and never come out.

He wants to mash himself to the window until the sun comes up.

He wants to bolt from the room and keep running, running, until they can't keep up with him any more.

He wants never to be have existed.

He wants to have been someone else.

Instead, he sits huddled in a corner, trying to think of something, anything that might calm him. Some happy memory, from before he did anything he now regrets.

He remembers now: his mother sang."

This is good at "saying" what he felt, but it doesn't "sound" like Spike. It's not done in what we would recognize as Spike's voice, and that shields us somewhat from connecting emotionally to the Spike we know and love. If you were able to make these sorts of passages sound as though Spike was talking, -even to himself- rather than sounding like a generic person was describing what Spike was thinking, I believe it would help a lot. And this suggestion is purely a gimmick, but you might also try a font change or using italics for the passages where Spike is thinking to himself, to further separate it from the rest of the story, which is really a narrative of what happened in Africa.

I'm going to put some thought to your request for high "emotional impact" fics. I want to try and think of one that is at least similar in plot/subject to your own. Most which come immediately to mind involve romantic pairings of one sort or another, and I don't think it's fair -or helpful- to try and compare your fic to that type. Apples and oranges, you know?

I'll get back to you asap on that.

smiLe