indri

Don't be surprised if you get no response whatsoever to this. It's that it must point out at least one, preferably more, flaws in the story rule that's the killer; I've never been able to find any flaws in "Descent" at all.

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azdak.livejournal.com

Yup. When I saw you'd submitted Descent I was *so glad* I hadn't picked you to crit.

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indri

Wow. That's astonishingly kind. I am, in fact, speechless, although I still seem capable of typing. Did you know I put off reading your comment for twenty-four hours so I could steel myself for the crit? (Well, I've been ill, I didn't feel up to it until now.)

I picked "Descent" because the flaws in my other works seem obvious to me and not worth rehashing. I want to know about the things that are less obvious!

From:

indri

Argh. I'd just like to know how to make my best work better. If I knew that, I could improve. I didn't want to waste someone's time on something I know I could already fix. Argh!

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azdak.livejournal.com

Tell you what then, if

speakertocustomers turns out to be right and you don't get anything useful out of the Thon, I'll reread Descent with the deliberate intention of picking holes and if I manage to find any I'll let you know. But maybe you'll just have to accept that your best work is, you know, perfect :-)

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indri

I'm sure he's wrong. (The Walsh bit is confusing, for starters.) But if I don't, I would gladly take you up on your offer. You're one of the most perceptive readers and viewers I know. I always enjoy reading your analyses.

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Hi Indri,
I took over from EntreNous who had to drop out.
I am afraid I won't be able to post my concrit on time. I started working on your piece, but because of a nasty cold that makes all my RL chores so much more exhausting, I didn't get as much done as I wanted. Weekends are always tough because the entire family goes to chess tournaments and dance practice, but I think that I should get your concrit done by Monday. I hope that's okay. :-)

I read your story before and liked it very much. I will write you a general critique, but I'll also send you a beta'd file, if that's okay with you.

Have a good weekend.

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indri

No worries about the deadline. I only managed my concrit in time because I was confined to bed for part of the week.

I will write you a general critique, but I'll also send you a beta'd file, if that's okay with you.

Both of those sound fantastic. Thank you very much.

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Hi there!

I'm assigned to you, but will be a day late getting it in. I have a rather odd work schedule which can get in the way of really important things like fanfic reading. Heh.

I must say that after reading the above comments I am really looking forward to your story. It looks like I will need to search for flaws, :) so I will have a stern go at it!

~GGj

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Critique of Indri's 'Descent' - by Estepheia

Few stories fit as seamlessly into Mutant Enemy canon as this one. Many viewers have wondered how Spike’s sanity got shattered like that and how he got back from Africa and what First Evil’s role was in Spike’s return, and what First Evil’s plan was for him. You have answered these questions in a way that’s so utterly convincing that it feels like it ought to be canon. Actually, in my head this is EXACTLY what happened and how it happened, no doubt about it. You nailed it. Whenever I write souled!Spike your story reverberates in the back of my head along with official Mutant Enemy canon.

Plot

I like the way Spike is threatened from two sides, physically by the vampires of Uganda, and mentally by the First’s insidious machinations. Spike is caught between a rock and a hard place, slowly crushed between them, bruised and battered, yet he never gives up.

I like Spike’s determination, his pig-headed pride that forbids him to just hurl himself into the sun’s rays, his desperate hope that maybe, at the end of his journey, he will find forgiveness.

He’s on a hero’s journey, traveling through an unfamiliar country (being newly ensouled is also a kind of terra incognita), gritting his teeth, fighting the pain, unaware that he’s being pushed into the abyss of madness. The sense of journeying is conveyed neatly through the different settings and landscapes that he travels through and through the various vehicles he uses or encounters. The heart-wrenching thing is the fact that the journey is rigged. The reader is constantly aware that Spike is being manipulated, that First Evil is trying to find the right way to pull his strings.

The First leaves no button unpushed, no dead face unworn to find the weak point where Spike will crack. At the end Spike is right where First Evil wants him, a weapon primed and about to be deployed, ready to be fired when First Evil sees fit.

POV

One of the most effective aspects of your story is the twin perspective. There is the third person limited perspective: we follow Spike’s travels, see what he sees, hear what he hears, smell what he smells. We feel his pain. We see him act, and we observe what he thinks. Sometimes we get close enough to really hear what he’s thinking.

On the other hand we are never allowed to fully merge with the character, never fully immerse ourselves in his thoughts and feelings, because we, unlike him, possess foresight. We know what will happen, know that the woman in the lab coat is the First. We can never quite exclude our knowledge, it gives us a kind of double vision of events. We know, unlike Spike, that he’s not hallucinating, that he’s being manipulated.

This double vision is maintained through skillful information management. Our canon knowledge of things to come and things that have already happened is repeatedly woven into the story, like an almost invisible thread.

Voice

By ‘voice’ I mean the narrator’s voice. The narrator’s voice is predominantly factual, not quite journalese but on the whole lean and precise. (And a lot more factual than Spike’s voice) Sometimes, when the POV moved closer to Spike, I felt that a choppier and more colorful language might have created greater immediacy. I would have liked for Spike’s voice to be more prominent in some of the introspective sections.

On the other hand, the language evokes an almost dreamlike sense of transit, not so much of falling but of slow motion. (Like when you stare out of the car window and lose yourself in the whoosh whoosh of the passing landscape.)

Overall the voice is very effective. The reader is never told how to feel. He’s not prodded and over-stimulated with great showy effects, he finds his emotional responses within himself. The sentences with the nastiest punch are those that are stated matter-of-factly.

However, I wouldn’t mind seeing the narrator lose some of her impassiveness is during fight scenes. The events are depicted with precision, but the scenes lack in drama, especially when weak verbs take over. That may well be deliberate, and it’s not something that distracts greatly from the overall impact of the story.

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Pacing / Syntax

I already mentioned in the previous section that the fight scenes could be a little more dramatic. More paragraph cuts and stronger verbs could accomplish a lot, both give a sense of speed and immediacy. Also, splitting longer sentences in two might speed up fight scenes. The fight scenes should convey a sense of danger.

You already vary sentence length more or less throughout the story, but a few times I felt you were trying to cram as much info into several successive sentences as possible. In these instances I felt you ended up with a more monotonous tone. Have you read your story out loud? If you do, you will surely spot the few instances where the sentences start to bleed into each other.

Pet phrases / frequently used words

He - You don’t use Spike’s name a lot – which leaves you stuck with the word ‘he’. Normally names and personal pronouns are ‘invisible’, i.e. they convey information without flavoring the sentence they are in. However, excessive use of one and avoidance of the other is something the reader notices, and it makes a statement. Use of the pronoun should create proximity and invite identification, but your voice is often distant, and impassive. I find this a (mild) discrepancy.

There is – This is a weak phrase. (I use it way too often myself). It should be used sparingly. (In fact, one of my books on writing calls the phrase a ‘bloodsucker’ and recommends its immediate replacement with a more active phrase.)

Pull (up) – I noticed that you use this particular expression very often at the beginning, but not towards the end. (I will send you the annotated file of the story so you can check for yourself.) Because ‘pulling’ subtly evokes images of puppets, this isn’t a bad word choice, but there’s a thin line between over-use and what I’d like to call ‘leitmotifing’. I’d get rid of a few ‘pulls’ and I’d use it again later, towards the end, when Spike has been turned into a puppet.

Look like / look at – yup, I use those all the time and I always have to struggle to come up with alternatives. These are weak words. Sometimes we don’t need the reminder that what the narrator shows us is what Spike sees. You’ve established from the start that you won’t show us anything outside the range of Spike’s senses.

Think, seem, feel, a little, almost – these words/expressions should be used with caution. They often convey a sense of vagueness, as though the author couldn’t make up her mind. That does not mean you have to always cut them out, just that you might want to use the Search option on your word processor to check if you really need to use them.

Conclusion

Like I said before, the overall writing is lean and effective. In some instances, there are more poetic and poignant phrases, but they do not stick out like sore thumbs. They serve the story and snugly fit into the flow of the narrative. The dialogue I find particularly effective. First Evil’s many voices are spot on. One or two of Spike’s utterances might have been a little ‘Spikier,’ but I was never jolted out of the story by them.

If you ask me, there’s not a lot wrong with this story. Sure, one can tweak and tinker until the cows come home, but usually it’s better to try to make the next story even better. Even if you don’t change a word, I’ll still gladly recommend this as a great story.

(Just one thing: maybe it’s because I’m used to American punctuation, but I often felt that there should have been more commas throughout – but punctuation is not my strong suit. Feel free to ignore me.)

From:

I've read

estephia's critique and I don't think that her comment about the lack of a sense of danger in the fight scenes is relevant. We already know that Spike survives - this is a 'fill in the blanks' story not an AU - and therefore there really isn't much point in trying to inject artificial drama into the fights. I think that if you had done so it would have drawn too sharp a line between the real and the unreal and weakened the overall effect.

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Hi there! I've organized my feedback in sections with different headers, with a summary section at the end, because that's how it was easiest for me to keep organized. (Hopefully it seems to be to you as well. Heh.) There will be several posts here, due to LJ limitations. I can send a full copy to your email if you think it would be helpful, just let me know!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Grammar

"He finds an unoccupied holiday shack -- built low, thatched roof -- and jemmies open its sole window."
I think this should be "jimmies".

Let me preface this comment with a statement that this is certainly not an error of any sort.
"...soon the stench of effluent becomes overpowering..."

This is probably a perception unique to me because I'm weird about word association, and I'm certain that you wouldn't need to have a concern with other readers. But for some reason, I initially perceived "effluent" as "effulgent" because of the notoriety and strong association the word has with Spike. Obviously the word was contextually wrong, and I re-read quickly and saw my error, but I thought it interesting enough to mention. If for some reason you think others might make the same stumble (I doubt it) you could probably use "effluvium" with no loss.

There were a couple of "Brit-isms" that I, as a yank, had to discern via context. I never did quite get what an antimaccassar was, but I gathered it was some sort of linen or sheet, and that was quite sufficient for the story's purpose. Personally, I have no problem with that, and think that it adds to the story, so yay. Others may not, however. But, who cares?

Overall structure comments

Runs more like a play-by-play than prose. Very structured, very clear, easily visualized, but I feel little emotional involvement with the story while reading. I felt almost as if we were watching a news broadcast or a documentary of "What happened in Africa" rather than being involved and swept up in Spike's story. Given the very real turmoil Spike clearly experienced due to his re-souling, this almost-objective telling of his story was unusual. I don't think it worked for me personally, but other readers might enjoy a more atypical telling of his experiences.

Intriguing sections

"What would she have done with her life had she had one? Got married and knocked-up? Put letters in the penny post, warning miners not to work tomorrow and sailors not to put to sea the day after next? Drusilla as kindly seer."

I like Spike's thoughts of a human Drusilla. This is also one of the few sections where I felt what Spike felt, rather than felt like I was reading a report of Spike's actions.

"Forget about the soul, Spike. Concentrate on what you're good at -- whenever you find out what that is."

I found this line intriguing, because as it happens, it turns out to be genuinely good advice. What I never did decide is whether the Angelus-spectre sincerely meant it to be, or whether it was intended as hurtful, and in truth was something else altogether. At first this bugged me, and I read and re-read the context trying to decide. Finally I decided that I liked not knowing the intent of the spectre when it was said. A little mystery is good.

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Regarding various action sequences

Enjoyed the first fight scene with the vamps and the "elder". Very clear and easily pictured; especially the scene with the train. I could almost picture it as part of an actual episode, with neat-O choreography as Spike thinks on his feet and tricks the pursuers into the vaporizing sunlight.

General plot commentary

The German woman that Spike meets at the bar...either she is superfluous, or I totally missed what her significance was. To me, she seemed jammed in there with no real reason behind her existence. The story could have proceeded just as well with Spike finding his own place to stay, especially given how she departs without incident or further explanation later. Why? Did I miss something important about her?

There are several instances where Spike encounters humans -often bleeding- but even though he hasn't eaten there is little to no mention of his hunger other than the pig incident until near the end with the hotel keeper crushed by the chest. No temptation to drink from the dead or dying, no stomach rumblings- not even a self-disgust at thoughts of their blood or the hunger it causes. Either the reader has to believe that Spike isn't hungry -he hasn't eaten since the first day out of the cave, and his body is struggling for fuel to heal itself- or has to believe that it isn't integral enough for the storyteller to comment on. Neither seemed believable to me.

The section about the biker and the lake seemed a little contrived to me. For one, I'm not really sure why Spike is obsessed with following the vamp biker. It's stated that he'll bring more pursuers, but I felt like Spike would have been better served just putting miles between himself and the biker. After all, it's not as though it's a secret that he's *in* the country. Cloven-hoof guy would still have to find him. And I am also not sure why Spike would drive the car into the lake. The story seems clear that the biker is unsuspecting of Spike being in the car. It's just an anonymous Japanese car. Why not just force him into the lake (as he did) and stay on shore and wait for a drenched vamp to come crawling out and meet him with a stake? If the vamp is really rushing to report Spike's presence, he's gotta come out of the lake sometime, and Spike could easily run down a waterlogged vamp in the car.

Finding a hat-selling demon in a random sewer-tunnel also seemed a stretch to me.

Interesting cameo apparitions: Walsh, the Coal Bin Girl, Ford...

I am a bit confuzzled by the phone conversation between Spike and Dawn (unless he totally imagined it and I didn't get that, in which case ignore this part of my commentary). We know that Buffy took Dawn to Spike's while he was in Africa in hopes of leaving her in his protection. This was a big thing with her friends (understandably). But we hear Dawn putting the hate on Spike over the phone, saying "she knew". If that were true, then Feisty Dawn would never have stood for the trip to Spike's. The case could be made that Dawn went to Spikes, then found out the truth, and *then* Spike called afterward, but the time line seems a little convoluted in my head. Maybe that's just my head, and no one else's.

Other than that tiny niggle, the entire story fits perfectly into show canon, explaining how Spike physically got "out of Africa" and how he came to be so ensorcelled by FirstBuffy. Well done!

Favorite scenes

I really like the parts with Angelus, especially the line where he tells Spike "But she loved me". I could feel that punch in the gut.

"He breaks a branch from a nearby tree and plunges it into the biker's heart. The dust becomes mud on his boots and is washed away in the rain."

Wonderful imagery here- really liked the dust becoming mud.

"There's something wrong with me," he tells her. "There's been something wrong with me for a while."
"Years," she says. "But I'll fix it."

I love this. Clearly, Spike and First-Buffy are referring to two different "wrongnesses" inside him, at different ends of the spectrum. Great symmetry here.

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Some of the lines I liked

"It's almost calming, this level of incomprehensible noise, as none of it triggers any warning bells or memories he wants to avoid. He has, he reflects, killed very few people on lakebeds."

I liked this, and actually smiled when reading it. It also made me realize that it was the only smile I'd felt so far in the story. I don't know if it was your intent to have a uniformly dark story without humorous interjection, so I thought I'd mention it.

"Blades of grass stick up through the mud an inch from Spike's face. He realises that his knees have given out."

Again, nice imagery...unique way of showing a collapse to one's knees.

"Around one corner is the Chinese Slayer. She snarls, "I was the best night of your life!"

I like the twist in this. Usually when a woman makes this sort of declaration, she's been scorned and discarded by the man, and she's trying to remind him of what he'll never feel again. In this case, she's been completely erased by a man and is reminding him of what he'll never feel again. Interesting.

"When Spike was a boy, this place didn't count as a country. He remembers when Stanley found Livingstone on the shores of another lake. Of course, they had to name this one lake Victoria. Every bloody thing was named Victoria, except for the things that were named Albert. If he had the chance, he'd name everything Buffy. Buffybuffybuffybuffybuffybuffybuff."

I think this might be my favorite line of the story. Brava!

Overall summary

Very strong grammatically!

As I mentioned earlier, I felt this story slides smoothly into canon. I liked the end especially, finding out how it is that Spike initially encounters The First. Neat!

The overall tone and feel to the story was rather dry and reserved to me personally. Other than a couple of the incidents I mentioned above, it seemed like I was watching a sequence of events dispassionately, with no real stake in or emotional investment with a character for whom I would normally feel a great deal of...something.

There were a couple of parts I felt were "inserted" rather than natural progression of the story: Dawn/Spike call, car into the lake, German woman. Rather than feeling intrigued by these sections, I was distracted, trying to figure out "why" it was happening and/or what I was missing. I like mystery, foreshadowing, and hints...I don't like if I have to re-read a lot or spend time trying to figure out why I didn't "get" something. Again, this is only my perception. Other readers may enjoy these same segments!

I felt your [Spike's] remembrances of Angelus and Drusilla were especially strong and well-characterized, and enjoyed reading them.

There were several really strong visual images...Spike's initial struggle to walk out of the cave across the sand, the broad, cloven-hoofed elder, the two different rooms where Spike stays (and him smoking, wet and naked on the chair), the fight scene at the railroad tracks, the chicken-carrying woman on the bus...all wonderfully described and easily seen in the mind's eye.

There were a couple of instances where I truly felt connected with Spike and his story, and, fittingly, they were associated with the women he loved- how he felt about Drusilla, his stunned reaction to Dawn's comments, Angelus' stating that Buffy didn't love Spike, and Spike's wanting to name everything after Buffy. As a whole, however, I felt too distanced from what was happening to him to be emotionally connected to the tale. On the other hand, this more austere style of telling the tale is quite original compared to how we generally see Spike portrayed, and I think that others will probably find it very interesting.

I hope this is helpful in some small way. If you feel I have misinterpreted or misunderstood anything, or simply want to "rebut" to any of my comments, please feel free to do so. I am not very experienced in giving organized crit, so I can certainly improve. I am also not easily offended, so please let me know if you think I've gotten something completely wrong. Thanks for allowing me to read and critique your work- I enjoyed the experience!

From:

there really isn't much point in trying to inject artificial drama into the fights.
There is nothing artificial about drama in a fight, in fact, the absence of drama is what makes the fight scenes artificial.
Also, strong, active verbs are not just reseved for action scenes. The important thing is that a writer knows the difference and chooses deliberately. The weak verbs are often the ones that pop into our heads first. That's one of the things revision is for, swapping weak verbs for strong ones.

And yes, I agree that the story works without an emphasis on drama. That's what I said in my critique:

the scenes lack in drama, especially when weak verbs take over. That may well be deliberate, and it’s not something that distracts greatly from the overall impact of the story.

:-)

Oh, and just for the record, it's Estepheia. ;-)

From:

indri

Thank you for the comments -- you have given me much to think about. Due to various commitments, I won't be able to respond at length until later in the week, but I did want to let you know how much I appreciate this. It's very interesing.

From:

indri

Hi. I'm just writing a quick thank you note for now for your critique. I won't be able to respind properly until later in the week, but I really appreciate the time you've taken to do this.

More when I have a mo'!

From:

No hurry...I'm leaving for a long weekend beginning Thursday, so won't be about to respond in any case after that point till next week. I just admire people like you who will put their writing up and *ask* people to find something wrong. In your case, as others have said, there isn't much to find!

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gillo

OK, I’m very late with this, for which please accept my grovelling apologies.

First let me say I loved it – the blurring of the boundary between delusion and reality, (and the two realities of the vampires and the First) the insidious gathering strength of the soul, the way one only gradually pieces together what is happening – even who the woman with the clipboard is. I wasn't 100% sure whether everyone Spike met who we recognised was the First, or if some of them were his delusions because of the weight of guilt. Dunno that it matters really, though. (Is the Buffy he thinks is with him already when she visits him in canon the First or his dream anyway? Dunno about that either.)

But If I have to post some criticisms, I hope you’ll accept these:

He's managing to sit up now, back to the tunnel wall, sitting on his arse and pulling himself along, inch by inch.>/i>

Is this slightly tautologous? Sitting up surely must be done on the arse?

"Go to sleep! It's late, don't you have," he waves, "huts to go to? Go to fucking sleep!"

The break there feels artificial. Personally I’d put it before “Don’t” or after “to?”.

The jeep's down a ways,

Very American wording, or so it seems to me – slight disjunct as the POV has used English slang like “arse” earlier.

The third vamp is armed with a wooden spoon but she seems too angry to use it: she tries to bite and hit him instead as if he were human. She lands a few blows and Spike lands on his backside on the floor, his stake rolling loose from his grasp. He spins away from her only to have the fourth one's fist land on his jaw, sending him flying. The wooden-spoon woman stabs through his chest but misses his heart. He grabs her wrist, pulls her down on top of him like a shield. Spike rolls like this, holding the woman to him, for a good five or ten seconds. By then he's found the lighter in his pocket and has pressed it to her hip. He has to throw her off the instant her skirt sets alight or he'll go up in smoke too. He grabs the spoon from her just as she starts to incinerate and thrusts it into the heart of the fourth. Then he turns to the vamp with the broken neck and kicks off his head.

I feel this lacks urgency, mainly, I think, because the sentences are mostly very similarly structured or of similar length. While nothing but very short sentences is, I think, overdone as a technique to create excitement, they have their function in sustaining pace.

Angelus throws back his shoulders and puffs himself out. "Evil," he says. "You know it makes sense."

Now that is really funny – but is that what you want to achieve just here?

I can only really find niggles to comment on - it really is a very fine piece. Sorry again that it's late.

From:

"Go to sleep! It's late, don't you have," he waves, "huts to go to? Go to fucking sleep!"

The break there feels artificial. Personally I’d put it before “Don’t” or after “to?”.

I took it that Spike was going to say "homes to go to", changed his mind, paused briefly and waved in the direction of the huts, and then decided on the "huts" wording and carried on speaking.

From:

gillo

I see what you mean. But the pause still *feels* odd - perhaps it needs a clearer break? Or perhaps I'm just too dim to see it right.

It's a wonderful bit of fic, anyway - I'm just being Ms Picky.

From:

indri

Don't worry about being late! As you can see, I'm only now finding time to reply. Your review is much welcome. I'm glad you enjoyed the story.

To reply to some of your comments:

"sitting on his arse" is indeed a tautology but it's a common one in British English vernacular. As in, "What are you lot doing sitting on your arses when there's work to do?"

"huts"--

speakr2customrs has interpreted it as I'd hoped, but it can't be that clear if you stumbled over it. Noted.

"The jeep's down a ways" could well be US English. I've lived in both the UK and the US so I get confused and need these things pointed out. At first I considered using "range rover" instead of "jeep" but I couldn't manage to use it without sounding clunky.

Fight scene urgency, or lack thereof -- you're not the only one to have mentioned this, so it's clearly something I need to look into. Do you know of any good examples of fight scenes I could analyse so I can improve?

"Evil. You know it makes sense." Absolutely I want a laugh here. I think Angelus is funny. And I also want to point out the inanity of the FE's underlying motivation. But that could be my odd sense of humour.

Thank you again! I know how much time these critiques take to do,

From:

indri

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this -- it's much appreciated.

A few responses:

jimmies/jemmies -- this seems to be a UK/US English thing. OED has both but "jimmies" is given as chiefly North American.

An antimacassar is a piece of cloth draped over the back of a sofa to protect it from a sitter's hair oil (macassar oil used to be popular). My grandmother had ones made of cream linen.

I would like to learn how to write prose that is more emotionally involving. I'd be very grateful if you would point me towards some fics (fanfic or commercial fiction) that you find have emotive impact. Some of this may be due to differences in taste, of course, but I'd be keen to compare different styles.

From:

indri

The German woman -- I see what you mean. Noted.

You're quite right about my oversight regarding Spike's growing hunger. In an earlier draft he had eaten the pig, so I should have altered the text elsewhere when I changed this.

Spike driving the car into the water was an accident. Should be clearer.

Dawn found out about the AR after Villains but before Beneath You. Or at least, I presume that's why she threatens to set him alight should he touch Buffy (in BY). So I'm presuming here that Xander or someone has told her by the time she gets the call.

Thank you again for your comments. I'm sorry that my response here will come across as brief -- I'm running off in a minute to catch Serenity. I will use your comments to improve!

From:

gillo

"sitting on his arse" is indeed a tautology but it's a common one in British English vernacular. As in, "What are you lot doing sitting on your arses when there's work to do?"

Trying to analyse what my problem with it is, I think it's because you've already used "sit up" in the same sentence. And to me the idiom "sitting on your arses" implies being stationary...

Do you know of any good examples of fight scenes I could analyse so I can improve?

None come to mind instantly, but I'll look out for some. Action scenes are tricky in any case. Some of the Harry Dresden fights seem to maintain energy well.

From:

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

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Oh, and just for the record, it's Estepheia. ;-)

I've just been looking back at my recs in Fanfic Author Appreciation Week (for an unrelated reason) and I've spotted that I spell your name wrong there too.

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Fight scene urgency, or lack thereof -- you're not the only one to have mentioned this, so it's clearly something I need to look into. Do you know of any good examples of fight scenes I could analyse so I can improve?

A lot of people have told me that my fight scenes are excellent, especially in "The Cloak of Mist"; those people may be flattering to deceive, but no-one has ever told me that my fights suck.

waywardchilde writes fight scenes that are badly marred by lousy grammar and frequent tense slips but otherwise are superb examples of urgency, immediacy, and drama - if he could get over his grammatical problems they'd be about as good as you could hope to read.

ffutures is a master of fight scenes.

ezagaaikwe has written some excellent fights, choreographing them out with the aid of her husband who was an unarmed combat expert in the US Marine Corps, but her fights are few and far between. The same applies to a few other writers I know who do good fights. With

waywardchilde there's a fight every few paragraphs, and they could be a valuable resource if the grammar doesn't drive you mad in the reading.

The best fight scenes that I've ever read are in the "Modesty Blaise" books by Peter O'Donnell.

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indri

Thanks. As soon as I get a moment to breath in, I'm going to post a general request for good fight scenes and emotionally affective texts. I want to see how it's done.

Also, I'll finally respond to Estepheia's thoughtful comments.

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