Thanks for the concrit. When it comes down to it everyone has great ideas, but it’s the skill of representation that makes it sing.
From what I can see you’ve picked up on three points that are currently causing me considerable grief with how my writing’s evolving:
- Tendencies for length (nyx wants to write novels) and unfamiliarity/impatience with such a structured thing - Inability to determine a structural/textual method that I’m comfortable with (transitions) for indicating ‘in chapter’ breaks and leaps in POV, which leads me to skim an awful lot just to get to the point - Basch, Basch, Basch: why do you do what you do, and why is it always exactly the wrong thing???
And then there’s that whole 'internal-monologue'/'exposition versus dialogue'/'show versus tell' stylistic issue that I’ll get around to resolving one day. I’ll write more on these in bunny_bit_me, I think, because that second point listed has been BUGGING me something chronic since I started North Star and put Clear Blue on hold. But as to this fic:
Length-wise, it was one of those that I thought would be a string of drabbles linked, about 3000/4000 – at 17000 words it’s over half the size of Progress. What I should have done was flesh it to that 30000 word mark, and make it a /story/ instead of a cluster of disconnections. Instead, I compressed, and cut and pasted any unresolved chunks into existing ‘chapters’. There would have been more Ashe-Basch letters, and Basch-Balthier letters; there would have been a couple of scenes where Ashe makes decisions to overrun Ffamran’s, where ‘Queen’ role supersedes all of Ashe that wants to be Ashe until she disappears – and also, critically lost I think, is how terrified Ashe is of pregnancy (female/vulnerable) and how much she wants to just submit and let Balthier take control, thus she has to make him an enemy.
With Basch I admit he got scrunched; with Ashe, I feel like her self-deceptive POV (all those words with no meaning!) totally got in the way.
Hence the:
… places it felt like the words wanted to say much more than you were willing to allot space to saying. Thus, in those places the story either felt a little constipated (?!) or as if beating around the bush.
Yes. Ashe never says what she wants to say. ^^ The most klutzy giant ‘reader beware’ gap I see is between Ashe and Ffamn dancing, and her utter rejection of him after she miscarries – that’s where most of the fleshing/conversing would have happened.
Ultimately, this was written very fast and with not nearly as much time or structure as Progress had, when I do think it should have been matching that length for the depth of ideas glossed over here. Plus I keep trying for that ‘what is unsaid’ poignant ache, when I always get better responses from the audience when I use my dialogue/blunt-description/shock-value instead. Should hone my strength instead of waving my weaknesses around.
PRIMARY BIG ISSUE: I need to just deal with the fact I want to write novels, or very specific Andante-equse fanfiction/characterisation nods. Half story and half not just doesn't work for me.