//------------------------------//
// A small update 
// Story: Seraphim 
// by Salacar 
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Hello everyone, a few things. First of all, I'd like to apologize for the lack of any recent updates, I'll explain the reason in a bit, I just want you to know that I do not plan to cancel 'Seraphim'.

Now, as some of you probably aware, this has been my first real work of fiction, I've never been taught how exactly to write fiction, thus most of my basis for writing this story comes from several years of forum RPing, as well as reading more fanfics than is really healthy for a human being. 

Therefore it is probably to no one's surprise that I'd look for any possible way to improve my writing, it is for this reason that I made the decision to submit 'Seraphim' to EqD. I figured it would be the easiest way to get some actual critique, and then use said critique to improve my work. I'm still not entirely sure if it was the best idea, since it did turn out to be the thing which has stopped me from updating. In any case, here's some of the reply I recieved:




The biggest issue is one of exposition. You tell instead of showing, and don't relate information in a wisely timed and interesting way. You don't do anything early to make your reader particularly care about your character, so the exposition you indulge in early in your fic is just boring. In its current form, your fic will simply not find a receptive audience on Equestria Daily, so I cannot recommend it for posting. This is your first strike of three. If you'd like to resubmit, please find a way to make your opening more engaging. That's what's holding your fic back the most.




I felt that there was a lot of truth to this statement, mostly reinforced by the fact that there's a huge drop in views between chapter 1 and chapter 5, showing that I've been unable to keep the interest of quite a few potential readers. To remedy this problem I've been spending a lot of time trying to come up with some method to improve on the first chapters.

Thus far, I've had very little luck. I simply can't figure out exactly what I can do to improve them. You'll notice that I've added some inner monologue to the Prologue, as well as fixing up some sentences and whatnot. But I'm not sure if it's really enough. This is part of why I wrote this update, I'd like to ask for your opinions, dear readers, on how I can improve upon the issues spoken of in the prereader's message. If you have any ideas on how to actually deal with this, I would very much appreciate it if you would share them with me, I don't feel like I'll be writing any new chapters until I've worked out the problem.

Also, you'll notice that I've changed the formatting slightly, indenting the first line in every paragraph. Does this look better than how it used to, or should I just change it back to how it was before?


Yours truly,

- Salacar



On an entirely different note, I've recently started proofreading another fic called 'Machine and Might' by Kriegor, if you're interested in science fiction and is looking for a very good story of humans in Equestria, I suggest you take a look, the concept of the story is rather rare on fimfiction, as I can only think of one other fic which uses a similar idea.