Still waiting on Midnight Rising prereads... · 6:31pm April 12th
Which are particularly important this time, because the first preread I got back was negative. As it came from AJ_Aficionado, whose opinions I particularly value mostly because he’s more interested in the story than the sex, I tend to give what he said about it credence but still want to hear from everyone else before I start making changes to the new chapter.
Without spoiling much, he said it was hard to follow and probably had too many voices in the peanut gallery, reading more like a Skype chat than anything else at times. This may well mean I’ve got to go back in there with major changes, since I really don’t want to post a bad chapter after all this—even if it’s just an interlude one. But I also need additional feedback before I decide the best course of action there.
In the meantime, I’ve gone ahead and started the first Lemon Zest chapter. It’s already up around 8,000 words, and for the first time in a while, it will incorporate a large amount of the previous version, just greatly fleshed out and altering Zesty’s punishment in a couple important ways. It will have peanut gallery comments limited almost entirely to the girls themselves this time, though Ms. Cheerilee may stick her head into the conversation briefly.
In any event, the plan had been to release the new chapter this weekend, but that may now be off due to a potential partial rewrite. But that’s what you have prereaders for—to save you from yourself sometimes. I’ll keep folks updated either way, and I promise you’re still going to get all the Lemon Zest chapters this month.
There's nothing damnably awful about the chapter or anything like that. It just felt hectic with so many people and at times, the existing cast seemed to fall into a series of basic patterns like Rarity getting mad about swearing, for example. One of the latest trends in commentary that comes to mind is podcasting. In podcasting, you get a group of usually guys together, have them freeform a conversation about a given topic and allow their natural personalities to shine through because it's like they're sitting together at a bar or something. When you get nine people together at the same time, that's nigh impossible to do.
Of course, prose is not bound to the rules of podcasting -- host, co-host, third mic -- I think EMD proves that four characters on-screen at once is more than doable. But it's my view that the less characters you have on screen, the better.
If I might suggest an alternative: Rotate out 2 or 3 of the Humane Seven and rotate in your guests to maintain a cozier, less hectic atmosphere.