A Dazzling Sunset: If I were to do it all over again. · 4:57pm May 17th, 2019
Some thoughts occured to me about parts of the story I would add too or redo if I had the time and umph to do so.
Primarily dealing with Aria. She doesn't get enough scenery to chew through in the earlier parts of the story. She's a subdued back-of-the-mind sort of threat right up until the end when she goes all Super Siren. IF I were to do it all over again, I'd add some scenes of her being abusive to Sonata and Adagio, pant a fuller picture of Aria's ducheiness. It'd break pattern, switching to anyone's perspective other than Adagio's or Sunset's, but so long as I was consistent, I don't think it'd throw that big a wrench into the works.
I love the work I did to show Sunset and Adagio growing into an understanding with each other, but I poured all my focus into that while the technical villain languished on the outskirts until her plot mandated moment to shine. Which isn't bad. I know it's not, but at the same time, I feel like the anticipation of Aria showing up just didn't land as well as it could. Adding a scene or three in the right places could really beef up that particular weakness, I think. And part of why things have been going so slow is that I've been wrestling with how to best show her off now, to implicate those unwritten and originally unplanned scenes without having to go full-on DBZ combat flashback style. I want the pay off of the next two chapters to feel satisfying. I'm just unsure if I can pull it off. But I know if I don't try, we'll never know.
So I'm going to get started on the end. Pick my threads apart and start tying these damn knots.
Stay classy.
-Fuzz
My question oftentimes in a story like this, especially when someone says the contrasting lines of "Man, the villain should have been bigger," and "I loved the relationship I built over here," is to just make sure that the person making the thing isn't ticking boxes. Like, how much does that villain actually play into the main draw of the romance, or is part of why it didn't land so well is because it wasn't as necessary as you may have once considered. After all, you already kind of break the normal Siren dynamic by having Aria be the HYPER bitch of the group and you have plenty of drama of just Sunset and Adagio
fuckinggetting closer to each other. I haven't read it of course, so I can only say so much, but I thought I'd offer a different way to look at it, especially since you yourself admit that adding more Aria scenes (especially such possibly severe ones from the sound of it) would clash so much with the original pacing and what not.5060013
I think it's a case of Show vs Tell. I had characters say things that built Aria up, but only showed her slapping Adagio once, and being kind of a bitch in the very first scene. I could have shown her being actively bad. I think the story still works as is, but it feels a touch off balance in the rising tension area. I could add more scenes to show why Aria was getting bad press and hammer in her bad behavior.
As it stands now, she goes from being a cunt to a straight murderer in 0.3 seconds.
Of course, I could go the other way and down play her more, take out the super powered fight climax and make this a more interpersonal style story that happens to feature formerly super powered bad people.
Eh, sometimes you need villains that’s are just flat out bad, depending on who they are and what they did they don’t need much of a buildup.