Dec
5th
2012
The Last Link goes semi-live! · 3:30am Dec 5th, 2012
I plan on starting to publish this soon, so I'm going to pre-pub by tossing some links up here. Comments and critique are desperately welcomed and eagerly wanted... er, wait, that's backwards. Yeah.
The Last Link, Prologue - Ch. 3, Draft
Pre-readers especially welcome- I want to know if my character interactions are okay, as well as if they pacing varies too much between the early and later chapters.
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Featherprop · 183 views
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I'm looking forward to this. :)
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Thanks! I'm looking forward to getting it done- it's about half-finished, though I have another chapter drafted out and being edited.
I've finished your first chapter, going to read one or two more. Thanks for the watch, man!
First off, this is a warning that I may sound like I know what I’m talking about, but I’m really just pretending to. xP Bear in mind that I’m no expert on literature; I'm just going off of my instincts as a reader, and also as a mediocre writer.
Might I just say that this is extremely well-written. It’s obvious that you’ve put a lot of thought and time into this, and it shows. Your language is poetic, almost, the way you use words. I also like your sense of humour. This story feels less like a fanfiction and more like a novel, engrossing the reader in the world you’ve created. It’s not a bad thing at all, and I hope the readers agree when you post it.
I remember you told me you had the documentarian gene. Well, it shows. :p Everything you do is thorough. You did a pretty good job world-building in the beginning. If I had a complaint, it’d be that it was a little too long. If we, as readers, are going to spend a lot of time at the weather station in Frostmane, then the amount of description of the weather station can be detailed, like it is. If, however, we don’t stay at the weather station that often throughout the story… unless it’s to reveal something about the characters, then you can dial down the detail a little.
Speaking of the characters: so far, they’ve each been fleshed out, I think, a good amount, if a little too much. I hope that you have more to tell about them later in the story, leaving some room for them to develop. You’ve already given a sizeable amount of detail to each. If we get to see some change in the characters later in the story, that would be fantastic.
Part of world-building is showing more than telling. When you get to the aspects of the Frostmane or the weather station like you have in the prologue, I feel that you can talk about them in later chapters, as the characters interact or talk about them. A couple of examples: You can mention FP’s schooling when he talks about ‘ether’ in chapter 2. Or, you can get more into Frostmane life when the plane lands in Fairflanks Field. To be honest, I was a tad bored during the prologue. It could be that I have a short attention span, though.
But, after the prologue, and when the story started to pick up, I was interested. An epidemic story is a good one to tell, and, after finishing chapter 4, I find myself wanting more!
As far as grammar, you’re doing pretty good. I spotted a couple of run-on sentences, and one or two typos. Also, there were many places that needed commas. Overall, though, you’re doing great in that respect.
A small note; you define thaumaturgic therapy twice (about three paragraphs apart) in chapter 4. I assume you accidentally typed it twice in two different places – it happens all the time to me. :)
Boy, I just realized how much I've typed. Sorry for the text wall, and that I was a little late getting around to reading it. All in all, you have a wonderful story, and I'd like to see where you take it. :)
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Written too much?? Please don't apologize for being thorough! I LOVE getting thorough reviews, so I am very thankful you took the time to dig into this so much! Your kind words are appreciated, and I appreciate your critique/observations about what doesn't look right even more!
There are a few things I've done so far that may help with points you critique; the doc you read is actually not the current version of the story. I suppose I should change that, though I want to keep an element of surprise to what's left. After working through some ideas with a friend, I have tried to add some dramatic elements that are spread across the chapters, and I'm dithering on letting people see that or keeping it a surprise.
I've cut down parts of the prologue, because you are correct: It's a monster of weird prose. As I've said to others, it was written late at night and I began channeling David Attenborough- literally, I heard his voice in my head and just typed down what I was imagining he would say. Reading through it again was somewhat cringe-inducing, so I tried to condense it. I think I'm going to try to take another pass to cut it down further. I want to give your suggestions about pushing some material to later chapters and see if I can make it work... it might take some doing, but doesn't seem impossible. This is actually the first fiction writing I've done since grade school (and that was not very good), aside from about three sentences I wrote back in college and then abandoned, so I am very gratified to hear that the bulk of the story was readable and even engaging. While I'm writing mostly to satisfy myself, knowing that others are liking it is a very nice feeling.
I hope that there will be something interesting left to the characters after this- as originally conceived, this was about exploring what someone like Featherprop would actually face and how they react. I feel bad because Espresso has been left out; I haven't found a compelling reason to flash back to her, because... well, all she can do is normal managerial tasks or being angsty, and she's not really the angsty type, at least not as I've built her up. I think I can find a few more things for her to do, though. There is definitely more conflict- that's something my wife and other prereaders have said they like, so I'm trying to balance the need to have two Ponies stay civil with their own motivations, fears, and worries pushing them to get snappish.
Thank you for pointing out the repeated section in 4; I've been trying to start editing that instead of beating the next chapter into draft form and outlining the followup chapter, so I'll definitely correct that. I have a love of run-on sentences, so if you've only identified a few, that means I've done a decent job of curbing my impulses. And I'll have to see about ADDING commas- I've been working hard on streamlining clauses and not flinging commas about willy-nilly, so maybe I've been a bit too zealous there.
If you want to see the changes I've made, as well as the fifth chapter, let me know and I'll shoot you a link. This thing is stretching out much farther than I ever expected, and there are a couple more side stories and a followup that I've been ruminating on- ones where canon characters are involved, which will be a different challenge: Avoiding Gary Stu-ification.
Oh, and pony lust. Well, maybe not lust, maybe more like PG-rated pony lust. Wait, that's still lust. Say, has it occurred to anyone else that this Dashmoticon has an easily corruptible pose?
Taste the rainbow indeed...
I'm doomed!