Concrit for regshoe

[regshoe]

I want to receive feedback by : Email (esmereldamargaretnotespelling@gmail.com) or comment on this post.

Here are the works I want feedback on (optional: and my safe works are...): My works are here—any of these would be fine! I'd especially like feedback on fic for Flight of the Heron, my current main fandom. If you don't know my main fandoms and don't want to read without knowing canon, you could try one of the stories I've written for various short ballads and fairytales.

My works' fandoms and content notes are: My main fandoms are Flight of the Heron, Raffles and Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, and I've also written for various other old book fandoms and ballad/fairytale fandoms—all tagged on AO3. Archive warnings are tagged where relevant—the CNTWs are all for borderline Major Character Death and do not contain any other archive warning content—and more specific warnings are included in the author's notes.

I have these questions for readers: Really, I'd like to know about anything that occurs to you to comment on! I would especially like feedback on characterisation: if you know the fandom, do the characters feel true to their canon selves? if you don't, do you feel you get a good sense of who they are? if it's a ballad/fairytale fic which builds character from a small amount of canon, is this done well? Comments on pacing, structure and plot development would also be good, particularly if it's a longer fic.

The style of feedback I prefer to receive is: I'd like to hear about both good and bad things; I don't mind directness, and would welcome specific thoughts on how I might improve anything that didn't work.

Comments to this post will be: unscreened.

Comments

Feedback: A Propitious Season of Living

[osteophage]

Hi! Thanks for signing up for Concrit-X. Since I'm not familiar with any of the fandoms you've written for, I decided to go with A Propitious Season of Living.

First I want to give you props for the vintage-feeling narration style. I get the sense that this is a style you're practiced and comfortable with, so maybe you take it as a matter of course, but I've definitely seen people go for older-sounding prose and completely mangle it. Part of what cinches it is your use of dashes and asides, I think. There's a hefty, elaborate, meandering feeling to the syntax that I associate with Victorian novels, and it shows you know how to pay attention to sentence-level structure.

Where you can turn that attention to next is to narrative-level structure. For this genre I understand it's expected for stories to be pretty loose and quiet in their pacing, but even so, I have some specific thoughts.

First, I want to point out your use of what I'll call preview sentences. These are sentences at the lead of a scene or segment that set the tone and warn us of what's about to happen next, which help with the pacing and generating interest. Sentences like "It was the next day that Becky's illness began to get worse" and "One day things reached a crisis" work like this. Those are some good ones, and I'd like to see more. For instance, I would have liked a more ominous note like that in the first sentence, which currently reads, "Of all the windows in London — all the lighted windows sending their warm, happy glow out onto the cold grey pavements of this gloomy March evening — none presented a happier view to the passer-by than this one." This definitely sounds cheerful, but (perhaps as a matter of personal taste) I'd prefer a hint of the trouble yet to come. While reading, I found the story to move faster in the second half than in the first, and I think that sense of initial "slowness" wasn't so much about the actual events as it was a hankering for more little hooks and warnings, if that makes sense.

Second, around the time of Becky's confession, I found myself wondering about Becky's POV. I understand you may have a purpose in sticking with Sara, so I'm just explaining where my mind was at during this point. I imagine there would be an interesting internal conflict going on over her guilt and sense of duty vs. a fear of speaking her mind. Becky's "I should have been able to stand it" is a very expected perspective, from what I can glean of her character, but I also wonder if Becky's "Thank you, miss" that concludes this conversation was just to close the subject, out of reluctance to argue with Sara. If we had access to Becky's thoughts, then we could see the contrast between those thoughts and her outward behavior. As it is, Sara's POV doesn't provide us with any clues that would hint at that, and so it seems like kind of an abruptly easy resolution.

Third, Sara's personal realization being placed right before Becky's recovery makes it feel like a narrative turning point. I don't know if you meant to imply that Sara's realization makes her get better, but it makes me wonder what kind of narrative significance I should read into that moment. I would be interested in seeing that fleshed out with a sharper contrast between Sara's mentality before and after. If that would be diverging from your intentions with the scene, though, then maybe something else (a realization on Becky's part, not Sara's?) would be a better fit for this spot.

Lastly, I noticed there's a lot of attention to plants here. I appreciate that. You've got a keen sense for atmospheric details, and even though I don't know most of the species named, it makes for a lot of lovely imagery in a way that's very fitting for the spirit of the story.

Re: Feedback: A Propitious Season of Living

[regshoe]

Thank you very much for this! You've given me a lot to think about, and your comments are very helpful. That point about 'preview sentences' gets at something I was aware of in writing and reading but hadn't articulated specifically to myself as a thing, which is an especially useful thing to get from concrit. And I appreciate your other points about Becky's POV and the story's structure. What I had in mind in that last scene was just the external-narrative appropriateness, I suppose, of having the hurt/comfort plot of Becky's illness and the emotional relationship/class stuff resolve at the same time, but I see what you mean about the vagueness of the implications there. Anyway, I shall mull all this over, and keep these things in mind for future writing. :)

(On an unrelated note—I thought I vaguely recognised your username, and following links from your profile, you write The Ace Theist? I got a lot out of reading that blog and your stuff on The Asexual Agenda when I was learning about the ace community a few years ago! Small world.)

Re: Feedback: A Propitious Season of Living

[osteophage]

Glad it was coherent, lol. With my other Concrit-X match, I accidentally based some feedback on a misunderstanding, and we had to talk it over for me to figure out where I went wrong.

And yep, The Ace Theist is me! Small world indeed. Glad I could help there too.

Re: Feedback: A Propitious Season of Living

[regshoe]

Oh dear! I hope the misunderstanding was still useful, though–I always like to hear when people have misunderstood things in my writing, because it tells me where I perhaps needed to explain things more clearly.