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

[anonne]

Hello! I’m just about familiar with Raffles so I had a look at Lovely on the Water. You pull off the pastiche really well and the subtle references to Raffles and Bunny’s relationship blend in very effectively. I think that can be one of the real challenges of the “pastiche but make it more overtly slashy” style, but none of it seems out of place here. Beyond that, you evoke the setting very well in the way you refer to the seasons and all the features of the natural world. It made me feel very nostalgic about the short time I spent living in south-east England even if it was over a century later!

I’m really impressed by how you mimic Hornung’s writing style; there were a few things that I thought might not be quite right, but when I looked back at the canon I found the same features there. There was just one thing – to be very pedantic! – that seemed slightly off to me, which was your use of “agreed” as a quotative, in the phrase “agreed Raffles”. It just didn’t sound quite right to me, especially in that inverted format, and when I had a look over the canon it seemed like the verbs typically used in that phrase related more directly to the act of speaking: I found “cried”, “murmured”, “whispered”, “continued”, “exclaimed”, and “laughed”, as well as the obvious “said”. To me, “agreed” doesn’t quite fit in with those – it seems less directly related to speaking, I think. I feel like that’s a ludicrously specific point to make, but I hope it doesn’t seem too out of place.

I think the second angst section (by which I mean from “I was unable to stand the continual lightness of his tone” to the end) blends in with the plot very well, and the story transitions effectively from more action-driven to more emotion-driven material; I was slightly less sure about the similar earlier section (from “That book of yours” to the end of that scene). I just wondered if the scene could be expanded slightly, and perhaps made a bit less subtle in places, to really root it in the story and make it clear how the characters feel at this point. When Raffles says “had we known that such a to-morrow as this were to follow”, I just feel like it would be good to have slightly detail on why this is significant at this point, and what Raffles understands his own assertion to mean.

Overall, as I said, I’m very impressed by how you pull off the style! You clearly know this canon extremely well, and you write for it with a lot of skill.

[regshoe]

Thank you very much! Aww, I'm glad the setting was effective enough to inspire nostalgia. :) That point about 'agreed' isn't ludicrous at all, that's just the kind of detail I like paying attention to! —and in this case I suspect it may have slipped over from my other main fandom, whose author uses 'agreed' in that way more often. And your thoughts on the subtlety of the angst scene are useful too—getting the right level of subtlety is a particular challenge with Raffles, I find. I'll keep these points in mind! :)