I have to agree with jpublic. In fact...man, I feel like a heel for saying this...the one criticism, that I've never really voiced, because in the end I really do like and respect you, Liz, at least I hope you know that, but as a fanfiction writer, your greatest weakness is that you make a great newspaper reporter. There are times you show us action...and then there are times when you bring the story to a halt and bring us the Dread Chapter(s) Exposition. Your Africander story, with the Watcher-cum-Slayer and her first-person-view, is a lot like this one: Nominally new character in introduced, is somehow involved in the world of the Scoobies, gets roped into it more directly by circumstances completely out of his/her control, and the whole time there's gobs of behind-the-scenes information that he/she doesn't know, but somebody else does. We the audience don't know it, either, but instead of learning it along with the POV character as they learn or discover it for themselves, eventually the POV character is sat down somewhere by
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In some cases, I'd agree with both your criticism. But in the case of this particular story, I don't.
Because it made sense from a character standpoint.
And it's time to at least partially pay off the whole thing for the readers.
Lemme explain:
I've just gone through 100 pages (yes, 100 pages have posted - the story itself is roughtly 155 to 175 pages - to give you an idea just how short this really is) with people demanding to know what's going on. I've had people insisting that somehow Xander was "forced" into this role, and not even willing to consider that maybe there are reasons that Xander would actually do it of his own free will. I've had people insisting that they want to know the full story now. I've had people insisting that the story does not make any sense at all.
This has been the majority, by the way.
Hell, I still have people insisting (after all that information up there in this very post) that somehow Xander was "forced" into this without any regard to his feelings at all. Seriously
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Actually, the story was originally constructed along those lines (i.e., this part didn't exist and it was told via flashback from Xander's pov).
One small problem.
It didn't work.
Think about this from a story construction standpoint for a second: You start with Story A (Alex's daily life rundown as told from his pov). Switch to Story B (Xander, full marbles, getting off the airplane after receiving a desperate call to get home as told from his pov). Then you switch back-and-forth like that for the length of the story itself.
The overall effect was confusing and the narrative was a huge a mess. On the one hand, you have a fairly straightforward (and uninteresting) narrative with elements that haven't even come out yet in the story as it's currently being presented. On the other, you have a deliberately disorienting narrative told from the pov of Alex, a total innocent.
Trying to make it work along the lines you proposed (which I actually did) is a large part of the reason why the first 35 pages took two years to write
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Ok, so there's a fair bit of talking heads in this chapter, and if you were filming it, you'd need to bring some action in (cue visual of Sir Wanksalot slaying the dragon with voice-over), but I think the structure works very well, not just from the point of view of Alex/Xander's character, but in terms of developing Spike. I love that we get to watch Spike discover that maybe he thinks more of Xander than he ever realized. If this were being filmed, that would be the gem: watching Spike's face as he makes that discovery. And you know James Marsters would nail it
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Because it made sense from a character standpoint.
And it's time to at least partially pay off the whole thing for the readers.
Lemme explain:
I've just gone through 100 pages (yes, 100 pages have posted - the story itself is roughtly 155 to 175 pages - to give you an idea just how short this really is) with people demanding to know what's going on. I've had people insisting that somehow Xander was "forced" into this role, and not even willing to consider that maybe there are reasons that Xander would actually do it of his own free will. I've had people insisting that they want to know the full story now. I've had people insisting that the story does not make any sense at all.
This has been the majority, by the way.
Hell, I still have people insisting (after all that information up there in this very post) that somehow Xander was "forced" into this without any regard to his feelings at all. Seriously ( ... )
Reply
(The comment has been removed)
One small problem.
It didn't work.
Think about this from a story construction standpoint for a second: You start with Story A (Alex's daily life rundown as told from his pov). Switch to Story B (Xander, full marbles, getting off the airplane after receiving a desperate call to get home as told from his pov). Then you switch back-and-forth like that for the length of the story itself.
The overall effect was confusing and the narrative was a huge a mess. On the one hand, you have a fairly straightforward (and uninteresting) narrative with elements that haven't even come out yet in the story as it's currently being presented. On the other, you have a deliberately disorienting narrative told from the pov of Alex, a total innocent.
Trying to make it work along the lines you proposed (which I actually did) is a large part of the reason why the first 35 pages took two years to write ( ... )
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