Somebody Told Me: Prelude and Part 1

[kitfallen]

Title: Somebody Told Me
Genre: Kingdom Hearts, AU
Rating: PG14
Pairing: Naminé/Marluxia, Axel/Roxas, Sora/Riku/Kairi
Main Characters: Sora, Roxas, Naminé
Summary: Sora was born into this world, but Roxas and Naminé weren’t so lucky. Thankfully, Sora is generous and gives their souls a place to stay.

Prelude “Breaking My Back Just To Know Your

Comments

[mirrorbrothers]

It's great to see another writer tackling multiplicity in KH. The fandom works so, so well for it, and there's just so few good multiple stories of any kind that I always love finding one. You've got the knack of producing great lines, too - maybe I'm biased, but "sometimes it was hard, knowing who was who" really hit me. You just need a little work on the nuts and bolts sentences - for example, don't be afraid to use your characters names. Pronouns are best, when it's clear who you mean, but when you can't use a pronoun just use a name. Names go down easy, readers hardly notice them even when they appear several times - but referring to someone by a physical feature that doesn't matter at the moment is actually very jarring. Only identify people by a description when that aspect of them - the color of Sora's hair, for example - is actually important to what's happening, or when you're in the POV of someone who doesn't actually know the person. Never use a description just as an excuse to avoid a name.

You do a great job of

[kitfallen]

Oh do I love both your comments, they are so perfect with much love and also critiques--all what a writer loves.

Rob: I'm surprised there isn't more multiplicity in KH, considering how often it springs up in that world. I'm glad I managed to portray it well enough to make it real for you--I always hate when other writers bring in something with a character and then make it completely one dimensional, so I work hard to make the characters work like they would in a real world setting.

What I was trying to show, by using the physical traits was to give the characters definite personality beyond what one sees at first glance: yes, Marluxia has brownish hair, but it's a warm and soft brown, like feathers, but his eyes are sharp like knives, giving him that duo nature that many writers fail to show. Also, with Sora, Roxas, and Namine I was trying to show, without using names (can you tell that I don't like names much?), that while they share the same body, each use it completely differently. I suppose I should work on this idea more to

[mirrorbrothers]

I can't really tell without more detail, but offhand I vote for shit-happens-rocks-fall. Ideas that scare the crap out of you are almost always right, in writing or anything else, and stories run off conflict.And, uh, yes, I could tell you don't like names. That was the point of the critique - your dislike of names is a flaw in your writing. The first time you described Marluxia's hair, it did indeed tell the reader something important about his personality. After the first time, the reader already knows all that, and the description does nothing but replace a name. You knew that, really - look at how you described Marls' hair the first time, and the way you said it every subsequent time. The first one looks like a description, it acts like a description, it does everything you wanted it to do. The later descriptions are in the same place you'd put a name - in fact, you could just find-replace "the warm-haired teen" with "Marluxia" through the whole chapter and it would read just fine. That means the description is doing a

[kitfallen]

Johnny: Hehe, the shit-happens-rocks-fall one doesn't really scare me, but you're good for wanting the one with more conflict. The way I'm working towards writing the story right now, is a mix of rocks-fall and birds-and-rainbows--which makes it harder to write but all the more real because not everyone's story is the same but it shows a range of plots without being too much of a range that it confuses the reader. I'm always one for purposefully sticking my pen in spots that I'm bad at and forcing myself through them so I improve.

Rob: I was only joking about the names, but I find that a lot of writers use names constantly as cop-outs for actually describing how the character looks and feels. You make a good point about my overuse, that there's way too much repeating of the same exact thing without any change, causing the story to be dragged down in repeated terms and far too many words. (Hmm, Kairi's hair isn't really 'warm' though, it's like ash, cooling down from the flame