Suggestions for FFVII fic

[ninja_egg]

Fandom: Final Fantasy VII
Pairing: Zack/Cloud
Rating: T-M (M for “Maybe”)
Purpose: Suggestions
Warnings: Cliché? Also, TL;DR
Possible spoilers: CC spoilers; FVII spoilers. Fic spoilers.

“Poop (title pending)” is pretty much just a “Zack survives being shot a million times and he and Cloud go live happily ever after” fic. You can read chapters 1 and

Comments

[ninja_egg]

These were all my thoughts, actually! Creepy. Get away from my brain

[fantasia0829]

About their relationship, you might want to think about using actions to show affection instead of words. A lingering glance, a 'friendly' touch on the arm that stays longer than it should in terms of social conditioning... all that can help to build up a relationship slowly. Once it's been established that they have a very close relationship, things can go very fast from there. Personally, I don't like using time skips in the beginning stages of a relationship since it feels like I didn't put too much thought and effect at building the foundation, but once they're close enough, time skips are more or less permissible for writing.

You might also want to think about how close Zack and Cloud already are, especially before their capture back in Nibelhelm.

Hope that helped! :D

[ninja_egg]

Exactly. Show, don't tell. It's already canon that they had a relatively close friendship, and I want to build on that. I honestly dislike overusing time-skips in general, because it really breaks up the pace of a story. At the same time, since this is taking place over the course of several months, I don't want to make a day by day journal of events because that just gets tedious. Honestly, I don't have a lot of patience. LOL

This is where background plots help. As the characters are following the plot, they're building their relationship. And as the readers are following the plot, they recognize the time-line of events without having to mention, "By the way, this is two weeks later."

[fantasia0829]

I'm actually okay with time skips, provided that it's well integrated into the story. I hate those that start a fic with, "Three months later..." And since it's usually not necessary for readers to know how much time exactly has it been since the last part, I prefer to have the passage of time shown, not told. It feels a lot less awkward and keeps the 4th wall up nicely. XD

BTW, talking about slow-moving relationships, have you read this fic on ff.net called Tenacity? The relationship between Zack and Cloud moves really slow here, but quite believable, so you might want to refer to it? I'll admit that it moves too slow for me personally, but that's probably because I live on fluff. XD

[ninja_egg]

Yes, that makes sense. But it sounds easier said than done. XP But I'll try it.

I haven't read it, but I'll check it out! Thanks.