Subject: Re: First Mission Plug. Finally.
Author:
Posted on: 2009-08-10 22:27:00 UTC
What was lj complaining about, by the way? Because it suddenly occurs to me that you had that mental voice within and lj will assume that's a crazy tag and it'll spaz right out.
This has been written and beta-ed for at least a month or so. I have no excuses for leaving it until now, except that I am very good at procrastinating ad livejournal evidently hates me. I eventually gave up on using it and made a new site, which was *more* grounds for procrastination.
So, yeah. The mission is at http://nadineandjodi.webs.com/missionone.htm and hopefully the next one will be up much sooner. It was beta-ed by Pads, and is rated K.
I enjoyed that quite a lot, particularly the way it flowed so nicely :)
If I had one quibble, it would be simply that I found your site extremely hard to read (I have poor eyesight and white text on dark backgrounds does my head in) and so I prevailed upon Pads to share the Gdoc with me so that I could read it without pain :) Thus my one suggestion would be, next time, dark text on light background? Pretty please?
I'll see if I can arrange that. Unfortunately, I find myself stuck with using a premade template, because I know nothing about html.
What was lj complaining about, by the way? Because it suddenly occurs to me that you had that mental voice within and lj will assume that's a crazy tag and it'll spaz right out.
Things kept showing up highlighted in various colors. *shrugs* That, and the font switched size for no apparent reason a few places. I just deleted the entry after the first few tries at editing.
Hmmm. You weren't using the dreaded rich text editor, were you? That thing's dreadful.
I don't trust myself to figure out html correctly.
Most of the regular LJ posters know HTML, or at least the basics of it. If you asked your beta, they might not mind helping you out with it.
I liked it, though I agree with the things IndeMaat pointed out--it's unclear what's going on some of the time. In addition, I have to ask, was that a little encounter with one of the occupants of RC #999 at the beginning? I imagine that would be an easy mistake to make. *g*
~Neshomeh
I don't think it was one of them, mostly because I'm not sure who they *are*, though. Thanks; I'll be more careful about POV, among other things, in the next one.
I was thinking specifically of this blue guy. {= )
Also, I linked to your Prologue from the Department of Fictional Psychology's page. Is that all right?
~Neshomeh
the blue bit was just to send home a "not human" message pretty clearly, since Nadine wasn't really up to detailed observations, though I was thinking, possibly an andalite (can't remember if that's capitalized, it's been ages since I read anything from that series). And the linking's fine.
It's the combination of the blue and the triangular brackets--that adds up pretty invariably to Andalite, and there's only Ilraen and Iskillion in HQ.
~Neshomeh
Nice mission.
Some nitpicks.
All the paragraphs have a one space indentation. I only noticed the indentation on my second look at story. I don't think it's necessary to indent when leaving a blank line between paragraphs.
“You’re my new partner, then?” she asked cheerfully, ignoring how naked she was.
“Nadine Moreno,” she said awkwardly, nodding.
Two things here: (1) in both sentences a "she" is referred to, both they are two different people. A little more distinction would be nice. (2) "Ignoring how naked she was" is Jodi's POV, while up to that point everything had been Nadine's POV. Some people (I imagine mainly those that have read a lot about keeping POVs consistent) would find such a switch jarring. (It's much later that Nadine notices she can follow her partner's POV, which I find a great escape for POVs that sometimes wander.)
Guessing that she was finished getting dressed, Nadine turned around and saw her sitting on the edge of one of the bookshelves.
Blame my high-school education for this one: whenever I see "she" I think the antecedent is the last female mentioned previously. In this case Nadine. Which made this sentence confusing on first reading it. Changing "she" with Jodi or the girl would sort that.
“Hey, if you’re going to clean for me, it’s fine with me,” Jodi said. Nadine smiled slightly, and nodded.
“Do you know when we’re going on our next mission?” she asked, sitting back on the bed and pulling off her boots. Her partner grinned.
The people that say, "start a new paragraph when a new person starts speaking" are not entirely right. A new paragraph can (should, depending on how strict you are) start when a new person starts acting or speaking. Which means that when a person first acts and then says something then that can be done in the same paragraph. In the above example:
“Hey, if you’re going to clean for me, it’s fine with me,” Jodi said.
Nadine smiled slightly, and nodded. “Do you know when we’re going on our next mission?” she asked, sitting back on the bed and pulling off her boots.
Her partner grinned. (...)
Could you make direct quotes from the fic stand out in some way (putting them in italics, bracketting them, opening the paragraph with a minus sign) so that a distinction can be made between what you wrote and what came from the fic?
After the impostors are apprehended Nadine seems to take charge of the situation and Jodi, her more experienced partner, just waits around for her. This seems unlikely for a seasoned agent and a cat-person. I imagine neither to be good at following orders. Waiting impatiently because their partner had run off with the equipment they needed, that I can imagine.
With the one space indentation, I have no idea what happened; I spent fifteen minutes going through and erasing those indents (it was copied from the Microsoft word file, because Google Docs evidently hates me). As for the last bit, I'm sorry for not making it clear, but both of them are new. I'll take note of the other things.
All paragraphs have a one space indent? That's weird. I just checked the gdoc the beta was done in, and there are a few odd lines with a one space indent (bad me; I should've spotted 'em) but most are fine. How peculiar.
I opened the story and enlarged the font once. Then all the paragraphs (except the first) I could see had a one space indent. I apparently assumed without checking that this is a layout thing throughout the story. Should have checked; have checked again now. When I scrolled down there were a few more with indent, but also without indent. At 25% in I guess most paragraphs were without indent.
I discovered that I couldn't actually open the docs by clicking the links, I had to type out the url, so I got kind of sick of using it. I did copy what was in that file into the Word file, but there might have been some changes after that. At any rate, I still don't know how the indents happened, because while they were there when I copied it into the web page, I spent about fifteen minutes going through and getting rid of them. *shrugs*
Definitely a good mission - that fic sounded horrendous.
The Agents seem to promise a lot of interesting events in the future, too. They certainly intrigued me, anyway.
Yeah, when I saw that fic on the Unclaimed Badfic list, I went, "That has to be a troll. Right? It *must die.*" I'm glad you thought my agents were interesting; I've had Jodi floating around in my head for over a year now, unnamed, but Nadine is a bit newer. Hopefully, the next missin will take less time for me to get around to putting up than this one.