Subject: Re: Not to spoil the surprise
Author:
Posted on: 2015-02-16 16:02:00 UTC
It would be nice to put a note at the end then, to credit the beta reading and co-writing without spoiling anything. It’s not unusual to do this.
HG
I'm not terribly pleased with how it ends, since I wanted to get Ginger and Alloy arguing over the whole "named-her-without-her-permission" thing, but then Alloy went a bit nuts about her LO being bashed and it all went to heck. :P
So, without further ado, here it is.
Mission 1: Enter Badfic
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10jqQ6jlmMflTqugylTJwotp10zbg5PIaF98LxIn75eg/edit
If there's one thing I like, it's bickering agents, and if there's one thing I like more, it's fanatical devotion to the Pope bickering agents who get into situations they can't handle. This was a fantastic start and I look forward to reading more! =]
Insert praise here. I’m really bad at positive feedback, you better get used to this :-)
"Look at this, Hieronymus:"
Ginger squeezed into the room and squinted, then began fumbling for her wand.
Alloy poked her head into the room and squinted.
"Don’t you want to page the Repetitive Department of Repetition again?" asked Still-not-an-agent Androia Avatar.
"Naah," answered Not-an-agent-yet Hieronymus. "Doing it twice a day is a bit repetitive, wouldn’t you say? And there’s nothing else to nitpick upon. I’m so disappointed," he added sulkily.
HG, not disappointed at all.
-Offers celebratory tea-
Some mechanical suggestions:
- Single line breaks between paragraphs are sufficient. Double line breaks are too much.
- "Alloy flicked the switch and sat down in the room's singular chair" - 'single' works better here, IMO.
- "Alloy checked the shoulders- she'd been told that she needed to have a patch there-" - Nesh would probably correct me, but I think those should be em dashes and have spaces before and after them. This is all over the text, so probably find-and-replace is your best friend, here.
-Inserting a fic quote in the middle of a sentence probably breaks some sort of rule, but even if doesn't, it does ruin the flow.
-It would seem that capitalisation minis are frowned upon?
- "“oh okay” Ruby said." -is the badfic affecting her? Otherwise, you're missing a comma there.
That said, I liked the mission. It's funny, the fight scene at the end is good, and the book ends are nice. Well-written, very well-written indeed!
Oh, also, a question: did you have the services of a beta? I can guess Iximaz at least took a look because one of her agents appears in the mission, but was there anybody else? If so, it should be noted - betas deserve their credit! - and if not, you most definitely get one for your next missions. They catch the mistakes you don't and generally serve as another pair of eyes, as well as a general advisor.
I actually had most of this written before the capitalization mini thing. I'll try not to pull them in again.
I'll fix up the other stuff. And yes, Ruby is being affected by the badfic. I believe the original badfic never used any commas for speech, so I carried that over for the influenced characters.
Iximaz was the only beta as well as co-writing a bit, and she asked to have her thing left out so as not to spoil the surprise.
The fic quote thing is something I think I've seen quite a bit, but I'll try to avoid that as well in future missions. :)
Thank you for the feedback!
It would be nice to put a note at the end then, to credit the beta reading and co-writing without spoiling anything. It’s not unusual to do this.
HG
Fic quotes are perfectly fine; what I meant is that putting a fic quote in the middle of the sentence - and then continuing the same sentence - is bad.
I have no idea how I managed to bungle that sentence so badly. >_
That's what you learn from, no?