And You May Find Yourself (10595 Words)

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > And You May Find Yourself (10595 Words)

Stabbey_the_Clown: Sep 21, 2002; Are... are you quite sure you really want to say that?; Taco Defender

Exmond posted:

Isekai

Not everyone in the world is an anime geek who speaks fluent Japanese/memorizes random Japanese terms. What's wrong with using the word "fantasy"?

Exmond posted:

1) We have no idea who your protagonist is and don't care about them, they just turn into a squirrel.
2) I don't know why the starting scene is there, with protag in the bedroom. It's not a good foundation to build a story on (Protag is.. miserable? I think? and has a mother) and in general, the focus on an Iseaki story is the new world and what your protagonist does in it.
3) You start is confusing. Suddenly shifting in and out of squirrel form, and your protagonist being oddly calm about it. This is a bit of a continuation of problem #2, as I believe if your protagonist was just cemented a little further, it would make sense.
4) Who cares about Mr. Coyote, I certainly don't!
5) Who cares about Mrs. Protags average day.

I agree with all of these points except for the second half of point 2 (not everything in the world is anime and must follow an anime formula exactly). It might sound like a contradiction to say "start out with the squirrel" and "show us who the protagonist is" because one tries to jump you into the story immediately, the other starts a bit slower. One way to do that is sort-of cheating, it's an in-media res sort of thing.

quote:

It wasn't a bad story, just didn't have a good character moment for me to latch onto.

Hope you continue writing!

I also agree with this.

Perpetual Motion posted:

I've copied the comments, thanks!

Funny thing about the whole "furry isekai" thing. My intention was never to try and break into those genres. It's just an idea I had rattling around in my head and felt the need to spend time writing, though obviously it does fall into those categories in retrospect. I totally see the problem with the opening. Suuuper newbie mistake there. It was literally the first thing I wrote, and I guess I was just to used to reading it that I never thought any better. Should be an easy fix, though. I think I may need to merge chapters 1 and 2 here to get the appropriate character hooks in there quicker. Combined with a quicker start, it shouldn't bloat things too much. Maybe rework the whole thing entirely to add more dread, since the mystery and character introductions were meant to be the driving force in the first half, and that obviously isn't going to work.

Thanks again! I'll need some processing time to figure all this out. Hearing that it's not very good stings, but I should have expected it. Nobody starts off good, right? I just hope it's salvageable.

I've got a story I'm working on. To give it a kick of momentum I started off with an in media res thing with a murder victim being found, to hook the audience, then flashing back to "two days earlier" where I'd do a bunch of character introduction stuff. I quickly realized though, that having just a bunch of character introductions would be dull, dull, dull, so I added in a source of conflict and tension, which also allowed me to show character in some different ways.

Conflict is the fuel for fiction. Conflict drives the story. What is the conflict in this enclave of these animals? Where do they get food and water? Is it being consumed faster than it grows? Are there any interpersonal squabbles?

Right now the conflict is largely internal. Internal conflict is good, it's important for well-rounded characters, but if you ONLY have internal conflict, then the story just devolves into navel-gazing.

I also find the ending a little odd. The main character has been suffering from depression, but after one brief flip back home for a motivational speech, suddenly Sam's depression seems to be lifted and she's willing to think "everything will be fine". It just seems a little abrupt, a little too easy - almost like that's the end of the story. However, I am assuming that there will be more after this, something to do with the world through the dead tree, though.

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The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > Creative Convention > And You May Find Yourself (10595 Words)