Beautiful Death

I received the three contest critiques yesterday from FF&P On the Far Side. Overall, the comments were extremely helpful. I was relieved to see that two judges scored me very high: 147/150 and 148/150. So BD doesn't entirely suck like a Hoover. The third judge scored me much lower, 116/150, but made some very good comments. The biggest thing: unsympathetic heroine.

Ding, ding, ding!

Yep, I'm already on that. There were a few other problems that I picked up on between the three judges. The low judge was confused about the setting. I already made some notes to myself about fleshing out futuristic Athens in more detail (I gave myself a homework exercise on this). I tried really, really hard to cut backstory and heavy description, and I think I succeeded a little too well.

Also, some comments written in the ms pages pointed out some "overwriting" on my part. Where the words and phrases were more important than what happened. E.g. I was trying too hard. I think if I read those passages out loud, I'd probably wince and get all tongue-tied, a sure way to tell when I'm getting carried away.

The best comment of all that really made me smile:

"I would probably recognize this author's voice if I read it again."

Happy smiles!

My number one goal for the remaining days of 2005 is to finish the first draft of BD. I'm not going to stop and fix anything right now, although I'm making extensive notes and thinking of homework things to work on later. I must finish this first draft and work through some of my growing pains.

Meanwhile, I'll continue to work with the Witch and hopefully gain some better skills with MRUs, scene/sequel, etc. I still don't know where in Hades I'll send this thing once it's polished, but the more I play in this world, the more I love it.