Well. I left my second ConCrit...
Feb. 10th, 2004 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
agilebritIn response to this: http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1725566
The good: You know where your spell check is. You MIGHT have an interesting idea, if you can flesh it out and not turn the baby into some kind of all-perfect idealized version of yourself (also known as a Mary Sue), and if this isn't like all the other "Buffy has Angel's baby OMG!!!11!!!" fics out there.
The bad? (1)Script format is evil. Fix that. (2)I had a baby three years ago, and I gained 35 pounds in the whole pregnancy. For someone like Buffy to gain 20 pounds in a month is, quite frankly, silly. (3)Random capitalization. "Blimp" is not a proper noun, if it doesn't come at the beginning of a sentence. However, "Angel" is, always, when referring to the character. (4)You're in serious need of a beta reader. They will catch mistakes like "loose" instead of "lose," "steak" instead of "stake" (and boy, what a mental image I got from that!), etc. (5)Willow asking Buffy if she "knows who the father is," is, quite frankly, insulting. It's not like Buffy's had so many sexual partners that there would even need to be a question like that.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. I'm not going to tell you to never ever write again, because I don't know how old you are, and this might actually be a good effort for a teenager. And a *good* beta reader (one who won't stroke your ego, but will tell you what's wrong and challenge you to make it better) will solve a lot of the problems with this. And please don't mistake this for a flame. Constructive criticism is not flaming. I told you what I liked, and how to make it better. It's up to you to step up to the plate and decide how you're going to react to it.
This person writes like a 13-year-old. I hope they're not much older than that. And I hope they take this review in the spirit in which it was given. I like to help new writers. And if she asks me to beta for her, I'll grit my teeth and do it. She might not like me very much while I'm doing it, but her fic WILL be better.
The good: You know where your spell check is. You MIGHT have an interesting idea, if you can flesh it out and not turn the baby into some kind of all-perfect idealized version of yourself (also known as a Mary Sue), and if this isn't like all the other "Buffy has Angel's baby OMG!!!11!!!" fics out there.
The bad? (1)Script format is evil. Fix that. (2)I had a baby three years ago, and I gained 35 pounds in the whole pregnancy. For someone like Buffy to gain 20 pounds in a month is, quite frankly, silly. (3)Random capitalization. "Blimp" is not a proper noun, if it doesn't come at the beginning of a sentence. However, "Angel" is, always, when referring to the character. (4)You're in serious need of a beta reader. They will catch mistakes like "loose" instead of "lose," "steak" instead of "stake" (and boy, what a mental image I got from that!), etc. (5)Willow asking Buffy if she "knows who the father is," is, quite frankly, insulting. It's not like Buffy's had so many sexual partners that there would even need to be a question like that.
If it's worth doing, it's worth doing well. I'm not going to tell you to never ever write again, because I don't know how old you are, and this might actually be a good effort for a teenager. And a *good* beta reader (one who won't stroke your ego, but will tell you what's wrong and challenge you to make it better) will solve a lot of the problems with this. And please don't mistake this for a flame. Constructive criticism is not flaming. I told you what I liked, and how to make it better. It's up to you to step up to the plate and decide how you're going to react to it.
This person writes like a 13-year-old. I hope they're not much older than that. And I hope they take this review in the spirit in which it was given. I like to help new writers. And if she asks me to beta for her, I'll grit my teeth and do it. She might not like me very much while I'm doing it, but her fic WILL be better.
