Eden

I finished reading Heaven's Net Is Wide, last night. I enjoyed it more than The Harsh Cry Of The Heron, though it wasn't all that much happier! I always liked the characters of Shigeru and Naomi, so it was quite interesting to read about when they were younger and when they first got together. There was interesting background for Shizuka, too, and Iida Sadamu. I'm not sure it added terribly much to their characters that I couldn't have extrapolated from reading the original trilogy and The Harsh Cry Of The Heron, but it was interesting and enjoyable anyway.

One thing I didn't like was that there were no surprises. Not even the illusion of a surprise. It wasn't just that, of course, it was history to the three books of the trilogy so it had to go a certain way. The narrative kept foreshadowing -- without subtlety -- what was to come. You know: "Little did he know but that dream was not to become a reality. In just another month, blahblahblah". I hate that when I'm reading, even if it's a prequel and I know roughly what's going to happen anyway. There's no point in it if you're going to tell the story in full in the narrative anyway, and foreshadowing can be done much more subtly. In fact, is done more subtly elsewhere in the book.

Still. That's just one of my pet peeves. I certainly don't regret reading the book, and I raced through it within twenty-four hours while doing a billion other things at the same time. I do think it's best appreciated if you've read the trilogy and then The Harsh Cry Of The Heron first.

Today a throwaway comment about a fic I wrote -- The Old Ways, to be exact -- made me pause for thought. It was basically that the fic didn't have enough build up to actually be poignant. It's obvious that I meant the fic to be poignant, so that's obviously a problem for me. It's been said to me before, in all sorts of different contexts -- me and bottle_of_shine have often talked about how I just can't seem to write at length; my big critic who I won't name probably said something to that effect (only in much more derogatory terms! XD); my RS teacher tells me I'm "surgically precise", but don't expand enough into my thinking.

(Incidentally, there are two fics I've written where I'm almost positive it's not a problem: Loyalty and Quest. Both for The Dark Is Rising; the first gen, the second Will/Bran/Barney.)

I'm not quite sure what to do to "fix" this. There are benefits to being surgically precise, of course: the prose is clear and easy to read, and for some published authors the style has worked -- I'm thinking Lian Hearn here. It's still possible to be descriptive and tell a story well without expanding a lot. Sometimes it's the whole point -- Scenes From A Warzone (FFVIII, Squall/Rinoa, Quistis/Selphie) wouldn't have worked, in my mind at least, if I'd described and explained everything.

Still, sometimes a little more is needed. I get that it's probably subjective: what was that person's lack of poignancy stabbed someone else in the heart. There are times when it's appropriate to keep it brief, and other times when expansion is much preferred. I do often look back after I've posted something and think, even if people like it -- "damn, that was kinda half-assed". Like, Gale (FFIV, Kain/Valvalicia) is legitimately short, in my opinion: it says what I want it to say, with some pretty imagery. While Reunion (FFVIII, Seifer/Squall) was just half-assed because I wanted to write something for the claim when I went to bed. I could have written loads for that little idea, and I'm sure the impact of it was lessened by me truncating it like that.

I'm somewhat embarrassed at admitting I'm half-assed sometimes. Me and lassarina have discussed it before, and I fear I'm falling back into old habits. I'll be glad when I've finished up more of my claims so I feel less of an impulse to write half-assed stuff just to get something done.

Being half-assed isn't the whole problem. In the fic that was first in question, The Old Ways, I thought I was doing a good job. By some people's lights, I was, of course. But there is also an issue of me being brief when I'm not being half-assed but it would still benefit from me not being. Not to say that drabbles aren't a valid form -- I love drabbles, they're great for working on being brief, but I think maybe I fall back on that form too much because it's something I can do. I've been working on dialogue a lot lately, making sure I can "hear" the characters' voices in what I'm writing (most recently in Goodbye, an FFX fic with Chappu/Lulu and Lulu watching Yuna grow up and become a summoner) -- and my efforts proved helpful, since a lot of people started commenting that the voices were very good. I think my next target is expanding a bit. :D

(Except when I can't. drabbles100 and centi_porn, I'm looking at you.)