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I got some interesting reactions to my Cuban superhero story yesterday. A couple of people loved it, but the majority of the crit group thought it was too long and confusing.
I had suspected that might be the reaction I got. It felt to me as though I had too many themes and characters in the story.
A lot of people missed the parallels with Cuban history or didn't pick up on them until the end of the story. I might have to make it a bit more obvious. The same with some of the character motivation.
I'm going to cut my opening scene, it misdirected people about the type of story I wanted to write and quite a few people thought I was writing a comedy, which wasn't my intention.
The explanation of the main character's powers somehow didn't make it into the story (that happens when you're up all night trying to finish it) and that confused a lot of people.
After the group crit, I had a very helpful one-on-one feedback session with Jack. He asked me about my intentions for the story and gave me some reading suggestions and ideas for character motivation. There are quite a few ways I could take the story, not sure which way to go yet. Jack said the story had the potential to be "fucking brilliant", but that it would be very difficult to get it right. There's a challenge. :-)
At the moment I feel like working on a revision of this story, rather than starting my week 5 story.
I had suspected that might be the reaction I got. It felt to me as though I had too many themes and characters in the story.
A lot of people missed the parallels with Cuban history or didn't pick up on them until the end of the story. I might have to make it a bit more obvious. The same with some of the character motivation.
I'm going to cut my opening scene, it misdirected people about the type of story I wanted to write and quite a few people thought I was writing a comedy, which wasn't my intention.
The explanation of the main character's powers somehow didn't make it into the story (that happens when you're up all night trying to finish it) and that confused a lot of people.
After the group crit, I had a very helpful one-on-one feedback session with Jack. He asked me about my intentions for the story and gave me some reading suggestions and ideas for character motivation. There are quite a few ways I could take the story, not sure which way to go yet. Jack said the story had the potential to be "fucking brilliant", but that it would be very difficult to get it right. There's a challenge. :-)
At the moment I feel like working on a revision of this story, rather than starting my week 5 story.
