'Lo Veritas:

     Took a bit, but finally got around to this. First reaction: Ahhhh, I *knew*
the story was going somewhere like here. All preamble, the first three
chaps, now the real action gets rolling, and who couldn't see it coming?

     Meaning to say, chaps 1-3 did accomplish a key goal: made the
reader wonder about (and want to know) what happens next. Remarkable
how many writers forget about this little point, hmmm? :- )

     And it was necessary to write chaps 1-3 too. You've got a 'backstory
to the story' that the reader has to know first, and it's pretty large,
(could be a novel in its own right), and the characters are complex.
Can't all be 'canned up' and then revealed in some quick way; there
are a number of possible devices. Better to spend the pages.

     Checked, and found you've got 3,638 words here. This is covering
two scenes, the museum events, and at the cop shop. Both scenes are
potentially very rich with colour and detail.

     So you know what I'm going to say next: very brief, very fast. Expand,
expand, expand. *Make* it rich, show us that colour. The text does let us
see the story here, it's all complete enough, but shall we say it's the
difference between pencil lines and brushstrokes in oil paint? Good
pencil work. Now grab that brush and go to.

     I'm tempted to get dragon-chan to paint a parrot on my avatar's
shoulder, have him say this. And I mean this in a gently humourous
way, because I'm stone-positive I'm going to be saying it a *lot* around
this odd place. This is a looong way from a bad thing, BTW.

     Mainly because it lets me pounce on something ultra-crucial with all
four footpaws: style. Artists have no trouble thinking about style: it's right
in front of their eyes. Writers, more tricky, not as obvious.

     Ya gotta analyze the snot out of a text to get a grasp of style,
to understand *how* the text was assembled, what was put in, what
was left out, what decisions were made that made it read this way and
not that way. So it made the reader feel this and not that. Style.

     This here is what I'd call High-Speed style, and I'll bet you a buck
it's *far* and away the most common style found here on FA, and in
furfic generally.

     It's splendidly suited to porn (if not mandatory). And we are all
reading online, and FA makes it a bitch to post longer text. You read
Panzergulo? High-speed style High Master, IMHO. Short stories
tend to demand this way of writing anyway. What did we say FA's
stuffed with?

     It's also the way most of us write when the story is all but bursting
out of our ears, so clear in our mind we could almost jack in a USB
plug and just print it out. This is a *lot* of writers on FA.

     So the story rushes out, and it's good, and the readers can and
do groove on it, especially if there's a good orgy scene. The story
may be the equivalent of art printed out at 100 dpi in B&W (in terms
of richness, detail, and readability), but that doesn't matter.

     Birds gotta fly, stories gotta be written. For both, speed can be
important. The story takes off, and we forgive all the awkward flapping
and dropped feathers because we get the story the text is trying to
tell. That's the important thing.

     This high-speed method can result in a very strong emphasis on dialog
over description, mood, action. I've noticed: dialog's pretty good here.
You've got a good feel for who these characters are and how they speak,
and yes, they have a lot to say. Great. Fine high speed style.

     But it does take more than good dialog to establish a character in
the reader's minds eye. Helluva problem with short stories; you've
sometimes barely got room for even the dialog. The ultimate in high-speed
style: the script. Guzzlemuzzle9460's a specialist, IMHO.

     So you tell me: how dramatic, exciting, and scary could that scene
in the museum be if we'd had more time to get a clear read on the
students and the guard? And this mysterious pyromanic woman? The
confrontation between guard and woman is an opportunity to
deliver plot information and establish character (and really piss off the
French guard)

     Then the action happens *so* fast. It's a huge surprise: her smashing
and grabbing the papyrus. The shock in the room would have been total.
Then *burning* it? Our emotional reaction to this hinges on the
reactions of the characters who witness this.

     Then ultimate shock: Anubis comes back to life. What? Nobody
screaming in fear? As this calm, cool, collected woman walks out with
a god? Nope.

     YES: this scene is right on the money in the details. And it's over before
we can feel anything. Can you imagine what Pixar could do with a
scene like this? Audience would be blown outta seats. Style.

     To close, I'll say it again: everything's right in these two scenes.
All the elements of plot are here, all the dialog works. The text delivers
what we need to get the story.

     The speed of it all: we-ll, it has given you something more or less
complete, so let's not knock it. The style can be raised to a richer level,
something that produces more emotional impact in the reader, but
personally I'd much rather have that problem than a story that's incomplete.

     I look forward to chap 5. Will more gods crawl out of the woodwork?
No bets... :- )

FB.




PS: FA being odd, turning a regular .doc or .rtf or whatever into a
.txt file calls for a bit of care. Some characters don't display.
Like above.

In Word, I always save as MS-DOS text with line breaks, then go back
in with WordPad and touch up italics, bold, para intends, whatever.
Seems to be trouble-free.

See Poetigress's The Furry Writer's Guide to FA (if you haven't already; tons of good ideas).

And see me for a fix to the para indent issue Indent Trick