A Fiery Gospel

[Little Brown Fox]

Right, so. Once you accidentally called Hisa Gato "Hiroshi Gato", when Reno was talking to Cobalt, I think it was. You misspelled "chef" as "chief", and in one series of paragraphs where Reno was talking continually, you didn't break them up at all. I mean, you can't really tell that they're supposed to be dialogue until you get to the end. When you break them up like that, you're not supposed to have quotation marks at the end of the paragraphs, until the speaker is finished speaking. But at the beginning of the paragraphs, one usually adds quotation marks. At least, that's how I've always seen it done, by way of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels.

There's probably more things wrong with this (aside from the unfortunate and stressful turn that the plot seems to be taking :< ), but I wasn't logging them continually this time. And sometimes it's just phrasing and the way sentences are written that rub me the wrong way; I can't properly articulate what feels off about those without being able to copy and paste them (because typing them out from memory is time consuming and difficult for someone like me, even with reference).

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Thanks ....

I originally called Goto, Hiroshi, but then realized that was Ochanomizu's first name so I changed it to Hisa. Guess I didn't catch them all. Also didn't catch that added 'i' (since the spell checker wouldn't have complained about that and my own eyes didn't either........)

There was one string of "paragraphs" where Reno was talking to Cobalt. I can't say I've seen paragraphs with leading, but no ending quotes, though you may be right about that. I'd think that breaking the long winded speech up rather than leaving it as one half page quoted dribble would be better off. Also I did fully enclose the lead in sentence with quotes since there was a he said in the middle. I think that's right. Let me do what you suggest and see how it looks.

Well two more chapters to post, the 8th one I'm happy with, but I'm still tinkering with the 9th (content wise, not grammar / spelling wise, I'm hopeless there as far as being perfect! Some of us have the 'gift', maybe you could find a way to make a living with that!).

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Here is chapter 8
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11420302/8/A-Fiery-Gospel

Yeah now it really hits the fan. Most of what happens next may be obvious to many, but there may be a surprise or two left in the final chapter. I still have to fine tune that one.

A big thank you to my self appointed proofreader (who reports after the fact). Don't worry about my ego, I know my checking of grammar and spelling sucks.

[Little Brown Fox]

Oh, pooh pooh. I'm much better at spotting it in other people's work than my own, unfortunately... and yes, it does suck when technically, you spelled the word right and it doesn't get pegged; because you just typo'd it into another word entirely. >.< Or you used the wrong word; for the same reason. Anyways, I do this because it bothers me to go back into my own work only to find crap that I didn't mean to type, or that something was typed kinda funny. I've actually gone back and read some of my own stuff fairly recently; I can't be bothered to go back and fix it for the time being, though. And I dunno; for some reason, since I actually sort of know you, I kind of don't want to rely totally on correcting stuff in my head, because I know that other people might notice it, too. Idk, man; maybe I'm just a bored and lazy busybody with nothing else to do. :T

I am stressed out haha let's see what you've got for me this time... ^-^;

[Little Brown Fox]

I'm only so far in and already- well first, some proofreading; you misspelled elusive as "illusive"; there was something else, I think, but I can't remember it nor find it again because of being distracted by some... TMI-level material. :T Really wish I didn't have to read that. I'm not even through it all the way yet... Was this really necessary?

Ah, not sure if this was it, but "losing", not "loosing". Although that phrase is debateably applicable.

Ah, hm, I noticed other errors, like a few missing quotations marks at the beginning of dialogues; but I didn't document everything very well. I don't really know how proper beta-reading works on FF... I'd have to look into that. But, as far as proof-reading and editing goes, I think I'd be down... depending on the content, anyway. Anything like what happened in part of this chapter, for example, I'd suggest looking for someone else who had a stronger stomach/wsa more desensitized than I.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

TMI level? I guess you mean the "potty" scene, sorry about that, but I didn't know any other way to handle that. Yeah I sometimes suffer from, well never mind.....

[Little Brown Fox]

I edited my post a little.

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

The last chapter is now up

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11420302/9/A-Fiery-Gospel

Can you see where the title of this story comes from now? (A Song crossover?)

[Little Brown Fox]

I can't remember all of the issues, aside from plenty of misplaced (and maybe missing) quotation marks. Mainly my issue was the resolution. I'm not so sure that was a good idea; a better one would have been for the influence to be overcome- virtue before the baser instincts; while a tad unrealistic, it would have made more sense here.

Also, the way you had them help Reno was just... just gruesome. :T And kind of like a magical bandaid, to boot; while idk if any better solution could be found that wasn't just that, a bandaid, this just feels... idk, man. It just sort of breaks up the story flow. Maybe the whole thing wrapped up too quickly, this plot point in particular. Longest thing you've ever written or not, it still feels too short to contain the amount of story that needed to be written and wasn't.

I feel a little harsh criticizing this in this way, but, I feel like it must be said. I also feel like I should try to back up my words, somehow; like my critique isn't valid because I'm a writer who can't do much better, if at all. If I wasn't a (hobbyist) writer myself, and didn't have at least a bare minimum of interest in writing things myself, I feel that the criticism would be more acceptable, somehow. Maybe because it's more the consumer point of view? Idk. I'd love to be able to produce something as long and as engaging as the later Harry Potter novels, or the Inheritance Cycle (still have not read that last book...). There's also an issue in fanfiction, though, of everything we need already being there, whereas an original author is tasked with coming up with and describing everything from scratch, and is a way that isn't excessively descriptive and boring to the reader.

Whoops, waxed philosophical for a moment. I'm sorry for saying any of this; I more or less enjoyed the story as I was reading it, but I'm not sure if I like it, as a whole or in individual parts. Maybe moreso the latter... and this also delves into the nature of things I cannot fathom, such as what it means to like something...

[Tetsuwan Penguin]

Thanks for all of your proofreading and comments. The story was born out of a bit of anger at the state of the world and my wanting to throw something at it. That and the words to Julia Ward Howe's civil war song. I'm not afraid of trying something when it comes to writing. This one was out of canon, even out of mine. It's out there now, but I'll probably never mention any of it in any other FF story I'll ever write.

You're right about fan fiction. Two years ago for my first Nano (November Novel in a Month contest) I tried to write an original story, I mean I had this simple idea to wrap a story around but didn't see any obvious way to develop it.

I ended up turning it into a sort of fan fiction story by writing it as a sequel to Carl Sagon's "Contact". I brought in some real characters as well as a few from the novel. The idea was that in the near future a powerful space based telescope is constructed with the ability to resolve something the size of the Earth at a distance of some tens of light years away. IOW, to be able to actually image a distant earth like planet, something that is still not possible. (We can detect such worlds by indirect means, but not actually study them).

So in my story such a planet is found and lights on the dark side of the planet are seen, and a spectroscopic study reveals the signature of several elements; Tungsten, Sodium, and Mercury. Exactly the spectra that a street light would put out. IOW, this would be the sign of an advanced civilization that had electric light.

While I managed to write a novel length story around this concept using the 'Contact' framework as a wrapper, it was forced. I don't like the way it came out and that story is still buried somewhere on my hard drive never to see the light of day, at least not in it's current form. Maybe some day I'll try and make a decent short story out of it, something more like what Asimov did with 'Nightfall'. (Although Issac did eventually take that story and lengthen it into a Novel, but several decades latter.)