Appearances- (late JA) Very small update 6-30-02

I can't believe how far behind I am.

Alli-Wan this was so good. I know I'm just echoing everyone else's sentiments when I say, poor Obi poor Qui-Gon, but I feel so bad for them. Qui-Gon has been badly injured and while I'm sure he hates being an invalid, surely he has been injured before. Why isn't he recovering at the temple? What could possibly be causing this severe depression? Is he having a crisis of faith? Could he be feeling guilty in some way? Or is Obi-Wan the one feeling guilty? (after all he's the one with the prescient abilities)

Clerise and her friends are simply great. Well, Clerise is great, her friends are funny. I rather like the way Clerise's father echoed Qui-Gon's first words, "You're late." There's almost a parallel between Obi's situation and Clerise's. They are both intelligent, sensitive people who are isolated by their present circumstances. Obi-Wan alone at the beach house with an uncommunicative Qui-Gon, cut off from friends and temple support systems. Clerise also has an uncommunicative father and while she is surrounded by family and friends her mother and sister are caught up in the plans for the upcoming wedding and her friends don't really seem to have much in common with her. They seem satisfied with the lives they are leading and will be expected to lead, while, I suspect Clerise is not. If she tried to explain her dissatisfaction I don't think they would understand. They seem more friends of habit than spirit... if that makes any sense... of course it could be that I've had just too much coffee and not enough sleep. ;-)

 

Alli-Wan, how could you not respond with a post after that excelent and acurate review by Abbi Cee (who spent way to much time going over the alphebet as a child)

please post soooooooon!

;~o

 

I loved all the interactions. Your characters are so on target. But now i'm really curious. What's going to happen? Please Post SOON!

 

Greetings. More for you. Poorly edited. Must go to bed. Gotta go turn eggs. Thanks for reading. Enjoy. --AWK

* * *

Kelvan Spryte stepped out onto the porch, gazing left and right for the young man he knew nervously awaited him. Closing his eyes, he listened the wind and surf, searching for the signs of sentience in the overwhelming flood of life that lived in this small cove. Sea birds called overhead. In the far distance, a cetecea blew a jet of vapor into the air. And from below came a sniffling sound. Kelvan looked down.

Well, not right below, actually. More to the left and over a bit. (There he is.) The young man was hunched over, sitting on the porch steps, his arms folded on his knees and his back facing Kelvan, shivering slightly in the warm summer breeze. (Poor kid.) Apparently the past weeks had taken their toll. (Not to mention the past months.) Remembering what he'd been told about his reserved and proper manner, Kelvan reasoned the boy would not want to be caught crying by his master's therapist. He cleared his throat loudly.

The young man abruptly sat upright, perfect posture, head snapping to attention. He took a second more to take a deep breath and the shuddering stopped altogether. Kelvan shook his head sadly. (Perfect control. Or the appearance of it.) A visible swallow, and he stood and turned to face the healer, bowing deeply. The wind had dried his tears, if he had actually let any fall at all, but his eyes were still a bit red and moist. Kelvan studied the young man's face, smiling sadly. Already he was using the Force to hide even these small signs of his emotions. (You have to let this out, young one.)

"M-" Kelvan held up a hand.

"Kelvan is just fine Obi-Wan. May I call you Obi-Wan?" The young man nodded, then started again.

"Kelvan, can you help him?" Kelvan pressed his lips together. (Trust a Jedi to get straight to the point. No beating abound the bush with this one.) Kelvan looked up and down the beach. No one around for miles. Even that small boat had left. He opened the gate and stepped down to the sand to join the young padawan.

"Let's take a walk, Obi-Wan." The young man's eyes widened in fear and respectful protest.

"But, I can't leave--"

"Obi-Wan?" The boy blinked. "You can walk, yes?" Kelvan asked in concern.

"Of course, but--" Kelvan put a hand on his arm, silencing his protests.

"He will be fine while we're gone, Obi-Wan. And just to ease your mind, we won't be going far." The padawan nodded, but still gazed at the house apprehensively. Kelvan shook his head and began walking along the beach, tossing his shoes next to the stairs as he went, freeing him to walk in the surf, barefoot. The young man obviously had reasoned that the sooner this was started, the sooner it would be over, and thus the sooner he could return to his master. The healer had no intention of dragging this out, but he had no easy answers in this.

And if Master Jinn was to be healed, Kelvan had to understand how Obi-Wan fit into his life.

The young man was already barefoot, shoes only a hindrance in the sand, and the porch slats, though worn, were well-cared for and splinter free. He hurried after the therapist, eager and apprehensive at the same time. After walking in the wavelets for several yards, Kelvan spoke.

"Your master was severely injured, but that is only part of the problem. He is not healing as he should." Kelvan watched as the boy nodded solemnly, taking this in. This was nothing he didn't already know; he probably had heard similar statements dozens of times from the Jedi healers on Coruscant. The therapist noted that the young man's faced was lined with impatience and concern, but remained true to his training and self-control. He did not ask again, merely waited for the healer to continue. Kelvan obliged the silent request.

"I don't need to tell you your master is strong in the Living Force, and as such, should be much further along in his recovery than he is now." Another nod. "I would also

 

What else can I say except wow? Excellent post. I loved the way that Obi-Wan reacted to the word "mental", and the fact that although he's frightened, he hasn't given up, and is willing to work together with this healer. It's so typical of him to fall into the trap of doing everything for Qui-Gon without realising that it might hinder his healing.

So Kelvan is a Healer. It almost seemed like he was a Jedi himself, but I suppose he's just a normal person who's worked with Jedi before and understands a lot about them. After all, didn't Clerice identify him as "her" therapist? And what sort of duties has the Council assigned Obi-Wan that he now has to carry out by himself? I can't wait to see if and how Qui-Gon reacts to that nurse, one who's not tied to him by a blood oath of obedience. Why do I have the feeling that sparks will fly sooner or later? Oooh, this is going to be good! I am anticipating a truly great story to come!

 

Wow, Wow, wow, wow, wow, and wow!!!! This is really starting to take off! that was a wonderful post! no where near iffy! Oh, please post again!! Please please please please! Wow!

 

I think that wow is the proper word to use! That was wonderful Alli-Wan. Poor Obi and Qui. What happened to put them both in such a state? I loved the Healer and the way he could tell that Obi was holding so much back.

Please, can we have some more?!

 

Wonderful story so far. So how old is Obi-Wan in this story?

 

This is all excellent, Alli-wan! You have a great balance of humor from the girls and angst from the Obi-wan. And I love Clerise!

 

Because this question was asked twice:

Obi-Wan is about 20 in this story. He acts a bit younger due to the stress he is under, but he is a few years older than the girls (they are around 17 or 18), thus Clerise thinks of him as a young man. However, because he is still rather young, and still a padawan, the healer sometimes thinks of him as a boy.

Hope that clears things up. Glad you have been enjoying this. --AWK

 

Alli-Wan we would all be very very very greatful if you would post again!

Please!

 

I'm not going to say "WOW"...I'm not...I won't!

The imagery of the last two posts was uncanny! You captured every nuance of silent emotion and the tiniest of details like the splinterless patio wood. Alli-Wan this is storytelling at it's best!

Ok, maybe I'll just say it really quietly..."wow"

 

Alli-Wan,
This is a good start you've got here. I like stories that start with interesting dialogue; it draws your readers in and gets them involved right away. Some suggestions:
1- You have way way too many parentheses. Parentheses should be used very sparingly in fiction, like once per story. You can make your points by using italics for interior monologue, since these are Clerice's observations and analysis. Parentheses are authorial intrusion, they call attention to the fact that you're writing. YOu want readers to get caught up in the flow, not slamming into parentheses.

2- Avoid passive voice constructions. Like 'the black and silver eyebrow was raised' reference. Raised by whom? It's more effective to just say, 'her father raised his black and silver eyebrows' blah blah blah than try to be coy about it. Also, it's more effective to use past tense word construction; you've got a lot of -ing verbs that are making the prose dull. Just say, 'she moved to the left' or whatever. Readers can get bogged down with too many passive voice uses.

3- Work on paragraphing correctly. New speaker =new paragraph. Again, this is so your reader doesn't get confused about who is speaking and can follow the conversation.

4- You need to do some adverb policing. All those -ly adverbs are ineffective and make for an awkward rhythm in writing. Choose your verbs with more care and drop those weak adverbs. You've got them within your narrative exposition(look at your graph with the guard) and in too many dialogue tags. Adverbs are just lazy writing. Tone it up!

5- You should probably give a quick physical description of each character pretty soon after you introduce them. Yes, as the writer, YOU know what they look like, but your readers don't.

6- If this is set in a Star Wars universe, it sounds very Earth-y. I didn't spot anything in particular that made me think it was anything different than 21st century America. Can you punch it up a bit?

That's it! Good job with this start and best wishes for your writing

 

tkilmer, I can see some of you criteque points and can kind of agree, but I disagree on two points and as for italics, I don't think the snowboard lets you use italics. At least I've never been able to get them to work.

However, I think she described the characters at times that were perfectly exceptable, times that fit the flow of the naritive. I think Ali-wan is trying to be a little more suttle. You don't have to describe the charicter right away, there is alot of highly respected lititure, where the author doesn't describe or explain everthing upon intorduction.

The other point I disagree with you on is the need to "punch it" I think part of what she is trying to do is show "normal" people, doing normal things. I don't imagine that 17 year old human females would be all that different a long time ago in a galaxy far far away. I have had friends from India, Mauritina, Turkey, Austrilia, and Morocco (where I spent the summer living with a family) and people are people no matter where they live or what culture they are from. And even in your muslim countires, a girl does notice a handsom young man... she just doesn't go up and talk to him. So I think her chariczations are fine. She has only just begun to introduce them to us. If you have looked at Jedi Dream, you will see that she takes her time developing her charicters, but by the end you know them very well. She creates 3-D people, she's not just using them as 2-D plot movers.

I will admit the extra paragraph makes sence.

On the ly thing... I don't know, I haven't noticed that... I will have to reread stuff to see if I agree with that or not.

(Oh, and I know I have a lot of misspelled words here, and my grammer and sentence sturcture stinks, but truth to tell, I really don't care. I can write well when I want and need to, I just don't have the time right now but I wanted to post,)

Thanks Ali-Wan for your wonderful stoy and I hope you will post soon. I am enjoying it emencely.

 

ummm tkilmer, I just read my privious post... if can be taken in ways I didn't mean it very easily... unfortunaltly, I can't go edit it. I don't mean to jump all over you or anything... welcom to the thread! I'm just working on yet anouther 20 paper and am getting tiered of tring to be precise...

Agian sorry,

Kaylla

 

Thanks for the comments everyone, and the technical input tkilmer.

1. As for the parentheses, KN is correct. When I started my first story, I hadn't figure out how to do italics, (and by the time I did, we switched to whatever we had before Snowboard.) As annoying as extraneous parantheses are, imagine if they all were written stuff [/1]. Plus, my first story is over 200 pages long and counting and not all forums support italics. I decided to go with parantheses so I wouldn't have to go through the whole thing to fix it if I wanted to post it somewhere else.

2. Sorry about the passive voice thing. It's just how I write. May stem from all the lab reports I had to write in the third person (because lab reports in the first person sound obnoxious when you're a freshman.) Have been called on it before. Let me know when it gets particularly bad.

3. Paragraphing. Thought I did have a new paragraph for each speaker. Where did I screw this up? I try to pay attention to this especially, as it drives me nuts when I see three people talking in the same paragraph.

4. Sorry about the adverbs. See a bit of this when I checked first post. As with passive voice, this is the way I write. Let me know if it gets obnoxious.

5. KN is also correct about physical descriptions. I'll include that when I can, or when it is important to the story. (At this point, some physical clues to some of the characters have already been mentioned. If I gave a full physical description, it might mess up parts of the plot I haven't worked out yet.) Although I will admit, it is kind of ironic that I left this aspect of the characters out, considering the title is "Appearances." What if I say I did that on purpose?

What do you mean I already admitted I hadn't done it intentionally?

Darn.

6. As for it being Star Wars-y, we haven't left the beach house yet. Clerise and her class kind of live in a privledged, primarily human neighborhood. Remember, Naboo looked fairly Earth-like until you got Otah Gunga. But thanks again for pointing that out. I'll work on that. (Also a weakness in JD, I suppose. Again, I'll work on it.)

Thanks for your input everyone. Sorry, no post tonight. I have to get ready for lab meeting tommorow at 8:30 am, which is really evil, as I have to turn chicken eggs at 2:30 am.

Thanks again, AWK

 

LOL, Thanks Kaylla. You know when I need to look something up in the dictionary I still have to sing the alphabet song so I know where to find the letter I need.

Ahhh, good ol' passive voice. My teachers spent years teaching me to avoid the "passive voice." Then I took up Latin only to discover that passive voice was the ancient Roman's preferred means of communication. It's rather sad really, all my teachers efforts undone by "hic haec hoc." ;-)

Hi tkilmer. Well I can't really comment on the bulk of your critique, my own grammar does not bear too close an inspection <g>, but I disagree on the description. I think Alli-Wan is making more of a stylistic choice here. I know I get tired of reading detailed descriptions where someone's long red hair flowed in waves to her waist and framed an elfin face domininated by crystal blue eyes. I enjoy filling in details with my imagination and a few subtle hints dropped here and there.

Curiouser and curiouser AWK. What could have happened to Qui-Gon to put him in such a depression? Surely it's not all from his injuries? Why did the temple send them to Kelvan? Who is he? What other duties does Obi-Wan have? I think Kelvan gave Obi some good advice though. He can't help Qui-Gon if he wears himself down. It'll be interesting to see what Qui-Gon does when his apprentice isn't at his beck and call at all moments. I really want to see the nurse, in my mind's eye I can already see a Brunhilde type... or maybe one of those cheerful perky morning people. I look forward to seeing whose tender mercies you leave Qui-Gon in.

 

Oh, yes the nurses... that will be fun. Kevin already knows that Qu-gon is strong and stuborn so the nurce he picks is going to be strong what ever their personality...

I also liked the comments about how Qui-gon will need someone who hasn't sworn a blood oath to protcect and obey him. Is kevin a healer who was raised in the temple but didn't become a temple healer... Like Jane Jinn mentioned he definitly seems to understand jedi.

And I want to add my voice to Abbi-Cee's question of what happend to Qui-gon? It can't be just the injuries that blew him apart. Was it something that happend after he was knoked unconcous, or something he witnessed, or...? please post soon to put us out of our quandrey...(course you'll probably just put us in another one but that's okay, we'll just beg some more....)

Please post!

 

Just a reminder: please critique my second fanfic is actually in the thread name! Guess I misunderstood. Alli, for only your second fanfic, this is really very good. My suggestions were just covering some of the basics of good narrative fiction. Yes, what we write may be 'only' fan fiction, but that doesn't mean that it can't be as good or better than the profic...

Some sites you might find useful:
http://ljc.simplenet.com/angel/buffy_faql.html
fanfic suggestions with examples from Buffy but applies to all fanfic

http://www.englishchick.com/
When one has a Master?s degree in English, others should listen!

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/
Great general site about writing scifi


Not sure if the links thing will work with these, but they're all excellent writing sites that go into more specifics on how to improve. Best,

 

I can understand the technical critiques given above on an intellectual level, of course, and have attempted to follow similar ideals in in my own writing in the past.

However, I must disagree with some of the 'guidelines' set forth. When one is reading for the sake of enjoyment...I hesitate to use the term 'emotional enjoyment' since that can be defined in an infinite number of terms proscribed by each individual's state of mind at the time of said reading.

Alli-Wan has been writing in her own style for quite some time, and in doing so has garnered quite a readership following. Therefore I would like to quote: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I guess the closest analogy to what I'm trying to convey is my opinion on Anne McCaffrey who, IMHO, is one of the most gifted writers of all time. Her stories take me to another realm, another reality...and for the brief time that I'm reading on an emotional level, I am a part of the pseudo-reality that one lone woman created. Conversely, when I stop for a moment and try to analyze her writing on a technical level, though still superb, I feel somewhat let-down. Not because of the verbage or plot lines, but because I no longer feel like I'm living in that momentary release from our own, tired reality.

Unfortunately, as unpaid writing hobbyists, some of us working toward MAYBE being pro writers, we have no control over the fonts used on this board. Italics, I've come to discover are sorely missed on this relatively new forum, as well as the lost ability to edit posts when one realizes that a post contains something that REALLY needs it.

Ok, I'm babbling now.

tkilmer, if you are still reading, I would very much appreciate it if you would allow me to submit to you some of my own writings for critique. I certainly need any pointers I can get, despite my slight disagreement with some of the more technical aspects of your post. Best Regards..

Keep on Alli-Wan...I'm still loving the story, sorry I went off on such a tangent.

Smilies for you!!

 

Hi Alli-Wan,

Another great story! Such original characters are refreshing! The characterizations of the three girls is very believable, and leaves me cringing remembering teenage shenanigans (sp?). *grin*

But this story has a darker quality than JD. I can only imagine that something *very bad* underlies Qui-Gon's depression. He is *afterall* connected to the Living Force. How does one get depressed connected to that? Did the Temple Healers send Qui-Gon to this planet, or to this specific therapist?

I liked the therapist, Kelvyn Spryte. That name sounds familiar, but I can't place it. I am glad that he is concerned about Obi-Wan's well-being too. I loved your phrase "bound by a blood-oath". I am waiting to see the kind of nurse you assign poor Qui-Gon. *grin*

Of the three girls, I empathize most closely with Clerise {great name}. What kind of trouble is Willow going to initiate trying to get information from the therapist?

Thanks again Alli-Wan for sharing this wonderful imagination you possess.

And for the time and energy spent writing and posting. Even when you had to turn the eggs. {I remember that too, in addition to squishing tetrads.} *grin*

JGG- I love Anne Mcaffrey's writing! The continuing Dragon Rider and Harper Hall series have kept me sane through many a course, lab or manuscript. Now I have SW fan-fiction for escapism too, to relieve the stress of RL. I lurk on your thread too.


Emma3Jane
who really should get back to that grant.....but patiently lurks on the JD thread too

 

Alli-Wan, Please post!!!!!!! I grow tiered fo waiting..... so for the last time....


Post!!

 

Alli-Wannnnn...where arrreee youuuuu??

 

Yes, please post more soon, I'm begging you!!!

 

And I am!