User blog:Atarumaster88/A light ReFEresh

''Caution: This blog contains ancient history. If you joined SWF after 2015, prepare to be confused''

I'm doing a light refresh on three stories of the Yanibar Tales: First Impressions, A New Course, and Second Guessed.

I say it's a light refresh because the plot is not changing appreciably for these stories&mdash;these are pure writing/wording/flow edits. I'm guessing the overall wordcount will decrease a bit as redundant words are trimmed. A New Course will have more substantial edits to the overall plot, and will likely be revisited later. Why am I doing this? Look for those to be re-uploaded soontm

There's some ancient history involved. A long time ago, I started posting my stories on TheForce.Net as well, because, frankly, it saw more traffic. Unfortunately, TF.N's fan-fiction boards, at least at the time, were far more interested in sappy vignettes to satisfy their SFW shipping fantasies (if you don't know what that is, don't ask). As such, I didn't get as much useful feedback as I would have hoped. They have (or had?) a storyboard called the "Archive" where they recognize and preserve their bestest-ever fan-fictions. It's akin to Featured Work status here. Well, I nominated First Impressions many years ago, and it was summarily rejected. Now, the unfortunate part of the TF.N system is that they don't really tell you why a word was rejected. They sent a rather generic e-mail with rather generic statements about the quality of the prose.

I was fairly annoyed with the non-helpful reply and worked with my beta-reader to fix up the story a bit, but never bothered to re-submit. For one, I lost interest. For two, I wasn't sure I had fixed everything. What's a beta-reader, you ask? Basically, someone who reads the story before you release it, and provide feedback, critiques, etc. In general, you want someone who is as good a writer as you or better, or at least has a very sharp eye. Some beta-readers are deeply knowledgeable about the Star Wars universe and can provide useful plot advice. Others are masters of prose and help clean up sloppy wording and sentences that run on forever and ever.

My beta-reader for many, many years was Jedi Master 76. This probably comes to no surprise to those of you who were around in IRC back in the day and happened to see both of us on at the same time frequently. For those of you who don't know this legend, JM76 is no longer active on SWF unless explicitly summoned, but he's written a massive tetralogy of KotOR-era novels and supporting short stories called Days of Dissidence. JM76 has a deep knowledge of the Star Wars universe, an excellent grasp of plot and characterization, and is an excellent sounding board for wacky ideas. Also, a sarcastic wit. His contributions to my writing were many and extensive, and I am much the better writer for his assistance. JM has helped with every Force Exile work since the first release of Force Exile III.

The reason for the changes to First Impressions and Second Guessed now is new input from another person: my wife. Mrs. Ataru has been a beta-reader for her sister for many years, and while not steeped in Star Wars content as deeply as the average SWF user, has a keen eye for improving prose. She's started to cast her critical eye on my work, and I think the end result will be better for it.

Lastly, a note on A New Course. In 2012, I sent A New Course to my brother to read. He sent back a Base Delta Zero'd version of the story with lots of fixes. And while I can handle a lot from you faceless folks and Brandon, it was a little different coming from someone I'd grown up making Star Wars stories with. Suffice to say it was harsh even by my relentless standards. In 2014, I received feedback from another SWF user, Joev14, who is also no longer active, on A New Course. Joev, while not as great of a writer himself, had comments and suggestions for other works, but the ones on A New Course were the most extensive. Only now am I getting around to addressing both of their criticisms and suggestions, which I guess points out that I am lazy.

Takeaways:


 * It is of incredible value to find and retain the readership of someone with serious skills
 * It is also of incredible value to learn from and listen to people who may not be as good at writing, but have insight nonetheless
 * Ataru is lazy

Thanks for reading, and hopefully my little trip down SWF History Lane was interesting, or maybe even helpful.