On Thu, 4 Feb 1999, Gary Kleppe wrote:

"Dot Warner" <dot_warner17@my-dejanews.com> wrote:

Can I assume that the lack of responses on the third draft of "Pleasure and Pain" means that you guys like it?

Most of us, I think, don't have the time and/or patience to keep reading
draft after draft of the same story -- not when there's new stuff being
posted all the time. Revisions almost always get fewer responses than
the original, and as for revisions of revisions.... Sorry, but that's
the way it is.

Oh, come on.  Don't sugar-coat it, Gary.  Give it to us straight up.
(smirk).

Except for the fact that you'd probably have a little more luck with a
ShortFic tag (implying, even beyond the tiny size, a limited required
investment), you added just barely enough new stuff to warrant even
posting the drafts.  However, any issues that were brought up in the first
draft were either made moot by the next draft, of never addressed/changed
after two drafts.  So, you basically polarized your audience (most of us
have some problems with attention span anyways ^_^)...

For example, somebody, whose name escapes me, said that she had never seen
a self-mutilator smile like "a drug addict" taking a hit.  You never
changed it, so there's one C&C'er who'll give up.  Others said Akane
realized too fast.  You changed the pace a little, leaving those C&Cers
without an issue to C&C.

I'd bet, with this fic, anyway, a lot of people read it the first time,
skimmed the second, and glanced the third.  That's what I did, anyway.

I like the situation, but stories like that can (and IMO should) be given
a ton of time to grow... What is a 2-page shortfic can be a 100-page
novella, with plenty of slow-building tension, and some rewarding
emotional scenes around the climax and therepy scenes.

As it is, way too short.  But what you have is downright good.

There.  How's that for a little C&C?  ^_^

Gary

--Matt

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