David Homerick <dhomeric@jps.net> wrote:

        Once upon a time, a vast kingdom existed. Its lands stretched
over enormous distances, bounded by desert and mountains and ocean. An
old and wise monarch ruled with justice and fairness, and was beloved by
all the people, or so say the legends.

Rather a bland opening:  The Legends of Generic Kingdom.  

It's intentionally vague, meant to give a fairy-tale sort of atmosphere
more than anything else.

Djinni don't flit about.  Fairies flit.  Butterflies flit.  Sailor Moon
would flit, except that she's too big and tends to trip over her own two
feet and go flying into the Tupperware.  Djinni are big and powerful and
don't flit.  Unless they want to.

Right, will change this to a different word.

Well, that was quick.  Pretty powerful monarch--what'd he do, pass a
law?  

I'm not telling. :)

        "Well," said the sage, "there might just be ONE thing...."

Not panties, please.

Of course not! Now, bras, on the other hand....

A little detail would help this predule quite a bit.  Perhaps you could
give the old and wise monarch a monocle or a pair of baggy pants or a
name or something.  Anything to give us a picture of him.  

As I said, the vagueness is intentional, but I'll consider adding
something of this sort. We might learn more about this monarch in later
installments... maybe.

        "I'm Akane." She smiled at the smaller girl. "You want to be
friends?"

What smaller girl?  You're writing like a screenplay; jump cuts don't
really work in prose.  They're confusing.  Set the scene before you
start in on the dialogue.  Let us know who's here and what they're
doing.

I pretty much figured readers would be intimate with this scene already.
It's Ranma volume 1, as featured in almost every AltUniv fic ever
written.

That's an odd detail.  Whose point of view is this?  It sounds like the
narrator is ogling Akane.

It's Akane's POV; I'll rewrite to make this clearer.

        It'd been a weird morning. They'd been expecting 

They?  Who's they?  Ranma and Akane?  The Bavarian Illuminati?  Can we
have an antecedent with that pronoun, please?

Akane and family. Will make clearer.
 

        "You do karate, don't you?" Akane asked.

I'm not sure "do" is the proper verb for "karate."  It sounds like an
illegal drug.  "Practice" or "study" or just "know" would be better, I
think.

This line (as well as a few of the others) are from the Viz translation
of Ranma 1/2.

        "Just for fun." Akane took up a combat stance, feet widely

"wide"

Right

        Akane stared at her opponent, who was gasping for breath. *How
the hell did I do that?* Not only had she easily hit the fastest
opponent she'd ever faced, but she'd known exactly where and how to hit
so that Ranma would be unable to keep fighting, but wouldn't sustain any
lasting injury.

She got her wish, hm?

Yep.

Good description of her new perceptions.

Thanks.

But . . . but genies ACTIVELY grant wishes.  Ranma's acting like a sort
of wishing stone or monkey's paw.  Shouldn't he have to DO something
before a wish is granted?

And aren't genies only required to grant wishes for their "masters?" 
Because they're basically slaves?

Not this one. His stuff works a little differenly; premise of the story.

Oooh, that's hard.  The "moody drama" passages flowed okay, but I didn't
see much humor.  Read Terry Pratchett, Douglas Adams, James Thurber, and
other comic writers.  Look at how they put words together.  Try to find
odd or clever ways to phrase the ideas you've set out in straightforward
prose.

That's not really the kind of humor I'm going for with this. It's going
to be more of a situational humor, where funny things happen rather than
describing ordinary things in a funny way. This part was very much a
setup, and later episodes should be better in this regard.

Thanks for the response!


Gary Kleppe
http://www.execpc.com/~kleppe/comics.html