[quote=@Roman]Here we go:

-I like Kelex and Livewire, and Lex Luthor has been great in his cameos. Kara herself is competently written, but it’s a shame I don’t like her as much as any of your supporting cast. It seems like you have great character direction with the people around Kara, but Kara herself, being young and new to the game and still exploring her powers, doesn’t feel as solid. Then again, it’s clear there’s still a lot of fleshing out and character development planned for Kara, so while she suffers now from a shaky start, I’m confident she’ll end up being an intricate character with a solid foundation, whereas her supporting cast are more one-note and therefore appear stronger in the early period.

-My only real gripe is there’s a lot of telling, and not enough showing. Your writing is serviceable and a pleasure to read, but I often find myself being told a character is frightened, or curious, or amused, etc etc, rather than given tone and body language to express the emotions organically. I understand with dialogue this is a limitation of the format, but it’s food for thought.

-Finally, your clearest strength is your command of narrative continuity and plot threading/hooking. Every post leads off from the last one and into the next one, each issue leaving on a point that launches the reader eagerly into the next one, and there’s a clear through line of what’s happening, why it’s happening, and what’s going to happen next, and it all feels organic rather than stiltedly stumbling from one plot point to the next (see: my DD arc). 

Consider yourself fed-back sucka

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Thanks!

I feel like a lot of Kara’s stilted characterization is that, well, I took a break for longer than I should have. I’ve also messed up on how to really setup Kara’s corner as a byproduct of my touch-and-go approach as opposed to Wraith’s rigid outlining. I’m a role-player by nature, not an editor or professional novelist, so I’ve always approached things as a play-by-post system in these games. While I do still outline important benchmarks/milestones, how I get to them is often a struggle. I’m not sure if I need to adjust my system to where I can work within the confines of it or just focus a lot harder on posting Kara a few times a week to get to those milestones I want. A lot of “Don’t Flinch” was me course-correcting and trying to get to the meat of antagonists and characters within the greater sphere of the Fortress, Krypton, Metropolis, and Midvale. I’m glad my dialogue and characterization of my [limited] supporting cast has gotten favorable responses because I second guess myself a lot.

As for the show-versus-tell, I’m not sure how to address that. Maybe it’s a virtue of my influences as a writer or just my writing philosophy but I don’t see anything wrong with “telling” as long as I contextualize it and don’t make it boring. I am an introspective writer at heart, after all. I will try to get to body language going forward, though that might be easier with some characters than others.

I think my threading is due to how I structure my posts. I look for bellends, benchmarks, or snappy dialogue to smoothly transition things from one post to the next. I’m really glad that it works, because well, I have only a rough idea of what I want to do in an arc. Tying things together on-the-fly in a cohesive fashion is possibly one of my other strengths. The big goal going forward for me is to address my issues and keep going with this course correction. Perhaps do a little more planning. I’d be really interested in hearing how everyone structures their posts and plans their arcs. Some people outline, others not so much. It’s an interesting divide. 

I really appreciate this analysis, as its put some interesting things ahead for me to think about and adjust.