ooc questions of amais job story

[Amai_Crimson]

I have to ask cause my anxiety gets better of me.

How is the story? Is it going too fast? Characters coming across ok? Any suggestions on things? I probably shouldn't do this lol but my anxiety gets me sometimes but looking for feedback

[Tapewolf]

I'm enjoying it so far...

[Anders71]

I have to ask cause my anxiety gets better of me.

How is the story? Is it going too fast? Characters coming across ok? Any suggestions on things? I probably shouldn't do this lol but my anxiety gets me sometimes but looking for feedback

I have to ask cause my anxiety gets better of me.

How is the story? Is it going too fast? Characters coming across ok? Any suggestions on things? I probably shouldn't do this lol but my anxiety gets me sometimes but looking for feedback

It's...okay. Personally, while I think there *are* some pacing problems, they're more along the line of the story getting bogged down in excessive detail.

This does kinda drag down characterization a bit, in the sense that I don't really feel like I can a strong lock on the characters' interiority, motivations, etc because the narrative doesn't really stick to a specific point

I think what may be going on is that you're tacking a bit too closely to the way the webcomics themselves pace things, in a way that doesn't translate to prose really well. E. G. a scene like this

Jason, true to cubi ways, had paid no mind to Amai's thoughts till he heard cute, at which point his tail swished. Turning away, he got an evil smile on his face thinking to himself ~Oh man, gonna have so much fun teasing him. If he thinks I'm cute, wait till he meets the others.~ Walking up the stairs he used a keycard to open the door and held it open for the new guy.

would work because we can actually see how Jason's tail swishes right after hearing that, see his exact expression, etc. But when you just communicate that a character is doing those actions in prose that nuance gets lost.

Compare with a passage like this (Taken from The Intuitionist, by Colson Whitehead):

Saturday afternoons find Chuck on stakeout. For the last six months of his life, every Saturday he goes to Freely's and watches the estuary roll through the front doors, rumble and mix into First Floor, Ladies' Cosmetics, The Men's Store, Jewelry. In the gallery of deluxe pleasures (perfume bottles ridged with jet-plane speed lines, curvilinear pink and aqua automatic toasters) where all the options are set from above, by men in secret rooms on the top floor, there is still one elemental choice left to be made. Elevator or escalator. Chuck vehemently disagrees with esteemed Cuvier, who thinks the choice is random, a simple matter of proximity. As they ricochet from bauble to bauble, snared by this sparkle, seduced by that luster, the shoppers opt for the vertical conveyance at hand, whatever is convenient. Which doesn't suit Chuck. He relies on primary sources. Ten Cents One Ascension. When the Otis Elevator Co. unveiled the world's first escalator at the 1900 Paris Exposition, the sign at the foot of the golden gate read, TEN CENTS ONE ASCENSION. Could it be any clearer than that? This need to rise is biological, transcending the vague physics of department store architecture. We choose the escalator, we choose the elevator, and these choices say much about who we are, says Chuck. (There is more than a smidgen of spite in this formulation, unseen by driven Chuck: he's trying to justify his specialty.) Do you wish to ascend at an angle, surveying the world you are leaving below and behind, a spirit arms wide, a sky king; or do you prefer the box, the coffin, that excises the journey Heavenward, presto, your arrival a magician's banal theatrics? Whenever Chuck touches the black rubber of the escalator guard rail (such a mysterious substance! what alchemy!), he understands he has made a choice. The right one.

He works late in the office, as he is now, contorting and torturing his data to support his thesis.

This is probably something along the lines of what you were trying to accomplish with the passage above: using a character's specific quirks, priorities (or the things they don't prioritize), etc, to characterize the larger group they work for. The difference is that the second passage focuses on the things the character thinks and feels as opposed just what the character is doing externally. This doesn't necessarily work very well if you're doing a webcomic because you have to worry about crowding out the image, but when you're writing you don't have the same restrictions.

[Amai_Crimson]

That makes sense, I try to stretch out the story but don't wanna drag it out and make it feel boring or padded.

I tried as well to focus on a few at a time but feel like I should expand on them all a bit more and try to pace the story a bit better. Most of my friends on discord don't tell me if going to fast or give real feedback.

Will try to do better I just get so excited to do new scenes I get ahead and forget I should expand more.


I will attempt better, I already got to where Mikhail ends in jail and got a new scene away from others to introduce two characters. I appreciate the feedback if my pacing still seems off let me know it's been 12 years since writing a story. Rps and or tabletop games are a bit different for me

[Amai_Crimson]

I will be extending the story in parts to let certain characters be expanded upon and let their quirks and stuff shine a bit more. The pacing will slow after this next bit to let the story feel expansive and alive. I focused on a few characters but had so many. I should let each have their time to shine.

Then I got more characters coming in which is like gonna tear away from where it is to focus on them a chapter so they can be established

[Anders71]

I will be extending the story in parts to let certain characters be expanded upon and let their quirks and stuff shine a bit more. The pacing will slow after this next bit to let the story feel expansive and alive. I focused on a few characters but had so many. I should let each have their time to shine.

Then I got more characters coming in which is like gonna tear away from where it is to focus on them a chapter so they can be established

That makes sense, I try to stretch out the story but don't wanna drag it out and make it feel boring or padded.

I tried as well to focus on a few at a time but feel like I should expand on them all a bit more and try to pace the story a bit better. Most of my friends on discord don't tell me if going to fast or give real feedback.

Will try to do better I just get so excited to do new scenes I get ahead and forget I should expand more.


I will attempt better, I already got to where Mikhail ends in jail and got a new scene away from others to introduce two characters. I appreciate the feedback if my pacing still seems off let me know it's been 12 years since writing a story. Rps and or tabletop games are a bit different for me

Yeah, getting feedback is something I feel like all of us amateur writers struggle with (or at least all of us 'low tier' amateurs, it may be different for Tapewolf haha)

[Amai_Crimson]

Feedback is vital so we know what works, doesn't work, as well let know that people are reading it and are willing to say something