Songfic by Jay (Please Comment)

[Jay_Quessir]

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it. :)

Tell me what you think. The link is <<<<http://www.annemccaffreyfans.org/forum/showthread.php?p=249914#post249914>>>>>


Please commment and critique

[Keita]

Jay...:cry:

That was beautiful. Just beautiful! :cry: :good: That said...moving on to a more detailed critique...

I found the transition between the two narrators a bit difficult to follow. Mostly because the song is only from one perspective: hers. Only later, once this verse

Open the door now
I don't know what he's after
But he's so beautiful
He's such a beautiful disaster

was mentioned did it start to make sense.

Okay, that comment should not be taken to mean that you weren't clear or that you wrote badly. Not at all. I think that this sort of story requires a specific sort of audience. It takes a bit of emotional abstract thinking (call it emotional intellectualism) to catch on instantly. You really only feel the full effect of the story in hindsight. Some people may not like that.

The emotional content is really raw. It hits you like a hammer. The spare language fits in perfectly with this. To the point. Personally, I would have liked a bit more elaboration but that's just me. In order for me to connect with a character, I need to know a bit about them, a bit of why. Why did she wait? Why was she scared to tell him?

The beginning...a bit cliche but then it can't be otherwise. It was almost completely dictated by the song. This sort of thing really happens so it is inevitable really.

I like the progression in the story. Moving on in years but not really moving on from the past. I would have liked to see alternating points of view from verse to verse. I realise this may not be possible given the song but the first one then the other approach has always irritated me. I don't like jumping around in time. Again, that's just me. Others will probably not be bothered by this. It is not a flaw in the story.

I love the way you don't elaborate on other aspects, like why she loves him. Every story needs a bit of mystery and this is rather core to yours. Focussing on the essentials are important and you stuck to the point brilliantly.

And the ending was very powerful indeed. THAT was the part that really stuck to me.

"I held on
Through the tears and the laughter
To find it beautiful
We're such a beautiful disaster........"

The implication of continuity is there and it contains SO MUCH potential activity that the whole thing feels real. It's open in exactly the right degree to encourage speculation, both for the optimist and the pessimist. At the same time, it wraps up the story to perfection. Any other ending would not have worked.

While I liked the spareness of the prose, some technical aspects could use a bit of attention. Sentences should never begin with but or and.
Your metaphors and similies were good though. Well used, evergreen ones that will appeal to and be understandable to a wide audience. Mostly well done.

Overall, a lovely story and a very interesting concept. I usually construct worlds and scenarios to instrumental music so the concept is not totally unknown to me. I never tried writing an actual story based completely on the song though...:D Very well done! :good:

I hope this was helpful. :)

[Brenda]

A beautiful story. I never thought of trying to write a story to fit a song like that.

[Jay_Quessir]

THanks y'all! :) I wrote that in the midst of college volleyball girls coming in and out of my room (they were at a party that my brother was having on a sunday night at my house. :) I just sat down and started writing. Yes...I did edit it before sending but that was about it.

I'm so glad you liked it. I don't know, that song has always struck heartstrings with me and I can see that it did affect some that way.

I too love that ending! It just came to me...I was going to leave it with the song but I thought...no...I should tie the song with the story and viola! :)

Glad you liked. I may write more soon...may edit!

[Keita]

Okay, this one was a lot harder for me to be objective about because I basically live the life being described here. The emotional impact was a whole lot more potent that it otherwise would have been.

I don't thing this one fits the pattern of a story. It's...much more direct. It's more like something one might rehearse at night to fend off the worst pain, or a letter that one writes with no intention of giving it to the person it's addressed to. Or that one might whisper at a grave...sorry, I'm being morbid.

Yes, it's well written and I like it a lot. Now please excuse me while I go cry in a corner...:sad:

[Brenda]

It's like each line of the song was trying to say so very much, and you went and let it out its full length.

[Jay_Quessir]

Thanks??? Lol...

No seriously though, thank y'all for the critiques!

Are y'all enjoying these???

[Anareth]

Not to be a party pooper (oh, who'm I kidding?) but there's a reason a lot of fic archives reject all songfics categorically (even fanfiction.net banned it.) http://www.godawful.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=14761&highlight=songfic Can't you just write a story without framing it through a cheesy, easily-dated pop song? Frankly I kept skipping over the song lyrics looking for a plot, which since it (the first one) is more an essay wasn't happening. Then there's a whiplash-inudcing first-person POV change. Since the original narrator doesn't have a distinctive voice, it's especially confusing. The second one's so plotless AND character-free it almost belongs in the poetry forum. They aren't really stories so much as 'diary of an adolescent wangsting out to current pop music.' The third one reads like a personal essay, again with adolescent overtones (FCA--college, right?) but that seems to be its intent.

Nothing here particularly persuades me that the general rule songfic = badfic isn't still valid. Especially the first one--it's like reading a narrative of a music video, not a story for the written medium. Have you tried writing the same story without using lyrics as a crutch? I wouldn't put any of this anywhere besides a very soft forum like this one.

[Jay_Quessir]

*rubs bruises* Ouch...

That's all I am saying...

[Jay_Quessir]

And again deleting things I said...

[Brenda]

I reluctantly agree - it's an interesting idea to put a story to a song, but I would like more of a real story. Maybe if you put all the lyrics at the beginning and expanded that into a longer story.

[Jay_Quessir]

*shrugs*

I could have done that but for performance sake, It would not do...

I had originally just sat down to type these and just let my creative juices form into words but then a friend asked me to write her a performance piece and i realized that all of these are performance pieces that would be better interpreted if seen on stage or done in some way like that.

[Brenda]

You mean, with one person speaking or singing the lyrics, and then another person saying the extended parts? I can picture that.

[Jay_Quessir]

Either that or having the track mixed so that it would play when I needed it to.