Muffinstud's story corner

[muffinstud]

Well, I guess that teaches me a valuable lesson. Don't experiment with two things that could potentially be a detriment to each other in the same story. I was trying out a couple of things here, namely mystery and a minimum of description. The goal was to have very little in the way of character description, and more have it based upon their actions and dialogue. Every time I write something, especially like this, I'm afraid that I get a little too carried away with the descriptions. Hence the experiment. Obviously, you felt it didn't quite work.

Also, I decided upon the mystery portion when I felt that things were just getting a little same-y. Like some made for dvd Disney movie. It was just too predictable. I suppose that, rather than doing the mystery as I did, it would have worked better had I introduced another plot line.

Oh well. You can't win 'em all.

[Mitera Nikkou]

I honestly didn't feel a distinct lack of details. Especially since it was a short story. It was only in the area of the villain, since there wasn't anything to bite on. Rather than a little description, there was none. I suppose it depends on the focus. But, really, you can just take what I said as an opinion. It's not like I'm an expert, or anything. I'm just used to the idea of having a chance to guess who it is, before they're revealed. The villain didn't even come to mind for consideration, while those that did I couldn't suspect. And because of that I couldn't suspect the character that you wanted to look like the villain, since it'd be odd for the villain to kill a mystery person. Well, unless there wasn't supposed to be any mystery... which I didn't think was the case. I know you're more intricate than that.

I'd say that you probably wouldn't need to add another plot line. Perhaps just another scene or two, with at least two characters (one being the villain, of course), that a reader might consider suspect enough when it comes time to figure out who the villain is. What they do, in those scenes, doesn't have to be as blatant as the one you were leading us on with.