Jul 16, 2022
JET FEATURE?! 😂😂
Okay that was one kind of an ending. But did Va kill Landini and Smoke then? I mean she could not kill Keiichi but why the others?
Well, it looks like this was actually it. To be honest I am a bit out of words even though you already told me that this would be the last chapter and I had a bit of preparaton time.
So maybe start with the good things. I hope you saw that I was really invested in the story, in the characters and how everything played out. The part where the club was infiltrated, I honestly could not put the novel down and simply had to read on to find out how it all further panned out. It was refrshing, seeing a story that suddenly broke far out of the borders of what it pretended to be. The same with Va actually killing people. I mean this comes along as said light Chunibyo story and hits you like a lightning strike. It is awesome how you play with the readers expectations and brave how you just undermine them. As I said you handled the topics with much care and even now in the end it becomes crystal clear why Keiichi's "born sexy yesterday" approach is just delusional and wrong.
As to your request of honest feedback: We already discussed the beginning in more detail, so I'll skip that. What occurred to me during the latter part of the novel was that I could sometimes tell how you were struggling with the bendings of your plot. Through the unconventional plot twists you maneuvered yourself into a position where you had to suddenly make a whole bunch of things work that had worked out with the current knowledge but don't with the new knowledge.
The "Jet Feature" is a good example of how you resolved such problems. You struggle with making Va pass from one side of the town to the other and make her overtake Keiichi on the way and let her simply FLY there. I really know and feel the struggle. The plot somehow developed into this direction and you like the way it felt, but it does not connect with the next story beat. So simply write a deux ex machina solution that solves this problem on the shortest path but maintains everything that worked up so well towards it. The other two ways would be to somehow cut and rearrange the structure but it only bends as much. So if this does not work you can only cut off completely what you originally liked and redo it a second time, hoping it works out better. However, it probably does not strike the same notes as the first version you liked. "Kill your Darlings" and lose your attachments to the texts you have written is therefore a further reccomendation I can give you.
I know how painful this process of editing and reiterating on a story can be. The last 10 % of bringing it to the finish line almost take as long as everything before. So it is only natural to "risk" a few moments of possibly poor writing that most readers probably take in without second thought.
Therefore I would only reccomend this if you really have a sheer boundless dedication for the craft of writing. This problem does not get better with complexity. This story of mine I told you about (the current working title funnily also started with "The girl who" [couldn't dream]): It had gotten quite jarring and painful to even think about how to develop the plot further because there are 5 character timelines happening during 3 distinct time periods and so many strings attached to each one of them plus exposition dependencies through the mixed up flow of the occurences. But since I love this challenge even though the process hurts, this does not necessarily has to be true for you.
Maybe I am mistaking there, but it felt a bit like you just wanted to put this story to an end during the last chapters. Probably because the plot had been told in your head. This ending here finished everything off, but it felt just a bit rushed to me. In other words: you appear to be more like someone who writes for their own enjoyment rather than to create the very best their mortal body is able to - which is totally fine! Therefore my (annoyingly - sorry 😅) long comments might also be a bit too much and overwhelming. Admit it! 😂 I hope that it was not too bad (It soon is over anyways 😂). 😅
But that is a rather small critique and you already have a solid writing style that I would even call professional. If you have fun with that, even better! I loved this story and will gladly partake at whatever story I am reading from you next.
I really wish you the best and will be there once your drops! 😊
Read ya!
