I hope this gets to you okay.  this is my first attempted fanfic and the
first time i've tried sending it to the FFML.  This story is a continuation
story from the end of the Ranma series and is roughly 80% comedy (i hope)
with a little angst and MSTing here and there.

These are my comments on your first fanfic, which I hope will be useful. Please
take them as nothing more than the opinions of one particularly cranky reader
who doesn't like much anyway. :)  I will also repeat things said by previous
commenters if I feel that the points are important enough to be worth driving
into the ground. :)

This is a story that takes place in little place called Nerima, Japan.  To
anyone who didn�t live there, it would seem like the craziest, most out of
control place in the entire world.  No exceptions, not even LA at midnight.
But to a resident, the events that happened would seem normal.  In fact, if
something even remotely insane didn�t happen every day there, they could
take it as a sign of the end of the world approaching.  It�s the city of a
hundred stories, and every one of those stories can be traced back to one
group of people.

Frankly, I recommend that you delete with extreme prejudice this entire
introduction (everything before the story's title).

Ranma 1/2 has been around for a long time by now. Your readers have most likely
read it, or read some other Ranma fanfics, or if nothing else watched the TV
adaptation. There's no need to introduce us to these characters. We already
know them. And even if we didn't, it would be much better to SHOW us who they
are in the course of your story than for you to try to explain them to us. Or
if you are going to tell rather than show, at least do so natutrally through
the thoughts of one of the characters, so that it becomes part of the story and
not an author intrusion.

Some people out there will disagree with me on this, but... for my money, an
author should never, ever talk directly to the readers in the middle of a
story. As an author, you should be working to develop the illusion that your
story is actually happening and your reader is actually experiencing it.
Nothing blows this out of the water quite like talking directly to the reader.
It's never as funny as you think it is, and even if it is, we didn't come to
hear a stand-up comedy routine about these characters, we came to experience a
*story* featuring them.

I'll also note that you've got formatting problems throughout this. Your quote,
apostrophe, and ellipses characters are non-standard variants that will show up
as completely different characters, or as blobs, to people who are using other
platforms. Quotes (") and apostrophes (') should be vertical -- straight up and
down, and ellipses (...) should be three seperate standard period characters (or
four if you are also including a period to end the sentence).

If you write using Microsoft Turd, make sure the option to convert to these
characters is turned off and that your file is saved as plain ASCII text.
Alternatively, you may wish to look into using a plain text editor such as
TextPad, which is just as good as Turd as long as you don't care about paging
and aren't intending to make a hard print.

Just Another Day
A Ranma � fanfic by Dragonboy (With random inputs by Dark Light)

Disclaimer:  Most of these characters don�t belong to me; though I wish I
could take credit for them.  They belong to the amazingly brilliant Rumiko
Takahashi and whoever she sold the rights to, except for the ones that I
made up.  I also made up the names for Ryoga�s parents and Ukyo�s father.
There are also several cameos from other manga, anime and video games in

manga, anime, and video games

(When listing more than two items, put a comma after each one except the last.)

Italic words signify thought.
<> signifies Chinese.
[] signifies sign writing.

While I have no objection to your using these delimeters if you really want to,
there's absolutely no need to explain their function. Any reader who isn't a
complete idiot will pick up their meaning from context. Explaning the obvious
only screams that you think your readers are stupid, which I hope isn't the
case. :)

() signifies author�s random inputs/MSTing.  My buddy DL will be doing most
of this.

Um, no. Please, please, no. Just... don't.

Remember what I said above about not ruining the illusion that your story is
really happening? It goes double for this. What's more, it sends the message
that you as the author don't have faith that your story can stand on its own.
Why should the rest of us have any confidence in your story if you don't? If
your friend wants to do an MST of your story, that's fine, but keep it seperate
from the story itself.

A boy stood outside the outer walls of the Furinkan High School.  The gentle
breeze of the autumn air caused his long silvery hair and long white cape to
billow out elegantly behind him.  He was dressed in a green sleeveless vest
with gold trim, white pants with a gold belt, green boots and green
wristbands.  Several kids were walking past, staring at him and muttering
between themselves.  No one knew who he was, but one thing they knew for
sure; anyone who looked and dressed the way he did had to be a martial

for sure: anyone

A semicolon, like you've used, connects two clauses that could be independent
sentences on their own. A colon means that what's to the right clarifies or
identifies what's being talked about on the left.

There are two things you can't eat for breakfast: lunch and dinner.
There are two things you can't eat for breakfast; those two things are lunch and
dinner.

POW!

Try to describe what happens rather than just giving the sound effect. This kind
of thing is okay to use occasionally but too much of it makes it seem more like
a comic book script than a prose story.

�Ranma, you idiot!  Why don�t you watch where you�re going?�  The girl
shouted.  Then she turned to the boy.  �Are you alright?�

As you have it written, Akane shouting is a seperate action from her line of
dialog. First she says "Why don�t you watch where you're going?" Then she
shouts. Then she turns. If it is the line "Why don�t you watch where you're
going?" that she shouts, then it needs to be punctuated so that the shouting is
part of the same sentence:

"Ranma, you idiot!  Why don't you watch where you're going?" the girl
shouted.  Then she turned to the boy.  "Are you all right?"

Note also the correct spelling of "all right", and the switch to standard ASCII
quote marks and apostrophes.

�Sorry about Ranma, he�s a total jerk!�  The girl told him.

Again, if the line of dialog is what she's telling him, then don't start a new
sentence with "The". Look for this throughout the story; I won't belabor the
point by pointing out every instance.

The boy�s face gave no indication as to whether or not he agreed.

The narrative point of view is messed up here. First we're watching this guy
externally, then we're in his head, and now we're back to watching him.

�Wha?�  Was all the girl got out before the silver haired boy jumped up and
ran toward Ranma, leaving her behind.  The boy named Ranma had defeated the
wooden sword boy by the time the silver haired boy reached him.

wooden-sword boy
silver-haired boy

Compound phrases used as descriptors should be hyphenated. It wouldn't make
sense to just call whatsisname the "haired boy", and it's the sword that's
wooden, not Kuno. Look for this elsewhere.

�Sorry Shampoo, but I have school right now.�  Ginami heard Ranma say in a

�Sorry, Shampoo, but

When a speaker identifies who is being spoken to, the identification ("Shampoo"
in this example) must be set off by comma(s). If you don't do this then you
completely change the meaning of what is said. In this case, Ranma is speaking
to someone named (or referred to as) "Sorry Shampoo". Again, look for this
elsewhere.

Try to give what's-his-name (the dragon boy) more of a personality. So far he
just kind of walks through the story, attacking people for no particular
reason. What does he want? What kinds of things does he really care about? What
drives him? What really gets to him? In what kinds of situations is he
(emotionally) vulnerable? What does he still need to learn? We readers
shouldn't know the answers to all of this but we do need enough hints to be
able to be confident that *you* know. Above all, make sure that this character
doesn't end up being a wish-fullfillment vehicle for you as the author. Nothing
ruins an otherwise good story quite as fast as that can.

will be a few angst scenes here and there.  And one last thing, even though
this story starts out mainly centered on Ranma and Akane, it will slowly
begin to switch focus to Ryoga and Ukyo.  I can�t help it, I like Ryoga, I
like Ukyo, and I like Ryoga and Ukyo together.  If none of these things
bothers you, then I sincerely hope you enjoy my story!  I also have a friend

The fact of this doesn't bother me, but I do have concerns about the way in
which you do it. When an author is overly fond of a particular match-up,
there's a temptation to force the characters together by author fiat. Not only
does this threaten believability, but it can get to the point where the story
isn't interesting to read because it's obvious what the result is going to be.
So I would say go ahead and do this match-up, but make sure that you can make
it interesting; put some significant obstacles in the way, with at least some
internal ones, which tend to be more interesting than just having a demented
Akari trying to break them up or something like that.

and pre-reader here named Dark Light (hello!) who will be adding his one and
a half cents into the story from time to time.  I promise not to let him do
it too often.  (Not if I can help it.)

Consider my above comments on this restated.

As I said, please take this as only one reader's opinions, and good luck with
this and any future stories.


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