JNC Writing Support Group
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I got my feedback as well,
”The judge felt that the end of the volume did not provide a satisfying arc conclusion and wouldn't be enough to stand alone.”
The story was written to be part of a series and ended on a cliffhanger—that was the best I could do given the time constraints and the speed in which a write. In short (ha!), the criticism was valid, helpful, and was a kinder review of the work than my own.
I will polish what I have and continue the series. Perhaps I will find a more satisfying ending/stopping point.As a bonus, it appears that the judge made it to the very end of the story! I will ignore the possibility that they skipped to the end and bask in the satisfaction that someone read my story!
For anyone interested in reading or reviewing The Two Minds of Cassandra go here:
https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/7981/jnc-group-writing-review-thread-the-two-minds-of-cassandra
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@QuixoticHorizon, darkness and grief are two things I have to struggle to control in my writing.
In the novel I submitted, the darkest I got was the MC's first love getting ritually murdered the day after their first night together because she wasn't human, but in volume 2 which I'm writing now it was going off the scale a bit until I reined it back in.
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@Angelus
Well, I thought I might have pushed some boundaries concerning violence and such.
Though it might be good in the story -
I am such a goof!
When I got the rejection letter without comment, I read my story and thought “This is total garbage! What was I thinking!”
When I received the reviewer’s mild justification for rejecting the story, I reread the story again and thought, “Hey, this is pretty good. Maybe the ending could use a little work, but…”
It was just a few words from someone I don't even know—I can't believe I am this fragile!
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@jazzyjeoff
I think that by receiving a rejection, you had "100% negative reviews" and that influenced your opinion to make you look for the problems that "everyone was pointing out". With a proper answer from the reviewer, you can pay attention to the whole book again instead of only looking for issues.
Just a set of bad circumstances that made everything appear worse for a while. -
Feedback is like chocolate for authors. I’m luckily still alive in the competition but whatever happens in the next, I plan to take the feedback and grow.
Even (touching every piece of wood and paw raising cats in the vicinity) if I get through to the next round, I fully expect there to be lots of edits and improvements requested.
Although I do want to touch on the comments about dark elements. It wasn’t that dark was bad but that balance of elements still needed to be there.
At the end of the day, these are intended as commercial works and need to sell. You can certainly have dark concepts and bad things happen but it is how you present and balance these elements that is the tightrope.
And it is one that is very easy to stumble and fall off when crossing. I took scenes out (scenes I really liked) because of reader reaction while others I moved ‘off-page’. The bad things still happened but you didn’t get a detailed description of them - more of a reaction shot.
This isn’t the only way and you all know your stories but I suppose what I am saying is that if you love your story enough there will be a way to tell it - even if it is not exactly what you envisaged going in.
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@Damon-Cavalchini Congratulations on making it to the next round and wish you luck on the next! I look forward to reading your work wherever it winds up. (Just curious, can you imagine what a manga adaption of your novel might be like—I mean it has to be fun to at least think about).
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@jazzyjeoff said in JNC Writing Support Group:
@Damon-Cavalchini Congratulations on making it to the next round and wish you luck on the next! I look forward to reading your work wherever it winds up. (Just curious, can you imagine what a manga adaption of your novel might be like—I mean it has to be fun to at least think about).
Thank you. I was actually surprised as one of my entries had some dark stuff in it.
In terms of a manga - I can dream though I can’t draw.
I actually do have a fairly clear image of the characters in my head and there a few scenes I would love to see in manga format (simply so I can make a poster of them to go on my wall).
But I don’t dare hope for a manga. Getting published would be a dream come true.
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@Angelus said in JNC Writing Support Group:
@QuixoticHorizon, darkness and grief are two things I have to struggle to control in my writing.
In the novel I submitted, the darkest I got was the MC's first love getting ritually murdered the day after their first night together because she wasn't human, but in volume 2 which I'm writing now it was going off the scale a bit until I reined it back in.
I mean, it's nowhere near as dark as something like Overlord (or even Shield Hero... this volume at least!) but after talking with a friend I'm already getting a couple ideas for workarounds.
It's weird, but I feel proud for everyone who passed? I mean, I felt proud of what I wrote at the time of submission, and everyone who got through did better than I did, so I feel proud of all these people I've never spoken to or interacted with and have no idea who any of them are. Is that weird?
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@QuixoticHorizon said in JNC Writing Support Group:
@Angelus said in JNC Writing Support Group:
It's weird, but I feel proud for everyone who passed? I mean, I felt proud of what I wrote at the time of submission, and everyone who got through did better than I did, so I feel proud of all these people I've never spoken to or interacted with and have no idea who any of them are. Is that weird?
I hope not. We are building a great community here and I will be genuinely happy if someone from this forum wins.
Actually, I will be happy for whoever wins because it means there’s a chance for next year or in the future.
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@jazzyjeoff said in JNC Writing Support Group:
It was just a few words from someone I don't even know—I can't believe I am this fragile!
Hardly fragile. You worked hard and it didn’t work out this time. But you seem to be bouncing back.
We sometimes don’t give ourselves time to grieve (and it is grief) and assess/resolve things internally. I’ve been amazed by how well so many people have taken not progressing this round.
I’m sure this community is helping which makes me happy.
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I am back at home finally- now I can upload my entry (that got rejected) and would love to do so.
The only question is: ...Where?
I never did anything like this before and am in dire need of feedback, so if anyone has any tips, please, tell me! -
@AkayaKaito People on the forums have been following the instructions that the community came up with in https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/7938/jnc-writing-group-feedback-thread/, looks like they recommend creating a google doc of it.
I also know people have been sharing their work on the JNC Discord in the
#Share your failed entriesthread under the#creative-writingchannel, if you're looking for a possibly different review population. They also seem to be mostly using google docs over there.I've never really used google docs so I'm not sure what settings you'd want to use but I'm assuming that anonymizing your google-related information is important, and possibly enabling commenting.
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@AkayaKaito
@Hylebos
I hope we get a nice feedback/viewing community here. I have tried posting other places, but most comments are from readers pov and not really insight (no discussion of areas for improvement) from other writers. If you just want your stuff to be seen, the best for me has been Royalroad, but Archive of our own has much more reader feedback with only a fraction of the views, wattpad probably splits the difference but is easier to edit in. On the plus side, everyone that has posted comments on all three sites have been kind and complementary (but that may be more indicative of the Tearmoon crowd than anything!). I probably polished my stuff for a year in Wattpad before I moved it to the other sites. -
Sorry I've been more or less MIA lately. After the announcement, I wound up having a stress-induced heart attack that resulted in being hospitalized twice. I've finally recovered somewhat physically and mentally, so I should be more active from now on. Gonna post my story in a minute--when I inquired about feedback, I was told the judge left none whatsoever. If anyone can help me figure out why I was rejected, I would be eternally grateful. Long story short, I'm severely disabled and have been denied benefits repeatedly for over ten years now. If I can't make ends meet by writing I basically have nowhere left to turn.
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Hi there,
Just posting something to keep the thread alive :)
With about 6 weeks until the next big announcement things have quietened down in here.
Hopefully once stories that progress to the next round (and which will get sample chapters put up for votes) are announced, things will pick up as we select our favourites and support those who don’t advance.
In the meantime the group is still open for chatting about stories and the review thread is also active with stories from many of people from this group if you want to pop over for a look.
It seems strange to say after waiting so long May 31is just around the corner and AnimeExpo in July marches closer.
Good luck and strong nerves everyone still alive in the competition. Who knows it probably won’t be long until it all starts again.
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@Damon-Cavalchini, this is just a polite suggestion so of course feel free to ignore it, but don't you think it would be better to keep discussions specifically about the competition in the competition thread and leave this thread as a more general writers' support group?
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Sorry - too many threads got me confused. Did you mean the one in the News section or is there another one?
I’m happy to delete the post above and move it somewhere else more appropriate.
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@Damon-Cavalchini I think it's fine either way. To me, it feels weird to post in the "submissions open" thread since they've long since closed. But if you did, you may get the attention of some contest entrants who aren't following the writing support thread. So it's up to you which audience you want to discuss things with.
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I think may have thought of an actual ending for my story—not a good enough because I couldn't think of anything else ending, but an actual ending ending. Something very natural that just pulls it all together. I still have a lot of writing to do to get there—but now I know where I am going!
