@Dawnaxis said in JNC Writing Support Group:
@jazzyjeoff I haven’t read your story yet, so I’m not sure about this. But maybe I’d ask how strongly you foreshadow (or want to foreshadow) the eventual redemption arc in the text of your work before the plot actually reaches that point.
If the seeds of your protagonist’s eventual redemption are in plain sight and reasonably recognizable as such in the earlier, darker portions of the story, then you probably don’t need to worry about the title coming across as spoiler-y. But if she experiences a “bolt from the blue” that causes her to seek or earn her redemption, then you probably don’t want to highlight that the moment is coming quite so clearly. At least, not if it’s supposed to be a surprise to the reader as it is to the protagonist.
Another way to consider it might be, what kind of language is likely to appear in the hypothetical marketing blurb for your work? Whatever description might sensibly appear on the back cover or store page for your light novel might be the threshold to consider for your title - it’d be odd for the title to be more of a spoiler than the synopsis. If you haven’t already put much thought into a short description or synopsis (for general readers, instead of contest judges or peer-reviewers), this might not be helpful. But if you’ve already put something together in that direction, even just as a mock-up, that might give you a better benchmark for your title.
Also also, I’m not sure I’d count on your title alone to convince people to stick around, depending on how dark the earlier portions of your story tends to be. I suspect that I’m not alone in finishing a book and feeling the title was misleading. So if I’m getting bogged down in the dark parts with no apparent light at the end of the tunnel, I might conclude that the promised “redemption” was either false or unlikely to be satisfying to my tastes and drop the story anyway. But that’s my personal perspective as someone who sometimes has a lower tolerance for darker stories than many.
Here is a link, if you are interested/have time.
https://forums.j-novel.club/topic/7981/jnc-group-writing-review-thread-the-two-minds-of-cassandra?_=1714767804384
So, it’s a villainess returns to her youth for revenge thing—but here’s the hook: when the villainess returns to her ten-year-old body, her ten-year-old soul is still there! It turns out that the villainess at age 10 was a sweet kid who just wants to love and be loved by the family her villainess soul wants to destroy. They share the same body, but neither soul dominates throughout the story—so, much of the tension comes from which soul will change the other the most.
There are other children in the story that have better ends in this new timeline—and I have made an effort to play them mostly straight—they are children and think like children, play like children and are sweet and mean and stupid and malable like children (as opposed to many LN’s where ten-year-old’s are all brilliant and have the social maturity of adults).
The darkest part is mostly the first chapter: scary prison, scary execution, scary resurrection. I really like the idea of playing the first chapter straight, since it adds substance to everything that follows—I would hate to tone it down too much.
There is nothing hopeful until chapter 2.
(I am completely reworking and extending the ending, btw).