null0trooper wrote: I wonder if it might help to move the manifestation/transformation back a couple of scenes. Take some time to establish that the protagonist has a past and a personality separate from the mutant powers or any other labels. Otherwise, a reader may be justified in saying "Oh, look. Another mutant. Maybe the MCO will prove useful for a change."
Fridging the sister in the first scene adds melodrama quickly, but we already know the story won't be about her, so she's only a statistic. Her family might care, but the readers? Not so much. Tell us more about her hopes and dreams and the obstacles overcome as she's worked to become a family advocate before you chuck her overboard into a pit of mutated fire ants as a sacrifice to Evil Goodbye Kitty!
Aria is Cypher's girlfriend, not sister. Just BTW. This has been mentioned before this little segment, I just didn't want to repost the entire first ~1000 words of the story up alongside this, when they're pretty much all there in the prior post. Which is linked above in the original post at the top of the thread. That section is subject to change however, and I will be completely reposting the whole story once it is finished.
ATPT, I've written about 1900 words out of the planned 9000 words for the first part, making this the largest single story instalment I will have ever written. Fun fact here, my longest story is 10,000 words over 9 chapters, and is called Life, Death and the Greater Good (available on my Fanfiction.net account, which is linked in the dropdown with the karma and thank you's underneath my avatar), though my current project that I've been putting a lot of effort into is my Destiny story Outbound Hopes, which is also on Fanfiction), a fanfiction of the Warhammer 40k universe, and moderately decent. You'll need a copy of the lexicon though. End fun fact.
Anyway...so yeah, I do need to put in some more characterisation (I agree). Aria is meant to be a character who the reader should feel emotion for, so it is a good idea to put like a 'last normal day of life before mutation' act in before launching into the events surrounding Cypher's mutation.
In addition, the scene is meant to be a decisive moment in the MC life, and is meant to be bought up as a painful memory, and to give the MC something to feel guilty about: the fact they couldn't save their lover. It's kinda a cliched thing to do, so it's not the most original of motivations, but it serves it's purpose, and the MC isn't TRYING to be a superhero anyway. This isn't going to be a 'everyone gets a happy ending' story either. At least, not until the very end of the first story arc I have planned. Even then, it's going to be a significantly darker ending until the story picks back up again. I've planned this like TV show, with each arc broken up into individual 'Episodes', which are all seperate stories, but fall under a overarching arc, together forming a 'season'. Each season depicts a different stage in the character's time at Whateley, as they get broken down, build themselves up again, and then repeat. Cypher is meant to showcase how resilient some people can be, with shit being thrown (sometimes quite literally) her way. I won't let her become a human punching bag though. Nor is she going to be batman. She will just be like every other human on planet earth: a individual trying to survive. Albeit a human with mutant abilities and all the extra struggles that come with those.
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