The Best Laid Plans, by: arun2110 - M

Whether to focus on or not focus on Team 7 in a Naruverse war story really depends on the role they play. Team 7 has been little more than an afterthought in this story. They are just 3 little pawns being trained into good little soldiers. You are not focusing on how war shapes people (don't even DARE try to claim that you are because you are not), so their lives and roles are insignificant.

What is significant? The scheming of the top brass.

If you planned to develop Team 7 heavily post-timeskip but wanted to focus on the top brass early on, you really should have split this into two stories: pre-timeskip and the post-timeskip sequel. That would have given you a lot more freedom in terms of how you use plot elements.

Jumping back and forth between Team 7 and the war subplot has been awkward at best. It's bad narrative flow, bad storytelling, capiche?

Your story summary implies that somehow Naruto's unpredictability is going to cause him to act in such a way that throws off Akatsuki's plans. Naruto has been nothing but a good pawn. You'll probably make a bullshit argument about the unpredictability of Naruto's fighting style, but that is weak at best. Naruto's role has been premeditated by others.

If not Naruto, someone else would have filled the role. Nothing about Naruto was special, certainly not regarding HIS decisions.

If you intended for Naruto's role to develop only really when he's older, then again, you should have written two stories instead of one.

When did I have to say you have to angst to develop? It's Sakura's character that has to experience inner turmoil given her CANON persona. You completely ignored canon Sakura's personality at this timeframe. Canon Sakura faced doubts, faced fears, and faced her own flaws. Canon Sakura at this time was woefully misguided and grew when she saw what she needed to do.

Even if you insist that Kakashi never gave her the chance to doubt herself (which is SHADY AT BEST), there would be lingering psychological issues that she would have never dealt with.

Face it: your development of Sakura isn't even as good as Kishimoto's and Kishimoto is an untterly crappy author when it comes to storytelling.

And where are you getting this ludicrous ideas about explaining Yondaime? Unless I am mistaken, you haven't changed anything about his character. Canon does not need explaining. It's Sakura's OOCness that I have a problem with.

When I first picked up this story, I was operating under the assumption that small decisions Naruto makes early on when combined with more critical decisions later would lead to Madara's eventual downfall (which is the presumed ending). The summary indicated that these changes in Naruto's life would arise from Naruto's unpredictability.

The changes in Naruto's life have been entirely orchestrated by Kakashi and Sarutobi. I feel like you could replace Naruto and company with a troupe of OC's and get almost the exact same story up until now. That's not a good thing.

If this is your attitude, you are entirely misguided. You're supposed to make us think with compelling plot twists. Subtle clues are supposed to be the only indications of truths that will later cause a complete 180 in the thinking of a reader who glossed over finer details.

The one glossing over details isn't the reader, it's you.


Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke join Team 7. Kakashi trains them like a drill sergeant. Naruto, Sakura and Sasuke experience character development. This character development will be left as an exercise for the reader to imagine.


...?

That's supposed to be storytelling? You're supposed to make us think with dialogue and content, not a LACK of content. Math textbooks leave blanks because the only way you will learn how to solve problems is by doing them yourself.

Storytelling is about expressing thought and feeling and conveying it effectively and powerfully. When you leave gaps, you compromise the effectiveness of your story.

Character development delves into psychology (you must understand the character and anticipate their response to stimulus) and feeling (getting the reader to identify with the character). We cannot identify with characters when we're just being TOLD what happens to them.

There's a saying when it comes to storytelling: show, don't tell.

This isn't canon and it's not sensical or true to the real world. The military does not have 1 doctor waiting on stand by for every 4 soldiers in training.

It does not add to your story. You added it just because you felt like it, just because it was convenient, not because it was good for your story.

Do you have any concept about training? I have competed in a number of different sports and you clearly have no clue what it means to train.

Do you understand why a football coach won't let his QB get sacked in practice? Do you understand why a runner will NEVER go all out unless he's in competition? Do you understand why bodybuilders rarely ever try to max and rely heavily on spotters when they do? Do you understand why martial artists practice with non-contact spars?

Your QB will get sacked in games. But if he brakes his arm because you let him get sacked in practice, you've just fucked your whole team.

Have you ever watched track meets? See how often guys pull muscles? Imagine if runners went all out in practice all the time -- at most 1 in 3 of the world's best would be able to compete with each other on the same day. The others would all be injured.

Weightlifting accidents are common. I know multiple people who experienced serious back injuries while lifting. These are experienced lifters, not scrubs. All it takes is to go down the wrong way just once and you can welcome a world of pain.

Yeah, you enter a real fight and you will toughen up real fast, but martial artists don't leave each other broken and bloody in spars because by the time they get better, they've wasted much valuable training time.



You do not intentionally risk the life of a soldier at boot camp. You gain nothing from it. You end up with a soldier who is too exhausted both mentally and physically to train hard the next day. You push them till they puke, you push them until they are so sore they can barely stand and so tired they can barely keep their eyes open. You push them until they can jump out of bed with a knife in hand at just the slightest disturbance. You train instinct and reaction. Come time for combat they will do what they need to do.

Force them into a mock combat situation with their lives really on the line and with every intention to kill them should they fail and you risk breaking them irrepairably mentally, breaking them irrepairably physically, and training personality traits you wish to avoid. You've done nothing but comrpomise your army, which is, by the way, quite a bit smaller while your hospital and cemetary are quite a bit larger.

If you think otherwise, you just have no clue.

If he cannot control everything in the environment, he should not attempt to inflict potentially lethal blows. That's retarded.

Clearly you have butchered the Naruto world and taken quite a bit of free license. Do you remember how long it took Kakashi and Zabuza to recover back in Wave? And Haku clearly knew quite a bit about anatomy and medicine.

By the way you refuse to acknowledge your faults, you are not at all harsh with yourself.

When did I say only Naruto should be in the story? Or even that he has to be the main character?

Your summary implies that Naruto is the one breeding change. Using your summary as a plot bunny (ignoring everything else about your story), I could write a number of different stories from a number of different view points. Madara-centric, Kyuubi-centric, Itachi-centric, Sasuke-centric, and Team 7-centric all come to mind as possible choices. And in all those stories, it would be Naruto's unpredictability consistently leading to Naruto being responsible for changing the environment he lives in.

In your story, Sarutobi is the one controlling Naruto's environment. You cannot honestly claim that Naruto is half as responsible for what has happened as Sarutobi or Kakashi.

A story can focus on both a unit and the greater picture at the same time. YOURS cannot. Emphasis on YOURS. Thus far, your war subplot has stodd in the way of character development within the unit while your unit subplot has been unnecessarily tedious given its role in the story.

Don't give a fuck if you proofread it; that makes you no more qualified to discuss it. GoK has its flaws, but unlike your story, it IS conducive to focusing on small groups and big picture at the same time. Until you understand why, you will never write a story as good.

And no, your story isn't as good, but if you did understand that why, it probably could be despite Riddler having a better way with words.

This post has been edited by mortalone on Aug 30 2008, 05:24 AM

Get the immaturity in check, people. I'm not invested enough to take sides, and I won't be. But I see accurate points on either side of this somewhat rapidly degenerating argument, so I'll let this little bitchfest to fester for a little while longer.

I have to ask, however, ranma and rakeesh, that you let off on any argument or statement that has the capability to be conceived of as flaming or flame-baiting.

liu, mortalone, and other participants who've been here a while or otherwise, same goes for you.

I don't know how much interest any of you have vested in this forum, but if this behavior continues, I'll be forced to ban the parties involved. And I mean, all parties involved. So. I won't be lenient whether you've just joined and won't care that much, or have been here a long time and are an active member of the community. Flamefests will not be tolerated.

I just love it when Lutris exerts his authority. Gets me all hot and bothered.

Lutris is flexing his modpeen

...and it is BIG

*shudders in pure ecstasy

li.u is right. Rakeesh, ranma, take a step back. The characterization change, especially in Sakura, is extremely sudden.

Also, training accident? Kakashi is supposed to be a genius. I don't think you become ANBU captain by forgetting your own strength.

. . . please. The writing is okay, the characterization, not so much.

And with Sakura,

First of all, this doesn't make any sense. In one sentence she's idolizing Sasuke, a paragraph later, he's a demon. Besides, three days later, she's . . .

Not only is this a bizarre turn-around in Sasuke and Naruto, Sakura's turn-about is one hundred percent unseen and not shown. She resolves to change, and the next time we see her, she has changed. Was the scroll that Kakashi gave her secretly a personality-changing-scroll? Did she also use magic juice on Sasuke and Naruto to not treat her like dirt despite feeling that she is the enemy for not telling them about going to Kakashi for extra training?

Rakesh: I don't know if you are a sock puppet or what, but chill out.
Ranma: Please don't think that we are trying to tear down your story. We are giving reviews. This is how we think you could improve your story. People have told me that my first chapter sucks. I looked at it, and realized that it really did suck. I haven't changed it yet, but because I was able to take a step back, remember that I am not work, and that everyone can make mistakes, and my work will be better as a whole after I change it.

Sincerely,

JJ

Ranma seemed confused about what I meant, so I am going to double post. This was originally written as a reply, but I am going to omit the sections that don't make sense without his email.

Okay, I figured that by posting it, you would see what my issues were, and that I wouldn't have to explain it, but you answered very clearly what I wasn't trying to get you to address, so here I will ask you again.

A. With the first post, no one talks like this. The only people who are so fucking blunt are the kids who are rocking calculators in their pocket protectors, and they aren't this fucked up.

"Hey, Sasuke, bare your soul for me, kay?"
"Aight, I am cool with that.'

I'll go through line by line.

People sometimes write like this, but say it out loud. It sounds retarded.

Less dumb, but still sounds dumb. Of course, your Naruto is not canon Naruto, so I'm not going to go into how that characterization differs. And I haven't read your story so recently to analyze it relative to what he said before. It's probably decently similar. "I pity the bastard who pissed you off." Who says that? Tarantino has dramatic shit, but it makes sense, it's realistic.

Devoid of emotion? That says "monotone" to me, which makes your already ridiculous line even more ridiculous. Even Kishimoto's Uchiha only went off on dumb rants like this was he was really fucking pissed off. It's like this is his normal way of talking. It's a little high tension, but not that much.

oh, okay, so she has known for a while that they hate her.

Except wait, a few sentences earlier,

and she was basically trying to figure out, "WHY DOESN'T HE LOVE ME". Already knowing that he was a "demon", why is she wondering this? Why isn't she wondering, I don't know, how she didn't see this years ago, or why everyone else also likes him?

Alright, we go to the next scene I was criticizing. I wasn't criticizing the scene itself, I was criticizing the sequence of events. I'm sure that Sakura could have forgotten or whatever. But Kakashi even notes that Naruto and Sasuke think of her in an antagonistic fashion now. They aren't about to play nice with her. They're little kids.

See? Pissed off.

But they just include her in their formulation, even though they are pissed at her and probably still think of her as weak.

Back to the fourth section.

(Note: This next section is also a reply, but it might explain a little about ranma's writing style. He told me that he showed, and that other reviewers on the board seemed to prefer showing to telling, which was what I was advocating that he do by explaining the shift in Sakura's character a little better.)

There is show, there is tell, there is omission. If you want to illustrate a change in Sakura's behavior, here is show.

Sakura sat on her bed. She was thinking about Sasuke. She loved him so much, but he didn't seem to love her. She lay back, and wondered what to do. Should she give up? She decided to give up. She got up.

Here is tell.

The day before, Sakura had decided that Sasuke was a dickhead, and that she no longer loved him. She was cool with it.

Here is omission.

Day 1:
HS:Love you sasuke!
US:Fuck you.
Day 2:
HS: Fuck you sasuke!
US: Whatever.

I hope that was helpful.

JJ

JJ's post really is on the money and this is something myself and others have been critical of. The characterization is just lacking. I'm sure you could make it work if you took the time to figure it out, but you seemed bent on the war plot.

And the war plot is good. We like the war plot. But Team 7's presence in the war plot isn't substantial, so focusing on them seems tedious.

Is that not why you chose to ignore the character development? You didn't want to get bogged down by it so you tossed it on the backburner. But that only makes it more tedious for us to read through.

Hence why it bored the crap out of me.



Basically, if you're going to focus heavily on a group or individual, particularly if that group or individual is not the one deciding the strategies of the war, then it is imperative to develop them as characters.

Alternatively, if the war is your focus, character development can sometimes feel like it's just breaking up the action needlessly.

The stories that are conducive to both heavy character development and heavy war strategy focus are the ones where the characters being developed are playing a substantial role in shaping the events of the war on their own accord.

Ex: A soldier gets caught behind enemy lines and stumbles upon an important enemy secret and he's now trying to relay it to his superiors.

Ex: A field officer is leading his troops to victory in a decisive battle.



Naruto beating Gaara might have mattered in your war subplot, but it didn't make NARUTO matter. It was just an event that a good soldier other than Naruto could have brought about.




I probably won't post in this thread again. Either you'll learn or you won't.

Ranma told me he would be leaving, so it's just as well.

Edit: mortalone, if you were wondering, your post at the top of the page is over five pages long.

This post has been edited by japanese_jew on Aug 31 2008, 03:12 AM

If only I could type my stories that fast. T_T