hmpf

When I sent off my unspectacular FS ficlet to my beta, the always fabulous

beccatoria, a few days ago, I didn't expect the result to be so awesome. Oh, not the fic - that's still nothing to write home about, even though it's been improved, of course. No, what's awesome is that with this fic, I got amazingly clear evidence of my improvement as a writer over the last seven or eight years. The evidence is so frelling clear that it can be represented visually!

I began this ficlet some seven or eight years ago, and finished it about a week ago. In between the starting point and last week, I barely worked on it at all. That means it's a kind of Frankenstein affair made from two fused halves: one bit of writing that's nearly a decade old, and a really recent bit (with a few, short new bits patched into the old bit in addition - a finger here, an eye there, a patch of skin over there, you know?)

Well, what can I say - check out the result I just got back from beccatoria, in the screenshots below.

What do all the colours mean?

- Black text is old.
- Red text is new.
- Text marked turquoise is "negative" beta reader comments, i.e., it denotes places where there's something wrong with my style etc. "Serious" stuff, if you will - not just a missing comma.
- Text marked pink is "positive" beta reader comments. Stuff like "Heeeeee. Great!" :D
- Text marked yellow is neutral comments. Stuff like a) "maybe lose the quotes?" and b) "singular/plural issues" etc. I consider this neutral because it a) doesn't denote very serious problems, and b) a lot of those problems are mainly due to English not being my first language, and have little to do with my skills as a writer as such.

Okay, here's the screenshots:

(Yes, that is the entire fic. Yes, I will post a readable version here soon.)

Notice how the pink (=positive) remarks tend to cluster around the red (=new) text? Notice how the turquoise (=negative) ones are rampant in the black (=old)? Isn't that completely awesome?!?

There is one seriously bad bit of writing in the new part, mind you. It's near the end - I've actually marked the worst sentence turquoise there, too, and not just beccatoria's comment about it. That, I'm afraid, is really quite recent, and is a result of the well known process of, "Oh frell this, I just want it to be done!" *scribblescribblescribblescribble* *reread* "Okay, this kind of sucks. Oh, never mind, beccatoria will fix this." *hits 'send e-mail' button*