kittyangelabdl

Thanks for the votes on Trusting the Babysitter :)
          
          I noticed the votes weren't all in the normal chapter order, so I have to wonder if you liked it enough to read it twice.  It's great to see someone appreciate my stories so much, you don't have to answer. But it makes me curious when the votes aren't all in chapter order.

BobbyRoland

@kittyangelabdl I finished it. The story was fantastic! I'm not sure how I feel about a sequel, though. The ending felt just right for the first story.
            
            Regarding unexplained powers, I find that the most enthralling method is to show the powers first, then work backwards towards the "how". It's annoying when things happen for no reason, but at the same time, it isn't as exciting to explain things in the order that they occur.
            
            I would say that what is most important is having a consistent reason and sticking to it. The depth of world-building has to exist, but it doesn't have to be fully explored. Telling the readers the reason is fine, but demonstrating the "how" and "why" of it over the course of the story simply feels more powerful to me. The best stories subtly acknowledge that they are showing but a fraction of the fictional world.
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kittyangelabdl

@BobbyRoland I just noticed how it showed up in my notifications this morning. Looks like you voted on chapters 8, 9, 10, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 11 … normally if they're out of order it's because someone has gone back to vote the ones they missed while reading, so there won't be a couple of minutes between them. That staggered sequence was unusual enough to make me curious.
            
            I do tend to start off slowly. A lot of that is because it bugs me when a story starts off with the kid having some weird power, but gives no explanation of why. I wanted to see if a relatively-common trope could be done in a way that makes a little more sense. I did think about moving the explanation to the end, or having it only explained when he tells Claudia what's going on. But as I was writing for NaNoWriMo, I was publishing a chapter every day as soon as I started on it… this one didn't have so much breathing room to adapt the structure.
            
            Thanks again :)
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BobbyRoland

@kittyangelabdl Hey Angel! That's funny that you noticed. I started this story awhile back, but I didn't get very far for some reason. IIRC, the introduction was particularly long-winded. This time, I tried starting in the middle to see if I could figure out what the story was about. It isn't too difficult to understand what's going on when dropped onto the midst, so I guess the intro isn't necessary. I'm having a ton of fun, so now I want to finish the story.
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