Yay, my novel's backstory was better received in workshop than I expected. I expected lots of criticism because of the poor writing, but I guess it helped that I was writing in a world I've been developing for a while now, about characters I'm invested in. Part of me wonders if it was the best piece to do for workshop because a lot of the things people wondered about are going to be answered in the novel. Also, because this was more of a backstory than an actual chapter (in my mind, anyway), I'm not sure how useful some of the more specific suggestions will be. Still, I got lots of great feedback and some good ideas and things to consider as I move forward with the novel.

Hm. So, my second piece was workshopped tonight. Not as successful as my first piece, I think. This one was set in the Edo period and was based off of the nopperabou kaidan. I think two of my readers did not like the story overall, and these two, I think, just really didn't get it. There was confusion from other readers too on various points, and they made the good point that the characters were too flat and template-ish. I think that's why my two most negative readers took issue with the story. Also, I evidently did not bring a unique aspect to my retelling of the story, so I need to do that. Ouch. Reading two critiques without anything positive or encouraging in them was kind of painful.

There was the expected confusion over various historical aspects--did they have divorce back then (heck yes), what was Edo like (I guess I could have been more descriptive), were foot soldiers not commoners (how to show that at least in terms of class, even the lowest samurai were not considered commoners, per say)? And it's hard to know what to do with some of this, other than just show it. As much as possible, I want to avoid the Shogun-esque approach of writing while assuming complete ignorance of the audience--that way, the people who are in the know can go, ah ha, and feel smart. That's part of what pissed me off about Shogun, other than the bad Japanese and obvious exoticization of Japan. On the other hand, I also want to present historical Japan to the uninitiated, but it's frustrating, trying to figure out which of their modern preconceptions I need to address, and how much background I actually need to explain, and so on. Edit: And then there was also this comment, when I wrote that the man had married into the woman's family: "Isn't that what everyone does?" =_= No. That's not what everyone does. Even if you come to this with a completely Western mindset, where do you come up with this matriarchal society where "everyone" marries into the woman's family? I don't know where the reader came up with that misconception or what was so misleading about my original statement.

It's so frustrating, but then I think about why I love Tokugawa Japan and how I want to share that with a wider audience. Maybe I was too absorbed with being faithful to the original nopperabou tale that I wasn't able to give my characters more dimension. Anyways, I will try again with something else historical and Japan.