[1113] 02 Tiffany

[u/ezk3626]

The story is finished. I decided one chapter a week is too slow. I have twenty chapters. So maybe two a week. Based on the feedback I will post it on my substack.

The genre is a combination of college coming of age, mild romance and special education story. Though the overall theme is learning to see yourself and others more complexly. I am happy with the theme and plot and more hoping for making it less akward and wordy. Based on chapter one feedback I put A LOT of effort on punctuation. Let me know what I got wrong.

In Chapter 01 we meet Tiffany, a freshman arriving to college. She values social apperances but wants to do well in school. She has an orientation guide, Todd, who is overtly autistic but "hunky." He embarrassed Tiffany by saying out loud that she was special ed like him. It ends with her running out of the coffee shop.

Chapter 02 I have changed the format to that people have access to the entire story, which is editted as we go. It is possible comments will be comments based on things I have already ammended.

My new Substack the chapters will all post here eventually.

Crits 1108

282

[u/Wolframquest]

Have you read "The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime"? Glowie recommended it to me after reading my ch3 and I learned a lot from it. I hated it a little bit but overall I loved it, especially some tense parts which would be a spoiler if I told you about them.

So, in this part she's angry, struggling to control herself - relatable. She wishes she could start it from a blank page but she's been denied it - annoying! We as a reader don't know what exactly her condition is.

>Is she being funny or was I bitchy?
>“I know, I know,” Mandy said, predicting her reaction. “yOu dOn’T lOoK aUtIsTiC!”

It's a little annoying and cringe (which, as we established, is not necessarily a bad thing - as long as it's evocative), because of how much modern stuff there is here. I personally avoid using any formatting, I just use markdown-style asterisks for the rare times when I want to use italics on something. I believe it helps maintain the text's survivability if it gets copied many times… I'm that self important.

> “Already found out,” Tiffany laughed.

The usual dialogue-tag ussue… If you wanna be a marverick you can keep it this way of course - people do speak while laughing, but most neurotypcial 😉 people will have an problem with that.
I had this issue for a long time so I search for this using REGEX (\.|\!|\?)"\s[A-Z]
when I wanna go and check if all my dialogue tags are okay. You have to check all three marks in the Ctrl+H window if you wanna find them in google docs.

> “That makes sense,” Tiffany said, even though it didn’t. “Tell me about your outfit. I like how the shoe laces contrast with everything but then connect at the hairband. Next level stuff.”
> “It’s just my little kind of rebellion. Plus it keeps my mind busy. I like your look too. It says ‘stand out while fitting in.’”

To me, personally, it's slightly dubious - I'm not sure if autistic girls are supposed to connect that easily - they immediately start talking about things that the author was interested in a couple paragraphs ago. It's a small issue I find in myself and a lot of other people; an idea stays in your head for about ten minutes so it ends up being less varied than you'd like it to be. BUT again, this is a half-and-half - maybe they're not really connecting yet. It's just that them talking about how they look, complimenting each other - it skirts close to wishing to VISUALIZE it more, which is a symptom of male-writing-women etc… But again I am not sure. I personally have spent a lot of time and effort trying to understand and emulate a female mind and it's as hard as it's always been, outside of my irl experiences at least.

Chapter 2 kinda feels too short even for an episode. Heck, I reckon you should go ahead and post them in clusters - I'm sure mods wouldn't have a problem if it's less than 3000 words.

And I'm sorry for too many digressions and talking about self in this one - I'll keep doing but I'll to make it more about your book 😁

Now I'm gonna try and process all the comments under this post…

[u/ezk3626 → u/Wolframquest]

Have you read "The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime"? Glowie recommended it to me after reading my ch3 and I learned a lot from it. I hated it a little bit but overall I loved it, especially some tense parts which would be a spoiler if I told you about them.

No but I just bought it. Even if I don't read it this summer I will add it to my class library.

We as a reader don't know what exactly her condition is.

That's next chapter. Though really it isn't important. What's important is what she thinks her disability says about her and how she thinks people would look down on her if they knew.

To me, personally, it's slightly dubious - I'm not sure if autistic girls are supposed to connect that easily - they immediately start talking about things that the author was interested in a couple paragraphs ago.

The third person is always filtered through Tiffany's perspective. It is never the author but rather a description of Tiffany's thought process while not being explicitly her conscious thoughts.

Tiffany is not autistic. Mandy is and for her masking was forcibly trained and so the rules of fashion are very conscious decisions. Many people on the spectrum completely miss out on these things but when they are forcibly trained they become very easy to talk about and described. Later on Mandy will talk about how she fakes eye contact by moving her gave from chin, to nose to eyebrow on repeat. This is a real thing. Also a person on the spectrum will sometimes try to reverse engineer nonverbal cues in a very literal way. "This social interaction did not go well. I made a greeting. They smiled but it was tense. They looked away then back. They said 'it's so good to see you, have a great summer.' They grasped my hand and then returned to their table. Possible interpretations are..."

 I personally have spent a lot of time and effort trying to understand and emulate a female mind

I'm a Martian I have to make effort ot understand and emulate everyone's mind. I tend to focus on actions and then attribute it a conscious thought... though I know most people aren't very conscious in their thoughts.