My original comment was referring to patterns in all but name; you're still not considering them on a meta enough level.
Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — WatchThe water is flowing down opposite sides of the mountain. The West and the East must divert them together to quench the thirst of the poor. I could be wrong though, but I think this is the way to getting good feedback.
edited 15th Apr '11 10:05:38 PM by EldritchBlueRose
Has ADD, plays World of Tanks, thinks up crazy ideas like children making spaceships for Hitler. Occasionally writes them down.Meaning that you're thinking of patterns, perhaps, as "Character does/says X, which justifies Y event/reaction".
That's one example of a pattern. It's overly specific, though. You don't have to replicate that to get an effect — but you can measure those events in light of the context in which they occurred, which is their placement geographically, in time and by character. The more you break down the specific elements of what worked and what went on, the more microelements you have to play with when it comes to replicating or approximating that emotional reaction in the audience.
Swordsman Troper — Reclaiming The Blade — Watch@ Op Can you give me permisdion to YKTTW this?
Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.
He was kidding when he said that, although I understand why you would thump it.
And so I have missed the debate. Oh woe unto me.
Read my stories!I just felt like stopping by to share the Writing Excuses podcast Alpha Readers
, because I felt like it was relevant to the topic of this thread.
Eh, about the positive critique vs. negative — I think positive is actually very important, because you don't want the author to wreck the good in their work while trying to fix the bad. Example — good flow vs. not good description. Though they'll want to improve on the description, they shouldn't sacrifice the flow of their writing for it.

Y'think maybe it's time to just agree to disagree?
No one believes me when I say angels can turn their panties into guns.