What people thought

 "Engaging and well written" 


"I enjoyed the lifts from Moffat's work" 


"I wanted to read all the way to the end"


"It's very like one conversation rather rather than a story per se."


"It's rather like a precursor of a book rather than a stand alone."


"I can't stop thinking if things to improve it. It's gotten under my skin."


"You do know it's spelt volition and not violation, right?"


And my personal favourite: "It's not entirely dislikeable."

On the whole feedback has been positive. With just enough negative thrown in for me to believe it.  The biggest problem, and I knew this myself, was that it still read like a script for an audio play.

One reviewer was kind enough to Email me an article on dialogue writing in response to reading my story.
That was probably the most helpful response of the lot if I'm being honest.

I'm not a big fan of false praise and that was one of the reasons behind Emailing to a select group of friends. I needed to confirm the weaknesses.

I also liked the fact that my work was compared to Moffat's. I don't see it myself and it certainly wasn't intentional, but I'll certainly take that as a compliment. After all the man brought us the giggle loop.

Although one of the common complaints was regarding something I very much did on purpose. This whole story was intended from the beginning as a prelude. It's the story of why the Doctor is the Doctor. From here you can jump straight to 'An Unearthly Child' the very first episode of Dr Who. I also made a very conscious choice to leave enough of a gap that the events of 'Lungbarrow' by Marc Platt wouldn't find themselves contradicted.

So, plenty of work still to do in the next few drafts. In fact one idea occurred to me  in the early hours of Sunday morning. But I'll cover that in my next post.

It would require an even more substantial re-write than the one currently under way.

Hmm.