I did a thing (and you can too)

[robkelk]

Looks like I got the short straw.

This is a ... very-early draft of an introductory scene, before spelling-checking and consistency-checking. It took a while to go through this because the formatting is difficult to read.

Obvious issues:

• Rutgers isn't in SoCal, it's in New Jersey.
  
• Douglass Gardens is also in NJ.
  
• And "Douglass Gardens" is plural. You consistently got the name wrong.
  
• And it isn't a dormitory; it's an apartment complex.
  
• The fastest you can get to Douglass Gardens from the airport is 33 minutes... and that requires taking I-95. The Displaced Mrs. Pollifax has a description of what the end of the drive looks like.
  
• "A gust of wind swirled around his body, lightly chilling him." It's difficult to tell whether there was wind at the time, because Newark on April 25th, 2017 had a mix of windy and calm periods. The temperature was pretty steady in the low-50s Fahrenheit that day, though, so I'm surprised you'd say the wind would only lightly-chill somebody from Arizona – the temperature in Phoenix the same day was in the 70s.
  
• "a place that had recently had a large uptick in tenants for no apparent reason." The introductory story mentions that it just had a huge downtick in tenants.
  
• "A man, maybe late thirties, early forties, opened the door." I wonder who he is, because the wiki doesn't list any males in that age range in residence there. (I suppose it might be Kyusaku Natsume, Takashi Kasuga, or one of the male members of Gorillaz; their ages aren't listed on the wiki.)
  
• Bob's way out of character, compared to the Bob shown in the stories.
  

All of these are easy enough to fix in your next re-write of the scene.

Then there are the not-so-obvious issues.


First, who is this Raven guy, anyway? He's male, he has hair, and he comes from Arizona – that isn't much to make me care about him one way or the other.

Compare the descriptions of the other self-inserts and managers in the introductory story:

• Within three paragraphs of his first mention in the story, we know that the version of Bob Schroeck in the story is old enough that what's left of his hair is a mix of strawberry blond and white, he runs a forum, he takes information security seriously, and he knows Rob.
  
• It takes just as many paragraphs to learn that Rob Donaldson grew up in Ottawa, knows the area that his future residence is in, is retired because he's fed up with office politics, has needed glasses for a while, and knows Bob.
  
• Within five shorter paragraphs, we know that Cassiopée Bright speaks French, was in a dead-end job that she wanted to get out of, and is married to somebody who works at a game company.
  
• And it takes us three paragraphs to learn that Harley Waters is on the outs with his family but not because he wants to be, and loves motorcycles as long as they aren't Harley-Davidsons.
  

Compared to that, "comes from Arizona" isn't much of a hook. Give us a reason to either like or hate this guy.


Second, why put two self-insert characters in the same building?

The premise of the series says "Trustworthy natives (including the self-insert characters of the writing circle, who are outnumbered by original characters) are originally tasked with making sure these "displacees" have a place to live, but will end up taking on additional responsibilities". That's pretty clear. Locals don't get lodging unless they work in a residence; the apartments are for the displacees.

Why not start your own residence building? We have nothing written about Arizona yet, despite there being residences in California and New Mexico. As long as you don't steal anyone else's fictional characters, you have an entire state to tell stories about... and you have a couple of places relatively nearby for your new building's residents to meet.

Again, it's a start. Keep working on it!