things without nouns (today's problem with beta reading)

[thanate]

This month's beta reading quandary goes rather like this: I wrote a thing. Then I had some other people read it, all of whom fell on the positive side of the feedback continuum. (ie, somewhere between "this mostly works" and "I loved this!!!") The reason I wanted several other pairs of eyes on the work is that I thought the ending was probably far too obvious; from the commentary, it's pretty clear that no one else thought so because they didn't catch that what I meant to imply was that a particular thing that's said is actually meant literally, in a context where I feel like that's an obvious interpretation. Having determined that the problem I was worried about is probably not mostly a problem, I now have to decide what to do with the various other things that people report being distracted by, most of which were deliberately withheld info for reason of not being relevant to the story. (the temptation is to say, "oh, well that wasn't a problem, then," and leave the rest as is, but usually this is bad form.)

Meanwhile I shall continue to consider the mysteries of a universe which contains substances labeled "Fat Free Half-and-half" and where I have intense conversations with a two-month-old.