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TD XCI Crits: I Hate You All, Plus The Earth This was not the worst week I've read. In fact, there were markedly fewer stories I would call hair-pullingly bad in the mix. Unfortunately, even fewer rose to the lofty bar of merely mediocre - a lot of you got mired in the swamp of Plain Old Bad. But, you know, progress. Now for my usual up-front lesson, which I'll cite throughout the crits, even though you're going to skip it anyway because you have the patience of a two-month-old puppy, but you're less cute and retained its proclivity for widdling the carpet. Fetchin' My Newspaper: A word from the ghost of Kurt Vonnegut Vonnegut wrote good. He also wrote eight tips on writing short stories. Let’s go over them. 1. Use the time of a total stranger in such a way that he or she will not feel the time was wasted. Write a story worth telling. All storytelling is essentially an act of communication. If you have nothing to say, it comes out as hot air (and/or postmodernism, which is the same thing (sorry, couldn’t resist the urge to take a cheap shot (not actually sorry, postmodernism is wretched))). Most of you hosed up on this one pretty hard, so I’m not even going to bother mentioning it in crits. 2. Give the reader at least one character he or she can root for. Useful when selling fiction, either to win the Dome or to get published. The more people who can identify-with (or even like!) one of your major characters, the greater the chance they’ll enjoy the story. Having nothing but dislikeable characters is possible, but it’s much harder to pull off. Many people don’t like amazing, important books like The Great Gatsby or A Catcher in the Rye because all the characters are unsympathetic. 3. Every character should want something, even if it is only a glass of water. This is a really loving important one. It should be crystal clear (to the reader) what each character wants at any given time. Any character you include must have a goal, the reader must be able to understand that goal, and the character’s actions must logically follow from that goal. (Note: This does not preclude layered or conflicting goals. Deep characters tend to have goals on multiple levels, even goals they don’t themselves realize at the time. These goals are often in conflict with one another. For those who’ve done a basic creative writing class, this is where Character vs. Self conflict arises.) 4. Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action. Kill your darlings, cut the flab. This is a short story. If it’s not showing us something vital, something necessary for understanding the story’s characters or action, then cut it. 5. Start as close to the end as possible. Look at your conclusion. What information is necessary to feel the emotional weight behind it, and to understand it? Cut everything else. We only need the barest setup to know what a character’s world is like before your inciting event turns it upside down. (Has your character’s world not been turned upside down? Then you’ve written a boring story. See next point.) 6. Be a sadist. No matter how sweet and innocent your leading characters, make awful things happen to them—in order that the reader may see what they are made of. Pretty straightforward, I think. Turn your character's world upside down and show us how they react. 7. Write to please just one person. If you open a window and make love to the world, so to speak, your story will get pneumonia. When you’re drafting a story, draft the story you want to tell. When you’re editing a story, start thinking about what the reader will want to read, and what the reader will find moving or interesting. In his memoir On Writing, Stephen King puts it like this: “Write with the door closed. Rewrite with the door open.” 8. Give your readers as much information as possible as soon as possible. To heck with suspense. Readers should have such complete understanding of what is going on, where and why, that they could finish the story themselves, should cockroaches eat the last few pages. A common new-writer mistake is to omit important details early on in a story, so that they get a “gotcha!” or “ah ha!” reveal when they put it down later. One common example is that they hint at an event or person which the characters are clearly aware of, but is unknown/unintroduced to the audience. This is a cheap trick, at best. More often, it will annoy readers rather than intrigue them. It’s hard to care about a conversation or event when you have little context. The sort-of exception to this rule is mystery writing (as in detectives, as in Sherlock Holmes). Mysteries are essentially puzzles for the reader to solve - and even then you must include all the clues necessary for the reader to solve the puzzle at the same time as the main character. -- On with the show! -- Drunk Nerds - Circle of Death (996 words, says the internet) Well. That was a thing I read. Your mechanics are a mess. You make a complete hash of grammar (and not in a good, artistic way), and you seem particularly confused about how dialogue, action and attributions get mixed together. This is such a common, basic mistake that I’m going to leave it up to Google to explain it to you. We start out with a fight between a paranoid guy and a pregnant sister over guilt. Then the woman goes into labor and they get into a car crash because the guy is paranoid. And then everyone dies. One of the problems is that you start the story with a halfway-decent line making me think this is going to be a story about coping with grief, and then it derails into something about paranoia and unsafe driving practices. The EMT comes out of left field and, really, you could’ve just cut that paragraph entirely. Your story lacks a clear theme and has little narrative consistency. Did you want to write about grief? About paranoia? About sibling disagreements? It’s all muddled together, and piecing together what you were trying to do is basically like trying to put a blenderized fetus back together. Also, see my note on Kurt Vonnegut’s Third Writing Tip. Also also, your horrendous overuse of said-bookisms made me throw up a little. Not a good way to start the week. Low pile, DM/Loser candidate. -- Entenzahn - Gambit (721 words) (-250 wordcount due to intro, but gently caress, you’re below that.  )Yeah, so, basically, the usual memory wipe story, except no one cares. Your story is a pile of Things That Happen, but they don’t form a cohesive Plot. Introduce the elements I need to understand your theme and plot as early as possible. Next, make us understand why this guy wants to wipe his brain. This was never explained. Next, something should stand in the way of that want - conflict! He’d already made up his mind and nothing, internal or external, existed to dissuade him. Result: Snoozefest. See also: Vonnegut’s last lesson. I thought this story was going to be about lovers breaking up at first, and then about suicide (and it is, kinda), and then suddenly in the second scene I had the sinking feeling you were doing a bad ripoff of Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and hey look, you were. Mechanically, OK. You can write a clear sentence. Now put that skill to work. Low pile. Fix the plot for mid. -- Meeple - Prophecy (993 words) Oh hey, a shaggy-dog story. Ugh. I don’t care about any of this. There’s no narrative tension, because you omit basically all the details necessary to understand what the guy was working on, etc., etc., which is really loving important when almost all of your words are used up telling us how brilliant this is and how amazed he is with himself. Vonnegut #8, go. You can omit details when you know them; you can’t omit details just to obscure the fact that you don’t know poo poo. (Hemingway said that, FYI.) This story couldn't be saved just by adding details, though. We need to know what he wants, why he wants it, and why he can't have it. Then we need to see him trying to get it. Period. Low pile. DM candidate. -- Starter Wiggin - Say Cheese (424 words) Two characters talking vaguely about something we’re unaware of? Vonnegut’s eighth rule, go read it right now. Show me something unusual or interesting immediately. You’ve wasted one-third of your words in the opening scene. Worse, going back and reading the story a second time, it doesn’t show us anything interesting about the characters or plot - Vonnegut’s third rule, go read it. You could just cut the entire first scene. In my entirely unscientific sampling of This Story Plus My Memory, you’ve committed this sin a lot. And you’ve been told off for it before. Stop it. All in all, this is pretty bad. For a second, I thought this was about a dead guy recreating his life through some kind of postmortem photography - you’ve got some work to do on clarity. Nothing particularly interesting happens, I don’t get a real sense of why the old man wants all the photos, nor does the son seem particularly strongly opposed to it. There’s no struggle at all. You took a potentially-intruiging idea (what would compel an old man to recreate all his life's photos? What happened to the other photos?) and turned it into a soporific. Low pile. -- Bushido Brown - Persistence (751 words) Your mechanics are pretty clumsy, and this is far too wordy for what it is. Strange word choices abound (“the antelope’s vitals”?), your sentences have no flow, and the way you express concepts is tedious. You need to read more good books; go pick up something by Faulkner or Hemingway and see how their sentences are constructed. Very meticulous men with vastly different styles. On the good side, your character clearly wanted something and there was a reason behind it, sort of. Good work on that, you're standing a hair higher than a lot of folks this week. Praise done, more stuff I don’t like: I don’t really feel his struggle; you spend a lot of time going over his aches and pains and being out of breath, but that makes this feel more like a story about old age than about persistence. He never really suffers a serious setback, so it never feels like he’s really being tested. He’s already competent and persistent. Also, you could cut the son and other trackers. They don’t add anything. Low pile, could’ve gone to mid if there were some conflict. -- dmboogie - Larger than Life on the Burning Screen (1000 words) PASSIVE VOICE, WHYYYYYYYYYY. This “story” suffers because we have no context in which to place the two characters’ long, tedious swapping of reminiscences. Two talking heads spit backstory at one another, but that backstory doesn’t contribute at all to the resolution of the story, so it’s just hot air. The introduction doesn’t matter - the police drones don’t matter. There’s no conflict at all. What do these characters want? What keeps them from getting it? They just ride an elevator and poof, tyranny destroyed! poo poo, where were these guys when Hitler was taking Poland? You’ve also got serious clarity issues. When you talk about a “clanking” “city guard” in “white robes”, I’m immediately thinking fantasy, and I had to re-read the first and second paragraphs for a while to realize that, no, it’s just very-poorly-written cyberpunk. Your prose is awful and clunky and passive. You use a lot of words to say not very many things. Cut more, burn your thesaurus. Low pile. DM candidate. -- WeLandedOnTheMoon - Henry: Portrait of a Goon (750 words) gently caress you. Don’t waste my time. Plain old DM. -- Nethilia - Friend of Mine (996 words) Generally, this was boring and muddled. The core idea for a plot - someone seeking catharsis after being spurned by a lover - is sound, but she does come to that catharsis largely by publicly humiliating (I think?) someone else. We don’t have enough information to know if the girl was cuckolded or if it was just a breakup and she’s a vindictive bitch. Who am I supposed to sympathize with here? There’s a lot of  dialogue, but it really doesn’t advance the plot.Clarity issue: I thought Gigi was Colleen’s daughter. Clarity issue: I have no idea what song this woman sang, nor what its lyrics are, nor what they imply. This entirely murders your resolution. You need to mention the Theresa detail earlier in the story, and you also need to show us Whitney’s aversion to singing earlier, so that it’s more significant when she does sing. Too many characters that basically speak and act the same. You could’ve condensed the two friends into one. Really, the friends don’t do much for the story, nor does the mention of the kid. Strip away the extra details. Low pile. -- Tyrannosaurus - Aloha (829 words) This has a lot of heart and a nice colloquial tone, but it seems like you want to tell two different stories. You start off trying to tell a story about the pressure felt by kids whom society expects to excel, and then you suddenly shift over into a story about a kid wanting to measure up to his father-figures (Uncle Abe & dad). The end does not logically connect to the intro. As a result, the story’s schizophrenic and doesn’t land. Don’t half-rear end two things. Whole-rear end one thing. Coming back to this, you’re going to end up winning this week because you had good, warm, human characters with relatable goals. It’s not a great story, given the tangled-up ideas, but the prose is strong. I just wish the themes weren’t so jumbled-together. Mid pile. Would go high if the themes were clearer. -- Greatbacon - One Last Job (930 words) Intro scene is useless wank. Cut. Generally speaking, this story is awful. I have no idea what’s at stake, and the whole thing is a terrible cliche. “One last job gets a guy killed”? Man, watch cop/crime movies much? Why the gently caress did you decide not to give any character a name? It’s impossible to empathize with the guy, especially since we don’t know why he’s accepting one last job, nor why he wants to get out. See Vonnegut points two, three, five and eight. (What do I appreciate? NOT THIS STORY.) Your mechanics are weak. There’s odd comma usage and, worse, you often abuse continuous verbs when you’re trying to depict events which occur in series. You can only use a continuous verb alongside a norman one when you’re trying to depict two things happening simultaneously. Examples: Wrong: “Spotting a dollar bill, he plucked it off the sidewalk.” (corrected: “He spotted a dollar bill on the sidewalk and snatched it up.”) Right: “Looking back and forth for cars, he crossed the street.” Low pile, DM candidate. -- Thalamas - Land of the Setting Sun (1000 words) Bad. Everything prior to the girl entering the bunker is irrelevant; the car crash doesn’t matter at all. None of it serves to give us a read on the protagonist’s character. I don’t know where this girl is going, or why. Point three, go read it. The bit about her being some kind of secret police pops up suddenly and only seems to serve because, as far as I can tell, she’s the brother of the DPRK Supreme Leader. Point eight, read it. The Supreme Leader himself is a moustache-twirling villain. Ugh. This seems like you didn’t really know what you wanted to write about, thematically - you just kinda had an idea for some cool stuff happening and what if North Korea got invaded and haha nukes!!one! Don't just toss events together; figure out Why You're Writing These Specific Events And What It All Means, jesus christ. Low pile. -- docbeard - Archival (767 words) Self-indulgent scifi worldbuilding tripe. There’s no point here, no characters to get attached to, the situation is cliched. The whole story is uninteresting. You’re trying to ape Asimov’s The Last Question, and it doesn’t work. Stop trying to be fancy and tell a simple, straight-through story until you get the hang of it. Low pile. -- Sir Azrael - Fog of War (650 words) Ah, a war is hell story. The war-is-hell, eye-for-an-eye-leaves-the-whole-world-blind theme is well-trodden and this one doesn’t till any new earth. Worse, the consequences are never explored, which is the whole point of that theme. It’s also really confusing when, in the space of a paragraph, you perspective-shift from the LT’s squad to the Chinese/DPRK squad. You need to signpost that shift better, perhaps by slapping it into a new scene. Lots of smaller, mechanical issues. Clunky prose, cliche dialogue. Suss these out and figure out how to actually end your story. An ending isn’t just where you stop because your wank-weakened wrists got tired of typing, you know. Low pile. -- Kalyco - Pura Vida (998 words) The story is confused, but could be worse. Your ending doesn’t match the expectations set by your beginning, nor are the characters particularly interesting. Is the story about a stiff character learning to be less stiff, or is it an interpersonal drama based on some kind of free-love ethos, or what? You could stand to cut the first scene. The key details it introduces are that this is the last night on a three-month leave for a military girl, but it doesn’t introduce her character, nor Josie’s, nor does it set up any tension between them over Ethan (which is an odd name for a Spanish character). In essence, we don’t really know what the protagonist wants, and so the rest of the story just sort of meanders along. Things start to get a little interesting in the middle, where we’ve got a sort of conflict between duty and desire, but then you toss it all out the window with the cuckold/free-love resolution, and the whole thing implodes. Figure out the story you’re trying to tell, don’t just mash events together. Mid pile. -- D.O.G.O.G.B.Y.N. - Mike and Doug (991 words) What the gently caress is this? Stuff happens, we have no context for understanding any of it, the characters are flat, and none of it ends up mattering - there’s no theme. A story is a sequence of events connected by emotional and physical causes; we need to be able to understand all of those things. Did you have an idea for a story, or did you go on an LSD binge and scrawl your trip on your underpants? Because this isn’t a story you’ve written, it’s just a bunch of poo poo-scribbles. Read more books. Low pile, DM/Loser candidate. -- V for Vegas - Requiem for a Clown (1000 words) Is this supposed to be about the guy’s loss of faith in himself? If so, then the resolution coming from the small girl jabbing him in the knee is cheap and doesn’t feel internally consistent; it comes from something other than his own flaws or flawed choices. Further, I don’t see the message you’re trying to get across - is it some kind of defeatist tract, where the clown’s suffering is cautionary? Writing is fairly clear, as are the images, but it doesn’t have a solid armature to hang on. Also, dude, proofread. There’s spacing, punctuation and capitalization errors all over the place. Zubrowka, hah. I’ve drank that stuff before. It’s pretty good. Polish, though, not Russian. Mid pile. -- Fumblemouse - The Secret Origin of the Midnight Brotherhood (999 words) Right, so the core of this is about trust and betrayal, and how the truth can cut both ways. You’re relying on dialogue a lot, but the dialogue in the middle seems to lose the edge and whimsical tone, particularly from the Mayor. You have the core of a good idea here, but there’s some fluff that could be cut. The dead teammate isn’t really necessary; it’s the political expedience that matters for the betrayal. Similarly, the banter at the beginning is good for setting tone, but doesn’t really establish character or plot. Also also, I’m not entirely sold on your ending few paras. The key turn here is when they kick the other guy out. Reforming into a supervillain club seems out of tone with the rest. You’ve got some amusing turns of phrase and referential superhero humor. It does start off a little too much like a ripoff of Watchmen for my taste; the key here is the group dynamic. We need to see more about trust and truth so that the mayoral reveal hits harder. This story was my alternate winner-candidate, but I voted for Tyr over this because his was tighter and clearer. Mid pile. -- Some Guy TT - A Hero’s Tale (905 words) Poor use of framing device. Guy-tells-a-story-to-other-people isn’t interesting unless the substory is being used to illustrate a larger point for the primary story. The kids are just prompts, their interjections serve only to interrupt the flow of the story and contribute nothing to our understanding of it. The teacher can’t tell a story for poo poo. He basically just recounts events; we don’t even know why he’s telling this story, and he admits he doesn’t either, at the end. poo poo, the characters themselves question “why are you telling us this?!” in the story itself, as a sort of authorial Freudian slip. Boring, tedious, clumsy, and reads like you just splatted some vague, unedited ideas on a page. Low pile, DM candidate. -- Kaishai - Ave Maria (991 words) Is the opening scene really necessary? I don’t think so. Your story starts out introducing a man’s love of art, then we get a fairly cliche scene where Suits (ugh - cliche) demand something unreasonable (ugh - cliche). And then we take a hard left turn and the story becomes about … something political about intolerance and art or something? This is all very muddled. The individual words and sentences are pretty, just like individual jellybeans are tasty, but this piece is like blenderizing all the Jellybelly flavors together without regard for what fits or what doesn’t. It comes out a mess, not a masterpiece. You know your way around a sentence, but you really need to try to unify your theme and plot. The sentences must add up to something greater than their individual parts. Why does the protagonist make a picture of the Virgin Mary? At first I thought this was going to be some weird Oedipal thing, but no, it’s just a picture of Mary, and you haven’t portrayed him as particularly religious. Argh. Mid pile only for the strength of language. Low pile for plot/theme/clarity. -- PootieTang - The Boasting Bastard, Backed into his Bunker at the Battle of Buggered Britain (689 words) Winston Churchill makes a last stand against Nazis? So what? What is the situation supposed to illustrate? Are we supposed to empathize with Winston? Why is Grant there, what narrative purpose does he serve? What do Winston and Grant want, and what does their refusal to retreat/refusal to die illustrate? Stuff happens, but I don’t care about the characters. At least there’s some external conflict to drive it forward, but without any emotive weight to land punches. Low pile. -- Grizzled Patriarch - Mutiles (812 words) Lots of stuff happening, no idea why it matters. I think you’re trying to make a story about an old man coping with grief, but we don’t find that out until the very end, and then the story ends unresolved. Point eight, above. Parent coping with the death of child is a classic idea, but you instead meander off first into some vague thing about a war and a sculptor who makes masks based on dead people (why?). Point three, above. Too many distracting details, not enough focus on the core of the story, but at least you had a core. Mid pile. -- News at 5 - Back Up the Stairs (980 words) A guy robs a house. He gets away with murder. The end. Seriously, dude? This doesn’t work because it’s all Event with no Plot - there’s no logical or motivational undercurrent connecting the events aside from physical cause-and-effect. We have no idea why this guy decided to rob a house, he just does because he’s a bit greedy. I mean, c’mon, that sets him up as a total sociopath, and I’m not going to empathize with a sociopath. And then he kills a guy by accident (okay, get him deeper into trouble, fine), but then he just shoots a defenseless girl for no apparent reason. We don’t get to see why, and his trite “being troubled by murdering someone” remorse is being unable to sleep at night. Now I'm thinking you're the sociopath. Further, why does any of this matter? Your theme seems to be “eh, if someone has something you want, just take it, ain’t nothing gonna happen to you”. Shine on, you crazy Aesop. (Kill yourself.) You spend way too long on the actual mechanics of the burglary, but none of that matters. What does the character want and why can’t he have it? That’s the conflict, and that’s what you need to focus on. Low pile, DM/Loser candidate. -- crabrock - Just One More Thing Before I Leave (997 words) Eh, fairly standard “man loses control of technology” story with a rat AI that gets uploaded to the internet. This one’s pretty straight-through and, unfortunately, predictable from the moment I realize the rat’s going to get its brain uploaded to the internet. The third scene doesn’t add a lot. Instead of focusing on the problems introduced by his ambition, we get a bunch of tedious back-and-forth about vacations and who-does-the-honor, but that’s all just wank. Your protagonist is kinda schizo, too. He’s driven by his research, and then he’s defeated at the prospect that it’s over, and then he just seems unfazed by the fact that he’s destroyed the western world. Not sure you had a core idea here, or were just flittering from one interesting tidbit of Gee Golly Science! to the next. Mid pile. -- Phobia - Empty Victory (996 words) This coach is a dick to teenagers. Also, way too many characters who appear once and then vanish. Point two, above. You overuse very short line-lengths. It works for action sequences, but your entire story is written in short lines with paragraph breaks mid-action, and the breaks don’t even change who the ‘focus’ of the story is on. This is really tedious to read. It’s almost impossible to tell what’s happening in your story. Lots of generic dialogue that doesn’t tell us much, and you shy away from showing us any of the physical actions or emotions needed to piece things together. Everything’s muddy, and I don’t care or like the characters enough to tease it apart. Clarity is your job, focus on it. Low pile. -- kurona_bright - Unceasing Downpour (863 words, DQ’d for lateness) Waaaaaay too much internal dialogue. It muddies the action. Cutting quickly between thought/action is very difficult to follow. Restructure your paragraphs, and consider breaking them up. What’s this supposed to be about? A teenager worries about singing, and there’s some hints of schoolyard drama, and then they sing and… that’s it? What’s the theme, what’s the teenager struggling with? Whatever it is, it seems to go unresolved, and I don’t see a turn anywhere. Your prose is unclear and muddled. I have no idea what the protagonist really wants. Your sentences don’t flow and there’s really clumsy constructions, like this one: quote:she found her vision begin to blur. That fragment makes me want to vomit gasoline over your head and set you ablaze with rage-lasers. Not a story, just a sequence of loving events. Die in a car fire, thanks. Low pile/could go for a DQ. -- FREE! FREE LIKE A PENIS SWINGING NAKED IN THE BREEZE!
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May 5, 2014 21:48
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If anyone feels like trading crits, let me know. I've got some free time and I'm definitely looking for some brutally honest opinions on where I'm loving up so I can gently caress up less this week. (If this isn't kosher just tell me to shut up.)
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May 5, 2014 22:05
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Hey guys, sorry I'm late! Beef's crit knocked me all the way to Kyoto and I'm feeling some serious jet lag! (also thank you for da crit beef) I brought you all a book of Japanese Folktales. No it is not a manga holy poo poo why does everyone keep thinking I'm bringing anime into TD I don't even go into adtrw. Phobia fucked around with this message at 22:44 on May 5, 2014 |
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May 5, 2014 22:35
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Huh, three dishonorable mentions in five attempts. Maybe this is a sign that I should stop posting stories in Thunderdome. Nah, that's just silly. I'm in.Phobia posted:No it is not a manga holy poo poo why does everyone keep thinking I'm bringing anime into TD I don't even go into adtrw. It's probably the avatar. Yeah. You think you got problems. My present: an unwanted avatar
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May 6, 2014 00:11
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DJESERCRIT PART 2 Kalyco - Pura Vida Another for the confusing pile. Not that your prose confused me, I just wasn't sure what to take away from this. There's something in there about kicking back and enjoyment, and the details about fire-dancing are interesting, but I don't know how I'm supposed to feel about it by the end. It's an interesting scenario, but I wish there was more done with it. D.O.G.O.G.B.Y.N. - Mike and Doug I was with you, dude. I was with you on this one for so long, because you've got some good wordstyles and I loving love psychedelic narratives. They are the way to my heart. Sure, there's too many words in there that do nothing but look good, but if you trimmed, you'd have something rad. And then your last line was "and then it was all a drug trip."  After that, I didn't feel bad about the DM. V for Vegas - Requiem for a Clown Sad clown drama. There's nothing that stood out as egregiously bad to me for this one, though looking it over now, there's definitely some places where you could clear up some grammar and sentence fragment stuff. I don't have a ton to say about this one. It was decent, but there were better ones that didn't get the win either. Fumblemouse - The Secret Origin of the Midnight Brotherhood I think superheros, much like anime, are an inherently funny concept, so I didn't have trouble with this one, since it takes superheroes about as seriously as I take superheroes. You had some good jokes that you didn't linger on too heavily, and even though it was a silly entry, it still told a decent story. The one thing that came to mind, though, was that Vanquisher was the one who brought up the Mayor's new law, and he went "I don't know why he has it in for us" when it feels like he might have tried to defend himself by saying like "I know the mayor basically had to but this still sucks" or something. The reveal that he's the mayor could probably be foreshadowed lightly like that, if you made it clear he's more tolerant of the decision than the others. Some Guy TT - A Hero's Tale I had to read some of The Things They Carried just yesterday. Those were good war stories. This was not really a good war story. While the horrors of war aspect works all right (you didn't really sell me on how horrifying the soldier's last words were, and I'm not sure how he drowned in mud and still managed to have last words) I don't get why this vet has to say this story every time someone comes over? It's a weird ending that didn't make sense. Kaishai - Ave Maria I really liked this one. It was one of my candidates for the win alongside Tyrannosaurus's. You gave me a good image of someone consumed with his work, and particularly with a sort of artwork that isn't a very traditional sort. I like lesser-known art forms, like stained glass or mosaics. The symbolism was a little blunt, but you portrayed his conflict (!) well, so in the end, I liked it. PootieTang - The Boasting Bastard, Backed into his Bunker at the Battle of Buggered Britain Another for confusion week. What was the point? Alternate history Churchill is drunk and tries to kill himself so the Germans don't capture him, but they do. ? ?????? ??????????? Maybe I missed something. Grizzled Patriarch - Mutilés While this one took a bit for me to get it, I finally did. In a way I thought they were death masks at first, until I figured out they were masks to cover up injuries, and then he makes a mask to cover up the damage that being a soldier did to his son's face. Oh, and another confusion point: I didn't grasp at first the shift between talking about the Captain's son and the sculptor's son. A name for the sculptor might have helped that. Still one of the better stories this week. The News at 5 - Back Up the Stairs This I wasn't confused about. It was really straightforward. That was the problem. A guy decides, for no good reason, to rob a place, then accidentally kills a dad, then is haunted by it. I don't really have a reason to care about him, and on top of that, you make it seem like he's robbed places before by how he talks about moving around where in the beginning it says he's never robbed a place. Pretty meh. crabrock - Just One More Thing Before I Leave Science rating 10/10 Bad pun rating 8/10 Another of my candidates for the win. The sincere, detailed science put it strongly above other entries that casually brushed science but were too afraid to dig in. The idea of a Yudkowskian FOOM caused by a mouse AI is pleasing to me. I spend too much time in the Less Wrong thread. Phobia - Empty Victory Yeah, not sure what was supposed to be happening here. The coach is a massive abusive rear end in a top hat, so I guess I'm not supposed to be on his side, which means I'm on Alex's side? Also why is everyone else referred to by the first name and Alex only by the last name? I guess it ends for a victory for Alex except now she has to stick it out with Worst Coach for another year. kurona_bright - Unceasing Downpour Man, another song reference one. Since you were late, you weren't in the running, and you probably wouldn't have won, but this is above average for this week. I'm not quite sold on the conflict you had in the middle (whether the song is going to fit) but anxiety over performance is a decent source of conflict, at least. And I liked the idea that this is someone who's not great, but who gets to feel great for this little bit of time, so that she can remember it when she's not feeling great. Could have probably used a little more description of what it actually felt like for her to sing--maybe what it sounds like to have your voice harmonized with the rest of the choir, the way it feels like she's singing out all the air in her lungs--I don't know, but it would have been better if I could have felt that glimpse of glory instead of just heard about it. (That's the problem with relying on a song; if your reader hasn't heard it, they might not be able to imagine how exciting it sounds.) SO WHAT DID WE LEARN? Confusion: A lot of the time, I wasn't sure what you were trying to say with your stories. This is not good. I don't want you replying to tell me what you were trying to say, so don't loving do it. What I want you to do is to look back at your story, then think to yourself what you were trying to say with your story. How is your audience supposed to feel? Who are they supposed to like? What are they supposed to identify with? This is why reading your own writing is so important. Think what you're trying to say. Then, look at what you did say. And then fix it. Confusion Part II - Twist Endings: This only happened once or twice this time, but the reason why a twist ending isn't fun is partially because it leaves the reader confused, because now what they thought they knew was wrong, and then it's over, no further explanation. This doesn't mean you can't ever reveal something, but it does mean that you shouldn't end a story "and it was all a drug trip and none of it mattered."
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May 6, 2014 00:15
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Fumblemouse: The Choose Your Own Adventure Once upon a time, a young lad named Fumble was reading this forums post. Click here to read on
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May 6, 2014 01:12
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I'm in, with the present of: a piece of a mirror.
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May 6, 2014 01:14
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I'm in. Got a bunch of old VHS tapes with me. Anyone have a VCR? Oh, and  .
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May 6, 2014 01:15
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Of course, if you need to pick something up in a pinch, you could always swing by the grocery store in
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May 6, 2014 01:28
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I get in and retrieve from my pocket a completely foreign language. You can pet it, it won't bite.
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May 6, 2014 02:02
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WLOTM expressed an interest in a more detailed crit. If anyone else wants more detail than what I gave in my general crits, just ask.WeLandedOnTheMoon! posted:I put a lot of firsthand research into my story this week, so thank you all for taking the time to read it. I had to really examine myself to capture the character of Henry; it was an exhaustive process, but we must sacrifice for our craft. I hope the judges like it. I know you can write good. Hell, you made some good writing moves in here. I'm willing to say I liked the foreshadowing. You lost me on a few details, but I was still generally following you, once I figured out the reveal, which had me kind of rolling my eyes. Looking at this as humor, the constant goon jokes just didn't click for me. The dude's got a realdoll. I can imagine how gross he is. And a lot of the time, the goon hygiene doesn't matter, except to underscore the point of how gross he is. Yeah, a sweaty anime tee shirt is gross, but when you've already told me he's got a cheesebeard and a realdoll, I think I'm getting it. And then the details like bitcoin and EVE Online are just plain injokes and kind of irrelevant. (Okay, that he's playing an MMO is kind of relevant for the whole 'my guild needs me' thing.) You really lost my sympathy on the goony goon poo poo, dude. As for the story itself, the problem is that we lose all emotional connection to Mariah once we figure out she's a realdoll and it's all in Henry's mind. You start off sympathizing with Mariah, then whoops, she's not real, it's just this gross guy you don't really care about. He's basically got a conflict, but it gets resolved relatively easily, and he bounces around from being like "ugh I hate you" to "hey let's menage a trois" within a paragraph, so I don't feel his conflict runs all that deep. At the end, when you personify Mariah again, she could have had a resolution for her conflict of being stuck with Henry, but the problem is that the reader has given up identifying with her because all you've given us to identify with is Henry's conception of her. You establish that she's only in his mind, but then it turns out that she wasn't only in his mind, but we only know about that at the end. So in the end, your story has one unlikeable character with a conflict that's shallow, disappears when he wants to gently caress, and is solved in seconds with no consequence, and a character who you tell us doesn't exist until the end, so we can't identify with her conflict until it's already been resolved. See Beef's Vonnegut tip #2: The only character we can root for isn't a character until the very end. Also, #4 re: goony goon jokes. Once it's established he's a gross dude, you're not really revealing any more character by making further jokes about how gross a dude he is, and few of the jokes drive the plot. Djeser fucked around with this message at 02:16 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 02:12
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Henry pulled up the login screen for EVE Online OMG WHAT A GOON
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Oh also because someone was a baby bitch, I ended up not getting to read about a quest for a divine rear end. I'm in, you dongholes.
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May 6, 2014 02:47
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Djeser posted:WLOTM expressed an interest in a more detailed crit. If anyone else wants more detail than what I gave in my general crits, just ask. I'd definitely take one. I've only written three stories in here so far but it's really great to feel like I'm actually getting better, and most of that is because of the crits ripping me a new one. You guys put a lot of effort into it and it's really appreciated.
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May 6, 2014 02:51
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quote:Lol Fumblemouse is a hack who couldn't write his way out of a bag On the assumption that FM is no feeble back-downy guy I will judge this.  Heap Big Sitting Mouse Brawl You are both wily and wordwise. But I want to have my cold, rust-spavined emotion cogs stirred. Give me an epic love story themed around 'straight lines meet at infinity'. Make me care about every character. No genre restrictions. 2500 words max, Friday 15 May, High Noon PST.
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May 6, 2014 03:10
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Grizzled Patriarch posted:Mutilés (812 words) On a closer read, I'm not sure where I got the death mask stuff from, but I was convinced, like, trying to figure out how they were carrying in a corpse to get this mask made. Where I could see to improve it, maybe, is that you start off in the beginning talking about him and his wife--his son doesn't come into the picture until the very end, and his wife isn't really important in the rest of the story. A small improvement could be changing the wife's role to saying something like 'his wife didn't like the masks--they reminded her of their son, she said,' that way the fact that he has a son isn't coming out of the blue, and we know the son is related to injured soldiers somehow. While the conflict here isn't very present until the latter half (sculptor grieving over loss of his son) I still think the earlier half carries it by merit of being an interesting profession and an interesting procedure he goes through. You start with a compelling image and tell us about someone in an uncommon job, so I'm willing to give you a pass on how your character's conflict doesn't show up until later on. Could be smoother, but I was engaged, so it worked, at least. The hero motif is a little odd, just because I'm not sure if it's supposed to be meaningful (as in soldiers = heroes etc) or if it's just A Kid Thing he liked. I appreciate the detail to what sort of stories his son liked, but it seems specific and repeated enough that there's some broader meaning to it than just role models and whatnot. Or maybe there just isn't any broader meaning. I don't know, but I wasn't sure about that. Other than the vagueness with your theme, I generally liked this story, so I don't have as much to rag on about.
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May 6, 2014 03:19
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In I go, not to confuse, to ole thunderdo', wherein I'm a goose, whose quacks say hello and hope not to misuse language and meaning plus some good booze (yes, I share with my fellow domers some good booze)
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May 6, 2014 04:47
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I'm In, and my unsolicited gift to you all is a missing person.
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May 6, 2014 05:02
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I am in and I gift you the present of Our Lord and Savior White Conservative Jesus
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May 6, 2014 05:36
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In. I'm bringing a death wish with me.
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May 6, 2014 05:43
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Experiment: Deep Freeze After a few days of freezing the samples, the stories were removed and analyzed.  Results: All stories fared well except for sample DN. It seems to have frozen solid.  I tried to get it moving again, but it just won't budge. This story is stuck and will have no further development. Drunk Nerds, maybe if something happened in your story, this wouldn't have happened. Status: Other samples have withstood simple tests. More elaborate experiments must be designed to assess the quality of story. Until then, more simple tests will be conducted on a new set of samples. Sample WM - WeLandedOnTheMoon!  Sample T2 - Thalamas  Sample K2 - Kalyco  Experiment: Seeds Sample WM begs for growth. A seed was planted in the pure essence of story.  Sample WM has rolled into the shadows. I poked at it with a stick for a while. I grabbed it with tongs. It has sprouted some sort of orange fruit. I don't understand this development at all.  What a boring development. WLOTM, wtf were you going for--EW WTF THERE IS SOME SORT OF WOUND NOW THIS IS NOT THE SCIENCE I SIGNED UP FOR. gently caress YOU WLOTM, YOUR STORY CAUSES SEPSIS.  Experiment: Caffination Exposed sample K2 to coffee and money. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=spP620kLhNI Results: Despite a sufficient dose of 20mg/kg coffee dose and 15mg/kg money dose, the sample appears unchanged. Nothing is happening. Story is inert. Kalyco, maybe you should have something happen next time your story, yes?  Experiment: Caffination Exposed sample K2 to coffee and money. Results: Despite a sufficient dose of 20mg/kg coffee dose and 15mg/kg money dose, the sample appears unchanged. Nothing is happening. Story is inert. Kalyco, maybe you should have something happen next time your story, yes?  Experiment: Caffination Exposed sample K2 to coffee and money. Results: Despite a sufficient dose of 20mg/kg coffee dose and 15mg/kg money dose, the sample appears unchanged. Nothing is happening. Story is inert. Kalyco, maybe you should have something happen next time your story, yes?  Experiment: Exposure to fire A story should be not only bulletproof, but fireproof. I don't know what this means, but it sounds good. Sample T2 is exposed to open flame for 1.2 seconds.  Story held up well under fire for the first half of this experiment, and then failed spectacularly. Thalamas, I recommend you work on fireproofing the second half of your stories in the future. Sample T2 is no more. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lR1q4aBzUEI UNEXPECTED RESULT: Some sort of combination of events have caused a mutation in sample CC. It has evolved to have legs and eyes.  OH GOD IT'S ATTACKING OUR OCEAN RESEARCH VESSEL  MAY DAY! MAY DAY! MAY D-- end of transmission
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May 6, 2014 05:46
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Sitting Here posted:Fumblemouse: The Choose Your Own Adventure Who are you calling young, Queenie?
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May 6, 2014 07:14
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I am preemptively weeping boozy tears of lament for how utterly you are going to be smote upon the floor of this Dome.
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May 6, 2014 07:43
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I'm in, and I bring this phrase: "was pure and untamed, and they were loving every minute of it".
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May 6, 2014 12:27
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UPDATE Entenzahn is now a judge and has bequeathed to everyone the genre of "psychological horror." So you gotta include that or elephants. I'll give you your third possibility whenever the next judge pops up.
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May 6, 2014 13:04
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Is my brawl due in just over 12 hours, or do I more like 36 hours?
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May 6, 2014 13:08
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systran posted:Is my brawl due in just over 12 hours, or do I more like 36 hours?
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May 6, 2014 13:28
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Okay... let me preface my brawl piece by saying that I wanted to achieve an effect of
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May 6, 2014 14:56
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So apparently the document with all of the line-by-lines I have been working on for Party Week got corrupted somehow. So there's that. If it’s any consolation, I read some of your stories. That consolation is not for you but for me, admittedly I am an rear end in a top hat. This is my first time critiquing so, like, grain of salt, whatever. If your stupid story isn't on here that's because I cherrypicked a couple of stories and just headbutted them. I might come back to do the rest but right now I really don't care. Yes I am extremely salty right now what gave it away? ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Cache Cab quote:House of Leaves-type poo poo I had a really bad headache. I squinted so hard at this my eyelids are stuck that way. Why the hell are you posting your creepypasta poo poo here? Did you think the judges would simultaneously climax to your blurry-rear end-hipster-poo poo? Well whatever. Putting on my serious rose-tinted glasses for a second, this was a unique way to hit the word count handicap headfirst. And it's certainly made an impression on me, just... not in the way you were probably hoping it would. Or maybe you don't give a poo poo. That's possible. Here's the thing - nothing makes sense. And I don’t mean that in the good drug-fueled sense, I mean that in a “who are these three friends, how old are they, where are their parents, how have they not been thrown out of the Chuckie Cheese" sort of way that is not conductive to having fun. You had 200 more words you could have used. It’s good that you didn't overstay your welcome but maybe if you had spouted some exposition or made an attempt to show us the beginning, middle and end, instead of locking the reader into the middle and putting on a Spooky Ambiance CD that you bought 2-for-1 at the local Walgreen. Also you shoehorned “grass” and “water” at the end, wow, how did you not get disqualified. But hey, you tried something different. Gold star. I didn’t like it though. that hipster John Mayer-type motherfucker at every party that plays an acoustic guitar in a desperate attempt to get girls to sleep with him out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Drunk Nerds quote:Comic book-type poo poo with that one scene from Office Space where they beat up the copier machine as the ending. Okay. So, like, this story. This story here. I've read this story. The story that you wrote. You wrote this story. Why did you write this story? You shouldn't have done this story. I want to get my message across but critiquing this story is way too much work and I want you to GET my point. So instead of going into specifics, I'm just going to dress up like Hunter S. Thompson, find where you live, tie a copy of The Elements of Style to a brick, chuck it through your window and then drive to vegas in your mom's BMV. Call me Gonzo Man. I'm actually being facetious, I wouldn't do any of that because it's stupid and illogical. I would gladly take a bat to it though. A Keeping Up with the Kardashians viewing party out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ WeLandedOnTheMoon!] quote:"I swear to god if I see any more of this House of Leaves poo poo I am going to punch someone." Phobia, in his room, brute forcing crits. At least I can read your story. That puts you above The Cash Cab though that isn't saying much. Also you have a story so that helps too. I don't have much to say about this one. I liked it, though I wasn't crazy about it. It's bittersweet, and I normally enjoy me some hopeless melancholy. I love how Dylan's story is frantic but hopeless and Marie's story is slow but numbed. I don't like the epilogue though. Personally, I wished it ended on them seeing each other. But I'm just glad you left the means of apocalypse up in the air. Because that isn't what the story is about. It's about people, not events. I like it when writers don't get the two mixed up. That one time I went to New Years Eve party for some reason there's a buffet table full of chicken and waffles, nothing but chicken and waffles, which is really weird to have on New Years Eve but I can dig it because I like chicken and I like waffles. I don't know if I'd ever lump them together in the same meal but whatever out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gau quote:You drat Kids Get off My Lawn: The Movie: The Video Game A conversation between Gau and the reader: quote:Reader: Why should I care about this guy's stupid house? You had good opening and ending lines and the imagery is vivid but I have no idea what you were trying to do with this story. a jukebox filled with nothing but Kids Bop Ke$sha covers out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ChairChucker quote:B2000, Robo Party Bouncer I have this wicked grin on my face and it's all your fault. Okay, this story boils down to “this guy is a jerk and two friends have a misunderstanding”. I hate when the conflict in a story can be boiled down to “two people having a misunderstanding”, it’s why I hate most romcoms, but I understand that the story isn’t about Gabrielle and Katie but about them and the robot. And I like the robot. It feels like you had a lot of fun writing this story, and I had a lot of fun reading it. Gabrielle is delightfully sardonic and full of herself, Casper is a dick enough that I hate him but not too overboard and the robot made me laugh on plenty of occasions. I do have a problem with how you seem to be pushing the story downhill in a shopping cart. It’s like your spoonfeeding me apple sauce. I like apple sauce but I can eat apple sauce just fine on my own, mom, thanks. But I can excuse all of that because your story doesn't see itself as a grand epic. It’s tongue-in-cheek and silly, and when you embrace those elements you really soar. This story isn’t perfect and it's not the best story this week. What I can say is that out of this batch of crits this is my definitely my favorite. a Ro-Bollywood dance number breaks out at an Oprah Book of the Month meeting out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ nickmeister quote:Fear and Loathing and Refund Checks and Sudden Halloween Parties in Tiki Land You come off as very eloquent, some colorful choice of words but I feel like I'm missing something. Something vital. Was there even a plot to this story? Or was this some sort of Ullyses fever dream and I just don’t get it? It could just be me, I am a simpleton and my definition of depth is Okay. Walk me through this. So our protagonist Al and he isn’t having such a good time at his work’s tiki party. There’s this one girl named Alaysha who he likes but he can't be friends with because she's much too young for him, golly gee what a headache! Alaysha is also a really weird name compared to Al. Al. Alaysha. Oh, I see. It's all symbolic isn't it? Alaysha is Al’s wasted youth and he can’t make friends with her because he’s an old fart. Or maybe Alaysha is part of Al's multiple system and when he puts on his mask he becomes her? Now he is the Alaysha and not only will she get to kiss the boys she will also get two refund checks with like a million dollars each because mystery money. That must be Al's master plan, it’s genius.Or maybe there's nothing here and you just wasted fifteen minutes of my life. You need some sort of conflict that isn't just "Middle Aged Man feels left out of social circle" if you're going for a Snapshot Jamboree. You had conflict, kind of, for like two paragraphs, but the refund check is a really jarring addition that's dropped almost immediately. There was this one paragraph where Al jumps into the ocean and has a pseudo-flashback and I kind of liked that. I have no reason to like Al though, past the Stockholm Syndrome Pity Party, and if I knew the story wasn't leading anywhere I would have stopped reading it at the part where someone throws punch in his face like this is a movie set in high school. I wanted to like this story but then I realized there was no story and you were just hiding behind semi-colorful prose. Also who the gently caress dances to dubstep? "Let's Dance?" Hold up a second Starman. You headbang and throw your arms around to dubstep, you don’t tango to dubstep. But I guess if you didn’t shoehorn that detail in the ending the reader wouldn’t know that Al is old cuz only old people do the cha-cha to Skrillex FT. Snoop Dog. How delightfully antiquated! That one scene in Scott Pilgrim Vs The World where he’s at a party awkwardly talking to Ramona about the anecdote about Pac-Man’s name originally being Puck-Man and there’s the barest minimum of conflict and characterization because he was all confident when he told his underage Asian girlfriend that exact same story earlier in the movie but he's totally falling flat on his face talking to the magic pixie scene chick but overall it just makes you roll your eyes out of 10 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Crabrock quote:I Kissed a Girl and now everyone thinks I'm gay, BRB going to drown myself in alcohol Out of the selection of stories in this crit batch, this has the best overall quality and it almost edges out ChairChucker's Robo-Bouncer as my favorite this round. You have this talent of really making the reader connect with the character without making it very overt. Like, seriously, I found myself really liking your protagonist and I liked her friend. Lots of funny dialogue. My biggest problem with the story is that... a lot of it is superfluous? The story is the MC hates parties, goes to a party with her friend, hates the party, plays a game of spin the bottle, kisses her friend, then drinks herself into a stupor. Like, there's a lot of buildup to the moment they kiss and I feel like Spin the Bottle doesn't need to be there. You could have cut out a lot of the descriptions but the descriptions are really, really good. Overall, good story. Not great but good. Walking in on your two best friends making out and then you backstep and close the door slowly so they don't see out of 10 Christ. I should be studying. What am I doing with my life? Phobia fucked around with this message at 15:38 on May 6, 2014 |
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May 6, 2014 15:35
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IN. I brought road kill.
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May 6, 2014 15:41
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leekster posted:Last Ride - 836 I enjoyed the read although I am a bit confused a Sue's behavior at the end and all.
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May 6, 2014 19:41
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Huntersoninski posted:Creature Comforts I really liked your take on the prompt, and was hoping more people would do fun/weird/magical contagions like this. So the main problem here is you've buried this whole "BIG DEAL" thing. You leave me unsure of exactly what happened. It's ok to put stuff between the lines, but you need to leave me better clues. Make me feel clever for figuring it out, rather than frustrated at the lack of detail. Your blocking is pretty bad too. You tell me where characters are standing rather than what they're doing or what they're about. If you took out all the blocking and replaced it with characterization, you'd have a much stronger piece. You cuss a lot to show anger. Some of it's fine, but a lot of it feels over the top, especially in the absence of characterization or action. It's just people cussing. Personal preference, but dial it down some and replace it with things they DO to show they're angry at her. Other than that, just a few minor things that I detailed above. I thought this was a strong piece, and had it down for an HM. But I can see why the other judges didn't like it as much. Not enough characterization and too much extra zzz blocking.
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May 6, 2014 21:20
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I'm in and I brought an old photo album! Who wants to flip through it with me and reminisce? ... Guys?
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May 7, 2014 02:13
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crabrock posted:[crit] Thank you very much, I can't disagree with any of it. My first draft was a bit too obvious on the "big deal" and I swung too far the other way. Helpful feedback, thanks!
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May 7, 2014 02:21
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Full Disclosure: I procrastinated my brawl. I wrote like one paragraph on the first day it was assigned, then I didn't touch it until yesterday. I've spent maybe five or six hours on it in the last two days. If it's cool with Seb and Muffin, can I have until Midnight tomorrow (Wednesday) EST? I don't want to ask for way more days, but I just want a few more hours to get it in better shape after work tomorrow. I will still submit by the the original deadline if this request is denied!
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May 7, 2014 03:13
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Fine by me.
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May 7, 2014 03:22
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WHAT IS THIS WEAK rear end poo poo I WILL DESTROY YOU. Yeah sure. Mojo gets the same extension.
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May 7, 2014 03:48
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Schneider Heim posted:Please do mine, thanks.  Entenzahn posted:
Sir Azrael posted:"Fog of War" Walamor posted:The Law of Contagion sebmojo fucked around with this message at 04:20 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 04:13
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Drunk Nerds posted:Euphoria You have some major flaws with your writing: 1) Stop using passive voice. Just stop. That bleeds into stop having passive characters. This is a first person story, but everything feels so incidental. You're just describing stuff that is happening and I don't feel like it's from this guy's POV at all, and I don't feel like this guy is actually doing anything. He has no agency for like half the story. The story's events don't unfold because he made a decision, but because he's there. Major plot points that allow him to be capture aren't a result of his mistakes, just something that happens. 2) BORING DETAILS. Holy christ don't describe how long a hallway is when THERE ARE PEOPLE LAYING ON THE FLOOR. Learn to describe the INTERESTING and RELEVANT details in the story, not the spatial layout of a room. Blocking falls into this as well. I don't care if the sister is on the same floor or upstairs. It really doesn't matter to me. I really never got what the ambience of this place was like. what did it sound like? what did it smell like? With the details you gave me I could draw a map, and that's about it. 3) Grammar mistakes. Too many comma splices. Weird dialogue smushed in with other people's actions. No dialogue attributions where necessary. 4) Structure. Your story needs to be restructured. Right now it is: Guy goes to a place, stuff happens to guy, guy does something, guy goes to new place, guy rescues sister, guy gets capture, exposition dump, guy is happy. We don't see the motivation of the character until the latter half of the story. Then it seems like he doesn't even really know what his plan is. Why didn't he just plug those fuckers? or lock them up? 5) First person past tense. this is related to point 4. Your char seems to be flying by the seat of his pants, but never once did you tell me he was panicking or even slightly unsure about anything. You just kinda gave me boring details about what was happening. The point of first person is to really make you identify with the charcter, but you totally failed to do this. Also this is past tense, but it leaves with him unconscious and us unsure of his fate. From where is he telling this story? And to whom? These may sound like silly questions, but they matter. If you're going to use first person, use it to great effect to let me into this guy's head and share all his fear and hopes and misery. If you're going to do something where the char dies/the ending is uncertain, do it in present tense. This last one is bit of a personal preference, but it really bugs me when stories are in past tense and I don't know where the guy is telling it from. 6) Wordy BS. Alliteration, poetic stuff. Over-detailed descriptions. Settle down with that. Don't use a fancy thesaurus word when "spit" will do just fine. Overall this was a pretty weak piece, and you need to work a lot on your writing mechanics. Still, you'll notice I didn't devolve into all-caps yelling. You didn't anger me. Keep Thunderdoming. crabrock fucked around with this message at 06:31 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 06:29
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As the bouncer stormed into the room, I hopped seems a little casual for the situation over the bar. Grabbing the jar of antidote, I pulled out a gun. a bit goofy
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PUT YOUR BRAWLS IN MY FACE: BIGGEST LOSER EDITION Losers and Dishonourable Mentions, check this poo poo out. This post comes with a soundtrack. Phobia approached me yesterday and asked if he could get involved in a 3-way with RichardGamingo and Leekster. I said no, because those two lovely lads are almost at the point of climax and I don't want to distract them. However, it got me thinking. I've had five folks judge my brawls recently, and haven't done a whole lot of judging myself. By my count, I still owe three more, so I'm taking them all at once. Three brawls, then a three-way final to see which of you losers wants to make something out of himself.  For this, I will need six people. You will need to have received a loss or DM to enter. Once all six are in, I'll pair you up and assign you with a prompt and a deadline. First in, first served. LOVER BOYS 1) Phobia 2) Hocus Pocus 3) Meinberg 4) dmboogie 5) Pseudoscorpion 6) Leekster Six in, prompts up when I get home from work. Come and get it. SurreptitiousMuffin fucked around with this message at 06:52 on May 8, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 11:07
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SurreptitiousMuffin posted:
I got a DM for writing George W Bush fanfiction... I am the biggest loser. Gonna walk out of this one svelte, and covered in the blood of my enemies. in edit: wanna go from a loverboy to a loverman Hocus Pocus fucked around with this message at 12:00 on May 7, 2014 |
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May 7, 2014 11:42
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