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Fuschia tude posted:"Brizz-ben." Sweet, I was close. I'm going to end up doing this entire lovely loving thing because I hate myself that much. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41330680/Dramatic%20Reading%203.mp3 Edit: this is an "addendum" so I guess I'll just put it here: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/41330680/Dramatic%20Reading%204.mp3 Gau fucked around with this message at 03:57 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 03:40
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Gau posted:Sweet, I was close. I'm going to end up doing this entire lovely loving thing because I hate myself that much. Keep them coming, I'm cracking up.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:40
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You fucker, always one step ahead of me. https://soundcloud.com/babyskeletons/cooper-diary-3
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Dec 2, 2014 03:42
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I'm in.
QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 03:44
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Gau posted:Apologies to any Aussies, I realized about halfway through the first sentence that I have no idea how to pronounce Brisbane.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:50
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In.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:51
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stop making GBS threads up the thread!!!
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Dec 2, 2014 03:51
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I almost made it through this shitfest of a story in one go before I couldn't take it anymore. https://soundcloud.com/johnmorg11/friendly-takeover systran posted:stop making GBS threads up the thread!!! We're just following the Blood Queen's orders.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:57
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I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt the torrent of two-letter posts. I'll cease immediately.
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Dec 2, 2014 03:58
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Mercedes posted:
Your Sledgehammer posted:
So I rag on Mercedes for little errors and I'm right to because he needs to tidy that poo poo up. And when I saw his opponent had put in a basically clean piece of prose I was guessing Merc'd be losing this one. But, really, one of these stories was fun to read despite its errors and missteps and one wasn't. Neither story really ended, each one had an animal on a raft, but only one is the victor. Judgment: Mercedes sebmojo fucked around with this message at 00:38 on Dec 3, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 03:58
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In. Let's give it another go.
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Dec 2, 2014 04:01
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QuoProQuid posted:Don't drink, but I'm in. The Goldeneye J.A.B.C. posted:In. Let's give it another go.
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Dec 2, 2014 04:05
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sebmojo posted:Judgment: Mercedes  Well done, Mercedes, you are a worthy opponent. Don't think you've seen the last of me, though. This is but the opening battle of a war that shall rage across the Dome. 
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Dec 2, 2014 04:09
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Crit of Mammon the Socialite by JcDent https://docs.google.com/document/d/1K6snkYR2PVWmtyyi9mbT9K4N23q8pz2qFc5Fii9FqMk/edit
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Dec 2, 2014 04:27
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Your Sledgehammer posted:
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Dec 2, 2014 04:32
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God Of Paradise posted:Over the word limit. Longer short story. Second attempt at writing a 1200 vignette, but it didn't work as one. So I wrote this short story instead. Disregard it due to length if you'd like. Since the judges were going to disregard it, I prepared a line-by-line crit of your story. You can find it here. And because the line-by-line focuses more on the details, here's my broad impressions: This is not a very good story. But it is not very good for reasons that are easy to improve upon. Most obviously, there's the word count, which you went ridiculously over. The word count isn't just there because the judges don't want to spend thirty minutes on each story, it's there because it's harder to write a story in that much space. You have to be more careful and more selective, and that careful selection trains you to be a better writer. When you go over the word count, the first question that comes to mind is: Could this have been shorter? The answer is yes. I don't feel like reading back through it to pick out the individual plot beats, but you spend a ton of time establishing things that end up being not that important to the story. Is it really important that we see the lawyer with the father? Is it really important that the lawyer makes conversation on the plane with the Buddhist psychiatrist? You toss these reams of exposition at me, but none of it is really that important to the core conflict. If it doesn't give us important information or further the conflict, don't put it in. You could establish most of the important information in maybe 300 words, and focus on the actual interesting part of the story, which starts at the scene when he goes into the room and Donny is freaking out. I couldn't tell where the story was going, and importantly, I didn't care for most of your story. When you're writing something other people are going to read, you have to realize that they're not under any obligation to care or to keep reading. You as a writer have to work to make sure that they'll care and want to keep reading. This is related to the pacing issues, because if it was paced better, I might be able to care sooner. I don't know what the word count is this week, but I could easily see this working at around a 1500 word length without losing anything important. Cut out the repetitive stuff with the doctor and his bodyguards. Cut out the part with the father in the beginning, and condense the rest of what you've got. If you were going for a slow sense of creeping dread, it doesn't really work, because there's nothing dreadful/unexplained that happens until the weird scene with the lawyer forcing his way in to see Donny. Dread works when something is wrong, but it doesn't make sense, or you don't know how or why, or you're in danger and can't get away. Here, it just seems like he's being stonewalled by Generic Executive Shenanigans until you pull out the Cthulhu stuff. So, since that happens, it feels like it comes out of left field, a twist that is in no way foreshadowed--not that everything has to be telegraphed, but the setup with the lawyer's website browsing was "conspiracy theory" and not "creeping body horror". Anyway, now that I've talked a lot about length and plotting, let me mention mechanics. There's a number of typos in this that you should have caught. Your tense flops around all over the place, like you kept forgetting you were writing these entries in present tense and slipped back into past, or something. There's a lot of sentences that just scan poorly. You use some weird turns of phrase from time to time that stopped me, and your descriptive prose was overwrought and often ended up defeating its own purpose. quote:Acrid turpentine and Lysol accosts my sinus, and the unnatural chill of being in the presence of death drops my stomach. quote:Airplane windows frame an endless vista of the Pacific. The image impregnates me with rising anxiety and indigestion. I focused a lot on stuff I didn't like in here, but there were a few things I actually did like. From time to time, you could pull out a good phrase that felt right, even though most of the time your prose was falling flat. Working on simple clarity in your prose would help you out a lot, but more than that, you need to use your space wisely. You've got almost 5,600 words there, when you could have told an effective condensed version of the story in a quarter of the space, and it would have come out more effective because you would have had to get to the point. Enthusiasm is great, being able to write a lot is great, but for all you wrote, you didn't say a whole lot. Next time you write a story for TD, stick to that word count. Keep the conflict straightforward. Start where things get interesting. And don't write five times the word count.
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Dec 2, 2014 05:03
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I'm in, let's write about alcohol without mentioning alcohol!
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Dec 2, 2014 05:06
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Crit of Of Boys and Bikes by crabrock Narrative Voice I liked the use of voice in this piece a lot, but I think it was let down a little by some consistency issues. Most obvious is the momma/mamma change from the start to the end, but there were some other less obvious problems, like I didn't buy the narrators use of the word "assumed" when he could have said thought, or when the officer said "proper hosed" which is contemporary urban London slang. So it was definitely a good voice, entertaining, useful and drove his character well. it was just let down a little. Plot This was a tight, exciting plot that didn't try to do too much. It was framed nicely by the Momma bits which gave it some emotional heft. Character I liked both of the developed characters, particularly the narrator who was dumb but loyal and sensitive. The line about the sunset was lovely and beautifully written. The characters were forced to some degree, especially the line about maths and angles. However this is not a major issue and is pretty much necessary with a piece as short as this. Overall this was a well written, compelling adventure story with likeable and interesting characters. It also had a nice emotional weight to it with the momma arc, giving it some depth. It was let down a little by some inconsistency in the language used.
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Dec 2, 2014 05:19
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 Week 121 SledgeCritsJ.A.B.C. – Let’s Go Away for Awhile I kept waiting for some little twist at the end that never came. The flashbacks are the best part (and the contain the best writing of the story), but the sweet moments in the past don't really jibe with the stuff happening in the present (1986?). The marriage ended but we never know why, and the tone is pretty uneven. The sudden appearance of the narrator's mom is really jarring and does nothing for the story. But hey, the flashbacks were decent! You’ve got some cliché dialogue (“They put on a heck of a show, folks…”) and some dialogue that seems absurd in context (who tells their mom “good to see you again” if their relationship is at all warm and loving? I think they’d say something way more personal and affectionate). I also don’t see the smell of whiskey being noticeable through a basement door (?!). Take a look at what you did in the flashbacks, those were fairly effective and the prose there was good. N. Senada – Taking the Lead I liked this one. The opening really hooked me and it was well written. My only issues were that it dragged a little bit towards the end (I feel like you go on just a touch too long about how the dog is going to be put down and there’s essentially nothing the narrator can do), and also that it wasn’t clear to me that the narrator was a kid until about halfway through. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it was surprising in a way that I don’t think you intended. Not much happens, but it still manages to be a pretty good story anyway. Systran – Aliya’s Hat I liked this a whole lot. I don’t know how, but you match the tone of the song really well. You tell a pretty horrific and dystopian story through a smear of childlike wonder, and it all works. The only thing I’d change is taking out the part where the narrator bursts/destroys (?) the blonde girl’s arm. I didn’t really get what you were trying to do there, he suffers no consequences for what he did and we never get a reaction from the girl, although it does show some of the powers of the helmets and it also clues us in that he isn’t really emotionally affected by violence. It’s like the moment isn’t given enough weight. Overall, though, a great story and the ending is perfect. Entenzahn – Space Simmens Some strong writing here and a plot that hums right along, but I felt oddly disconnected from the characters, especially Leah. I feel like you had to spend so many words setting up what was going on that you only had time to sketch the characters rather than flesh them out, and it robbed the story of some of the emotional impact. Nan Ertie was the strongest character in the story, but her clear connection to Leah wasn’t enough to give me a sense for who Leah is. A really nice take on your song, though. Boozahol – The Din Within This one felt pretty flat to me. Predictable from the outset and not terribly original, and I feel like you hewed way too closely to the song, even going so far as to having your character named Caroline (why?). There’s no real depth to latch on to here. Your writing is decent and you’ve got some nice verbiage in there, but the story is sort of lifeless. God of Paradise – Friendly Takeover  Refusing to follow some basic guidelines after you were explicitly asked to do so means no crit for you. Welcome to the Dome, I hope you stick around long enough to win some stupid awards! ZeBourgeoisie – Last Reflections A whole bunch of “meh” here. I liked the beginning and the end but not really the middle part so much (the bit about the pregnancy and shooting). This one felt overstuffed, and I feel like you could have used the additional words you had up to the word count to flesh out the middle a bit more. The shooting is jarring and you don’t give any motivation for it beyond “she has to die for my story to go the way I need it to go.” It felt like a really cheap out to me, and the pregnancy bit threw me a little bit too, because I really liked the romance you were talking about in their younger days and then you jump right to them married and pregnant. The end was well done and I like your last line, and the character of Tyler comes across pretty well, but this one was marred by cheap shock that wasn’t set up well enough. SurreptitiousMuffin – Hole in the Wall This one is aces all the way through. A little confusing at times but the imagery is vivid and it all coalesces as the story goes on. I love the little hint that Samantha is pregnant early on in the story. You disguised it so well with the fact that everyone is going hungry that the twist later was a real pleasure. I like where you take this and the ending is really strong, but the one letdown I had was that I struggled to understand Samantha’s motivation to kill her unborn baby. I mean, you kind of paint the angels as the bad guys, but I never really got a strong sense for what is motivating Samantha, personally, other than just the horrified realization that she didn’t know something (a potentially destructive something, at least to the world she knows) was growing inside her. Kaishai – The Stars Are Not Silent This one is so beautifully told but uneven to me. I absolutely love the premise. It’s so fascinating at the beginning and the family drama provides a nice backdrop, but then you bring the family drama to the forefront and that’s when it starts to come apart for me. It’s well told and avoids well-worn paths and cliché, but the initial premise was so interesting to me that I felt let down when you didn’t do more with it. Once I settled into what you were doing with the ending, I enjoyed it, but it sorta felt like a bait-and-switch. Nethilia – Momma’s Girls Great from beginning to end. Only criticism I could come up with is that it’s a little predictable, but not really in a bad way. Very well-written and kept me interested all the way through. What I love most about it is that all the characters shine through, the characterization in this is really strong. All of the characters (even the minor character of the grandmother) felt fully fleshed out and real. It ends up being more than the sum of its parts, and its parts are pretty drat good to begin with. Broenheim – More The writing is decent but this one is confusing to me. Which account at the end is supposed to be what really happened, and does it even matter? I guess that ultimately is the major problem with this one; I don’t feel strongly enough for the main character to really care if he killed his friend or not. It feels like there is no real meat to this one, no theme to latch onto other than a pretty standard drug abuse story. Fairly clever use of the song but not enough to save this one. The “snow” thing is also kind of annoying; it was sort of clever the first time but not the next twenty. Docbeard – Foundling I really like this a lot and you made good use of the song. It’s a pretty simple story but you do a lot with a little and it hits all the right notes. The emotions of both characters come through strongly, though Mia is a little flat (I guess partially due to what the story is, since she’s all but mute when we first meet her). It moves a little slowly at first, but never slowly enough to hurt the story, and the ending is a really sweet, well-earned moment. Crabrock – For Want of a Bird’s Eye View I like what you did with the song here, but I don’t like a whole lot else about it. The writing is good but the ending is really jarring and rushed to me and it ends up affecting the whole piece. Audrey is just not a strong enough character and I feel like her turn at the end isn’t properly motivated. She doesn’t really seem to give much of a poo poo about the harm she is causing the birds, even right up towards the end, and there is little weight or impact to her change of heart. You try to do a lot thematically at the end with the old man and it kind of turns into a mess. The setup was nice, and you’ve got some fascinating bits, but the weak ending overwhelms the rest. Grizzled Patriarch – This is the Part I Hate Well-written but predictable and a little flat. I feel like the character of Preston was as interesting as the old man, and that’s a huge problem. You don’t spend enough time in the scene with the wife, I really wished you’d lingered with the old man’s emotions more and maybe had the narrator talk to him a bit, but you didn’t, and the story suffers for it. Obliterati – Don’t Talk This one doesn’t really go anywhere and is sorta try-hard for me. I was with you at the beginning but the more it went on, the more you lost me. It moves at a glacial pace for what it is and the main character is two-dimensional. What’s going on with him, and why is he refusing treatment? It’s an enigma, and those only make interesting stories if they have some thematic weight or if you allow your readers to solve them (or both, preferably). We get neither with this mystery, and the narrator himself is impenetrable; there’s nothing to illuminate what’s going on or why. I’m not sure if the ending is supposed to be funny or not, but I laughed. Benny the Snake – Brand New Morning Pretty bleh. Kinda bored me, honestly. The main character is fairly well-written but pretty drat unlikeable up until the very end. This was just too unrealistic for me, and I feel like realism is what you were going for. The internal thoughts of the main character occasionally make little sense – for example, it’s clear at the beginning that he is doing it for Petra, yet by the end, he doesn’t know where she is and may well have ruined his marriage in his withdrawal rage, yet it doesn’t seem to affect him that much. Also, one night without alcohol is hardly kicking the habit and it robbed the ending of all its weight. Tyrannosaurus – Inheritance Well-written and held me all the way through but pretty obvious, at least in how the story itself plays out. Use of the song was pretty clever, and the characters shine through here, but it just didn’t do much for me. I was with it while I was reading it, but found it pretty forgettable when I got finished. There’s not much wrong with this, but not really much to get excited about, either. Jonked – It’s Late And I’m Tired This one is really great. I like what you do with the prompt here and I love the characters. I don’t have much to say about this because it’s nice and tight and well-told. The prose was excellent, the dialogue was realistic, and the characters felt like real people with real histories. The argument at the end drips with tension and I like how you resolve it. I think what stands out the most about this is that it could easily have been a cliché “son rebels against his father” story, but it wasn’t; you did something original and unexpected with the way the father reacts. Good job. Newtestleper – Ronnie’s Mum I like the ending but this was waaaaay too slow. I feel like you could have cut it down and it would have been a lot more effective. The relationship between the father and daughter is great. The mom is nearly a caricature, but we don’t really need much of her to get the gist, so it works. The ending is nice and nearly makes up for the slow pace of the rest. Pare this one down and you’d have a pretty strong piece. Dr. Kloctopussy – New Life Good but uneven. I was honestly about ready to give up on it after the first few paragraphs, but it gets much better as it goes along. I like the narrator and pretty much hate Jill, and I feel like that’s exactly what you were trying to do, so kudos there. I like the sci-fi spin on Kokomo and the background elements work, but this one was a bumpy ride even if it ultimately got around to something good. I think what threw me off most about the intro was that it was mostly dialogue, and that made it confusing. Give us a little bit about the characters before you have them speaking to each other, otherwise it can be pretty disorienting. Fuschia tude – Harmony and Dissonance Here’s why you got the loss: it’s boring. Nothing happened, essentially. We get more background than we do story, and that’s bad. I like what you were trying to do with the song but that little bright spot is not enough to make this interesting. There is not much technically wrong with the prose, but the characters spend time talking and thinking about stuff that we don’t care much about as readers, because we have no reason to. Then, at the end, the characters never get around to doing anything. I had high hopes for this one when I first started, because I liked what you were doing with the setting, but it quickly becomes inert. This might have been fine as part of a larger piece where we know more about the characters, and something happens after the endless discussions, but as it stands, there is nothing for a reader to sink their teeth into. JcDent – Together, They Fight Crime There’s some interesting stuff here, but the writing is a bit rough in places and the ending was really flat. Like most of the stories, I like what you were doing with the song, but the ending really torpedoed this one for me. You set up this interesting contrast with what the kid thinks of the frontiersmen and what his uncle actually does, but then you don’t really explore it with any depth, and that becomes painfully obvious at the end. There’s a little hint that perhaps the uncle has seen more action than Billy thinks, but just a hint alone isn’t enough to make me care. Sebmojo – Heroes and Villains Strong writing here. The rural Australian setting is a really great backdrop and I like the voice of the narrator; his thoughts feel really human and realistic, and that can be hard to do sometimes. I like the fake-out with the trunk not opening at first. The characters are fleshed out and you never lost my interest. The ending is a nice little stinger and you avoid the temptation of lingering on it, which sells it and leaves the reader with a little something to chew on. Not the most imaginative use of the song, but the story is so strong that it doesn’t really matter.
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Dec 2, 2014 06:04
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I'm in for cocktail-based storytelling.
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Dec 2, 2014 07:18
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Thanks for the crit! BUT Your Sledgehammer posted:
Please fall off a bridge.
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Dec 2, 2014 08:26
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Thunderdome is basically a suburb of Auckland by this point
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Dec 2, 2014 08:29
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Hit me, bartender.
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Dec 2, 2014 08:50
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I'll take a drink.
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Dec 2, 2014 09:04
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Djeser posted:Since the judges were going to disregard it, I prepared a line-by-line crit of your story. You can find it here. Thank you very much. But I must apologize to you. Since I didn't edit it myself, you shouldn't have had to either. My attempt at a satirizing modernized Lovecraftian fiction was a total botch. My problem here was I didn't take any time to craft the language of the story. I just sat down and wrote whatever blurted into my head, as quickly as possible, half of it in an altered state. I didn't take the process seriously. If I had treated writing the story like my job... Well... I'm not sure it would've been good, as I'm not good at writing fiction, but it would've been better. A nerdy academic narrator making a post on loving Info Wars Dot Com about how a supernatural entity helped Lockheed Martin acquire a small island made of bird poo poo might be too ridiculous a story no matter who writes it. I meant it to straddle the line between weird fiction and humor, like something Warren Ellis would do. What came out was totally inept and insane, like something Uwe Boll would have done were he an author. Then I made it worse by not editing it beyond spell check and not cutting anything from it. When there are so many mistakes, not even basic poo poo like the racism of the narrator comes off as intentional. loving Hell I'm a jackass. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 09:50 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 09:08
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God Of Paradise posted:Thank you very much. good point
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Dec 2, 2014 09:57
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Anyways, my apologies to the editor. I would've written "No," in red marker if someone sent me this. God Of Paradise fucked around with this message at 10:07 on Dec 2, 2014 |
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Dec 2, 2014 10:02
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Generally we disapprove of excuses for poor performance because otherwise the thread would be a million pages long. That said, the candor and sincerity are appreciated. I have hope for you. Come back next week and give it a thorough edit before you submit. It's okay to write high, but you've gotta edit sober.
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Dec 2, 2014 10:15
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Time to get back on the wagon. I'm in
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Dec 2, 2014 13:10
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in
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Dec 2, 2014 14:02
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Djeser posted:Thunderdome is basically a suburb of Auckland by this point true there are a lot of aussies in this thread
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Dec 2, 2014 15:56
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Aw, a tiny part of me hoped God of Paradise would have blown up at us like Cache Cab. Oh well, there's always the next newbie.
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Dec 2, 2014 16:27
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JcDent posted:I'm in, let's write about alcohol without mentioning alcohol! Cacto posted:I'm in for cocktail-based storytelling. Benny the Snake posted:Hit me, bartender. Pete Zah posted:I'll take a drink. Meeple posted:Time to get back on the wagon. Fluffy Critter
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Dec 2, 2014 16:38
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Martello posted:true there are a lot of aussies in this thread Geography called. It didn't say it wanted anything, it just mentioned you were a badger fingerer. Auckland only has one suburb and that is Antarctica. In.
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Dec 2, 2014 17:25
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look I know you Tasmanians don't like being called Australians, but facts are facts my friend
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Dec 2, 2014 18:11
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This thread makes me giggle. Also, I'm in a strange mood. This will be interesting. (In.)
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Dec 2, 2014 19:19
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In for this week. Never been drunk before. 
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Dec 2, 2014 20:12
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Crit of The Din Within by Boozahol Prose I like the style of your writing, it's clear and generally flows nicely. It kept my attention well enough that reading this wasn't a chore. Some of your longer descriptions feel a bit tortured and don't flow so well. An example of this is "A lanky fourteen-year-old, her shiny, new skirt flying; waist-length hair whipping around. And a giant, braces-filled smile across her face, with confidence and a blissful lack of self-awareness." I find these things hard myself, but it's so important to get these things just right because they're so memorable. This magnifies problems like starting a sentence with "And". Another example of this is right at the start " A hopeful grin without showing any teeth." The adverb isn't good here and a grin that doesn't show teeth doesn't really make sense. Characterization I liked the narrator well enough, he was clearly sensitive to her problems. The story isn't really about him though, and I felt that Caroline wasn't interesting enough. While we saw an image of her as a kid to contrast to her current broken state there wasn't enough to her to make me really feel for her. Plot This is more of a vignette than a story. We are presented with a problem but there is no kind of resolution. It is also quite an expected vignette, and I don't think the fact the PTSD soldier home from war is a Woman changes that. For a vignette to work it really needs to bring something exciting, unexpected, or poignant to the table, and I don't think this achieved it. I felt like the story started where the vignette ended. Overall I felt this was competent but uninteresting. There were small issues with the writing, but my main problem was that there was no meat to the most important character, and that it wasn't a story at all.
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Dec 2, 2014 22:15
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I, too, would like to write a non-alcoholic alcohol story.
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Dec 2, 2014 22:41
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| # ? Apr 16, 2024 05:43 |
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Crit of Taking the Lead by N Senada Prose You used a lot of very short sentences which can be good, but in this case it felt weird and stilted to me. Maybe it's because of how often you use the word I? For example this sentence seems odd, almost childish. "I went to the owner’s house. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered me. It was early, I reasoned, and so maybe they’re still asleep. I walked back down the street to where the dog was lying. I sat beside it and wondered what to do." There were also some things that you focused on that felt completely out of place. The second paragraph about the grass seemed to have no purpose at all, though I think it was supposed to be meaningful in some way. The phone conversation is another example. It's boring and could have been done in one or two sentences. Characterization The short sentences sort of made the narrator seem like he was a small child or mentally disabled or something. I don't think that was the intent. The section after the break was confusing- was this the same person? I think it was but I couldn't really tell. Setting I had to google what an "unincorporated territory." was, and it seems either you misused the term or this was set in some sort of dystopia. I think you were aiming for the latter, which is really bizarre when it adds nothing to the story whatsoever. This was a very confusing choice. Plot I like the idea of someone who tries to save a dog and it gets taken away and killed due to the apathy of bureaucracy. If the plot had been more focused on that it could have been a good one. I have no idea what the passage at the end was supposed to mean, why it as there, when it was set, who the character was. Overall I strongly disliked this story. The core of the idea is fine and could be interesting but your story is a bit of a mess. The style was a bit weird (in a bad way) and the section at the end was unnecessary and confusing.
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Dec 2, 2014 23:03
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