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sebmojo posted:
Okay, you choose a judge etc.
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Apr 22, 2014 12:33
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systran posted:Okay, you choose a judge etc.
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Apr 22, 2014 12:36
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Apr 22, 2014 12:57
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Apr 22, 2014 13:09
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MOJO/SYSTRAN BRAWL: TAKE ME AWAY FROM THIS DREADFUL PLACE, LOVER BOY This is a prompt that’s been brewing a long time. I had it planned way back for the first thread, but I despite a lot of HMs in the time between, I’ve never managed to clinch another win. In the meantime, the number of entrants has gone up, and the word counts have gone down, and it’s not really viable for a big ole’ whole ‘dome rumble any more. This feels right, though. This feels just. The universe was waiting for this moment, for me to lay down the rules by which you live. This is gonna be epic, lads. Your prompt is:  Set a story in a new world. Not America, not Mars, not Neo-London: something totally unrecogniseable from the earth we know and love. I want to be able to taste it in the air, I want to be able to smell it, to hear its songs. I want a living, breathing place constructed entirely from your imagination, as different from Terra Firma 2014 as a siberian tiger is different from a big mac. Furthermore, you must tell a story. Characters, motivations, plot. No encyclopedia entries or blog posts or naturalists taking notes. You don’t have the time nor the space for that. You need to sell your world through the fabric of the story, through the way the characters perceive their world and choose to act in it. May God help you if it reads like Malazan: Book of the Fallen. Finally: Mojo no cyberpunk, Systran no Chinese/Turkish-esque mashup. Your limit is 2500. That is a hard limit: one single word over (title inclusive) and I will fail your rear end so hard that your children will be born with losertars instead of faces. I will count every single word and every single one over the limit will be taken as a personal insult that I will avenge by coming to your house and making GBS threads in places that poo poo does not go. Deadline is 11:59pm Wednesday May 7th. Since you’re both in wacky-rear end timezones, we’re running by the only true clock: Singapore standard time. That’s UTC+8. C'mon little doggies, let's rumble. 
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Apr 22, 2014 13:14
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i accept your terms / 
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Apr 22, 2014 13:53
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OPTIONAL BRAWL THEME: Hope in strange places.
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Apr 22, 2014 14:14
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 Results of the 89th Thunderdome, The Party Games Having spent an evening reading jumbles of words and unable to drink to blur the pain, let’s do this. Pin the Tail On the WINNER: curlingiron wrote a touching story about a group of gamers dealing with one of the loss of their own. Double honor for making this D&D-despising judge love this D&D story more than any other she's ever read. Bravo. I pass the party hat to you. Party On, HONORABLE MENTION: We Landed On The Moon, despite the initial formatting wince on my personal end, wrote something touching about people facing down the end of the world and made the formatting work. That's how you play with words. Entenzahn took a flash rule and made it shine, writing about a kid who wanted that cake and didn't get it with a hilarious ending line. Erogenous Beef wrote a party blowing up (literally) that rolled with lots of good description and riveted from start to end. DISHONORABLE MENTION, Next Time Bring Chips: PootieTang didn't go anywhere or say anything, despite many words about warriors. Sir Azrael also went absolutely nowhere with cardboard characters and ended on a weed joke. Hocus pocus wrote political fanfic and by all rights should be DQed. Boo. LOSER who Pissed in the Punchbowl: Drunk Nerds wrote some weird rear end poo poo about a valet stalking a director, doing weird poo poo to get his screenplay read, and then getting pissed because his writing was poo poo. You don’t get any cake. A special failing call-out for Cache Cab. A hint for future trick writing. If your special snowflake formatting makes it so a judge can’t read the story, don’t further compound it by not leaving any text that can be read. As soon as the middle image started pulsing I got so sick I almost threw up. Congrats, you pulled a judge that’s photosensitive. Dis-loving-qualified. Get out my house. You'll get your quick paragraph crits over the course of the week, and if you want longer ones you can ask after they're up. Now someone clean up this mess.
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Apr 22, 2014 15:16
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Congratulations, curlingiron! Now PROOOOOOOOOOOMPT
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Apr 22, 2014 15:19
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prompt
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Apr 22, 2014 15:36
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Thunderdome XC: Down With the Sickness Okay kids, I’m about to plunge into all-morning meetings that determine my pay grade for the next year, but y’all need your fuckin’ prompt, so here it is: Write me a story on the theme of contagion. How you interpret that is up to you with the caveat that the contagion in question cannot be something that is usually contagious. Please also note that using laughter or love as your contagious element will get you disqualified, because I hate happiness and am driven by suffering (see also why I THUNDERDOME). You have until 11:59 PM EST Friday April 25th to sign up and until 11:59 PM EST on Sunday April 27th to submit (because I have to get up early on Mondays and I enjoy being fast) to write me 1200 words on the subject. And make it an actual story, would ya? Hope that’s simple enough for you chucklefucks. ADDENDUM 4/24: crabrock posted:
Judges: curlingiron crabrock The Saddest Rhino List of the Quarantined: Erogenous Beef Bushido Brown docbeard WeLandedOnTheMoon! Flash rule: "That's when sunlight came from behind / a rock and began to follow my hand." SurreptitiousMuffin Paladinus  God Over Djinn Phobia Starter Wiggin Klayco The News at 5 QuoProQuid Flash rule: No dialogue. Lake Jucas Gau Drunk Nerds leekster Hocus Pocus Thalamas Flash rule: Your story involves a house on fire. Djeser rule: WeLandedOnTheMoon must confirm a first draft of your story was written before Friday.RunningIntoWalls kurona_bright Chairchucker PootieTang Entenzahn lambeth Flash rule: Part of your story takes place in an aquarium. Teddybear That Old Ganon Pinball Narahari Schneider Heim ReptileChillock Tyrannosaurus McSlaughter Kaishai Griff Lee Some Guy TT Grizzled Patriarch Cache Cab theblunderbuss Huntersoninski dmboogie Walamor curlingiron fucked around with this message at 05:18 on Apr 26, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 15:59
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In.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:01
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In.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:07
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In
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Apr 22, 2014 16:07
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I got a fever, and the only prescription is more cowbell.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:10
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I like this. In.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:13
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In with as promised.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:14
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Also, I'm going to need a
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Apr 22, 2014 16:16
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so in.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:46
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quote:using laughter or love as your contagious element will get you disqualified Inb4 someone writes a story about a widespread outbreak of kissing booths.
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Apr 22, 2014 16:53
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In.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:21
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In!
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Apr 22, 2014 17:41
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I am down with the sickness. In.
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Apr 22, 2014 17:51
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In, with an additional self-imposed flash rule: No dialogue.
QuoProQuid fucked around with this message at 18:50 on Apr 22, 2014 |
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Apr 22, 2014 18:47
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In with a
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Apr 22, 2014 19:14
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In before I catch whatever Cache Cab has.
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Apr 22, 2014 19:26
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In. I can do better.
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Apr 22, 2014 19:27
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I'm in, also offering two critiques for the first two to claim them.
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Apr 22, 2014 21:52
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leekster posted:I'm in, also offering two critiques for the first two to claim them.
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Apr 22, 2014 21:55
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leekster posted:I'm in, also offering two critiques for the first two to claim them. Yes please. Would love to know what the newbies think of my lunacy.
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Apr 22, 2014 21:59
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In
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Apr 22, 2014 23:00
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Brief crits, still chugging on my last two weeks so won't do longer ones. Glass lotus clumsy but nice closer Turtlicious blah wgaf d&d fanfic with cheaty pointless close out Drunk nerds this is garbage learn to write kid Cc ok that was pretty funny Thalamas complicated and annoying Gau nerd burns party to dea th; unconvincing. Whalley bland clunky and endlessly protracted Ebeef broliciously awesome hm/w Tenniseveryone effective yarn, good use of detail, televisionitis? Curlingiron, dorky, cheesy, but well done and affecting. Clever with the prompt too. Hm? Entenzahn decent, kinda funny, Bushido brown o god shut up Kurona bright blah dull L? News at 5 nice guy fanfic but it works, if crudely at times hm? Wlotm tight and clever hm? Nickmeister wtf dreadful dm? Maultaschen, competent prose. But endless lead up to a baffling close Pootietang lots of nice and convincing detail but lots of fatally muddled words Starter wiggin nice work, clever pivot from teen emo to vampire and good words hm? Kaishai awww poo poo bangin hm/w Kalyco good words but protracted and weirdly unsatisfying plu o god ending Leekster better words but jesus dude Quopro no you dont get to handwave the party Walamor cyberpiffle Jeep eh blah blurg Sir azrael oh get hosed who cares Grizzled patriarch wow nice poeing hm/w Hocus pocus bush fanfic Noah clumsy and over intricate but some nice emotion Fm glorious hm/w Djeser great idea, prose a bit too sloppy, but good work Crabrock tight and grimy, good work Phobia way too many words i dont care about
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Apr 22, 2014 23:06
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Seb could you expound a little bit? I'm not asking for anything more than a sentence or two.
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Apr 22, 2014 23:22
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Crit for Thalamas.Thalamas posted:Only One Brother 1199 words Big Issues: 1. The ordering of your little segments is awkward and adds to an already confusing story. There's no need for a flashback. Your plot is fairly straightforward and you just confuse it by scattering details in pointless asides and POV changes. As an exercise, just rewrite this as a straightforward sequential story. It'll be better. I get it, I fall in love with stupid lovely storytelling devices too. Pretension will strangle you. 2. You need to get your reader inside your character's heads. You combine dispassionate dialogue with a lot of telling to make me not give a gently caress about (or even understand) the emotional impact. 3. If you're going to give us a turnabout gotcha ending, you need to set it up. Even something as simple as "Matthew wanted to tell Paul the truth, but he couldn't" would give us the idea that there's more to this than "James is dead." Since we start in Matthew's head, we should really get more than that. Also, why doesn't Matthew tell Paul the truth in the graveyard? Don't answer that, you should already know and so should I. THALAMAS YOU ARE WORTH NOT ANOTHER WORD, ELSE I'D CALL YOU KNAVE. I CALL YOU TO BRAWL. YOU WANNA BE A WRITER? LET'S loving WRITE.
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Apr 22, 2014 23:24
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WeLandedOnTheMoon! posted:Also, I'm going to need a Flash Rule: "That's when sunlight came from behind / a rock and began to follow my hand."
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Apr 23, 2014 00:05
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a new study bible! fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Apr 23, 2014 01:08
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I'll take one of them then!
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Apr 23, 2014 01:14
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WeLandedOnTheMoon! posted:Reminding you clowns that I'll crit up to two stories based on request. I'll take you up on this and I'll offer up two crits of my own to any takers.
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Apr 23, 2014 01:14
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Nethilia posted:You'll get your quick paragraph crits over the course of the week, and if you want longer ones you can ask after they're up. Now someone clean up this mess. Guess that's me, since you seem at least kind of busy and Seb has a backlog. Cache Cab posted:Some murderer or child or maybe both at some point goes on an acid trip and it's not at all clear what's happening or when. Your special effects are neat, but unfortunately you don't frame what happens well enough to make this at all entertaining without the gimmick. A good gimmick, when readable. You wanted a story that took a turn for the incomprehensible, and that's exactly what you wrote. The trouble is that the integration isn't very good. The final product reads like it was made by a computer- the characterization is random and not particularly interrelated, as is the weirdness emphasis. Yes, I know that real life acid trips have the same feeling- but you're not trying to write a documentary. You're trying to tell a story. Don't just manipulate the format, manipulate us, too. GlassLotus posted:A couple of girls get into a fight then one runs away to the cemetery, where the faeries are having a party and one of the girls learns a lesson. Oh and none of it was real anyway so nobody learned anything. It took me several rereads to see your ending as ambiguous instead of just straight up telling the reader that the story was pointless. The former is good, the latter insulting- pay close attention to properly toeing that line. As to merits, the description of the faerie party was good, and I wondered why you spent so much time on Zoe getting lost when there's a lot more energy in the fantastic stuff. If you want to write about a faerie party, just do that. Don't tie in themes boring normal people and sisterhood just out of obligation. I could tell the difference. If you actually cared about Zoe you would have given her proper characterization and a proper ending instead of the nothing we ended up with. Turtlicious posted:A king is having a wedding party, then some thief interrupts the narration, calling it boring. Then the thief and his partners bicker for awhile until they're found out and everything gets messy. Plot twist- they were playing Dungeons and Dragons all along. It's bad enough you had to make this a Dungeons and Dragons story- those are already almost always obnoxious in-jokes. But you had to make it a twist ending too, which only calls attention to how poorly written all this was. Yes, none of it actually matters because it was just a bunch of nerds screwing around on a tabletop. So what? Why should anyone care what a bunch of obnoxious faux witty geeks do in their free time? They're jerks, their characters are jerks, same difference. It's all equally boring and obnoxious. The first few paragraphs at least try to set the scene and give environment, and then Ragnar gets whiny and the whole thing just feels horribly lazy. Not that your opening was great, but it's nowhere near bad enough for snark to be amusing, or for the twist to come off as anything other than rude and assholish. Drunk Nerds posted:Some aspiring screenwriter is trying to get a screenplay read by a well regarded director. She uses the persona Chameleon Man to get close, but when he expresses disgust at the writing quality she decides to destroy his Ferrari. Were you trying to anti-pander or something? Your hero writes a bad story and has a temper tantrum when somebody tells her it's bad. I don't care if the scumbag director has a teenage wife, I'm going to side with him unless you give me a real good reason not to. Which you don't. Who is Chameleon Man? Exactly what he sounds like, I guess. Or is it a she? The director calls her a bar bitch. Your action isn't engaging, and your characterization is really weak, so all we're left with is a rage story about why nobody understands my totally cool story ideas man. Chairchucker posted:In the future bratty teenage girls will have robots to act as bouncers for their totally rad parties. Well, hm, this isn't really a story so much as a concept, but it's a good concept. At first I thought Gabrielle was a robot, too, given the way she was using SAT words awkwardly, but once you get rolling this is fun stuff. B2000 is plausible as a robot precisely because it isn't particularly consistent. Real machines are like that more than we like to think, and yet it's still plausible that B2000 is looking out for Gabby rather than just acting out a subroutine. Even if your word choice isn't that well set-up, it's often cute (I really liked “friendzone”), so you got smiles out of me. That's always worth something. Thalamas posted:The party is a wake for some dead dude who used to beat his wife. He's dead because his brothers poisoned him over his domestic abuse. Then the brothers argue over the moral ramifications, and one of them dies by accident. Then the widow leads an angry mob against the surviving brother. Plot twist- the first dead brother wasn't actually dead, the poison just wore off. Everyone in your story is in such a hurry to move on to the next narrative thread there's never any time to slow down and actually give the reader a chance to learn about the characters. Heck, there isn't even enough time to set up the twist ending, which once again, turns out to be really pointless. If you want to make a story with Easter imagery, try using characters that also fit the imagery instead of a random domestic abuse love triangle. These tropes are cliched, but they can still be used to good effect in longer form fiction with better built-up. But that's straight up impossible in a story that's under 1200 words long. Cut out about half this stuff and you might have a story with breathing room, though I'd probably still stop short of calling it good. Gau posted:Somebody gets their house totally destroyed due to the most epic party ever. He then decides the only way to end it is to murder everyone in a fire. I want you to consider the fact that you spent nearly every last word in your story describing the terrible state of the house. That's not a story. A story needs something to happen, and we only get that right at the end when Hank decides to destroy the house. Now, never mind that he chickens out. That's a heck of a decision to make and the personal background of that really needs to be explored. By contrast, we really do not need to know the location of all the semen stains. You get some mileage out of decent description but you overplay your hands and make the proceedings boring. A good story needs balance. A good resolution sprouts from seeds planted in the beginning. Keep this in mind next time. Whalley posted:A graduate student throws a party so as to prove his amazing theory- that a Partysphere exists which connects us to the multiverse of all the perfect parties throughout time and space. I was hopeful when you opened up with the arrival of the stereotypical professors, but then you immediately toss all their characterization away and make them wear costumes we don't actually get to see. The trouble with your story is that the premise is exactly as stupid as it sounds. I'm not happy that Kumar got a Nobel Prize. I'm annoyed because nothing that happened made any sense, not even in the realm of fictional pseudoscience, but Kumar's being rewarded anyway because the story has to end somehow. The whole thing feels like a quantum physics in-joke anyway, and speaking as someone with only a passing understanding of that stuff, none of it was funny. Erogenous Beef posted:A bunch of embassy frat boys prank their way into World War III Your story's easy to understand. It has a simple concept, and comprehensible prose. There's no major technical problems here, but I took an immediate strong dislike to it. John is an obnoxious jerk. His pranks aren't even charming- I could buy him destroying the world with a butt fax if he was drunk but there was nothing in your writing indicating this. What's worse, half the story actually takes place after the apocalypse, and I guess I'm supposed to find it funny that the world has been destroyed and the pranksters are now stuck in the aftermath of the fallout. The jokes have to connect for this kind of story to have any kind of impact at all, and I didn't feel any of it. tenniseveryone posted:A group of...teenagers? College students? They're playing Seven Minutes in Heaven, and she wants nothing to do with it, but he's an alien. Your perspective constantly jumps around here, and it gets confusing. Is this from Chelsea's point of view or Reggie's? Make up your mind- especially if you're going to toss in fantastic elements like destroyed worlds and resource plunder. The whole bit about the wind had me completely lost- Chelsea thinking it was a pick-up line about farts made a lot more sense than whatever was actually happening there. Was this supposed to be romantic? I'm not a woman but I'm guessing they aren't generally down for making out with aliens at a moment's notice. Well, unless it's a weird woman. Which could make for an interesting story. That would not be this one. curlingiron posted:A bunch of nerds play Dungeons and Dragons in the wake of the real life death of one of the members of the group. As hokey as the premise is...actually that's not much of a problem, because your story addresses it. While your characters aren't given much detail, they react plausibly to the game, especially to the appearance of their dead friend's player character. I really enjoyed how, even if I didn't know these people, I got a very good idea of their overall relationship from James' letter. It's actually quite touching. The idea was a bit of a tweak, given that the theme was parties, but the effort was well worth it. In a week filled with parties that were the stuff of legend for typical epic stuff, you made one that built its foundation on something a lot more meaningful. That's how you won. Entenzahn posted:A delightful cake entices a small child to eat him. Because only the birthday boy deserves cake. I always wondered why children are so insistent on starting fires. Dumb children. And cakes. Oh cakes why do you have to be so delicious stop tempting me. While your story was obviously intended to be comedy (and works quite well on that level), it's the way the themes work on a universal standard that really makes it effective. Maybe the boy didn't learn anything, but I learned why it is that we always have to keep our eyes on small children at all times to keep them from killing us all. There are good universal themes at play here- something that was lacking in this week's stories, which gives yours a fair amount of heft. Bushido Brown posted:Anthropological aliens study Earth, then destroy it, because it's their culture or something. So Klaxxor doesn't want to destroy the Earth, but he's a giant weenie so he does it anyway. And I guess I'm supposed to feel bad because I live on Earth and he just killed me for no reason? If you're trying to tell a disturbing story about well-meaning people doing evil things because their culture said so, don't make them aliens with ridiculous names. That would have destroyed any pathos you were trying to build up. Not that you had any to begin with. Klaxxor is just too wishy-washy for his angst to really mean much of anything. I'd be a lot more interested in a story about his buddies. A funny story, because for pity's sake, there's aliens with beer pong here. Talk about misuse of essential story elements. kurona_bright posted:This guy going off to college is moping because his best friend won't be coming too. Then he has a talk with his dad and looks to the future. The premise is fairly generic, and your prose is below average. A lot of this is just awkward phrasing. There's plenty of background detail but none of it is relevant. We only get to real story territory when Robert starts talking to his dad- up until then we're only vaguely in Robert's head at all. Is the idea here that he's thinking of boring, inconsequential stuff because he's trying to distract himself from his impending separation from Chris? Because all it does is make me feel bored reading a story where nothing is actually happening. Work on your technique- the story structure's not great either, but it looks pretty good relative to the other offerings this week. The News at 5 posted:This guy goes to an old friend's wedding with a gun in his hand. Then he shoots himself but I guess it was a blank even though it made a loud noise. I think you're laboring under the assumption that thrillers are entertaining because we like to guess how they're going to end. This is incorrect- mysteries are fun because we want to know why it ends a certain way. And you never actually do anything to explain Paul's motivation. The little information we do get doesn't explain his bizarre behavior at the end. For the most part you just write about a wedding where one of the guests happens to have a gun. There's no sense of heart, urgency, or excitement to anything that occurs here. Motivation is essential, and it needs to be telegraphed well enough that the reader isn't left guessing. WeLandedOnTheMoon! posted:The world is ending and two lovers at opposite ends move toward resolution in the center, becoming one as the universe smashes together. I want to rant at you for using that format- my computer's screen wasn't big enough for the verticals, and I had to tilt it, too. Fortunately my irritation was mostly ameliorated by the poetic writing, which the format does a lot to reenforce even if it's a giant pain-in-the-rear end to read. It was a wise decision to leave out the interpoints. We see Dylan and Marie in their loneliest, darkest hour, and then everything's all right. We don't need to see how this happens. The greater theme is about being alone and them being together, just as the planets, too, collide together. It's effective stuff. nickmeister posted:A community group that has something to do with taxes has a party at the beach. I'm pretty sure something happened in this story but I'll be darned if I have any idea what it was. I'm not even sure who these people are, or what their relationship with each other is supposed to be. Al likes Alayasha even though she's a lot younger than him, and that's all I got. If there was some sort of context maybe I could bring myself to care about these people, but without it the story's just incomprehensible. Your prose is good enough that I can understand that something is happening, but in this case that just reminds me that nothing is happening and I'm wasting my time with this. Maultaschen posted:A realtor attempts to sell a future house to human aliens, but her plans are foiled by the dastardly United Nations and she gains superpowers. Oh how I wish this story was as funny as that synopsis makes it sound. You took all these weird and absurd elements and turned them into an extremely banal story about an optimistic realtor working in less than ideal conditions, and then it turns into a revenge fantasy that stops right when the exciting stuff happens. For the ending to make any sense, it has to somehow relate to who Belinda is as a person. Is she willing to sell homes to possible terrorists because she's desperate to help her family and will sink to any level? Then make her depraved. Make her connected to the family. Don't make her show us a bunch of random future tech. And foreshadow the political situation somehow so this doesn't all come out of nowhere. PootieTang posted:A religious guy impresses a general with his personality, then goes somewhere to meet someone. I have no idea what actually happened here. Your main character never actually says anything but everybody else stands around him and says stuff that I guess is relevant somehow. It's just plain weird how you make a story called The Messenger and then never actually tell us in vague terms what the message is about. You had plenty of words left over- wait, no you didn't, since the appearance of opium cut your word count in half. Although you're still over the limit, and I'm not so hot on your interpretation of what constitutes a party either. Get a flash rule next time. You need more clearly defined direction. Starter Wiggin posted:I'm all giddy because an eclipse is happening and my crush wants to spend it with me. But plot twist I am a vampire and will do the same thing with other guys. I liked your use of the second-person. It really gets the story into an emotional feeling, which is appropriate for romance. Except this isn't romance it's vampires. Why are there vampires. Is it because you thought the story needed a twist? It didn't. We connect with characters based on who they are, not the arbitrary labels assigned to them. You figured out that much just by using second-person speech in the first place. Technically I am the main character in this story, and I can feel it. I can understand that kind of life experience. I don't understand the need to suck blood from the person I'm snuggling with. That could work as a metaphor, but allegorical stories are pretty much the worst possible place to use second-person narration, which is all about keeping things relatable. I'd say either ditch the narration style or the vampires, but your writing is good enough that the combination isn't totally bad. Kaishai posted:A prisoner is forced to cook a feast for the enemy banquet because she's good at her job, She poisons their food and makes them all go crazy. This is the rare story that actually needs less characters with names- the impact here is all about Ronya's suffering and Ronya's revenge, and naming the enemy soldiers detracts from that. It's not like they're sympathetic and we're sad that they die- these people have almost no characterization. Focus on Ronya- make this about her knowledge of herbs, her memories of better times, and her quiet determination to take revenge on her captors. There's elements of this that shine through, but the short length of the story and the emphasis on mechanics rather than emotions weaken the impact. Reorganizing the events here along those lines instead of sticking to simple beginning to end chronology might help as well. Kalyco posted:A couple of priests on gravedigging duty meet up with a doctor and a bunch of gypsies, and come up with a scheme for a border run. Your whole story was a set-up to a meme. Fortunately this is a very old meme that works in the historical context of the story, so we're fine, but only because it matches up with Judd's characterization. I guess. Frankly speaking all I have for motivation is that John dislikes war (because it's inconvenient), Judd is jolly, and everyone else just wants to avoid getting killed. For an escape story this isn't so bad- but the emphasis needs to be on the escape, not the backgrounds. Tell us the kind of people your characters are by having them act. As it stands your story is decent because there's no major contradictions, so you do at least have the advantage of having flaws that work to the benefit of your writing. leekster posted:A family prepares to spread ashes out over the lake. They succeed in doing so, and then dive into the lake with the ashes. I had to read this story several times to figure out what the relation is between all these characters. You have four men with generic names, three in the generation after the dead guys, one of them being a grandson. Cut down the number of characters- two should be enough. And actually discuss why the glitter is so important. There are a lot of conflicts here but the glitter is the only one that actually matters, going by the ending. Give us a bitter angry fight between two grown men over whether or not to use glitter while scattering ashes, and make it sound important. A good story only needs one idea. Don't clutter it up with unnecessary characters and backstory. QuoProQuid posted:An angel enlists a nun to help him get to a sweet party via carjacking. I suppose Mary Margaret (why did she need two names?) reacted to Raphael's request about the same way any of the rest of us would. That's a problem- just the fact that she's a nun should give the woman a different interpretation of events, and here you have her being fairly blasé about everything. She doesn't even ask the big question- why Raphael chose her, why they're even doing this at all. “It looks cool” isn't a good reason, at least not with this kind of prose. You focus on detailing the basics of the story events than actually making it sound exciting. At the end Raphael has to tell us the entrance looked cool, because you didn't write a cool sounding entrance. When working with an outrageous concept like this, show don't tell is a pretty essential rule. Walamor posted:In the future, it is forbidden to look at plants. Yeah, I guess there was a plot in here about a guy who likes looking at plants, and this woman who likes stealing plants, but really, the star of the show here is the setting, which really needed better explanation. Felix doesn't actually explain what he's doing there until the story's practically over, and as far as I can tell Sam is just a wacky thief who teaches him that it's better to have plants than to look at them. Most of the story is an extended action sequence with no dramatic stakes. Partially this is a result of generic characters, but the absence of a coherent well-defined setting is the real culprit here. Make me care about a future where there's little access to plants, or don't bother writing about it. Jeep posted:This eccentric guy died wanting his funeral to be a giant drunken church orgy. Now he's dead and gets his wish. I'm sure there are people in the world with such a bizarre goal for their funerary rites. It's too bad I don't know why Sanders wanted that- you constantly make comments to the effect of “he sure was a strange guy!” but never actually explain the specific level of strangeness that would get at this request. Irritatingly, you almost get there, when his daughter starts with the stories, but we only get the vague outline of one rather unimpressive one. The rest of this is just beer and piss and vomit and sex in the church and, you know, outside of shock value, there's nothing here of any worthwhile substance. There's no philosophy. Just a bunch of boring sodomy with no conflict. The fire doesn't count- I have to care whether any of these people are going to live or die first, and most of them don't even have names. Sir Azrael posted:This woman dumps a guy and tells her friend they're having a party. Then they go to this other guy's house, do some small talk, and prepare to summon a demon. The minute something is actually about to happen in your story, you end it. Good grief. Your dialogue is horribly wooden, to the point I was expecting a twist that they were robots or the living personification of nature or something. Don't do something as silly as introduce friends named April, May, and June unless you have some kind of thematic excuse. Also, don't expect your reader to care about their relationship drama unless there's some kind of background to make it interesting. These people are not funny or interesting. They just do all this dull unremarkable stuff, to the point that the demon thing isn't even a twist. It's long awaited characterization and context that needs to be at the beginning of the story, not the end. Grizzled Patriarch posted:There's so many cannonballs flying around everywhere that nobody can get any sleep. I like Goran. He has a personality. Too bad the guy's only in one scene and we have to spend the rest of the story with Pavel, a guy so whiny I can't sympathize even when he's about to die in the middle of an unexplained war. If you want to go dark, you need to write some kind of backstory that makes the reader feel bad about characters dying, if only because they were interesting and will no longer be able to entertain us. What we have here instead is just a bunch of bad stuff that happens without rhyme or reason. If there's barbarians at the gate, make them terrifying. Here they're just too distant, too unknown to make any kind of impact. Give us fear- then we could empathize with Pavel even if he didn't have a personality. Hocus Pocus posted:George Bush is a lonely old man who spends his days painting. Then he meets his other famous friends. I'm not buying Bush as the quiet reclusive type and his buddies as frat boys. Not because of political reasons, but because everything about this is so generic. If you're banking on the context of us all knowing who these people are to make the story work, don't. Remove the political element and this is just a story about a bunch of old people who...didn't even have glory days, actually. All they talk about is hurt feelings and boring angst. There's almost no characterization here at all. I have no idea why you felt the need to write a story about a bunch of famous people, but if there was a point, political or otherwise, to any of this, I missed it. Noah posted:A woman has had two lousy birthdays in a row, and her life hasn't been going so hot outside of that either. Her current birthday utilizes elements from both the previous ones to tell a story. I have to give you credit for telling a story at least. I can see how Margie's had a rough enough time that she can't recover, and the ending does let the woman resolve her twin betrayals, sort of. I really wish you'd focused more on Margie's mental state, because you throw in a lot of details, like the size of the goons or the alienation of Margie's family (even though she has guests?) when the focus really needs to be on the woman's depression. You get that general tone down pretty good at least, accentuating it well by having her snap at the people who love her while still holding an undercurrent that they probably don't deserve her love in the first place. Not that she knows that. You don't keep a perfect focus, but it's still pretty decent considering the format. Fumblemouse posted:A policy writer who hates his job and the people there prepares to hatefully rip into everyone as a final parting shot at his retirement banquet. It's clear immediately that Arnold has suffered a lot of meaningless indignity in his life. But just when it's obvious what he's been planning a curveball shows up and completely alters the story's direction- not in a way that makes much sense. I like how your story is dumb in a way that clearly takes into account why the prompt had a penalty for non-alcoholic drugs in the first place. Even considering that, though, some foreshadowing would have been nice. On balance I still liked the general idea of taking a revenge fantasy trope and screwing it up randomly. Your story only needed one chuckle to succeed, and you got that much from me at least. Djeser posted:A bunch of dumb teenagers keep getting themselves killed because they mistake a shadow beast for evil. I'm assuming they're teenagers anyway, since that's the genre trend you're making fun of here. Not exactly the most original concept, but well executed nonetheless. You make the deaths funny, obviously preventable, and yet so unremarkable that it's easy to sympathize with the shadow beast's general defeated tone. It's easy to second-guess her actions here, but she's probably tried every possible permutation by now and gotten about the same results. Your interpretation also handily explains why people in this universe are so genre blind- to any outside observer these kids just got drunk and killed themselves. Good work here. crabrock posted:A couple of girls who are definitely not lesbians and don't even like each other that much get into a party game that ends predictably and obnoxiously. The narrator (who really needs a name) is that nice mix of person who doesn't like parties, goes to them anyway, then remembers why she doesn't like going to parties in the first place. Lilly is a great friend for her, too, since without Lilly the narrator would otherwise avoid doing social stuff and then we'd have no plot. The whole lesbian angle is a good one, because that is absolutely an annoying assumption people make way too often, but the reference you use is a little weird. Ellen, really? Didn't they stop making that show last century? Regardless, this is a good story that hits all the right beats. Phobia posted:A bunch of sixth graders have a tea party, but one of the girls is having a tough time at home so she's not playing correctly. You really need to start with the whole sixth grader thing. At first I couldn't tell whether these were actual snobs, a girly tea party, or a girl playing by herself and all of this stuff was in her imagination. Also, if you're going to make them this old and actually call your story The Last Tea Party, there needs to be some sense of finality, like the girls aren't going to be doing this much longer. Aside from that, this is a decent enough story about kids growing up, learning the true value of friendship because parents are terrible. Work on your background description and setting the tone. Those are your main weaknesses. You do pretty well as far exposition goes, but that tends to go down better in narration than in dialogue. Some Guy TT fucked around with this message at 01:28 on Apr 23, 2014 |
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Wise Fool crits for Grandmaster.flv and Starter Wiggin, with Party Week #1 coming down the chute later this evening.Grandmaster.flv posted:fuckin' lol next time I'm not writing scifi because I spent too loving long worldbuilding. Also this is my first entry ever and I am garbage at writing dialogue but no excuses. Weakest Link: First of all, you bounced from POV to POV. "She" to "I" to "she." Don't loving do that in a short story. Pick one view or the other, especially when the POV shift is applying to the same drat character. I see no wise fools, unless it's girl with one-off name. Or the guy in the apartment with his fruit bowl? Fssh. There's a lot of wordbarf that try to scream "this is the FUTURE" but it is wholly unneeded. The story came to a weak confrontation that ended with a katana, of all things. Strongest Chain: In this story the strongest chain is made of baby spit and wet gum. That is, there ain't one. If there was I couldn't see it past the drat SHIFTS. Picky Bitch poo poo: "When you use dialog," she said, "you put commas and periods inside the quotation marks." She dug into the citrus fruit with her fingers. "Yes, even at the end of the sentence. And yes, even when the paragraph is over. If you don't do this, your writing is poo poo to read. It's basic high school grammar, for gently caress's sake." Overall: Don't write like this. The characters were weak and barely distinguishable. There were a lot of words wasted on poo poo I didn't give a gently caress about--all that "worldbuilding" wasn't needed in a story that should have been 1200 words max. Worst of all, the story meandered to a clichéd ending that didn't even make anything happen. #### Starter Wiggin posted:Truth and Beauty Bombs Weakest Link: The part where we go into his headspace for wanting to set things on fire/blow things up is a slow drag between the actual stuff happening. Weave it in. Strongest Chain: I like the part about why he's doing this. I just don't feel like it was in the right space. Picky Bitch poo poo:There are lot of clunky sentences that jar my reading. Also, that citrus tie-in was weaksauce. Is he the wise fool? Cause to me he's just blowing poo poo up for the thrill, and that's crazy as poo poo but that's not foolish. Overall: Like the premise, don't like the execution. Middle of the road.
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