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This is pretty solid. I'd forgotten that this was part of a bigger piece when I read it, so my major complaint was going to be that details like mentioning bullets and trains seemed superfluous, but now I want to read more about this world of guns and wyrms. I would say that you should watch your dashes and semicolons. You use them well enough, but I noticed them because there were moments where I thought a comma or slight restructuring of the phrase would serve just as well. Like quote:A body twice the size of a horse, knobbed and ridged - its head reptilian, like an ugly mockery of a true dragon Maybe something like "...knobbed and ridged, its reptilian head an ugly mockery of a true dragon." Could be that's a poo poo example, but it's a little distracting to see breaks like that every couple paragraphs. I say this as a person who loves dashes and semicolons. Commas just don't do it for me (though I hear stone of madness is into that kind of thing). My last nitpick would be this bit here: quote:Cold had begun to seep through my furs and into my bones by the time I checked to make sure it was dead "Cold had begun" bugs me here. I like this bit because you don't waste words telling us the protagonist stood around waiting to make sure the wyrm was dead. You move pretty much straight from action to resolution and don't mince words tying up the scene. Which is why I feel like "cold had begun" is a bit unwieldy. Maybe someone with a finer-toothed comb than me can give you more insight, but honestly I found this enjoyable and would be interested in reading more. My only other complaint is that I don't know much about the protagonist, but this was written as an action sequence so that makes sense. I'm intrigued.
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Feb 17, 2013 02:59
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 05:41 |
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Hmmm. I see a few things. Tonsured posted:Spontaneous unfinished Fantasy thing So first thing I thought was "who is frank and why is he stroking his massive forge I mean stoking his ambitions?" But going along with the two long paragraphs of Frank's forge time; you set him up as a somewhat serious dude, only to have him bumble and flail around in the anvil scene. But laying that aside, there isn't much going on in those first, long two paragraphs. A lot of that stuff is character development that you should be showing as your character goes through the story. We don't need to know right off the bat that Frank is constantly stoking his smithy desires unless that fact directly pertains to the larger conflict hinted at with the raven-shaped anvil. And then there is the passive and overly flowery sentence structure in some places: "A far more important attribute that became apparent..." "...that Frank was currently engaged in." "...pervaded Frank's head." Those are a few examples that I saw from scanning it just now. Your characters can be verbose and flowery if they must, but you as the narrator need to be conveying things as clearly and concisely as possible. Right now some of it verges on purple prose. If you are going further with this, I would start with Frank investigating the anvil or some other inciting event. Two paragraphs of ruminations on the glory of smithing isn't the best attention grabber.
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Mar 21, 2013 07:15
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Yes, this heat was taking its toll. Frank focused his eyes on the bellows once more. He should inform Burke immediately, if the bellows snapped during one of the more important client's commissions Burke, in his avarice, might attempt to forge shoddy substitutes to meet the demand. The Gilded Bird's renown rested on its quality. Burke, in his old age had forgotten or refused to care about that fact. It was up to Frank to keep up appearances. After all, what was mastery without renown? Frank was satisfied that the forge was in order. Ok, we have some semblance of a conflict here, maybe. Old dude is trying to cut corners, young passionate smith picks up the slack in hopes of finding fame and renown. But then...
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Down With People posted:Aquatic (1069 words) I had some thoughts while reading this. One was that I'm not sure how I feel about the narrator addressing the reader in present tense the few times you do it ("I am a Sea Creature," "They can have the land. I only want the sea," "I held my breath. I can hold it for a long time")given that the story ends with the narrator's fate ambiguous. It's weird to have the narrator narrate in present tense in an otherwise past tense story if that narrator is no longer in a position to be telling the story by the end. Second thought was: Adjectives! So many of them. I cocked an eyebrow at the "numb roar" of the water. Oceans are always roaring in fiction. But I'm not sure how the sound of it would be numb. Elsewise, you do a lot of telling us how wonderful and exhilarating and shocking and etc everything is. I think the story seeks to be poetic or sublime, but I got a little weary of the narrator telling me over and over how great and beautiful and wonderful the ocean is (at least without tension to balance it out, see below). The biggest thing was, well, the plot. Namely, the narrator's motivation for suddenly forsaking the land and going out to the ocean forever. For one thing, you describe the shore as stretching as far as the eye could see...why wouldn't the narrator just shrug and swim somewhere else when the lifeguard asks them to swim between the flags? But ok he/she had some epiphany that they were no better than the jellyfish, how she(in my head it's a she, no idea if that's the case) had to prove to herself that she was really a sea creature. The whole "needs air" caveat is weird considering she is able to survive down in intense cold and lethal pressure. The ending left me thinking "well, she has all these other super powers, why not this?" But yeah, there isn't a whole lot to drive this piece along, except that the narrator doesn't like the land much and won't just swim elsewhere, so she leaves. No sense of what she's leaving behind, no sense of who she is, other than someone who can inexplicably swim to the bottom of the ocean. I don't even mind that her abilities aren't explained, but if she disliked the land so much and could apparently go places no other human can go, why didn't she just do that in the first place? What was keeping her at that particular beach? Watch out for stuff like this: quote:Concerned for the well-being of the beach's patrons, a whitewashed wooden platform was erected for the lifeguards to stand on This reads like the wooden platform is the one who is concerned about the beach patrons' well-being. You could say something like Concerned for the well-being of the beach's patrons, the city had erected a whitewashed wooden platform for the lifeguards to stand on or something. I would like this better with more conflict and less unresolved questions. And a few less adjectives. ... Here is a thing I wrote a while ago for Thunderdome. I kinda l...l...like it a little, but the first draft was a lot more words and I can't really recall what they were. I'm revising some of my old stuff for fun and practice, so any input on parts that are lumpy, awkward, or unclear would be appreciated. The Magician's Apprentice 989 words Raspiro took the center ring, and the crowd went wild. Julian flung another shovelful of dung into the bin. Fragments of the performance drifted out to the elephant pens, where he labored ankle deep in straw and manure. "Ladies and gentleman, tonight is your night. When you leave this tent, your world will have changed beyond your wildest reckoning. Your very self will be a stranger to you..." Julian knew the monologue by heart. Everyone who travelled with the circus did. His shovel bit through the heaps of offal like a blade, with such force that his old calluses were torn open to weep puss. "...but ours is not a voyage into the mystical, and any perception of the paranormal is simply a product of your imagination. When you are in this tent, you are scientists. The phenomena you are about to witness will test your grip on reality, but rest assured: It is all just an illusion." There came a prickle, the feeling of an invisible hand just barely touching the little hairs at the nape of his neck. "Celest," Julian said without turning. "Shouldn't you be inside taking notes?" "You and I both know the show well enough to perform it ourselves now, I think," she said, and Julian felt the warmth of her against his arm. He shrugged her off and stalked to the far side of the enclosure. The murmur of the crowd rose and fell like waves inside the big tent, every man, woman and child cooing in daft rapture of The Great Raspiro. "Julian." The simple sound of his name, innocent and breathy. "No." He grunted the word through gritted teeth. "I know what you're doing here." "What am I doing?" Her voice was closer, almost at his ear. "You come here, you wait until I'm rear end-deep in poo poo. And then you try to use your goddamn soothsayer voice tricks on me, tricks that he taught you." "You've been avoiding me. I had no choice." Julian laughed despairingly and turned around then, regretting it as soon as he saw her. Even in the mud, her boots and the hem of her gown were pristine white. When he met her eyes, though, there was no glamour that could conceal the tarnish of the circus on her soul. "I don't usually keep company with people that look at me like I'm a trained monkey. And I know how folks look at trained monkeys, believe me." "Julian," she said plaintively. "You could outthink anyone in that audience. You could go be a scientist, or a politician, or--" "I'm not going to cheat by inventing the television thirty years ahead of schedule. You knew drat well what could happen when you let me follow you here, and you know I'm going to be mucking pens and stables until I die." "You now imagine that you are of one mind and one soul, each and every one of you transcending your physical form to become one. Deep in this meditative state, imagine that self, that whole, flowing into the ring, filling it with your essence..." The magician's voice boomed. Celest shivered and looked toward the big tent. "I don't like this part, you know. He makes me practice it on the smaller crowds, and it just feels wrong. I'm not a total monster yet." Even Julian could feel it, like a fishhook in the center of his forehead. Raspiro reeled in the audience, and took from them whatever it was that the circus needed to carry on for another week or month or day. Souls. Dreams. Julian didn't like to speculate. "You're not a monster yet," he said. "But you're not the woman I married, either. Here--I want you to look at something." Julian reached into his shirt and produced a small velvet bag, ornately embroidered, that hung from the chain around his neck. It appeared large enough to hold little more than a pocket watch or perfume bottle. The bag was Julian's one concession to magic; like a rabbit from a hat, he pulled a cellphone from an apparently impossible place. "You brought a phone back with you?" Celest's serene air of composure flickered. "Raspiro forbade us anything like that. Emphatically." "'Forbade,'" Julian spat. "You don't even talk like you anymore. Look." He shoved the device into her hands. "If you can remember how to use it. I've pulled up a photo, maybe you'll recall being in it." Celest stared down at the picture on the screen, her face cast in pale, unnatural blue light. Two people smiled back at her, a man and a woman. Julian looked ten years younger, and Celest.... "You were Amanda Meyers. You loved cats and sketch comedy. You wore skinny jeans and band T-shirts. You were my beautiful, funny wife. No charms. No glamours. Just you." Julian was shaking. "And now you're his. And we can't go back. We'll never go to another rock show. There were so many things. So many things." What Celest would have said, Julian never knew. From the big tent came a thunderous applause, and the audience began to file out into the night. Some went to waiting carriages, others in dreamy-eyed throngs on foot. They murmured to each other in reverent tones, and why not? Raspiro was an exceptional man, capable of exceptional things. "I should go," Celest said quietly. Julian snatched the phone back. "No doubt," he said. "I'm sure your presence is required elsewhere." "Yes," she whispered. "He's sorted out that I wasn't watching tonight, I think." Goosebumps stood out on her skin. "Well go, then. I've got a lot of poo poo to muck through, if you hadn't noticed." She turned and went, not fast enough to conceal how her face crumpled as she left him. It was only later, when he fell exhausted onto his cot, that Julian remembered the mud that had spattered her gown as she fled to Raspiro.
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May 8, 2013 18:14
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Dang, I don't really have any significant critiques, but I kind of am sorry I won this week 
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Jul 2, 2013 23:38
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I didn't think I was gonna have time to Thunderdome this week so I didn't sign up. But it was a neat prompt and I ended up writing something in that vein. I'm trying to practice atmosphere for the Goonreads horror contest, so this was a good chance to do that. I will crit the next story posted or a dome entry or something. 528 words The draft that fills the room whistles through gap-toothed window shards. There is the gentle, dry trill of magazine pages flipping back and forth as the breeze stirs a travel catalog on the desk. Above the bed, which is made but rumpled into ridges and canyons of fabric, hangs a print of a painting, one of those nice reproductions printed right onto a canvas. Tink. LCD glass falls onto the armoire from the wall-mounted television. The painting hints through broad brushstrokes at brooding cumulonimbus clouds over a low prairie horizon, and dripping wine on the surface of the print leaves lines like slow, red rain. The phone that is askew on the floor has a sticker that says 'Dial 0 for Front Desk', but the cord's been yanked out of the wall, and the handset is silent. Just below the number pad, another sticker reminds guests to dial 9 before all outgoing calls, including, the sticker emphasizes, 911. The catalog flips faster in the draft from the broken window. Shhh, the glossy pages go. Shhh. There's a cosmetics bag on the marble vanity, alongside a travel charger big enough for three electric toothbrushes, only one of which is in its plastic dock. Puddles of water and something red sit like convex lakes around the raised lip of the white porcelain sink. A particularly strong gust of wind pushes one of the little lakes to the edge of the vanity, down the front of the cherrywood cupboards, onto the largest of three sets of Sandals® Resort souvenir flip-flops. Thwap. The first drop hits the rubber insole of the shoe. Tink. Another fragment falls from the face of the television onto the armoire, which is the same polished cherry wood as the cabinets below the marble vanity. A Pack n' Play crib is crumpled against the wall just below the window, so that the heavy curtains catch every so often in the tangle of mesh and plastic rods. Shhh. Tink. Thwap. Shhh. Sirens rise from the street far below like the disjointed crescendo of a tuning orchestra. Shhh. The curtain is caught in the Pack n' Play again, billowing in and out like a sail or a lung. On the bed is one suitcase, open. On the desk next to the travel catalog is one bottle of wine, and like the suitcase it is half full or, possibly, half empty. Thwap. Thwap. Thwa--thwip. A second rivulet has made its way down the vanity cupboard, leaving a translucent burgundy trail of water and the red something-or-other, and drips onto the smallest of the three pairs of Sandals® Resort souvenir flip-flops, which are less than half the size of the other two pairs and decorated with cartoon fish. Thwip-thwap-shhh-shhh-shhh-thwap-tink goes the room as the sirens move from the background into the audio foreground. The diastemic window is on the side of the building that overlooks the portico that shelters the valet parking stand. There is a smear of something red on the top of the arch of the portico, one broad, lazy brushstroke where something landed, left its mark, then slid down to rest on the cobbles of the valet car park.
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Sep 9, 2013 05:35
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sebmojo posted:Boss. Mercedes posted:I really did like it! You killed with those descriptions for reals. I guess I won writing. I'm glad you guys liked it.
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Sep 10, 2013 03:28
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Kraus posted:Sorry for the double post, but I'd love to have this torn apart by goons: Seems like a lot of settup for "granny is Hitler." I actually like the idea of dead people getting reanimated by more or less benign spirits of famous people, but this sort of just tells its joke and then ends.
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Sep 12, 2013 22:19
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| # ¿ Apr 20, 2024 05:41 |
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mr meowzers posted:Well, time to get my rear end kicked. Here's a few. This sample is too short to really assess your plotting and character development skills. This reads as someone trying to be funny, clever, and non sequitur, but none of it really lands. Luckily, I have a neat hack for better writing. Click the link in my avatar for details!
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Aug 22, 2015 08:20
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