Down With People posted:

Hahahaha YES.

Maybe it's just because I cuss a blue streak, but I think swearing is fine to have in your work, especially if it's dealing with blue-collar subject matter like a guy out of his mind on mesc catching a taxi to a festival. It wouldn't fit in everything, though.

Lord Windy posted:

Hi, this is my first critique so I apologise in advance if the critique itself isn't that great.


To start with, I love this little bit of writing. I've never looked at wills and such like this and it was a bit of a 'ahhhh' moment for myself when I really thought about it. It just doesn't fit with the story, in fact I'd go as far as to say most of the short story feels a little out of context. I'm having trouble putting words to what I mean, so I'll try to illustrate the problem I am seeing as someone who is looking at this without the benefit of the rest of the script.


I'm sorry if this was a bit harsh. My opinion is just to rewrite the second half of this work with dialogue between the Vampire Hunters and Lambert rather than the current monologue.

Blarggy posted:

Hello, I was directed to this thread by Mr. Martello and despite my protests I managed to write out a scene from a book I will begin writing soon. This scene does not have much dialogue(read: any), but it is the only scene from the book I have so played out in my head that I could write it at seven in the morning. It's possible depending on the reception of this piece that I will write of their second meeting, which will contain significant dialogue, so that I can get a full critique of my writing, dialogue or otherwise. In the meantime; thank you in advance for any critiques.

quote:

Scene from a currently unnamed novel, 1016 words.

Boston was frigid in the middle of winter, unfortunately that was no excuse to close the schools, not in Massachusetts, they were far too used to the snow and cold here to get any time off. This is basically a run-on sentence. How about "Boston was frigid as ever this winter, but of course the schools were still open." That's good enough. We don't need the rest of the editorial. This is third-person that reads like first-person. You're not Tolkien and you're not writing The Hobbit. His father left for work earlier than he woke up, leaving him no choice but to walk. This sentence just sits here and doesn't really tell us anything. Who is "he?" As you've already been told, give this guy a name. Toby is fine so I'll keep going with that. Why do we care that Toby's dad left for work? We never see him at the end of the story so at this point you need to conserve detail and leave him out completely. At the most, say "His father had already left for work, so he had to walk to school.

He kept his bare hands stuffed into the pockets of his fluffy winter jacket, weaving deftly I'm not a super-anti-adverb guy like a lot of people here, but deftly is a bad one. Make "weaving" into a stronger adjective or just leave it as is. Since he isn't tripping or slamming into people, it's assumed that his weaving skills are deft. between the early morning crowds. The thick faux fur along the neck of the coat took the place of a scarf and his scruffy brown hair stretched over his ears enough to keep them from freezing off. Does hair stretch? Mine doesn't. Pick a better adjective. It was a twenty minute walk, depending on the crosswalks, and he usually cut through the city hall plaza to save a few minutes in the bitter cold. This whole second paragraph drags just as badly as the first, and so far nothing has really happened. You need to build some kind of tension and there isn't any yet.

Today was a day like any other, he mentally prepared himself for a biology test in first period, one he feared he might not pass as he had done no studying the previous night, having spent the night out with his friends. Holy poo poo another run-on sentence! You really need to work on these. Periods are not the enemy. Also, this is more boring non-information. If you're trying to set him up as the cliched "ordinary high school student," I strongly advise against it. Especially for a superhero story. We've seen it a million times and we don't need to see it a million and one times.

It was when he passed a strange girl as he was exiting the plaza that he snapped out of his world of thoughts and turned his body, craning his neck to see where she was going. I'm coming to the conclusion that your sentence structure is just God-awful. Try something along these lines - "He saw her when he was leaving the plaza. A strange girl coming the other way. He snapped out of his thoughts and spun around to watch her go." She was somewhere around 16 years old, ugh, teen romance...if you're 16 too, give yourself four years or so because young teenagers can't write. It's science, look at Christopher Paolini. It's okay to keep writing, though, in fact please do. You might learn some things the rest of us had to learn after college. probably the same as him, with golden blonde hair in thick wavy curls down to her shoulders. As she passed him he happened to be glancing up to check his path and had noticed the most striking green eyes, as bright as emeralds, and as hard set as the stone. If this happened when she passed him, that's the first thing that you should have shown us in this paragraph. Really, it's too much description anyway so leave it out. Or just make the picture of her much more concise. "She had thick golden curls to her shoulders, green eyes like emeralds." Like emeralds is kind of an awful simile so try to think of another one.

She was, in a word, beautiful. An amazing girl in any place, nevermind New England, but what caught his attention wasn’t just her beauty, it was her clothing and her apparent destination as well. She wore a pair of plain blue jeans, torn in a few places, stylishly or otherwise, a pair of black sandals and a beige wide necked short sleeve shirt. Clearly she had not dressed for the weather, and it seemed as though she were headed for city hall itself, but why would a girl be going into city hall by herself he could not discern. Cut this entire paragraph, holy poo poo. Too much and none of it poo poo we need to know. You really need to cut down on the number of words you use, too. I bet this entire scene could be written in 500.

As he turned his head and lifted it slightly to see if she entered, it felt as if his world had suddenly fractured. As soon as the door closed behind her, the concrete pillars buckled outwards, cracking and shearing under apparent immense pressure, in the following second, a flash brighter than anything he had ever seen shone through the windows, and pillars of flame and smoke flew from the shattering glass. Okay, this entire paragraph needs a rewrite.

"He watched her walk in, close the door behind her. The world fractured. City Hall's pillars buckled outward, exploding into a million shards. A supernova flash was followed by tongues of flame through the blown-out windows." That's 36 words to your 71, and it could still be shaved down. This is a novel, not a school writing assignment. More words are not better.

His brain did not have time to process exactly what was going on, other than a resounding roaring noise, and that the entire front of the city hall building, thick concrete pillars, stone floors and brick pavers, were now shattering like so much glass and flying through the air, mostly in his direction. Before he had time to think, the wall of debris reached him, his arms flew up in front of him and his eyes squeezed shut in a vain, unconscious attempt to defend his vital organs and head. Same thing, rewrite this entire paragraph. Way too many words, overwrought sentences. Worst of all, you're just reiterating what the last paragraph already said. Just tack on to the last paragraph something like "He barely had time to react, closing his eyes and throwing out his hands to protect himself." Done, point made. All the rest is just bullshit. We already KNOW he saw the explosion and assume that it was loud. You just described it in the last paragraph. You don't need to describe it again through his eyes.

He felt a strong wind flapping all around him as if he were caught in a hurricane, "Hurricane winds rushed around him," and he was blasted backwards by the shockwaveperiod! and new sentence: It lifted him off his feet and send him sprawling over the rail of a starcase What other kind of rail would it be? Also use spellcheck. and into a set of bicycle stands, This is just one more place you use three words when you could use one. How about "some bicycle stands." where he finally came to rest, struggling to remain conscious. Just cut this.

He tried to groan, but the effort made it obvious there was no air left in his lungs, having been forced out when his back contacted a solid steel pipe behind him, his lungs frantically searched for air that was not there as he gasped in a new breath, every second if the inhalation felt as though his ribs were cracking, and they probably were. He felt a warmth on his temple as his disoriented body attempted to stand, something one would not normally associate with the current season. Holy poo poo this is getting worse! "He tried to groan but no air was left in his lungs. Each new breath felt like his ribs were cracking." And holy gently caress just cut the rest of it.

As he stood, wobbling to the side, one hand rose to his temple and touched it gently, creating another sharp pain. The entire world snapped back into focus before his eyes and with it came the realisation that the warmth was from his own blood, now smeared onto his fingertips. He raised his eyes up, towards the building that had just previously been a stalwart sight every morning, but was now nothing more than a pile of rubble with bodies strewn about. Not gonna line edit this. I think you get the picture, this is overwrought and awful too.

It was then he saw the rubble all around him, concrete blocks bigger than his body with steel rebar piercing through them, but none close enough to have hit him. In fact, there appeared to be no rubble within a few feet of him. He looked towards the point where he had been standing moments before and traced back his route to the bike stands. There was not a single piece of rubble on the path, not within five feet on either side. "Rubble lay all around him, man-sized concrete chunks prickling with rebar. But a" semicircle of debris and dust stopped mere feet from where he had been, as if he had been encased in a glass ball. "Like he'd been inside a glass ball." or something

Someone grabbed his shoulder, and he dimly registered a noise of some kind, distant and quiet, like someone talking through a long tunnel. The arm turned him away from the building, a policeman was shouting at him, but he could barely hear the words. His ears rung with silence, a deafening silence, the officer pulled him roughly away from the former building, pulling him across the road and sat him down on the sidewalk, apparently trying to ask him questions.

When all he got in response was a blank look, the man hurried off, back towards the numerous bodies laying all over the plaza, some of them were moving, standing, jostling. Some were not.

Unfortunately his brain could no longer handle the various sources of information streaming into him, the pain in his ribs and ringing in his ears went away and he fell sideways, the blackness of unconsciousness embracing him. That's all the line editing you get, all the rest of this is just as bad as what came before.

STONE OF MADNESS posted:

STONE OF MADNESS posted:

Mike Works posted:

The Place I Was Before (504 words)

On the stove, White Cheddar Kraft Dinner bubbles next to a plate of sliced wieners. This is good, tells me a lot about what kind of woman Priscilla is. Priscilla’s cheek pushes into the embroidered Vancouver Giants patch while Derek forces a smile. This is kind of an awkward sentence. We know she's hugging him from the context of the following sentence, but the way it is now is clumsy. You're starting the action with what Priscilla's cheek is doing, not what she's doing as a person. And her cheek is pushing into a patch, not necessarily Derek. It just doesn't read well. Maybe "Priscilla pushes her cheek into the Vancouver Giants patch (embroidered is assumed, and you say "logo stitching" in the next sentence to confirm it) on Derek's sweatshirt (or whatever he's wearing). He forces a smile." His mother lets go, rubs her thumb along the logo stitching, asks him when he got this top, and he thinks back to shotgunning Kokanees with Mark in an East Hastings park before that game against Kamloops that had eight fighting majors and one half-remembered bout of concourse shoplifting. Run-on sentence. Break it down to shorter sentences that will have more impact. And he says, Long time ago.

You're doing the "no quotations" thing I see. Why? I've never heard a good argument for it that doesn't boil down to "it's more literary." If that's the reason, don't do it. You might as well just stop using punctuation period if you want to be different.

Priscilla starts saying sorry, I’m so sorry, and it sounds like a general sentiment at first. Telling. Show us. Also, "starts saying" is clunky. Then he realizes she’s spotted an unwrapped box of Anthon Berg chocolate liqueur bottles on the counter – a forgotten Christmas gift from the Dutch couple next door – and he tells her it’s okay, but she starts biting the heads off the foil-wrapped bottle necks and drips them down the sink one by one. This continues to be telling, and you used "starts [present progressive verb]" again. Don't do that. Also, I fail to make the connection between her sentiment being "general" (did you mean "genuine?") or not and biting the heads off bottles and spilling the liquor down the sink. It's an interesting picture, but why is she doing it? What does it have to do with the conversation? Is she just crazy? If she's crazy, try to find a better way to get it across.

Your father’s in the playhouse with Benny, she says. Got a surprise.
"Your father's in the playhouse with Benny," she says. "Got a surprise."

What makes the first line better than the second?

Grass has gotten long while he’s been gone; the dew drops fall like beehives. What the gently caress does this mean? Do beehives drop off of trees a lot in Canada or something? He knocks on the small door built moons ago Really? Is he a medieval fantasy novel character or a cartoon First Nation?, which feels stupid Does he also sometimes feel angry?, but Rick says come in. This reported dialogue is detaching me from the story and especially the characters, which is not a good thing. The playhouse is Benny’s now – old boy’s huddled in the corner, more folded laundry than basset hound at his age. Felt eyebrows lift like pinball flippers when he sees Derek, which finally feels like home. This is clumsy. Maybe break it up. "Felt eyebrows lift like pinball flippers when he sees Derek. He finally feels at home." I think writing it as "at home" is important versus "like home" because I don't know that a dog lifting his eyebrows can feel "like" home.

Rick’s in his bath robe, knees at his ears, I dunno about this, is Rick a yoga master? doing Derek doesn’t know what. Metal plates, screws, batteries. The Gipsy Kings Band names don't need italics escape all tinny from a baby monitor on the table corner, the other monitor surely in Rick’s den next to the record player. Somewhere else: an unused iPod with the click wheel; another Christmas present, this time from a son.

Hey boy.

Rick slides over printed pages of a Wiki how-to website. Building a robot: not the expected welcome home. Page 1 of 12 has a monochrome picture of C-3P0, but instead they’re putting together a door wedge with wheels. Are the instructions for building C-3PO but they're building a door wedge instead? Or is it like a logo or something? This is just more confusing than anything else. Priscilla starts vacuuming over "Hotel California," Song titles are in quotes, like a short story. Album names are in italics. so Rick clicks it off and says, Remember that race car we made for Cub Scouts?

The one with the Lego man on top?

The men puzzle over servo motors and NiCad batteries until the thing’s built. Rick whips his son’s wrist with the remote control antenna as a joke, tells him to give it a test. It hits Derek that this is the only thing he’s allowed to drive now. The doorstop whirs past snoozing Benny, then jerks left, chips the wall.

I pressed right, Derek says.

Easy fix, Rick says.

Rick turns the baby monitor back on. Bambeleo is quiet behind Priscilla’s phone call with her sister where she’s saying, I don’t know what we’re going to do, over and over until Derek switches it off, and that’s when his father tosses him an O’Doul’s and says, Tastes like piss, then, You’ll get used to it. God drat it, just use quotes and separate the dialogue from the rest of the paragraph! You're just making it harder on the reader, and for what? Especially with the "then" inserted in the middle. Is this dialogue supposed to read as:

Rick says, "Tastes like piss," then, "You'll get used to it."

or

Rick says, "Tastes like piss, then, you'll get used to it."

It must be the first, because the second doesn't make sense. But the way you write it, it reads like the second. Dialogue tags are not just a style thing, they're every bit as important as using proper punctuation and grammar. Here's a better way to do that line:

Rick says, "Tastes like piss." He watches Derek open the bottle. "You'll get used to it."

Break up the two separate short sentences with an action, because right now they just run together.

I'm guessing the O'Doul's and "the only thing he's allowed to drive now" means Derek is a serious alcoholic and has had his license revoked permanently or something. I actually like the way you show us that instead of some expospeak bullshit between the characters.


Rick leaves barefoot. Derek turns to Benny, because someone’s got to ask the question: Cut this. Why does someone have to ask it? It's telling, not showing. Having Derek ask the dog how he's feeling is a great ending, so keep that.

How’re you feeling, boy?

Dr. Kloctopussy posted:

a crit

Dr. Kloctopussy posted:

bar exam

Jeza posted:

The story is trying so hard to be dramatic and edgy that you can see the tryhard from outer space.

sebmojo posted:

Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities is basically the Best Book in the World.

Symptomless Coma posted:

You did this one yourself, right? I hope so. I'd hate to spend all night critting dead Italians. Anyway, I love it, and I think there some some cunning edits that could make it great.


Love it.

ViggyNash posted:

They're all drunk. I'm not sure what you expect.

In all seriousness I see what you mean in some of those instances. However, most of those fit the way I imagined the characters would speak. They aren't linguists, and even if they were, the majority are piss drunk. They're going to need transitional phrases to keep their thoughts in line.

On a different note, they aren't in there to convey the meaning the characters are trying to convey; they're in there to keep the persona going. If I were to take all of those out, they would sound almost like any random guy you meet on the street today. That's boring and doesn't fit the setting I was going for. Imagine the same dialog in a modern sports pub, then try it in what you imagine a turn of the century pub to be.

If it's something that simply annoys you then .

Sulla-Marius 88 posted:

To everyone else: If you were as good a writer as you think you are, you probably wouldn't be on CC hand-holding newbies and making fun of them when they trip. Keep some perspective.

M. Propagandalf posted:

Lessons to take from the last Thunderdome battle: Writing dialogue with crowds


One of the prominent flaws in my last submission was assigning names to figures that are essentially props. There are only two characters (Tobias and Mallory) that matter in this piece, everyone else is there to enhance their conflict.

I thought about, but rejected the idea of keeping the prop figures nameless (ex. "someone from the fellowship cried..." "another person said...") which seemed even more awkward. I thought I could highlight who mattered and who didn't via syllables - everyone with a monosyllablic name is essentially a prop. The consensus is this doesn't work either.

The solution seems to be narrowed to minimizing the number of named figures so the speaking roles are less spread out. For this piece, I wanted to convey a sense of a crowd with group participation, even if it means a character to line ratio of 1:1. What would be an effective way to do this without minimizing numbers?

M. Propagandalf posted:

Holiday Break
1160 words
“Offended by what?” guffawed Rick

Several cries of “What!?” and a “no way!” were uttered.

“We already bought all the ingredients for our baking,” sniveled Gwen

“No one’s dictating anyone’s cookies,” Tobias assured

“How would that make it work?” argued Mallory,

“Well actually,” mused Steve

“Forget what the union says,” Mallory replied firmly

“If we do that,” Tobias warned

“‘Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s’,” replied Mallory

“Don’t you think this is rather extreme?” ventured Liz

“It’s not just songs and cookies,” voiced Jeff

“We need to pray,” replied Mallory

quote:

“She has her own money?” I had the black queen in my hand now, and he didn’t seem to care.

“Her own savings, yes, but I give her a generous allowance for spending money.” Horricks paused to relight his cigar. “It auto-transfers to her account every two weeks.”

“How did she pull it out?”

He leaned back in his chair and blew a large cloud at the track lights in the ceiling. “She made a transfer to another account. I think it was one of those temporary phone debit accounts.”

“Smart.”

“She is. So with all this, I had one of our white hat hackers from Maskar come over and crack her Friendspace. It turns out that she and Cameron had been maintaining a rather risqué communiqué for the past four months.” He shook his head and looked at me as if he hadn’t just used two French loanwords in a row. “They talked about how good it had been when they were dating, and how much they wished they were together again, and Jessica said some pretty nasty things about me that rather hurt me, I’ll admit. I had no idea that she felt that way. We’d always been so happy.”

I looked at him doubtfully and tapped the black queen against the frosted glass of the chessboard. “So you believe that she moved to Tokyo to be with Cameron?”

Chillmatic posted:

He slammed the plates down on the table. "You're never around when I need you!"

neonnoodle posted:

$1,000,000 in gold would weigh about 50 pounds.
There's no way you could compress that into a groin-bean.

sebmojo posted:

A one inch ball (lol) of 24 karat gold weighs a bit less than six ounces, not including cockring/ball fittings. An ounce of gold is $USD1300. So we're looking at a value, on the damned, mean, dirty, cold-rear end streets, of around $8k. We need to go bigger.

A cool mill of gold is gonna weigh, by my reckoning, around 46 pounds. The dad in the story is carrying (attached, let us never forget, to his penis) a ten inch sphere of gold that weighs more than:

•five gallons of water
•a 3-year-old child
•an average human leg
•a Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier
•a 15-foot canoe

Echo Cian posted:

Always read more.

crabrock posted:

systran posted:

Well, to stem the derail, I specifically said that Ender's Game is worth reading despite whatever controversy there may be surrounding him.

crabrock posted:

I totally agree, because I think most artists are lovely people and I want to consume their works of [hopefully] fiction. But there are people out there who really care about the author's personal beliefs, especially in books like OSC's that deal with society and religion and government. Think about all the crazy people who worship Ayn Rand.

I think OSC's a total shitbag (I think comparing his views to not eating grass fed beef is a little disingenuous at best), but I've still read like 4 of the Ender novels and went to see the movie. It doesn't hurt to make people aware that their money may go to support causes that they are actively against, such as rising up and destroying the US government (a particular stated position of OSC).

the wildest turkey posted:

I really like this piece, I think the old-timey noir detective feel works well here. I have made a few comments below (in bold) and crossed out a couple lines here and there that I think you could probably drop. Of course, I'm a CC nobody so: grain of salt, etc. etc.


Where are you thinking of submitting it? Just curious which publications you're looking at for a crime/noir story. Anyway, cool story & hope my crits help a little. Good luck!

DreadNite posted:

I like the story, but it didn't capture my attention until the part where the Detective says he believes him, and the big drop comes about what happened.

When Baylor says "I hope you don't", it had me confused because of the immediate contradiction from "watch your mouth" to "I hope you don't", but then I realized it may be sarcasm after reading it again. Maybe touch up that comment slightly to convey the meaning more clearly.

The story is a LOT of dialogue, 100% actually. I'm not sure if this was a dialogue only Thunderdome, (We've all seen much worse prompts come from there :P ) but personally it would have been a nice break to be able to see a mix of dialogue and narration. For about the first half of the piece, I felt blind to what was going on besides the two characters speaking to each other. (Felt almost like these two were talking to each other in a dark closet or something! )

I really liked the ending. It reveals much about the personality of the characters while tinging it with trajedy to end the story on a note that makes the reader continue thinking even after its' close. If that was what you were going for, rock on!

These are just my thoughts, I was an engineering major in college so same thing, grain of salt, etc etc.

Good luck with wherever you send it!

sebmojo posted:

Maybe you should try and extend it; it doesn't have to be this length, after all. Take us with Christi to the counsellor, I'd like to know more.

ScottyWired posted:

Do I also spell colour, neighbour and clamour incorrectly? What about centre and fibre?