This is late for multiple reasons, one I can apologize for, two that are out of my hands.
The one I can apologize for is a delay in the middle of the week caused by google docs not liking me anymore. I was stubborn and tried to figure it out instead of doing the smart thing right away, and then circumstance did not like me very much this weekend to say the least. I actually think I cursed this by making it about evil, or perhaps that is just my own paranoia.
Anyway I am done with Google docs and instead started a forum which should make it a lot easier on me to actually properly share things with everyone in the future. I am sorry if I annoyed anyone with the delays, they were mostly unavoidable.
Four entries this week, and after a quick glance I think they all come from different places so that's good!
Also this will feature the return of me actually not being a lazy dick and critiquing, so whoo.
You make it seem as if I am obligated to contribute for some strange reason!
Also I am making the new topic. But the new topic is including all the write-ups with proper nomination information and I am trying to make it into the least number of posts possible, so it is taking a little bit to do that!
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http://firsthour.net/screenshots/suikoden-2/suikoden-2-luca-blight.JPG The Cult of Personality.
You're right. As the host and the one among us with the most writing experience it is insane of me to expect you to contribute critiques and rankings that would help the rest if us improve. I apologize.
Okay it seems there has been a mutiny here so I am forced to ...sigh, help.
I am of course being overly dramatic, I love helping! I have just been stupidly busy with Diablo/Life recently :D.
Entry 1:
First off you should remember the golden rule of using two commas in a sentence: If you can't take away what is between the two commas and form a cohesive sentence you have misused your commas. You were guilty of this in your third sentence, while your second sentence has an unneeded comma after the word 'shining' which completely breaks up the flow of a sentence that is flowery in its composition which requires it to have that flow. Also you confused your tense between “appearing” and “disappeared” and really made this sentence awkward to read. Don't be afraid to try sentence variation such as “no clouds marred the sky as...” or something. You say the same thing but with more elegance and less clumsiness.
Same comma problem, different paragraph. I think my tip about taking out the middle and reading the sentence will prove to be really useful to your writing in the future. I used to make the same mistake until someone gave me that easy tip about removing the middle part and seeing if what remained made sense. Drill it into your head and you won't make the mistake nearly as often. Also you commented on how the sun was still up even though in the previous sentence you said it disappeared. A silly error that I tend to overlook mostly because silly errors like that are bound to happen in anything, but not if you are careful with your proof reading which you should be any time you submit something as a matter of pride. There is more tense confusion in this paragraph as well that makes it a pain to read. Also I am aware there are some time travel aspects to this story but it doesn't excuse tense issues of this nature.
“That man passing me by, for example” is really just a bad sentence overall. It gives the reader nothing at all. It is cheeky without the wit required to pull off cheeky. It feels very tacked on and cheap. Like a piece of plastic.
I am not sure if this was meant to be confusing, but if it was it wasn't the good type of confusion that comes from clever wordplay and purposeful misdirection. A lot of the sentences near the story's climax are just so garbled and they aren't as cool and badass as you likely believe. It really stilts the writing when you use conventions like stopping mid thought to redirect and not describing the story's lone action sequence's climax with anything other than a single word, it didn't feel satisfying at all.
The concept was interesting, maybe the most interesting of the four, but it was overall poorly executed due to a bit of a misunderstanding of some basic conventions and some poor decision making in sentence structure and word choice.
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http://firsthour.net/screenshots/suikoden-2/suikoden-2-luca-blight.JPG The Cult of Personality.
Y'know, probably because I've been sick the past few days and so I am feeling a wee bit pissy in general, but if your participation is based on mine then you can just not do anything it's cool. I understand that I am not the most reliable person as my mind is usually off in the clouds but I don't need twice daily reminders of it in this topic.
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http://firsthour.net/screenshots/suikoden-2/suikoden-2-luca-blight.JPG The Cult of Personality.
Because I can always look it up if I am missing something.
Funny story of the day: I literally started to throw up during my write-up of entry # 1, and I haven't felt right for days, it is why I stopped at entry # 1. I think my sickness is unrelated to the content of the entry to be fair.
Entry # 2:
Pet peeve of the day: Saying stuff like “His vision surveys.” It is such a flowery way to say “He sees” or something else. Like it goes out of its way to sound unique and by doing so sticks out like a sore thumb. Often times I find basic is best for narrative purposes. You are missing the word the word “of'” when describing the dirt.
Then you kind of lose me with your grammar here. I don't know why you thought it was a good idea to use only one word to transition to someone speaking to the character. Please never do that. It should be “Suddenly a voice called out” or something. Complete the thought. Every time. Yes there are exceptions to this rule, no it isn't worth trying to figure them out at this stage.
Your sentence structure is very stilted and lacks any kind of flow. I find this very hard to read because the constant short thoughts take me out of the scene. For example this is how I would have written the second main paragraph. Also notice that I am giving Vincent some character here as I do it. All you do for this part is tell us what he sees and that's not very interesting. It reads as if Vincent doesn't think at all. Now mind you if that was your intention fair enough but the story didn't read as if Vincent was quite so far gone that he couldn't at least think.
“Vincent steps out of the car, his head peeking above the roof as he stands. Slowly, without a word, he walks to the back. His face is a mask. He looks into the trunk and sees a woman. She has long brown hair, green eyes, and a fair complexion. She is by any measure pretty, although the look is diminished a little by her hands being tied up and a gag around her mouth. Only a little though. He turns back to the man.”
You also had various grammatical errors that if you compare mine to yours you'll see I corrected for the most part. Also grammar convention: You don't need to space Vincent's speech if the paragraph is in his perspective. You can just add it on to the end.
Anyway there are various grammatical errors but for the most part if you follow what I've said already you can root almost all them out. As for the actual story I really loved it, which goes to show that grammar isn't everything. You actually got me with the ending, as I didn't expect it. This was a really well thought out story. I have always enjoyed a good misdirection and I like these types of stories that delve a little bit into the human mind so kudos for going into this direction with the story. I know I spent some time talking about the errors, but I really did enjoy the story itself. You'd be surprised how many perfectly grammatical stories I've read that are complete crap.
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http://firsthour.net/screenshots/suikoden-2/suikoden-2-luca-blight.JPG The Cult of Personality.
This is my entry that I whipped up. I was going for quirky. I have never been very good at being critical of things I write, so I won't bother. This is the best thing ever written and there should be monuments built for the worship of it. Now save that, I'll just go with its quirky and silly. Judging by someone's ranking the humor was lost on at least one person, which is understandable as I am very weird. Also no substance at all here, which isn't perhaps the best idea when discussing evil.
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http://firsthour.net/screenshots/suikoden-2/suikoden-2-luca-blight.JPG The Cult of Personality.
It is late and I'm not going to finish any of these.
But I will say that I even without your prompting I could tell within a minute that entry three was written by you chris. It just seemed distinctively in your style.
Maybe next time a round goes up let me know so I can try to pick yours out without the foreknowledge.
Might as well get this out of the way before the Heat game.
Entry 4: HEEL TURN IT SUCKS, HAR HAR.
No, really, by far the best of the three stories that is not my own. For one for 99% of the story you have proper grammar and know how to construct sentences, which I can be grateful for! Like I said earlier grammar isn't everything but gosh darn it grammar is nice. I like how in this story you gave a bit of flavor to the characters. Everyone felt like they had some depth to them, which is always good for a short story. Things like nicknames and good use of perspective really showed themselves within this piece. Earlier I talked about getting inside the head of people and you did this really well in the story. Thematically you did a good job and it fits the theme well, which makes my humorous take look all the more sad if I have to be truthful. I like to write humorous things but when in direct competition with serious subject matter I start to wilt even though I thought I did a good job with my own punchlines. What I am trying to say is I think this story made mine look bad, which is good for you!
Now the bad parts. I would advise against using cliches in your writing in terms of figures of speech. They jar the reader out of their experience. When you said that a 12 year old was 'wise beyond her years" I honestly rolled my eyes. When you catch yourself doing that don't be afraid to switch it up but mean the same thing. "She was oddly keen for a girl at her age" or something, anything, other than those figures of speech. An experienced reader will have read them too much as it is, you don't want to lessen the impact of your writing by taking people out of their appreciation of it.
I thought your characterization of the villain was good but your execution of him was bad. The idea was great, but his speech didn't sell it for me. He spoke... too casual. It is a hard thing to critique because I am unsure exactly what I was looking for but I just know he spoke wrong for how you developed him. Too easily frustrated and allowed his captive to see it. Too sloppy for a man who had killed so many. Too unimposing from an evil, wicked man. One of the hardest things to learn, and something I am not good enough at to be able to help others with it, is to make an impact with your words. To be explosive. To have the evil drip from the words. Something just felt off. I also thought the premise was a bit unrealistic because a 12 year old just couldn't handle that without completely cracking, which should have pleased the man.
Anyway Heat time. Ifd you want to discuss it more I'd be glad to.
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http://firsthour.net/screenshots/suikoden-2/suikoden-2-luca-blight.JPG The Cult of Personality.
The most obvious problem is the continuity error with the sun. It's probably the one you mentioned in your earlier post. Next I'd say to avoid redundancy. For example, you already told us he stopped at his apartment, there is no reason to tell us he's no longer moving inhumanly fast. And.. "His speed increased, faster and faster, as seconds..." can be changed/shored to "Time passed at an increasingly accelerated rate" or something similar.
"I smiled. Today was almost perfect. Everything is going according to plan. Now if only it wasn’t a cloudy day." The last sentence seems like a complete mood swap. At first he feels like it's almost the best day ever, then he's complaining.
Now, the narrator keeps talking about his "plans" and how things are important or not important to them. The thing is, I don't know what his plans are. There is an obvious time travel type thing, but it's not even clear how that's really happening either. At times I'm led to believe it's really happening, and sometimes I think it's all in his head because I read it as the narrator being somewhat of a psychopath.
A major issue is your constantly changing tenses. A tip is to use third person (almost every fiction writing instructor I've had has recommended this. TBH I'm not I'm not exactly sure why, but it seems easier to get a good flow and stay within your tense restrictions while using it. If you're wondering why all my entries are in first person, that's because I have a lot of experience with screen writing.)
An issue I personally had was the narrators little "inputs" that were jotted throughout. They just seem tacked on and don't add anything.
This could have been interesting in a Minority Report type way, but nothing is clearly laid out for the reader, I'm not even sure if the narrator is a good or bad guy.
Yeah, the narrator is supposed to hate hot days, wishing there were clouds. AUGH!
Ahh, tense problems. Gotta get better >_>
At first I wanted the story to be much longer, with a cop going on patrol when he witnessed the murderer killing the kid. After a grueling interrogation, the murderer confessed that they had to kill the kid because of a vision. It's never made clear if it's the truth or not, but shortly after the murderer was found guilty and sent to prison, something happened. The cop watches the news next morning after the incident and found out that a massive prison break was planned that day for a mob boss, but apparently the mob boss was killed, along with other dangerous criminals, while others were left untouched, and the child killer went missing...
But then I had to do interviews, so I scrapped most of the plot and just went with a short ambiguous POV piece. That sucked.
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Aww, I lost to SuperNiceDog, Winner of the Rivalry Rumble Guru Contest
I'm about to complain about something only someone who has a lot of knowledge with RPGs would point out. In MMOs you resurrect at a graveyard, in other RPGs you return to a save point. I guess it could be like demon souls or something like that, but everything in the story from the team name cliche, FF references, etc screams generic JRPG.
I do feel like the entire thing is more or less a very long rant without any real content. 90% of it is vlad complaining about the heroes and how stupid they are, while at the end he just wants to kill things. Also, if he's burning dying flesh, I'm not really sure how that's working out. If they were all dead they'd be sent back to the graveyard.
There is very little wrong I can point out technically, but I just found it kind of boring and one dimensional. If I didn't have experience with RPGs this story would be completely lost on me. I'd consider that a little too niche an audience.
Entry 4 is going to take me a while to get the write up for, so It'll be up tomorrow.
This one is longer, so I'll do something special for this one and make edits to the story (with input to why I did the edit at each point). Doing it this way is easier then a general write up. But it'll take longer. I typically only work on this at school so the write up will be late, but you'll get it (and it will be pretty detailed)
Anyways rankings
3>4>1
3 and 4 were close. 3 is technically written very well, but could be fleshed out a bit more. Gen's is a good idea (she also uses a PoV style which is seen in a lot of novels, I'm not sure if this was intentional), but was not as polished as Chris's.
Like I said, Gen will have to wait for her full write up (Monday sometime).
Also, responding to Chris's critique of mine
"surveys" was supposed to indicate something like "looked with intent" or "look and scanned" . Cutting thoughts short is probably something I do often. I typically write screen plays (I'm a film student) and doing things like that are common as I often have to micro manage length)
I agree that I could have done more with vincent. He was supposed to be that way to sort of "trick" the victim, but that got lost along the way.