Ceramic Dm (final judgement posted, New Champion announced!)
Rodrigo Istalindir
Explorer
Piratecat said:
Sorry -- didn't know how to do it, and since the rules forbid editing, I didn't want to screw up. Probably should have played in the meta forum first. Feel free to excercise mod-powers and remove the attachments.
arwink
Clockwork Golem
Well, after six hours of waiting without anyone showing up I've just been informed that someone made an error in the booking process and it's going to take another few weeks for another appointment to come up, which means my internet connection is far, far away.
Sadly, this means I'm out of this - I'm not going to be online reliably enough to compete.
Sadly, this means I'm out of this - I'm not going to be online reliably enough to compete.
Last edited:
alsih2o
First Post
Barsoomcore-
Berandor "Robert I."
First things first: never, and I mean NEVER, use an exclamation point in a piece of fiction. Unless you're deliberately trying to do something in a cheeseball pulp vein, don't do it. Never never never.
Okay, got that off my chest.
Reasonably good use of the pictures -- but I'm forced to wonder what the invisible car has to do with anything. There isn't a thread that ties the pictures together -- they're just random moments from the story. None of the uses feel like throwaways, but I'm left thinking you could have left all but the one out and the story would have been largely the same. Which is a bit of a problem.
The narrative position wanders around a little and that weakens things for you. For example -- in the first paragraph our hero is looking around the room, and we're pretty much getting told what he sees. Which is fine until the last sentence of that paragraph, where we get told that the plastic on his brow is green and red. Since he can't see it, I start wondering what's going on. It would have been smoother and more consistent if you had delayed describing the appearance of the "crown" until he'd taken it off and could look at it.
Choose your point of view and stick with it.
The beginning, up to Robert's confrontation with Dr. Flint at her apartment, is WAY too long. We don't need very much of this. The story doesn't really get going until that confrontation anyway, so get us there faster. The stuff in the hotel especially isn't adding anything -- I'd just turf it. The story could probably be about half as long as it is now and be much better.
Five foot six is quite a ways off average height for a white male, by the way.
And just to be a nit-picky jerk, I get 12,500,000 results on Google for "Robert I."
The conversations with the guards don't move the story along. We don't care. It's the conversation with Dr. Flint that we need to hear so ditch the long explanations as to how he gets into the apartment complex. Doesn't matter -- unless it matters. Like if he's able to jump a ten-foot fence or something, then we need to know. But he doesn't do anything in all this that gives me clues as to what's going on, so leave it all out.
Overall, the story suffers from a lack of urgency. We don't see any particular reason for this guy to move quickly or to take any risks in order to solve his problem, and so we're not very worried. We need to see some threat to him implicit in what's going on to give the story the juice it really needs.
MarauderX "Recruiting"
Definitely very solid use of the pictures. All four are neatly integrated and if not essential to the story, at least illustrate key ideas in the story. Well done.
The story itself, however, is at least twice as long as it needs to be. Those big, meaty paragraphs aren't carrying much information and you could lose most of the sentences in each and not be missing much of the story.
The plot takes too long to get moving. In a story of this length, if the story hasn't kicked in by the third or fourth sentence, my attention's starting to wander, and here it doesn't get going for paragraphs and paragraphs. Not until he discovers the invisibility field is there any sense of urgency.
Too much explaining. Does it really matter that Tiflime built the first acropolis? I don't care. I don't have any reason to care. He's a rich guy. Got it, moving on.
"Silenced him like a ton of bricks." -- how does a ton of bricks silence someone, anyway? Seems to me that a ton of bricks might actually be pretty noisy, if you dropped it on somebody. Come up with your own metaphor, or if you're going to use a cliched one, make sure you give a very very good reason why you're using that cliche.
The character of Sayta appears somewhat out of nowhere -- the story would have felt more complete if this had been a return rather than an introduction. There wasn't much reason for our hero to trust this complete stranger, so I was a little disappointed that he did. It also robs the twist at the end -- he's back at the lab -- of any power it might have. I'm not surprised that he's back at the lab because I haven't had a chance to believe that Sayta might represent a different concern. This is really a general problem in the story -- the first time we learn that Dr. Marroquin created the virus is the first time she's introduced, which is also when we discover she was murdered by our hero's co-workers. We learn that invisibility is illegal at the moment we discover Gilgamesh is using it. Surprise depends on the reader understanding the initial conditions so that they can be surprised by a sudden reversal.
Read Gibson's short stories like "New Rose Hotel" or "Johnny Mnemonic" and pay attention to how few words he actually uses and how fast his stories move. How much happens from one paragraph to the next. How many times our understanding of what's happening flips as one betrayal after another turns things inside out.
The invisibility idea is used well, and the dilemna of the technician who's stumbled on a secret is a fine source of plot, but the story is far too long and the surprises are not set up sufficiently.
Decision: MarauderX, for superior picture use.
Mythago-
RECRUITING (MarauderX)
I like the use of the glasses as a plot device, and the pictures are
very nicely integrated with the theme of the invisibility device--I
particularly liked Jerrid leaping over the automaton, and the black hole
picture was a good tie-in to the use of the tablet.
Unfortunately, the rest of the story doesn't work as well. The
descriptions are choppy and awkward in places (silenced like a ton of
bricks?) and the characterizations are thin; the nameless, faceless
engineers don't do much but fill in plot holes, and Dr. Tiflime comes
across as a stereotypical Rich Guy. I also had a hard time believing
that invisibility could be kept under wraps by just about everyone
simply by making it illegal--for sixty-five years? Not gonna happen.
The ending is not abrupt, but it does make the story sound more like a
prologue than a stand-alone.
ROBERT I (Berandor)
There are two different ways to run an "amnesiac discovers his true
identity" story: have the reader in the dark too, or have it obvious to
everyone but the amnesiac. The story here takes the latter path, but
seems to be trying to take the other.
I had some credibility problems with some of the plotlines: scientists
assuming Robert I (who is, after all, wearing a name tag) being let past
when confronted, the truly awful security at Dr. Flint's home, and
getting a description of Robert by having himself look in a mirror.
(Plus, if he's seeing himself for the first time, we'd expect him to be
looking very carefully and therefore notice the oddity Dr. Flint points
out.) And the line about memory loss being contrived was, well, a little
too cute.
On the other hand, the narrative was a tense, well-run storyline. We
don't really know what Robert is going to do next; is he going to turn
violent? What was he programmed for? Are more memories going to come
back? What are they building these robots for, anyway? The answers
aren't predictable.
The use of the pictures was strong, except for the 'invisible car'; we
know that Dr. Flint has access to whiz-bang technology, but the car is
used pretty much as a throwaway here. A more even integration into the
narrative would have made a stronger story.
Judgment for this round goes to BERANDOR
Alsih2o-
Berandor- We begin with a futuristic setting and a messianic overtone.
2800 words into a 4300 word story before we ever see an illustration. The bad part means they are all stuffed in at last, the good part means Berandor has his hero cleaning in the second act of his own volition. I would give my left pinky to see Will Smith or Sly Stallone stop to clean up for a few minutes mid-adventure!
Speaking of Will Smith….I am not sure if writing a story where we are mislead (as far as I can tell) into thinking it is titled Robot “i” during a summer movie release of Asimov is bold or derivative.
Dr. Flint recoiling is pretty good picture use. And I like how the leaping picture is handled, although I must admit I got stuck wondering how one droves an invisible car without being crushed. This made it feel like less of a good use of a pic and more like an out that wasn’t thoroughly thought through (what IS thoroughly thought through in 3days?) J The eye- if you knew the pic was coming you knew where it would fit.
There are some little things that bother me, 5’6” ain’t avg., The way the doctor takes commands unthinkingly, even though she helped create the perfectly matching robot, the moron guard, but 2 of 3 of these seem standards of the genre.
MarauderX- Pretty good pic use. Strange that both writers made the car carved of ice into an invisible car! I am amused by how similarly the pictures were used in two different stories.
It ends awfully abruptly, and I wish the final betrayal had as much attention payed to it as some of the other, less important details.
I like the bulkiness of the story, and just wish some of it had been remioved for a little more description at the end. I also wish he had been given more of a choice. Screwed vs. screwed isn’t the best, seems a bit too dark for me.
With a little less detail about Mr. Ricj and Powerful we may have had some more room for explanation, and this would have made a richer story form a rich one.
Decision- This is a hard one for me. It comes down to two stories with some similar strengths, and some similar weaknesses. Reading them both multiple times I think I expect somewhat better things form Berandor, and have to side with him.
Judgement- 2-1 for Berandor, who moves to the next round.
Berandor "Robert I."
First things first: never, and I mean NEVER, use an exclamation point in a piece of fiction. Unless you're deliberately trying to do something in a cheeseball pulp vein, don't do it. Never never never.
Okay, got that off my chest.
Reasonably good use of the pictures -- but I'm forced to wonder what the invisible car has to do with anything. There isn't a thread that ties the pictures together -- they're just random moments from the story. None of the uses feel like throwaways, but I'm left thinking you could have left all but the one out and the story would have been largely the same. Which is a bit of a problem.
The narrative position wanders around a little and that weakens things for you. For example -- in the first paragraph our hero is looking around the room, and we're pretty much getting told what he sees. Which is fine until the last sentence of that paragraph, where we get told that the plastic on his brow is green and red. Since he can't see it, I start wondering what's going on. It would have been smoother and more consistent if you had delayed describing the appearance of the "crown" until he'd taken it off and could look at it.
Choose your point of view and stick with it.
The beginning, up to Robert's confrontation with Dr. Flint at her apartment, is WAY too long. We don't need very much of this. The story doesn't really get going until that confrontation anyway, so get us there faster. The stuff in the hotel especially isn't adding anything -- I'd just turf it. The story could probably be about half as long as it is now and be much better.
Five foot six is quite a ways off average height for a white male, by the way.
And just to be a nit-picky jerk, I get 12,500,000 results on Google for "Robert I."
The conversations with the guards don't move the story along. We don't care. It's the conversation with Dr. Flint that we need to hear so ditch the long explanations as to how he gets into the apartment complex. Doesn't matter -- unless it matters. Like if he's able to jump a ten-foot fence or something, then we need to know. But he doesn't do anything in all this that gives me clues as to what's going on, so leave it all out.
Overall, the story suffers from a lack of urgency. We don't see any particular reason for this guy to move quickly or to take any risks in order to solve his problem, and so we're not very worried. We need to see some threat to him implicit in what's going on to give the story the juice it really needs.
MarauderX "Recruiting"
Definitely very solid use of the pictures. All four are neatly integrated and if not essential to the story, at least illustrate key ideas in the story. Well done.
The story itself, however, is at least twice as long as it needs to be. Those big, meaty paragraphs aren't carrying much information and you could lose most of the sentences in each and not be missing much of the story.
The plot takes too long to get moving. In a story of this length, if the story hasn't kicked in by the third or fourth sentence, my attention's starting to wander, and here it doesn't get going for paragraphs and paragraphs. Not until he discovers the invisibility field is there any sense of urgency.
Too much explaining. Does it really matter that Tiflime built the first acropolis? I don't care. I don't have any reason to care. He's a rich guy. Got it, moving on.
"Silenced him like a ton of bricks." -- how does a ton of bricks silence someone, anyway? Seems to me that a ton of bricks might actually be pretty noisy, if you dropped it on somebody. Come up with your own metaphor, or if you're going to use a cliched one, make sure you give a very very good reason why you're using that cliche.
The character of Sayta appears somewhat out of nowhere -- the story would have felt more complete if this had been a return rather than an introduction. There wasn't much reason for our hero to trust this complete stranger, so I was a little disappointed that he did. It also robs the twist at the end -- he's back at the lab -- of any power it might have. I'm not surprised that he's back at the lab because I haven't had a chance to believe that Sayta might represent a different concern. This is really a general problem in the story -- the first time we learn that Dr. Marroquin created the virus is the first time she's introduced, which is also when we discover she was murdered by our hero's co-workers. We learn that invisibility is illegal at the moment we discover Gilgamesh is using it. Surprise depends on the reader understanding the initial conditions so that they can be surprised by a sudden reversal.
Read Gibson's short stories like "New Rose Hotel" or "Johnny Mnemonic" and pay attention to how few words he actually uses and how fast his stories move. How much happens from one paragraph to the next. How many times our understanding of what's happening flips as one betrayal after another turns things inside out.
The invisibility idea is used well, and the dilemna of the technician who's stumbled on a secret is a fine source of plot, but the story is far too long and the surprises are not set up sufficiently.
Decision: MarauderX, for superior picture use.
Mythago-
RECRUITING (MarauderX)
I like the use of the glasses as a plot device, and the pictures are
very nicely integrated with the theme of the invisibility device--I
particularly liked Jerrid leaping over the automaton, and the black hole
picture was a good tie-in to the use of the tablet.
Unfortunately, the rest of the story doesn't work as well. The
descriptions are choppy and awkward in places (silenced like a ton of
bricks?) and the characterizations are thin; the nameless, faceless
engineers don't do much but fill in plot holes, and Dr. Tiflime comes
across as a stereotypical Rich Guy. I also had a hard time believing
that invisibility could be kept under wraps by just about everyone
simply by making it illegal--for sixty-five years? Not gonna happen.
The ending is not abrupt, but it does make the story sound more like a
prologue than a stand-alone.
ROBERT I (Berandor)
There are two different ways to run an "amnesiac discovers his true
identity" story: have the reader in the dark too, or have it obvious to
everyone but the amnesiac. The story here takes the latter path, but
seems to be trying to take the other.
I had some credibility problems with some of the plotlines: scientists
assuming Robert I (who is, after all, wearing a name tag) being let past
when confronted, the truly awful security at Dr. Flint's home, and
getting a description of Robert by having himself look in a mirror.
(Plus, if he's seeing himself for the first time, we'd expect him to be
looking very carefully and therefore notice the oddity Dr. Flint points
out.) And the line about memory loss being contrived was, well, a little
too cute.
On the other hand, the narrative was a tense, well-run storyline. We
don't really know what Robert is going to do next; is he going to turn
violent? What was he programmed for? Are more memories going to come
back? What are they building these robots for, anyway? The answers
aren't predictable.
The use of the pictures was strong, except for the 'invisible car'; we
know that Dr. Flint has access to whiz-bang technology, but the car is
used pretty much as a throwaway here. A more even integration into the
narrative would have made a stronger story.
Judgment for this round goes to BERANDOR
Alsih2o-
Berandor- We begin with a futuristic setting and a messianic overtone.
2800 words into a 4300 word story before we ever see an illustration. The bad part means they are all stuffed in at last, the good part means Berandor has his hero cleaning in the second act of his own volition. I would give my left pinky to see Will Smith or Sly Stallone stop to clean up for a few minutes mid-adventure!
Speaking of Will Smith….I am not sure if writing a story where we are mislead (as far as I can tell) into thinking it is titled Robot “i” during a summer movie release of Asimov is bold or derivative.
Dr. Flint recoiling is pretty good picture use. And I like how the leaping picture is handled, although I must admit I got stuck wondering how one droves an invisible car without being crushed. This made it feel like less of a good use of a pic and more like an out that wasn’t thoroughly thought through (what IS thoroughly thought through in 3days?) J The eye- if you knew the pic was coming you knew where it would fit.
There are some little things that bother me, 5’6” ain’t avg., The way the doctor takes commands unthinkingly, even though she helped create the perfectly matching robot, the moron guard, but 2 of 3 of these seem standards of the genre.
MarauderX- Pretty good pic use. Strange that both writers made the car carved of ice into an invisible car! I am amused by how similarly the pictures were used in two different stories.
It ends awfully abruptly, and I wish the final betrayal had as much attention payed to it as some of the other, less important details.
I like the bulkiness of the story, and just wish some of it had been remioved for a little more description at the end. I also wish he had been given more of a choice. Screwed vs. screwed isn’t the best, seems a bit too dark for me.
With a little less detail about Mr. Ricj and Powerful we may have had some more room for explanation, and this would have made a richer story form a rich one.
Decision- This is a hard one for me. It comes down to two stories with some similar strengths, and some similar weaknesses. Reading them both multiple times I think I expect somewhat better things form Berandor, and have to side with him.
Judgement- 2-1 for Berandor, who moves to the next round.
Berandor
lunatic
Wow. Thanks. Just to be clear on one thing, though (I'm at work now and can't comment thoroughly): I typed in "Robert I." in Google as well, before writing down the number of results
Perhaps I accidentally had it set to only search German pages...
Otherwise, kudos to MarauderX, who made this round as close as it was, and I'll definitely try to polish my next entry for both our sakes
Perhaps I accidentally had it set to only search German pages...
Otherwise, kudos to MarauderX, who made this round as close as it was, and I'll definitely try to polish my next entry for both our sakes
Last edited:
Graywolf-ELM
Explorer
alsih2o said:You (her) vs, Yangnome, tomorrow morning.
Any chance that ours can start tomorrow morning as well?
GW
Similar Threads
