Ceramic Dm (final judgement posted, New Champion announced!)

[Noskov]

Okay, to start off, I just want to say that I agree with the judges in their decision and back it 100%. Below I have some answers and retorts to the opinions.

Barsoomcore-

Noskov "The Penitent Man"

Okay, a "bad guy gets his comeuppance" story. I'm a sucker for these and this one's not too bad at all. A couple of general comments first:

These stories are short -- get to the point quickly. It takes too long to get to "he's a bad guy".
The penitence doesn't feel bad enough to justify the story I just read. Sure, chipping stone balls is tedious, but as penance for a serial killer?

Not that I disagree, but the point was that Lonnie's sacrifice was what allowed him to be saved. In keeping with the theme of what Lonnie had to do, I had him serve the same penance. I also wanted the correlation to the rocks pic to be strong.

Okay, now let's get our hands dirty.

There's a lot of typos in this story. Please check your work before you submit it:
"I swam out and caught a mammoth and rode it" -- he caught a mammoth? Wow, is this Surfin' Pellucidar?
"I looked out to the see"
"I should head in after then next wave"

Those are all in one paragraph. You don't do yourself any favours with errors like these.

I was formatting as I typed the story.

Your style is simple, which is good, and reasonably terse, which is also good. Like many Ceramic entries, your beginning is flabby and your ending slightly underdone. It takes a long time to get to the revelation that our hero is a murderer, and then there's a long period of discussion on his childhood that finally leads into Lonnie's death.

I guess it's nice to hear I have a 'style'. I am an extremely poor and inexperienced writer. It's good to know I'm not quite as bad at is as I think I am. I have no idea what terse means.

THAT scene is very well done, however, and that's where this story really takes off.

I wanted so much more depth for this part of the story. I just don't know what else to say for this.

We have some sympathy for the narrator and his situation, but of course his actions are horrible.

I'm really glad the sympathy for the narrator came through. I wanted him to be despised for being the degenerate he was, but I also wanted it to be somewhat ambiguous if he were truly 'evil'. I wanted to bring up the question of was it really his fault because of his childhood, or did it even matter because of how brutal, selfish and uncaring he was.

You do need to watch out for cliched phrasing: "Like a mad bull," "like fire over a dry hayfield." Use metaphors sparingly and make each one count. Otherwise, just choose the correct word.

I actually left these parts blank until I finished the story, trying to figure out what best to put there. By the time I got done, I had to post it, so I just put the easiest and first things that came to mind....Probably a mistake, but I felt that I needed metaphores at this point in the story to convey the emotion of the situation.

I think you could have given us more on our narrator's reaction to the deaths of his brother and his father. A clear reaction here would provide us with insight into why he kept killing. Did he enjoy the experience? Why? What part of it did he enjoy?

I wanted to...so very very badly. Problem was, I knew exactly how much time I had to complete this story and I knew if I went further, I wouldn't finish. I had to leave some things out.

Plot issue: The storm seems very important in the early stages of the story, but it then just disappears. If it's important, it should be important. If it's not, why include it in the first place?

This is very interesting because I originally was intending for the storm to be important. I wrote this story, for the most part, from the beginning on and made it up as I went. I had no idea of what I wanted it to be when I started it....It actually started as an effort to come up with a use for the surfing pic (more on that later) and go from there.

As the story evolved, I woud come back and make changes as I thought necessary, based on how much time I had. I still considered the storm important, because that is altimately what kills the narrator.

"Around my wrists are shackles and I?m not sitting in the chair that Lonnie was in when I arrived." -- Why is this suddenly in present tense? And if he's not sitting in the chair, where is he? This is very confusing.
"the piles of spheres he carved eating voraciously" -- He carved spheres that ate voraciously?

Cramming for time at the end of the story. The fact that English is not a strong suit for me didn't help either. Tense is a major problem for me too, I struggle with it constantly.

In the end, this story satisfies. This is a strong Ceramic DM entry, for all its errors and typos. The pictures are used very well, without any throwaways, although getting from the first reference to the second is a bit of a slog. You need to get away from hackneyed phraseology, you need to be more rigorous in your usage and copyediting, and you need to be more ruthless in your cutting. Don't go easy on yourself. You've got a knack for storytelling. Develop it.

Thanks for this story.

Assuming you are not just being nice to me, I'm very happy that you liked the story. I thought it was overall mediocre at best. I liked the story and pic usage, but not how I related the story and ideas to the reader....If that makes any sense.

Mythago-

THE PENITENT MAN (Noskov)

A good story thread, a good beginning, a great ending, and a somewhat
muddled middle.

I loved the abrupt transition from a surfer story to something with
higher stakes (though I wondered, if the narrator drowned, why the whole
dolphin/shark thing mattered).

The bane of my Ceramic DM experience. The pic of the surfer was a complete block for me. It just so happened that I saw that very picture on the internet a day or two before it was posted in Ceramic DM. The picture itself is a real picture, but the shape is a dolphin. For whatever reason, I could not bring myself to call it a shark.

I did, however, leave the dolphin/shark thing in there on purpose. I knew it seemed pointless at the time, but I thought it was interesting when you came to the end and realized the guy is drowned in the water because he thought he saw a shark in the water and it scared him off his board. Kind of weak, but I thought slightly ironic.

The problem was that it sort of lost its
way trying to get to the end. The whole discussion with the old man was
hand-waved--why is the guy asking him things he already knows about? Why
isn't the narrator asking questions back, like "Who the hell are you and
how do you know about those murders?"

One of, in my opinion, the story's biggest weaknesses. I had wondered to myself as to his lack of questioning and what not and my basic answer was that he didn't care. This guy was already a victim in his mind and nothing else mattered. That being said....If I had the time, the relationship and dialoge between these two would have been much different.

While we get that the narrator is more than a few pixels short of a
screenshot, after the seminal killings of his brother and father, we
have no idea about the other eleven. People who looked like his dad?
People who got him mad? He follows a stranger down into a cave because
letting him drop to his death is "not my style," but we have no idea
what the narrator's style is. (It's also a little implausible that he'd
never have been so much as questioned in the deaths of his father and
brother, unless he's been a fugitive, but the story implies he's just
never been caught rather than actively evading a manhunt.)

I wanted to get into the other murders more and his reasons and the emotions and feelings all of it brought to him, but didn't have time.

The narrator's style is hands on brutality. It was never expressed, but I tried to imply it. If I had gone further into this scene, I think I would have done a better job of that.

His father stole them away from their mother. They were already hiding out and away from other people. They never interacted with anyone except for the father, who's only contact was hookers and junkies. No one really knew about them and the few that did, didn't care. Again, I tried to imply that, but certainly could have done a better job of it.

The word "penance" could be used less at the end--the repetition takes
out some of the punch.

Agreed. In my rush to get the entry done the thesaurus had been closed at this point.

Excellent use of the rock picture. I was disappointed by the shark; it
seemed important but then we find out the narrator drowned; his death
had nothing to do with the shark at all.

I still thought it was important because it was the reason he fell into the water in the first place.

Noskov- Wow.

The pic use on the round stones is some of the best pic use I have seen. There are several jarring moments in this story “Now he had my attention.” Is the first and I wondered if the wait was worth it. Then everything got darker.

I like the darker. There are a few clumsy moments- you have made a great show of getting me to sympathize with the killer except his motivation to keep following into the woods and down the hole. Something needs to add to his reasoning for me to not be distracted there.

The Lonnie pic was really good, the shark pic was alright and the pit pic was the weakest.

But wow did that rock pic work well.

Judgement- This one is a very tough call for me.. Really strong round- I usually have my decisions ready when I receive the other judges emails, but this one took me a long while. I think Noskovs highs are higher, but I have to side with the consistently good writing of Rodrigo

Decision- 3-0 for Rodrigo, thanks to you both

I will kind of skip this one because I think I've more or less addressed all of these comments. I thank you for your enthusiasm for my pic use. The one thing I really thought was good about the story was the pic use.




Thank you everyone for your comments and (very unexpected) praise. I'm truly sorry I couldn't put forth a better effort. When I was put in as an alternate, I never expected to actually play, so I didn't put any time aside in case it did come up. Excuses aside, it was fun and I thank everyone for the experience.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Response to feedback

This -- "Although he was by all appearances a young man" -- is intriguing, but this -- "draining what little strength he had left" -- begs to explain WHY he has little strength left.

A (clumsy) attempt at foreshadowing. I was hoping that when Simon's nature was revealed the reader would get some sense that there was a physical price the father was paying to remain on land as a human. You're right, it doesn't belong in the opening, as it asks questions that don't really get answered. It also indicates that something isn't as it seems when what I'm trying to establish -- the father-daughter relationship -- *is* as it appears.

I like the specific use of "cantalo" rather than "fish" -- of course fishermen would never just talk about "fish".

Thanks. I like little details like that in the stuff I read. It's a little harder to include in a short story, where space is tight and you want to avoid unneccesary exposition. It's a made up word (so far as I know), but since I'd borrowed 'adaro' from a Polynesian man-shark legend, I thought 'cantalo' sounded sufficiently Oceanic.

The reunion of Simon and Calliya is touching, though the exposition on were-sharks is a little clumsy. I know she's a were-shark. I just saw her change form, so I figured that out. Your problem is to communicate A) that Simon is just like her, and B) that when Sarenne grows up, she'll be like them, too. It's a lot of information to communicate -- trying to do it all in one paragraph is maybe a little too ambitious.

Agreed. That was by far the hardest part to write. Everything up to then sort of flowed, and the conclusion went very quickly. I didn't want to assume the reader would make the were-shark connection. Everyone on ENWorld would (heck, I was worried that the 'tired' line in the first paragraph would give it away), but someone whose only exposure to lycanthropy was Lon Chaney might not get it. I tried to split the difference between assuming an audience would need the connection between Simon, Sarenne and Calliya explicitly spelled out, and one that would immediately understand and be bored by lengthy explanations. This is absolutely the first part I would re-write. Suggestions welcome.

A very powerful story, an interesting ending without being a standard "happy ending."

Thanks. I'm a sucker for a dark ending myself, sometimes.

... nice contrast between Simon's care of the eggs as a human and his casual destruction as a shark.

That was intended to work several ways. One was to add additional justification to the turtle picture, which I felt wasn't used as well as it could have been. Another was to accentuate the nature of the were-sharks -- loving, nurturing on the one hand (Calliya providing the eggs, Simon conserving them) and yet still savage, apex predators on the others. It also served to provide a little taste of the conclusion. With their potential for violence understood, I could end with their revenge on the fishermen imminent. I felt ending with a sense of impending violence was more satisfying than a bunch of prose detailing the actual attack.

I was a bit put off by the "blow to the back of the head and our hero wakes up alone" sequence

Me, too. I had intended for a more drawn out section with them inflicting a lot more damage, torturing Simon and then almost killing him, with Calliya finding him nearly dead and returning him to the sea. I was starting to worry about length, and I also wanted to focus on the threat to Sarenne and thought that an extended action sequence would detract from that.

I like how we get a strong sense of the powers without a need to over-explain them, one of the luxuries of picking your audience. J An environmentalist monster- we need to see this stuff more often.

As I mentioned above, I got a little paralyzed by trying *not* to write to the audience too much. And Simon's insistence on saving half of the eggs wasn't done to illustrate any particular environmentalist sentiment on my part, but to demonstrate that Simon considered himself a part of the community and had adopted their ways and concerns.

Thanks for all the feedback (Berandor, too). It's been a long time since I wrote any fiction (or finished any, actually), and I've always had a hard time with it. I tend to write the story in my head and get bored putting it down on paper since I already know how it's going to end The Ceramic DM contest is a nice antidote to my lassitude. I'm just sorry to have waited so long to try and participate. When this is over I'm looking forward to going back and reading all the past contests' entries.

The bones of the story came together pretty quickly, with the combination of the shark picture and the face with it's silvery scars. The surfer-shark picture was so ominous, I really wanted to turn the expectations it set around. The eggs came next, as I tried to set up that Calliya was still looking out for her family. The cave picture came last, and to me felt the most tacked on, since the essence of the scene was the death of Sarenne; the location was picked to serve the picture.

Finally, I've got to learn to read the directions more carefully -- I got it stuck in my head that round one had a 4000 word limit, and had to do some last minute hatchet work. Oh, and thanks for not holding it against me that I ignored the fact that it's a dolphin in the picture, not a shark. I wasn't too sure how much liberty we could take with the photos. I figured it was safe to ignore anything terribly anachronistic (ie the wetsuit).

 

[barsoomcore]

Sorry to the very-patiently-waiting contestants -- I feel very bad that my judgements are taking so long.

And, of course, hoping that mythago and alsih2o are just as late as me and I'm not the one holding things up.

I am working my way through these entries, but I know you folks worked hard and I really want to give each story the attention it warrants.

As a general observation, based on many writing courses, workshops and hard-bitten discussions with other writers, editors and so on: be careful with responding to criticisms of your stories. The only REQUIRED response to anyone's opinion of your work is "Thank you for taking the time to think about it." When you respond in other ways, when you explain WHY you did something one way or the other, you put a foot on the path of justifying yourself. Which is death.

You want to prove you learned your lesson? Write another story. When you justify yourself, you lift from your shoulders the burden of proving yourself.

WHY statements can lead to interesting discussions, and out of those discussions you can learn a great deal, but be cautious. Those who spend most of their time TALKING about some activity are usually not those who spend most of their time actually DOING it. And it's easy to fool yourself that the one is the same as the other.

I'm not trying to dog on anyone, or kill conversation, but I know myself how easy it can be.

 

[orchid blossom]

Sorry to the very-patiently-waiting contestants -- I feel very bad that my judgements are taking so long.

No worries. I'd rather have a well thought out judgement than a quick one. With all the feedback I've had someplace to start with revisions. I can live with the wait for the benefit.

 

[alsih2o]

Francisca Vs. BSF

Barsoomcore-

Francisca "The continuing adventures of Agent Keady"

I'm always up for a little hard-boiled detective action. A Ceramic DM
mystery is quite an ambitious project -- mysteries live or die on the
presentation of clues and it's tough to get that right in such little
time.

But then this isn't really a mystery, is it? We know it's the
very-strangely-behaving Atanasia pretty much from the first second we
see her, so really the story is about why is she killing people, what's
up with the animals, and will our hero escape her hairy clutches?
Unfortunately, we only get an answer to the last of those questions,
unless she's just killing people because she's a werewolf.

On that note, you really need to be careful with the spellings of
"desert" and "dessert". Nothing kills a climactic moment like an
unintentional pun.

Usage: You use weak modifiers like "simply" and "quickly" and
"incredibly" -- words like this accomplish the opposite of what you
want them to accomplish -- they make things LESS impressive. Find the
right word and use it. Simply.

Look at a sentence like: "At the end of the day, despite his knowing
better, Keady could not help but be extremely attracted to Atanasia."
The only information in this is sentence is "Atanasia attracted Keady."
Everything else is just empty verbage that doesn't move the story or
reveal anything about these characters. And big sentences in passive
voice -- you should always watch out for those. A big sentence needs an
active verb to propel the reader, to give them a point of focus as they
make their way along. Passive voice is almost always a bad idea, and
it's definitely a bad idea in a sentence like this.

The plot moves fast enough and the story is nicely paced. But the
characters never come off the page. Agent Keady has no personality I
can discern, and Atanasia is so bizarre you start wondering why she
hasn't been locked up long ago. Her motives (and his) are unfathomable
-- why does she decide to kill Keady, given that she clearly comes into
contact with all sorts of men? Why Keady rather than some other random
guy? What's up with the animals?

Picture usage is a problem here as well. The shadow picture, the bait
and even the costume are all pretty much throwaways, having nothing to
do with the plot of the story.

Overall, the story, while moving through the plot speedily enough,
doesn't draw me in with interesting characters, nor entertain me with
deft language.


BardStephenFox "Delusional"

Half the fun of reading a good Ceramic DM entry is waiting for the
pictures to come, hoping they'll be key to the story, and being pleased
when they are.

Terrific picture use like this can lift just about any story up in my
estimation, and when a story is as inventive and well-paced as this
one, well, it's a real pleasure.

It suffers, though, from too many words. Whenever you write a paragraph
that's more than, say, five sentences long, reconsider what you're
doing. You've probably got more than you really need to get your point
across. Be especially cautious with regards to long stretches of
dialogue where one character just goes on and on.

Break it up, even if you have to keep all the words. It feels more like
conversation if my eye can take a break every now and then. But you
probably don't have to keep all the words.

"Dr. Clayton did not like waiting, even if they were billable hours."
The grammar's a bit imprecise (they? who are they?) but I like this
moment. It gives us a bit of an in to our "point-of-view" character,
and gives us a reference for whose eyes we're going to be seeing things
through.

Seeing Clayton react to Yu is much more important than reading
narratorial description of Yu. I think your story would be better
served if you gave us more of Clayton's behaviour rather than
his state of mind.

"This might be interesting." -- watch out for stuff like this. Are you
writing first-person or third-person? If you don't know what your point
of view is, your reader doesn't know. And if your reader doesn't know
what "lens is on the camera", the reader doesn't know what he's looking
at. If you see what I mean.

Too much explanation about Druids and magic and all that. She's a
Druid, he kills Druids, good enough. Move on. There's a lot of details
in this story that seem unnecessary. Why do we care that Yu's
grandparents were in the internment camps? What's the big deal with his
"non-prison" attire?

I'm complaining a lot about a story I generally liked quite a bit. But
spend some time with a good grammar text, and work hard to cut your
writing as much as you can. Be precise. Watch your grammar:

"Dr. Clayton had to agree, it did look like an angel." -- comma splice
"Mr. Yu was the one that committed the murder, he had provided a full
verbal confession" -- comma splice

Comma splices are a basic grammatical error. They occur when two full
sentences are joined by a comma -- which is incorrect usage. Separate
full sentences with either a period or, if you must, a semi-colon.
Simple errors like this keep your story from feeling 100% competent.


Decision: BardStephenFox


Mythago-

DELUSIONAL (BardStephenFox)

Lovely use of the pictures; they fit right in and moved the story along. I
believe Sialia once said that a pitfall of Ceramic DM is the temptation to
treat it like an amusement-park ride: you go around the circle, stop at
each picture along the way, and move on to the end. That's definitely not
the case here. Re-use isn't necessary, of course, but the bird first being
described by Darren and then physically viewed by Dr. Clayton--confirming
Darren's story in some way--is masterful.

The problem here is that the story itself bumps along in the way the
pictures don't. The narrative flow is fine, but the details tend to grate.
I'm going to set aside the "real world" issues about how insanity is
determined and what a psychiatrist would do and so forth in the interests
of not being a pedantic twit. However--if Lou can make Dr. clayton's pen
dry up, why is Darren in jail at all? It's no harder to screw up a booking
record than a prison transfer, so Lou could easily have given Darren the
equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card. (Or done the same with any
other paperwork; the indictment, the police report, etcera.)

Darren's speech is uneven. Sometimes he sounds uneducated and colloquial,
sometimes he's eloquent. There's also a tendency to throw meaningless
little actions into the dialogue--head-nodding, shrugging--more than is
necessary, and feelings told to us rather than shown.

I sensed that the story was trying to create tension between Darren's
being nuts and his telling the truth. That's pretty clearly resolved in
Darren's favor at the end. I'd prefer to have seen it way the other way at
the beginning, or have the ending more ambiguous.



THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF AGENT KEADY (francisca)

The story takes an awfully long time to get going. Much of the first
section is a description of Keady getting to where he's going, picking up
his luggage, and so forth; it sounds like a third-person version of a
report. It drags down the narrative to the point where Keady stumbling
across a clue was easy to overlook.

It's hinted that Keady is a lone wolf with an eye to the occult, not just
a random Fed, but that isn't explained. (If he is a random Fed, his
procedure is way sloppy. If he's an occult investigator, that explains his
following the Ricis around and his wondering about the circus.)

The most difficult picture--the giraffe--was nicely integrated, and the
boat chum was a good anchor for the scene on the boat. Unfortunately, the
shadows picture was barely mentioned at all.

Overall I wish the story had either pumped up the humorous, B-movie aspect
more or dropped it in favor of straight horror.


Judgement for BARDSTEPHENFOX


Alsih2o-

Francisca starts us off with a picture as a picture. I hate that. J I will give him some credit for making it a “Real” scene though.

All of the pictures here are used as what they really are. Now, it is difficult, but I like it when someone surprises me with something from the pics.

And someone tell me what happened in Greenland!

The whole story feels a little hurried, but I usually forgive that as it si just 3 days.

The real high point- killing a werewolf with a pieve of silverware (which I LOVED) would have been stronger if he had taken the silverware with a reason, I am slightly bothered by him taking it and not knowing why.

BSF- A few flaws here. But just a few.

The pic use is really good. Everything that is in the pics is included, plus that twist I love to see. The shadow pic is pretty straitforward, but the additions of the fish just hiding bodies and the transforming druid rock.

The double use of the dead bird works well, and I like the “feel” of the world.

Great stuff.

Judgement- Bard Stephen Fox.

Decision- 3-0 For BSF

 

[mythago]

or, if you must, a semi-colon

Hey. Don't you be dissin' semicolons.

I am out of town Friday through Monday, so any entries over the weekend likely won't get read by me until Tuesday.

 

[Macbeth]

Way to go, BSF! (Any chance of salsa as a celebration this Friday? Only kidding...)

 

[BSF]

Whoa! Judgements posted like 3 1/2 hours ago and I somehow missed it. Yipes!

First off, thank you for the story Francisca! Werewolves are fun and I think Agent Keady encountering one makes for a good story idea.

For the judges: Wow, thanks for the kind words on the story.

I am very pleased that you enjoyed the dual use for the angel picture. I decided I was taking a chance on that one, since it would be unusual to have an illustration used twice for a story, but it felt right.

I was expecting to get nailed for a few things and I am oddly pleased that I did. I say pleased because I know my writing skills need polish and I enjoy the feedback.

Barsoomcore - I have been thinking that I really need to take a brush-up course on grammar. While I always loved reading, I despised grammar classes in school. Looking back on it, and contrasting my scholastic experiences with people I know, I did not have the most dynamic teachers. It's really not a good excuse, and it is one that I think I need to correct. Any advice on good books providing a strong overview of grammar would be appreciated.

I do suffer from verbosity. I even cut stuff out of the story and it still had too much verbosity. Tighten my stories and improve my grammar is the message I am hearing.

Mythago - What can I say? Doh! *bangs head on desk* You are, of course, correct. It would be an easy thing for a demon with Lou's talents to find some way for Darren to be free. What a plot hole! I actually knew that I would have a little more difficulty with some of the details with you in the "audience", but I chose to take the risk. This was the third story my muse tried to feed me and I was running out of time. The other two didn't have anywhere to go.

Darren's style is a bit jumbled. I had difficulty finding his voice and his style as I was writing. I need to make a decision on his style, or better explain why it is erratic.

I am very pleased that you all thought the story stood on it's own. The story my muse handed me, as a final option, was really just a prelude to another story I have written. (Rainmaker) I wanted people who have read both stories to see some of the potential links, but I needed this one to stand alone if you hadn't read the other.

Thank you for the feedback! If anyone else has any desire to throw their thoughts out there, I would certainly welcome them! Either in this thread, or in the Judge Free Commentary thread. Though, since my story has been judged, you do not need to worry about biasing judgements, so this thread is fine.

 

[BSF]

Way to go, BSF! (Any chance of salsa as a celebration this Friday? Only kidding...)

*laugh* Possibly. The salsa garden is still maturing so it wouldn't be garden fresh. But, I like salsa and it might not be a bad idea to placate my muse ahead of time.

 

[barsoomcore]

Hey. Don't you be dissin' semicolons.

I'm a fan of a well-placed semi-colon. I advise their use with caution, however, because so few people know how to use them properly.

A semi-colon is like champagne -- you wouldn't want it every day, but when it's the right thing, it is SO the right thing.

Better now?

BSF: Grammatical inexactitude (man, I'm so pleased with that phrase) is one of the easiest ways to distinguish amateur writers. Grammar is one of your two basic toolkits -- the other being vocabulary. Develop both. If you were learning carpentry, you'd spend a lot of time figuring out the differences between cross-cut and rip saws, ballpeen and claw hammers and so on. As a writer, if you take your craft seriously, you have to spend a lot of time learning the tools at your disposal.

Here's a GREAT resource: Bartleby.com -- lots of classic texts on usage.

Learn, love, live.

"Grammatical inexactitude" how often do you get to use a phrase like that?