alsih2o
First Post
Barsoomcore sent his early. Sorry I am late, I fired a kiln yesterday and still feel like a mule kicked me. Twice.
Final round Decision: Berandor Vs. Orchid Blossom
Alsih2o-
Orchid Blossom- Good story. Nothing blindingly brilliant, and I think the end could have maybe been more personal (maybe even by just naming the former partner?) but it is a good story.
I was impressed by the picture use, the light behind the cleric, the goofy pose by the rogue, the detail of the eye “scars” on the sorceress. The use of these details, and the skull, show me you were really shaping story and pics together.
Berandor- What a spooky story! So much unexplained, but in a good way.
The treatement of the half-elf, the shock of Raxos. The greed and misbehavior of the knight. Good world, even with so many huts. J
I would have appreciated at least a quick view of some of the other characters before they show up as a rape-gang, and a bit more on Raxos, some explanation of what was going down there.
The picture use is good, they are all there, but I favored OB on that one as she drew the details out. Your story is strong though, an your world drew me in more.
Judgement: OOB got more done with the pictures, but in the end Berandor kicked my butt by filling em with emotions that are not easily named. I choose Berandor.
Mythago-
THE PUPPET MASTER (orchid blossom)
It's a different take on the old "rogue gets his comeuppance"; I
particularly like his exit from the brothel, with arrows whizzing past
his ears. The pictures integrate into the story nicely, and Nigel's an
engaging protagonist. (Sophia, much less so, which is disappointing
given that she's the nominal 'winner'.) The interaction with Darien
really shines and is, I think, the best part of the story; seeing the
sun behind the cleric as an incoming spell is particularly well-done.
But it seems that the story hiccups around the pictures.
Why did Nigel hang on to the skull? He doesn't seem like the kind of guy
to hoard a valueless trophy. (I know the picture has a skull; but how
did it get there? It doesn't make sense that Nigel would have kept it.)
Why didn't Sophia arrange to deal with Nigel when she first stole the
chest, or better, that night in the brothel when he was completely at
her mercy? (It would have been easier to get the chest, then, too.)
Certainly she could have told her 'ride'--whose presence is completely
unexplained--that the puppet-Nigel was an associate, as he'd be in no
condition to complain. Why attack Darien? Surely it would be a Bad Idea
to irriate Darien's entire church.
And the ending is unsatisfying, because the person who gives Nigel his
comeuppance is a lot less likeable than he is. I couldn't see this as
what barsoomcore (correctly) refers to as a "Heh heh heh" story, because
who cares if Sophia wins? She's a bitch. And Nigel is likeable, if a
sleazeball. So there's no emotional punch one way or the other at the end.
THE HUNT (Berandor)
I found the world you drew here incredibly engaging; the
nobody-is-the-good-guy hatred between the humans and elves, the social
structure of Cedric's little village, the Hunt, the claustrophia of the
small society and how it affects Cedric and Allyria.
I found the prose wasn't quite up to the story in places. The opening
scene was, I'm sorry, a bit of an eye-roller: okay, we get that he's
upset and stumbling through the woods, but this was a bit overdone, even
given that Cedric is young and has a temper. (I kept expecting to hear
Linkin Park in the background.) There were too many places where you
lapsed into dictation, with the author explaining (rather than showing)
what's going on.
Let me give you an example. You could have told us that the elves are
just as hostile and nasty as the human villagers, but you show us in one
line: Cedric reminding Allyria of what they did to her mother. That
makes it very clear that the elves are much more than simply fending off
attacks. Contrast that to the two-paragraph explanation of the Hunt,
when we could easily have gotten the same information (and pretty much
did) by inference in the other conversations about Cedric's own Hunt.
The story really begins to pick up towards the end, when Cedric makes
his choice, and returns to the village....not quite the same. And the
full horror of his change--what he did to Allyria--is made clear,
without explanation or flourish.
Judgment this round for BERANDOR.
orchid blossom "The Puppet Master"
A tight little story, one that plays nicely with the little details in
the pictures. Your characters are nicely drawn
My problem with it is that the story's actually about Sophia, but we
get it from Nigel's point of view, and Nigel doesn't do much of
anything throughout. I know you're going for the surprise of "Nigel
done somebody wrong" ending -- but I can't help but think I'd have
enjoyed the story more if it were from Sophia's point of view.
This gives it a certain flatness, I'm afraid, since our involvement is
limited to watching Nigel react to Sophia's efforts. And Sophia's
efforts don't always make a lot of sense. If she wants Nigel to serve
her, why doesn't she do that to him in the first place? Why all the
fuss with the orc and the knight and the fireball?
The picture use is excellent (as always), however, and the story
certainly doesn't lag at any point. You keep things moving so fast that
there's no time to worry about story confusion during the reading. It's
only after, as I'm considering things, that I start going, "Hey, but
what about..."
But I think the fundamental problem here is that Nigel's not taking any
action -- he occasionally reacts to Sophia's actions, but even then
it's limited to ducking and running away. If Nigel had been more of
narrative force, I would have developed more of an emotional connection
to him. We get connected to characters who we observe trying to do
things. What they try to do and how they go about it are what tell us
about them, and what make us care about them or hate them. Since
Nigel's not doing very much, and what he is doing he's not doing in any
particular style, we don't get a good sense of him as a character, and
we don't care about him all that much.
This has been a problem for you throughout the competition, orchid
blossom -- main characters who don't take much action. I get the
feeling that you're shying away from the stories that really grip you
-- this story would have been very interesting from Sophia's point of
view, watching her get her revenge on her friend's bad boyfriend. But
from the point of view of the bad boyfriend -- who never does anything
very bad that we can see -- it's not super-satisfying.
In the beginning you set up that this Nigel character has had some good
luck -- which gives us the expectation that maybe his luck is about to
end. And while, yeah, his luck has ended, we don't watch him try to get
out of his predicament, nor do we watch things get progressively worse
and worse and worse. It's just -- now he's an orc, now he's stabbed,
now he's lost his money, now he's a puppet. If these things piled up
and up then that would build some tension in us as we wondered what
next for this poor guy. If he was scrambling and taking actions to
escape Sophia's plans, we'd be excited to see how he fared.
I'll just finish by pointing out that even the title of this story
suggests that it's really about Sophia, not Nigel.
Technically, you're a fine writer, orchid blossom. You've always been
economical with your prose and your characters have always been
well-drawn. I enjoy reading your stories. If I can suggest an exercise
you might benefit from -- try writing a story about a character trying
to do something utterly trivial. Open a door. Tie their shoes. Try to
come up with as many resistances to them completing this task as you
possibly can, and force your character to come up with ever more
desperate measures in order to succeed.
This is actually one of the bases of comedy -- trivial actions
encountering great resistances. The other is the opposite -- great
actions encountering trivial resistances. In any case, I really think
you'd benefit from deliberately trying to keep a story to a single
course of action, and keeping your focus on that.
If you want someone to read such efforts (or indeed anything you might
produce) please don't hesitate to ask me. I'd be happy to.
Berandor "The Hunt"
Wow, that was a nasty little tale. Not at all sure I approve, but not
in a bad way. Just... yuck. That was a story about a bunch of bad, bad
people. Doing bad, bad things.
First up -- props for the bravery, Berandor. That was a gutsy story.
Alright, let's get into it.
You do give fair warning in your opening scene. Cedric's looking like
kind of a jerk from square one, which you pay off later. To put it
mildly. Your language is a little plain, and you still tend to shift
voice without notification. The paragraph that starts with "Why had he
even asked her?" seems to be from the voice of Cedric, while the
following one seems to be from some other voice entirely. It's okay to
shift, but each shift needs to be clear and needs to serve a purpose.
Otherwise, why are you doing it?
That following paragraph ("It's not that Cedric was ugly.") is
problematic. It's a big chunk of exposition about somebody we don't
even know, serving no purpose that we're aware of. It's fine to dump
out exposition that is clearly giving the reader important information,
but at this point in the story I don't have any way of knowing if this
is important so I just get impatient and skip over it, then say to
myself, "No, I should really read this," and go back and read it, and
now you've lost me as a reader.
The fact that this exposition turns out to be pointless only rubs salt
in the wound. This has been a problem for you throughout this
competition, I know -- and you've improved dramatically, Berandor --
but you can't miss a step on your opening scene. If you don't get me
now, you never will.
But you do a good job setting up your story -- the racial issue and
Cedric's foul nature.
Allyria and her relationship with Cedric is a bit of a problem
logically. Why is she friends with this boor? Especially if he accepts
the village party line that elves are okay to kill. I would have bought
it if you'd made it clear that Cedric had suffered some change of heart
in deciding to go on the Hunt, but it seems like this has been his plan
all along, so I don't really see why she tolerates him.
I just want to add that the term "knight" isn't enough. If in this land
knights are people who kill elves, or defend the country from elves,
then I reckon they ought to have some proper title. Just me.
You do a good job at building up Cedric's point of view. Nobody has any
faith in him, nobody appreciates him. I'm actually sympathetic to him
at the point at which he heads off into the woods -- I'm hoping this
young chap learns a lesson and gains a little tenderness.
No such luck, huh?
And suddenly it's Raxos. The whole Raxos and his castle in the middle
of the forest kinda comes out of nowhere. It works for me, pretty much,
but that's mostly because I'm by now so wrapped up in Cedric and his
internal struggle that your external trappings aren't really bothering
me much at all. So you probably could have set this up a little better.
But, okay, castle in the woods, little smiley guy with a sinister offer
-- I have no real problem with this.
And then things get very unpleasant. And then they get even more
unpleasant. And at last they get more unpleasant than I care to think
about. Holy crap, Ber. You really went all the way with this one. I
admit it, I was shocked. Appalled. I felt cheated -- you'd gotten me to
care about this guy and then he turns out to be a complete jerk.
Nice job.
I'm struck by your improvement over the course of this contest, Ber.
Each story has been better than the previous one, braver, tighter, and
more ambitious. Each time you've gotten to a stronger emotional core
than the previous story.
Your weakness is in story structure. In this story, the castle and
Raxos are kind of thrown in without any explication or set-up or
anything. It's just, for some reason, there's this castle. Maybe it's a
function of Ceramic DM, but it seems that your stories have often
nearly foundered on structural issues -- either too much set-up, or
pointless scenes, or whatever. I suspect you're a writer who greatly
benefits from an edit session a week or so after writing the first
draft -- so that you can come back to it with a fresh eye and see the
unnecessary stuff.
My advice is to do just that -- and to make it your mission to always
cut about half of your story out. The way you write is to build stuff
up and up, and I suspect that when you start you don't always quite
know where you're going -- which is great, but which means that by the
time you get where you're going, you've gone down any number of dead
ends and your story needs a serious pruning.
Keep the idea of cutting half your story and I think your stories would
be much better. But this one was very, very strong.
Decision: Berandor
Final round Decision: Berandor Vs. Orchid Blossom
Alsih2o-
Orchid Blossom- Good story. Nothing blindingly brilliant, and I think the end could have maybe been more personal (maybe even by just naming the former partner?) but it is a good story.
I was impressed by the picture use, the light behind the cleric, the goofy pose by the rogue, the detail of the eye “scars” on the sorceress. The use of these details, and the skull, show me you were really shaping story and pics together.
Berandor- What a spooky story! So much unexplained, but in a good way.
The treatement of the half-elf, the shock of Raxos. The greed and misbehavior of the knight. Good world, even with so many huts. J
I would have appreciated at least a quick view of some of the other characters before they show up as a rape-gang, and a bit more on Raxos, some explanation of what was going down there.
The picture use is good, they are all there, but I favored OB on that one as she drew the details out. Your story is strong though, an your world drew me in more.
Judgement: OOB got more done with the pictures, but in the end Berandor kicked my butt by filling em with emotions that are not easily named. I choose Berandor.
Mythago-
THE PUPPET MASTER (orchid blossom)
It's a different take on the old "rogue gets his comeuppance"; I
particularly like his exit from the brothel, with arrows whizzing past
his ears. The pictures integrate into the story nicely, and Nigel's an
engaging protagonist. (Sophia, much less so, which is disappointing
given that she's the nominal 'winner'.) The interaction with Darien
really shines and is, I think, the best part of the story; seeing the
sun behind the cleric as an incoming spell is particularly well-done.
But it seems that the story hiccups around the pictures.
Why did Nigel hang on to the skull? He doesn't seem like the kind of guy
to hoard a valueless trophy. (I know the picture has a skull; but how
did it get there? It doesn't make sense that Nigel would have kept it.)
Why didn't Sophia arrange to deal with Nigel when she first stole the
chest, or better, that night in the brothel when he was completely at
her mercy? (It would have been easier to get the chest, then, too.)
Certainly she could have told her 'ride'--whose presence is completely
unexplained--that the puppet-Nigel was an associate, as he'd be in no
condition to complain. Why attack Darien? Surely it would be a Bad Idea
to irriate Darien's entire church.
And the ending is unsatisfying, because the person who gives Nigel his
comeuppance is a lot less likeable than he is. I couldn't see this as
what barsoomcore (correctly) refers to as a "Heh heh heh" story, because
who cares if Sophia wins? She's a bitch. And Nigel is likeable, if a
sleazeball. So there's no emotional punch one way or the other at the end.
THE HUNT (Berandor)
I found the world you drew here incredibly engaging; the
nobody-is-the-good-guy hatred between the humans and elves, the social
structure of Cedric's little village, the Hunt, the claustrophia of the
small society and how it affects Cedric and Allyria.
I found the prose wasn't quite up to the story in places. The opening
scene was, I'm sorry, a bit of an eye-roller: okay, we get that he's
upset and stumbling through the woods, but this was a bit overdone, even
given that Cedric is young and has a temper. (I kept expecting to hear
Linkin Park in the background.) There were too many places where you
lapsed into dictation, with the author explaining (rather than showing)
what's going on.
Let me give you an example. You could have told us that the elves are
just as hostile and nasty as the human villagers, but you show us in one
line: Cedric reminding Allyria of what they did to her mother. That
makes it very clear that the elves are much more than simply fending off
attacks. Contrast that to the two-paragraph explanation of the Hunt,
when we could easily have gotten the same information (and pretty much
did) by inference in the other conversations about Cedric's own Hunt.
The story really begins to pick up towards the end, when Cedric makes
his choice, and returns to the village....not quite the same. And the
full horror of his change--what he did to Allyria--is made clear,
without explanation or flourish.
Judgment this round for BERANDOR.
orchid blossom "The Puppet Master"
A tight little story, one that plays nicely with the little details in
the pictures. Your characters are nicely drawn
My problem with it is that the story's actually about Sophia, but we
get it from Nigel's point of view, and Nigel doesn't do much of
anything throughout. I know you're going for the surprise of "Nigel
done somebody wrong" ending -- but I can't help but think I'd have
enjoyed the story more if it were from Sophia's point of view.
This gives it a certain flatness, I'm afraid, since our involvement is
limited to watching Nigel react to Sophia's efforts. And Sophia's
efforts don't always make a lot of sense. If she wants Nigel to serve
her, why doesn't she do that to him in the first place? Why all the
fuss with the orc and the knight and the fireball?
The picture use is excellent (as always), however, and the story
certainly doesn't lag at any point. You keep things moving so fast that
there's no time to worry about story confusion during the reading. It's
only after, as I'm considering things, that I start going, "Hey, but
what about..."
But I think the fundamental problem here is that Nigel's not taking any
action -- he occasionally reacts to Sophia's actions, but even then
it's limited to ducking and running away. If Nigel had been more of
narrative force, I would have developed more of an emotional connection
to him. We get connected to characters who we observe trying to do
things. What they try to do and how they go about it are what tell us
about them, and what make us care about them or hate them. Since
Nigel's not doing very much, and what he is doing he's not doing in any
particular style, we don't get a good sense of him as a character, and
we don't care about him all that much.
This has been a problem for you throughout the competition, orchid
blossom -- main characters who don't take much action. I get the
feeling that you're shying away from the stories that really grip you
-- this story would have been very interesting from Sophia's point of
view, watching her get her revenge on her friend's bad boyfriend. But
from the point of view of the bad boyfriend -- who never does anything
very bad that we can see -- it's not super-satisfying.
In the beginning you set up that this Nigel character has had some good
luck -- which gives us the expectation that maybe his luck is about to
end. And while, yeah, his luck has ended, we don't watch him try to get
out of his predicament, nor do we watch things get progressively worse
and worse and worse. It's just -- now he's an orc, now he's stabbed,
now he's lost his money, now he's a puppet. If these things piled up
and up then that would build some tension in us as we wondered what
next for this poor guy. If he was scrambling and taking actions to
escape Sophia's plans, we'd be excited to see how he fared.
I'll just finish by pointing out that even the title of this story
suggests that it's really about Sophia, not Nigel.
Technically, you're a fine writer, orchid blossom. You've always been
economical with your prose and your characters have always been
well-drawn. I enjoy reading your stories. If I can suggest an exercise
you might benefit from -- try writing a story about a character trying
to do something utterly trivial. Open a door. Tie their shoes. Try to
come up with as many resistances to them completing this task as you
possibly can, and force your character to come up with ever more
desperate measures in order to succeed.
This is actually one of the bases of comedy -- trivial actions
encountering great resistances. The other is the opposite -- great
actions encountering trivial resistances. In any case, I really think
you'd benefit from deliberately trying to keep a story to a single
course of action, and keeping your focus on that.
If you want someone to read such efforts (or indeed anything you might
produce) please don't hesitate to ask me. I'd be happy to.
Berandor "The Hunt"
Wow, that was a nasty little tale. Not at all sure I approve, but not
in a bad way. Just... yuck. That was a story about a bunch of bad, bad
people. Doing bad, bad things.
First up -- props for the bravery, Berandor. That was a gutsy story.
Alright, let's get into it.
You do give fair warning in your opening scene. Cedric's looking like
kind of a jerk from square one, which you pay off later. To put it
mildly. Your language is a little plain, and you still tend to shift
voice without notification. The paragraph that starts with "Why had he
even asked her?" seems to be from the voice of Cedric, while the
following one seems to be from some other voice entirely. It's okay to
shift, but each shift needs to be clear and needs to serve a purpose.
Otherwise, why are you doing it?
That following paragraph ("It's not that Cedric was ugly.") is
problematic. It's a big chunk of exposition about somebody we don't
even know, serving no purpose that we're aware of. It's fine to dump
out exposition that is clearly giving the reader important information,
but at this point in the story I don't have any way of knowing if this
is important so I just get impatient and skip over it, then say to
myself, "No, I should really read this," and go back and read it, and
now you've lost me as a reader.
The fact that this exposition turns out to be pointless only rubs salt
in the wound. This has been a problem for you throughout this
competition, I know -- and you've improved dramatically, Berandor --
but you can't miss a step on your opening scene. If you don't get me
now, you never will.
But you do a good job setting up your story -- the racial issue and
Cedric's foul nature.
Allyria and her relationship with Cedric is a bit of a problem
logically. Why is she friends with this boor? Especially if he accepts
the village party line that elves are okay to kill. I would have bought
it if you'd made it clear that Cedric had suffered some change of heart
in deciding to go on the Hunt, but it seems like this has been his plan
all along, so I don't really see why she tolerates him.
I just want to add that the term "knight" isn't enough. If in this land
knights are people who kill elves, or defend the country from elves,
then I reckon they ought to have some proper title. Just me.
You do a good job at building up Cedric's point of view. Nobody has any
faith in him, nobody appreciates him. I'm actually sympathetic to him
at the point at which he heads off into the woods -- I'm hoping this
young chap learns a lesson and gains a little tenderness.
No such luck, huh?
And suddenly it's Raxos. The whole Raxos and his castle in the middle
of the forest kinda comes out of nowhere. It works for me, pretty much,
but that's mostly because I'm by now so wrapped up in Cedric and his
internal struggle that your external trappings aren't really bothering
me much at all. So you probably could have set this up a little better.
But, okay, castle in the woods, little smiley guy with a sinister offer
-- I have no real problem with this.
And then things get very unpleasant. And then they get even more
unpleasant. And at last they get more unpleasant than I care to think
about. Holy crap, Ber. You really went all the way with this one. I
admit it, I was shocked. Appalled. I felt cheated -- you'd gotten me to
care about this guy and then he turns out to be a complete jerk.
Nice job.
I'm struck by your improvement over the course of this contest, Ber.
Each story has been better than the previous one, braver, tighter, and
more ambitious. Each time you've gotten to a stronger emotional core
than the previous story.
Your weakness is in story structure. In this story, the castle and
Raxos are kind of thrown in without any explication or set-up or
anything. It's just, for some reason, there's this castle. Maybe it's a
function of Ceramic DM, but it seems that your stories have often
nearly foundered on structural issues -- either too much set-up, or
pointless scenes, or whatever. I suspect you're a writer who greatly
benefits from an edit session a week or so after writing the first
draft -- so that you can come back to it with a fresh eye and see the
unnecessary stuff.
My advice is to do just that -- and to make it your mission to always
cut about half of your story out. The way you write is to build stuff
up and up, and I suspect that when you start you don't always quite
know where you're going -- which is great, but which means that by the
time you get where you're going, you've gone down any number of dead
ends and your story needs a serious pruning.
Keep the idea of cutting half your story and I think your stories would
be much better. But this one was very, very strong.
Decision: Berandor
