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<blockquote data-quote="alsih2o" data-source="post: 1643603" data-attributes="member: 4790"><p>Francisca Vs. BSF</p><p></p><p> Barsoomcore-</p><p></p><p> Francisca "The continuing adventures of Agent Keady"</p><p></p><p>I'm always up for a little hard-boiled detective action. A Ceramic DM </p><p>mystery is quite an ambitious project -- mysteries live or die on the </p><p>presentation of clues and it's tough to get that right in such little </p><p>time.</p><p></p><p>But then this isn't really a mystery, is it? We know it's the </p><p>very-strangely-behaving Atanasia pretty much from the first second we </p><p>see her, so really the story is about why is she killing people, what's </p><p>up with the animals, and will our hero escape her hairy clutches? </p><p>Unfortunately, we only get an answer to the last of those questions, </p><p>unless she's just killing people because she's a werewolf.</p><p></p><p>On that note, you really need to be careful with the spellings of </p><p>"desert" and "dessert". Nothing kills a climactic moment like an </p><p>unintentional pun.</p><p></p><p>Usage: You use weak modifiers like "simply" and "quickly" and </p><p>"incredibly" -- words like this accomplish the opposite of what you </p><p>want them to accomplish -- they make things LESS impressive. Find the </p><p>right word and use it. Simply. <img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite8" alt=":D" title="Big grin :D" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":D" /></p><p></p><p>Look at a sentence like: "At the end of the day, despite his knowing </p><p>better, Keady could not help but be extremely attracted to Atanasia." </p><p>The only information in this is sentence is "Atanasia attracted Keady." </p><p>Everything else is just empty verbage that doesn't move the story or </p><p>reveal anything about these characters. And big sentences in passive </p><p>voice -- you should always watch out for those. A big sentence needs an </p><p>active verb to propel the reader, to give them a point of focus as they </p><p>make their way along. Passive voice is almost always a bad idea, and </p><p>it's definitely a bad idea in a sentence like this.</p><p></p><p>The plot moves fast enough and the story is nicely paced. But the </p><p>characters never come off the page. Agent Keady has no personality I </p><p>can discern, and Atanasia is so bizarre you start wondering why she </p><p>hasn't been locked up long ago. Her motives (and his) are unfathomable </p><p>-- why does she decide to kill Keady, given that she clearly comes into </p><p>contact with all sorts of men? Why Keady rather than some other random </p><p>guy? What's up with the animals?</p><p></p><p>Picture usage is a problem here as well. The shadow picture, the bait </p><p>and even the costume are all pretty much throwaways, having nothing to </p><p>do with the plot of the story.</p><p></p><p>Overall, the story, while moving through the plot speedily enough, </p><p>doesn't draw me in with interesting characters, nor entertain me with </p><p>deft language.</p><p></p><p></p><p>BardStephenFox "Delusional"</p><p></p><p>Half the fun of reading a good Ceramic DM entry is waiting for the </p><p>pictures to come, hoping they'll be key to the story, and being pleased </p><p>when they are.</p><p></p><p>Terrific picture use like this can lift just about any story up in my </p><p>estimation, and when a story is as inventive and well-paced as this </p><p>one, well, it's a real pleasure.</p><p></p><p>It suffers, though, from too many words. Whenever you write a paragraph </p><p>that's more than, say, five sentences long, reconsider what you're </p><p>doing. You've probably got more than you really need to get your point </p><p>across. Be especially cautious with regards to long stretches of </p><p>dialogue where one character just goes on and on.</p><p></p><p>Break it up, even if you have to keep all the words. It feels more like </p><p>conversation if my eye can take a break every now and then. But you </p><p>probably don't have to keep all the words.</p><p></p><p>"Dr. Clayton did not like waiting, even if they were billable hours." </p><p>The grammar's a bit imprecise (they? who are they?) but I like this </p><p>moment. It gives us a bit of an in to our "point-of-view" character, </p><p>and gives us a reference for whose eyes we're going to be seeing things </p><p>through.</p><p></p><p>Seeing Clayton react to Yu is much more important than reading </p><p>narratorial description of Yu. I think your story would be better </p><p>served if you gave us more of Clayton's <em>behaviour</em> rather than </p><p>his state of mind.</p><p></p><p>"This might be interesting." -- watch out for stuff like this. Are you </p><p>writing first-person or third-person? If you don't know what your point </p><p>of view is, your reader doesn't know. And if your reader doesn't know </p><p>what "lens is on the camera", the reader doesn't know what he's looking </p><p>at. If you see what I mean.</p><p></p><p>Too much explanation about Druids and magic and all that. She's a </p><p>Druid, he kills Druids, good enough. Move on. There's a lot of details </p><p>in this story that seem unnecessary. Why do we care that Yu's </p><p>grandparents were in the internment camps? What's the big deal with his </p><p>"non-prison" attire?</p><p></p><p>I'm complaining a lot about a story I generally liked quite a bit. But </p><p>spend some time with a good grammar text, and work hard to cut your </p><p>writing as much as you can. Be precise. Watch your grammar:</p><p></p><p>"Dr. Clayton had to agree, it did look like an angel." -- comma splice</p><p>"Mr. Yu was the one that committed the murder, he had provided a full </p><p>verbal confession" -- comma splice</p><p></p><p>Comma splices are a basic grammatical error. They occur when two full </p><p>sentences are joined by a comma -- which is incorrect usage. Separate </p><p>full sentences with either a period or, if you must, a semi-colon. </p><p>Simple errors like this keep your story from feeling 100% competent.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Decision: BardStephenFox</p><p></p><p></p><p> Mythago-</p><p></p><p> DELUSIONAL (BardStephenFox)</p><p></p><p>Lovely use of the pictures; they fit right in and moved the story along. I</p><p>believe Sialia once said that a pitfall of Ceramic DM is the temptation to</p><p>treat it like an amusement-park ride: you go around the circle, stop at</p><p>each picture along the way, and move on to the end. That's definitely not</p><p>the case here. Re-use isn't necessary, of course, but the bird first being</p><p>described by Darren and then physically viewed by Dr. Clayton--confirming</p><p>Darren's story in some way--is masterful.</p><p></p><p>The problem here is that the story itself bumps along in the way the</p><p>pictures don't. The narrative flow is fine, but the details tend to grate.</p><p>I'm going to set aside the "real world" issues about how insanity is</p><p>determined and what a psychiatrist would do and so forth in the interests</p><p>of not being a pedantic twit. However--if Lou can make Dr. clayton's pen</p><p>dry up, why is Darren in jail at all? It's no harder to screw up a booking</p><p>record than a prison transfer, so Lou could easily have given Darren the</p><p>equivalent of a get-out-of-jail-free card. (Or done the same with any</p><p>other paperwork; the indictment, the police report, etcera.)</p><p></p><p>Darren's speech is uneven. Sometimes he sounds uneducated and colloquial,</p><p>sometimes he's eloquent. There's also a tendency to throw meaningless</p><p>little actions into the dialogue--head-nodding, shrugging--more than is</p><p>necessary, and feelings told to us rather than shown.</p><p></p><p>I sensed that the story was trying to create tension between Darren's</p><p>being nuts and his telling the truth. That's pretty clearly resolved in</p><p>Darren's favor at the end. I'd prefer to have seen it way the other way at</p><p>the beginning, or have the ending more ambiguous.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF AGENT KEADY (francisca)</p><p></p><p>The story takes an awfully long time to get going. Much of the first</p><p>section is a description of Keady getting to where he's going, picking up</p><p>his luggage, and so forth; it sounds like a third-person version of a</p><p>report. It drags down the narrative to the point where Keady stumbling</p><p>across a clue was easy to overlook.</p><p></p><p>It's hinted that Keady is a lone wolf with an eye to the occult, not just</p><p>a random Fed, but that isn't explained. (If he is a random Fed, his</p><p>procedure is way sloppy. If he's an occult investigator, that explains his</p><p>following the Ricis around and his wondering about the circus.)</p><p></p><p>The most difficult picture--the giraffe--was nicely integrated, and the</p><p>boat chum was a good anchor for the scene on the boat. Unfortunately, the</p><p>shadows picture was barely mentioned at all.</p><p></p><p>Overall I wish the story had either pumped up the humorous, B-movie aspect</p><p>more or dropped it in favor of straight horror.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Judgement for BARDSTEPHENFOX</p><p></p><p> </p><p>Alsih2o-</p><p></p><p> 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.</p><p></p><p> 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.</p><p></p><p> And someone tell me what happened in Greenland!</p><p></p><p> The whole story feels a little hurried, but I usually forgive that as it si just 3 days.</p><p></p><p> 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.</p><p></p><p>BSF- A few flaws here. But just a few.</p><p></p><p> 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.</p><p></p><p> The double use of the dead bird works well, and I like the “feel” of the world.</p><p></p><p> Great stuff.</p><p></p><p> Judgement- Bard Stephen Fox.</p><p></p><p> Decision- 3-0 For BSF</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="alsih2o, post: 1643603, member: 4790"] 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. :D 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 [i]behaviour[/i] 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 [/QUOTE]
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