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<blockquote data-quote="alsih2o" data-source="post: 1651740" data-attributes="member: 4790"><p>Barsoomcore-</p><p></p><p> RPGgirl "20090 Upanga Road"</p><p></p><p>First off, I really enjoyed this story. A seemingly effortless glide </p><p>from one picture to the next -- which is what Ceramic DM is all about. </p><p>You couldn't tell this story without the pictures, and that's exactly </p><p>how it should be. The images of Derek on his little pig bike and Ngai </p><p>in the fish tank are central to the story, and even the books, which </p><p>might be considered a throwaway, are so emotionally charged that you </p><p>get away with it just fine.</p><p></p><p>Very well told. So now I'm going to tear it to little bits. That's what </p><p>you signed up for, isn't it?</p><p></p><p>You suffer from unclear descriptions. I can't always see what's going </p><p>on -- or rather, once you've set the scene, you seem to violate what </p><p>you just said and so I get confused.</p><p></p><p>Take Derek's first arrival at the enkang. He looks in, sees no one but </p><p>some kids, calls out and turns away. A voice calls "from the recesses </p><p>of the biggest hut." Derek turns back "to face a seven foot Maasai </p><p>warrior wrapped in bright red silk." This is confusing. Did the seven </p><p>foot tall Maasai emerge from the hut? Did he materialize behind Derek? </p><p>Suddenly you're changing my impression of what the scene is, and so I </p><p>start to doubt my initial impression, and I get confused and you lose </p><p>the evocation of the scene you originally had.</p><p></p><p>Another: at the end of the conversation with the Maasai, we see Derek, </p><p>"jumping astride the bike and peddling back Dar as fast as he could." </p><p>Which is fine, except that after Derek has evidently returned to Dar, </p><p>the Maasai calls out to him. "Oh, I see," says your reader, "He didn't </p><p>peddle back TO Dar, he peddled back TOWARDS Dar. I get it now." But by </p><p>now your reader is no longer engrossed in the story.</p><p></p><p>This sort of thing is common throughout the story.</p><p></p><p>"Still skeptical, Derek returned to the elder’s hut. Entering, he was </p><p>surprised by the enkang shaman waiting just inside the door." Why was </p><p>he surprised? Was she doing something strange? Was she hovering at the </p><p>doorway? Painted blue?</p><p></p><p>Okay, enough about that. You get the idea. Let's talk about structure. </p><p>Derek's problem (I think) is that he's kind of lazy. He got himself </p><p>into this rather interesting mess (delivering pork in Dar Es Salaam) </p><p>because he didn't apply himself thoroughly enough, and his uncle is </p><p>forever drilling the lesson of industry into his head. I'd like to have </p><p>seen more made of this. Maybe what we needed to see more clearly was </p><p>Derek's laziness early on, in order to contrast it with what he does </p><p>for Ngai. Though then I'm wondering why Ngai gets the hard-working </p><p>Derek...</p><p></p><p>You spend too much time explaining what needs to be done to restore </p><p>Ngai. It feels like you don't think I'll believe you unless you provide </p><p>lots of context. Keep in mind that Ngai is basically a MaGuffin, and as </p><p>such, you don't want to spend any more time on it than absolutely </p><p>necessary. Once the audience has it, move on. It's the LEAST important </p><p>part of your story. What matters isn't who Ngai is or why Derek has to </p><p>be the one to free him. What matters is what happens to Derek.</p><p></p><p>Very fine story indeed, RPGgirl. A real pleasure.</p><p></p><p></p><p>yangnome "Mother Knows Best"</p><p></p><p>If you're going to build your story out of big blocky paragraphs, you'd </p><p>better be supplying some energetic, poetically muscular prose to power </p><p>your readers through those great big undigested chunks. To be honest, </p><p>this was a hard story to get through. I kept skimming rather than </p><p>reading, because of those big paragraphs.</p><p></p><p>Hemingway can do it. But even Hemingway breaks it up and delivers some </p><p>one-line paragraphs to build a rhythm with the reader. And not many </p><p>people can write like ol' Ernest.</p><p></p><p>If your story is going to be based on the slow recovering of memory, </p><p>there'd better be some urgency to that recovery. It needs to MATTER if </p><p>our hero figures out the truth now or later, otherwise, who cares?</p><p></p><p>THIS story doesn't get started until the "brotherhood" enters the </p><p>scene. And even then it's not until we learn that the brotherhood </p><p>harbours some dark secret that we see any reason to even be interested </p><p>-- and by this time your story's nearly over.</p><p></p><p>You need to cut about 75% of this story out. Seriously, this is a </p><p>1,000-word story.</p><p></p><p>There's also a problem with point of view. Is this the thoughts of our </p><p>hero as he discovers the truth? The first paragraph ("I guess you'll </p><p>have to bear with me for a couple minutes") suggests that but then why </p><p>is the whole thing in past tense? And what's up with the italicized </p><p>bits? They're not clearly differentiated from the rest of the story. I </p><p>know what they're supposed to be: our hero's "quoted" thoughts. But </p><p>then you get lines like, "There is no way I could live me life like </p><p>this," which ought to be italicized but aren't. And these sorts of </p><p>inconsistencies really make it hard for me to embrace the story and </p><p>lose myself in it.</p><p></p><p>The story as I see it is of a fellow who joined up with an unsavoury </p><p>group, didn't take their evil seriously, and got betrayed by them. But </p><p>this story is hard to find behind an unnecessary set of contrivances </p><p>like the memory loss and the discussions of reincarnation, and the end </p><p>result is that the story itself is robbed of its strength.</p><p></p><p>Betrayal only means something if we care about the people involved. And </p><p>the only way to get us to care about these people is make them the </p><p>center of the story. I feel like you're shying away from the actual </p><p>emotional core of your story -- which is a betrayal of a friend -- and </p><p>giving me a lot of smoke and mirrors that I don't care about. Show me </p><p>the friendship and THEN turn it into a bitter act of cold-hearted </p><p>betrayal. NOW you've got a story.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Decision: RPGgirl</p><p></p><p></p><p> Mythago-</p><p></p><p> 20090 UPANGA ROAD (RPGgirl)</p><p></p><p>The biggest believability hurdle is Derek getting sent to Africa to live </p><p>with his uncle--a foster home, or a residential foster care place, would </p><p>be far more likely than placing him in Africa unless his uncle jumped </p><p>through all the hoops to get him there. I'd trim the details about all </p><p>the other options closed to him.</p><p></p><p>The rest of the story hangs together quite nicely. Why does Derek have </p><p>to do this task? Magic reasons; he's a foreigner. Is he saving the </p><p>world? No, but he's helping a lot of people who couldn't otherwise be </p><p>saved through normal means. I'd leave out the stuff about 'child of </p><p>Africa'--it just sounds off. And it would be better to actually hear </p><p>Erasto speak to Derek, rather than giving us the summary version of Ngai </p><p>and his imprisonment.</p><p></p><p>I very much like that Derek, while a likeable kid, is still a kid and </p><p>not the Hero Reborn. The Masai admit that they weren't exactly expecting </p><p>him (though they are kind about it), and he has normal-person problems </p><p>getting in and freeing Ngai. However--I know that it's tricky to get </p><p>Derek from freeing Ngai to back out of the aquarium in a narratively </p><p>interesting fashion, but "it all went black and then he woke up in his </p><p>own bed" is a little too much of the easy way out.</p><p></p><p>Very good use of the pictures. The books, while briefly shown, tied into </p><p>the emotional theme of Derek's loss of his father and his future.</p><p></p><p></p><p>MOTHER KNOWS BEST (yanggnome)</p><p></p><p>Small credibility point: if the narrator is eviscerated and waiting to </p><p>die, how is he writing all this down? (He tells us he's writing.) Either </p><p>he's not dying, in which case he's probably figured out an afterlife is </p><p>not in the cards, or he's dying and would be unlikely to carefully write </p><p>all this out.</p><p></p><p>The Uglyfish photo, highlighting the most dramatic moment of the story, </p><p>was nicely used. The book and bicycle photos, unfortunately, were pretty </p><p>much throwaways. (I'm also not sure why our narrator would be in an </p><p>unfamiliar place alone with a stack of his books.)</p><p></p><p>I liked the way the story started out, with the single, irrelevant </p><p>memory of throwing pencils into the ceiling, and the narrator's </p><p>frustration at remembering one useless, frustrating memory. The problem </p><p>is that the memories that explain it all come in a long rush, after he </p><p>sees the sharps container. After seeing himself in the tank it's kind of </p><p>anticlimactic, and it feels forced. Bits and pieces slowly building to a </p><p>conclusion, or one huge rush when he sees what he really is: either </p><p>would work, but the long tale about the fraternity feels kind of tacked on.</p><p></p><p>Judgment this round for RPGGIRL</p><p></p><p></p><p> Alsih2o-</p><p></p><p> RPGgirl gives us a cute, interesting, quirky little tale. It has some wording and language problems but they fall aside for em as the pictures work smoothly into the text and the images provided by them and by the author work harmoniously to drag me along through the story.</p><p></p><p> There area s I said, some bumps. The push to industry by the uncle followed by him sending the hero to bed, things like that can be distracting but they washed away for me under the weight of the interesting characters and the cool use of pictures.</p><p></p><p> Yangnome- To be honest I am made a little uncomfortable by the opening text. The whole part about being unable to move and in pain and not knowing where you are doesn’t lean towards the almost casual writing style of the narrator.</p><p></p><p> I really did like most of the picture usage, the Uglygfish pic especially. Unexpected use always gets extra points from me. But I still feel there is a large hole here. Like two stories are being told and the author hasn’t realy dedicated to one over the other.</p><p></p><p> Good pic use, but some failure in…cohesiveness?</p><p></p><p> Judgement: RPGgirl</p><p></p><p> Decision: RPGgirl 3-0</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="alsih2o, post: 1651740, member: 4790"] Barsoomcore- RPGgirl "20090 Upanga Road" First off, I really enjoyed this story. A seemingly effortless glide from one picture to the next -- which is what Ceramic DM is all about. You couldn't tell this story without the pictures, and that's exactly how it should be. The images of Derek on his little pig bike and Ngai in the fish tank are central to the story, and even the books, which might be considered a throwaway, are so emotionally charged that you get away with it just fine. Very well told. So now I'm going to tear it to little bits. That's what you signed up for, isn't it? You suffer from unclear descriptions. I can't always see what's going on -- or rather, once you've set the scene, you seem to violate what you just said and so I get confused. Take Derek's first arrival at the enkang. He looks in, sees no one but some kids, calls out and turns away. A voice calls "from the recesses of the biggest hut." Derek turns back "to face a seven foot Maasai warrior wrapped in bright red silk." This is confusing. Did the seven foot tall Maasai emerge from the hut? Did he materialize behind Derek? Suddenly you're changing my impression of what the scene is, and so I start to doubt my initial impression, and I get confused and you lose the evocation of the scene you originally had. Another: at the end of the conversation with the Maasai, we see Derek, "jumping astride the bike and peddling back Dar as fast as he could." Which is fine, except that after Derek has evidently returned to Dar, the Maasai calls out to him. "Oh, I see," says your reader, "He didn't peddle back TO Dar, he peddled back TOWARDS Dar. I get it now." But by now your reader is no longer engrossed in the story. This sort of thing is common throughout the story. "Still skeptical, Derek returned to the elder’s hut. Entering, he was surprised by the enkang shaman waiting just inside the door." Why was he surprised? Was she doing something strange? Was she hovering at the doorway? Painted blue? Okay, enough about that. You get the idea. Let's talk about structure. Derek's problem (I think) is that he's kind of lazy. He got himself into this rather interesting mess (delivering pork in Dar Es Salaam) because he didn't apply himself thoroughly enough, and his uncle is forever drilling the lesson of industry into his head. I'd like to have seen more made of this. Maybe what we needed to see more clearly was Derek's laziness early on, in order to contrast it with what he does for Ngai. Though then I'm wondering why Ngai gets the hard-working Derek... You spend too much time explaining what needs to be done to restore Ngai. It feels like you don't think I'll believe you unless you provide lots of context. Keep in mind that Ngai is basically a MaGuffin, and as such, you don't want to spend any more time on it than absolutely necessary. Once the audience has it, move on. It's the LEAST important part of your story. What matters isn't who Ngai is or why Derek has to be the one to free him. What matters is what happens to Derek. Very fine story indeed, RPGgirl. A real pleasure. yangnome "Mother Knows Best" If you're going to build your story out of big blocky paragraphs, you'd better be supplying some energetic, poetically muscular prose to power your readers through those great big undigested chunks. To be honest, this was a hard story to get through. I kept skimming rather than reading, because of those big paragraphs. Hemingway can do it. But even Hemingway breaks it up and delivers some one-line paragraphs to build a rhythm with the reader. And not many people can write like ol' Ernest. If your story is going to be based on the slow recovering of memory, there'd better be some urgency to that recovery. It needs to MATTER if our hero figures out the truth now or later, otherwise, who cares? THIS story doesn't get started until the "brotherhood" enters the scene. And even then it's not until we learn that the brotherhood harbours some dark secret that we see any reason to even be interested -- and by this time your story's nearly over. You need to cut about 75% of this story out. Seriously, this is a 1,000-word story. There's also a problem with point of view. Is this the thoughts of our hero as he discovers the truth? The first paragraph ("I guess you'll have to bear with me for a couple minutes") suggests that but then why is the whole thing in past tense? And what's up with the italicized bits? They're not clearly differentiated from the rest of the story. I know what they're supposed to be: our hero's "quoted" thoughts. But then you get lines like, "There is no way I could live me life like this," which ought to be italicized but aren't. And these sorts of inconsistencies really make it hard for me to embrace the story and lose myself in it. The story as I see it is of a fellow who joined up with an unsavoury group, didn't take their evil seriously, and got betrayed by them. But this story is hard to find behind an unnecessary set of contrivances like the memory loss and the discussions of reincarnation, and the end result is that the story itself is robbed of its strength. Betrayal only means something if we care about the people involved. And the only way to get us to care about these people is make them the center of the story. I feel like you're shying away from the actual emotional core of your story -- which is a betrayal of a friend -- and giving me a lot of smoke and mirrors that I don't care about. Show me the friendship and THEN turn it into a bitter act of cold-hearted betrayal. NOW you've got a story. Decision: RPGgirl Mythago- 20090 UPANGA ROAD (RPGgirl) The biggest believability hurdle is Derek getting sent to Africa to live with his uncle--a foster home, or a residential foster care place, would be far more likely than placing him in Africa unless his uncle jumped through all the hoops to get him there. I'd trim the details about all the other options closed to him. The rest of the story hangs together quite nicely. Why does Derek have to do this task? Magic reasons; he's a foreigner. Is he saving the world? No, but he's helping a lot of people who couldn't otherwise be saved through normal means. I'd leave out the stuff about 'child of Africa'--it just sounds off. And it would be better to actually hear Erasto speak to Derek, rather than giving us the summary version of Ngai and his imprisonment. I very much like that Derek, while a likeable kid, is still a kid and not the Hero Reborn. The Masai admit that they weren't exactly expecting him (though they are kind about it), and he has normal-person problems getting in and freeing Ngai. However--I know that it's tricky to get Derek from freeing Ngai to back out of the aquarium in a narratively interesting fashion, but "it all went black and then he woke up in his own bed" is a little too much of the easy way out. Very good use of the pictures. The books, while briefly shown, tied into the emotional theme of Derek's loss of his father and his future. MOTHER KNOWS BEST (yanggnome) Small credibility point: if the narrator is eviscerated and waiting to die, how is he writing all this down? (He tells us he's writing.) Either he's not dying, in which case he's probably figured out an afterlife is not in the cards, or he's dying and would be unlikely to carefully write all this out. The Uglyfish photo, highlighting the most dramatic moment of the story, was nicely used. The book and bicycle photos, unfortunately, were pretty much throwaways. (I'm also not sure why our narrator would be in an unfamiliar place alone with a stack of his books.) I liked the way the story started out, with the single, irrelevant memory of throwing pencils into the ceiling, and the narrator's frustration at remembering one useless, frustrating memory. The problem is that the memories that explain it all come in a long rush, after he sees the sharps container. After seeing himself in the tank it's kind of anticlimactic, and it feels forced. Bits and pieces slowly building to a conclusion, or one huge rush when he sees what he really is: either would work, but the long tale about the fraternity feels kind of tacked on. Judgment this round for RPGGIRL Alsih2o- RPGgirl gives us a cute, interesting, quirky little tale. It has some wording and language problems but they fall aside for em as the pictures work smoothly into the text and the images provided by them and by the author work harmoniously to drag me along through the story. There area s I said, some bumps. The push to industry by the uncle followed by him sending the hero to bed, things like that can be distracting but they washed away for me under the weight of the interesting characters and the cool use of pictures. Yangnome- To be honest I am made a little uncomfortable by the opening text. The whole part about being unable to move and in pain and not knowing where you are doesn’t lean towards the almost casual writing style of the narrator. I really did like most of the picture usage, the Uglygfish pic especially. Unexpected use always gets extra points from me. But I still feel there is a large hole here. Like two stories are being told and the author hasn’t realy dedicated to one over the other. Good pic use, but some failure in…cohesiveness? Judgement: RPGgirl Decision: RPGgirl 3-0 [/QUOTE]
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