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<blockquote data-quote="alsih2o" data-source="post: 1731467" data-attributes="member: 4790"><p>Barsoomcore sent his early. Sorry I am late, I fired a kiln yesterday and still feel like a mule kicked me. Twice.</p><p></p><p> Final round Decision: Berandor Vs. Orchid Blossom</p><p></p><p> Alsih2o-</p><p></p><p>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.</p><p></p><p> 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.</p><p></p><p> Berandor- What a spooky story! So much unexplained, but in a good way.</p><p></p><p> 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</p><p></p><p> 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.</p><p></p><p> 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. </p><p></p><p> 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.</p><p></p><p> Mythago-</p><p></p><p> </p><p></p><p> THE PUPPET MASTER (orchid blossom)</p><p></p><p>It's a different take on the old "rogue gets his comeuppance"; I </p><p>particularly like his exit from the brothel, with arrows whizzing past </p><p>his ears. The pictures integrate into the story nicely, and Nigel's an </p><p>engaging protagonist. (Sophia, much less so, which is disappointing </p><p>given that she's the nominal 'winner'.) The interaction with Darien </p><p>really shines and is, I think, the best part of the story; seeing the </p><p>sun behind the cleric as an incoming spell is particularly well-done.</p><p></p><p>But it seems that the story hiccups around the pictures.</p><p></p><p>Why did Nigel hang on to the skull? He doesn't seem like the kind of guy </p><p>to hoard a valueless trophy. (I know the picture has a skull; but how </p><p>did it get there? It doesn't make sense that Nigel would have kept it.) </p><p>Why didn't Sophia arrange to deal with Nigel when she first stole the </p><p>chest, or better, that night in the brothel when he was completely at </p><p>her mercy? (It would have been easier to get the chest, then, too.) </p><p>Certainly she could have told her 'ride'--whose presence is completely </p><p>unexplained--that the puppet-Nigel was an associate, as he'd be in no </p><p>condition to complain. Why attack Darien? Surely it would be a Bad Idea </p><p>to irriate Darien's entire church.</p><p></p><p>And the ending is unsatisfying, because the person who gives Nigel his </p><p>comeuppance is a lot less likeable than he is. I couldn't see this as </p><p>what barsoomcore (correctly) refers to as a "Heh heh heh" story, because </p><p>who cares if Sophia wins? She's a bitch. And Nigel is likeable, if a </p><p>sleazeball. So there's no emotional punch one way or the other at the end.</p><p></p><p></p><p>THE HUNT (Berandor)</p><p></p><p>I found the world you drew here incredibly engaging; the </p><p>nobody-is-the-good-guy hatred between the humans and elves, the social </p><p>structure of Cedric's little village, the Hunt, the claustrophia of the </p><p>small society and how it affects Cedric and Allyria.</p><p></p><p>I found the prose wasn't quite up to the story in places. The opening </p><p>scene was, I'm sorry, a bit of an eye-roller: okay, we get that he's </p><p>upset and stumbling through the woods, but this was a bit overdone, even </p><p>given that Cedric is young and has a temper. (I kept expecting to hear </p><p>Linkin Park in the background.) There were too many places where you </p><p>lapsed into dictation, with the author explaining (rather than showing) </p><p>what's going on.</p><p></p><p>Let me give you an example. You could have told us that the elves are </p><p>just as hostile and nasty as the human villagers, but you show us in one </p><p>line: Cedric reminding Allyria of what they did to her mother. That </p><p>makes it very clear that the elves are much more than simply fending off </p><p>attacks. Contrast that to the two-paragraph explanation of the Hunt, </p><p>when we could easily have gotten the same information (and pretty much </p><p>did) by inference in the other conversations about Cedric's own Hunt.</p><p></p><p>The story really begins to pick up towards the end, when Cedric makes </p><p>his choice, and returns to the village....not quite the same. And the </p><p>full horror of his change--what he did to Allyria--is made clear, </p><p>without explanation or flourish.</p><p></p><p>Judgment this round for BERANDOR.</p><p></p><p> orchid blossom "The Puppet Master"</p><p></p><p>A tight little story, one that plays nicely with the little details in </p><p>the pictures. Your characters are nicely drawn</p><p></p><p>My problem with it is that the story's actually about Sophia, but we </p><p>get it from Nigel's point of view, and Nigel doesn't do much of </p><p>anything throughout. I know you're going for the surprise of "Nigel </p><p>done somebody wrong" ending -- but I can't help but think I'd have </p><p>enjoyed the story more if it were from Sophia's point of view.</p><p></p><p>This gives it a certain flatness, I'm afraid, since our involvement is </p><p>limited to watching Nigel react to Sophia's efforts. And Sophia's </p><p>efforts don't always make a lot of sense. If she wants Nigel to serve </p><p>her, why doesn't she do that to him in the first place? Why all the </p><p>fuss with the orc and the knight and the fireball?</p><p></p><p>The picture use is excellent (as always), however, and the story </p><p>certainly doesn't lag at any point. You keep things moving so fast that </p><p>there's no time to worry about story confusion during the reading. It's </p><p>only after, as I'm considering things, that I start going, "Hey, but </p><p>what about..."</p><p></p><p>But I think the fundamental problem here is that Nigel's not taking any </p><p>action -- he occasionally reacts to Sophia's actions, but even then </p><p>it's limited to ducking and running away. If Nigel had been more of </p><p>narrative force, I would have developed more of an emotional connection </p><p>to him. We get connected to characters who we observe trying to do </p><p>things. What they try to do and how they go about it are what tell us </p><p>about them, and what make us care about them or hate them. Since </p><p>Nigel's not doing very much, and what he is doing he's not doing in any </p><p>particular style, we don't get a good sense of him as a character, and </p><p>we don't care about him all that much.</p><p></p><p>This has been a problem for you throughout the competition, orchid </p><p>blossom -- main characters who don't take much action. I get the </p><p>feeling that you're shying away from the stories that really grip you </p><p>-- this story would have been very interesting from Sophia's point of </p><p>view, watching her get her revenge on her friend's bad boyfriend. But </p><p>from the point of view of the bad boyfriend -- who never does anything </p><p>very bad that we can see -- it's not super-satisfying.</p><p></p><p>In the beginning you set up that this Nigel character has had some good </p><p>luck -- which gives us the expectation that maybe his luck is about to </p><p>end. And while, yeah, his luck has ended, we don't watch him try to get </p><p>out of his predicament, nor do we watch things get progressively worse </p><p>and worse and worse. It's just -- now he's an orc, now he's stabbed, </p><p>now he's lost his money, now he's a puppet. If these things piled up </p><p>and up then that would build some tension in us as we wondered what </p><p>next for this poor guy. If he was scrambling and taking actions to </p><p>escape Sophia's plans, we'd be excited to see how he fared.</p><p></p><p>I'll just finish by pointing out that even the title of this story </p><p>suggests that it's really about Sophia, not Nigel.</p><p></p><p>Technically, you're a fine writer, orchid blossom. You've always been </p><p>economical with your prose and your characters have always been </p><p>well-drawn. I enjoy reading your stories. If I can suggest an exercise </p><p>you might benefit from -- try writing a story about a character trying </p><p>to do something utterly trivial. Open a door. Tie their shoes. Try to </p><p>come up with as many resistances to them completing this task as you </p><p>possibly can, and force your character to come up with ever more </p><p>desperate measures in order to succeed.</p><p></p><p>This is actually one of the bases of comedy -- trivial actions </p><p>encountering great resistances. The other is the opposite -- great </p><p>actions encountering trivial resistances. In any case, I really think </p><p>you'd benefit from deliberately trying to keep a story to a single </p><p>course of action, and keeping your focus on that.</p><p></p><p>If you want someone to read such efforts (or indeed anything you might </p><p>produce) please don't hesitate to ask me. I'd be happy to.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Berandor "The Hunt"</p><p></p><p>Wow, that was a nasty little tale. Not at all sure I approve, but not </p><p>in a bad way. Just... yuck. That was a story about a bunch of bad, bad </p><p>people. Doing bad, bad things.</p><p></p><p>First up -- props for the bravery, Berandor. That was a gutsy story.</p><p></p><p>Alright, let's get into it.</p><p></p><p>You do give fair warning in your opening scene. Cedric's looking like </p><p>kind of a jerk from square one, which you pay off later. To put it </p><p>mildly. Your language is a little plain, and you still tend to shift </p><p>voice without notification. The paragraph that starts with "Why had he </p><p>even asked her?" seems to be from the voice of Cedric, while the </p><p>following one seems to be from some other voice entirely. It's okay to </p><p>shift, but each shift needs to be clear and needs to serve a purpose. </p><p>Otherwise, why are you doing it?</p><p></p><p>That following paragraph ("It's not that Cedric was ugly.") is </p><p>problematic. It's a big chunk of exposition about somebody we don't </p><p>even know, serving no purpose that we're aware of. It's fine to dump </p><p>out exposition that is clearly giving the reader important information, </p><p>but at this point in the story I don't have any way of knowing if this </p><p>is important so I just get impatient and skip over it, then say to </p><p>myself, "No, I should really read this," and go back and read it, and </p><p>now you've lost me as a reader.</p><p></p><p>The fact that this exposition turns out to be pointless only rubs salt </p><p>in the wound. This has been a problem for you throughout this </p><p>competition, I know -- and you've improved dramatically, Berandor -- </p><p>but you can't miss a step on your opening scene. If you don't get me </p><p>now, you never will.</p><p></p><p>But you do a good job setting up your story -- the racial issue and </p><p>Cedric's foul nature.</p><p></p><p>Allyria and her relationship with Cedric is a bit of a problem </p><p>logically. Why is she friends with this boor? Especially if he accepts </p><p>the village party line that elves are okay to kill. I would have bought </p><p>it if you'd made it clear that Cedric had suffered some change of heart </p><p>in deciding to go on the Hunt, but it seems like this has been his plan </p><p>all along, so I don't really see why she tolerates him.</p><p></p><p>I just want to add that the term "knight" isn't enough. If in this land </p><p>knights are people who kill elves, or defend the country from elves, </p><p>then I reckon they ought to have some proper title. Just me.</p><p></p><p>You do a good job at building up Cedric's point of view. Nobody has any </p><p>faith in him, nobody appreciates him. I'm actually sympathetic to him </p><p>at the point at which he heads off into the woods -- I'm hoping this </p><p>young chap learns a lesson and gains a little tenderness.</p><p></p><p>No such luck, huh?</p><p></p><p>And suddenly it's Raxos. The whole Raxos and his castle in the middle </p><p>of the forest kinda comes out of nowhere. It works for me, pretty much, </p><p>but that's mostly because I'm by now so wrapped up in Cedric and his </p><p>internal struggle that your external trappings aren't really bothering </p><p>me much at all. So you probably could have set this up a little better. </p><p>But, okay, castle in the woods, little smiley guy with a sinister offer </p><p>-- I have no real problem with this.</p><p></p><p>And then things get very unpleasant. And then they get even more </p><p>unpleasant. And at last they get more unpleasant than I care to think </p><p>about. Holy crap, Ber. You really went all the way with this one. I </p><p>admit it, I was shocked. Appalled. I felt cheated -- you'd gotten me to </p><p>care about this guy and then he turns out to be a complete jerk.</p><p></p><p>Nice job.</p><p></p><p>I'm struck by your improvement over the course of this contest, Ber. </p><p>Each story has been better than the previous one, braver, tighter, and </p><p>more ambitious. Each time you've gotten to a stronger emotional core </p><p>than the previous story.</p><p></p><p>Your weakness is in story structure. In this story, the castle and </p><p>Raxos are kind of thrown in without any explication or set-up or </p><p>anything. It's just, for some reason, there's this castle. Maybe it's a </p><p>function of Ceramic DM, but it seems that your stories have often </p><p>nearly foundered on structural issues -- either too much set-up, or </p><p>pointless scenes, or whatever. I suspect you're a writer who greatly </p><p>benefits from an edit session a week or so after writing the first </p><p>draft -- so that you can come back to it with a fresh eye and see the </p><p>unnecessary stuff.</p><p></p><p>My advice is to do just that -- and to make it your mission to always </p><p>cut about half of your story out. The way you write is to build stuff </p><p>up and up, and I suspect that when you start you don't always quite </p><p>know where you're going -- which is great, but which means that by the </p><p>time you get where you're going, you've gone down any number of dead </p><p>ends and your story needs a serious pruning.</p><p></p><p>Keep the idea of cutting half your story and I think your stories would </p><p>be much better. But this one was very, very strong.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Decision: Berandor</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="alsih2o, post: 1731467, member: 4790"] 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 [/QUOTE]
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