Another big competition vote - pick your favourite author!

[Queen_Dopplepopolis]

Wow! What a talented group of authors. All of the entries have merit, but - from the very first line - Dolorosa stands out in my mind. Not only do the characters stand out, the writing style is unique and refreshing... a little witty and very fun to read.

I'm very excited to see how this turns out!

 

[Eridanis]

Kooiker (who got my vote) and Forbing were my favorite entries. All of them need more polishing, of course, but theirs were the ones that held my attention best.

 

[Seonaid]

Though it's a rough draft, Dolorosa's entry has the most striking characters. From the start, they don't have that cardboard cut-out feel shared by a lot of fantasy out there. Of the entries, it has the most promise. I'll take sarcastic wit and a bit of swashbuckling over stoic caricatures any day.

The others leave me with a feeling of familiarity - it's all been done and braised, recycled as sandwich meat, and finally reduced to hashed. We've seen it all before - the overcrowded and racially/ethnically diverse party, all of whom happen to get along fine, the labored dialogue and exposition.

Just to play devil's advocate, is this really a good way to choose a person to write a novel based on a product you're still trying to market? This could easily degenerate into a popularity contest in which talent becomes secondary.

This is pretty much exactly how I feel. I agree with all of the above. I also agree with Queen_D.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Gabriel Dolorosa would be my choice as well.

One of the problems I have with RPG fiction is that the characters seem to come across as PC's rather than literary protagonists. Dolorosa seems to avoid that

 

[eyebeams]

Elements of all of them have merit. I will make a few comments that come from my reading but are not directed at specific people as much as trends in each.

* The word "said," is a fine, fine word. People really don't notice when you use it repeatedly. It's transparent. So there's no need for "cried," or "whispered" just to break up the pattern. Especially when such cries and whispers would actually sound pretty silly if taken literally.

* One of the most annoying things for me to read is 100 words about a horse, describing its every attribute in detail with as much lyricism as you can mention, followed by this dailogue:

"It's a horse," said Bill.

It's even worse if there's another huge descriptive para. It Makes People Seem Very Slow. Try to balance dialogue and description. An example of how to change gears skillfully is in Lions of Al-Rassan, where the duel at the end is full-on fancy prose, but the lead up is not choked with excess description.

* Avoid passive voice. There are a few constructions in a couple of the drafts that are unnecessarily long thanks to being sentences that were written using passive methods (<-- if you get my drift).

* Every step you take from describing what's happening as it is experienced by a character or the narrator is a step away from verisimilitude. That's things like the character being happy or depressed being described with just "happy" or "depressed." People do things and have sensations and images that represent their emotions. Actual reportage is second hand. You sometimes have writers who will use a gesture or sensation to effectively transmit and emotion, but they don't trust themselves and "back it up" with telling you the emotion anyway. "He sighed," is elegant. "He sighed with depression," is overmuch in many (though not all) cases. Trust in your ability to imply the emotion.

 

[Starglim]

Look at all the votes that have been cast thus far (almost 40 at this point) . . . do you really think each voter has read every submission and chosen which one they liked the best? It raises an interesting question . . .

To be perfectly honest, I read the first page of each submission, which is about as much time as I'd give any game fiction to convince me to keep reading in a bookshop or library. So, yes, this method indicates pretty directly which author's work I would be likely to buy.

I didn't find it difficult to decide who had a story to tell, rather than a Campaign Guide to translate.

 

[sniffles]

Morrus, how long do we have to look at these?

 

[RangerWickett]

I believe voting will end 2 weeks from when he put up the competition, which would be some time in the morning, Monday, March 12th.

 

[Gez]

HUnfortunately, six 5,000 word entries is A LOT of reading for anyone, particularly just to cast a vote. Look at all the votes that have been cast thus far (almost 40 at this point) . . . do you really think each voter has read every submission and chosen which one they liked the best? It raises an interesting question . . .

Well, I won't vote until I've read all entries, and so far I've read none.

If I don't find the time to read them all before the poll's duration is over, then I just won't vote at all.

 

[EditorBFG]

I read all of them, but it was Forbing's characters, as well as how he wrote Rook and Torrent, that set him apart in my mind. I didn't expect the halfling monk, or the drunk priest (I hope he's a real character and not just a set piece), and the sadistic, prejudicial elf, while a bit of a dark Legolas, was still fun to read.

Thank you for the kind words. Just to let you know, yes, the drunk priest is planned as a main character, one of the protagonists. I wanted to structure things so that the main characters were introduced over time, organically, rather than everyone introducing themselves at a bar. This is also why the elf's name isn't mentioned.

I wanted to honor what had been written in the module, which was a sort of modernized post-fantasy in many ways (especially in terms of character dialogue), by avoiding or poking holes in genre cliches as much as possible. Ironically, given some of the comments I've read, I was afraid I was going too far with this, but it seems for many peoples' tastes I didn't take it far enough.

Sorry it took me so long to reply, but I have actually been avoiding this thread a little bit, because following the voting is so nerve-wracking. I just want this gig so badly that it is hard not to let the way things are going affect me emotionally.