Ceramic DM feedback thread[JUDGES, OUT!]

[Piratecat]

Macbeth, you bastard, you totally stole the schtick which I was planning on using later in the competition. Drat!

 

[orchid blossom]

It ain't bad, that is for sure.

It's even more surreal if you read it while booking a flight online.....

Seriously though, very cool story. For a while there I thought you had a hidden camera in my brain. A lot of the beginning was exactly how I feel for the first 24 or 48 hours after the pics go up.

There's one thing I always know when your stories go up, and that is that it will be something completely unexpected, and all the more fun for it. No exception this time.

Re: your comments on my story...

I tend to have the same problems with every story. They tend to run too short, and usually seem like an introduction to a bigger story.

I'm pretty consistent with my word counts, coming in around 2600 most stories. I think that's because that's all I have time to write. It takes me the first day and a half to get any kind of idea, then I usually do the bulk of the writing in six to eight hours.

What seems to happen is that writing session hacks out what I want to write about. I explore what the idea was, refine it, and get something basic down. The problem is by then, I'm out of time. So esentially I'm always posting a first draft.

As for the introductory nature of the stories, I think I still get ideas in a "novel" form. Short stories don't come naturally to me, which is why Ceramic DM is good for my brain.

I'm glad you liked it. I never have any idea if something is good or not until weeks later, so I'll have to reserve my own judgements on my story for a while.

 

[Macbeth]

I'm honored to know you had the same idea, PKitty. I definately wanted to make it a Cermic DM in-joke. The CDM references I can think of:

A reference to the infamous 'hand pics' of doom.

A reference to alsih2o's story from the first round of this competition.

A reference to BardStephenFox's Rainmaker story.

A vague reference to my own first round story.

That's all that I think actually made it in, but I ment to add more. Little references to other great CDM stories. alsih2o and BSF, sorry for referencing your stories. No offence intended, I just used some of the first plots to come to mind.

 

[FireLance]

Sparky: LOL, great story! Funny how both of us drew on elements of fairy tales. It would have been even creepier if I'd added the background comment (edited out as I couldn't develop it well enough) that Brina won her snake spirit (animate rope, in D&D terms) from a witch that used it to enchant the hair of a girl so that she could get in and out of the tower where she imprisoned her.

 

[alsih2o]

alsih2o and BSF, sorry for referencing your stories. No offence intended, I just used some of the first plots to come to mind.

I remain unoffended.


And highly entertained.

 

[Sparky]

Firelance: Yeah - That is weird. I really like your (Cinder)Ella. She's got a spine. The fire-spirit threw me for a loop - I wasn't expecting that. Nice. It's always really interesting to me how people interpret the pictures. I liked how you differentiated between sorcery and witchcraft. I don't want to spoil too much for other folks. I thought the bit with the shoe in the square was rushed... how the Baron know?

Will we see more of Ella and Brina?

(Brina a reference to the brine that saves Ella?)

 

[FireLance]

I thought the bit with the shoe in the square was rushed... how the Baron know?

The 72-hour deadline tends to hit the ending of my stories pretty hard. Anyway, the bit with the shoe was actually a bit of a farce. The Baron was looking for a way to examine all the girls in the village up close, without making it look as if he was simply ordering them all to submit to an inspection (PR, you know). I'd always wondered about that bit from the original Cinderella story, anyway - nobody else had feet her size?

Will we see more of Ella and Brina?

(Brina a reference to the brine that saves Ella?)

Actually, I got the name Brina by chopping the first syllable off the name "Sabrina". It was a happy conincidence that it also sounds like "brine". I don't know about Ella, but I'll probably re-use Brina the Sorceress in some other context. Maybe as an NPC in a game.

 

[Sparky]

Heh - using the shoe... good stuff. I suspected that that particular part (the part with the Baron in the square) had suffered from the ack-it's-the-end-of-my-72-hours! crunch. I suspected because it was an inexplicable hole in an otherwise very solid story. The kind of hole that I recognize from somewhere...

 

[Piratecat]

MarauderX, using "bullwhip" as a whisker from the creature in "Nexus" is friggin' inspired. Bravo, my friend. I like that picture use.

My story would benefit from another hour or two of rewriting and editing. I think parts of it are strong, and I hope those sections carry it over the weaker parts.

 

[MarauderX]

MarauderX, using "bullwhip" as a whisker from the creature in "Nexus" is friggin' inspired. Bravo, my friend. I like that picture use.

My story would benefit from another hour or two of rewriting and editing. I think parts of it are strong, and I hope those sections carry it over the weaker parts.

Thanks. I could have used more time to read through mine too, as I made some goofy mistakes that'll cost me. Excellent story PC, and good luck with the rest of the competition, as I think you more than deserve to move on.