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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Berandor" data-source="post: 1479804" data-attributes="member: 225">I somehow missed the judgement above my post. Oops! <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />First off, congratulations to drose25! When I read your story, I already thought you'd probably beat me. Good luck for the next rounds!Second in writing, but equal in quality, thanks to the esteemed judges. I hope I could do my part for a difficult round to judge. As this is the only commentary I will be able to make with regards to my own story, allow me to say a few words.You've really hit home with your criticism. Crafting compelling characters, and especially compelling motivations, is perhaps my biggest flaw in writing. I tend to have neat ideas (the story itself came almost instantly to me), and I think I possess at least decent narrative skills - but motivation? Not much.It's not really a lack of understanding on my part. For example, I know what I wanted to convey in the story, I know why Pierre did what he did. I just tend to fail on communicating these reasons to the reader; or on the opposite, I simply write about it matter-of-factly, and it becomes an issue of telling instead of showing.At first, Pierre was supposed to overcome the snake-eater by remembering Francois. His going on the mission was at least as much motivated by a sense of duty and a dislike (hatred) for HYDRA's goals as by a wish to avenge his mentor. In the end, the latter was supposed to prevail. I agree I didn't show anything of that <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Back to the snake-man: I changed my mind to give Pierre something to actively overcome, without help of luck. And instead of having Francois help him against the Queen, I had the idea of the escape hatch. And all went down the gutter <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />As to the White Queen, she was supposed to be a medusa indeed (home-brewed version, so to speak). I had hoped that naming the story desert snakes, having the stairs snake up the citadel, a snake-eating man and a woman whose face was hidden, in concert with "petrified" victims, would be hint enough. I still remember how in the last tourney, two medusa stories were criticised in part because of the cliché resorting to such a creature, so I didn't want to describe or unmask her, really, cop-out as it may have seemed.I could have written more about HYDRA and Tricolore, but I partly believed that the relationship between a good intelligency agency and a bad one was known well enough for such a piece of genre fiction to function without it (see UNCLE vs. what's-their-name?, MI-6 vs. Blofeld's organization, and a host of similar examples).I also thought about continuing that story in prosopective further rounds, I must admit.I was surprised that my second major flaw (at least in this story) didn't come to light that much: the lack of dialogue. I had next to none dialogue, something I feel drose25's story was eminently better than my own. But perhaps you didn't want to be too cruel, eh? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Nevertheless, I'd like to try again, come fall - if you would have me (and the board's allow) <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" />Berandor will now resort to reading the stories to come, whilst muttering under his breath that he could have done them better in his sleep.</blockquote>

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