Team of Fellows - Quest Judgment
This is my first "workshop" judgment, and I elected to put it on the full rubric for two reasons. Ordinarily workshop judgments are on the condensed rubric, but I wanted to showcase the slightly remodelled 3.0 rubric here, and also provide well-organised commentary, because of the quantity and quality of work you put in here. After I've archived this thread, I'll add my judgment to the workshop and leave it open for a few days for any last-minute user comments. My commentary in each area will be somewhat rudimentary, only filling in things I believe the workshop did not cover.
Mood: Patient
Music: Lethal & Young by HW
Plot Construction - 18/30
Story: 6/10 - The first 4-5 posts of this thread would have made a bone-biting intro if not for weaknesses in the writing I'll outline further on. Your execution of the rising action/climax/falling action was somewhat less elegant, but nonetheless I commend your work on a building a coherent storyline.
Strategy: 5.5/10 - When you actually used the skills, abilities, and body language/actions of the characters to drive the plot, you did it exceptionally well. However there were large segments of dialogue dominant prose where your strategy work fell apart, which I'll get into later.
Setting: 6.5/10 - You had some really great setting work, solid original descriptions, but again my commentary further down will show how your pacing got in the way of a higher score here. Basically your consistency is off - in post #2 for example, mostly the descriptions are good, but your transition from "forest" to "guys' house" is so sudden and muddy I had to re-read it, and finally read on to the next post before I really understood where we were.
Characterisation - 15/30
Continuity: 4/10 - Because of the lack of physical actions from the characters, or any other adequate imagery during the long dialogy bits, it was difficult to keep a flowing image in my head. You did a great job of capturing the "feel" of Althanas but I didn't notice a significant effort beyond that to connect your story or character to existing lore.
Character: 6.5/10 - You really do have some great character work with Ganlon, but that only extended to the NPCs on occasion - for the most part they didn't come off nearly as real or important as him. You can remedy this by applying the same level of realism to other characters as you do to Ganlon - even though they may be stronger/tougher.
Interaction: 4.5/10 - You had some really great moments, mostly linked to Ganlon's physical actions, but your overuse of dialogue really hurt the thread overall. As an exercise in the future, try to always have at least two sentences of description after someone says something. In this way, each "line" becomes accompanied by a physical action, piece of body language, or sound that will help tie the reader in to the moment. When you get comfortable doing this every time, you'll find your characters don't need to say as much out loud, simply because they are saying things with their personalities and their actions. At that point, you'll be able to find the "right" spots to use quick one-liners, and provide rich dialogue that complements the action consistently.
Writing Style - 16/30
Creativity: 6/10 - A unique approach at a concept I haven't seen for awhile at least on Althanas. Your work with literary devices is still fairly basic, but I can see you're getting better. I also did appreciate some overarching themes in this thread and your character's storyline, as well as a few nifty allusions.
Mechanics: 7/10 - You can probably find all of your own typos and grammatical errors, so I won't go into that. Instead I'll use this spot to mention the flashback-present phase of this story would have worked better if you'd had one post of flashback, then one post of present. It got confusing with you switching in the middle of posts, and the ______ really just made it look bad. I'd recommend a single or three * centred or aligned left, but keep in mind playing with flashbacks is trickier than it seems.
Clarity: 3/10 - Thought this really wasn't long I had to take a couple breaks to get my thoughts in order. The combination of my critique elsewhere all contributed to bringing this score down. If you don't already read your posts out loud to yourself as part of your editing, begin doing so immediately. If you are already doing that, find someone else to read them out loud to.
Wildcard: 6/10 - You're really close to jumping 5-10 points in your average scores, I can sense it.
Total: 55/100
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ganlon
I request from this quest one white wooden pipe and the tobacco to smoke in it. I request the Delyn shield devoid of any power,metal alone, to be used in a future quest where power maybe bestowed upon it, in lieu of any gold. Thank you.
Ganlon Martel gains the pipe and tobacco as described and a medium or small sized dehlar shield in lieu of gold. The shield may be upgraded to delyn in a future quest or at the bazaar at a reduced rate.
Ganlon Martel gains 710 EXP.