Sorry that so many people seemed to drop out of this as it went on. Though it’s quite a big thread, I’ll be giving the full commentary where possible. Hope this all helps, if you have questions feel free to send me a message.
Continuity 5
Lorenor: This goes back to what I say in the clarity section, but it should be noted because it’s not a specific time so much as the story itself. I see that you tried to add something special to the story along the lines of what exactly is going on. I mean, specialized units for the vampires, interesting ideas to draw the reader into the overall conflict between the Endless and the Vampires… but it was lost to me. Why are there Spartans? I, as the reader, didn’t get enough about what an Endless is to understand why it’s a dangerous opponent. I’m also missing a few other things: Why are the two fighting? Why is Lorenor a Vampire merc leader? Things like that would have helped a lot.
Of Water: Why are you in Haidia? How do two water dragons find their way down to the underground caves of the demons and vampires? Why are they on land, much less there anyway? All of these things could have helped a lot with understanding what was going on and helped the reader figure out what the story is about. It would help the clarity as well as persona.
Setting 6
General Note: You have five senses, use them all. It’s a common issue that I see with writing, when people tend to just use sight instead of everything else. You have other senses, and in a world like Haidia they can all become paramount and important. The smell of the place, what you hear, how it tastes (from the air to the battleground), and the way it all feels can easily be displayed with the setting. The second thing to always remember is that you want to show, not tell. Just throwing me a scene and how it looks only goes so far. Tell me how it makes the character feel, tell me what they think about it through inner dialogue, actions and reactions… all of this comes together to make something altogether more fulfilling than just telling me through your narrative what is going on.
Lorenor: I saw that you started to put in some details as to what the world of Haidia looked like… however there was more missing that should have been added to make the world something more real. I got that it was a cavernous area, and that the “sky” was dark all the time. But there is a lot more to the world than just that… it’s underground, yes, but what about the unique lighting? There are supposed to be something along the line of orange glowing light that is almost supernatural. How does the setting make you feel? How do you, as a character used to the natural world (or perhaps used to Haidia), think about the differences? These questions about how you feel in this odd world help form the setting as well as help with your persona score.
The description of the teleportation area, having been done about 3-4 times in different posts, was a bit too much. I got it the first time, the second helping solidify the idea, but the next time it was explained was just slowing everything down. It hurt the pacing, but at the same time the setting since it was just you expounding again on what you already explained. I’d suggest leaving it after a little bit, unless you are taking the time to go into something directly important with the situation described in the thread instead of more general description.
Of Water: Same questions generally. Though in a much more specific way… your characters are those of the water realm, I would assume the oceans on the surface of Althanas. Not only do they get put in a completely different situation when they are Haidia, which is all brimstone and heat… but there isn’t a lot of water. How do they feel about the situation they are in, about the world they aren’t used to? The questions pertain to the differences between what your characters are used to and the world you are in more so than anyone else…
Vornwin: Elves in Haidia? Armor that mirrored the reflection of the sun? There isn’t a sun in the underground cavernous lands of Haidia, and elves aren’t exactly welcome there. Who are the elves and why are they there?
Pacing 6
Lorenor: Like I say below, pacing is about pulling in the reader and not letting them go. It’s about how well you write the story and how well it flows. You write a good story, don’t get me wrong, but it seems at times to be long winded and laboriously devised. The reader, and myself as a judge, has to shift through long posts to get the gist of what is going on. I’d suggest taking a little bit of time to add a small bit of brevity to the overall feel. There are times when I thought that part of a paragraph was unnecessary, and other times when entire paragraphs were. Your writing style tends to add a lot, making it very detailed, but without the overall flair that draws the reader in. It’s like reading a technical manual sometimes, whereas others it’s like reading a brilliantly devised story. Make sure when you’re writing to figure out what would make it flow better, make sure that the story that you’re telling doesn’t seem to drag on and I think you will do fine with pacing in the future.
Of Water: Pacing is all about how the thread moves and flows as a story, how much interest you keep with the reader. In all… the tense issues, the lack of other area’s in the rubric, as well as the numerous and continued mechanical issues made me as a reader not want to actually go through the posts. I don’t mean to sound harsh, but every time one of your posts came up it took me a lot not to just skip it. The pacing was shot by the fact that I had to re-read almost every post you wrote multiple times to try and make sense of it all. Through the grammatical mistakes as well as the technical mistakes I found that the clarity and pacing was destroyed, and made me as a reader thoroughly dislike every paragraph that came next.
Dialogue 5
Vornwin: The prayer by the dwarf was funny, realistic for a blunt mercenary, and made the character seem more real. That is the key to dialogue, as far as I’m concerned. Make it feel natural, not stand out to a point of making the reader note it in the wrong way, and have it add to the general feel of the personality of the character speaking. You did well with the dwarf, but I’d suggest that you take a little more time to develop your own character’s dialogue.
Lorenor: As said above, the dialogue is what I like to see develop characters. It’s often used in trite ways, as if to just fill out the post… but it is valuable in a much more pertinent way when used correctly. I would suggest that you allow yourself to use internal dialogue a little more to display the true nature of the character. You used it in a way that made it seem like you put only the slimmest bit of dialogue in so that Lorenor could convey the basics. Though, what you thought was not put into dialogue form… but given to the reader through narrative instead. I’ll expound upon that in the persona section.
Action 5
Vornwin: When the battle began, it was like you had set up the field to your advantage before you had even entered it. Boulders were set aside to roll down the hill at the enemy? When were the boulder’s collected, how did everyone know what was about to happen… things like that tend to detract from the setting, but more importantly the action in general. It wasn’t exactly realistic, but it was also something completely unexpected. Proper, realistic action is the key to a good score for action, and that was lacking almost as soon as it all started.
Lorenor: Your use of the setting, the general feel of what you were fighting, as well as how you portrayed the reactions was a good way of writing out the action. All in all it was well done. I would have like a bit more in the beginning, but it wasn’t bad.
Persona 6
Lorenor: Up until the point where you were in serious conflict with the Endless that was attacking you I didn’t really get a good feel for WHO the character was. I got a little bit, before you took up the quest as a solo, but till that point there was a severe lack. After that point, it was a thick display of personality that came through quite well… despite being a little bit verbose most of the time. I was engaged and draw in by the battle and the events following, enough so that I could not help but enjoy the pacing, action, and persona displayed. Well done, if not a bit late. I would suggest starting out with a little more of that to begin with, and carrying it on as you go.
Furthermore, your commentary about being a Spartan Warrior… it was confusing as I said before. I would have liked more explanation for that as well as more about how it affected the character, and how his reactions and thoughts and everything were pulled together by his affiliation. It would have added more to the persona in general, as well as given me a better feel for the character and those around him.
Technique 6
Of Water: You write in a very informal tone that actually adds to the mechanical issues that I noted below. There is little to no use of advanced technique, of any kind, and the tense agreements as well as what else was noted in the section below added to the overall issues I had with not only reading your posts… but actually understanding them in general. You also change the style of writing in an awkward way during the 4th post. It seems that you are telling the story from limited omniscient in the 2nd post, setting it up as an outside observer, when you get to your next post its limited omniscient from the viewpoint of a specific character.
“To take shelters with you, to create them, to make them so that you can carry them about, put them up and take them down, well, that’s just something so completely unnatural for his kind to contemplate.” ~ [4] ~ I was really trying to avoid putting quoted passages into the rubric up here, was going to add the majority of the issues into general notes at the end… but this is just too hard to pass up on. You went from third person to second person. Also, this is a VERY long run-on that isn’t even a sentence except for the fact that Word would recognize it based on the merit of a lot of words and comma’s used. It would need to be completely re-written in order to make it something more grammatically correct. There are comma mistakes, second person mistakes, semi-colon’s could be used, you dip back into the informal common speech way of talking, as well as fail to continue the parallelism within the sentence itself.
Mechanics 6
Lorenor: You have a few things here and there that are missing. In general it’s mostly comma usage that caught me while reading, missing them more than using them incorrectly. However you have a few points where you tend to write capitalized words instead of just emphasizing them in some other way. I’d suggest instead of putting a word in CAPS to make it stand out, put it in italics when it’s not in a line of thought. That should make it stand out just as much, but the reader that’s learned correct grammatical style will automatically put the emphasis on the italicized words as they read.
Of Water: Your mechanical writing is terrible. There are obvious mistakes that continue on and on. Take the time to read over the posts you write so that you can make sure that they are readable. There are a lot of mistakes when it comes to the comma usage. Multiple times you simply have sentences that are not complete sentences, just dependent clauses; other times you have run-ons that are composed by incomplete sentences. There are a lot of times when you switch between present tense and past tense as well. Word usage is also an issue, since when you write you seem to use words that don’t fit what you mean… or are close, such as “Armoury” instead of “Armor”. ((This was all noted from just the first 5 paragraphs of your very first post, btw. That’s why the score is affected so hard.))
Clarity 5
Lorenor: The opening post… was so confusing it was hard to get anything from it. I read it over about 3 times, but still couldn’t find a way to make sense of what it said. I don’t know what Spartan’s had to do with Althanas, whether the things attacking were attacking your character or some other character and you were just watching. In the end, I just pushed to the next post and hoped that things would make more sense later.
Of Water: If you had been the only one that this score was based on, much like mechanics and technique, I would have had to give a 0 without question. The fact that the posts that you wrote made me cringe every time I saw them didn’t help. Please take the time to go over what you wrote, multiple times if necessary. Read it out loud, ask yourself if it makes sense, and then edit it as is necessary. There were many times when I re-read a single sentence so many times that I had to just quit reading it and move on because no matter what I did it didn’t make any sense to me.
Wild Card 7
Adding a little more here because you pushed through and finished it, which is always something to be proud of and note. Nothing I hate more than just submitting something that’s not complete because the partners dropped out. Congrats on the finished product!
Score 57
Rewards
Lorenor: 2300 exp | 400 gold
Of Water and Scales: 380 exp | 50 gold
Vornwin: 370 exp | 50 gold
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