Workshop: A Cult of Personality

Name of Completed thread: A cult of personality
Name of Authors: Nevin
Type of Thread: Quest
Thread Length: 17 posts
Feedback Rewards: (Post Length of Thread/10) * ((EXP Needed to Level)*0.05) EXP
Date Closed: 27th November 2017

Critique Guidelines:

1.) Standard rules for etiquette apply. No spamming or off-topic posts, no personal attacks or trolling. Focus on critiquing the thread, not the writer. Use constructive criticism and try to speak in terms of "strengths" and "weaknesses". For example: "Your story was strong, but the action seemed a little weak. Try using more adverbs to describe actions or use a thesaurus to spice up your word choice."

2.) Likewise, those who have asked for a workshop should take criticism gracefully. Use it to better yourself. These are not intended to offend or belittle, only show you opportunities to grow.

3.) If at any point you notice improper conduct, contact an administrator immediately. Bullying of any kind will not be tolerated. Arguing will also be regulated heavily. Polite, constructive debate is permitted within reason.

4.) In order to receive EXP & GP for your feedback(see Workshop Guide), a critique must be helpful, elaborate, and considerate. It is suggested that the review be at least 3 paragraphs and focus on strengths, weaknesses, and overall content. You may use the Althanas Rubric as a guide.

5.)Those that leave an exceptionally detailed review with plenty of constructive advice may be eligible for double rewards. This will be up to the posting judge's discretion. The authors of the thread may request the additional reward be given if they found a review to be particularly helpful. The request must still be approved.

Let me preface this by saying I enjoyed reading this thread and it was quite the good tale to spin. You provided excellent amounts of background, allowing me to make sense of your character without ever really reading your profile.

Now, onto the review. First off, I commend you for your excellent proofreading. I didn’t really check that deeply into it, but from what checking I did do, you were fairly solid. Good spelling, excluding a couple mistakes here and there. Well constructed posts, they flowed very nicely into each other, personally didn’t really have any issue shifting from post-to-post. There were also minor issues with comma placement, especially in post 7.

Another great facet of your writing is the excellent imagery that you provoke in your reader’s mind. The descriptions that you’ve managed to conjure up really do make it so much more enjoyable to read your writing. The stylistic detail (especially when describing the people inside the tavern) is excellent. I will note that the only passing mention of the benches and tables was a bit odd, considering the great detail added about the shutters and grime. It was slightly off putting to only get a sentence about a rather major feature of the tavern. It somewhat interrupted the flow of the paragraph, but not in a major fashion. This also applies to the effort you put into the description of the preacher. It really provoked thought with his words and the descriptions of the actions that you wrote. Excellent work. Further, the use of bolding and color changes later on in the thread aids greatly with comprehension. It’s pretty neat.

I do have a major issue at this point. Post 3, you suddenly switch from speaking about a ‘being’ in the general, to a more specific but still general ‘brother.’ The shift from a general concept to one being more dependent upon one’s understanding of your backstory is a tad jarring. It messes with how the rest of the thread balances, that bit. Another issue I found was the odd wording of the second bit of Crimson dialogue in post 7. There’s a lot of shifting there, as if you wrote it one way, added in a couple words, and forgot to erase some. There’s also some odd commas in there, but that comes with writing, as I do it all the time. Post 8 is another one with that issue, so I’d suggest working on that somehow. (They seem to be moreso compensating for run on sentences there, however.)

There is one weird bit in the latter half of the thread that bothers me. “It darted forward, suddenly rushing around the table after than Nevin anticipated, apparently mistaking his trembling as fear, instead of the rage that was consuming him” which seems to be filled with a bit of redundancy. Darted forward implies sudden-ness, and the after is supposed to be ‘faster’, i’m assuming.

Otherwise, I found relatively few mistakes beyond that. None that aren’t covered by earlier statements. Kudos.

Last week to get in your commentaries!

Hey Nevin, nice job on this story. I figured since I've approved your character 3+ times I should check out what he's about a little, and I was not disappointed. I hope you find this commentary helpful in some way - feel free to contact me if you have any questions!

Plot

Story: You took a fairly direct approach to introducing various story elements, and while this worked for your style in this area, it left things a little lacking in other aspects of the rubric. I liked how you immediately linked Nevin's abilities to the plot with his skin humming. However I think you could have done a lot more to provide history on the cult early on. As it was, I was somewhat left in the dark until later posts provided some illumination. Unfortunately this wasn't so much "I wonder what's going to happen," as it was "I don't understand why things are happening." Also, don't be afraid of writing in scenes. Your story doesn't have to be one continuous take, and in this case I think starting with an earlier scene that provides some background would have really benefited the story.

Setting: The chosen setting - Radasanth and the buildings within it - was adequately described, albeit in a manner I've never quite seen before. I've never heard of Radasanth having appealing beaches, but I suppose anything is possible. At first you did a great job of engaging multiple senses - the stench of the city really brought it to life. However as things wore on the setting became more a list of descriptions, some of which were fairly unimportant. Remember to keep your setting spicy by writing what your character notices and why, not just what's there. You did a good job bringing your stronger descriptions back at the end, but I would definitely advise you to have Nevin notice a little more with all of his senses from time to time.

Pacing: The passage of time was pretty steady at first, but got a little rocky at the beginning of post #8. The first line of that post was fairly jarring and seemed like an unnecessary segue. Up until that point, everything had been a steady flow, and it would have only taken a sentence or two to properly describe people filtering out of the room. Using the word "now" like that is usually jarring, in fact you did it later on in the same post with "taking in everything in the area he was now in." You could have cut the word "he" and everything after it, and that sentence would have worked much better. After that you got back on track pretty well, and did a good job of speeding things up through most of the boring parts to skip to things more relevant to the plot. I do however think you need to work on starting with your best stuff - immediately bringing scenes to life with dialogue and action will do a lot more than slowly describing them from a single static viewpoint.

Character

Communication: Your dialogue was quite good, I enjoyed how different people (in particular the preacher) had different ways of talking, and I encourage you to continued down this path, using dialogue to differentiate characters. I do think that you like the internal monologue a little too much... In particular I found the beginning of post 17 quite dry, and having Nevin bouncing ideas off of someone else rather than just brooding over them himself might have helped. I would also like to challenge you to write a full thread without using any colored text. I'm sure some people like it but it can be quite annoying/distracting, especially when reading an entire paragraph of it. If you find you miss using the color, maybe be a little more choosy about where/how you use it.

Action: The first scene of this story could definitely have benefited from some action. This would not necessarily have needed to be a fight scene; just something that shows some of Nevin's physical skills and gives us a broader picture of who he is. In the first post he thought things, felt things, sensed things, but he didn't really do much. The sooner you get your character moving on some kind of action, the sooner the reader can become engaged with them. As it was the doing nothing lasted until about the end of post 3, and I did learn that Nevin has patience from that, so kudos to you. When the fight scene did happen it was quite well represented, I didn't have too difficult a time following what was happening despite the... uniqueness... of the Scarlet Letter. Overall I'd encourage you to keep your descriptions of action clear and concise, and use MORE actions throughout your posts to keep the reader engaged.

Persona: I enjoyed the references to other characters such as Stare and Elthas, but I felt they could have been better explained. If I wasn't already familiar with these characters, the references would not have made much sense to me. From Nevin, I didn't get much sense of his persona early on, which could have been fixed with a more involved opening scene as I suggested above. However, by the end of the story I did have a decent idea of the kind of person Nevin is. I really think that following the advice I gave you in Action and Communication will help you bring Nevin's personality to life even more.

Prose

Technique: I didn't notice any significant use of advanced literary technique, so I'm going to use this area to provide a few quick pointers. Here's a chunk of text taken from the thread;

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Post #11

Nevin was now standing upright, his eyes, normally a dark shade, blazing with hate and magic, burning bright crimson as he met the black and red gaze of the twisted priest. The other man was still unnaturally still, his head cocked slightly to one side at an strange angle that normally would have been disconcerting.

---

"Nevin was now standing upright" was a little jarring, and would have worked much better as "Nevin stood upright". Also a little re-arranging could have cut down on the number of commas in this sentence.
"The other man was still unnaturally still," - Avoid using two homonyms so close together, it can be quite jarring.
"strange angle that normally would have been disconcerting." - You pretty much said it was a strange angle then re-described what a strange angle is. Although it's easy for them to slip through, try to avoid such redundancies.

Mechanics: For the most part your mechanics were solid, I would just recommend re-reading your posts out loud so that you catch some of those nasty typos. Otherwise well done.

Clarity: I like your straight to the point style, it keeps the majority of your writing quite clear. However at times you do tend to get lost in internal monologue / telling too much rather than ever showing. Livening things up with a little more action and dialogue is sure to set you on the right path, and giving posts that extra re-read will also help you notice anything that may be a bit muddy.

Wildcard: Well done! I hope to see another thread from you in the workshop soon, hopefully with less colored text :P

Two days left to get in commentary.

All right Nevin, now that I am not having to spam these workshops for maximum AP. that's fantastic for both of us because I can pretty much lead with... By the way forgive my jumping around.

You're a fantastic writer, your performance of a cult leader is pretty well spot on, you gave him just enough creep factor, and hypocrisy in it to no parody any real life organization but convey enough for people to manifest their own views on him. Lets talk about action, action doesn't have to be all about blood and guts, you can insert action here and there and never have your character draw a sword. But like Storm said you eventually get to some action. It's real good action, one of the better things you did was how you described it. What a lot of writers, directors, and producers forget is that just because the main character is lost, does not mean that the reader/viewer is also lost. Before the first punch is thrown in your story, you make sure that the reader is aware of the "geography of the battle field". What this means is that you describe the layout of where your main character is fighting. It lets the reader know where the character is in the fight.

The thread was an entertaining one, all be it heavy on the cult creep factor but that was the point wasn't it. All in all it was a good thread. If you wanted criticism, well sorry but I will give you all the accolades you could ever desire. Good work!

Disclaimer: I'm coming at this in the mist of reading an 8 book epic and I'm on book 4, so perspective matters.

Story
Storytelling, Setting, and Pacing

This is tough. The first half seems to be hunting down and looking for any signs of the believers of the tenets Nevin was raised with, and still believes. It exposes a new branch of the church, followed by an initiation, which in Nevin's case involves an unmasking followed by a second unmasking. But with the hints of what this scarlet ritual is, I still don't know enough of what transpired to piece things together. There's a lot of context missing, and that's what I feel could have added more to this thread. Perhaps adding a prologue that tells of the ritual, or even scattering flashbacks throughout the story, could have given me a better understanding of the importance of stopping this creature. Understanding more of what differentiates Nevin from this creature and their different colors would also help me understand what's happening, and why Nevin cares so much about destroying this place. I just feel like this story is such a tiny fragment and lacks the proper information to stand alone in such a way that I can come in and get something fulfilling from its brevity. I know that's a huge challenge of writing on Althanas, so I'll let you decide what it means to you.


Character
Communication, Action, and Persona

Following Nevin's emotional state becomes trying, especially later in the story. It's less and less clear whether he's feeling fear or anger at various points, and as the author, you switch between the two while saying it's not one or the other. You tell me he's furious, so much so that he snaps and loses control, but his behavior during the battle seems very rational and he's reflective as he fights. Then, when porcupine mode happens, you tell me he should feel fear but doesn't. Once it ends, you tell me trembled, calming himself down from the fear.

I could not wrap my head around why he drained and packed up all the empty tendrils. I also can't say I know much about Nevin's personality after the thread, which is unfortunate.


Prose
Mechanics, Clarity, and Technique

This is an area where I think you could hone your skills quite a bit. You have a mind for the storytelling, but the struggles arise in presenting it. There are plenty of small mechanical errors, such as typos or misused words or words that don't even exist (what is frission?), and rereading your thread to clean that up can take you a long way. The other major thing I'd ask you work on though is clarity. There is a fine line in overstating details and giving a vivid picture, and I think you tend to cross into the former far too often. When reading becomes so dense that it ends up being difficult to follow, you lose your reader. This is especially true when entering into a combat encounter, as giving the play-by-play of every action can become overboard. I'd recommend trying to be more brief in your sentences and descriptions. Though I see you are trying to add a personal touch and flair into your writing, as though you're telling the story verbally, it's important to remember that this is written narrative and follows different rules.


Wildcard

Don't use colored text. Dialogue should be clear regardless of color.

Also, tentacle porn.

Also, change your last name.

This workshop is now closed.
Rewards to be posted shortly.

Workshop: Cult of Personality..
Workshop rewards

Rewards:

Itinerant receives:
340 EXP
40 Gold
2 AP

Breaker receives:
1700 EXP
40 Gold
5 AP

Jdd2035 receives:
680 EXP
40 Gold
2 AP

Sir Artemis receives:
1275 EXP
40 Gold
5 AP

All rewards have been added.