All Things Said And All Things Done Workshop

[Zook Murnig]

Duffy Bracken has requested a Workshop Evaluation of his solo, All Things Said and All Things Done (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?p=162127#post162127). The following were his notes and requests regarding the commentator evaluation.


1. I don't expect a good score (due to the nature of the thread and it's lack of continuity in a sense) but I would like feedback if possible on how to write gleaming threads, things that are collections of little events as opposed to the traditional narrative.

2. Some of these events are fairly specific, so if something doesn't make sense feel free to ask away and I can link it up - this is a risk I run when making a story so complex and internal, but I'm more than willing to work on clarification.

3. I'd like to sacrifice any gold earnt from this thread in support of the Rheinholdt Spark spoil, consider it expenses for new props and for the writing material and stage accommodation that will be required to perform the play once it is finished. (And another thread down the line will be required, a focus on the pirate persona before it can be used proper).

More importantly, hope it's at least an enjoyable read in between the mistakes, that builds up a history of the past and a glimpse of what Duffy is thinking now, as the last two posts are the here and now, the last dreams of the Troupe before they go to war.

This thread will remain open for two weeks for commentary, followed by commentator rewards and a light judgment with a modified rubric. Be respectful and civil, please, and give him your best efforts.

[Nayeli]

Hello Duffy! Hooray, this is my second review in the Writing Workshop. I like this thing, fun fun fun. Now let's get started!

I have to say, I always do enjoy reading stuff with this character. The whole concept is very interesting to me. You don’t usually see the whole “bard” fantasy concept explored all in its own; generally a character like that plays a supporting role. So yeah, it’s a neat concept, I like it a lot.

Okay, first of all, the big things (problems) in this thread were continuity and clarity. I think you recognized that, though, given your note above. Largely I suppose it was the nature of the thread—because it’s really a series of little events, rather than a single large story. So I don't think you should be penalized harshly for it or anything. However, even given the nature of the thread, I think you could have been stronger in that area. It really does seem disjointed and it’s all a bit confusing at times. However, I think you could have compensated for that by better using post breaks. The way you break up your posts seems arbitrary at times.

For instance, look at the break between posts five and six. It’s right in the middle of a conversation. I wasn’t even sure at first—is this the same conversation? Was there a time skip? It’s just an odd place to put a break. It might be more effective if you consistently put breaks when there’s a scene change. Which is usually what you do, but not always. There just wasn’t always a clear transition between settings, either, which lead to sort it feeling sort of disjointed.

The lack of continuity, I think, really harmed the clarity. The other thing that would maybe have improved clarity was if you gave a bit more background knowledge about the characters and settings. Understandably, this thread seems to be towards the end of a story arc, and I don’t know the story of Duffy and the Tantalum overall—but some amount of background knowledge would have made it easier to understand. For instance, you start talking about Lucian and the Tantalum all the way in post ten, and when I got to that part I was like oooooh. Now it makes sense! So maybe hinting at that earlier would have been nice? It wasn’t unreadable or anything, I was just confused at a few points. But maybe that was a reading comprehension fail on my part, I dunno, heh. It wasn’t always as clear or coherent as it could be.

Your descriptions of setting were…inconsistent? Sometimes they were very strong, and sometimes I had no idea what the setting was at all. Mostly I thought that was an area you were solid in, but there's room for improvement. Sometimes you spent too much time on the setting, and just on describing things, I think.

That, actually, is sort of a major thing that I’ve noticed about your writing. You have a very good vocabulary, and you’re very good at purple prose and that sort of thing. When done well this makes you sound Tolkien-esque, which is cool! When it’s not done well it’s…just sort of boring and thick and hard to read. Sometimes I’m very impressed by your writing, and sometimes it’s tough. What you’ve got to strive for, I think, is brevity! That’s something that I have to work on too, actually. I think probably the best solution to this is to go back and try and cut out as much stuff as possible. It hurts, oh god I know it hurts, but just imagine the disapproving ghost of Stephen King staring over your shoulder and ordering you to kill your darlings and cut out everything.

Hmmm, Stephen King staring over my shoulder...that's an image that will keep you up at night. He's a creepy dude. *Shudder* But I digress!

Cutting out words and working on brevity would help another problem, which is that sometimes your sentences are grammatically unclear. It’s hard for me to describe what I mean by this exactly, so let me find an example…


Lucian Lahore was born in distant lands, an elf of formidable wrath and ruin, to parents of little wealth of knowledge. Dreaming of distant dreams, he came to Scara Brae after travelling the world and learning of the folk tales and cultures of all the people of Althanas. He was struck by the beauty of a street performance in the cascading shadow of the Old Harbour Inn, in that simple moment, his fate was sealed. He auditioned for the troupe, precisely one hundred years before he became the Tantalum, and soon he was the lead role in many plays. He rose to be greater than even Tantalus was in mortal coils. His talent has yet to be matched in any part of the world, his voice itself carried power, even the simplest of comment or command controlled the very fabric of reality. He was The Bard, the greatest of poets, the strongest of performers.

Let’s look at this paragraph, for instance!

Okay, so, the first sentence. Wrath and ruin? Very little wealth of knowledge? What do these things even mean, exactly? Ruin isn’t an adjective, so that just seems odd…and “wealth of knowledge” is a common phrase, but it just seems strange in that context. If the point is to describe him as having a bad temper and ignorant parents, you might want to just come out and say that in a clearer way.

Then the sentence after: Dreaming of distant dreams? That’s a bit…redundant? Confusing? It's stuff like that that makes the reader pause and breaks up their suspension of disbelief. You, as the narrator, need to be as unobtrusive as possible. You want to fade into the background and let the story take hold; if the reader notices and has their thought process interrupted like that, it's not a good thing.

The paragraph gets progressively stronger, and that is, I think, because it gets progressively clearer. See what I mean? The best sentence there is probably the last one, because it's also the simplest. There's no fancy vocabulary or weird turns of phrase, it's just...saying what you mean exactly how you mean to say it, and in an interesting an effective way.

I don’t know, it’s just little stuff like that. It’s easy to fix, just go back and look at your diction and word choice when you’re done and try to make it sound as clear as possible. You want the reader to know exactly what you’re trying to say. Like once you talk about Ruby’s smile tindering dragon scales. Did you mean tender? It’s just a bit confusing.

Oh dear, this review is all over the place. I was going to try and go in some sort of order, but that didn’t really happen. Alright well, what have I not talked about yet?

Ah yes, dialogue. Okay, first of all…ellipses…you use them kind of…a lot? In your dialogue for all your characters. An ellipse is an okay way to insert a pause, but when they’re overused it just makes it sound choppy. Your dialogue itself is good (if at times unrealistic), I just think it needs to be broken up in a broader variety of ways. Look at the dialogue in posts #5 and #6. It

When you have dialogue, there’s a lot of ways you can break it up. You can not give it a tag at all.

“Hello there, friend! How are you?”

Or you could put a tag at the end.

“Hello there, friend! How are you?” Bob said.

Or you could put one in the middle.

“Hello there,” Bob said. “How are you?”

And here's an example using an ellipse.

"Hello there...how are you?" Bob said.

I, personally, think the last is the most effective. The sooner you break it up, the sooner your reader knows who is talking, and the less confusing it’ll be. That also can serve as a more “natural” pause than the ellipses. When you read “bob said” in the last example, see how you automatically put a pause between “hello there” and “how are you?” Then compare to the last example, which has the same pause, but just seems awkward and broken up.

I don’t know, it just might be something to think about.

As for your characters persona and emotions, I thought those were pretty good. I didn’t necessarily get a really strong feel for what Duffy was like, but that was maybe a function of the disjointed nature of the thread more than anything else. I thought he was supposed to come off as more playful and cheerful than he did; he mostly seemed fairly somber and contemplative. I understand that he’s a complicated character, but I think if you showed him interacting with people on more of a day-to-day basis, you would get a stronger feel for his personality from the way he acts. Remember, there’s a lot of different ways to characterize someone: you can say “bob was a very cheerful dude,” or you can show him joking around and being cheery, and the latter is probably more effective.

I don’t think you really have much to worry about when it comes to mechanics. As I said earlier, reading over stuff again for clarity might help, but you don’t make an atrocious amount of spelling mistakes. I saw a few, though, so I’d keep an eye on that. It’s mostly grammar stuff you need to work on especially; just sometimes things are phrased in an unclear or not-quite correct way. That's more to do with technique, though.

Ugh, I really hope I didn’t come off as too harsh or critical—I honestly didn’t mean it that way. I enjoy reading your writing, really I do, and I think you come up with creative and interesting concepts and situations. These are just sort of my observations of how you could make things flow a bit better and make the reader really get sucked in to your story more effectively. You definitely don’t want people to be intimidated by big blocks of descriptive text, or confused by odd or unclear phrasing. It was enjoyable to read, though, I liked the concept quite a bit.

Anyway, if you’d like to talk about this, just hit me up with a PM or something, I’m always available :D

[MetalDrago]

STORY ~ (18/30)

CHARACTER ~ (21/30)

WRITING STYLE ~ (18/30)

Wild Card (6/10) ~

Duffy gains 2310 EXP and 200 GP

Spoils approved, pending review in the Realm of Greeting.

Nayeli, as the most helpful (not to mention only) reviewer in this Workshop, revieves 25 EXP and 150 GP.

[Letho]

EXP/GP for both Duffy and Nayeli added.