'Brick By Brick' Workshop

[Mordelain]

Rules

1. No outright attacks on thread writers or reviewers. You may criticize the thread only. This is not a venue for trolling, flaming, or otherwise bashing, demonizing or demoralizing individuals. You will receive only one warning, and upon the second offense in the entire forum, action will be taken.

2. This forum is for Workshop type evaluations only. If you have a thread you want others to look over and comment on, create your own Personal Workshop thread (or whatever you want to call it) in the Role Players' Corner.

3. Take criticism well. The comments here are intended to help writers improve as such. Do not get disheartened if someone says something ill of your work, but rather take it to heart and work hard to improve.

Mr Winchester and Luned have requested a Workshop Judgement for the thread, Brick By Brick (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?25815-Brick-By-Brick-(Closed)).

To relaunch the Writer's Workshop, and to encourage contributions, all contributors on this workshop will receive an additional 50 gold, and the best contributor double experience! It will remain open for feedback until midnight on the 16th of September.

[Breaker]

Hallo folks, thanks for choosing the Writer's Workshop! I hope you won't begrudge me if I dust off my old judge's cap and lay some constructive criticism daown hare.

Brick by Brick - a quick read, a thoughtful insight into IC relations. So many players will leave important IC events assumed without ever actually exploring them in writing. I commend you two for doing just the opposite here. Since I'm not completely familiar with the new rubric, I'll give a quick overview of my thoughts and then some specific advice for each of you.

Overall: The scenes (there were really only two of them, with a nice transition in between) were well composed and, except for in the instances I'll mention later, flowed well. However I noted a distinct lack of an "establishing shot". It really could have come from either of you, but as a reader I wanted to know what this majestic library looked like from the outside, and since Mr Winchester wrote a prologue and Luned approached from the exterior, you both had easy opportunities to cover that.

Between the two of you there is ample writing skill and experience on Althanas, and it shows in a number of ways. However, I felt setting wasn't one of them, with the exception of some of your descriptions of the Well (or whatever you called it). All the discussion of the Tap and other nations definitely helped connect me to the setting of Althanas, but in terms of the setting the story actually took place in, it fell a little flat. Remember that each thread is an opportunity to rediscover and redefine wherever it takes place.

Last thing before the individual stuff... Aurelianus. He was awkwardly name dropped early on, but when Leopold and Luned were arguing over whether to work with him, I thought you were building up to introduce a comnpletely different character, which resulted in a letdown, where I kind of went "oh, it's that guy you mentioned earlier? I guess that makes sense..." basically I felt like you both switched a bit too much between being specific and alluding.

Also... it doesn't make sense to me that Duffy and Leopold sat around for hours waiting for Luned whilst Duffy's leg bled. Why didn't he seek proper medical attention? Did they attempt to perform first aid, but find the wound is tainted or unhealable in some way? I can't think of a reason why he would be leaving a trail of blood, and if I missed an explanation of that, I think it should have been explained a bit more thoroughly, because a wound that never stops bleeding is both unusual and more of a problem than it seemed like here.

Duffy: Off the top, solid character work playing your protagonists off each other. I think you missed a lot of opportunities to situate the reader (as I described earlier re: setting) and also to supply a compelling narrative hook. While it was there, it didn't dig deep. Fleshing out Duff and Winchester's past with Luned rather than hyperlinking would have given the reader more and given more weight to later insights about her character. I'd like to discourage you, as a regular reader, from putting hyperlinks in the middle of IC posts in the future. Relevant threads and info should be linked at the beginning of the thread when possible, and at the beginning or end of the post in question otherwise.
-Try to avoid run on sentences made almost entirely of nouns/adjectives. While I understand this is part of your character's internal voice, it ends up sounding like poppycock often as not, and I think experimenting with shorter sentences and more verbs would behoove you greatly.
-You barely noted Duffy's injured leg and then didn't mention it again till post 4, when suddenly it was a big issue. Generally speaking, a wound which actively bleeds and inhibits the function of a limb will change the way someone does things and thinks. If Duffy is super tough and was just gutting it out, it didn't read that way.
-Again, watch wordiness. Wood doesn't give fire function, and the unecessary alliteration becomes purple prose.
-As a rule your dialogue is good, but a lot of it through your first two posts felt forced, and didn't enliven the characters so much as tell the story. Be careful too that you don't use a word like "interrupted" when you actually mean "responded". When in doubt, "said" works in most situations.
-The fact the floor is marble didn't appear till post 6, when Luned's heels clicked across it. It seemed odd that this was the first time a marble floor made any noise, despite people walking around on it, sitting down and standing up, etc. This relates to my comments about the injury - the more permanent elements of the story are, the more compelling the story is.
-There were more mechanical errors than I usually see from you, and it looked like Luned edited your posts for you. Bad form chap! A short thread like this needs to flow well and read quickly, and the mechanical errors slowed it down more than anything else.

Luned: Think about showing rather than telling. Example from post 5 - rather than telling the reader Luned is shrewd and taking her sweet time, finding a way to actively describe it so we know what that looks/sounds like would have kicked the post off a lot stronger.
-Try avoiding turns of phrase like "took her sweet time" and "the weight of the world on her shoulders". While these come to mind easily when writing, they do nothing to connect the reader with the action, the character, or the setting. Using turns of phrase which are rooted in Althanas lore somehow, or finding more character-specific internal dialog, can make your work that much more original and synergistic.
-Great job using the action of the story to connect the reader with your character (for examnple, thinking of Bleddyn when Duffy has difficulty walking).
-It seemed like you threw in (almost name dropped) Carcosa at the end, which sort of threw off the conclusion for anyone who doesn't know what that is. Again, if I missed a previous mention of it I apologize, but if it was there it could have been clearer.

To sum up... I think you two did a great job, considering you wrote this in a day! Even so, the mistakes we make when we're power posting are the same as the ones we make when we're taking our time... they just pop up more frequently and more visibly. That makes the fact that you did this, and chose a workshop judgement, an excellent decision in my opinion! Bravo!

For future threads, I'd say don't hesitate to take some extra time, especially in the editing phase. My FAVORITE thing about speed writing is that you get lots of material down, which you can then edit and add to afterwards to make it as good as or better than your normal-paced writing. If you'd taken the time to not only make mechanical edits but assess the thread's strengths/weaknesses and adapt it accordingly, this could have been a magical visit to Underwood. Instead, I will dub it a very interesting beginning to something that I'm sure will be epic!

I do hope you two will keep writing together, and keep using the Writer's Workshop!

[Max Dirks]

Great bit of speed writing, here.

Duffy, your writing style changed throughout the thread. I've noticed it happens a lot in your writing, particularly when controlling multiple characters. Sometimes you'll write in third person omnipresent (unlimited). This is like Cydney is objectively telling the story of Duffy and Leopold and Cydney has access to both of their thoughts and feelings. Other times you'll write in third person personal (limited). This is like Duffy or Leopold telling his story without insight to one another's thoughts and feelings. This happened to me in the LCC too against you. For example, I would write something like "The pale woman dashed at him" then write "Sei frowned, he wanted to pummel Dirks." In other words, I'd use personal to describe my opponents but omnipresent to describe my partner. Keep that in mind when "bunnying" for a partner or introducing NPCs.

That is all for now. Sorry Luned! Next time I'll think of something for you as well.

[Mordelain]

Thank you both!

I'd just like to chip in and apologise to Luned. I'm having a bit of a brain scatter week, and forgot to proof read my posts for mechanical errors pre-opening the workshop. When I went on a power admin spree last night it slipped my mind. It's no excuse for sloppy sentence structure, but I'll amend it as best I can in future threads. I am usually a lot more careful.

[Flames of Hyperion]

* Disclaimer: This is informal, subjective advice from somebody who's not very accomplished at handing out such. Treat accordingly. Without further ado!

Story: A nice, quick read building on the relationships between Leopold and Duffy, and Leopold and Luned. I enjoy short stories like this that embellish on single defining moments where character paths intersect. And as always, I'm in awe of writers who can power-post!

The overall pacing felt just right for what you set out to achieve, and the transition between the two scenes a perfect breather. I did feel that Duffy came over to Leopold's favourable view on Luned very easily, and that the principle conflict in the thread - Duffy and Leopold convincing Luned to join their cause - resolved itself rather quickly in the end.


Background: Ample history and background, covering everything fro the ills in Salvar, Corone, and Alerar to recapturing the Forgotten Ones and the Tap. The concrete references really established the world.

It helped my understanding of the thread as a whole that I'd read (and reviewed) A Tale in Shrink beforehand, but a new reader would have probably appreciated an introduction that better fleshed out the history between the three.

I didn't get much... uniqueness, for lack of a better word, from their immediate setting. The library was warm, it had books and seats... the wellspring was captivating. But for all that the three of them interacted with the setting as they talked, it could have taken place anywhere.


Characters: Again, solid work from all three characters; you know them (and their quirks) well, and play them off against one another. I'll just note some points in particular...

I liked the sense of development since their previous meeting, the small things that Luned noticed had changed both in herself and in Leopold.

Duffy's leg: why didn't he seek attention, why did it keep bleeding? As a reader, I wondered what the point of the wound was in the context of the story being told, whether I'd missed something important about it that I should have understood (possibly from a previous thread).

Again, I felt that Luned gave in to the silver-tongued sales pitch a bit easily, given her reservations. I was half expecting her to refuse at this point in time, and perhaps to come round at a later date.


Technique: Minor errors and unpolished sentences, but I've seen far worse in power-posted threads and I didn't feel they spoilt the flow too badly. Thorough editing would have helped, of course, but this is coming from somebody who's just spent six months rereading one of his own.

One thing I might point out is that it may be worthwhile breaking up your paragraphs a bit more, especially when there's dialogue involved. Once or twice I lost track of the dialogue within description.


* In closing: An intriguing snapshot and mission statement, a hint of bigger and more epic stories to come!

[Luned]

Thank you for the feedback, everyone! So appreciated. : )