Workshop: Tunnels

[Philomel]

Name of Completed Thread: Tunnels (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28395-Tunnels)
Name of Authors: Hysteria
Type of Thread: Quest
Thread Length: 19 Posts
Feedback Rewards: (Post Length of Thread/10) * ((EXP Needed to Level)*0.05) EXP
Date Closed: 12/01/2014

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[matthewkuch]

Name of Completed Thread: Tunnels (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28395-Tunnels)
Judgment Type: Workshop
Participants: Hysteria



Plot:

Story
Hey Hysteria, loved the story and how you put it all together. The events were not too unrealistic for your character yet you had that touch of fantasy added to it as well. There was a very nice balance between rationalization and chaos, and in the end you followed through with possible backlash of Talen’s actions making the story seem more real in a sense.

Setting
I was very happy as you clearly described the settings of your scenes and then some. You were very strong with details in the beginning of the story and maintained it throughout the story which I applaud you for. Most writer’s (myself included) start out their thread with strong description and they really flesh out and articulate their scene but falter in terms of clarity towards the end which you did not do. Good job on that.

There are only two real things I would say that might have helped me understand the setting more would be the climate in the area Talen was in. Was the mine high in the mountain where the snow chilled the miners? Was it down at a low altitude where this did not really affect them? What season was it in Alerar? Etc.

The other would have to be the characters’ appearance. You did a good job of describing how the spider was larger-than-life, but Talen, the dwarves, and the elves had little to no description in terms of physical appearance.

Pacing
Pacing was great in this thread as there was a substantial build up and a nice burst of action at the end. The shorter length posts always ended at the height of action or the build-up of another attack letting me question what Talen or the spider would do next. Example:

The charred and burnt side of its face still bubbled away, while from its mouth dripped the potentate toxin. It reared back and lunged forwards in an attempt to swallow Talen whole.

The kid however had very different plans.(**end of post**)
(post#12 paragraph4 sentence2)



Character:

Communication
Overall I thought the communication was good between your characters. Your description of Talen as “the youth” coincided with his somewhat immature personality at times. As when he addresses the Dwarves in post 2:

“Back you idiots!”
(post#2 1st Dialogue)

I also liked how you gave the dwarves a dialect that made them seem Scottish. This compensated for the lack of appearance description in the dwarves as it helped my mind generate how they may look.

Action
Action was a strong area of yours as it was clearly described. The chaos was not extremely difficult to follow, nor was it lacking in clarity for the most part.

Persona
This was one of your strongest areas as you clearly defined a complex and dynamic character. As I mentioned earlier, your description of Talen as “the youth” coincided with his somewhat immature personality, yet he was serious at times while being straight forward and to the point.

“No spider.” Talen's voice was steady.

”Then you seek to rule my brood?”

“I seek only your death.” Talen replied.

The youth reached into his pocket and pulled out a pair of sunglasses. He slipped them on, but held his hand on their rim.

“Solar flare!”



Prose:
I know you wrote this as “ just a rough and kinda crappy story to get some cobwebs out…” but this was consequently your weakest area, undoubtedly because of how you described it (I didn’t think it was crappy btw).

Mechanics
This area of your writing suffered the most, but I am sure you would have done better had it been an extremely serious or competitive thread. Some misused words and confusing sentences made me double check things or look up words for proper definitions.

Example- “The morning sun was peaking over the twilight mountains…”

Did you mean the sun was peeking over the mountains or did you mean it was reaching its highest point in the sky over the mountains?

“The spiders were coming closer, but Talen's refusal to turn and run had imbued them was some apprehension.”

I was rather unsure about this sentence as to if you meant ‘with’ instead of ‘was’

I also notice your repetition of words or phrases in paragraphs.


Perhaps the dwarves had broken into a huge underground chamber, and the creatures living there had a new prey. Perhaps the spiders had been in hibernation and the fresh air flowing in over night had awoken them.

In this case it was the word ‘perhaps’ (and this paragraph was actually followed up by one that used perhaps again). I know what it’s like when you have a recurring thought and you don’t realize your repetition of the same vocabulary, sometimes rereading your work can help you see when you’re doing this. Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com really helps me find other ways to articulate my ideas when I find myself repeating words or phrases


Clarity
You were pretty clear on things. For the most part your clarity errors were a result of small lapses in mechanics.

Technique
Your writing style is very unique in its own way. I really enjoy your use of inverted sentence structure, as it is a display of clear grammatical knowledge and superior skill, but at times it can be confusing if mixed with mechanics errors.

It was indeed possible that if they had entered the cavern as soon as finding them they could have dispatched the spiders easily.

In this case your pronouns were not extremely clear as you used ‘them’ and ‘they’ several times and I was confused as to whether you were talking about the dwarves or the spiders. I had to read it a few times to understand it but for the most part your inverted structures gave the writing a sense of superiority.

I also liked your use of the words girth, gait, exorbitant, and apprehensive. They added to the superior style of the writing. Figurative language was not rampant but it was used at just the right time to add extra description and life to your characters and situation.


“Talen paused as the humid air wrapped its slimy grasp around him.”
“Talen shot like a weight tied to a string towards the injured leg.”



Wildcard:

I really liked the giant talking spider. As I said earlier it helped with the rationality:chaos ratio and made the story very interesting.



Good Job!
If you consider that a bad solo not worth the read, I wish my bad solos could be like that!

[Philomel]

This workshop thread will be kept open a further WEEK for added commentary. Comment here for easy EXP!

[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: The opening post, with just the letter asking for help, opened the thread very well. In fact I felt it was a much more effective opening than what you did in A Gentle Breeze and a Falling Stone, allowing Talen to get to the meat of the story immediately. One thing that wasn't quite clear to me (a first-time reader of Talen's tales) was how the dwarf recognised him on sight. Even a simple '... hm, you're even younger than the tales tell." would have helped in this respect.

The first half of the tale read like a relatively standard boss fight, complete with rich rewards at the end. The observation regarding the spider's 'fat and lazy' mindset, that it 'did not know of the dangers outside its home', rang especially true given Talen's fighting style. I wasn't expecting the twist in the tail, which arrested my attention and didn't let go. Well executed! Kudos also to your pacing, which moved the story along relentlessly throughout.


Background: Always good to see more stories with dwarves! And lovingly described Alerian arcano-tech! The connection of the spiders with N'jal felt like a casual aside at first, but you revisited it (and its implications) in the latter part of the thread to great effect. You also made an effort to tie things in to greater events around Althanas (the dragon in Alerar) which was a good touch.

I did feel, however, that you missed a number of opportunities to firmly establish Talen and the world around him. As Matthew pointed out, there was little to no description of Talen or the other humanoid characters in the tale: this allows us to generate them according to our own imaginations, but does little to set them apart from 'ye olde generic fantasy adventure'. Unsurprisingly given the way I myself write, I felt that you could have done more to describe and interact with the scenery according to the five senses: the damp below ground, the stink of mould and the occasional blast of frigid air, etc. Finally, I felt that the scenery fell a little by the wayside during the battle proper, which was a shame given the richness of the locations visited by your plot.


Characters: Talen gravitated between immature and observant, youthfully impulsive and haunted by his choices, which made for an interesting character to follow. It did feel though he was the only character in the thread of any importance, however, and you didn't quite explore the consequences of his actions (the death of the dwarves in the tavern) on his psyche, which felt like another missed opportunity. He follows N'jal, but clearly not as devoutly as some of her more fervent adherents: is there any chance for redemption, or is he truly beyond salvation?

Despite the above, I did appreciate some of the little touches you incorporated in your NPCs: the Spider Queen's ridiculous surprise that Talen betrayed the oath after she'd done so, and the concern of the trapped dwarves for their families goading them into a reckless decision.


Technique: You made it clear at the beginning not to expect a polished thread, but I'm still going to point out the many minor errors, including misplaced apostrophes, tenses, misspelled words, etc, that could be swept away with a quick proof-read. They were unfortunately noticeable in particular when they infringed upon the clarity of the story, forcing me to re-read lines to better understand the gist of the tale. Matthew's done a good job of analysing the rest of your technique, so I'll defer to his post here.


* In closing: Sometimes I wish I could write a thread like this. Short, sweet, to the point, but with its memorable touches.

[Alydia Ettermire]

Tunnels

Plot

Story
I'm honestly not sure why Talen was summoned to the mine in the first place. Surely Alerar has the means, knowledge, and motivation to eradicate a nest of over-sized arachnids. Does Talen have an established reputation in Alerar or Kachuk? Since no other character in the thread has so much as a name, I'd assume no prior personal relationships existed. Why Talen, specifically?

That aside, the story flowed smoothly enough, but sparsely. Even the punch you tried to give it at the end fell flat, like when and if Talen tells the story, it will go "one time I was in Alerar and got hired to kill a bunch of spiders, so I did."

It has potential to lead somewhere, but wasn't much in and of itself.

Setting
Setting was sparse but adequate. Unfortunately, a lot of it fell into the "told, not shown" category. For example, you mentioned that while Talen estimated two hundred spiders, there were really a hundred fifty. I think this is a case where a concrete number makes the horror less real. If we can quantify, we can conquer. "The rough rock nearly vanished beneath the thick weave of webs and the seemingly endless swarm of beady eyes and skittering legs," or the like, would have served you much better. The setting made me sad, because I've seen you make it vivid and intense.

Pacing
I think the pacing fit the story. In some places it rushed a bit, in some places it dragged a smidge.

Character

Communication
There was very little non-dialogue communication, which made the thread feel a little flat. I did like the use of N'Jal speech.

Action
I felt like the action was the entire purpose of the thread, like all you really wanted was to have Talen go smash some arachnids. It looks like you had a lot of fun with it. That said, it did get quite cartoonish between weaponized "bubble gum," Talen pulling out (and wielding) a hammer bigger than himself, and Talen literally blowing himself back up like a balloon.

Persona
There wasn't much of this. Talen came off as a little apathetic and a little cruel (or a lot cruel). No one else had any sort of depth at all.

Prose

Mechanics
Proofread yourself! You use the wrong word or misspell things (or abuse some form of punctuation) a couple of times - minimum - per post. Considering the brevity of your posts, that is nothing short of shameful.

Clarity
Everything came directly to the point without obfuscating wordiness. No issues here.

Technique
I didn't notice you using any advanced technique effectively. I could see attempts at building tension, but everything went so quickly to where it was going that it felt half-hearted.

Hurting you was a lot of closely-packed repetition, notably that you referred to Talen as "the youth" often and sequentially, and over use of the word "shadow."

Wildcard
Tunnels was readable, but I think that with a little effort it could have been much, much more.

[Hysteria]

Thanks for the feedback, and taking the time to read the thread. There was some darn good comments which I'll put into future threads :D

[Philomel]

This thread is now closed. Rewards will be calculated and posted soon.

[Philomel]

Rewards:

Matthewkuch (http://http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17109-matthewkuch):
1520 EXP
40 GP

Flames of Hyperion (http://http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?8570-Flames-of-Hyperion):
1235 EXP
40 GP

Where In The World (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?8606-Where-in-the-World):
665 EXP
40 GP

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added!

Thank you all for your contributions.