Workshop: Forged Like Iron

[Philomel]

Name of Completed Thread: Forged Like Iron (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?29255-Forged-like-Iron-%28Closed%29)
Name of Authors: Zelrius and JLScrolls
Type of Thread: Quest
Thread Length: 11 Posts
Feedback Rewards: (Post Length of Thread/10) * ((EXP Needed to Level)*0.05) EXP
Date Closed: 10/05/2014 (10th May)

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.

[Eyvik]

First off, fellas, welcome to the site. I am so glad to see familiar faces coming over and enjoying the Althanian way of doing things. Since you've asked for a workshop, expect helpful criticism from all of us here that will help you to identify your strong suits and weak points, and to refine both. Though judgments by the judges are far and away in depth and helpful, this resource gives you feedback from all manner of angles. You might argue it's as good as it gets.

Firstly, let me say that I appreciate this thread for what it is: simplistic. It does not overextend toward unnecessary greatness, nor underachieve. It simply tells a story to further and develop the involved characters. This fundamental skill is one many writers undervalue. The ability to wrote droll, even boring scenes that fit between emotionally charged pieces allows a writer to generate more content in the long run. That said, this piece was far from boring. The conflict between two characters is established quickly, and the integration of Althanas lore shows you are both extremely excited about the world you've jumped into. Kudos to you for that enthusiasm.

Now, for the gritty stuff. Your writing is choppy, outright. I spent a lot of time on sites where the objective was less focused on the quality of writing and centralized on conflict. Overcoming an opposing entity to achieve victory was often the primary goal, and when it fell back to "fluff" writing, we mostly wrote soapbox grandstands about the character's pasts, current thoughts, and their interactions- and often laid it on thick. With sites like that, it's easy to lose sight of little things, like basic grammar or proper sentence structure. Mechanics may not remain an issue for long with the feedback you receive in this workshop, though.

Here's a number of things to watch out for.

Hard-shifts in tense: If you're writing in the past tense, that is, your verbs are written -ed, that should remain fluid throughout your work. Shifting to -ing, or the present tense, confuses the flow of the writing. This is a very easy rule to break, and while it does not seem harmful, can confuse things quickly. There are instances of -ing words being acceptable in conjunction with -ed verbs. Here's one:

"Eyvik watched the men fighting."

The reason for this is that Eyvik watched them. While his act of watching was done in the past tense, they were doing it while he was watching. Now, this could be further improved to the following:

"Eyvik watched as they fought."

But you can choose the voice you like most. Experiment with how things sound and find where you're most comfortable.

Here's an example of where the tense shifts over the course of a paragraph, from Zelrius ' first post:

"The sun beat down with its normal hue of blood red and sand peach heat bouncing off anything that stood more than a single meter off the ground. (First sentence establishes Present Tense) Zelrius had just walked out the Keep, in which he was housed and lived by order of the Priestess of Suravani and the Jya..." (Second sentence shifts to Past)

Simplicity of style versus Extravagance: Sometimes, a writer feels compelled to take things to an extreme with his description, metaphors, and similies. While it is by no means bad to paint a picture with your words, the danger is in too much, or too little. It's fine to open with a colorful exposition on the sun and sand, but watch out for being too wordy. Likewise, don't feel the need to understate an aspect of the environment, either. A good middle ground is key.

Show, don't tell: This is the most amazing feedback I've ever received, and I still struggle with it. Scrolls, this one will help you develop your writing a lot in the coming months. What I mean by this is, when you have an idea, it needs to translate as story. It is so easy to blab your concept in dialogue between characters, or script it into the narrative. You say:

"Alkor's heart raced as he watched in terror, uncertain how the fight would end. He knew that Zel was good friends with Lessa, but also that the swordsman had an undeniable thirst for blood."

Great. Now I know exactly why he's terrified and what's going on, but you've effectively taken the excitement out of it. Instead:

"Alkor clutched the hilt of his blade, and sweat beaded on his brow. The golden eyed swordsman narrowed his gaze as he watched the two figures stand at odds. Blonde haired and blue eyed, the gentle Lessa was a sacrificial lamb at the Altar of a brutal god.

Zelrius. The name alone was enough to strike terror in every heart on Aincrad. The bow tie-toting terror adjusted his favorite accessory, a wicked grin across his thin lips."

What's next, you ask? Exactly. That's show, don't tell. Instead of telling you all the details, you now have a scene that's going to play out. You have emotion, action, characterization, and one hell of a good time just waiting to happen.

I'll keep my feedback minimal this time, and let everyone else take a crack at this thread.

Good job, guys, and I hope you can use what I've put here.

Stay classy!

[Doge]

Plot:
I liked where the story was set. Fallien is a good region, but intrinsic in that is the description of the city. Adding more color would have helped your scores here. Remember, your characters were in the middle of a city in a desert and running around. Heat, sand, sun. Add to this the richness of city, smells, burnt, sweat and salty.

For the story generally I thought you had a solid premise, and you both did a good job linking this fairly small story to a wider world. There could have been a bit more polish with how that story flowed. Its very, very hard to have a story take place while people are running. Its even hard to have a fight while running. With that in mind, you could have had better progression by having a smaller chase, and then a fight in a dead end.

In terms of your characters, I think you did a good job explaining why they were fighting. A slight tweak to the dialogue or explanation of your characters would have increased this more. For example, Michael not wanting to reveal his angelic side, and fearing failure of saving the girl might better explain why he ran. Perhaps he feared missing a deadline that he needed to make to get into the city? Zelrius might have believed him in the end, but was duty bound to chase him down.

The court section seemed a bit forced, also quick that he was suddenly in front of a judge.


Character:
Generally this was pretty good. A word of caution, don’t show your characters as gods, or speak too highly of them. People relate to weakness more than strength, if you wanted us to like Zelrius then share his feeling of being trapped by duty and fate. For Michael it would be his feeling of loss at what he had been, and his struggle to do good (I assume rescuing the girl was good) while not as powerful as he had been.

The part where Zelrius came into the court before Michael killed everyone was a bit corny. This is a world where magic flows freely, and for the most part our characters shouldn’t be that much stronger than everyone around them. Just as Zelrius was employed because of his abilities, so too would be others. This goes back to the comment I made about not treating your characters like gods.

I mentioned before that the running fight scene was a challenging. It’s hard, very hard to maintain clarity of the actions of the characters while running.


Prose:
Careful of the run on sentences. If a sentence gets more than three comas it might be time to end it and start another.


“I’m an angel, Archangel to be precise, my name is Michael and my services have been employed to smuggle a foreigner girl out of this city, who was smuggled in to care for a sick relative in the first place.”

In this quote the character has been fighting so you’d expect something shorter, perhaps him being puffed. Regardless, it should be broken up.


Gingerly kicking his feet along the sand he reached to subdue the angel man whom quickly put a hand on the Soldier’s shoulder and held tightly, almost making feeling be lost in that arm.

It’s a good idea at the start of a paragraph to re-establish who the subject is. Careful of using too many changing between too many nicknames as well.

As a final note, you should start a new paragraph when switching to dialogue. It makes it much easier to read through posts.

Overall:
I liked this thread, it was a good, albeit short read. Working on technique of writing will greatly help the other categories

2 out of 5 Doges! :D
http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/281/3/4/doge_by_harlequinhues-d8212ta.png http://fc08.deviantart.net/fs71/f/2014/281/3/4/doge_by_harlequinhues-d8212ta.png http://orig02.deviantart.net/ae03/f/2015/092/7/4/grey_doge_by_harlequinhues-d8o2jbz.png http://orig02.deviantart.net/ae03/f/2015/092/7/4/grey_doge_by_harlequinhues-d8o2jbz.png http://orig02.deviantart.net/ae03/f/2015/092/7/4/grey_doge_by_harlequinhues-d8o2jbz.png

[Cards of Fate]

(Yo, the score here don't mean anything, just some Judge Training.)

Thread Title: Forged like Iron (Closed)
Judgment Type: Condensed (Using this template for ease)
Participants: Zelrius and JLScrolls

Im going to preface this a bit here. You two are both new, and as far as I know this is your first judgment/thread. There's a lot of criticism but take them all in stride. Im not trying to bring you down here, but lift you up by pointing out the things you need to fix. That being said lets get this ball rolling.

Plot: 9/30

Your story has a basic idea and an interesting premise. It’s execution is lacking however. I got why both of your characters were there, but other than that lead up I got very little on your pasts or what you did for a living ect. Your setting was sorta set up then ignored for the most part. It was kinda like the backdrop for a school play, I imagined Agrabah from Alladin, and while this may have been what you were going for, it was me supplementing your writing not following it. The biggest issue was your pacing, which felt all over the place. I often found myself thinking “How many more posts can this possibly go on for?” and then suddenly “Oh hey it’s over...” there was next to no lead up to your last post and it drove me crazy. All in all it needs a bit of love and perhaps a bit more planning. Did you try sitting down and making a basic outline? Fixing your pacing to allow for steady plot progression will allow you to focus more on your setting and story. Just make sure that when you’re working on your next thread that you don’t over-correct and bog your story down or give too much back-story. Just remember balance.


Character:10 /30

While it’s your highest scoring section it is far from perfect. Your dialogue and actions felt disjointed and forced. There were several times when your characters said something that felt just flat wrong or out of place. Some pointed exampled would be the Smuggler telling the soldier about his job BREAKING THE LAW. Then Zelrius’ response? “Oooh smuggling, what’s the pay?” You just got done beating the hell out of each other, why are you suddenly chatting like best friends? Offering to go to a brothel together? In terms of action it feels like you’re actions line up with your characters shaky personalities, however it feels like your fights are literally you listed your attacks. “Zelrius used punch, Micheal used block.” It felt…rigid. Show me more of the fights, don’t tell me. Same with persona, you really liked telling me Zel was arrogant, but you didn't show me at all. Show me Zel’s arrogance with him underestimating an opponent ect. It seemed like you tried to do this, but all I saw was ego this, ego that, it wasn't well implemented at all. Scrolls your characters persona didn't catch much attention from me aside from he seemed to fluctuate VERY rapidly. Next time you two write I would suggest you sit down and really think to yourselves "Who is my character? How will they act? How can I communicate this to my reader without straight up telling this." I have both of you on skype so if you want to have a more in depth discussion about this we can.

Prose: 9/30

Typos everywhere. All I had to do was copy paste you to a word document and follow the squiggles. There were tense shifts galore and missing words. This was a collaborative effort from the two of you in google docs, one of you should have copy pasted this to word or at least glanced over this before judging it. All of your major errors would have been caught with a close reading, slow down and check your work. You don’t have a time limit, it isn’t a race. Between the shift tensing, the redundant words, and some instances where your writing pulled me out of the story there is a lot of room for improvement. Zelrius, you have a tendency to change from passive to active voice and while in some cases this is a strong literary technique your work suffers from you doing it in almost a jarring manner. Usually unless you want to draw my attention to a line you should try to stay consistent. Your redundant words come in the shape of “every day many attempts were made each and every day.” Both of you did this rather consistently and it made the thread harder to read. A rule of thumb is unless you’re reaching for a top shelf literary technique try to avoid repeating words, and when you do go for that technique make sure you get it right or it’ll hurt your writing. My last major comment is about “thourghholy (Get it?).” No, just…unless you’re deadpool don’t break the fourth wall.

Wildcard: 5/10

Welcome to the site! I know this score seems really low, but don’t get discouraged. Look at anything I wrote in January or December and compare it to my recent posts this month and you’ll see major growth! The same will happen with you, just remember my comments and PROOF READ. A bunch of your issues will be fixed with a simple double or triple glance after pasting your posts to word.

Final Score: 33 /100

[Philomel]

This thread will be extended until Wednesday, and then CLOSED. Get in some commentary for some easy EXP!

[Philomel]

This thread is CLOSED. EXP and GP to be awarded shortly.

[Philomel]

Rewards for workshop commentary: Forged Like Iron (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?29267-Workshop-Forged-Like-Iron)

Rewards:

Eyvik: (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?18161-Eyvik)
110 EXP
22GP

Doge: (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17393-Doge)
165 EXP
22GP

Cards of Fate: (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?17720-Cards-of-Fate)
330 EXP
22GP

[Lye]

EXP & GP Added!