Workshop; Merry Christmas, Friend

[Philomel]

Name of Completed Thread:Merry Christmas, Friend (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?28525-Merry-Christmas-Friend)
Name of Authors: matthewkuch, black shadow
Type of Thread: Quest
Thread Length: 12 Posts
Feedback Rewards: (Post Length of Thread/10) * ((EXP Needed to Level)*0.05) EXP
Date Closed: 06/12/2014 (6th December)

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[Rayse Valentino]

Hello.

This was a thread about two friends meeting and to exchange gifts. Well, one person got gifts.

For one thing, proofreading is important. There were a lot of unnecessary commas and typos. In one piece of dialogue you had 'where' instead of 'wear'.

You both touched upon a few things from the pasts of your characters and never expanded on them... like the whole Black Shadow killing his daughter's mother thing. That's a very heavy topic to casually mention and then forget about for the rest of the thread. You mention it again at the end and I still don't know why it happened.

And why they needed to live outside of the Ixian castle. This location seems extremely desolate. Was it really that bad?

Matthew, the skin tearing off Gavner's fingers in the first post was very jarring. I'm not sure where you were going with that.

Black Shadow, at one point you flip out and try to kill Gavner, and despite describing how he loses himself in this process, it looked pretty easy for Gavner to break him out of it. I didn't really understand what Black Shadow was at that point, I generally don't picture ninjas as the type from realultimatepower.com. I got somewhat of a sense of character from Black Shadow and Gavner.

"clump clump clump" Should probably not be inside a dialogue box. Maybe italics? Anything to differentiate it from the format of dialogue.

This thread works fine if you think of it was a long vignette.

I would say it was a good exercise at reconnecting characters and laying the groundwork for future events. You hinted at some potential plot points and while I saw a few mechanical errors, I didn't have any points where I had to stop reading because I didn't understand what was going on.

[Shinsou Vaan Osiris]

Commentary:

Story:

Strengths:

The strengths here were the telling of two separate, and rather contrasting, stories. Between Gavner’s wishes to bring the strange, new concept of Christmas from the ‘real world’ to the world of Althanas to hints of Black Shadow’s obviously dark past, it was an entertaining read.

The story here was intriguing. This piece explored the relationships between a number of parties, namely Gavner and Black Shadow, as well as a cameo appearance by their “creators” Matthew and Tyler. Whilst not particularly complex, the story does contain elements of comedy that keeps the reader entertained (one example of the comedic element I particularly liked was in post three, in the exchanges between Gavner and Matthew). It also has slightly darker undertones relating to the truth behind Espoir’s parent’s deaths (post two: “He stopped and thought for a second. If he told her, then she might not trust him, or she could become afraid. But if he kept it from her the same could also happen. The decision was a tough one to make, but keeping the truth from her for now was a better option than to tell her”), which sets this short story up to be the pre-cursor for something a bit more hard-hitting in the future.

Weaknesses:

The weakness to the story lay in post number three from paragraph two onwards. At this point, when Gavner is ‘mistaken’ for an intruder by the protective Black Shadow, Black Shadow attacks Gavner in a sustained and obviously quite brutal way. I felt that the reader would find it difficult to make sense of this fight, as these were two people who were supposed to be friends. Whilst the writer does his best to get across to the reader that Gavner assumes it will be a bit of a friendly spar, that message becomes contradictory in that Black Shadow is going for the kill (“Black Shadow did not flinch at the name, but continued attacking; he was in battle mode now, nothing could snap him out of this trance until he killed his enemy or died.”).

An improvement here would be made if the scene was re-written to show Black Shadow spending a few seconds fighting whilst attempting to figure out who Gavner was. I would recommend that in future you think about how a situation like that would unfold in real terms. Surprise, confusion, and then quick reconciliation would have been a more fitting set of actions for that confrontation. This would also help to improve the pace and action of the piece.

The setting was OK, but I felt as if I couldn’t visualise the area properly at times. The start was promising (such as the description of Dead Man’s Drink in post three) but tailed off midway through the story and became somewhat peripheral until the end of the story. It was then that the significance of Black Shadow’s house was revealed, and this tied in nicely to the “family” message that was being portrayed.


Character:

Strengths:

This was the area of the thread that felt strongest. Gavner and Black Shadow have two very different personalities that come through clearly in this thread, and both compliment each other nicely. The additions of Matthew and Tyler brought out the relationship between Gavner and his ‘real world’ counterparts well, with Gavner showing that he knows what liberties to take in his dialogue with the pair. It also clear that Gavner and Black Shadow are close to the point of being comfortable sparring with each other (“So it is a fight you want, Gavner thought with a smile as he crashed to the ground, smashing through the railing of his best friend's porch. He always enjoyed friendly fights.”).

Black Shadow’s character relies heavily on a very emotional relationship with Espoir, his adopted daughter, and this ranges from the joy of having her around and being able to protect her to the sadness of her possibly finding out the truth of her parent’s deaths (“Black Shadow felt like he did not even deserve to be called her father, he did kill her mother after all”) and thinking ill of him for whatever involvement he had in those events. This, for me, displays a promising depth of personality that really came across in the writing. Indeed, a special mention to Espoir’s character should be given for adding splashes of colour and a third dimension to both character’s personalities, especially towards the end of the thread.

Weaknesses:

I refer to post number three from paragraph two onwards once again as an example where the character relationships suffered. Whilst I cited that the friendship between Gavner and Black Shadow was clear, and listed this as a strength above, the consistency in this section was a weakness. An area for improvement would be to expand on your characters personalities even more, and to keep your consistency in this area throughout the thread.


Prose:

Strengths:

There were areas of the thread that were done well. For the most part, sentences were well constructed and the use of paragraphing was good, with shorter paragraphs used to emphasise a point or particular action, so well done on this part.

Weaknesses:

The definite weakness in this thread was the failure to check for basic spelling errors and grammatical problems, such as the possessive apostrophe in “hero’s” (which should have been written “heroes”) and the misspelling of simple words. Copying your posts into word and pressing F7 is the easiest way to eliminate these errors.

There were two other areas which I would highlight as definite areas for improvement. The first is to avoid putting character actions between *these*. As a writer, your aim is to get the reader to visualise either what you imagine to be happening or something close to it and if your character is performing an action, you have to show the reader what it is. A suggestion for an improved description of the knocking might have been along the lines of:

“Suddenly, Black Shadow was startled by a series of sharp knocks on the wooden door.”

The description you use after *knock knock knock* was good – quick and a little tense – so it seems odd that the description for the knocking itself would be given so little attention.

The second area was the use of the number 2 instead of the word two. Again, this is something to avoid when writing descriptively and can actually serve to disrupt the flow of the piece, making it look untidy.


Wildcard:

I really enjoyed the contribution of Espoir’s character to the story and the basic message the thread was trying to convey. It was also a good pre-cursor to a much more involved plot further down the line. Well done!

[Philomel]

This thread will remain open until the end of the week (Sunday) and then EXP and GP sorted.

Apologies for the delay in sorting these out. I have been super busy with my dissertation.

[Philomel]

Workshop Commentary Rewards: Merry Christmas, Friend (http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?30228-Workshop-Merry-Christmas-Friend)

Rayse Valentino receives: (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?4242-Rayse-Valentino)
840 EXP
25 GP

Shinsou Vaan Osiris receives: (http://www.althanas.com/world/member.php?18305-Shinsou-Vaan-Osiris)
180 EXP
25 GP

[Rayleigh]

All EXP and GP have been added.