Originally Posted by
016573
First and foremost I have a big pointer for both of you. Brevity is key. While battles should ideally tell compelling stories and help characters to learn/develop, they are principally about captivating action. The massive posts I witnessed in this thread were, for the most part, unnecessary. It’s one thing if you’re writing an epic story and take a long time to give a detailed description of a beautiful bit of setting. But no one, judge or otherwise, wants to read a long paragraph describing a character’s single action. In fact, except in cases where it is VERY well executed, really long battle posts tend to detract from the action and thus, lower the score.
Anyways, I’ll give commentary wherever I think I can help you improve.
Continuity
This section is largely about what caused your character to be where he is, doing what he’s doing. Answering questions such as why he is in the tournament, why he is fighting alongside his partner, what he hopes to gain from a victory, what he might to if defeated, what he has at stake, will bring this score up. You both did some of these things, but in NightCast’s first post for example, you spent an awful long time describing what was essentially an irrelevant battle, and neglected to explain why the fight started. There was something about the Gods choosing your character and his NPC, but this is incredibly weak justification and will be scored accordingly by any judge. Shadowed would have saved this score to a certain extent, giving a brief description of why both of you were there, but let me say this; a concise summary of the events which led to the present is much better than a two thousand word battle sequence.
Setting
Basic tips for both of you: when you’re describing a setting use all five senses. I found Shadowed to be much better at describing things, but still didn’t really experience the setting in my mind’s eye. You can remedy this by interspersing your long descriptions with shorter, simpler ones and interacting with the environment. Yes your character spreads his wings and flies, but how does the air feel? Is he exhilarated by it? Is there a cross breeze making his ascent difficult? The setting isn’t just a static place where a bunch of badass stuff happens; it should be a living, breathing environment.
Pacing
The pacing score in the Althanas rubric identifies with a writer’s ability to keep the reader interested. I’ll be honest, if I wasn’t reading this to critique it I wouldn’t have finished either of your first posts. It’s not especially poor writing, but it is very thick. I think this stems from both of you focusing on making your characters seem omniscient and all-powerful. NightCast, your battle scenes were often like reading a long list of moves, which isn’t at all interesting. Shadowed, you seem to try to have your character consider every possible option before making up his mind. While this may seem cool/good for winning the IC battle, it won’t help you win where it counts, on the judge’s score card. Focus on what is imperative to the plot development. Write less, and make what you do write better, in short.
Dialogue
The dialogue was decent overall. My suggestions are: always space it using proper paragraph breaks. Don’t use too much superfluous dialogue. It’s okay to have the occasional one-liner, but when the majority of your dialogue isn’t pertinent to the storyline or character, it’s distracting and you will lose points. Also, think about your character’s body language when they speak, and how their voice/vocabulary affects their speech.
Action
Focus on quality, not quantity. Get into the details of how your character moves, how their movements affect their surroundings and their own body, and how it defines them as a person. Keep in mind, action is not scored based on whose character kills the most enemies or seems the most like a god. It is scored based on how appropriate the action is to your character.
Persona
A lot of the stuff I said in continuity applies here. Although this is fantasy writing, your characters just won’t be compelling unless they are real enough to make the reader suspend their disbelief. Characters need to have emotions, realistic actions and reactions. A good way to look for true feeling is to imagine yourself in your character’s shoes. Ask yourself, “what would I do?”, then ask, “what would I do if I was my character?” Seems silly, but it works for me, and it’s hard to give pointers for persona.
Technique
Okay, I was actually really impressed with a lot of the literary devices you guys used. Imagery is one of my favorite facets of creative writing, and you both used it effectively in places. The problem is, the really cool metaphors were buried beneath layers of other stuff that to be frank, I didn’t feel like reading. Again, you need to write less overall. That way, your literary devices become the cherry on top of a described action or setting, rather than the diamond buried beneath a mountain of fluff.
Mechanics amd Clarity
This is the simplest part to improve. All you need to do is proof read your own post OUT LOUD. You’ll find a lot of typographical errors and silly mistakes this way. Also, if you pause where there shouldn’t be a pause, you may need to eliminate a comma. If you run out of breath, it probably means you need to fix a run-on sentence. If you realize you just read a paragraph exhaustively describing something irrelevant, edit that thing down to size.
You guys have both got some serious promise: I’m really glad to see writers with such potential coming to Althanas. You just need to refine your respective writing styles, and you’ll do that by writing more, and always always listening to your judges.
Hope this helps. Best of luck to you in the semi-finals!