Workshop: Songs of a Lonely Heart

What is the name of your thread?: Songs of a Lonely Heart
Who participated in the thread?: Flamebird
Number of Posts?: 11
Full Rubric Judgment?: Yes
Workshop Close Date: April 20th, 2021

Feedback Rewards: (Post Length of Thread/10) * ((EXP Needed to Level)*0.05) EXP

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 for your feedback, 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 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.

Hi Flamebird! I'm going to give this a proper critique tomorrow. I would also like another member of staff to jump in as well and give a response.

I am hereby committing myself to giving you some feedback for this workshop thread. I have read it already last week, so I'm familiar with it, but it was not with the intent of judging. You will have something from me by Sunday afternoon, 10/24. =)

Good afternoon Flamebird. I have read over your thread a couple times, once before I accepted the position as a mod and now after, and I wanted to go ahead and give you my thoughts on the writing as a whole. Please let me know if you would like further clarification, elaboration on a specific point, or anything that you think I could do better in my way of presenting this in the future for yourself or others. I appreciate the feedback as much as presenting it.

Anyway, onto the thread: Songs of a Lonely Heart

Pros

Post #4 with the interaction between Kylie and Felicity has a very good emotional and personable reaction between two characters. It gives a fair amount of insight into Felicity and her interaction with another character, as well as her character as a whole without revealing everything. In a way, it’s a foreshadowing effect for a reader who has no immediate knowledge of Felicity, a good hook. Very well done.

I really liked the interaction with the initial discovery of Althanas by a young Felicity and learning of the world around her, not the frozen world she was used to. As that continued into the following posts that was very good. It reminded me of other characters in the past that were either from other parts of Althanas or from other worlds dropped into the world. It was fun to see and read.

All in all, I think your strong suit is dialogue with the NPC’s that you have created and building around that. I think you have an opportunity to weave in a bit more of the background story into that through the writing so I as a reader know who the character is a bit more, or your character’s background in alchemy for example, but it all plays out well enough in the story.

Cons

Grammatically there are some tense and agreement issues within the first post that cause the flow of the story to be a bit jolting off the bat. Try to keep in the present or past tense when you write, as the very first post was switching between the two. In the first post (#2 for this thread), there were pronoun issues which were almost like dangling modifiers. I’m also not sure how this frozen ice lady and the brutality of the first opening post had anything to do with the rest of the story as a whole...

In other posts there were grammatical issues that were just words put out of place or misused (post #5). As well as other posts here and there

The overall pacing was jarring because I had trouble following what timeline and who I each post was supposed to be following to start the story. The largest contributor to this was post # 9 which was just incredibly long in comparison to the rest and seemed to jump in timeline for her life I think, but it was hard to tell.

Aside from the above, there is a lot of use of pronouns in certain points where I’m not sure who it, they, or them is referring to.. I found that most of the problem was in the first post, but as the story went on there were points where the pronouns were left dangling at times and I had to reread to try and figure out what it was referencing.

I apologise that this is late, but I read Songs of Lonely Heart and had time to offer you some more informally formatted feedback!

My favourite part about this thread, and about your writing in general, is the emotional journey that you take the reader through. The characters you create always have a purpose, and always serve to either reflect what Felicity is feeling or act as a "bounce off". In this thread, Uncle Fulcrum, Jonathan and Kylie are such NPC's.

Preston already touched on this above, which kind of stole my thunder a bit, but I also really enjoyed Felicity's introduction to Althanas and how she is immediately interested by so many strange new aspects of the world around her; even something as simple as discovering gulls. It was nice to see a character physically introduced to our world for the first time. Most characters are simply "in" Althanas to start with, so a different perspective was refreshing. I think I also enjoyed the excitement of Althanas juxta positioned to her past in Eiskalt.

I felt that there were a couple of jarring moments, and I wondered if your song / poem posts were in the right place to have the effect you wanted. Again, as Preston pointed out above, there were quite a few issues with tense and it was difficult to determine what was in the past and what was in the present. I do feel that your grammar and spelling, as well as your overall technique, have massively improved since this thread (your work in Detonation is testament to this), so I'm not going to go too ham fisted , but in the context of just this thread in isolation I felt that a little more time and a little less rush would have improved the overall quality by some measure.

For a Flamebird short, this was a good one and and enjoyable read overall. I know that you've addressed some of the issues prevalent in this thread in your overall writing, but the things to carry forward from this are probably just a little more attention to your tense in the context of what you are trying to convey, and keep doing what you are doing with everything else!

Workshop Closed


Preston receives-

150 EXP
30 GP


Shinsou Vaan Osiris receives-

1000 EXP
30 GP



Thank you both for participating!!!



Rewards Added