Old dogs, new tricks. [closed]

[Breaker]

Thread Name: Old dogs, new tricks.
Thread Type: Quest
Participants: Shinsou Vaan Osiris and Storm Veritas
Full Rubric Judgment

Opening Remarks
Another dynamic adventure from Althanas' family friendly, feel-good odd couple!

Just kidding. I really enjoyed the liquor-swilling, card-playing opening and the mysterious nature of the cat-and-mouse game that followed. Can I use more hyphens? No, no I cannot. My favorite aspect of this thread was the characters and the way you brought them to life, but more on that later!

Plot: 21/30
Overall the plot felt powerful and well developed. I don't know how much planning you put into this, but it seemed as though you definitely put some forethought and preparation into this storyline. Points where I think you could improve include setting the tone and managing pacing. The gunshot came as a complete surprise to me, which may have been your intent, but I feel it would have been better served with a little more foreshadowing. As for the pacing, it was smooth at times but got rocky through the action sequences, so I'll touch more on that later.

Story: 7/10
Story is definitely a strength for both of you; you both know how to spin a compelling yarn, and your unique skillsets complement each other well. The reveal of the big bad perpetrator was well executed, especially by comparison to the gunshot, which as I mentioned seemed to come out of nowhere. On that note, while the intro was completely in character and enjoyable to read it took rather too long to get to the hook. Up until the gunshot, I was honestly wondering if this was just going to be a thread about how cool Shin and Storm are (which I probably still would have enjoyed). That said, a little foreboding in the air would have gone a long way to setting up the shot, and I think you could have found an inciting incident earlier in the story.

Setting: 8/10
Another strength for both of you, and one of the most enjoyable factors about this story. It did an excellent job of playing in and around current Althanas events, and bringing elements of the world to life. I felt immersed in the scenery as the characters moved from the one spot to the next, and those transitions were executed smoothly. You also did a superb job of using setting interaction to demonstrate the force of your characters' abilities. Even Shinsou's time spent outside of reality was well written, which can be a difficult task (after all, how do you write a lack of setting?).

The two things that stopped this score from being higher were the fact that your descriptions bogged the action down at times, and there were a few references that seemed a bit outside the context of Corone. For example, after Shin is injured Storm refers to him being kept alive by some "incredible machines". The presence of a firearm was somewhat surprising as well, although a little more common place. In any case, I think it would have benefited the thread to include some explanation as to the origin of these technologies, even if just a passing reference to dark elves. This thread was very Corone/Brotherhood focused, which is fine, but you don't get top scores without being a bit ambitious.

Pacing: 6/10
Still a strong area generally, but definitely the weakest in this category. As I mentioned above the main action took too long to get going, and once things did get rolling they got bogged down on occasion by meaty descriptions that did a lot of telling instead of showing. I'll grab a couple examples to show you what I mean:

It was only a few moments later that the door from the room adjacent to Shinsou’s unfortunate quarters was opened again. The door opened in with a gentle creak, exposing the wizard who had finished his interrogative work. He appeared a bimodal disaster; well dressed with sharp creases in his suit offset by his hair uncharacteristically messy, sweat stains forming in the center of his chest and at his armpits. Most notably, blood was spattered across his clothing in seemingly errant streaks, six or seven slashes of crimson and battery orange-brown across his knuckles, suit, and shoes. There was no sound behind him coming from the room, the fate of the salesmen seemed to have been terrible.

This is just one thick paragraph of the narrator telling the reader information. You start off by mentioning that the door opened twice before introducing the subject of that action, Storm. Most of what follows is passive, adjective-filled description that does nothing to move the plot forward. It's fine to do a little review at the beginning of a post to throw the reader a bone, but you could have done so much more effectively with one or two succinct sentences.

The portal behind the cloaked enigma died away with a whimper. Outside, heavy, cumbersome rainclouds had rolled in from the north and before long raindrops heavily rang a thousand staccato beats across the Tylmerande architecture. Damascus shuffled uncomfortably as the sound of an arcane hum grew ever louder, and Tenedos bounced on his heels as the vibrations of unknown magics started to manifest all around him. It was power, raw power, stemming from their employer. The hooded figure momentarily closed his eyes, shut out the empty pit in his stomach and focused on the pair in front of him, enough that when he spoke, it came out with a straight, unwavering voice.

There's some really pretty descriptive language in here, but it's delivered fairly clumsily. First sentence? Beautiful. Second sentence? Triply redundant. Heavy, cumbersome, and heavily all mean the same thing in this context, and you're doubling and tripling up on adjectives where strong verbs would suit you so much better. Also I had to re-read the last sentence of this paragraph a couple times because you refer to his voice as "it" without being clear what "it" refers to.

Character: 23/30
You both know your characters very well, and it shows in every interaction and piece of dialogue. I really enjoyed getting to see these two (anti?)heroes put through the ringer, but I do have a few pointers so I'll get on to the categories.

Communication: 9/10
Without a doubt the strongest aspect of the writing from both of you. Both of your main characters, and even Arius and most of the secondary cast had distinctive enough ways of talking that I might have guessed who was speaking without needing the tags. You both use external and internal dialogue well with consistent vocabularies, and also employ strong elements of body language to bolster the things your characters say.

Since I just finished raking you over the coals in the last category, let's highlight some of your finer moments as well:

Can’t let them reach the west gate; they won’t stay covered for long. Shit, they could be long gone by now. You waited too long.

I love the decisive darkening of his thoughts in this passage. At first we have a glimmer of hope, but then a cloud of solidifying smog obscures it, hardened with a helping of self-blame. Well done.

“I don’t know how I got here, why I’m here, or even why you’re here,” Feeling their business was done, the Telgradian’s brown boots began to tread a crisp path away from the woman, who listened as Shinsou moved towards foothills on the horizon, “…but I do know this; this isn’t real, you aren’t real, and I don’t need the opinions of a phantom. I don’t belong here.”

The last two sentences are utterly Shinsou; I can't think of a character more likely to express disdain towards a ghost's audacity. The use of Arius was also very strong and consistent across both of your posts.

Action: 6/10
There were moments of action that I really enjoyed, because you both know your characters so well there are bound to be beautiful segments of motion. But for the most part I felt like the physical action dragged, especially by comparison to the dialogue.

Fury drove the old wizard, who found himself moving with purpose and a swiftness he hadn’t felt in ten years.

This is a great example because everything before the comma is great and everything afterwards is not so great. Firstly, anytime you say something like "who found himself" you need to consider reordering your phrasing. You could just as easily have said "who moved" and it would have been an improvement. Second, you go on to describe a powerful physical action with multiple adjectives and no verbs (I'm not counting felt.) I'd be much more interested to hear about his feet impacting the ground, his heart thundering in his chest etc than the fact that he's moving with "purpose and a swiftness". Instead of telling me what he's doing, show me what it looks, feels, and sounds like.

Deliberately, as quickly as he could summon the energy to do so, Storm took the opportunity to kick low, knocking the severed finger and iron bangle back under Shinsou’s blood-soaked gurney. The electromancer almost crumbled with the effort it took out of his body.

Similar issues here; the last sentence is strong except for the word "almost". Excepting cases where things need to literally almost happen, you should pretty much strike that from your non-dialogue vocabulary in prose. There's no reason Storm couldn't have actually crumbled here (it might have been more poignant) or he could have done something slightly less dramatic like sagging against the wall. The very first part of the first sentence is the big problem. It starts with an adjective, which doesn't provide any information until after the reader gets to the subject of the sentence. "Quickly" is another word which you should avoid using 95% of the time, it's an especially weak adjective which actually does the opposite of what what it's supposed to do. Any time you use the word "quickly" it takes the reader longer to get to what actually happens, which means the pacing is slower. It's almost like saying "very". And Storm didn't need to "take the opportunity" to kick low... he should have just kicked low.

Persona: 8/10
Very strong here again, although at times the same types of problems that weakened your action got in the way of really fluid personas. If you guys had applied the same type of focus and execution to your scene writing as you did to your dialogue, setting, and story then this thread would have definitely been in the JC range. As it is I have a feeling it will fall a bit shy, but I hope that will do the opposite of discourage you. The dedication that you both bring to your characters and your use of language is really remarkable and enjoyable to read.

Prose: 22/30

Mechanics: 7/10
The biggest thing I noticed was that Storm had a broken italics tag in one of his posts. Other than that there weren't a lot of errors, but I did notice more than you can get away with (which is pretty much zero). If you're not proofreading each others posts you really should, and remember to read back out loud to yourselves when editing.

Clarity: 7/10
While I could make the argument that everything was quite clear generally speaking, the lags in the pacing and action hampered my overall picture of the story at times. In order to get to the next level, you both need to take a closer look at how you're writing action, specifically with more showing, less telling, and less adjectives. A good example which I already referenced is Storm saying that the door opened twice before letting the reader know who opened it. I can't think of a good reason to write a phrase that way other than that that's how it initially occurred to you... but that's what review and editing is for.

Technique: 7/10
I went back and forth between a 7 and 8 here because you both create really beautiful imagery. However I don't feel like you're executing all of your your literary devices at the highest level; in order to do so, pay careful attention to my advice earlier on. Get rid of meaningless commas, phrases, and words and you'll be left with lean, expertly crafted prose.

Wildcard: 8/10
I apologize if the commentary is a little light towards the end, but the truth is you're both advanced writers who need to go back to the basics in order to achieve high-level improvement. If it seems like I'm saying things you've heard before, it's probably because you've gotten a little too comfortable breaking some of the rules that govern strong writing. There's nothing wrong with a little passive voice or purple prose here or there, but if those elements start to take over the story or get used in the wrong places, it brings down the overall quality of the piece and a reader's ability to enjoy it.

In the end though, a fantastic story well woven. I wish you would let me in on more of your epic planning sessions. No fair no fair.

Total 76/100

Shinsou gains 2500 EXP and 160 GP
Storm gains 2400 EXP and 150 GP

Congratulations, and thank you for writing on Althanas! Lets make some more adventures.