Bloody Fury and Alchemy Workshop
Bloody Fury and Alchemy gave an interesting look into the characters of both Nevin and Felicity. The highlight for me was the way both of you interwove dialogue with casual actions to keep the rhythm going. I've read threads by both of you before, and I'm happy to have seen some improvement, especially in the way you conduct your characters. I believe you're both gaining a level of comfort and proficiency that will allow you to reach new heights on Althanas.
Plot
Story
The strongest element of this story came from Felicity's desire to understand her abilities/the negative side effects of them. This was clear and present from the first post on, and drove the action and dialogue of the thread. Nevin did a good job of playing a slightly secondary character, allowing Felicity to be the main attraction while still adding his own elements to the plot. However, this story was also lacking in several fundamental ways. There wasn't any real inciting incident or narrative hook, nothing that would snatch the reader's attention and set you up for a grander adventure. There wasn't much in the way of rising action, however there was plenty of background provided from both sides as well as character development. I also really liked the ending, it was kind of sweet and set the table for what could be a more robust meal.
Setting
The setting of this thread was Nevin's alchemist shop, and that pretty much sums it up. There was a brief glimpse of the outside world at the beginning, as well as in the flashback, but nothing that really painted a picture of any particular place on Althanas. You both did, however, do a great job of incorporating Althanas lore (whether it's canon or not, doesn't really matter - it was interesting). There was lots to appreciate in the knowledge base your characters shared as well as the references to places like Salvar, the Tular Plains, and Eiskalt. At times I did feel like you both became overly comfortable with the setting, and I would have like to see some change to it during the course of the thread. Either the setting should have changed by them going somewhere, or some change should have occurred TO the setting, such as Felicity freaking out and breaking something.
Pacing
While the events of this story mostly unfolded in a linear, easy-to-follow manner, there was little work done with the pacing to keep the reader interested. There was very little tension being built and/or released throughout the thread, and that made reading it a touch flat in places. For a moment I thought something was going to happen when Nevin cut Felicity with the scalpel, but the only payoff I got was some internal angst. To be honest, what I think this story needed is a subplot. Something to kick a little octane into the situation. Such as, what if Felicity was being chased? By a murderer? By an alchemist? By the law? What if Nevin had a reason to house her? What if someone tried to rob the shop at the worst possible time? Overall I would say the stakes of this story started off fairly low, and they never climbed much higher than the moment when I thought Felicity might break a shelf or something. While you could make the argument here that this is the story of how your characters met, my rebuttal would be you could have picked a more interesting moment in their relationship to write about and covered the events of this thread with a few lines of dialogue.
Character
Communication
This would easily be the strongest area of the rubric for both of you. This thread was largely conversation based, and you both represented your characters quite well in that regard. Nothing overly interesting caught my eye, but nothing impeded my appreciation of the banter either. One thing I think you both could work on is using quirks of dialogue. I saw some of this from Felicity in the form of her recalling the lisp she overcame, but what I'm really looking for is elements of speech that make the character who they are. For example, are there any words that Felicity still struggles with to this day? Are there any slang terms or curses Nevin uses left over from his youth in Salvar? Pieces of dialogue that answer these types of questions can be not only interesting but informative to the character. Overall though, I liked what both of you did. Nevin has a way of rambling about things before getting round to the point, and Felicity is more concise, so they make a good duo.
Action
This would easily be one of the weaker areas of the rubric for both of you because so little happened. Granted, things occurred. Some moments even impressed me, such as Felicity's nails scarring the countertop and Nevin's reaction to it. The series of action-reaction surrounding Nevin pulling out the needle also deserves some respect. And, as I mentioned before, you both did a fine job of interweaving mundane actions with your dialogue. However, only a few things of great consequence happened, and they were labored over for a rather long time. While making the story a little more complex could have easily introduced more action to it as I suggested before, even the story as it was could have contained some more compelling action. Felicity could have flipped a table over, at the very least, but ideally the characters would have gone places and done things that built up both their personas and the world around them.
Persona
You are both quite comfortable writing your respective characters, and did a good job of representing each others' actions when necessary. I liked getting to know both sides of Felicity, the kinder side and the hidden, angry side, and Nevin evolved as an alchemist from earlier threads I've seen him in. If anything, I feel like you both lean a little heavily on your characters' personas to fill the content of your writing, which can be remedied by putting more effort into Action and Setting. I didn't quite buy Felicity as a sasspot, her quips were a little too scarce. I would recommend either dialing up or dialing back this element of her personality, it could work either way but at present it's kind of stuck in between. For Nevin, I might recommend making him a little more direct. Not saying to get rid of his puttering ways (far from it), but at times he rambles enough that the reader can lose his train of thought, and thus become distracted from reading the story.
Prose
Mechanics
I happened to read Amari's mechanics advice and it's pretty much spot on, so just let me re-iterate perhaps the most important part. The large part of both your errors can be caught by re-reading your posts out loud and editing them. This is a great kindness when you are asking someone to read your work, which is what your are doing when you submit to the workshop. It will also increase your skill at avoiding these errors in the first place, and teach you things about your own writing which you previously may not have known. Overall I would say that re-reading and actively editing/re-writing your work is nearly as important for developing your writing as actually writing.
Clarity
There were only a few clarity issues because you're both solid writers and you weren't really pushing yourselves to try anything difficult or different. Again I think Amari caught the most significant problems, and I re-iterate my reiteration from mechanics for advice on improvement. In some situations, you really just need to give your work that second look.
Technique
Putting a little more thought into the composition of the thread and the individual posts could have really spiced things up. Most of my advice in this section will be for Flamebird because I didn't notice much of an effort to write with advanced technique from Nevin. So, for Nevin, try experimenting a bit! Your writing already shows great creativity, so try channeling some of that into literary techniques and devices.
Flamebird, you had a pretty nice variety of metaphors, and my advice mostly surrounds cleaning up your use of them. For example:
The personification you used here (the serum attacking her mind) is bold and strong. I like it. However, it's muddied up by everything surrounding it. Words like "Instantly" often have the opposite effect from what they intend. In this instance, the word (three whole syllables!) as well as the comma actually prevent the attack from seeming instantaneous. I also don't believe you needed the word "viciously". Adjectives are generally much weaker descriptors than metaphors, so you're effectively weakening the description, like watering down a sauce. What we'd be left with if we remove the "extra" stuff is this:Instantly, the memory of the injection of the serum viciously attacked her mind.
I might even go so far as to change it to "The memory of the serums' injection attacked her mind" to avoid repeating "of the", but you get the idea. The image of a memory attacking her mind is quite powerful, and an attack is inherently instantaneous and vicious in most cases.The memory of the injection of the serum attacked her mind.
Another example of extra words getting in the way of a good metaphor came a little later:
This is an even smaller adjustment, but just as significant. You almost never need to say that something started to happen; the reader can automatically assume that something started happening if you tell them it is happening. So this would become:Her heartbeat started to race like thunderous horse hooves.
Keeps all the goodness, gets rid of the unnecessary. We could also debate about using "thundered" as the operative verb rather than raced, but I like the way the whole sentence flows together so I'll just leave it at that.Her heartbeat raced like thunderous horse hooves.
Wildcard
Well done. Well done. Well done.
Final Score: A happy new year/100
Hope to see you both back in the workshop!
