Alright, thanks for all the entries guys! I mean there are four but they're just what I was hoping four. I have them all fully ranked and scored by Virg doesn't. I am going to post my comments now in the hopes that some of you will give your stories a quick revision by Wednesday since that's when I gotta print them. I really should have done this sooner.
If any of you want a fuller critique, I will give it to you as promised, but it will have to be like a month from now.
An Eased Mind by Sunrise W12:
You describe a lot of things twice or more. For instance, “I was never a suicidal person. I had always though suicide was cheap and pathetic, but the apathy and despondence inside me took over for that instant.” You should just leave out “I was never a suicidal person.” Yes, the next sentence gives a slightly different view, but you gotta pick and choose since it’s still 90% redundant. It will make your writing tighter.
I like the paragraph leading up to the crash.
In the first hospital scene, you do a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. You talk about a lot of talking but there is not a lot of actual dialogue given. Show some of that.
When Kelly walks in, she’s described with blue eyes then piercing green eyes, ones that he seems to remember. I’m guessing there’s a mistake in there.
You start to get a few typos toward the end. No big deal though.
“yelling various things as the doctor did things to my hurt abdomen.” “Hurt” is an underwhelming adjective here.
I kinda like the idea for this story, though it’s not very original. Although I’ve never heard the song, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” you picked a good one since whatever you need to know about it is in the name of the song.
Also, on last thing about the ending, if Kelly has moved to New York she’s not going to be in any phone book outside of there.
Overall this story is pretty solid. I’d say your biggest problems are over-description and telling instead of showing. You have some good original moments (like describing Kelly disappearing) and should work on coming up with more of those, as some of your other descriptions are bland. Come up with more specific and concrete things instead of vague ones.
Bargaining Chip by Raul
For the first chapter and a bit, you call Ellasar “the angel.” It’s a common rookie mistake to not use a character’s name until someone else says it, but it’s better to just use it soon or right away. It makes your characters feel more like individuals.
I actually thought the Behemoth’s story was interesting! So I thought the ending to the second chapter was funny, in a good way.
In some of the battle scenes, it is hard to keep track of where the characters are, and some things seem to happen out of the blue. Even when you describe things that happen suddenly, for instance, the Behemoth’s axe hitting the Leviathan, you should say, “an axe hit him” instead of “the axe hit him” since “the axe” hasn’t really been introduced.
You are somewhat over-descriptive. Use adjectives and adverbs sparingly.
When Ellasar is going to cross the lake of fire, he just seems really stupid for not taking the Behemoth and the Ziz with him. You should give that a more robust explanation than simply wanting to do it on his own.
The final chapter is weird (but that’s okay) but it also changes voice at times. Describing women as blondes, brunettes, and redheads jumped out at me in particular; just say they have brown, red, and blonde hair. Also, the redheads seem to be wasting their talents with just brining in wine! Satan is smarter than that. Another thing that jumped out was describing the incubus’ sex as “meaningless,” it seems kind of shoehorned in there. Although the entire scene with the incubi isn’t as necessary as it is “edgy” so to speak, but I can see its thematic significance in that there is some pleasure to be had in Hell even after Ellasar is taken by Satan.
The ending is great in idea but it seems kind of rushed. I appreciate the explanation at the end though, since a lot of people just write whacked-out endings that make sense in a labyrinthine way without offering explanation. But I think after saying that Ellasar had gotten what he wanted when Satan made him his new God, it doesn’t need further explanation. But what happens in the ending is great because Ellasar really did seem misguided in thinking he could betray God and get away with it.
Overall, I really liked this story. I’m a sucker for Heaven and Hell stuff but it’s good besides that. What I would add near the beginning is a concrete explanation of just how extremely long Ellasar’s journey is. As I read I was thinking to myself, why does he need to make allies and stuff like an adventure story? Also, some pacing seems off. For instance, you spend a lot of time on the Behemoth getting Gregor, that scene should probably be half as long.
You do have a lot of good scenes and I can tell you spent a while thinking up the story.
I guess another thing I’d add is that Ellasar’s spells bored me in that he always did the same thing, getting into cross position and mumbling. But what the spells do is interesting.
And about Ellasar in general, I’d beef up his character more in terms of personality. He seems to have a pretty generic attitude and voice.
I’m not sure what to think about describing the orb Ellasar carries as “about the size of a globe.” It had the hallmarks of good foreshadowing when it turns out that the orb is a kind of image of Earth. But by itself it reads like a really clumsy comparison that’s out of place.
Dawn by Jam Stunna
This whole thing struck me as a pretty generic fantasy story. It certainly doesn’t read like a bad example of fantasy, and you constrain the stiltedness of the language and dialogue a bit, but it’s still there. Lines like “My pouch! It contained my gold!” are what I’m talking about. “Contained” is just the wrong word there, a person is more likely to say something like “it had all my gold in it!” Even though the first way is shorter which is usually better, it is worse because it is something that the character wouldn’t really say. Also, characters having weird-colored eyes is in almost every amateur fantasy story.
Also, not enough Adherence to Prompt. There is a lot of death, but death and the afterlife are different things. It comes in at the end in a few ways, but it’s not really a major element. The sword containing all the soulds it has killed was pretty interesting.
I was relieved not to find any “I’m a WUMMAN who can be as good as a MAUGHN” in this story.
Something about the suspense in this story is lacking. It’s decent but it could be better. I think part of it is that Reene seems invincible when she is fighting, and even though she gets injured she never really comes close to dying. Like in the fight against the guy in her room in the beginning, she is in a situation where she might die but then she just cuts the guy’s head off effortlessly. Part of it is also the lack of realism in some of the fight scenes—like the one I just talked about, heads almost never really come off, and a sword would be totally ruined if you jammed it into plate armour. Even though it’s a fantasy story, the fighting shouldn’t read like fantasy fighting, if you know what I mean. It gives off the sense that the main characters are in no danger except in ‘boss fight’ situations, and in stories like that the good guys always win.
Also, I think you only had one typo, but I forget what it was. You seem to have paid a lot of attention to the writing in this story since the whole thing reads clearly and all the scenes have something interesting. The pacing is good since you show all the important things and skim over boring things. My advice to you is, if you want to continue writing fantasy, you should work to differentiate yourself from most amateur fantasy writers, since the worst thing about fantasy is the lack of creativity even though fantasy should be all rights be the most creative genre. Try looking at Limyaael’s rants to get a good grasp of what most fantasy writers are doing wrong:
http://www.forresterlabs.com/limyaael/titlelistall
Meeting Loved Ones by Sandtiger
What immediately jumps out at me about this story is the lack of specific detail. Like “Enormous buildings.” What do the buildings look like besides being enormous? Are they so enormous that they’re bigger than any building on Earth, or just regular enormous? Do they look old or new? Stuff like that.
Also, there is a lot of tense confusion. It starts in present tense then moves to past tense then jumps around for a bit, then settles into past tense.
There’s also a lot of vague “sensing” going on. I can see how that fits with the story, but it’s boring to read, so you should reconsider it. Instead of sensing stuff the protagonist should hear it or be physically pulled in like a magnet or something. Did the beings of knowledge “seem strong in themselves” because of the way they stood, or the way they addressed each other, or something?
You should try to vary your sentence structure more.
Your last two paragraphs could be merged together sorta. You describe the nonverbal transfer of knowledge twice
I like the idea of the afterlife you have here, it really seems like a higher plane of existence.
Also, your story almost entirely lacks conflict. I think that's okay, since it's just a short kinda sketch of an idea, Also, you could beef up the characterization a bit. Show more dialog, like the thoughts of the protagonist you gave.
If any of you want a fuller critique, I will give it to you as promised, but it will have to be like a month from now.
An Eased Mind by Sunrise W12:
You describe a lot of things twice or more. For instance, “I was never a suicidal person. I had always though suicide was cheap and pathetic, but the apathy and despondence inside me took over for that instant.” You should just leave out “I was never a suicidal person.” Yes, the next sentence gives a slightly different view, but you gotta pick and choose since it’s still 90% redundant. It will make your writing tighter.
I like the paragraph leading up to the crash.
In the first hospital scene, you do a lot of telling and not a lot of showing. You talk about a lot of talking but there is not a lot of actual dialogue given. Show some of that.
When Kelly walks in, she’s described with blue eyes then piercing green eyes, ones that he seems to remember. I’m guessing there’s a mistake in there.
You start to get a few typos toward the end. No big deal though.
“yelling various things as the doctor did things to my hurt abdomen.” “Hurt” is an underwhelming adjective here.
I kinda like the idea for this story, though it’s not very original. Although I’ve never heard the song, “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” you picked a good one since whatever you need to know about it is in the name of the song.
Also, on last thing about the ending, if Kelly has moved to New York she’s not going to be in any phone book outside of there.
Overall this story is pretty solid. I’d say your biggest problems are over-description and telling instead of showing. You have some good original moments (like describing Kelly disappearing) and should work on coming up with more of those, as some of your other descriptions are bland. Come up with more specific and concrete things instead of vague ones.
Bargaining Chip by Raul
For the first chapter and a bit, you call Ellasar “the angel.” It’s a common rookie mistake to not use a character’s name until someone else says it, but it’s better to just use it soon or right away. It makes your characters feel more like individuals.
I actually thought the Behemoth’s story was interesting! So I thought the ending to the second chapter was funny, in a good way.
In some of the battle scenes, it is hard to keep track of where the characters are, and some things seem to happen out of the blue. Even when you describe things that happen suddenly, for instance, the Behemoth’s axe hitting the Leviathan, you should say, “an axe hit him” instead of “the axe hit him” since “the axe” hasn’t really been introduced.
You are somewhat over-descriptive. Use adjectives and adverbs sparingly.
When Ellasar is going to cross the lake of fire, he just seems really stupid for not taking the Behemoth and the Ziz with him. You should give that a more robust explanation than simply wanting to do it on his own.
The final chapter is weird (but that’s okay) but it also changes voice at times. Describing women as blondes, brunettes, and redheads jumped out at me in particular; just say they have brown, red, and blonde hair. Also, the redheads seem to be wasting their talents with just brining in wine! Satan is smarter than that. Another thing that jumped out was describing the incubus’ sex as “meaningless,” it seems kind of shoehorned in there. Although the entire scene with the incubi isn’t as necessary as it is “edgy” so to speak, but I can see its thematic significance in that there is some pleasure to be had in Hell even after Ellasar is taken by Satan.
The ending is great in idea but it seems kind of rushed. I appreciate the explanation at the end though, since a lot of people just write whacked-out endings that make sense in a labyrinthine way without offering explanation. But I think after saying that Ellasar had gotten what he wanted when Satan made him his new God, it doesn’t need further explanation. But what happens in the ending is great because Ellasar really did seem misguided in thinking he could betray God and get away with it.
Overall, I really liked this story. I’m a sucker for Heaven and Hell stuff but it’s good besides that. What I would add near the beginning is a concrete explanation of just how extremely long Ellasar’s journey is. As I read I was thinking to myself, why does he need to make allies and stuff like an adventure story? Also, some pacing seems off. For instance, you spend a lot of time on the Behemoth getting Gregor, that scene should probably be half as long.
You do have a lot of good scenes and I can tell you spent a while thinking up the story.
I guess another thing I’d add is that Ellasar’s spells bored me in that he always did the same thing, getting into cross position and mumbling. But what the spells do is interesting.
And about Ellasar in general, I’d beef up his character more in terms of personality. He seems to have a pretty generic attitude and voice.
I’m not sure what to think about describing the orb Ellasar carries as “about the size of a globe.” It had the hallmarks of good foreshadowing when it turns out that the orb is a kind of image of Earth. But by itself it reads like a really clumsy comparison that’s out of place.
Dawn by Jam Stunna
This whole thing struck me as a pretty generic fantasy story. It certainly doesn’t read like a bad example of fantasy, and you constrain the stiltedness of the language and dialogue a bit, but it’s still there. Lines like “My pouch! It contained my gold!” are what I’m talking about. “Contained” is just the wrong word there, a person is more likely to say something like “it had all my gold in it!” Even though the first way is shorter which is usually better, it is worse because it is something that the character wouldn’t really say. Also, characters having weird-colored eyes is in almost every amateur fantasy story.
Also, not enough Adherence to Prompt. There is a lot of death, but death and the afterlife are different things. It comes in at the end in a few ways, but it’s not really a major element. The sword containing all the soulds it has killed was pretty interesting.
I was relieved not to find any “I’m a WUMMAN who can be as good as a MAUGHN” in this story.
Something about the suspense in this story is lacking. It’s decent but it could be better. I think part of it is that Reene seems invincible when she is fighting, and even though she gets injured she never really comes close to dying. Like in the fight against the guy in her room in the beginning, she is in a situation where she might die but then she just cuts the guy’s head off effortlessly. Part of it is also the lack of realism in some of the fight scenes—like the one I just talked about, heads almost never really come off, and a sword would be totally ruined if you jammed it into plate armour. Even though it’s a fantasy story, the fighting shouldn’t read like fantasy fighting, if you know what I mean. It gives off the sense that the main characters are in no danger except in ‘boss fight’ situations, and in stories like that the good guys always win.
Also, I think you only had one typo, but I forget what it was. You seem to have paid a lot of attention to the writing in this story since the whole thing reads clearly and all the scenes have something interesting. The pacing is good since you show all the important things and skim over boring things. My advice to you is, if you want to continue writing fantasy, you should work to differentiate yourself from most amateur fantasy writers, since the worst thing about fantasy is the lack of creativity even though fantasy should be all rights be the most creative genre. Try looking at Limyaael’s rants to get a good grasp of what most fantasy writers are doing wrong:
http://www.forresterlabs.com/limyaael/titlelistall
Meeting Loved Ones by Sandtiger
What immediately jumps out at me about this story is the lack of specific detail. Like “Enormous buildings.” What do the buildings look like besides being enormous? Are they so enormous that they’re bigger than any building on Earth, or just regular enormous? Do they look old or new? Stuff like that.
Also, there is a lot of tense confusion. It starts in present tense then moves to past tense then jumps around for a bit, then settles into past tense.
There’s also a lot of vague “sensing” going on. I can see how that fits with the story, but it’s boring to read, so you should reconsider it. Instead of sensing stuff the protagonist should hear it or be physically pulled in like a magnet or something. Did the beings of knowledge “seem strong in themselves” because of the way they stood, or the way they addressed each other, or something?
You should try to vary your sentence structure more.
Your last two paragraphs could be merged together sorta. You describe the nonverbal transfer of knowledge twice
I like the idea of the afterlife you have here, it really seems like a higher plane of existence.
Also, your story almost entirely lacks conflict. I think that's okay, since it's just a short kinda sketch of an idea, Also, you could beef up the characterization a bit. Show more dialog, like the thoughts of the protagonist you gave.
! It's also funny that you described the battles as "boss fights", considering that this story was very heavily influenced by Fire Emblem. This is good, it gives me a reason to take the break I've been meaning to take from writing fantasy since I suck at it.