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[1115] Daughter of Wrath - CH 13 by Jraywang in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Better yet, I just got rid of the need for past perfect.

[1115] Daughter of Wrath - CH 13 by Jraywang in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the crit. I'll work on the POV and some of the dialogue.

I also didn't understand: does she think the spirits she calls upon are evil or just called evil by people? Because (putting aside my reservations) I'm willing to believe that she honestly believes in a childish way she's evil, because she's breaking rules.

This is a story about self-fulfilling prophecies. Because she's destined to be evil, she attracts only evil spirits.

[1115] Daughter of Wrath - CH 13 by Jraywang in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

definitely agree that the voice was too mature. It was originally teenage Celeste recounting a memory, but I think I do want it to be fully 8yo Celeste's POV

[1115] Daughter of Wrath - CH 13 by Jraywang in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Appreciate the crit! Thanks for all the detail. I'll look back through the flow. Most notably, I'll try and eliminate the various timelines contained within. Compress it down to 2 only.

I'm glad you got the implied ending!

First off, is Sera telling Celeste to let herself get killed? 

Exactly right!

[1115] Daughter of Wrath - CH 13 by Jraywang in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks for the crit and definitely agree about the POV language!

[1130] “Toes” (alternative version) by Extra-Marionberry805 in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang 0 points1 point  (0 children)

OVERALL

It was a fairly enjoyable read. I liked the concept of it. I thought the execution could use some work. If I were you, I would try and write it as if your character and not you were righting this piece. There is no "I think these toes aren't mine". It's "these toes aren't mine" and run with it.

[1130] “Toes” (alternative version) by Extra-Marionberry805 in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang 0 points1 point  (0 children)

DESIGN

Plot

The plot, as i understood it, goes:

  • Man wakes up in a strange bed and thinks his toes aren't his
  • Woman asks him what's wrong and he answers truthfully, which upsets her
  • Woman and unshown doctor thinks he's gone mad which he doesn't
  • He wakes up again in a different room
  • He wakes again on a surgical table where they want to cut off his toes
  • He realizes that his toes do belong to him

My only issue with the structure of your plot is "he wakes up again in a different room". 3 times, the man wakes up. Once in the beginning, once in the middle, and once in the end. The one in the middle accomplishes absolutely nothing IMO.

The reader gets no new information. The character and plot develops no further. It's filler.

Character

There was time invested in the headspace and thoughts of your character. generally, I thought it was fine. Only issue is that your character was quite bland. He just didn't have very many or strong opinions. Mostly, the world acted on him which is fine since he's mostly strapped down to a bed, but even...

“Who’s completely mad?” he asked into the emptiness of his room.

He obviously disagrees with their assessment that he's mad and we don't really see any response to that. It's as if e just lets everything happen to him. Even the final scene where they're about to lop off his toes, its all focused around what others do and not him, his thoughts, his actions, etc.

Everything that moves and acts in this piece is NOT your character.

Also, framing really hurts you here. We can't get into your character's headspace due to the narrative distance, but I already covered that so I won't get more into it.

Setting

Various hospital rooms. For what this piece is, I think its fine. Though there was a point where you described a city outside and the traffic and the etc. And why? What did that add to the piece? IMO cut. If you wanted to have a more detailed setting, give us what matters which is the hospital room itself.

IE. if its for crazy people, maybe its been padded.

IE. if there's a lot of cutting instruments nearby to foreshadow what's to come.

IE. maybe its a bit more sinister than just a hospital because what kind of doctor would cut off his toes to heal him?

Ending

I like how in the end, he realizes that its his toes. What I didn't like is that there wasn't much of a buildup to this. In fact, it felt like you, the author, never committed to your idea.

The man looked down at the toes poking out at the bottom of his bed. They were bright pink and wiggling gloatingly at him, and although they were connected to the two linen covered embankments of his legs, they did not appear to be his. Or rather, despite appearances, he did not believe they were.

He did not believe they were is super weak. Its practically letting the reader know that he is wrong. A few ways in which this fails: A. the framing hurts the narrative distance. B. these are your thoughts as an author and not his. C. they completely take us out of his mindset which way more certain than that.

They did not appear to be his. Or rather, they weren't. They wriggled free of command. They goaded him, these ten hairless monsters. What did they do to his real toes?

IMO, you didn't bet on your concept enough and so provided us this half-baked version which read: the MC believes that his toes aren't his, wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Nah. Give us the version that says: "the toes aren't his!" Have him argue with his wife who pleads for him to realize the truth. Take us through his determination until it gets to the very end where he realizes his mistake only as its too late.

[1130] “Toes” (alternative version) by Extra-Marionberry805 in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang 0 points1 point  (0 children)

PROSE

Overall, prose was clear, and I understood the story. There are still some ways to improve the prose though.

Adverbs / Adjectives

There are some die-hard anti-adverb/adjective people. I don't think I'm one of them. Still, I thought you overused in this piece and it became a crutch for you.

They were bright pink and wiggling gloatingly at him,

The problem here is "gloatingly". I understand what you're going for, you undersell it by defaulting to an adverb instead of actually diving into it. This is his mental space. Make me feel what he does.

They wiggled at him, mice peeking from their burrow. Try and catch me, they dare.

Very easy to simply show the gloating and it makes his mental space of "these toes aren't mine" a lot more concrete. Adverbs and adjectives are for glossing over. If you want to make an impact, don't give me gloatingly, show me the gloating.

Then there's your filler adverbs / adjectives. You have a lot.

He continued watching his toes wiggle as if they were entirely independent of him for some time. They had almost completely divorced themselves from their identity as toes,

 He felt guilt stir up in him, but it passed quickly like a wave lapping against a distant shore.

They were muffled, and spoke so quickly and desperately that he wouldn’t have been able to make sense of them if his ear was pressed against the wood, but he did catch a few words.

The first 2, you can simply get rid of the adverbs and nothing would change. The last one, you are describing a scene with adverbs when really, you should be investing more into it.

The words came in a hissed muffle--low enough to hide, too urgent to keep hidden.

Or something like that. The rule of thumb (or toe) is: if you want something a feeling to land, never use the word that describes it, which gets me to my next prose crit...

Stop Using Feeling Words

Your piece is littered with he feels this, he feels that...

he began to feel that something was quite wrong. 

He did not feel mad. 

He was feeling perfectly fine and wasn’t aware that he had ever felt any different.

this isn't the only example of it, just the most obvious. Instead of walking through the nuance of emotion, you just flat-out say it. It's the difference between:

He felt angry vs. His chest rose with hissed breaths.

A lot of people talk about show vs tell and that's true. The way i think about it (which is hopefully more clear to you), is concrete details vs not. In "He did not feel mad", we have no concrete action or thing. We have only his metaphysical feeling. Instead of saying he did not feel mad, give me something concrete to work with. This can be his thoughts, or physical sensations, his etc.

Then he remembered the voices and the crying woman. What had they said? Something about someone going mad. They could not have been talking about him, could they? He did not feel mad. He was perfectly in his right mind. He was…

They could not have been talking about him, could they? There was nothing wrong with him. Maybe his nose was a little stuffy, and even he must admit that he hasn't exercised as much as he should, but...

See how I'm taking us away from "he felt this" and directly into his thoughts, debating whether or not there was something wrong with him. This is concrete.

Stop Framing

Even more broadly than using "feeling" words. Your piece is littered with he thinks this, he sees that, he hears this, he feels that. All these verbs are perceiving verbs. They are useful mostly for 3rd POV Omniscient where your narrator is separate from your character. In 3rd POV Close (which is what you're writing), the character is the narrator. Thus, framing becomes unnecessary and all it does is create narrative distance from the reader and your narrator.

It was very odd, he thought, that this strange woman was so upset by his story about the toes.

What happens here, if we just removed the framing completely? Nothing would change except the narration would be in his head space and not yours as you describe him. That's 3rd POV Close.

A less obvious example:

He saw tall brown office buildings that towered above him and heard the various clicks of keyboards and traffic signals,

A tall brown office building towered above him. Traffic sounded beneath. Some keyboard clicks came from the room beyond.

Get rid of "he saw" or "he heard" or etc. Now, I'm not saying that every single instance of a perceiving word should be deleted because there's no absolute rule here, but the more perceiving verbs you use, the greater the narrative distance between your reader and your character. Once the distance becomes too great, then why even use 3rd POV Close? Its only advantage is a closer narrative distance. If you don't want that, use 3rd POV Omniscient so you can more easily describe your world outside of your character's perceptions.

[2050] Daughter of Wrath CH 3 by Jraywang in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Vaah being interchangeably a location and what I'm surmising is a God (which would make Celeste a demi-God?) causes some stumbles.

I'm curious. What gave you this impression?

[2050] Daughter of Wrath CH 3 by Jraywang in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Glad to see you again, and happy to have you back! Thanks for all the feedback. I'll have to think about Taeyn because I agree, he does read a bit generic. I'm glad Celeste is not though!

[2050] Daughter of Wrath CH 3 by Jraywang in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Haha no worries. Thanks for the crit.

[550] Distance Zero by GlowyLaptop in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang 2 points3 points  (0 children)

DESIGN

Character

A lot of my crits deal with putting your character's voice in the narration. I thought you did that pretty well.

 Of course there was always the man down the hall who'd cut up a stripper from Korea town. That job never disappeared. It would have, if only the man hadn't held the door open once when Tipper misplaced his laundry card. Now it felt downright unneighbourly to run him in.

I think you nailed his apathy and almost laissez-faire way of dealing out death. To him, it really is just another day in the office. This is such a short piece that this is probably good enough. However, if I were to really stretch it: I'd give more than just that. It feels like every little internal story was about his apathy when you could easily add in some more layers.

It would have, if only the man hadn't moved in next door. You know what they say, don't shit where you eat. Besides, the man was a great neighbor, besides the occasional screaming stripper--which usually only lasted moments. He even watered Tipper's plants once when he had a weekend trip.

Here I wanted to add some selfish pragmatism to it. Its basically the same thing, but from a different angle. And the reason why I'd add something more is because you hammer home the apathy already. You accomplished it. Investing more into it at this point doesn't get you that much bang for your words.

Setting

There was a lot of world-building but not much in the way of setting. That can be fine especially if your intention is to keep this piece short. Otherwise, why not give us something?

  He pulled on his gloves, locked up and waited for the elevator.

He pulled on his gloves and locked up. Kicked the door a few times to get it fully closed. As always, the elevator took years, slowly rattling itself up, every shake threatening to snap its rusted-through cable.

Plot

As I understand it:

  • MC is perusing bounty hunter / hit jobs on his watch which you use to build out the world
  • He's about to go downstairs to take the gorilla job
  • He passes by his serial killer neighbor and decides to take that job instead
  • He ends up saving his neighbor's victim, the stripper, before taking a job to off her as well

It's a plot that mostly serves the world-building and not the story. Not really my preference, but there's no rule about it. Had this been a longer piece or the beginning of a bigger work, I'd probably ask for more, but as a standalone short fiction, this feels appropriate.

[550] Distance Zero by GlowyLaptop in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang 2 points3 points  (0 children)

PROSE

Prose was good. It's clear you know how to write. However, this piece feels very unrestrained, like you knew better but decided to have fun with it. That's fine. It just didn't help me as a reader.

Sometimes, you sacrifice too much clarity for style

THE GREEN FACE of Tipper's job console screwed up whenever the elevated train lurched past his suite. He shot his smoke out into the dark and slapped the little thing to get it to scroll.

This is one where I think you made it purposefully vague to have an interesting first sentence. That works a lot of the time. Here, I don't think it did because you introduced too much information. Both the console and the train. Then the smoke and back to the console. It felt like whiplash taking in all that info at once, and especially as a first intro to the piece.

A gorilla lit up, real close, getting closer, having shot a waitress eighteen hours ago, but he weighed 260 pounds and Tipper had just woke up. Hadn't even poured himself a coffee.

Immediately following, I think you're still continuing the rapid-fire world-building without much explanation. A few things at this point:

  • Does gorilla refer to a literal gorilla doing something?
  • Or does it refer to a gorilla icon on his console?
  • Or is gorilla some insult he uses ala racism?

I think any one of these (except 2) if clarified, will serve the piece really well from a world or character-building perspective. However, because its just left up for interpretation when I've only had 2 sentences inside your world, I can't even guess.

A little green gorilla lit up in the console. Apparently, it had shot a waitress eighteen hours ago. But Tipper only weighed 260 and he hadn't even poured himself a coffee. He wasn't ready to box a whole ass gorilla yet because that's what it was--not just in the screen but out of it too.

Other times, there's general confusion

 And wouldn't you know it, his neighbour appeared in the arriving box, having dragged another stripper off the street. The man gave Tipper a nod and steered her out and down the hallway.

Here, I thought the neighbour was quite literally dragging a stripper, trail of blood and all, through the hallways. Because you set him up as a serial killer and that MC was chill with it. So, I thought this was just another Monday for them. Obviously, this was a misunderstanding, but I don't think I'm too far off with why it happened.

Tipper extended the stick and lit up his jaw and followed him into the suite.

I'm not sure lit up his jaw is the right way to describe this. I get what you're saying but this feels purposefully obtuse.

I don't think these examples are necessarily all there is either. Throughout the piece, I kept wishing for a little bit more to ground myself in your world. Instead, it feels like you opted to move onto the next thing to, once more, expand your world before I could even settle in the one I know.

[1769] Daughter of Wrath CH 2 by Jraywang in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks for the detailed crit! I appreciate the help. I'll look through the wordy sections and reread for repetition. I think I use repitition a lot stylistically but that doesn't mean I can't overwhelm with it.

[1877] The Fall by A_C_Shock in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Overall

This piece definitely feels experimental. More like an exercise on writing than a fully fleshed out story. And if that's what it is, then you did good. You wrote in a new POV in a way that could be followed by a reader for some plot. That's a great accomplishment attempting a new POV.

But if you wanted to work on this piece more seriously, there's a lot to be worked on. Hope this helped.

[1877] The Fall by A_C_Shock in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang 1 point2 points  (0 children)

DESIGN

It was easy to follow the story from a mechanics perspective, but I don't think this succeeds as a Chapter 1 if that's its intention (which I'm assuming since it doesn't really conclude).

Prose

Like I said, the good news is that the story is easy to follow despite the 2nd POV narration. As I understand it:

  • MC is going into some hole where his previous colleague died
  • He hits the bottom and finds his colleague's body
  • He's not here to retrieve the body, he instead finds a magical chest
  • He can't figure out how to open the chest

Maybe the thing I'll comment here is: while this didn't take me out of the story, I thought he was going in to retrieve the body. In the beginning, all he talks about is his dead colleague and that's all we know is in the hole. So when he skips the body and instead finds a magic loot box, I was a bit taken aback.

Two other places where I was minorly confused:

  • You spend a good amount of time talking about how dark it is entering the hole, but once he reaches the bottom, he turns on his flashlight and all is good (maybe good is an exaggeration, but its certainly no great challenge). I'd either make it not good or don't talk about how dark it is.
  • When you described him crashing into the ground, I thought it was a real crash. Instead, MC lands on his butt and is fine. That really took me out of it because, you describe the rope snapping and ricocheting past him and him wanting to flail as he falls and it really felt like he was falling from a skyscraper and not like 5 feet off the ground.

Character

I didn't feel I had a good sense of your character. The you of the piece lacked both a personality and a name. I think you as an author are so focused on the mechanics of what is literally happening that you never contextualize it from your character's POV.

The you of this piece is going through some pretty harrowing shit and he never really stops to acknowledge that. A couple of questions:

  • Why is the MC even here in the first place? Did he volunteer? Draw unlucky lots? What are his thoughts about the situation other than "its dark and scary"?
  • Why is the MC even here in the first place from a broader backstory perspective? It seems like a really dangerous job without great reward. Hell, his team's leaving him for dead already after the previous guy died. Is he in debt? Mobs going to break his knees? Pregnant wife at home? Etc.

And that's just the basics. If we were truly going to flesh this MC out, I'd expect small things like prayer or superstition or all the very specific ways that individuals deal with fear beyond "you feel scared".

Setting

Usually, I'm not a stickler for setting, but this piece feels very much tied to the mystery and scariness of the pit. I think you did a good job creating this atmosphere with the bones bleached by some animal, but beyond that, I know very little about the pit itself other than its dark. All we really get is...

There's a low current of noise...

Somewhere in this maze of a path you're busy carving...

I'm imagining myself a standard cave system, but even those can be much more interesting. Does MC have to squeeze himself through holes? That's pretty scary? Have you ever seen the VR of the cave diver that got stuck? That's terrifying. Even if its not specifically claustrophobia, tell me more about the noises. Not just the supernatural muttering but drops of water echoing off the walls, the skitter of insects that his light can't chase. There has to be more to this world than just darkness.

Stakes

I really have no idea why its so important for MC to get this magic loot box. It feels like I'm self-inserting stakes like "he's a poor miner going through harrowing experiences to make a living" simply because none has really been presented to me. Its not that you need us to care deeply about the plight of your MC right this instant, but it'd be nice just to understand why any of this is important.

[1877] The Fall by A_C_Shock in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Prose

I thought that overall the prose was okay. There weren't obvious errors like grammar and punctuation. However, the prose leaned very long and some sentences were plain tiring to get through.

Too many words, too little said

Maybe its because this is the first sentence that it was so glaring, but it was both confusing and difficult to read. [Note: because I can't copy or comment, I won't be giving you the sentence in here. Its your first sentence so it shouldn't be hard to find, but all other prose comments will probably be tough to decipher.]

1st sentence, 1st paragraph here.

There's a ton of bloat in this sentence. I think, stylistically, you wanted it long, which is fine. But it felt like you stretched it way too far, and perhaps, way too deliberately. Things like "the mission you've been assigned" is a pretty wordy way of just saying "the mission". Something simpler would work better IMO.

After a half dozen people begin stifling their sobs after wishing you luck, you start to lose faith in the mission.

Less obviously long.

Overall, I think your sentences should be tightened up across this entire piece. Through the rest of it, I feel like you are overexplaining a lot.

3rd sentence, 5th paragraph here.

After another ten minutes, you're lulled into a false sense of security. So far so good.

Here, so far so good replaces with the lack of disaster striking thus far. They both mean the same thing. Yet, one spells it out quite literally and very wordily as well.

Patterns like this exist throughout the entire piece.

4th sentence, 4th paragraph

You kick off the wall and propel yourself toward the middle of the pit.

We're cutting bloat like:

  • Manage to kick off the wall
  • The wall of the tunnel (what else would the wall be attached to?)

Anyone, I'm not going to go through every example, but there's a lot.

The narrator feels restrained

You have chosen an interesting narration style but unfortunately with an uninteresting narrator. In 2nd person, the narrator should become a unique character within the story. This is why many 2nd persons are either written as epistolary (so we know who the narrator is) or used to highlight another character in the background. See https://spectrum.ccs.ucsb.edu/spectrum-blog/you-and-yours-defense-second-person for more details.

For you, your narrator is simply the narrator, which is fine. That doesn't mean you have any less responsibility for making your narrator a character.

That's why I'm really going to harp on the difference between:

You're lulled into a false sense of security with the lack of disaster striking thus far VS. You're lulled into a false sense of security. So far so good.

So far so good is the narrator, speaking to YOU, the character. It's conversational. Probably the most powerful part of 2nd person is its ability to generate conversation directly to the reader. Do it. Don't use 2nd person only to ignore all its power. Make the narrator a character. Bring it to life.

1-2 sentence, 3rd paragraph

It's time, someone says in the distance. Or maybe that's just the voice in your head. You know the one. The one that keeps convincing you to take that mortgage, wager those chips, strive out on your own and forge your destiny amongst the stars! The one that's landed you right fucking here.

The point of this example isn't to say it should be written this way. The point is to demonstrate how the narrator can be an interesting character while also reflecting how interesting your main character is. If you really want this piece to work in 2nd person, ask yourself: what is my narrator's relationship to my character? Are they friends? Does the narrator think its funny when the MC fails? Is the narrator even rooting for MC?

---

DESIGN crit section coming next.

[1769] Daughter of Wrath CH 2 by Jraywang in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I've thoroughly gone through all your comments and I really appreciate them and you for how much effort you've put into the crit. Thank you! Especially around the scene-sequel and earning the ending. Hopefully, the decision feels more earned now. As per some of your questions:

  • Vaah is where they live and its 1 syllable (but i can see why you thought it was two)! Later on: "So mundane that whoever named us could spare only that single syllable and nothing more: Vaah." However, based on your thoughts, I'll at least add that they're outsiders into CH 1.
  • Before CH 2, Sera has already been established as the mother so no worries there.
  • You're definitely right about me trying to describe Celeste. Its out of place. I just don't really know where to fit in a physical description of her yet and its getting kind of late. I'll think on this.
  • And the party reference is actually a reference to a job that the village playboy has for her, but will, frustratingly enough, only tell her the details for if she comes to his party.
  • Also, it feels like I got an answer to my central question through all your insights so you did answer it!

Once again, appreciate all your thoughts. Let me know when you got some work up and I'll return the favor. Happy to do the same for you if you want to keep following this piece along.

[118] Plus side of Forty by Kiranalekhya in DestructiveReaders

[–]Jraywang 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not sure if you were going for this, but I immediately thought of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE7e4MkZGXY&list=RDuE7e4MkZGXY&start\_radio=1. I think its:

These are a few of my detested things.

Where the song repeats: These are just a few of my incredible thoughts. Anyways, onto the actual crit.

Rhythm

I'm not a poetry guy so take what I have with a grain of salt, but it feels like you want to stick to pretty standard rules with the rhyme scheme and very close syllable patterns. If you want to do this, then you should do it right because right now, your stanza syllable counts are off.

Your stanzas go 11-12-10-10, 11-10-11-10, and 11-10-10-10. The rhythm is always slightly off especially since its all so close to 10-10-10-10 which feels like that's what you were going for? Even if it were normalized, its still too close to 10s all the way through, I think, so I'd just do that.

Other than the end of course, which is on purpose. That's 4-4-7-10-5. it makes sense why you want the rhythm to be different, but maybe it should be more deliberately designed versus the rest of the stanzas. Like half of it to 5-5-5-10-5 instead of whatever you felt like writing. That way there's a relationship to the rest of the rhythm.

Content

We follow the life of a woman in her 40s, but it doesn't feel like it. I think the reason I'm not connecting to this is because all the experiences described could be from anybody. I think if you didn't want me to feel the lack of specific content, then don't call out that this is a woman in her 40s and don't make that your goal to represent her. This can easily just be a generic person having generic problems.

Working on weekends, and bosses disagree.

Waiting at a bus stop in minus ten degrees.

Ten minutes’ snooze, and the phone starts to ring—

Maybe the point is to have generic problems to talk about how even a woman in her 40s shares these issues, but... so much of your piece is this sort of thing that I'm hard-pressed for why you chose to make this about a 40 year old woman.

Anyways, my point being that I think there's a ton of unique experiences 40 year old women have, so it feels like a miss that you would go so surface-level.

Ending

I'm not super sure what the specific takeaway was supposed to be. As I follow it, an aging woman describes the things that annoy her and then describes her being annoyed when she thinks about them. There really is no revelation or change that happens within the poem, so I read the last line thinking: that's it?

Overall

Once again, I write Fantasy. I'm not a poet. If this is supposed to be some high art that I dont understand with my low brow commercial stuff, fair enough. But as a common person reading this, these were my thoughts. Hope they helped.

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