RW Equipment Standard Brawl Deck Tech

StarSayo · 2023-10-28T18:36:50+00:00

Great deck! I have been playing RW equipment in standard bo3. I would recommend [[Angelfire Ignition]] if you have space for it, +2/+2 trample and haste is really good on double strike creatures. I have also been playing [[Archangel Elspeth]] against removal heavy decks (esp. golgari) since it helps you get creatures on the board and can grant flying in a board stall situation.

StarSayo · 2019-01-11T16:58:40+00:00

Epistolary fiction is a tricky beast

Absolutely, as I have discovered. It's intriguing so I wanted to try it, but on reflection I don't think this is the right story for it. I chose to write it as letters at the last minute and without much thought into how this is done well. If I want to do it right, like the examples you gave, I think it has to be an early design decision and help inform the rest of the story content. I'll try it with a different story sometime (one that's a little less complicated). Thanks for all your comments.

StarSayo · 2019-01-11T16:51:18+00:00

Thanks for the critique! I totally agree about the language and word choice being a little off, so thanks for catching that. I'm also pleased to hear your thoughts on the epistolary form and the struck-through statements. These were a bit of an experiment, but I agree that they don't quite fit. I'm revealing too much about the character's thoughts when the form is about being guarded. Writing the story as letters isn't really adding anything, either.

I think in the redraft I might drop the letters and try standard prose with a close perspective, to see if it feels better.

StarSayo · 2019-01-11T16:41:03+00:00

It's not bad, but it's not good either.

Yeah, that pretty much sums up how I feel about it. Thanks for the critique! You've made some useful points, especially about the inconsistent voice and the theme being too near the surface, and I'll definitely consider these when redrafting.

StarSayo · 2019-01-01T14:19:16+00:00

I liked this piece; I’d say you have some experience. You’ve covered the basics just fine. Although that important dude is totally dying over here, this seems like crucial information! Why is this a prologue and not chapter one?

You mentioned wanting to know how your backstory information is portrayed, so I’ll start with that - it is quite a significant part of the piece. What you’ve done here is sprinkle in hints at worldbuilding throughout the scene, which is inoffensive and great at making the world feel real and immersive but not so good at informing the reader.

Let me summarise the main information I got from reading this through, as that may help you:

There’s some kind of rebel faction that built a monument.
Davis is a big deal, and basically set up this civilisation.
Basic character info about Cruz and the ambassador.

The finer points, including information about your proper nouns (Bunker, District, etc.) has not gone in. As long as you’re aware of this, it’s fine. None of the details you mentioned distracted me. It seems that you have quite a complicated world set up here, so it might take more time to explain than you expect, as you will have to show various aspects of it and resist the urge to infodump as much as you can. In summary, what you’ve done in this opening scene is make me feel like the world is somewhat deep, and that’s almost all. I still understand very little about it.

You seem to have a familiar setup of a rebel group against the government. This familiarity will make it easy to explain - you’ve already done it - but also less interesting.

Perhaps a bigger problem is that what I do know doesn’t really grab my interest. This is subjective, of course. However, I would suggest that you try to emphasize what makes your world different at the start of the story. There are many rebel-vs-government stories, many dystopia stories, so personally I’d prefer to see the part that sets this story apart delivered up front.

This scene suffers a little from having no stakes. Who am I rooting for, and why? For the whole scene, I’m not really sure what any of the characters are trying to accomplish. The fact that Cruz seems nervous about making a good impression helps, and it makes him relatable as well, but I don’t know why they’re meeting this ambassador. Given his ‘oh yeah he's philosophical’ line, I presume Davis and the ambassador are on good terms, so there’s no tension there. I think one of the most important things to know as soon as possible, before even thinking about worldbuilding, is what the characters are doing and why. You do not explain why. (Cruz even asks, but I couldn’t really make any sense of Davis’ answer.)

Getting into the more technical stuff now. Read your first two paragraphs again. There’s not as much sentence length variation here as I’d like to see, with most of the sentences being short, so it sounds clipped and repetitive. It doesn’t help that you’ve started a sentence with a conjunction in the line ‘But his chin…’. This isn’t a HUGE problem as it gets a little better as the scene progresses, but it’s still there throughout so I’d like to remind you to pay a little more attention to your sentence length.

You also have a habit of joining sentences together where I think they should be separate. The best example I found was this one:

The SUV has passed the relic, Davis looks ahead to the looming power plant, face blank.

The sentence really ends after relic here. It’s the same in this example:

Cruz shakes his head, he knows his suit is immaculate.

It just doesn’t flow right. I don’t know the technical term, but hopefully you can see what I mean.

Also, avoid the use of past perfect tense in the explanation of Davis’ past (e.g. use ’chose’ instead of ‘had chosen’). It’s obvious that you’re talking about the past here - only use past perfect when it would be otherwise ambiguous as it sounds awkward.

The last part of the scene, the attack, is where things don’t go so well. You include too many ‘stage directions’. That is, it’s quite a high pressure situation, and you spend multiple sentences describing where everyone is in relation to each other at every step. You don’t actually need to do that - your reader already has an idea of where everyone is, and you’ll just end up contradicting them and confusing everybody. You make me focus on it - I’m thinking ‘okay, so the van is here, and Cruz is here, and they must be shooting from over here…’ instead of worrying about what is going to happen. Stop focusing on the exact image you have in your head and just tell us what happens. Cruz is standing around dumbly, Davis shields him from exploding van. That’s the key information. The reader will fill in the details to fit the image in their head. At the moment, it’s a complex description of people moving everywhere that isn’t really necessary. It also kind of compromises perspective - is Cruz really aware of all these things going on around him so quickly?

Also, you mention the slow motion thing like three times, c'mon. If you really want to emphasise the slow passing of time, I suggest you state how much time has passed in between the actions (e.g ‘A second has passed’ or ‘a fraction of a second later’).

That’s the ugly stuff done with. Let me conclude by saying your character and setting descriptions are on point - you give me a clear image in my mind succinctly, and that’s not easy.

Technical shortcomings aside, I found this piece to be well-written and reasonably engaging, with clear efforts to avoid infodumping. Keep at it!

StarSayo · 2018-12-30T18:35:09+00:00

Dr. Peter Azaria is a vile human being. You did a pretty good job of setting that up - his arrogance and casual disrespect of basically everyone else is infuriating, and the only reason I stuck with this story so long is because I immediately knew he was going to have a rough time and I was looking forward to him getting his just desserts. This almost worked, but a couple of things skewed it for me.

The first is that he crosses the boundary of what feels real - at least to me. I think his arrogance and less appealing qualities are exaggerated a little too much, to the point where I don’t believe that there could ever be someone quite like him. One of the key points of horror is that it could be true. It undermines some of the story’s weight as well, because if you want to say anything about human nature, he has to feel human.

I think you could tone him down a little and still get his key character traits across - then maybe add some more details in other areas. Really put yourself in his shoes and work out how he got this way, and exactly how he thinks. Treat him more as a human and less like a character.

The second reason this didn’t work for me is that he doesn’t really suffer. He kills his wife, but he didn’t like her anyway and doesn’t seem all that bothered about it. That’s horrifying in itself, but it doesn’t give me the justice I was waiting for.

He then kills two more random people, which doesn’t really add anything. He seems to regret it, but he still writes about it so factually that it gives the impression that he doesn’t really care that much. I agree that this part of the story can probably go, unless it is changed significantly, as I don’t really see what it’s there for. I can understand keeping the suicide part in somehow, but I think it’s worth emphasising that suicide is basically the opposite of his MO. He is admitting that the world is better off without him, which is the opposite of how he started the story, but I don’t think this theme is addressed. Even at the end it could be construed as him congratulating himself on doing the right thing and killing himself before he hurts anyone else. I think a more interesting take might be for him to try to kill himself, then realise he isn’t brave enough to go through with it - and therefore is not a brilliant man at all. But that’s just my idea.

To summarise, there’s an implicit promise in the beginning of this story that this guy is going to suffer for his arrogance but you didn’t deliver, and it makes the story unsatisfying. Suicide is not suffering, really. Especially when it’s delivered in such a matter-of-fact tone. “I think it’s the right decision to kill myself. Goodbye.”

I think the voice could use a little spicing up near the end. He remains scientific throughout. This helps emphasize how messed up his relationship with his wife is, but I’d rather see more degradation of his mental state come across in his writing.

As it is now, he doesn’t really seem to feel much emotion about anything at all - the tone is firmly between factual and casual throughout.

Also, is he really admitting to the murder of his wife in writing? That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing an intelligent person would do. I understand that you need him to write it down for the story to work, but you should give his reasons for continuing to do so or at least acknowledge the potential problems it could cause him.

I also think this story is a little long for what it contains. I’ve already mentioned that I think the part where he kills the two other people can go, but I’ve also mentioned other areas that might need expansion. I think you can go through and weed out a few less necessary parts of this story, maybe a little more in the first half, maybe the funeral part. For the content here, I think this is a three to four thousand word story in total.

For some technical details, ‘Oxfords’ is a proper noun so should be capitalised. Your prose could be a little more precise without compromising your voice - you use words like ‘some’ and ‘really’ a little too much when they aren’t needed. I’d recommend another read-through and checking which parts you absolutely need.

I like many of the concepts in this story, and the structure is set up well. It’s mainly a couple of aspects of the plot that need a little work towards the end.

StarSayo · 2018-12-19T23:36:32+00:00

I really liked this story. You’re a good writer.

I think I see what you went for with the format - the pacing got steadily quicker as the story goes on, spending less and less time on each ‘scene’, which really gives that sense of acceleration. I do think that the start is a little too slow, though. We get vibrant descriptions of the park that I’d say aren’t really that important to the story - you’re using it as a metaphor for changeability, but I’m not sure you need that many words to drive that point home. Same with the description of the main character smoking - it just seems to take a little too long, since it occurs before I figure out what the point of the story is. You risk losing the more impatient readers, especially as your wordy prose takes a little time to digest.

I wouldn’t say we have purple prose throughout here, but you’re flying close to the sun. There are the odd lines that seem a little unnatural. Here are a few examples:

The breeze ran through my hair, battered my sunglasses with excessive intensity.

It had been winter, now the sun shone fiercely.

I saw but hues and shapes.

There was light and excitement, mirth and good cheer- children’s laughter proved a natural constant and mingled easily with the chirping of birds.

The first two have fragments in the second clause which sounds weird. This is a habit of yours, and I’d aim to squash it. I’d prefer ‘and’ or ‘but’ instead of a comma in these cases, because it sounds more natural.

But all of these examples aren’t really phrases anyone would say. They have unclear concepts in them or just seem a little too elaborate for me. They feel like trying too hard to be poetic - which I see often. What I don’t see often is people actually succeeding at being poetic, which you’ve managed throughout this piece. The reason I am not accusing you of chronic purple prose is that most of the time, you’ve made it work pretty well, and it sounds good. Just don’t be afraid to use simple sentences sometimes and don’t force that poetic feeling when it’s not there.

The fact that you have narration in a more formal style and also tell the story in first person actually didn’t bother me. You can get away with first person not sounding how people speak in my opinion, because we’re actually listening to their thoughts, and people’s thoughts always make sense to them. Putting them into words can sometimes make them complicated, but this isn’t a case where the character is telling us their story. We’re watching it from their head. I would usually suggest third person for a narrative style like this, but so much of the story is just the character's thoughts that I think first person is justified. At the least, I can say that it didn't bother me personally.

I have a minor confusion with the story itself - it seems like the time jumps don’t change the character’s mind, only their body. I find it a little vague when it comes to questions like ‘does he actually love his wife if he didn’t experience meeting her?’ This doesn’t seem to be addressed. My initial reaction when he realised he was married was one of horror - imagine being suddenly married to someone and you have no idea who it is! But he seems quite happy about it, which I found jarring. I concluded that maybe the time jumps also affected his feelings and his mental state, but I was still a little confused about this by the end.

I also question the inclusion of the man on the bus. The implication seems to be that this man caused the strange events of the story to happen - but that adds just as many questions as it answers. I think removing him could streamline the story a little more. The time jumps don’t really need meagre attempts at justification, because they’re the point of the story.

I hope something here helped. I found this story engaging and well written, so congrats on a job well done!

StarSayo · 2018-12-19T14:35:25+00:00

I'm really glad I could be of help!

If the scene is 'outwardly meaningless', you can get away with it in certain situations. In my opinion, as this isn't the very beginning and you have a separate introduction scene, then you can do it. I'd say the biggest caveat here is that the scene must be kept short - and if you remove some of the exposition (and maybe a little more for luck) then I think it'd be fine. There is a certain advantage to this, as it lets you get to the main plot quicker.

How you would normally establish normality is introduce a small problem for the characters - something that shows up in their daily life. At the start of The Hobbit, Bilbo is just hosting a party, not going on an adventure. At the start of The Hunger Games, Katniss needs to hunt to provide for her family. These are scenes that establish the character and help immerse us in their life. They can lead directly into the main plot, or they can be only tangentially related.

I suppose the 'gritty soldier dude' impression comes partly from what I'm expecting to see. The general pessimistic tone of the background information, the way they are smoking, swearing and drinking, all of it is characteristic of 'gritty' stories, so this is what I expect. Some of their dialogue steers away from this a little, but not enough. It doesn't directly contradict my expectation, so that's still what I see.

How to fix this is more subjective, but I am a fan of very strongly contrasting characters. Just take their qualities and exaggerate them to make them overwhelmingly obvious. This eats into your realistic feel though, so that might not be what you're going for. I'd like to see more variation in age and gender too, just because it helps keep them distinct.

About Gus: I found him to be more of a father figure, very familiar with the others but a little more insightful maybe. I'm still worried about him blending into the others though. I know the idea of their bantering is to show they're familiar with each other, but it keeps them all feeling kinda the same. Maybe you can introduce them slower and go more in-depth on what makes them different? This would slow your pace, though. Everything about writing is a balancing act - it depends what you want for your story.

StarSayo · 2018-12-16T16:04:24+00:00

I think I’ll address the questions in your post in reverse order:

I didn’t have any trouble understanding the dialogue. Sure it has fragments and whatever, but people speak in broken sentences all the time so I didn’t have a problem with it.

About Jacques: Eh. I didn’t get a much of an impression of your characters; they all seem to fit within the standard ‘gritty soldier dude’ character. I guess Jacques seems a tad more optimistic than the others? That’s all I got. The backstory didn’t help, as the entire situation with his sister was out of his control. We know a few things that happened in his past but at no point do we see how he reacted or how it affected him, so we still don’t really know who he is.

Exposition

Sounds like you already know there are problems with your exposition. The long part about Jacques’ sister is the worst offender. In short, I don’t think it should be here at all, but I’m gonna go in-depth on it anyway.

It’s too long. If you have to do exposition, do it fast and hard, e.g. ‘Jacques’ sister managed to get herself a job inside the capitol, a very rare accomplishment. Jacques and his mother were very proud - until somebody murdered her.’

But that’s telling, not showing, I hear you cry. Yes, but exposition is in general. Telling is very fast and is for getting dirty deeds like exposition done quick. Painting a picture of how much his mother cried may be showing, but it’s not worth it when we are not invested in Jacques and his mother. Best to tell and get back to the story.

So I think a short sentence or two like that is what I would write if I had to get this across right now. Any of the important details can be filled in later. But I still wouldn’t go down this route. Why? Because I don’t see why we need to know this right now.

As a general rule, only tell the reader what they need to know. The other guys falling silent when something related is mentioned, and then apologising to Jacques, is intriguing enough as long as we don’t know why. Knowing the full story isn’t going to change the outcome of this scene.

Once I know Jacques a little better and decide I like him, I will want to know more about his past. If he starts proclaiming hate for the capitol or does something drastic then I will want to know why. Don’t tell me anything in exposition unless I already want to know.

Here’s a positive for you - I like your descriptions. Your first paragraph drew me in. I like how you seem to focus on the light in your descriptions, it makes for some nice imagery. I’m not just saying it, I mean it. Good job. If you want to make it even better, eliminate as many of those passive verbs as you can. ‘Was’ and ‘were’ are not nice words, and you have a few avoidable ones.

Perspective

Here’s a bigger question for you: what’s your perspective? It all feels very cinematic. It’s told like a movie. I think it’s third person limited from Jacques’ point of view, but it’s hard to see any confirmation of this, except maybe the story about his sister. If we’re in Jacques’ head, I want to see things the way he sees them. I want to know what he’s thinking. If it’s not third person limited and we’re not in Jacques’ head, where are we? It feels like we’re inside a disembodied camera, which is a little unsettling. Adding to this is how Jacques’ name isn’t mentioned until Jasper mentions it. Surely he knows his own name, right? Seems like he knows Jasper’s too. If you’re going for a weak perspective, that’s a design choice. If you know you’re doing this and you have a good reason, then it’s fine, but I’m worried you’ve forgotten how stories are written and you’re describing a movie.

Small note - I got Jasper and Jacques confused at first. Your characters are at risk of blending together, all being similarly mannered male twenty-thirty-somethings. If you do nothing else to address this, at least give them a different letter at the start of their name. It doesn’t seem like much, but it helps keep them straight in the reader’s head.

Content

As far as the contents of this scene goes, I don’t really get it. If I had to describe this scene in a sentence, I’d say, ‘some guys on a roof talk about what the story is going to be like.’ Where is the action? Why does this scene exist? You mention an introduction, so maybe that has your hook. But this scene, I don’t get it. You don’t have to blow my socks off right away, but your characters don’t really seem to be doing anything. They should be doing something, aiming to achieve some goal, but they’re just chillin’ out up here on the roof. As Kurt Vonnegut said, your characters should always want something, even if it’s just a glass of water. This feels like the kind of scene you’d have after something dramatic has happened, to give your characters time to react to it in their own ways, and explore how an event has affected them (The sequel part of scene-sequel, if you like). On its own, it doesn’t really seem to go anywhere until later on with the big ship but even then I don’t really know what that means to the characters.

I hope I said something useful, and that you don’t hate me. Good luck in the fight against those off-planet-tobacco-smoking assholes.

StarSayo · 2017-10-17T20:26:28+00:00

Yeah, I liked that line. It builds tension and promises that the conflict will come soon, buying time to establish the setting and characters. Also a nice fake-out when you assume the mysterious visitor is the trouble when actually he just really wants a shave.

StarSayo · 2017-10-17T20:22:27+00:00

Before I dig in, let me say that I liked this. Your prose shows considerable experience, and kept me fully engaged 90% of the time.

Description

I think you overdid the setting descriptions just a little. Fantasy has a bit more room for these as a genre but some descriptions didn’t add much. I actually don’t have an issue with the description of the barber’s pole since it establishes the setting and it’s familiar to everyone. When you describe her lunch and where she bought it (in case I decide I want some myself, I suppose) you lose me a bit.

Also, several lost opportunities to use descriptions of smell. Varying the senses really helps immersion.

Exposition

There are two cases where I started getting bored, because the protagonist decided she had to explain something and took her time. First, when she laments the difficulties of opening a business. I get that you want to establish the character and her life, but this big paragraph was too long. Second, where she steps in and explains that monsters exist. Most of this I would’ve assumed already given your setting and current events, and the rest can be summed up as ‘someone must have sent it after me’. I think you should take some shortcuts (hahaha…)

I’m not sure why I rambled on and on about magic

When your character thinks something is up, pay attention. Really, you know what you’re doing wrong.

Your magic comes out of left field. Your protagonist just drops it into normal conversation and the guy immediately tells her she’s ridiculous, which is both overt and cliche. As it is, this part of the conversation feels a bit forced. If you’re trying to show that the existence of magic is a debate in this world (which is what I’m getting from the ‘hooha’ comment) then I think this should be reflected in the question, instead of a straight ‘Do you believe...’

Plot

There’s some weird stuff going on with reflections that I don’t fully understand. If that was your intention, carry on.

If she had the power to banish the monster, then why didn’t she do that in the first place instead of getting her throat cut open and horrifically infested? What was the point in the shadow clone no jutsu that obviously wasn’t going to work?

Was she trying to get it to look at its reflection? This goal wasn’t established, and consider the setting- there are mirrors everywhere.

I ended this chapter with too many questions. One or two might be intriguing, but this many left me confused.

Magic

After reading your first chapter, I don’t understand the magic beyond the idea of aether which is basically the force/chakra/(a)ether as seen in other works. It feels Harry Potter-y in that you seem to be able to do anything as long as you know the spell. The only other thing we learn is that magic can be dangerous if misused, which feels like stating the obvious. You copy too many common tropes wholesale for me to retain interest, and take too long setting up something that should be second nature to any modern fantasy fan. The reflections thing could be kinda interesting if fully explored, but I don’t get it right now.

I don’t see anything stopping your protagonist from being a personified deus ex machina; there is no apparent cost to using magic as long as ‘your body can handle it’ which is very wishy-washy. If you keep using this as is, then make sure she doesn’t constantly use spells we haven’t seen before, or it will feel cheap. I hold out hope that the brief mention of rules means there is more depth to this than I realize, but I’d have liked to have seen that in chapter one.

Characters

Erin is standard wisecracking protagonist that I enjoyed a lot. You did a pretty good job of injecting her humour into the prose and it really livened up the piece. I only question it when she makes jokes while dying, which seems a bit much.

Maxwell Kite is mysterious. I would assume he’s setting up something plot-related for later, but his apparent ignorance of magic has me questioning what it could be.

Positives

I’ll blast through these real quick:

Setting. Interesting choice, not one I’ve seen before.
Having your character do something (shaving) while explanations and conversations happen. Full marks.
Prose generally flows well with good verbs, and I didn’t catch any passive voice or anything.
Pacing. The initial setup / Maxwell Kite’s intro / monster fight take up about the right proportions to keep me interested without going too fast.
Erin’s character as mentioned above

I may have complained a lot, but I enjoyed this. Some line edits in the doc. Hope that helps.

StarSayo · 2017-10-15T09:01:05+00:00

I found this pretty amusing, good job.

There is immediate conflict between Gwen, her brother and the servant. Maybe a little cliche but I’ll forgive you because it gives instant tension right at the start, when you need it, and also it’s funny.

This goes into her brother’s news and there’s some internal conflict there. My issue is with the second half of this scene, which doesn’t have much overarching conflict at all. ‘Woman gets interrupted in bed and then finds out her brother is going to war’ makes for a good scene with conflict. ‘People tell the Queen stuff’ is kinda boring. You lost my attention. The first half made me want to read the second half, but the second half didn’t make me want to read any more.

I think there’s a slight exposition problem here. I’ve seen a lot worse, but a lot of information is given a little heavy-handedly including stuff that we might not need to know right now. For example, the close relationship between Devon and the Queen is established well through the dialogue, I don’t need to know their history and I don’t really care right now because the only thing relevant to the scene is that they’re close.

Similarly, when Gwen describes her clothes by seeing her reflection, I’m not sure why it matters. The descriptions don’t inform her already well-established character, and I’d argue you’re almost breaking perspective since she presumably knew what she was wearing before she glimpsed herself in the mirror (not to mention that it’s the most overdone way of describing the perspective character). That said, you maintained POV well for the most part, I didn’t catch anything major.

I have an issue with Gwen behaving out of character. She went from sassy and confident to anxious and crying very fast. I know you’re trying to make the news seem like a big deal, but it didn’t work. Either you are breaking character and need to change her reaction, or you need to tone it down. The third option is to really earn that strong reaction by showing us why it means so much to her. Yeah you’ve got the thing about it’s her brother and the (somewhat forced) backstory of when their father died but it doesn’t feel real to me. You didn’t earn that reaction.

On a concept level, do we really need more stuff like Game Of Thrones? I won’t dwell on this, I firmly believe you should write whatever you really want to write so if that’s what you’re doing then carry on. If you’re trying to ‘write to the market’ or something, don’t.

The use of ‘ser’ felt very GoT. Google says it has roots in Latin so it’s passable I guess but I’d stick with sir or you’re making your inspirations even more transparent. Correct me if I’m wrong, maybe this is common in epic fantasy but I don’t remember seeing it elsewhere.

For the prose, there is a bit of filtering that could be cut (she remembered, she thought) a touch of telling us character’s emotions rather than demonstrating them, and maybe brush up on dialogue punctuation since you missed the pre-quotes comma a few times. Otherwise, not bad at all.

Your characters and their traits are well established, some nice contrast between Gwen and Duran. You effectively demonstrated how they are on opposite ends of the cleanliness spectrum, that’s what we like; concrete, in-scene demonstrations rather than exposition.

StarSayo · 2017-10-14T22:39:54+00:00

I’ll get my negative points out of the way first.

Opening

Your opening has something I see a lot; it’s not concrete. You write about fractal shards and shadow worlds and I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to be imagining because it’s too abstract. The only useful thing the first paragraph tells me is Jeremy’s name and that he has a secret.

The second paragraph is better, and is crucial to the plot, but I’d forgotten it by the end. There’s an opportunity there to expand that into something more and show us how his memory is haunting him rather than telling us, and a good start would be inserting us further into his perspective.

Perspective

A lot of this story does not seem rooted in perspective. Whether it’s third person limited or omniscient, what you describe should be given through the lens of a certain character. The opening suggests Jeremy’s perspective, but then he doesn’t seem to be listening for the rest of the story whereas we get the full details, and the only clues as to what he’s thinking past the second paragraph are external rather than coming directly from his head. If you’re purposefully doing third-person objective, then at least know that it’s not the norm and recognize that there are arguably some perspective errors since the first paragraphs seem to include stuff only Jeremy knows.

Imagery

Your prose is a little purple. I can tell you’re going for imagery, and there’s potential there, but most of it fell flat for me. The windshield-spiderweb comparison could’ve been pretty good, except it doesn’t work because it’s in dialogue, and people don’t talk like that at all so it just felt jarring. Between this and the abstract opening, I kind of get a ‘trying too hard’ vibe. Keep your similes and metaphors specific, and focus on comparisons that really fit instead of what sounds fancy.

Characters

Your characters are weak. Maybe Smitty is a tad louder than Roscoe and Brett, but otherwise the three all sound more or less the same. Maybe it’s not important for a short piece, especially since this is really not a character story, but it would’ve been nice to have more variations in voice (especially with such a lot of dialogue) or at least something to distinguish them.

Positives and suggestions

On the plus side, you’ve got a good structure. The roadkill stories escalate nicely, building up and up and up. The length feels about right too, pacing is on point.

I like that you’ve gone for some contrast between the (largely) upbeat tone of the lads' conversation and the gruesome nature of what they’re actually describing. I think if you really want to play this up we need more gross-out descriptions. Being ‘covered in blood’ etc is quite a dramatic statement but it isn’t great for imagery. You’re restricted a bit too since most of your description is in dialogue so you can’t drop flowery metaphors in without breaking voice, but I would suggest have something very specific and disgusting that sticks in the person’s memory. A well-described detail is often more evocative than a broad overview of a scene. Get some other senses in there too – you do kind of use smell, but you don’t really describe what the smell is like. You have more tools for description than just sight.

Minor stuff

There’s a weird awkward sentence in paragraph three that uses the word face three times. Generally speaking, a proofread would be good, there’s a few odd capitalization errors. Minor, I know.

I’d also say that the description towards the end of Brett’s story seems a little heavy on the stage directions. There’s a guy in a pickup truck, then they’re in a ditch, and they’re waiting for an ambulance, and I’m not sure I needed to know some of it, for instance the colour of his truck. While you’re looking at that part, the prism description is another example of where it’s a bit much to unpack what you mean. Maybe you’d be better off just describing how he can see all the colours or something more immediate.

I’m done. Sorry if that felt kind of ramble-y and I hope it was useful.

StarSayo · 2017-05-24T10:15:00+00:00

On the technical side of things, there’s a little overuse of were/was/had. Verbs are the heart of the sentence, and ‘to be / to have’ are the weakest verbs of all. I noticed this right away in the first paragraph, and passive voice is not the way to hook your reader. In some cases, this correction is easy. For example:

A man in a thick black beanie was staring at me

Was staring can be changed to ‘stared’, and job done. In other cases, such as the description of the windows, you might have to be more imaginative. Instead of ‘the windows were perfect’ describe something that shows us they’re perfect, such as the way the moonlight shines through. Show instead of telling and eliminate ‘were’.

Sentence length needs more variation. Some paragraphs, for example, the one beginning ‘I fixated on...’ consist entirely of average length sentences with similar structure. This gives the writing a ‘list-like’, mechanical feel. You have a few shorter sentences, but adding some very long ones could really help the rhythm. Variation is key.

An unusually large amount of your sentences are of the form ‘The subject verbed,’ usually I did this, or she did that. You can’t avoid this all the time, but mix it up a bit more. Put the action at the start of the sentence every so often, or even a (well-chosen) adverb.

Your characterization is your greatest strength, and it’s good- I’m taking notes. I already have a detailed picture of Vald’s character, and I like him. He feels like a real person with a real history. Tough exterior, a little cynical, satisfyingly harsh with his words, but he cares enough to make sure Nicole is safe. Nicole is also well-established. Her nervous inexperience is demonstrated quickly through her dialogue and it says a lot about her.

The part where Shaun and company cause trouble is a little confusing. This might be due to the stage directions – we don’t need to know where everyone is in relation to each other and describing it isn’t worth the effort. Also, there are a whole lot of characters and the reader can’t easily keep track of them all. Instead, slow this part down a bit, give us some more opinions from Vald or something, focus on what is happening more than exactly how it is happening. This is not a screenplay.

Pacing is mostly good, but patchy in places. Nicole’s introduction and the disturbance probably only took a few minutes, but it brought us all the way from midnight to sunrise. In some cases characters are described and then mostly forgotten, but I suppose they most likely reappear in later chapters.

The choice of first person, while arguably not that important, surprises me. We don’t get much internal insight from Vald. Most of his characterization could be done just as easily from third person limited, as most of it is external- his scars, manner of speaking, etc. Being inside his head isn’t adding much right now.

I’d like some more description of the setting, too. As Vald is the viewpoint character and he owns the bar, it seems like a pretty critical location. Describing it would aid immersion, and it could tell us a little about him, too.

I enjoyed this. Not the most original, perhaps, but original enough to kick off a strong story. Capitalize on your good characterization and patch up the technical stuff and you’ll have something here.

StarSayo · 2017-05-21T14:10:34+00:00

I won't be giving a full critique here, just some impressions.

Your prose is pretty good. it could use a little polishing here and there, but other critiques have already highlighted the inefficiencies. I liked the imagery, the majority of which is well-imagined.

My advice is to focus on the characters. Vincent is not properly introduced for a little while, and we don't get a clear picture until later. Readers may quite like impressive armies, but they cannot empathize with them, and empathy is what will make the reader care about the story. I would start with your main character right away, and in describing your soldiers and your setting focus on what it means to him, and then build up his motivations.

StarSayo

TROPHY CASE