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Author Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___  (Read 312764 times)

TD1

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1545 on: November 30, 2015, 07:12:33 pm »

As I said, it was therapeutic :P

I just wrote whatever, so it kinda jumbled up. There was no intent, and no editing afterward. Call it ore rather than metal, hehe.
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Emma

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1546 on: December 03, 2015, 07:58:52 pm »

Incidentally, I'd appreciate people saying if they're entering the competition.
Not mandatory, of course, but it'd be nice to be able to ballpark the figure.
Just posting to let you know that I'll be entering your competition and that my entry will come in later today.
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1547 on: December 03, 2015, 08:00:17 pm »

Incidentally, I'd appreciate people saying if they're entering the competition.
Not mandatory, of course, but it'd be nice to be able to ballpark the figure.
Just posting to let you know that I'll be entering your competition and that my entry will come in later today.
Excellent.
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1548 on: December 05, 2015, 08:24:19 pm »

This isn't related whatsoever to the challenge, but tell me what you think: what did you like? What could I have done better?

Spoiler: Dust and steel (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: December 08, 2015, 04:23:46 am by GiglameshDespair »
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1549 on: December 06, 2015, 02:30:02 pm »

Not sure what this 'challenge' thing is. But I've written something that sucks, and as usual, I'll put it her to make it better.

Write a short story that is connected thematically to one or both of the prompts given. In a week, I'll read it and compare it to the others that are posted.
If any are posted


One week remains to post a story for the challenge



Not sure what this 'challenge' thing is. But I've written something that sucks, and as usual, I'll put it her to make it better.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
First: The calf would probably armoured by the greaves, as they'd probably be closed greaves. If the greaves only protect the front of the leg, they'd be demi-greaves, and I have no idea what just calf armour would be called. Armour for the upper arm would probably be a rarebrace, and it seems odd she gets partly armoured and then presumably puts her armour on as she goes to the training field.

Similarly, she seems rather unarmoured for training with full, deadly weapons, where you'd expect to be wearing full plate or using training weapons; having soldiers is no good if they've all maimed each other in training.

A lot of the sentences feel run-on and rather awkward. If you want, I can go through it and fix it.
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adwarf

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1550 on: December 08, 2015, 04:20:45 am »

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1551 on: December 08, 2015, 06:48:14 am »

Spoiler: A Merciless Love (click to show/hide)



Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You mentioned you were going to check it through yourself later, so I'll hold off for now on doing a full run through.
But trim a lot of the run-on sentences.

You've worded a few things unnecessarily long; just say "a jagged tooth" or "a jagged fang" rather than "a tooth whose edges were jagged".
"Flaming, smoking craters" rather than "craters with flames and smoke coming out of them." Flaming and smoking are probably unnecessary to have together; if you have one generally you'll have the other.

It feels kinda... anime? Towards to the end, when the Mackson has time to spout a couple of sentences then close his eyes for a few seconds before his suit explodes. What was the god doing in this time? Why was he standing still?

How did Mackson see his expression at the end after having a) his eyes shut and b) exploded?
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sjm9876

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1552 on: December 08, 2015, 11:27:34 am »

Spoiler: Prompt: Lantern (click to show/hide)

Short piece for the prompt. Not particularly happy with it, but I haven't written in a while and don't really have the time to fix it up at the moment.
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1553 on: December 09, 2015, 07:10:35 am »

I'm not a good writer at all, but I can say some things as a reader!

"Even at this late hour, there was still figures"

Might be just me, but I think it'd sound better with 'were' instead of 'was'. Not sure if that's grammatically correct, however.

Anyone can give feedback - and it'd be nice if more people did! After all, whatever I write won't just be read by writers; and don't put yourself down :P
You're right, that should be "were".

'The preacher outside the bar was old and decrepit, poorly maintained – parts of his chassis were missing, and externals and internals both were splotchy with rust. It was a small miracle the old machine hadn’t deactivated already. The preacher’s optics flickered as he turned his head towards the approaching Jeremiah, neck servos creaking.
“Repent!” he blared, voice box screeching with feedback. “The Creators’ return is nigh! Soon all of Steel will be washed away by the wrath of the Flesh! Unless… we repent! Repent!” '

Personally I like this part. I'd also like a bit more information in what he's saying, maybe foreshadow a bit? :D
Though this right here does that quite well: 'He wasn’t quite wrong, after all.'

I personally felt the wasn't-quite-wrong foreshadows enough, but I do love the concept of a broken-down old robot preacher.

'The smooth faceplate of the machine turned up towards him. It had no visible cameras or voicebox, just a curved reflective panel.'

Right now I'm wondering if most other machines have blank faceplates or the other way around. Either way, a comparison in there could help. For example, 'Like most others of the town, it had no visible cameras or voicebox, just a curved reflective panel.' or 'It had no visible cameras or voicebox, just a curved reflective panel. The town held a large variety of machines, and this design happened to be in a slight minority.'

Good point. I'd hoped that the mention earlier of the preacher's facial(?) features would make it seem out of the norm, but I do need to make that clearer.

' “Good guess,” the stranger said at last, and then he was surging upwards and Jeremiah was reaching for his gun and the stranger’s fist crashed into his faceplate and threw Jeremiah back enough the human could land a heavy kick to his chest.'

This sentence here feels kind of awkward. You have three 'and's in a row, and it reads kinda badly. After that, you seem to be missing a preposition between 'threw Jeremiah back enough' and 'the human could land a heavy kick'. I'm suggesting 'that', 'so', or something similar. Of course, once again, I suck at writing so that's probably not the best way to do it.

It was meant to evoke a sense of frantic, flowing motion, but it seems it's failed. Ah well, it'll have to be trimmed down.

'and as he toppled the human overturned the table to block the shots from the gun the bartender had pulled. Ricochets whined as they sprang from the steel. '

It's rather wordy in the middle. I think you should've said something about providing cover to reduce it, like 'the human overturned the table to provide cover against the bartender, who had pulled a gun and shot at him.'
Right now, it sounds like the human is preparing for the bullets from the bartender, instead of the bartender actually shot at him.
The second is flat out confusing. The closest I can get is that the bartender's bullet ricocheted around, therefore 'springing from the steel'.

First part: yeah, I could have worded that better.
Second part: the bartender's bullets ricocheting of the steel table the human was taking cover behind. Again, I'll have to reword that.

' A metallic click from the other side of the table suggested the human had done the same,'

I'd have assumed 'click' meant that he shot. Pulling the gun wouldn't exactly make a sound (at least not that I'm aware of, having never read anything where pulling a gun made an audible noise.).

The click was meant to be the human's gun being cocked, or the safety catch coming off, rather than a gunshot.

'The bartender fired again, and the ricochet glanced off the human’s table. With a thunderous roar, the human fired his, and the shot went through the table, the bartender’s CPU, and a bottle behind him, sending him crashing to the floor in an explosion of sparks and greenish coolant.'

I'm not sure you are aware of this (but I'm probably wrong), but this implies that the bartender is in a position behind Jeremiah so that the human must shoot through the table in order to hit him.


I liked it! The ending was definitely the best part.
By this I meant the human shot through his own cover to kill the bartender - but no, that's not worded clearly at all.

Cheers for the feedback; I can definitely see venues to improve it. Some of these things require a second eye - it makes sense to me, because I already can see what happens, but it needs to be clear to readers.

I'm glad you enjoyed it!

-----

Are you going to join the competition? :P
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1554 on: December 09, 2015, 08:32:56 am »

I'll finish going through this in a bit.

Not sure what this 'challenge' thing is. But I've written something that sucks, and as usual, I'll put it her to make it better.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

1 sounds too academic in a casual medieval setting
2 Flew from her mind suggests quick action, when she's relaxing for a moment in the sun.
3 I'm not quite sure what you're trying to say in this bit. This would suggest as an eight year old, she was used to using a claymore; besides the fact a knight would learn to use multiple kinds of weapons, it's worded ambiguously.

Further suggestions:
There are five senses - what can she hear, taste, smell?
Perhaps the sounds of the people sparring drifts up to her when she's looking out her window, foreshadowing her own bout.
Perhaps the smells here are foreign and strange, to enforce the idea she's away from home in a strange place.
Does it hurt when she is knocked down? Does she feel a flush of anger when defeated, a spike of anger at Zira's arrogance?
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GiglameshDespair

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1555 on: December 09, 2015, 09:34:06 am »

Not in four days?
Ah, well.


After a decade, I tried my hand at poetry again.
Spoiler: On surrender (click to show/hide)
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Digital Hellhound

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1556 on: December 09, 2015, 10:38:45 am »

To make up for my failure to get anything worthwhile for the prompts, I figured I'd review some of these pieces. All comments personal opinion and feeling, etc, take with all the salt etc.


All comments in red. Excuse my lack of analytical vocabulary sometimes, but I hope I get my point across. Generally, you use a lot of passive voice which makes some paragraphs repetitive and flow poorly. You also have a lot ', and' sentences where it might be better to just chop things up into several sentences. Short, fast sentences can speed up the action quite a bit.

Overall, I like it - it's a solid short showing off an interesting world, with well-done worldbuilding and a focused plot. Nice scifi western feel to the whole thing. I didn't read Moonlit's comments or your responses to them, so apologies if I'm repeating stuff already said.

***

Spoiler: Moonlit Shadow's Piece (click to show/hide)

When posting stuff on a forum, just do empty spaces between paragraphs - the formatting here makes it a bit hard to read. In general, you have a lot of long, sentences, separated into several, with an overabundance of commas. I'm not telling you to get rid of all of them - the first sentence, for example, works fine - but they can hurt the flow of the text.

At points, this feels like an excerpt from the middle of a story. Our protagonist's feelings towards or relationship with Zira don't come clear at all. You don't need to infodump everything about them here, but the fight feels like it exists in a vacuum where I'm not sure what to think and feel about what's going on. We're left in the dark regarding a lot of things - which I'm sure would gradually come clear in a longer story, so it's not really a problem. The reader would benefit from... I dunno how to put it, better access inside our protagonist's head. This doesn't need to be through 'she thought this and that', though you do use that early on, but it'd be more engaging if we could get a better sense of her opinion and thoughts towards things, especially in the fight scene.

***


I don't really have any big criticisms of this. There are some nice images and we get a good/vivid sense of the girl's sensations, so generally I like it.

***

Spoiler: A Merciless Love (click to show/hide)

Honestly, I have no real critiques for this. I like it a lot, especially since it reminds me of something I've been writing (a training montage love story). The images are lovely, the passion is palpable, there's nothing to distract from the point - it's just great.

I'll see if I have the time to review more of the recent stuff here later - hope these are of some worth to people.
« Last Edit: December 09, 2015, 10:44:13 am by Digital Hellhound »
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sjm9876

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1557 on: December 09, 2015, 02:09:51 pm »

Spoiler: A Merciless Love (click to show/hide)

Love this. Got briefly confused at the our, but that's more how my brain has been trained than a writing issue i think.


Spoiler: Dust and steel (click to show/hide)
-Will go though this shortly.-
« Last Edit: December 09, 2015, 02:33:30 pm by sjm9876 »
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My dreams are not unlike yours - they long for the safety, and break like a glass chandelier.
But there's laughter and oh there is love, just past the edge of our fears.
And there's chaos when push comes to shove, but it's music to my ears.

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Tiruin

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1558 on: December 10, 2015, 09:38:47 am »

Spoiler: A Merciless Love (click to show/hide)
You asked me via PM and I responded that I'd get to this :x
...I was busy in the last days and still am--sorry for lacking response and participation!

How many days left until prompt end, by the way? Thinking to get back into all this given the [freedom of free time, as exemplified in my situation perfectly, here]



For me, how I read the transition between the first paragraph and the second gave me a bit of confusion where the PoV was describing. I saw two different things at the same time before moving to one or the other [when the pronouns became 'we'] after getting deeper into the second paragraph; first would be the original 'speaker' describing the whole scenario, and describing what the second entity is doing due to the emotional impact in the first paragraph. The second, being that the first paragraph was a totally different voice than the second--as the start of the second sounds like a self-description and the story being written as from a second-person PoV. [Think: Roguelike description method. It uses a second-person voice.]

That said, I like how the narrative goes. It sounded poetic in the end, and after (my) confusion subsided, I realized the emotional theme that was being presented; it meshed well with the adjectives and superlatives you were using.
The blood bit threw me off in guessing what the subjects were talking about though. Dancing vampires or dueling fighters basking in the expertise of each other? ._.
It's very well written though. :) I think I just got lost halfway!


Also a friend chimed in: He thinks that in starting your second paragraph, perhaps a change of tense may be better to convey the shift of viewpoint. :) I agree with him, but unsure what specific I can give for critique.
« Last Edit: December 10, 2015, 10:19:16 am by Tiruin »
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TD1

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1559 on: December 10, 2015, 09:43:15 am »

I've got two essays due for Monday, so no writing from me until day or so after that I'd say, though I have started.
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