Chris sat quietly in his chair, not listening to a word the teacher was saying. He was stuck in school in his nerdy school uniform – a red and blue tartan shirt and blue trouser with a merchant navy blue tie – and stuck listening to the teacher ramble on about some Joan of Arc woman.
“Joan of Arc,” the teacher said. “Was a heroine of France who lived from 1412 to 1431,”
The word went in one ear and out the other like water through a tube. Chris lay his head on the wooden desk and close his eyes.
Why does she put us through this hell? He thought as he slowly dozed off.
* * *
Chris slowly woke up, the booming sounds of yells being the thing that roused him. He rubbed his eyes, removing some of the sleep that had built up in his eyelids. When his eyes focused, he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
The room was trashed, chairs scattered around the floor and tables broken and upside down. The chalkboard had been smashed and broken into two – one half still on the wall and the other on the ground.
Who did this? He mused. And why? His train of thought was soon interrupted. A young lady rushed into the room, grabbed Chris by the arm and sprinted off, dragging Chris with her.
The woman had hair the colour of a warm, well burning fire. She was wearing a simple brown dress with a blue shirt underneath.
“Who are you?” He inquired, puffing heavily from all the running.
“No time to explain,” she responded. “You are in grave danger,”
Now, he thought. She would've had plenty of time to tell me her name and still have time to tell me I'm in danger. Once more his thoughts were interrupted, but not by a lady taking him away, but by a blast of burning light that missed him by a hair.
“Faster!” The lady cried.
“Faster?” Chris whispered. “This is as fast as I can go,” another blast of light came and singed Chris on the arm. The lady stopped where the schools halls intersected.
“Keep running,” she ordered. Chris obeyed her order, running to the nearest exit. He had sufficient time to take one last glimpse of the lady, summoning a wall of water to her aid before he ran out the main door.
He shut the door and turned to face what should've been the teacher's car park. Instead he saw a grassy pasture and a thick copse of trees. A small camp of tents was visible about 300 metres away. Chris ran towards it.
He heard a loud smashing noise just behind him. The lady flew through the front door of the building, a ball of light pushing her backwards. She dropped to the ground, her clothing blackened and her lip bleeding. She held her hands out in front of her, her fingers splayed out wide.
“Stay away!” She shouted, firing bolts of lightning at the creature. Her efforts were however vain for the creature had disappeared before a single bolt could hit him.
The creature had been large and metallic. He had a bulky, muscular build and no visible neck. His face had been stern and hard the only facial features were his eyes; lifeless and grey.
The red hair woman turned to face Chris. “Quick, run!” She yelled. She also began running. Chris turned and started to sprint as fast as he could. A loud explosion deafened Chris for a moment but his hearing soon returned. He turned his head to see what had occurred.
He was stunned to see that the building he had just came out of wasn't his school. It was a large citadel made of large grey stone; or at least, had been a large citadel. The explosion had came from the core of the tower, sending I tumbling to its crumbling death.
Dust was now choking up the air. The red haired woman was nowhere to be seen. He resumed following the lady's orders, running towards the camp hoping that they weren't as hostile as that large metallic creature had been.
He came to an old lady, who was sitting around a small fire.
“Excuse me?” He asked. “There has been an attack on a lady back their,”
“Oh,” replied the old lady. “Joan? She'll be fine. Besides, here she is now,” The old lady pointed over Chris' shoulder. He turned around and saw Joan coming out of the dust cloud, not a single scratch on her.
“H-H-How,” Chris stuttered. “How did she do that?”
“The water, the thunder or surviving an explosion?” She was conversing rather casually.
“Everything,” he cried.
“That lady their,” she remarked, pointing at Joan. “Is Joan of Arc and she's a witch,”
“Don't be foolish,” Chris replied. “Witches aren't real.”
“Sure they are,” she said. “You just saw one practice magic right in front of you. Didn't you,”
“Well yes, but,” he couldn't find any words that suited. “You are talking about Joan of Arc aren't you?”
“Well what other Joan is there in France that can practice magic?”
“According to history books, Joan was just a French heroine, not a witch, I mean she was executed for working with the devil but-”
“How can you say that? She is standing right behind you, and you say she's dead,”
“But they say that witchcraft is the work of the devil, so it's almost inevitable that she'll get killed. Haven't you worked that out yet? Or did you never go to school? Wait. What year is this?”
“Why young man,” she said. “It's 1429.”
“1429!” He yelled. “This means I've gone back,” he counted with his fingers. “577 years. How?”
“Son, I think you need some help,” she said. “It isn't possible to go back in time 577 years. To do that, you'd have to be a-” she stopped. “You're a wizard, aren't you,”
“Me,” he replied. “A wizard. No,”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. You're a wizard. You've come from the future to help us. Haven't you.”
“No,” he said quickly. “I just fell asleep in class and woke up here,”
The lady didn't listen. “Joan,” she yelled. “Joan. A wizard has come to save us. He's come from the future. Like you said,”
“Young, man,” Joan said. “Is what Mary's saying true? Are you a wizard?”
“Well, no,” he replied. He changed the subject. “But I thought you were a firm believer in God.”
“I am,”
“Then why are you practicing witchcraft? Isn't that against God and your beliefs?”
“Son,” she said. “This is not witchcraft. This is a blessing. God gave me these powers so that I could protect my people. Witch or wizard is just the words I use to describe the powers. I'm using God's power, not using Satan's.”
“Then-” he was cut short. The strange metallic creature appeared right in front of him. It lifted one long hand, swooping it down, hitting Chris in the chest, sending his spiralling through the air, only to land on the ground with a thump.
Joan fired a large stream of water at the creature. The water forced it back a couple of metres, but then it countered.
It shot a fireball at Joan, missing her, but only just.
“Who is he?” Chris yelled.
“That is a witch,” Joan replied, now fighting back a beam of light with bolts of lightning. “Young man,” she yelled. “I need your help,”
“Why,” he replied.
“I can't fight him off myself. He's too strong.”
“But I have no powers,” Chris said.
“Yes you do,” she yelled. “You have the power of belief. If you believe you have powers, then you do; you just have to believe.”
Chris couldn't. How can believing in something give him powers? He focused, he vision in his mind light. Pure, white, light. He channelled his thoughts into his hands, which were now out in front of him, his fingers wide apart. And then, he believed.
The beam shot out of his hand, making a pure note that gave him strength. He could feel him living off the note. The beam hit the witch in the chest, sending it flying.
Chris let out a yell of triumph, which made the beam stronger. It engulfed the witch fully, sizzling noises coming from the creature. Chris stopped the beam and fell to the ground, tired and puffing heavily. Joan ran towards him.
“My boy,” she said. “My boy. You did it. The witch is dead; she completely obliterated. How did you use the light of God?”
“That,” he whispered. “Was the light of god? But how-” He spoke no further. His head grew heavy, and then he blacked out.
* * *
“Chris,” came the voice. “Chris,” it repeated. Chris opened his eyes. “Chris,” the voice said again. “Why are you sleeping in my class?”
Chris lifted his head off the desk. “Huh?” he said, wiping saliva off his chin. “What happened to Joan?”
“She was executed.”
“No she wasn't,” Chris said again. “She defeated a witch with help from the light of God.”
“What on Earth are you talking about?”
“I'm sure you saw the room too. It was trashed, and then Joan came and rescued me before it exploded and-”
“Oh shut up you stupid boy,” she said. Everyone around him giggled. “Tell the story to the principal and in detention. Oh and don't worry, you'll be able to say it a lot. Particularly because you be spending the rest of this week their.”
“For what?”
“For sleeping in class.” It clicked. He had been sleeping, and everything that had happened had been a dream.
He left the room and went down the hall towards the Principals office. On the way, he got a slight twinge in his arm. He looked down and saw a rather nasty singe. He lifted his head and smiled, for he knew something had happened.
linx_389: I Dream of Joanie
Adherence to Prompt: 2.5. Joan as a magic user can be done, but the magic should be related to her history, personality, beliefs, etc. Not to mention, fireballs and walls of water would PROBABLY have been mentioned in the historical record, had she used any. And… you have her in a dress? This makes it seem as if you didn’t do much research at all.
Spelling/Grammar: 3/5. Some mistakes, like capitalizing after a quote, “teacher’s car park” when you should say “teachers’ car park,” etc.
Characterization: 2/10. I really get no feeling for Chris or Joan, for who they are or what they want. They’re mostly just names.
Plot and Structure: 5/10. What plot there is makes sense, though it is somewhat choppy. As it is, it seems like a sprint through the typical dramatic arc, without really stopping to actually explore or enjoy any parts of it.
Style: 5/10. Rather lackluster, needs some variation in sentence construction, word chose, etc. Spice it up a bit!
Creativity: 3/10. Sorry, but there just isn’t much here. “It’s a dream” is about one of the weakest narrative mechanics you can use, even with the “but some of it was real” twist tacked on.
Total: 19.5/50 First of all, the pun in this title is too much of a stretch – it makes it more awkward than quirky. In general, the story was a bit too short and underdeveloped to really accomplish anything.
I'm glad you told me that. I felt I could've done better but I just wasn't in the mood to change anything. Thanks a heap though for being truthful. I'll just have to try harder in later contests.
Adherence to Prompt: 2/5 - It looks like you did just enough research to fill the school scenes, and then went off in your own world of innacuracy. I don't mind the Joan using magic... but wearing a dress?
Spelling/Grammar: 1/5 - So many errors. My favorite was a "Green Great Dragon" moment: "Merchant Navy Blue Tie."
Characterization: 2/5 - Your characters lack depth, and Joan doesn't make much sense. And... Mary? Witches?
Plot/Structure: 5/10 - You had a plot curve, and had a structure, which I appreciated. You knew what you wanted to do with this story.
Style: 3/10 - Your style started out strong, but after the first few paragraphs it weakened. The school scenes feel like excuses to info-dump. Also, I don't see how his thoughts keep "getting intterupted" when they manage to form complete, articulate sentences
Creativity: 3/10 - Meh, this is a difficult story for me to get behind. It's a fantasy story written with a character named Joan, tacked onto a standard "it was all a dream omg no it wasn't" structure.
And the award for most literal pun-title of the contest goes to linx_389!
Comments
This method of time travel worked more or less for Samuel Clemens (nice little synchronicity, that, since he also wrote a 'biography' of Joan) but, ultimately, it comes off as the first thing you could think of when you learned that Joan would be the subject of the contest and that she could be taken out of her element. It's sort of like you turned medieval France into Euro-Dominaria.
This style of story turns up all over the place, especially on TV – I think most recently I saw it on South Park when Cartman dreamed himself back to the American Revolution – and I think you grabbed the structure of this story gimmick without using any real reason for it to happen other than that the protagonist is imaginative and he's falling asleep while listening to history about Joan. You can certainly play the "history doesn't tell you what it was *really* like" angle, but when you do you need to make sure you know the real history first so you can turn it on its ear. Just turning Joan's era into a D&D setting doesn't cut it. There's just not much effort here to deal with Joan as anything other than a time-travel destination.
0-5 Adherence to Prompt: This isn't just "Is Joan of Arc in the story." This is "Does she seem like Joan of Arc?" Historical innacuracies will come out of here, though I'll likely be the only one to dock for that.
1
The idea of giving Joan actual, full-blown Harry Potter magical abilities was an interesting one, but failing to go beyond that or justifying why it should be made her feel generic. Joan's surroundings and situation was somewhat bizarre, I would have liked to see more explanation as to why this military leader was fighting witches solo like Blade instead of leading an army, as she did historically. If you're going to change her, justify it. Say the protagonist really did time travel, and has done it before and will do it again, and somehow he's let real demons and magic loose on Joan and this is how she's handling it (for example).
0-5 Spelling and Grammar: Sefl-esplanator.y Don't neglect this - Scavenger had a few spelling errors, and lost last round by half a point. These are not hard points to get, so don't take them for granted.
2
"Their" is the plural possessive pronoun. "There" is a place. Nothing, but NOTHING, stands out to a reader, editor, or potential publisher like that sort of basic error. Just catch it in editing.
0-10 Characterization: How well are your characters (all of them) developed? Are they believable? Do they come alive to the readers, or are they just flat archetypes?
5
You've got a nice, simple, change for your protagonist that fits the length of the story well—he goes to sleep thinking learning about Joan is hell, and wakes up with a thrilling tale and admiration for this witch heroine he met. And you showed us his interest and admiration rather than just telling us that he'd learned something. The basics are important, and the most basic of the storytelling basics is a protagonist who changes in some way, even if it's a tiny change.
Points docked, however, for Joan, who was one-dimensional (I doubt she'd call anyone "son," she died very young); and Joan's sidekick, who wasn't very memorable at all, I'm afraid.
0-10 Plot and Structure: Does everything flow well? Does the story make coherant sense? Do we care about what happens, at the same time as not being able to see everything coming?
3
Plotwise, I thought there was way too much inevitability here – the structure was tidy, but too tidy. The Rip Van Winkle convention leaves little doubt in a story this size that it's all going to be a dream, and throwing a prophecy made the outcome of the battle certain. The interest in the story for me was in the strange modifications and the concept of witch-Joan, none of which were ever explained or justified.
0-10 Style: How effective your words are. How well you use symbolism, imagery, voice, and all those other mystical writing concepts.
5
You have worlds to explore, and you can explore them. You obviously enjoy writing dialogue and are comfortable doing it. Except for a few grammatical bits, you've got a good ear for rhythm and speech. But don't let your "actors" work on an empty stage. Fill out that world a bit, not necessarily in huge blocks of description, but in shorter bursts that let you keep the pace you've set.
0-10 Creativity: Just because you have to use a well-documented historical figure, doesn't mean you can't be creative about it.
3
Joan as a real holy witch is a cool, if unjustified, twist to the story. Everything else was very conventional—especially the framing device that robbed much of the middle bits of their oomph (I can't be the only one who's seen that South Park episode). The framing device is comfortable and leaves you an out as far as historical inaccuracies, but you run the risk of looking as if you're afraid to let the adventure setting stand on its own.
Thanks for that. It's really pulled me into line, to check for grammar, spelling and typo's. And I'm glad that I've been told by a published author and not someone who has no sense of novel writing at all.
Thanks for that. It's really pulled me into line, to check for grammar, spelling and typo's. And I'm glad that I've been told by a published author and not someone who has no sense of novel writing at all.
Speaking of typos...
Check your posts! Look at the typo in this post! Typo's means "Typo is" or "Typo possessive." Start now!
Chris sat quietly in his chair, not listening to a word the teacher was saying. He was stuck in school in his nerdy school uniform – a red and blue tartan shirt and blue trouser with a merchant navy blue tie – and stuck listening to the teacher ramble on about some Joan of Arc woman.
“Joan of Arc,” the teacher said. “Was a heroine of France who lived from 1412 to 1431,”
The word went in one ear and out the other like water through a tube. Chris lay his head on the wooden desk and close his eyes.
Why does she put us through this hell? He thought as he slowly dozed off.
Chris slowly woke up, the booming sounds of yells being the thing that roused him. He rubbed his eyes, removing some of the sleep that had built up in his eyelids. When his eyes focused, he couldn't believe what he was seeing.
The room was trashed, chairs scattered around the floor and tables broken and upside down. The chalkboard had been smashed and broken into two – one half still on the wall and the other on the ground.
Who did this? He mused. And why? His train of thought was soon interrupted. A young lady rushed into the room, grabbed Chris by the arm and sprinted off, dragging Chris with her.
The woman had hair the colour of a warm, well burning fire. She was wearing a simple brown dress with a blue shirt underneath.
“Who are you?” He inquired, puffing heavily from all the running.
“No time to explain,” she responded. “You are in grave danger,”
Now, he thought. She would've had plenty of time to tell me her name and still have time to tell me I'm in danger. Once more his thoughts were interrupted, but not by a lady taking him away, but by a blast of burning light that missed him by a hair.
“Faster!” The lady cried.
“Faster?” Chris whispered. “This is as fast as I can go,” another blast of light came and singed Chris on the arm. The lady stopped where the schools halls intersected.
“Keep running,” she ordered. Chris obeyed her order, running to the nearest exit. He had sufficient time to take one last glimpse of the lady, summoning a wall of water to her aid before he ran out the main door.
He shut the door and turned to face what should've been the teacher's car park. Instead he saw a grassy pasture and a thick copse of trees. A small camp of tents was visible about 300 metres away. Chris ran towards it.
He heard a loud smashing noise just behind him. The lady flew through the front door of the building, a ball of light pushing her backwards. She dropped to the ground, her clothing blackened and her lip bleeding. She held her hands out in front of her, her fingers splayed out wide.
“Stay away!” She shouted, firing bolts of lightning at the creature. Her efforts were however vain for the creature had disappeared before a single bolt could hit him.
The creature had been large and metallic. He had a bulky, muscular build and no visible neck. His face had been stern and hard the only facial features were his eyes; lifeless and grey.
The red hair woman turned to face Chris. “Quick, run!” She yelled. She also began running. Chris turned and started to sprint as fast as he could. A loud explosion deafened Chris for a moment but his hearing soon returned. He turned his head to see what had occurred.
He was stunned to see that the building he had just came out of wasn't his school. It was a large citadel made of large grey stone; or at least, had been a large citadel. The explosion had came from the core of the tower, sending I tumbling to its crumbling death.
Dust was now choking up the air. The red haired woman was nowhere to be seen. He resumed following the lady's orders, running towards the camp hoping that they weren't as hostile as that large metallic creature had been.
He came to an old lady, who was sitting around a small fire.
“Excuse me?” He asked. “There has been an attack on a lady back their,”
“Oh,” replied the old lady. “Joan? She'll be fine. Besides, here she is now,” The old lady pointed over Chris' shoulder. He turned around and saw Joan coming out of the dust cloud, not a single scratch on her.
“H-H-How,” Chris stuttered. “How did she do that?”
“The water, the thunder or surviving an explosion?” She was conversing rather casually.
“Everything,” he cried.
“That lady their,” she remarked, pointing at Joan. “Is Joan of Arc and she's a witch,”
“Don't be foolish,” Chris replied. “Witches aren't real.”
“Sure they are,” she said. “You just saw one practice magic right in front of you. Didn't you,”
“Well yes, but,” he couldn't find any words that suited. “You are talking about Joan of Arc aren't you?”
“Well what other Joan is there in France that can practice magic?”
“According to history books, Joan was just a French heroine, not a witch, I mean she was executed for working with the devil but-”
“How can you say that? She is standing right behind you, and you say she's dead,”
“But they say that witchcraft is the work of the devil, so it's almost inevitable that she'll get killed. Haven't you worked that out yet? Or did you never go to school? Wait. What year is this?”
“Why young man,” she said. “It's 1429.”
“1429!” He yelled. “This means I've gone back,” he counted with his fingers. “577 years. How?”
“Son, I think you need some help,” she said. “It isn't possible to go back in time 577 years. To do that, you'd have to be a-” she stopped. “You're a wizard, aren't you,”
“Me,” he replied. “A wizard. No,”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes. You're a wizard. You've come from the future to help us. Haven't you.”
“No,” he said quickly. “I just fell asleep in class and woke up here,”
The lady didn't listen. “Joan,” she yelled. “Joan. A wizard has come to save us. He's come from the future. Like you said,”
“Young, man,” Joan said. “Is what Mary's saying true? Are you a wizard?”
“Well, no,” he replied. He changed the subject. “But I thought you were a firm believer in God.”
“I am,”
“Then why are you practicing witchcraft? Isn't that against God and your beliefs?”
“Son,” she said. “This is not witchcraft. This is a blessing. God gave me these powers so that I could protect my people. Witch or wizard is just the words I use to describe the powers. I'm using God's power, not using Satan's.”
“Then-” he was cut short. The strange metallic creature appeared right in front of him. It lifted one long hand, swooping it down, hitting Chris in the chest, sending his spiralling through the air, only to land on the ground with a thump.
Joan fired a large stream of water at the creature. The water forced it back a couple of metres, but then it countered.
It shot a fireball at Joan, missing her, but only just.
“Who is he?” Chris yelled.
“That is a witch,” Joan replied, now fighting back a beam of light with bolts of lightning. “Young man,” she yelled. “I need your help,”
“Why,” he replied.
“I can't fight him off myself. He's too strong.”
“But I have no powers,” Chris said.
“Yes you do,” she yelled. “You have the power of belief. If you believe you have powers, then you do; you just have to believe.”
Chris couldn't. How can believing in something give him powers? He focused, he vision in his mind light. Pure, white, light. He channelled his thoughts into his hands, which were now out in front of him, his fingers wide apart. And then, he believed.
The beam shot out of his hand, making a pure note that gave him strength. He could feel him living off the note. The beam hit the witch in the chest, sending it flying.
Chris let out a yell of triumph, which made the beam stronger. It engulfed the witch fully, sizzling noises coming from the creature. Chris stopped the beam and fell to the ground, tired and puffing heavily. Joan ran towards him.
“My boy,” she said. “My boy. You did it. The witch is dead; she completely obliterated. How did you use the light of God?”
“That,” he whispered. “Was the light of god? But how-” He spoke no further. His head grew heavy, and then he blacked out.
* * *
“Chris,” came the voice. “Chris,” it repeated. Chris opened his eyes. “Chris,” the voice said again. “Why are you sleeping in my class?”
Chris lifted his head off the desk. “Huh?” he said, wiping saliva off his chin. “What happened to Joan?”
“She was executed.”
“No she wasn't,” Chris said again. “She defeated a witch with help from the light of God.”
“What on Earth are you talking about?”
“I'm sure you saw the room too. It was trashed, and then Joan came and rescued me before it exploded and-”
“Oh shut up you stupid boy,” she said. Everyone around him giggled. “Tell the story to the principal and in detention. Oh and don't worry, you'll be able to say it a lot. Particularly because you be spending the rest of this week their.”
“For what?”
“For sleeping in class.” It clicked. He had been sleeping, and everything that had happened had been a dream.
He left the room and went down the hall towards the Principals office. On the way, he got a slight twinge in his arm. He looked down and saw a rather nasty singe. He lifted his head and smiled, for he knew something had happened.
Adherence to Prompt: 2.5. Joan as a magic user can be done, but the magic should be related to her history, personality, beliefs, etc. Not to mention, fireballs and walls of water would PROBABLY have been mentioned in the historical record, had she used any. And… you have her in a dress? This makes it seem as if you didn’t do much research at all.
Spelling/Grammar: 3/5. Some mistakes, like capitalizing after a quote, “teacher’s car park” when you should say “teachers’ car park,” etc.
Characterization: 2/10. I really get no feeling for Chris or Joan, for who they are or what they want. They’re mostly just names.
Plot and Structure: 5/10. What plot there is makes sense, though it is somewhat choppy. As it is, it seems like a sprint through the typical dramatic arc, without really stopping to actually explore or enjoy any parts of it.
Style: 5/10. Rather lackluster, needs some variation in sentence construction, word chose, etc. Spice it up a bit!
Creativity: 3/10. Sorry, but there just isn’t much here. “It’s a dream” is about one of the weakest narrative mechanics you can use, even with the “but some of it was real” twist tacked on.
Total: 19.5/50 First of all, the pun in this title is too much of a stretch – it makes it more awkward than quirky. In general, the story was a bit too short and underdeveloped to really accomplish anything.
Trades
Articles
Winner of SSC 1 & ">3 & 6
Spelling/Grammar: 1/5 - So many errors. My favorite was a "Green Great Dragon" moment: "Merchant Navy Blue Tie."
Characterization: 2/5 - Your characters lack depth, and Joan doesn't make much sense. And... Mary? Witches?
Plot/Structure: 5/10 - You had a plot curve, and had a structure, which I appreciated. You knew what you wanted to do with this story.
Style: 3/10 - Your style started out strong, but after the first few paragraphs it weakened. The school scenes feel like excuses to info-dump. Also, I don't see how his thoughts keep "getting intterupted" when they manage to form complete, articulate sentences
Creativity: 3/10 - Meh, this is a difficult story for me to get behind. It's a fantasy story written with a character named Joan, tacked onto a standard "it was all a dream omg no it wasn't" structure.
Total: 16
By linx_389
And the award for most literal pun-title of the contest goes to linx_389!
Comments
This method of time travel worked more or less for Samuel Clemens (nice little synchronicity, that, since he also wrote a 'biography' of Joan) but, ultimately, it comes off as the first thing you could think of when you learned that Joan would be the subject of the contest and that she could be taken out of her element. It's sort of like you turned medieval France into Euro-Dominaria.
This style of story turns up all over the place, especially on TV – I think most recently I saw it on South Park when Cartman dreamed himself back to the American Revolution – and I think you grabbed the structure of this story gimmick without using any real reason for it to happen other than that the protagonist is imaginative and he's falling asleep while listening to history about Joan. You can certainly play the "history doesn't tell you what it was *really* like" angle, but when you do you need to make sure you know the real history first so you can turn it on its ear. Just turning Joan's era into a D&D setting doesn't cut it. There's just not much effort here to deal with Joan as anything other than a time-travel destination.
0-5 Adherence to Prompt: This isn't just "Is Joan of Arc in the story." This is "Does she seem like Joan of Arc?" Historical innacuracies will come out of here, though I'll likely be the only one to dock for that.
1
The idea of giving Joan actual, full-blown Harry Potter magical abilities was an interesting one, but failing to go beyond that or justifying why it should be made her feel generic. Joan's surroundings and situation was somewhat bizarre, I would have liked to see more explanation as to why this military leader was fighting witches solo like Blade instead of leading an army, as she did historically. If you're going to change her, justify it. Say the protagonist really did time travel, and has done it before and will do it again, and somehow he's let real demons and magic loose on Joan and this is how she's handling it (for example).
0-5 Spelling and Grammar: Sefl-esplanator.y Don't neglect this - Scavenger had a few spelling errors, and lost last round by half a point. These are not hard points to get, so don't take them for granted.
2
"Their" is the plural possessive pronoun. "There" is a place. Nothing, but NOTHING, stands out to a reader, editor, or potential publisher like that sort of basic error. Just catch it in editing.
0-10 Characterization: How well are your characters (all of them) developed? Are they believable? Do they come alive to the readers, or are they just flat archetypes?
5
You've got a nice, simple, change for your protagonist that fits the length of the story well—he goes to sleep thinking learning about Joan is hell, and wakes up with a thrilling tale and admiration for this witch heroine he met. And you showed us his interest and admiration rather than just telling us that he'd learned something. The basics are important, and the most basic of the storytelling basics is a protagonist who changes in some way, even if it's a tiny change.
Points docked, however, for Joan, who was one-dimensional (I doubt she'd call anyone "son," she died very young); and Joan's sidekick, who wasn't very memorable at all, I'm afraid.
0-10 Plot and Structure: Does everything flow well? Does the story make coherant sense? Do we care about what happens, at the same time as not being able to see everything coming?
3
Plotwise, I thought there was way too much inevitability here – the structure was tidy, but too tidy. The Rip Van Winkle convention leaves little doubt in a story this size that it's all going to be a dream, and throwing a prophecy made the outcome of the battle certain. The interest in the story for me was in the strange modifications and the concept of witch-Joan, none of which were ever explained or justified.
0-10 Style: How effective your words are. How well you use symbolism, imagery, voice, and all those other mystical writing concepts.
5
You have worlds to explore, and you can explore them. You obviously enjoy writing dialogue and are comfortable doing it. Except for a few grammatical bits, you've got a good ear for rhythm and speech. But don't let your "actors" work on an empty stage. Fill out that world a bit, not necessarily in huge blocks of description, but in shorter bursts that let you keep the pace you've set.
0-10 Creativity: Just because you have to use a well-documented historical figure, doesn't mean you can't be creative about it.
3
Joan as a real holy witch is a cool, if unjustified, twist to the story. Everything else was very conventional—especially the framing device that robbed much of the middle bits of their oomph (I can't be the only one who's seen that South Park episode). The framing device is comfortable and leaves you an out as far as historical inaccuracies, but you run the risk of looking as if you're afraid to let the adventure setting stand on its own.
Total: 19
Speaking of typos...
Check your posts! Look at the typo in this post! Typo's means "Typo is" or "Typo possessive." Start now!
(Plural does not use apostrophes.)
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