Adherence to Prompt: 3/5 - A capable how-to, but you don't really go into depth. You also suffer from the same problem as most of the stories, in that the reader pretty much already knows (or has been told) what you instruct.
Spelling/Grammar: 3/5 - Some distracting typos and awkward grammar.
Plot/Structure: 7/10 - I gave you extra points for sticking to your structure. A lesser writer would have had him storm into the history teacher's room, and abandoned structure. Still, your story is lacking a second plot point. Impressively, you have two first PP's. The death of his family, and when he gets captured. But, you still need something to change, in order to force a moving action. This will make your story much more satisfying to the reader, strengthen your characters, and make the "twist" at the end less obvious.
Characterization: 4/10 - Unfortunately, revenge stories are hard. They are made even harder when driven by dialogue and motive backstory (lots of flashbacks.) While the interview format can work (See: World War Z by Max Brooks), it is difficult to pull off. Either you need to pepper the dialogue with more personal observations, or you need to pull away from dialogue altogether. Dialogue is at its weakest when used for exposition.
Victor needs more depth. Revenge stories are notoriously character-shallow, so you need all of the depth you can muster.
Style: 5/10 - I covered most of my style issues under Characterization and Plot. The main issue: you have very colorful descriptions, but they tend to conflict. Avoid describing the same objects over and over again (at least, too colorfully.) The best example of this the many ways to describe cigarette smoke. "Dark Perfume" is great, but combined with "Poison" and the many other epithets, it just makes your prose turn purple. (Purple prose: the author trying too hard to be ornate and descriptive.) Another example is when he got stabbed. Gorgeous description, but it stands out like... well, like a knife wound. And not in the good way.
Creativity: 5/10 - You have a well-imagined world, now you just need a bit more to make it unique. The history teacher is a good start. But you can do more than just the "evil empire killed my family and now it's time to murder the emperor" routine. I'm looking forward to it.
Adherance to Prompt: 4/5: I almost gave 3, but I rather enjoyed the application and the way it was explained. Once again, I took off a point because it lacked that last bit of detail and "oomph" that would make me ready to storm a castle. That, and some of the advice is rather suspect... granted, I don't know about siege tactics in a world with powerful magic users, but I'm willing to bet more than 1 knight was lying in ambush past the door.
Spelling/Grammar: 5/5: Nothing big enough for me to take notice.
Characterization 4/10: You've boxed yourself into a corner. All of your characterization is done through snarky dialogue and archaic grammars. Your characters pretty much tell eachother how they are characterized with lines like "as you are so fond of telling me." In fact, your strongest character is the young lieutenent with strong eyes, and he only exists for 2 lines.
Basically, I need to know more about these characters. Right now I have no idea why they are friends, why they are storming this castle, what's at stake... you have a lot of leads you can develop, such as a 1-paragraph description of Garrett supporting Ket'zel for constable.
Plot/Structure: 3/10 Lose the ending. The "friends briefly reminisice years later" ending doesn't work for Walker, Texas Ranger, nor does it work for High Fantasy. You need to take a second look at your plot and have something happen.
A quick how-to on plot structure:
This is a magic website, so I'll quote Mark Rosewater instead of my old fiction prof :p. All stories follow something called 3-act structure. You have Act 1, the world at rest. In this case, the world at rest is Ket'zel being terrible at storming castles. Then, you have Plot Point 1, which transitions the story into Act 2. PP1 acts upon the characters to thrust them out of their "at rest" world. Right now, PP1 is Garrett trying to help. Act 2 ends at Plot Point 2, which is the event that allows the story to end. Notice that this isn't always the climax, but it's close. It allows the story to enter Act 3, where everything (to some degree) is resolved.
Right now, you lack a second plot point. The war starts, then Garrett turns it around, and then it... ends. You need something else to happen.
Style: 3/10: So much dialogue. It's holding your story back. Dialogue is strongest when used as characterization, and you have it do pretty much everything in the story. Try taking a step back and explaining a few things without it.
Creativity: 4/10: Enjoyable, but hollow. Your ending scene pretends to be a morality scene, but instead it just sums up what we've already read. Wait a bit, reread the story, and then decide what it is really "about."
Hey guys, just popping in to let you know that I haven't pulled a Turnip Song. I have 2 judges currently, and the other is indeed working on them (and should announce himself in the thread fooey). So we'll have at least those two.
I panicked for a moment because I had forgotten to lock the topics last night at the deadline. Then, I remembered that not only is that not how this contest works, I also don't have that ability. Go me!
Judging is commencing by myself and a talented writer friend of mine, and I will announce the third judge by Wednesday. Y'all made me a happy camper with the rally, so now it's time to hold up my end of the bargain
It doesn't have to be right, it just haves to establish trust with the narrator
A story about, say, how to pick up chicks, would probably be really awesome if it was entirely wrong. Step one: lift with your legs, not with your back.
Since the topic is waning a bit, here's another fantastic example of a short how-to passage
Quote from High Fidelity by Nick Hornby »
I spent hours putting that cassette together. To me, making a tape is like writing a letter--there's a lot of erasing and rethinking and starting again, and I wanted it to be a good one, because... to be honest, because I hadn't met anyone as promising as Laura since I'd started the DJ-ing, and meeting promising womn was partly what the DJ-ing was supposed to be about. A good compilation tape, like breaking up, is hard to do. You've got to kick it off with a corker, to hold the attention (I started with "Got to Get You Off My Mind" but then realized that she might not get any further than track one, side one if I delivered what she wanted straightaway, so I buried it in the middle of side two), and then you've got to up it a notch, or cool it a notch, and you can't have white music and black music together, unless the white music sounds like black music, and you can't have two tracks by the same artist side by side, unless you've done the whole thing in pairs, and... oh, there are loads of rules.
Anyway, I worked and worked at this one, and I've still got a couple of early demons knocking around the flat, prototype tapes I changed my mind about when I was checking them through. And on Friday night, club night, I produced it from my jacket pocket when she came over to me, and we went on from there. It was a good beginning.
Beautiful glad to see a story already up. (Nope, I haven't read it yet, and won't until the deadline, so you can edit freely.)
But, I did notice one thing: please bump up the font. The judges will have a lot of reading to do, so anything less than 12 point (or whatever MTGS' standard) is unnecessary pain.
They were going to boil Dorothy’s blood. Take it out, heat it, put it back in. The cancer would be gone. Well, that wasn’t exactly it. The treatment had a more formal-sounding name, thermosomethingorother, a word that was both trustworthy (because you recognized the prefix) and lofty, so that you didn’t really question it, knew you were too thick to really understand whatever explanation might be given you. “They’re going to boil my blood” is what it came down to, and this was what Dorothy had told her daughter, Helen, when she called her from New York. There were statistics, affidavits. There was a four-color brochure from the clinic in Frankfurt, Germany, printed in three languages. As they waited for the train in the Munich station, Helen studied the pamphlet’s fonts and graphics. A frequent dupe of advertising herself—how many depilatories and night creams had she bought over the years, and at what expense?—Helen understood the significance behind the choice of peaceful, healing blue over charged, emotional red, the softening elegance of the italicized quotes from Adèle de Chavigny, a woman from Strasbourg who had not only survived having her blood boiled but had gone on to live a life of graceful transcendence. There were no concrete images of the clinic itself, no pictures of whatever this boiling machine might look like. Helen imagined huge vats like those in a brewery—wide, clear tubes with viscous, viral blood moving sluggishly in one direction, while bright, animated, healthy blood rushed eagerly back toward the patient. On the roof of the brewery, she imagined enormous chimneys expelling the sweet-sour-smelling residue of defeated disease into the air. Poof, poof, the smokestacks would go, and all the German townsfolk (yes, in her fantasy they were wearing lederhosen and small peaked caps) would look up, proud to know that, in their town, death had been conquered.
How interesting... it's an important part of the story, but might not be involved in the plot at all. It's subtle despite describing how to "boil blood." It's probably entirely incorrect fact-wise, but it's based in enough real life experience and medicine that it is an entirely convincing fantasy on the part of the character. And it conveyed a convincing knowledge of the material without explicitly resorting to a step-by-step analysis...
If what you're explaining is boring, well, then it had better be interesting. If you're describing how to do CPR during a critical 4 paragraphs at the very end of your story and you throw in a hundred details that nobody thinks of about CPR (like how your ears pop when you take a big yawning breath or how the stubble on his chin actually makes it easier to grip) then you will probably do well.
well, I tend to score Adherance differently than others. For me, you get 3 points if you follow the prompt "by the book." You get 2 if it's a stretch and not pulled off well. You get a 5 if I think, "damn, I wish I thought of that."
Spelling/Grammar: 3/5 - Some distracting typos and awkward grammar.
Plot/Structure: 7/10 - I gave you extra points for sticking to your structure. A lesser writer would have had him storm into the history teacher's room, and abandoned structure. Still, your story is lacking a second plot point. Impressively, you have two first PP's. The death of his family, and when he gets captured. But, you still need something to change, in order to force a moving action. This will make your story much more satisfying to the reader, strengthen your characters, and make the "twist" at the end less obvious.
Characterization: 4/10 - Unfortunately, revenge stories are hard. They are made even harder when driven by dialogue and motive backstory (lots of flashbacks.) While the interview format can work (See: World War Z by Max Brooks), it is difficult to pull off. Either you need to pepper the dialogue with more personal observations, or you need to pull away from dialogue altogether. Dialogue is at its weakest when used for exposition.
Victor needs more depth. Revenge stories are notoriously character-shallow, so you need all of the depth you can muster.
Style: 5/10 - I covered most of my style issues under Characterization and Plot. The main issue: you have very colorful descriptions, but they tend to conflict. Avoid describing the same objects over and over again (at least, too colorfully.) The best example of this the many ways to describe cigarette smoke. "Dark Perfume" is great, but combined with "Poison" and the many other epithets, it just makes your prose turn purple. (Purple prose: the author trying too hard to be ornate and descriptive.) Another example is when he got stabbed. Gorgeous description, but it stands out like... well, like a knife wound. And not in the good way.
Creativity: 5/10 - You have a well-imagined world, now you just need a bit more to make it unique. The history teacher is a good start. But you can do more than just the "evil empire killed my family and now it's time to murder the emperor" routine. I'm looking forward to it.
Total: 27/50
Adherance to Prompt: 4/5: I almost gave 3, but I rather enjoyed the application and the way it was explained. Once again, I took off a point because it lacked that last bit of detail and "oomph" that would make me ready to storm a castle. That, and some of the advice is rather suspect... granted, I don't know about siege tactics in a world with powerful magic users, but I'm willing to bet more than 1 knight was lying in ambush past the door.
Spelling/Grammar: 5/5: Nothing big enough for me to take notice.
Characterization 4/10: You've boxed yourself into a corner. All of your characterization is done through snarky dialogue and archaic grammars. Your characters pretty much tell eachother how they are characterized with lines like "as you are so fond of telling me." In fact, your strongest character is the young lieutenent with strong eyes, and he only exists for 2 lines.
Basically, I need to know more about these characters. Right now I have no idea why they are friends, why they are storming this castle, what's at stake... you have a lot of leads you can develop, such as a 1-paragraph description of Garrett supporting Ket'zel for constable.
Plot/Structure: 3/10 Lose the ending. The "friends briefly reminisice years later" ending doesn't work for Walker, Texas Ranger, nor does it work for High Fantasy. You need to take a second look at your plot and have something happen.
A quick how-to on plot structure:
This is a magic website, so I'll quote Mark Rosewater instead of my old fiction prof :p. All stories follow something called 3-act structure. You have Act 1, the world at rest. In this case, the world at rest is Ket'zel being terrible at storming castles. Then, you have Plot Point 1, which transitions the story into Act 2. PP1 acts upon the characters to thrust them out of their "at rest" world. Right now, PP1 is Garrett trying to help. Act 2 ends at Plot Point 2, which is the event that allows the story to end. Notice that this isn't always the climax, but it's close. It allows the story to enter Act 3, where everything (to some degree) is resolved.
Right now, you lack a second plot point. The war starts, then Garrett turns it around, and then it... ends. You need something else to happen.
Style: 3/10: So much dialogue. It's holding your story back. Dialogue is strongest when used as characterization, and you have it do pretty much everything in the story. Try taking a step back and explaining a few things without it.
Creativity: 4/10: Enjoyable, but hollow. Your ending scene pretends to be a morality scene, but instead it just sums up what we've already read. Wait a bit, reread the story, and then decide what it is really "about."
Total: 23/50
I panicked for a moment because I had forgotten to lock the topics last night at the deadline. Then, I remembered that not only is that not how this contest works, I also don't have that ability. Go me!
Judging is commencing by myself and a talented writer friend of mine, and I will announce the third judge by Wednesday. Y'all made me a happy camper with the rally, so now it's time to hold up my end of the bargain
I want at least 5 entries.
Preferably 10. Yeah, you heard me...
A story about, say, how to pick up chicks, would probably be really awesome if it was entirely wrong. Step one: lift with your legs, not with your back.
Doing it in a fantasy setting is harder, but no less rewarding. It just means you have to really use your imagination.
Hope everyone's stories are going well
But, I did notice one thing: please bump up the font. The judges will have a lot of reading to do, so anything less than 12 point (or whatever MTGS' standard) is unnecessary pain.
How interesting... it's an important part of the story, but might not be involved in the plot at all. It's subtle despite describing how to "boil blood." It's probably entirely incorrect fact-wise, but it's based in enough real life experience and medicine that it is an entirely convincing fantasy on the part of the character. And it conveyed a convincing knowledge of the material without explicitly resorting to a step-by-step analysis...
If what you're explaining is boring, well, then it had better be interesting. If you're describing how to do CPR during a critical 4 paragraphs at the very end of your story and you throw in a hundred details that nobody thinks of about CPR (like how your ears pop when you take a big yawning breath or how the stubble on his chin actually makes it easier to grip) then you will probably do well.
Yes, if you do it well.
Professions are just an easy way to get the how-to to drive the story, along with some characterization to boot.
Oron: All you have to do is post a story before the deadline