(10-13-2017, 02:20 PM)Jade Harley Wrote: Thread: Beyond the Mountains of Madness (http://omniverse-rpg.com/showthread.php?tid=7100), submitted for Writing Bonuses!
Artefact Quest
Characters: Jade Harley, Amber Veritz
AMBER (Wordcounter.net)
Word Count: 10,822 words
Character Count: 60,373 characters
JADE (Wordcounter.net)
Word Count: 29,157 words
Character Count: 167,767 characters
39,979 words and 228,140 characters overall!
*Readies an MRV bonus-missile, outfitted with dial-able bonus-yield technology*
Now, I've never used this technology before so -
Oops. Uh...there was only supposed to be one. It seems I have accidentally caused
BONUS JUDGEMENT DAY: RISE OF THE BONUS MACHINES
Jade:
First things first - effusive praise! You, madame, craft some damn fine imagery. The Dwarven tavern, the mountain pass, and Rebecca's skewed perceptions were all brought across with remarkable vividness and clarity. You handle your NPCs with aplomb, fleshing them out in subtle ways without interrupting your flow, giving them relationships and making them interesting. I liked the way Brandon kind of fell apart as things got bad; your rendition of Rebecca, Becquerel, his protectiveness and her halucinatory obliviousness was a delight; even the trolls, for all of their brief screen-time, were fun to watch. You create tension and atmosphere through inspired word-choices, apt metaphors, and elegant reference to evocative smells, sensations and sounds. At your best, your writing is both engaging and thoroughly immersive.
As for the things that roused my inner critic...
Stylistically, your sentence structure is never broken, but it is occasionally baroque. I'm aware that this may be a deliberate choice in some cases - Jade being Jade and all - but it seemed to creep in at the edges in spots where it didn't fit. Its hardly a chronic problem, and I may have noticed it more than I otherwise would because I too have that issue, but its something you should probably watch out for. There were also times where you slipped into the passive voice and it twisted the language in knots. Technically correct knots, but still knots. Rarely, I even found myself mentally rephrasing things as I read in order to avoid stumbling. Again - most of the time, you are nothing less than an adept, but sometimes your language tries to run away from you.
Both plot and character-wise, the weakest element of the story was Sheron and the evil dwarves. They seemed... forced, and the ending left their entire motivation somewhat in question. The end in general seemed a little bit wooden in comparison to earlier character-interactions, honestly - even considering the stress of what they'd just gone through, your NPCs lacked some of their usual shine.
Your action sequences - particularly during the rising action near the middle of the story, when the general writing quality (as you noted yourself in your OOC comments) took something of a dip, tend to tunnel vision-on the characters, which is understandable, them being the ones doing the acting - but one of the defining elements of an action-scene is the way the action interacts with the environment. It lends heft to a fight (although the chaos of the parenthesized 'this is what is actually happening' during the Rebecca perspective section was awesome, so, like most things, this varies with context.)
Participation + EXEMPLARY: 100% bonus - 3355.34 OM.
Amber:
This was solid. Amber is Amber throughout, brash, direct, and spoiling for a fight. Your use of language has noticeably improved since I first wrote with you, way back in the heady mists of time, both in terms of action and imagery, and your tenses are far more consistent. You write activity and action in a way that's smooth and generally easy to follow. Amber's radio-conversations with Saki during the opening post were genuinely enjoyable, and chuckled a bit at her sword getting getting stuck in the ceiling.
As for things that raised my hackles (or just gneral things you could polish)...
Stylistically, your biggest issue is that your tense-switching problem persists. Although only a rare issue, popping up for one sentence at a time, it happened often enough for me to notice it (which sadly precludes the Great bonus). While your sentence-structure is reliably correct, its occasionally clunky. You have a tendency to use words and phrases like 'of course' and 'obviously' to begin sentences, which you should try to avoid - if it was obvious, you wouldn't have to tell us about it, and it makes your narrative seem distressingly passive-aggressive when it occurs. You also repeat adjectives frequently; One of the great things about English is our abundance of synonyms - taking advantage of them can improve the texture of your work.
Your descriptions of action, while clear and easily followed, sometimes lack impact. You suffered somewhat from being partnered with (and thus inevitably compared to) Jade, who excels at this, but while you make vivid pictures, they're missing the non-visual subtleties that lend a scene weight. When Amber fights a Wampa, tell us about weight of her blade; tell us about how the snow crunches when she moves. Tell us about the brief jerk of resistance as Razorback bites into its neck, and the copper-scented heat of its blood as it steams in the chill.
Lastly; dialogue. Sometime's you write it fairly naturally, but other times the characters explain too much, or lean too heavily on their archetype, and it comes across as stilted. Admittedly when you're writing NPCs somebody else just made, that's hard to avoid, but its something you should be aware of.
Participation: 50% bonus - 603.73 OM
Overall, I'll probably read this again. It was like an early draft of something I'd find on a shelf.
A more advanced staffinator will be along shortly to process you both.
Done! - Spur