10-13-2015, 12:48 PM
Round 1, Group B - Adam Gaite vs Ballad
Adam
Description & Clarity: 2
You described things well enough, but there were a few areas in the writing where I was either confused or I was wanting to hear more about what was going on.
It’s certainly not a major sin, and certainly my reading comprehension could have been better, but it points out one major thing that was missing throughout the majority of your writing: Supporting details. By providing us with other, smaller details about what is happening, you can allow the reader to INFER what is happening. For example, you could have written about how he soundlessly drifted from cover to cover while Ballad was looking at his prior position. Another example is when Adam jumped in the air and came down with the laser sword, you could have added more details about the movement, like what his clothes were doing in the movement, the sound of the blade as it moved for the strike, the eyes of the audience moving up to follow his massive leap.
Supporting details are a tough one in a limited writing format, because you have to strike the balance of JUST ENOUGH while staying below your word count. It’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but I have faith that you can tag them in there.
Additionally, I would have liked to see more description of exactly how you were moving through things, and what kinds of cover you were using. I just had a vague idea that both Ballad and Adam were standing behind OBJECTS, but there wasn’t a really coherent description of exactly how things were oriented or what they were using.
You didn’t overuse words, which was really nice to see. Good work on that. It’s important.
Voice: 4
This is where you really shined as a writer. You spoke to the audience in a clear, authentic and personal Voice, which informed us about the character and the situation he found himself in. The choice of where to break paragraphs, and the emphasis you placed on certain aspects of description or exposition was really well done. I felt like I got to know the character not just through his actions, but how you wrote, which is just fantastic.
Character: 3
Adam was a pretty interesting character. His dialogue, his mannerisms. There’s a lot of weakness and a lot of strength in there. You have an inherent conflict within the character himself and I really like the way you used him. In a limited form, it’s difficult to really do much “progression,” and it might not be the place for it in EVERY SINGLE FIGHT. Overall, I enjoyed him, more than I would an average character, but you weren’t really afforded the space or time to blow me out of the water.
Story: 2
It was a fight. There was back and forth, there were missed shots and hit shots. People moved from cover to cover. There was a final charge, and then a melee confrontation. It’s not bad, it’s not schlocky, it’s just a fight. Nothing WRONG with that, nothing jaw-dropping though.
I liked that you added in that he was starting to get his powers back in your last post, and I liked the delivery method of him preemptively feeling the pain.
One other thing I did really like is that you added the appropriate tension to each moment, though. You made it feel IMPORTANT when people were shooting at each other. I wasn’t on the edge of my seat, but every shot felt like it had a direct result. It wasn’t laser tag out there.
Grammar: 4
Ellipses are hard for me to bring down on somebody, because they’re kind of a debatable use of grammar, but as a whole, there are other tools to do almost every job that an ellipses does. Especially in the case of brief pauses in a sentence, you can use commas or periods, or you can even do this kinda thing:
“Why,” the knight breathed heavily as he strained against the dragon’s claws, “do you,” the claw sunk a little deeper, “exist?!”
Or whatever. Heavily used ellipses are just of kind of… amateurish? To me? It sounds more harsh than I want it to. If you like using ellipses like that, feel free, keep on trucking, that’s just my opinion on em.
Hyphening things that are one adjective is something we should do. It’s nit-picky, but GRAMMAR IS THAT WAY Like, if you have an adjective that’s all one object, like:
Arctic-Survival-Lumberjack-McWestern man
or
An inky-black burrito was sat on my plate.
You see how those things are technically one descriptive text describing the subject? If they are SEPARATE adjectives, you add a comma, like this:
An inky, black, burrito was sat on my plate.
One has ink in and is a dark color, one is a dark color. Same goes for the opposite, like when you have one descriptor for a multi-word subject. Like:
The yellow bird-man leapt high.
or
The fecund man-baby sprawled.
Get it? It’s a small thing. It’s probably up for debate, but this kind of stuff is touchy.
Total: 15
Good work! Grammar is kind of a lame thing to get a 4 in, I know, but you also got one in Voice. Feel real good about it.
Ballad
Description & Clarity: 1
Yeah, you have a lot of room to grow, but you have a really SOLID foundation beneath you. I can tell that you understand what makes description and setting the scene interesting, but we’re just not there yet. I really want to emphasize that I think you’ve got a really good potential, but you still have some leg work you need to put forward in order to get where you want to be.
One place to look at improving is WORD REPETITION. You frequently re-use the same words in the same paragraph, and even the same sentence. There are Ton of really good online thesauruses, and I really support their use. If you find that you’ve used a word twice in the same POST, see if there’s an alternative. If there is, use the one that best suits the scene. If there isn’t, there might be a way to write around it! Try and spice up your language and it’ll take you a long way.
I didn’t frequently get confused about what you were trying to describe, but there were a few times. Make sure you read through your stuff a few times and make sure it’s clear in your mind what is happening. Try to write in a way that it is apparent what’s going on and in what order.
I feel like a lot of your writing is cluttered with exposisition. You are outright telling us exactly what a character is thinking and feeling or what the situation means. Instead, describe the situation and the reader can infer the feelings or emotions that you are trying to put on display. I call it “Show, Don’t Tell.” For example:
You don’t have to tell us that it’s annoying Ballad if you SHOW us. Show Ballad’s expression, show us how he’s swinging harder, but not cleaner. Describe to us a situation, and we can figure out what that means for the character or the situation.
“The rock clung to the precipice of the cliff, small stones beginning to tumble down the edge and into the valley below. The rock drunkenly wobbled as the wind blew, rocking back and forth precariously.”
Can you guess what’s about to happen in that scene? I don’t have to TELL you that the rock is about to fall because I SHOWED you. Make sense?
“Ballad reeled back, hammering his heavy pickaxe into Adam’s saber, sparks flying from the force of the blow. The leafy-green monster snarled, spittle frothing from the corners of his mouth as he recoiled and flung his weapon forward with another haymaker, again easily parried by the prescient boy. Ballad’s movements became faster and more furious with each missed blow, his yellow eyes widening as his features sunk into a grimace.”
We can tell that Ballad is frustrated because of his actions in that quote, you wouldn’t need to say, “Ballad was pissed,” because we can TELL from how he’s ACTING.
If you’d like, I’d be happy to give you a more complete C&C after the tournament is over.
Voice: 3
I think you had a good Voice in this! You definitely have your own style of writing and describing things, and you’re working towards a really cool method of writing. I really dig it, if we’re honest. The way that Ballad’s thoughts and things bleed into the narrative are evident, and you use more harsh words when you’re speaking as Ballad than when you did as Adam.
When you get more comfortable with description and word choice, I can see this being one of your strong points. Keep your personality and the personality of your character in the heart of your post, and you’ll keep doing well in this.
Character: 2
You had some good dialogue in this, showing off how Ballad thinks and feels as a character, but I would have liked to see more. You got kinda caught up in the narrative as a storyteller, and that prevented us from seeing how Ballad, and not YOU, was pushing the story forward.
When you’re describing what your character is thinking, and especially how he is feeling, SHOW us, don’t tell us. How does ballad move, and how does that inform us about who he is as a person? How does he inflect his voice, so that when I read his dialogue, I can hear him speaking?
Ballad is an interesting character, and we all know that the fights are a confined space, but when you CAN, make sure that you showcase how interesting the cabbage man really is.
Story: 2
Same as I said with Adam, it was good, there was good back and forth, by my mind wasn’t like TOTALLY BLOWN by the fight. It was moving and shooting, and then a melee portion with a bit of powers mixed in. You did well considering that you’re just like, a guy with a gun, but using your situation, your character and the setting can always land you a beautiful story, even in a fight. Look for opportunities to create conflict BEYOND just the fight. Look for emotional connections, look for threats that are generated in novel and interesting ways. Write around your disadvantages and turn your character’s weaknesses into a writing strength.
I liked that you lopped back around to the crossbow, but I also got really confused with how you were switching back and forth between perspectives. Making clean breaks between perspective is super important in these kinds of things, because otherwise intention and action can get really confusing to read.
Grammar: 1
You have a lot of good foundation for sentence structure, and you are one of the few “new” writers on the site that knows how to structure a paragraph. Keep up the good work, and always keep in mind just how important the flow of a sentence is for your reader.
There were a lot of mistakes though. Most of them were due to a lack of proofreading, like accidentally swapping past for present tense or not capitalizing at the beginning of a sentence. It’s stuff you KNOW, but things you didn’t proofread enough to catch. If you don’t proofread you’re not gonna catch that stuff and it’s gonna jack your score up.
You had some run-on sentences here and there, and a few paragraphs that could have been merged with others to prevent them from being too short, but I would mainly lay the focus on keeping your proofreading and come back to formatting.
Total: 9
Don’t take this loss too hard. You’re a newer writer on the site, and you have shown AMAZING potential in your fight here. Keep working at improving your craft, and you’ll be writing with the best of ‘em soon enough. Seek feedback whenever and wherever you can. I was really glad I got to read your stuff, man.
Adam
Description & Clarity: 2
You described things well enough, but there were a few areas in the writing where I was either confused or I was wanting to hear more about what was going on.
Quote:He slowly floated out from behind cover, keeping his aim steady, and hovered forward, several inches above the ground. He was moving along at a fairly rapid pace, hoping to get an edge in his mostly soundless form of movement and get in closer to ensure his aim wouldn't fuck up from distance again.This was a pretty major part of your character’s strategy, and I found that I had to read it a few times to realize he was ACTUALLY FLOATING. It reads really clearly when isolated like this, but if you’re in the middle of a fight where there are a lot of movements and descriptive text describing that movement, it’s easy to assume that “floated” is a way of gently moving or something else.
It’s certainly not a major sin, and certainly my reading comprehension could have been better, but it points out one major thing that was missing throughout the majority of your writing: Supporting details. By providing us with other, smaller details about what is happening, you can allow the reader to INFER what is happening. For example, you could have written about how he soundlessly drifted from cover to cover while Ballad was looking at his prior position. Another example is when Adam jumped in the air and came down with the laser sword, you could have added more details about the movement, like what his clothes were doing in the movement, the sound of the blade as it moved for the strike, the eyes of the audience moving up to follow his massive leap.
Supporting details are a tough one in a limited writing format, because you have to strike the balance of JUST ENOUGH while staying below your word count. It’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination, but I have faith that you can tag them in there.
Additionally, I would have liked to see more description of exactly how you were moving through things, and what kinds of cover you were using. I just had a vague idea that both Ballad and Adam were standing behind OBJECTS, but there wasn’t a really coherent description of exactly how things were oriented or what they were using.
You didn’t overuse words, which was really nice to see. Good work on that. It’s important.
Voice: 4
This is where you really shined as a writer. You spoke to the audience in a clear, authentic and personal Voice, which informed us about the character and the situation he found himself in. The choice of where to break paragraphs, and the emphasis you placed on certain aspects of description or exposition was really well done. I felt like I got to know the character not just through his actions, but how you wrote, which is just fantastic.
Character: 3
Adam was a pretty interesting character. His dialogue, his mannerisms. There’s a lot of weakness and a lot of strength in there. You have an inherent conflict within the character himself and I really like the way you used him. In a limited form, it’s difficult to really do much “progression,” and it might not be the place for it in EVERY SINGLE FIGHT. Overall, I enjoyed him, more than I would an average character, but you weren’t really afforded the space or time to blow me out of the water.
Story: 2
It was a fight. There was back and forth, there were missed shots and hit shots. People moved from cover to cover. There was a final charge, and then a melee confrontation. It’s not bad, it’s not schlocky, it’s just a fight. Nothing WRONG with that, nothing jaw-dropping though.
I liked that you added in that he was starting to get his powers back in your last post, and I liked the delivery method of him preemptively feeling the pain.
One other thing I did really like is that you added the appropriate tension to each moment, though. You made it feel IMPORTANT when people were shooting at each other. I wasn’t on the edge of my seat, but every shot felt like it had a direct result. It wasn’t laser tag out there.
Grammar: 4
Ellipses are hard for me to bring down on somebody, because they’re kind of a debatable use of grammar, but as a whole, there are other tools to do almost every job that an ellipses does. Especially in the case of brief pauses in a sentence, you can use commas or periods, or you can even do this kinda thing:
“Why,” the knight breathed heavily as he strained against the dragon’s claws, “do you,” the claw sunk a little deeper, “exist?!”
Or whatever. Heavily used ellipses are just of kind of… amateurish? To me? It sounds more harsh than I want it to. If you like using ellipses like that, feel free, keep on trucking, that’s just my opinion on em.
Hyphening things that are one adjective is something we should do. It’s nit-picky, but GRAMMAR IS THAT WAY Like, if you have an adjective that’s all one object, like:
Arctic-Survival-Lumberjack-McWestern man
or
An inky-black burrito was sat on my plate.
You see how those things are technically one descriptive text describing the subject? If they are SEPARATE adjectives, you add a comma, like this:
An inky, black, burrito was sat on my plate.
One has ink in and is a dark color, one is a dark color. Same goes for the opposite, like when you have one descriptor for a multi-word subject. Like:
The yellow bird-man leapt high.
or
The fecund man-baby sprawled.
Get it? It’s a small thing. It’s probably up for debate, but this kind of stuff is touchy.
Total: 15
Good work! Grammar is kind of a lame thing to get a 4 in, I know, but you also got one in Voice. Feel real good about it.
Ballad
Description & Clarity: 1
Yeah, you have a lot of room to grow, but you have a really SOLID foundation beneath you. I can tell that you understand what makes description and setting the scene interesting, but we’re just not there yet. I really want to emphasize that I think you’ve got a really good potential, but you still have some leg work you need to put forward in order to get where you want to be.
One place to look at improving is WORD REPETITION. You frequently re-use the same words in the same paragraph, and even the same sentence. There are Ton of really good online thesauruses, and I really support their use. If you find that you’ve used a word twice in the same POST, see if there’s an alternative. If there is, use the one that best suits the scene. If there isn’t, there might be a way to write around it! Try and spice up your language and it’ll take you a long way.
I didn’t frequently get confused about what you were trying to describe, but there were a few times. Make sure you read through your stuff a few times and make sure it’s clear in your mind what is happening. Try to write in a way that it is apparent what’s going on and in what order.
I feel like a lot of your writing is cluttered with exposisition. You are outright telling us exactly what a character is thinking and feeling or what the situation means. Instead, describe the situation and the reader can infer the feelings or emotions that you are trying to put on display. I call it “Show, Don’t Tell.” For example:
Quote:Adam was just a little too fast, and with his powers returning, he could more easily predict Ballad before he acts. Doesn't really help when he was blocking two-thirds of his attacks, which was just downright annoying.
You don’t have to tell us that it’s annoying Ballad if you SHOW us. Show Ballad’s expression, show us how he’s swinging harder, but not cleaner. Describe to us a situation, and we can figure out what that means for the character or the situation.
“The rock clung to the precipice of the cliff, small stones beginning to tumble down the edge and into the valley below. The rock drunkenly wobbled as the wind blew, rocking back and forth precariously.”
Can you guess what’s about to happen in that scene? I don’t have to TELL you that the rock is about to fall because I SHOWED you. Make sense?
“Ballad reeled back, hammering his heavy pickaxe into Adam’s saber, sparks flying from the force of the blow. The leafy-green monster snarled, spittle frothing from the corners of his mouth as he recoiled and flung his weapon forward with another haymaker, again easily parried by the prescient boy. Ballad’s movements became faster and more furious with each missed blow, his yellow eyes widening as his features sunk into a grimace.”
We can tell that Ballad is frustrated because of his actions in that quote, you wouldn’t need to say, “Ballad was pissed,” because we can TELL from how he’s ACTING.
If you’d like, I’d be happy to give you a more complete C&C after the tournament is over.
Voice: 3
I think you had a good Voice in this! You definitely have your own style of writing and describing things, and you’re working towards a really cool method of writing. I really dig it, if we’re honest. The way that Ballad’s thoughts and things bleed into the narrative are evident, and you use more harsh words when you’re speaking as Ballad than when you did as Adam.
When you get more comfortable with description and word choice, I can see this being one of your strong points. Keep your personality and the personality of your character in the heart of your post, and you’ll keep doing well in this.
Character: 2
You had some good dialogue in this, showing off how Ballad thinks and feels as a character, but I would have liked to see more. You got kinda caught up in the narrative as a storyteller, and that prevented us from seeing how Ballad, and not YOU, was pushing the story forward.
When you’re describing what your character is thinking, and especially how he is feeling, SHOW us, don’t tell us. How does ballad move, and how does that inform us about who he is as a person? How does he inflect his voice, so that when I read his dialogue, I can hear him speaking?
Ballad is an interesting character, and we all know that the fights are a confined space, but when you CAN, make sure that you showcase how interesting the cabbage man really is.
Story: 2
Same as I said with Adam, it was good, there was good back and forth, by my mind wasn’t like TOTALLY BLOWN by the fight. It was moving and shooting, and then a melee portion with a bit of powers mixed in. You did well considering that you’re just like, a guy with a gun, but using your situation, your character and the setting can always land you a beautiful story, even in a fight. Look for opportunities to create conflict BEYOND just the fight. Look for emotional connections, look for threats that are generated in novel and interesting ways. Write around your disadvantages and turn your character’s weaknesses into a writing strength.
I liked that you lopped back around to the crossbow, but I also got really confused with how you were switching back and forth between perspectives. Making clean breaks between perspective is super important in these kinds of things, because otherwise intention and action can get really confusing to read.
Grammar: 1
You have a lot of good foundation for sentence structure, and you are one of the few “new” writers on the site that knows how to structure a paragraph. Keep up the good work, and always keep in mind just how important the flow of a sentence is for your reader.
There were a lot of mistakes though. Most of them were due to a lack of proofreading, like accidentally swapping past for present tense or not capitalizing at the beginning of a sentence. It’s stuff you KNOW, but things you didn’t proofread enough to catch. If you don’t proofread you’re not gonna catch that stuff and it’s gonna jack your score up.
You had some run-on sentences here and there, and a few paragraphs that could have been merged with others to prevent them from being too short, but I would mainly lay the focus on keeping your proofreading and come back to formatting.
Total: 9
Don’t take this loss too hard. You’re a newer writer on the site, and you have shown AMAZING potential in your fight here. Keep working at improving your craft, and you’ll be writing with the best of ‘em soon enough. Seek feedback whenever and wherever you can. I was really glad I got to read your stuff, man.
WINNER: ADAM GAITE
You can chose to either execute, banish or spare you opponent in a final post of any length. If no post is made by the time your next fight begins, it will be assumed that they were spared.
You can chose to either execute, banish or spare you opponent in a final post of any length. If no post is made by the time your next fight begins, it will be assumed that they were spared.