GFF Literary Workshop: Week 4

Week 4: Closed

Welcome to the rotating literary workshop here at GFF. Each week will feature a new piece of member-written literature for you to critique and constructively criticize. Download and read the work at the bottom of this post, and offer your comments! The event will continue as long as there are submissions in the queue, so be sure to nominate and participate!

Comment Rules
There are no rules per se, but all comments are expected to be mature and within the bounds of common decency. The key is to be as helpful as possible to allow the author to improve their work.

Each work will be open for comments for one week, starting on Monday and ending on Sunday.

Submission Rules
The workshop is open to any and all GFF members; simply post in the thread and ask to be added to the queue. New participants are automatically placed at the top of the queue to allow them a week to prepare a submission.

Please send all submissions to orion_mk2@yahoo.com. Be sure to include your GFF username, preferably in the subject line. Submissions can be sent at any time, and will be held until your next turn in the queue.

Length
Submissions are limited to prose (stories) for the time being. They should be no less than 500 and no more than 5000 words long.

This is just a guideline; submissions slightly over the limit may be allowed. Sections of longer works are also permitted.

Format
Submit work in .doc, .txt, .rtf, or .pdf format.

Queue:
Helloween
Dark Nation
Lycanthrope
Pyromaniac
Matt
RainMan
orion_mk3
Acro-nym
Ozma
Phone
The Wise Vivi
Ayos

People in bold have submitted work for their week. If you have not submitted anything by the time your week begins, you will be moved to the bottom of the queue and the next participant who has submitted will go.

This Week's Submission
Atlantis: Black by Ayos
Prose, 1600 words

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Well... I'd get the ball rolling, but it's my story, and I'd only be completely critical of it and point out all the flaws that I see every time I read it.

Anyone have anything at all to say?

How ya doing, buddy?

Hi Ayos. Is there anyway you might post 'Atlantis' in pdf format? I have a mac and can't seem to load Word files through Appleworks though I'd appreciate a chance to check out your work.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.

Done - dunno if it converted everything properly, but it looked good at first glance.

I am a dolphin, do you want me on your body?

Thank you.

Cool. You really get down to business pretty fast! As far as constructive criticism goes, I feel you might be jumping a bit fast into the dialogue without explaining who's who in the opening paragraph. As far as I can tell, it seemed like a character might have been having a conversation with themselves. (This might just be me though)

I like your descriptions of the environment and almost feel like I'd like to hear a bit more about it in order to determine the full scope of the world in which the characters are interacting.

I also really like how you sum up the story (... and black) casting a bit of darkness and gravity on the premise of it.

I'd like to be able to be a bit more indepth with specifics after a bit more reading but I like what I've read so far.

I was speaking idiomatically.

I didn't like it. The characters were paper cut-outs, without soul, the story had no point, made no sense and had no ending. Nothing was imparted, no theme, no vision, no grand idea.

I liked the bit of dialogue at the begining ... for about the first three lines. Then it went straight into crap country with cheap, hollow lines from movies about insecure men who make a front of being badass. Your words are lifeless (and that may be me, honestly, I've found a very large part of English is lifeless and dull), your characters even more so. Your prose is straight-cut (even a kid could guess you're male, and not even by content) and leaves no room for mystery, for exploration. Everything happens in a predictable, gamer-ish way and I hate that.

This isn't a short story; it's a script for two minute movie at the begining of FPS video game, with all the implied cliched crap sprinkled in appropriate amounts.


Disclaimer: neus was sufficiently bored whilst typing this post and the above text ought to be taken with a grain of salt, preferably sea salt, without iodine, farmed on the coasts of the Adriatic Sea.


Way to fail at reading neus.
Editing this post now.

Allright. I missed the constructive part of the criticism (yeah right, asshole) so let's try this again:

Quote:

You're smart, a good fighter, you've got good instincts, aside from the
occasional moment of idiotic heroism.

People don't talk like that. Firefly characters, while hilarious and awesome when speaking in such a fashion, are TV show characters. This kind of writing is definitely fun but it comes off as cheap and hallow when written in text. When Mal says "occasional moment of idiotic heroism," I'd grin because that's him and I'd expect him to say that. This Daniel fellow hasn't a character yet and you haven't developed him enough yet to warrant that kind of talking.

When introducing characters, take this route: make us believe they are human and then when you have us hooked, let your imagination fly off and paint his character.

It's fun to paint a character first but if you start with the paint before the meat, your audience doesn't believe the character. We become alienated and we stop caring.

Quote:

And you having two different identities doesn't help much, either."

Come on, man. This is the kind of stuff that promted the hotly-typed words above. People don't talk like this. Have you ever heard someone say something this cheesy? Have you ever read someone say something this dumb?
THe only place where you can find this kind of crap is in video games and "action packed" B-grade movies. There's a reason why people devote half a paragraph to stories in video game reviews. Show, don't tell.

Quote:

"I hate you. You know that, right? I hate you."
"And you'll hate me forever. We'll talk more later. I'll get the tip."
"Deremus, I swear..."
"No, you don't, Daniel, and that's what I like about you. You've got morals."
"Oh, will you just shut up?"
"Gladly."
Flicker. "...bloody heck."
"See what I mean? Have a nice day, Danny boy."

At this point, you've made me hate you. This kind of lovey-dovey crap -- you can pull that off once and only once in a large novel of bad-assedry. (I am allowed to invent words whilst sufficiently pissed off.)

It makes one of the characters (the one who says I hate you, you haven't distinguished them enough for me to remember their names and you haven't given me a reason to remember their names), it makes him seem weak and that is not what you ought to be aiming for here. They are discussing something large and radical -- not who gets to go grab pizza when it's raining outside. The rest of your story doesn't seem light-hearted enough to warrant this kind of crap. If the entire story was light-hearted and half-joke every two sentences, this'd be right in. But in the middle of a serious story about conflict and revolution and (cringe) lost love, this kind of thing has no place.

Your voice needs to be uniform. That quote above is such a glaring deviation from the voice present in the rest of the story (well, not quite voice but style, tone) that it stops the suspension of disbelief. (It makes people step out of the story, they are not in a world of your crafting anymore -- you've lost them.) Keep your tone, style, voice, gut-feeling, whatever, unifrom.

Quote:

As Deremus walked away from the table, Daniel Xavier Allister slumped in his chair and sighed, running a hand tiredly through his jet-black hair.

Why do I need to know either of their names? When you're talking to a friend, how often do you say their name? I don't need to know Deremus's name and I don't need to know Daniel's full name. In a story this short, introduce one name and reference everyone by what they are, and not their name.

If you have a long story, people can associate characteristics to a name, that is, they can make the connection "Deremus walked off, ah, yeah, he's the denim coat guy, the one who told off the guard, and is married to thta girl and ...." -- they can associate an idea, a character, to the name.

In a story this short, the reader doesn't have the time to associate a name to an idea. Only enough character is present to warrant the name of the main character. And only use it when you need to -- constant use of names makes the text stop in a reader's mind while they associate who this name is to the character it represents.

I'd advise very strongly against use of more than one name (the one for the main character). If you use more, you find people doing what I did -- not associating the character to the name and basically not even caring to remember the names or to distinguish them. Distinguish people by how they act, what they do, what they wear -- not their names.

Quote:

Instead, it became another warzone between what remained of the Capitalist Alliance - the United States, United Nations, and United Kingdom had all long since been dissolved - and the Totalitarian Regime, which consisted of the remnants of the People's Republic of China and the failed attempt at rebirthing the Soviet Union.

That's a whole lot of big names that I'm not going to bother to remember. Like the rant above, I don't know enough about these names to associate them to ideas. If you really need to introduce all thirty five factions in a four page story, do it like this: introduce the main character. Make us believe he is human. Then paint him. During the painting, show us that he belongs to a faction.
Then show us that there is more than one faction. Possibly describe these factions in terms of what the main character thinks of them because we already know who he is, his position is strengthened and remembered in our minds: we can make up our ideas "hmm, he's fighting these Alliance bastards, they must be horrible cunts. I hope they get fried."

Basically for anything: characters, factions, languages, areas, worlds, etc.: introduce the main one, the one relevant the most to the stroy. Develop that one thoroughly. Then frame the rest from the point of view of that one. Otherwise, people get confused, caught up in names, and ultimately stop caring about the characters or ideas or whatever it is you are trying to say.

Say who Daniel is, mention his coat that could somehow show his affiliation to one of these factions, expound the idea of who Daniel is and then associate him with one of these factions.
Then, show him observing others of different factions and present his views. Make him mutter as he passes by a member of a different faction something colorful to show off who he is. Even your views, impartial author ones, but you can't introduce eight factions all at once. That just makes people confused and they refuse to care.

Quote:

Long ago, he had learned not to fear death.

Show, don't tell. That is nothing but cheap hype and it doesn't make people believe your words. You have SOME authority as the author: we're supposed to take your word and believe it. But if you abuse that, like you have here, people will distrust you no matter how awesome your writing may be afterward.
You've abused this "author" trust by hyping, by saying and not showing.

Had you shown him encountering a soldier and getting in a tussle and escaping with some offhand remark about his previous exploits, I'd believe this is a badass guy. Now I have your word for it and I haven't a reason to believe such a fantastic fact about some guy I've just been introduced to. Don't tell people what to think about characters: make them think that by showing what these characters do.

Quote:

"It is time to die, for the good of the people," Lilia murmured, her accent giving herwords even more of an edge.

Quick note on word choice: you don't murmur death threats. A bunch of people murmur approval or dissent; an old woman mutters about the prices of cabbage at a vegetable market: you speak boldly when you are about to kill another human being.

Quote:

The gun shook as Lilia's eyes welled up with tears. "Drop your sword, Daniel," she pleaded, softly now.

I've already mentioned the cheesy crap above but here it's particularly potent: cut it the fuck out. It is annoying to 95% of the world's population. (The 5% are the 13 year old boys.)

Quote:

Attacks which, she realized, had killed no one, but had inspired the Defense Council and the PolitBuro to join forces, had inspired the Totalitarian Regime and the Capitalist Alliance to unite against a common foe. And in a sudden vision, she saw Atlantis rebuilt, even more glorious than before, and the two factions once separated by war were now at peace one with another, standing with the Board of Regents underneath a new flag. A flag that flew as a tribute to those who sacrificed to achieve that reality. A flag of red, white, blue...

If this is the main idea, you've done a poor job of making me care at this point. I don't know who half of those names are, nor do I even know what this fight is about and quite frankly I skimmed over this paragraph the first time I read it because it seemed like a cheap atempt to end a story that never even started.
The first part, in the bar, was a slow introduction to a very long piece. This was a short ending to a short piece. I can't put that better: the story has no meat, no character development. Add in five more pages of Daniel's struggle so that we can see who he is, who this Lilia girl is, what the heck this conflict is about: make us care.
Right now, the structure is all broken. Keep it simple. Short story = short conflict = single idea. No huge revolutions with eighty factions, none of which you've introduced past a name.


That's all.

What kind of toxic man-thing is happening now?

Three quick comments: one, I wrote this story before having even heard of Firefly. Two, the dialogue is almost word-for-word after playing it out in a roleplaying game (also titled Atlantis) ... yes, I realize that's NEVER a strong basis for dialogue. Three, I had to keep the story at or under 1,500 words when I wrote it, with a 150-word leeway given for overzealous people. Trying to take a two-year-long roleplaying campaign and condense it into 1,650 words is rather difficult

That being said, I agree with just about everything you said, neus. Given those restrictions I should have picked different subject matter. If I had written a review of this piece, that would pretty much be exactly what I would say, except possibly even harsher, since I don't care about hurting my own feelings

FELIPE NO

Actually, it's a good story, although it's a bit vague at the beginning. I think that maybe you're trying to develop just the conversation between two persons without involving any characteristics or events on the background, so it's ok. UI must admit that I'm a bit confusing though.

The story went well in my opinion. The only flaw I see is when you describe a lot about Daniel and Lilia. Some people like a thorough description about the characters, but here comes the bad news: most of people don't actually like this. If you want to tell about their background, it's fine, but try to limit the descriptions into only some details. You can try to tell the other explanation in the story, either from the conversations occurring or from events happening.

And yeah, this story is like a movie script for a ten-up-to-twenty minutes film.
But overall, it's cool. Keep up the work.

What, you don't want my bikini-clad body?

I think neus hit a few nails on some heads, but i enjoyed it more than he did apperantly. I read it as a story that wasn't done yet. Clearly there are huge holes in your plot, and character development.

The story needs to be lengthened, and possibly novelized. Keep up the writing, but hopefully you don't have any reason to restrict yourself anymore. Write longer stories, you're style needs it.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

You know, fuck all, I didn't (and I still don't) like this onion_mk3 guy, but this literary workshop idea is a good one.
Let's keep this shit going. We need more people reading and typing.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Originally Posted by neus

You know, fuck all, I didn't (and I still don't) like this onion_mk3 guy, but this literary workshop idea is a good one.
Let's keep this shit going. We need more people reading and typing.

Glad to have you aboard.

Now that I finally have a moment to myself after the holiday weekend, here's how Atlantis Black struck me. Good comments all around, by the way!

The crisp, staccato delivery of the opening lines was nicely handled; it gave the characters an air of realism in an unrealistic situation. Stories that set up an alternate or future world sometimes make the mistake of cramming a ton of expository text at the beginning, which can be off-putting to say the least. I also enjoyed the protagonist's internal monologue in the second and third sections, as it served to keep things somewhat grounded amid a lot of narration.

To echo what others said, the storyline seems a bit ambitious for the tale's short length. There's nothing wrong with putting huge events in an alternate world in a short story (Asimov was quite good at it; the Foundation series started out as a series of short stories) but it's difficult. Much easier is mirroring a larger struggle in miniature, and a good way to do that is through characterization.

I wanted to see more development in the characters. They're defined somewhat by the dialogue and their actions, but I think that some of the burden of explaining who's who in the story's world could be shifted to them. What is it about Daniel and Lilia that defines their alliegences--why did the choose the factions they are allied with, and what do those choices reflect about them? What's more, was that what drove them apart?

Whether the author chooses to develop the idea into a longer work or leaves it as a shorter tale, I think there's a lot of potential. I'd like to see more dialogue, more character, and less explanation--let the characters and their actions do as much of the explaining as they can.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.