Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions In

Are you looking for a place to post your work, hoping to receive comments, suggestions and criticisms? If so, this forum is for you! Showcase your stories, drawings, animations, and anything else you have created here. You can even upload your files directly to our site! Note: Everyone is free to share opinions of anything here. If you can't handle criticism, refrain from posting here!
Forum rules
This section is for any artist, writer, animator, or any form of creation to share their work in order to receive comment to improve themselves better.

Read the rules in detail here

Read the Critiquing suggestion here

Please open only one thread per person. Detail here.

Re: Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions

Postby Tassie » Tue Feb 21, 2017 1:23 am

Groblek: Happy that's what you were looking for.
Probably spent more time than I should have thinking about the characters and if there's more to the story, I think I'm ready to look at it, maybe even help if you're looking for more input on a creative level.
Sorry there's not more.




Imrhys:
Sorry for taking so long with your review. I've a terrible time putting my mind around this work, so it's taking much longer than expected. Sorry for being so late. I'm working on it, I really am.
Tassie
Participator
 
Posts: 246
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2014 12:05 am

Re: Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions

Postby Gershwin » Thu Feb 23, 2017 12:54 pm

@Imrhys:

Sorry, a lot of this is going to be a bit harsh, but I believe that's more useful than trying to be too nice when things need saying. Everything I say is with the thought that I'd love to read an improved version of this idea.

* Excessive use of "..." - considered something you should *almost* never use in writing.

* Way too much dry exposition at the start. A phrase often mentioned to writers is "Show, don't tell" - you're doing a lot of telling! A lot of the telling was also stuff that, honestly, the reader didn't need to know and added nothing to the story. You could for example get across the change of ownership and renaming by describing the front of the building as the girl enters, mentioning that the feint outlines of previous names are sun bleached onto the wooden frontage, perhaps musing on how people used to talk of the place with respect, but no any more. You can put across how seedy it is and the "side work" that takes place there by internal observations of the characters or descriptions of things they see and pass. It would give the world you are building much more colour and life.

* I found the whole thing rather confusing. Perhaps this is a snippet and thus lacks context? Either way, by the end, I had no grasp of the characters, motivations or the world in general other than a few dry facts that had been stated here and there.

* Mixed perspectives within the same line or paragraph makes for hard to read story telling and confusing use of language.

* "...spanned much of the northern hemisphere" followed by a list of countries, seems unnecessary having established it's size already. Lists make for dry reading and the reader likely doesn't care.

* Too much usage of "but". I wouldn't mind if it was "butt" ;)

* Spelling, grammar, etc mistakes were numerous, but you've said to leave that alone so I will.

* "curious if I was able to put give it a strong voice" - Personally I'd say not. The total lack of context as to what "it" is, and the use of lots of words that have no meaning to describe "it", left me not really caring and mainly confused.

* "if the POV being non humanoid made the story too hard to follow" - It was very hard to follow, but I don't think it was the POV that caused that. I believe it could do with some serious editing and a look at how you write and develop characters and situations. It felt like how I may feel being told about a story by someone else who read it and was giving me the gist but missing out all the meat of it.

* "What were/are your thoughts on the POV's moving from person/place to person/place" - it makes for hard reading. It's a neat idea, but I believe it would work a *lot* better if you did a jump per chapter or something. You've constructed a story that makes the reader tired just trying to keep track, which isn't ideal!

** Final Thoughts **

I like the premise, the ideas. I think they could make a great story. However, I believe in it's current state, it's almost unreadable, especially if it was a lot longer and maintained that style and pace. I believe you need to review how you do world building and character development, as I think that was one of the most lacking areas. You definitely need to tighten up your style of writing. Literally go through and rip out every "...", unless someone is talking and the intent is to have them trailing off mid sentence. The general flow was off for me and sort of lacked direction.

I'd love to see a much improved version of this in the future, and happy to discuss anything, just throw me a PM. I'm aware that I my self have made some of the mistakes I mention here, it's always easier spotting other people's mistakes.
User avatar
Gershwin
Somewhat familiar
 
Posts: 125
Joined: Sat Dec 17, 2005 12:00 am

Re: Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions

Postby Tassie » Tue Feb 28, 2017 3:41 pm

Review for Imrhys

Spoiler: show
There's incredible potential here, but right now, the project seems rife with problems, most minor, but some very troublesome for the story.

Right away, formatting was problematic; I opened it in Office, but it had full-page breaks between sections, so I opened it in WordPad and saved it as a different format. I don't know why it was doing that, sorry.

The Chinese "lucky eight" seemed an odd lead-in; something of a stretch since 80 is not the same. Is there something about the number 80 that the Chinese assume and is that relevant and unstated? Do the Chinese write numbers differently?

Stepping into this world of yours was difficult, the experience entirely foreign, and as such I needed much more guidance than was given. Setting the state at the beginning of this story for the rest of what happens is the logical way to do this; unless there's to be a twist on the ending, it keeps readers rooted in the story.

The character point of view started off difficult to identify since it was referenced in plural; technically correct by the rule of majesty, but modern readers usually assume and assimilate such an archaic concept incorrectly without guidance. At first, I thought you were talking about multiple people instead of a "head collection" of one entity of multiple personalities.
Worse, in my experience, trying to write characters with limited or other perspectives is hard to grasp for most readers, even with exposition on the mechanics of their unusual pronouns and perspective-references. For me, my mouse stories were proof enough, seeming like while we understand how our characters think and what their perspectives are like, getting others to stretch their minds to fit the concepts is too much to ask of too many readers.
Fourth time reading the story, 2/3 of the way into this writing, I'm still assuming there's more exposition on the entities involved in an earlier chapter because I'm still guessing on what it is, how it think and how and why it exists.

Explaining nature of your creatures' existence(s) would help explain the "head hopping", which would, in turn make the story easier to comprehend.


Pacing was a little odd, weird point of view shifts inside scenes, but the major scene shifts were clear and unambiguous. The tension was very strong and remained intense through the story once I was able to follow the shifting levels of conversation and interaction.


Quote:
"Unofficially, according to court documents they had recently stumbled upon, a place inner city troublesome children with no parents of record were put."
I know you said don't worry about the grammar, but sentence fragments always feel unsatisfying if they're too long; little quirk of mine.


Quote:
"It was a... Last resort type of place before...
Well that was why..."
Grammatically, I've only ever seen a trio of periods used to indicate missing information inside a quoted text or to terminate a quote that was not finished. Using those sort of mechanic in a chat room or casual forum is perfectly alright, but for formal writing, as I believe you are producing, it leaves a reader hanging for information that should be, but isn't there, omitted for reasons unknown.

Quick host? They hopped quickly or the host was quick? Where that appears, the sentence is confusing, sorry.
It's clear later in the paragraph, but threw me at first. I'm easy to confuse, sorry.

Quote:
"But... I... What the h..." In conversation, the triple-dot break-pauses work well.

Quote:
"School. Of. Last. Resort." On their own, periods and single-word sentences aren't clear at first. Some preparation would be helpful to tell readers why the speech is broken so. Preface by stating that each word was spoken as its own sentence to let the full impact of the statement tell Laquisha of her situation and that sort of punctuation is more sensible and forgivable.

Quote:
""Out of options." Lesquesha's eyes fell to..." Another preface noting that Mrs. Merkel is finishing speaking would be useful here; on first read, I thought it was the Lesquesha talking.
Also, her name is already going to appear foreign enough to most readers, so you'd do well to spell-check each and every occurrence.

Quote:
"...once the two of them had had some time to talk..."
Double 'had' is a real squick of mine. Sorry, but I just have to say something. Yes, it may be technically correct, and I've read it in many a professionally published article, but it always looks and feels wrong. Please try to avoid that. English really has no reason for such redundancy.

Time dating your material is problematic when there's anything technology-related. The "ethernet" (or whatever you end up calling it in the final draft) is going to take a bit of mystical detailing or readers could assume you mean an ethernet router or some such instead of being ethereal, especially in conjunction with a specific date like "1994".

For a stand-alone piece, the ending was short and abrupt. I'm still not entirely certain what happened to Mr. Tokugawa. Again, I'll have to assume this is part of something larger.

There's a lot of technical problems, but since you said this is a preliminary draft, I skipped over most. For a teaser, this story is overwhelming, but as for generating interest, it does make me wonder what else is going on behind the scenes. Teasing your audience with hints, like the one about "Angie" helps to tell us there's more than merely the events happening at this story's surface.

This has the potential for greatness as part of a larger world and bigger story, but sorry to say, still needs more work. I hope this is what you were asking, sorry if it wasn't.
I feel terrible for being so harsh. Sorry. that's not how I intended to sound.
Tassie
Participator
 
Posts: 246
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2014 12:05 am

Re: Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions

Postby ConcordantOpposition » Tue Feb 28, 2017 7:49 pm

Thank you for the insight, Tassie and Groblek. I'm looking forward to working on the final version of that story.

Sorry for the wait, Nick, here's your critique:

nicktaken wrote:As in-depth as you can manage, looking primarily at punctuation and overall "flow" of the narrative - my first language is Russian and it's very different lexically, and I feel like techniques appropriate for it keep popping up in my english writing.

nicktaken wrote:Whether there were moments where you "stumbled" on a poorly constructed sentence and such - basically how well it reads.

I would not have known you were not a native English speaker if you had not told me. Your writing is very crisp and eloquent, and there were only a few sentences in the story I thought seemed awkward.

Namely:

She came upon a large settlement by and partially on the sea before long, one that was exceptionally clean and shiny.

I would lead with the time descriptor, "before long" instead of putting it in in the middle. "One that was exceptionally clean and shiny" could be split into its own sentence, perhaps with some description of the form of the settlement (How are its buildings laid out? How big are they? Are they in a specific style? What's the landscaping like?) to help the audience imagine the city. "By and partially on the sea" is redundant the way most readers will interpret it. "By the sea" and "On the sea" (Or "On the coast") mean roughly the same thing in colloquial English. However, if you meant to imply that a considerable amount of the settlement is quite literally built on top of the water (using piers or some more advanced technology), then the distinction is necessary. In this case, though, it would help to expand on that unique feature of the settlement.

Golden hair, which she actually preferred to be a bit messier than it was now, radiant emerald eyes, gentle features, pristine white wings on his back, distinctly masculine yet slender figure – sometimes she couldn’t tell if her lover was more handsome or pretty.

In the first couple paragraphs, you use a lot of colons to connect thoughts. In those instances the colon is just as good as a dash or a new sentence. The first aside in this sentence definitely needs to be dashed, though. It's the kind of quick stream-of-consciousness interjection where dashes really shine. The sentence already has a dash, though, so that part can just become a separate sentence.

Something like: "Golden hair - which she actually preferred to be a bit messier than it was now - radiant emerald eyes, gentle features, pristine white wings on his back, distinctly masculine yet slender figure. Sometimes she couldn’t decide if her lover was more handsome or pretty."

Aside from those I think everything was very cleanly written. Your style is relaxed and conversational, without seeming informal, which I think fits the romantic tone of the story.

The characterization of the two lovers was effective. They cleave to established (but still enjoyable) archetypes, but also have surprises. For example, the angel's willingness to engage in "deviant" sex because he's so devoted to his partner is an interesting way to express the purity of his love.

In terms of plot, the conflict of the demon revealing her true form was well executed, but I think it might have benefited from more background as to how the distinction between a Hadesian and a real demon is viewed in that world (or specifically from the angel's point of view). This would help the audience better decide how his reaction to her demonic form reflects on his character. He wasn't sure demons existed until he saw her, but are they a well-established legend or a completely baseless superstition? Are they evil, mischievous, mysterious, or even good? In a stock modern or medieval fantasy setting the audience could probably fill in his expectations themselves (demons are immortal, otherworldly forces of evil dedicated to corrupting and harming mortals) but in this sort of science-fantasy setting that's not a safe assumption to make.

Similarly, considering how clever and perceptive the angel was in gathering evidence to confront his lover, I might expect him to be a bit more wary of being eaten by her. The demoness even suspects this, herself, but he doesn't really realize she's going to digest him until he's halfway melted into cum. Doing it any differently would change how the ending scene plays out, though, and that scene is great so it's probably best for the angel to be a little clueless.

I feel bad leaving you with such a short review after such a long wait, but it's difficult to find flaws in this story. My recommendation for your future work would be to sprinkle more setting details into your dialogue and description. This world seems like it has potential, but I can't say for sure because that might just be me projecting my expectations for science fantasy onto the mostly blank-canvas you left. You did well in describing the Paradise City/Sin City and its role, but it's difficult to tell how it fits into the larger world, and it ultimately wasn't important to the plot of the story itself. Details on the cultures and societies of the Hadesians and Celestians (and how they relate to the surface world) would probably have been more useful.
Last edited by ConcordantOpposition on Wed Mar 01, 2017 2:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
ConcordantOpposition
Been posting for a bit
 
Posts: 21
Joined: Tue Mar 22, 2016 4:00 pm

Re: Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions

Postby Gershwin » Wed Mar 01, 2017 9:10 am

@nicktaken

I not really the target audiance for cock-vore (or anything M/*) based stories, however this was enjoyable all the same. By and large very well written, I found myself making almost not notes on mistakes or suggested changes, which is a problem as that's the bit you wanted focus on!

* "my first language is Russian and it's very different lexically" - which is impressive, because your writing is generally excellent, far better than a lot of writing on Eka's by native English (or US English) people.

* "...had nothing to do with either of them, but seeing how their anniversary..." - You are making reference to someone who has yet to be introduced or even mentioned. Using "them" and "their" is something you do after establishing context - we have no context for another person yet so it comes across as confusing and odd to read.

* “So rather than being mislabelled a ‘demon’, you are an actual one?” - Why would he think or know this? If "he wasn’t sure real demons existed" then why would he know she was one when seeing her form? It'd be more realistic for him to think of her as looking more "demonic" than before, but to not be sure what she is. Especially in the context of the universe you've created, where angels and demons are just another species/races that "humans" mistook for something they themselves invented. Perhaps I am focussing on it too much, but it stood out to me for some reason.

* I enjoyed the relationship you created, it's what made the subject matter enjoyable to me even when cock-vore is very not something I'd normally read.

* The angel doesn't seem terribly worried by what he may reveal when confronting his lover. One would imagine if someone has gone to such lengths to hide themselves then there could be a very dangerous reason. Perhaps he just needs a little hint of worry/concern about what he is doing?

* The ending with the reforming was a bit too vague IMO. A little more explanation about how that happened would have been nice, it feels glossed over.

* If the demoness can take any form at all, since she can project an image or shape-shift or something, why didn't she choose an angel, it'd make their relationship a lot easier! Felt like something the angel would ask about, or the background details could explain somehow?

So overall, subject matter aside, I rather enjoyed it. There could perhaps be a little more world building, a bit more depth behind why there is a conflict between the races, other than the obvious "Angels and Demons" thing, since they are technically not angels or demons. If you can tidy up the first paragraph, taking into account what I said about establishing context before vaguely referencing another character, I think there is little else to suggest.
User avatar
Gershwin
Somewhat familiar
 
Posts: 125
Joined: Sat Dec 17, 2005 12:00 am

Re: Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions

Postby Gershwin » Fri Mar 03, 2017 9:01 am

@Imrhys looks like we're only missing your reviews for this month? I think everyone has done their lot - looks like each person did three (excluding the reviews of the newspaper clipping).

So we're pending one for each: Groblek, Gershwin, Tassie
User avatar
Gershwin
Somewhat familiar
 
Posts: 125
Joined: Sat Dec 17, 2005 12:00 am

Re: Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions

Postby Gershwin » Mon Mar 13, 2017 4:05 am

Soooo... while this month was largely a success, it appears it has not been a "complete" success. Better than not happening though :)
User avatar
Gershwin
Somewhat familiar
 
Posts: 125
Joined: Sat Dec 17, 2005 12:00 am

Re: Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions

Postby Imrhys » Sat Mar 18, 2017 3:27 pm

Gershwin wrote:@Imrhys looks like we're only missing your reviews for this month? I think everyone has done their lot - looks like each person did three (excluding the reviews of the newspaper clipping).

So we're pending one for each: Groblek, Gershwin, Tassie


Gershwin wrote:Soooo... while this month was largely a success, it appears it has not been a "complete" success. Better than not happening though :)


Apologies all. RL intervened and after losing nearly four weeks, now I'm digging back through backlog of "things to do."

Additionally, though while I will be posting this over in March's thread as well, I'm gonna have to at least take a step back from EPWG until April or maybe even May, while I sort out some RL things and see if I'm even going to be able to continue moderating the group.

Again, apologies for the disappearance, my pending reviews are on the list of things to get caught up on.
User avatar
Imrhys
---
 
Posts: 1772
Joined: Tue Dec 18, 2007 12:00 am
Location: Texas, USA

Re: Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions

Postby Gershwin » Sun Mar 19, 2017 7:08 am

If important RL issues have turned up, I don't think anyone here will think any worse of you for skipping stuff or delaying more.
User avatar
Gershwin
Somewhat familiar
 
Posts: 125
Joined: Sat Dec 17, 2005 12:00 am

Re: Eka's Portal Writing Group - February - All Submissions

Postby Tassie » Sun Mar 19, 2017 9:33 pm

Imrhys wrote:Apologies all. RL intervened and after losing nearly four weeks, now I'm digging back through backlog of "things to do."
Additionally, though while I will be posting this over in March's thread as well, I'm gonna have to at least take a step back from EPWG until April or maybe even May, while I sort out some RL things and see if I'm even going to be able to continue moderating the group.


I'm still listening and I hoped you are alright. That sounds serious, so now I'm worried for you.

I don't know how much work it takes to make something like the writing group work, so I admire your initiative and leadership. You are a beautiful person for making this happen and I understand that it can become overwhelming. I'll wait for when your next writing group is and I want to write something fro that too.

I hope you're fine.
Tassie
Participator
 
Posts: 246
Joined: Thu Mar 13, 2014 12:05 am

Previous

Return to Work to be shared!

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: vorcountant