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Author Topic: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___  (Read 291503 times)

Hanslanda

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1830 on: June 09, 2018, 09:35:11 am »

No, I understand quite clearly. It was written in some haste but I see some basic mistakes I've been making explained. I could feel some things weren't quite right but I couldn't pin them down. I'll edit it later and maybe make some progress on relearning grammar and sentence structure. Thank you for the input.
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Well, we could put two and two together and write a book: "The Shit that Hans and Max Did: You Won't Believe This Shit."
He's fucking with us.

FallacyofUrist

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1831 on: June 13, 2018, 05:59:47 pm »

Spoiler: The Farmers' Revolt (click to show/hide)
Over one thousand five hundred words of fantastic peasant revolt.
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Generic Arms Race.

Would you like to play a game of Mafia? The subforum is always open to new players.

Aylokat

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1832 on: June 15, 2018, 08:42:40 am »

An estimated (haphazardly) five hundred words of critique and over a thousand words of peasant revolt–related remarks:



If I made a mistake I welcome any corrections, and if you want me to clarify or elaborate a point I would be glad to.
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Rowanas

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1833 on: June 22, 2018, 01:56:59 pm »

I'm finally going to post however many hundreds of words this is, but sadly I can't write without inspiration whether it's a nightmare or a daydream or whatever, so none of these are full stories - just whatever I can scrape together.  Once upon a time I got bursaries to nice schools for my writing, but I haven't received any feedback in a decade, so I'm not hoping for much (though 500  words of critique would be appreciated, Aylokat :P)

Each different topic is spoilered to prevent it from taking up all the space, and to make working out what goes where a bit easier. P.S. As they are based on whatever inspiration happened to strike, the tone and nature of these vary wildly. Don't read Jakob's Interview if you're in a good mood. Hell, definitely don't read it if you're in a bad mood.



Spoiler: A Quest Denied (click to show/hide)



Spoiler: Pascal defends himself (click to show/hide)



Spoiler: Jakob's Interview (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: June 25, 2018, 08:37:53 am by Rowanas »
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I agree with Urist. Steampunk is like Darth Vader winning Holland's Next Top Model. It would be awesome but not something I'd like in this game.
Unfortunately dying involves the amputation of the entire body from the dwarf.

Dark One

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1834 on: June 24, 2018, 02:14:16 pm »

The first story from a series that I'm writing right now. I'm planning to write several short stories that share one main character. This one has approximately over one thousand and two hundred words. It's a story that introduces the main character of Tales of a crow knight. Written over the course of two evenings, it's bound to have something that should be fixed or completely changed.

Spoiler: The silver crow (click to show/hide)

GiglameshDespair

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1835 on: June 24, 2018, 04:41:11 pm »

Speech is not done like - this -.

It uses, well, speech marks like "this" or sometimes people use 'this'.

There's a lot of grammatical errors, in addition, but I don't have time to go through all of them now.
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You fool. Don't you understand?
No one wishes to go on...

Dark One

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1836 on: June 25, 2018, 02:29:41 am »

The fun thing is that I'm never making any mistakes like these when writing my assignments. I'm studying english philology at a university and all of them have to be written in english. During this examination session I had a writing exam that checked vocabulary, grammar and ability to write coherent texts. I passed this one with flying colours, getting a 100% score. But when it comes to writing something in my leisure time, I'm making lots of mistakes. I guess that I don't really care that much when the work is not graded. There's also the thing that my writing quality drops considerably when I don't write for a long time in my native language.

Using - for dialogs is my bad habit, I write them like that in concept versions of my texts and replace them when editing later on.

This text wasn't checked for any mistakes at all. I just slapped a concept here and called it a day. I'm more concerned with the story and if it's a good introduction to the character (giving the most basic information as the rest is going to be revealed in next stories) as I was going to rewrite it in my native language from the beginning.
« Last Edit: June 25, 2018, 02:40:20 am by Dark One »
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Aylokat

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1837 on: June 25, 2018, 09:39:58 am »

I'm finally going to post however many hundreds of words this is

And here is the critique of at least a thousand words. This critique was a lot more effort than I had first imagined, and it was a lot harder to read through the works as well. On account of the difficulty I did not read through it all again, but I reckon that the fragmentary nature limits the negatives of potentially missing a line.

Spoiler: Rowanas, various (click to show/hide)


This text wasn't checked for any mistakes at all. I just slapped a concept here and called it a day. I'm more concerned with the story and if it's a good introduction to the character (giving the most basic information as the rest is going to be revealed in next stories)

It would be helpful for anyone giving critique on your story if it was prefaced with the request to only look at the story, that way it would focus the efforts of the one giving critique on what you want and make the task easier. You could also fix the mistakes and make it easier still. That would be quite welcome.
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Dark One

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1838 on: June 25, 2018, 09:52:35 am »

I'm sorry, didn't wanted to sound like a d****. I'm going to rewrite it and post an updated version once I'll have enough time.

Rowanas

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1839 on: June 25, 2018, 02:47:28 pm »

To anyone reading my last works, you can skip to the bottom of this post if you like :D

Aylokat, thank you for your reply and for the effort that it represents. I take your grammatical criticisms and comments on redundancy to heart (I used it's instead of its in one place, I'm genuinely ashamed).  I can see where I've wasted space resaying things I've already said, and intend to modify the originals ASAP.  I've used dashes to indicate emphasis primarily because these are generally typed up on a Notepad file kept for this purpose and the italics tags don't work on Notepad, so it was copied across without modification.
I'll look at the placement of dialogue interruption, as yes, some of it is too clunky. I tried to find alternative places for some of those and it ended up feeling too much like a child's book ("blah" said john, "blah" said mary, "blah" said john again), but perhaps the interjections are simply too clunky to work wherever I put them.
Fewer commas, not less commas :P (we can argue this for ever if you like).

A few word choices and sentences, especially in the nightmare with the chittering darkness and A Quest Denied were made to try and more exactly replicate the styles they were associated with, Cosmic Horror and Sword and Sandals respectively. I realise that I made a lot of assumptions in the escape portion of the nightmare based on how I imagined it might feel to be in such situations - the pain fading from initial agony to dull throb, the renewal when you actually have to use the foot again and whatnot, but I can definitely rework those passages for clarity without compromising on pace and tone.  Other changes, such as the one regarding the purpose of the chittering chamber were made for brevity, as the alternative is to have to explain that the chamber was constructed for the purpose of carrying sounds of agony from the exhibits to the zoo owners. I think you'll agree that it would end up being atrociously clunky. I contend that a moan may be brief, but will at least accept that I probably don't need long and drawn out.

British colleges run from age 16 to 19ish, it's a British college not an American college, which would be a British university. As a result, his hosts are adolescent. More generally, if the narrator considers that they are not yet fully adult it's perfectly valid to describe them as adolescents, even if they are above the legal age of majority.

In Pascal Defends Himself, the passage regarding him outrunning the fat little fuck is speculative. Pascal considers that if it came down to a footrace he'd easily beat the kid, but that this is not an option presently. in this sentence, outrun is the correct word for the tense. I outran him, I could have outrun him.

In the Appointment with the Emperor's Advisor, Pascal notes that the advisor's laugh is strange because it is not strange at all, which he assumed it would be given that the advisor in question is an electrical elemental, and that it seems natural to assume some strangeness in such a situation. The accidentally in the next section needs moving though, definitely.

So, in addition to the issues you've presented, what made these difficult to read exactly? Were they just unenjoyable reads? Did you have any highs or lows in your consumption of my assembled works? What did you think of the various premises, characters (such as you could've gathered in such short passages) and the like? If you had to pick which ones to throw away forever, and which ones might be worthy of examination as a path forward (however little an advancement or slim the talent might be) for my further writing? Should I just quit and satisfy myself that the gap between school and now has robbed me of any creative spark I might once have possessed? Y'know, general feedback on the feel of it all.
« Last Edit: June 26, 2018, 07:45:01 am by Rowanas »
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I agree with Urist. Steampunk is like Darth Vader winning Holland's Next Top Model. It would be awesome but not something I'd like in this game.
Unfortunately dying involves the amputation of the entire body from the dwarf.

Dark One

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1840 on: June 26, 2018, 05:07:07 pm »

Made a few changes, but it probably won't be that much better. An overall review of the text with emphasis on the story (which is mediocre at best) would be greatly appreciated.

Spoiler: The silver crow (click to show/hide)

Aylokat

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1841 on: June 28, 2018, 05:13:48 am »

Fewer commas, not less commas :P

Did I say “less commas”? Oops. Thanks for pointing that out.

Quote
Other changes, such as the one regarding the purpose of the chittering chamber were made for brevity, as the alternative is to have to explain that the chamber was constructed for the purpose of carrying sounds of agony from the exhibits to the zoo owners.

I was thinking an alternative like The screaming reverberated through the chamber too well to be natural—or accidental.

Quote
I contend that a moan may be brief

Of course, but this moan was describe to be long and drawn-out.

Quote
In Pascal Defends Himself, the passage regarding him outrunning the fat little fuck is speculative.

I had thought it was speculative and retrospective because the next sentence started with “Plus, he had had a knife”.

Quote
In the Appointment with the Emperor's Advisor, Pascal notes that the advisor's laugh is strange because it is not strange at all, which he assumed it would be given that the advisor in question is an electrical elemental

The laugh is not detailed before being labeled strange and Brin's assumption of a different laugh is not mentioned until after, and the reader might think the actual laugh of the adviser to still be strange.

Quote
Y'know, general feedback on the feel of it all.

Spoiler: Feedback (click to show/hide)


An overall review of the text with emphasis on the story (which is mediocre at best) would be greatly appreciated.

Look at it this way, if your story is mediocre then it is not bad; it is middle-of-the-road and thus getting to the other side of good is easier than if you start at “bad.” Keep up your enthusiasm and be diligent and you will get there.

Here is the general review, and because you are planning on rewriting this into different language I will not get into specifics on grammar or spelling. I will say that it does read like a concept outline.

The story so far is a standard “hero fights off bandits” deal. Not much I can say about it. It works, and it reads smooth enough bar the formatting. Is there anything specific about the story you want examined?

The personality of the crow knight is odd, almost quixotic. I believe this is caused by the story moving too fast and thus requiring all actions to be exaggerated to convey the same ideas.

There are many unnecessary words strewn around, like in "outstretching his hand with an open palm" which could have been outstretching his hand. Because outstretching refers to the crow knight’s hand it is clear to mean extending fully, and that would mean opening his palm. Keep an eye on your phrasing so you do not repeat yourself and waste yours and the reader’s time.

Dialog and its dialog tag, if any, should generally be in its own paragraph. Put ideas that form a whole in the same paragraph; neat paragraphs make writing easier to read and understand.
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Dark One

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1842 on: June 28, 2018, 06:15:47 am »

An overall review of the text with emphasis on the story (which is mediocre at best) would be greatly appreciated.

Look at it this way, if your story is mediocre then it is not bad; it is middle-of-the-road and thus getting to the other side of good is easier than if you start at “bad.” Keep up your enthusiasm and be diligent and you will get there.

Here is the general review, and because you are planning on rewriting this into different language I will not get into specifics on grammar or spelling. I will say that it does read like a concept outline.

The story so far is a standard “hero fights off bandits” deal. Not much I can say about it. It works, and it reads smooth enough bar the formatting. Is there anything specific about the story you want examined?

The personality of the crow knight is odd, almost quixotic. I believe this is caused by the story moving too fast and thus requiring all actions to be exaggerated to convey the same ideas.

There are many unnecessary words strewn around, like in "outstretching his hand with an open palm" which could have been outstretching his hand. Because outstretching refers to the crow knight’s hand it is clear to mean extending fully, and that would mean opening his palm. Keep an eye on your phrasing so you do not repeat yourself and waste yours and the reader’s time.

Dialog and its dialog tag, if any, should generally be in its own paragraph. Put ideas that form a whole in the same paragraph; neat paragraphs make writing easier to read and understand.

Thanks for the review!

I had written much better stories. I'm writing since a few years and I had been writing even before joining the forums (approximately) four years ago. I wanted the story to be mediocre, it's main goal is to introduce the concept of the character.

I had already rewritten the story in my native language, changing several things on the fly, so the English version is highly subpar in comparison. But I'm rewriting things all the time, so both versions may yet change.

The Crow was actually meant to be a quixotic wandering knight, so I think that it was conveyed well. I wanted to hear opinions on the concept of the character - a quixotic wandering knight, that can speak with birds, turn into a crow and can regenerate from fatal injuries if given enough time to rest.

The second piece will have much better story, will be longer, slower paced and less chaotic. It'll also reveal more about the character - his name and provenance, more personality traits and why he is so quixotic.

I tend to throw unnecessary words when writing in English, then change or remove them when rewriting. It's easier to work on the text when you have to remove words instead of adding and matching then. I spend much more time on rewriting or editing things than on writing itself, but that's just my perfectionism not letting me ever write something fast.

Rowanas

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1843 on: June 28, 2018, 07:46:35 am »

Dark One, if I may also be permitted to provide my opinion -

I think your description of the Crow Knight as quixotic is perfectly apt. He charges a group of bandits for no other reason than honour and general do-goodery as far as I can tell, and refers to gunpowder as sorcery.  It definitely gave me the impression that he might be rather decent but perhaps a couple feathers short of a crow, as it were.  Birds are universal and function very nicely as all sorts of plot device, so a knight who can transform himself into a bird has a variety of interesting things he can do without breaking the internal logic or relying too heavily on deus ex machina.

His power set and nature lend themselves well to some sort of supernatural patron as the source of his powers, but I would be interested to see what you envisaged for him.

Aylokat, thanks for the direction. I'll try and write a bit next week without inspiration, post it up here and see how much the quality drops.
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I agree with Urist. Steampunk is like Darth Vader winning Holland's Next Top Model. It would be awesome but not something I'd like in this game.
Unfortunately dying involves the amputation of the entire body from the dwarf.

Dark One

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Re: ___/The Writer's Apprenticeship\___
« Reply #1844 on: June 28, 2018, 12:50:42 pm »

Dark One, if I may also be permitted to provide my opinion -

I think your description of the Crow Knight as quixotic is perfectly apt. He charges a group of bandits for no other reason than honour and general do-goodery as far as I can tell, and refers to gunpowder as sorcery.  It definitely gave me the impression that he might be rather decent but perhaps a couple feathers short of a crow, as it were.  Birds are universal and function very nicely as all sorts of plot device, so a knight who can transform himself into a bird has a variety of interesting things he can do without breaking the internal logic or relying too heavily on deus ex machina.

His power set and nature lend themselves well to some sort of supernatural patron as the source of his powers, but I would be interested to see what you envisaged for him.

Aylokat, thanks for the direction. I'll try and write a bit next week without inspiration, post it up here and see how much the quality drops.

Every opinion is valuable and I'm really thankful for yours!



Here's a second Crow Knight story. It seems to be more dialogue heavy than the previous one. The idea is that each of the stories could be read independently, but together they form one coherent plot. This took longer than expected, with 2660 words. A review with emphasis on the plot would be welcome, but focusing on any aspect of the text would be greatly appreciated.

Spoiler: Witches of Darkbog (click to show/hide)
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