Original Fiction Competition Launch!

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#51
Just a heads up - I'll judge the remaining stuff this weekend (about 2 or 3 days from now). I'm a bit exhausted and with work, doubt if I'll be able to sit and properly judge anything till Saturday.

-chronodekar
 

chronodekar

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Staff member
#52
H-Man said:
Magellan, chapter three done.

Man, I sure wish I had had more time to work on this, else I wouldn't have to write a chapter four... but was busy most of the week, so...
My review for chapters 3;

First off; the meaning of the Tarot cards are ... confusing to say the least, so I guess I was in error on assuming that there would be a romantic relationship in this story. With that in mind, I continue to read;

Hmm... for what its worth, the mechanics of the sword-blocking confuse me. No, I'm not going to deduct points for it. It's a situation I often find myself in - the 'explanations' just result in confusion.

And now we're introducing guns into the story? Oh well, I've seen weirder things. Quite frankly, it makes it an interesting read.

Grammar - 20
Plot - 20
Theme - 5

Total = 45/50

And now onto chapter 4;

Wow. That was one heck of an ending. The motivations of the cast confuse me but here's what I think;

Grammar - 20
Plot - 23
Theme - 5

Total = 48 / 50

-chronodekar
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#53
QE1 said:
Ch2 posted

I believe I completed two of the bonus tropes this week, and posted 2 days late. I will leave that to the judges though.
Looks like I'm going to review chapters 2 - 4 in one sitting. Here goes;

Chapter 2 in a word - fun. :)

Grammar - 18 /20
Plot - 25 / 25
Theme - 5/5

Total = 48/50

Chapter 3 now;
that ... felt shorter for some reason.

Grammar - 20/20
Plot - 23/25
Theme - 4/5

Total = 47/50

Chapter 4;

... THAT was one heck of seduction. :D

and the follow-up twist has my thinking jumbled. he, he.

Grammar - 20/20
Plot - 24/25
Theme - 4/5

Total = 48/50

-chronodekar
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#54
Halibel Lecter said:
Er, I did submit it here. Here's a link to that post:

http://thefanfictionforum.net/showthread.php?tid=20055&pid=1190664#pid1190664
And here's my review;

Chapter 2:

Grammar - 20/20 (didn't spot anything)
Plot - 25/25 (I think I got sucked in)
Theme - 3/5 (not exactly sure what to say here, but going with this)

Total = 48/50

chapter 3:

Grammar - 20/20
Plot - 21/25
Theme - 4/5

Total = 45/50

We're on October 6th now. Looks to me like this tale needs an ending. Author?

On another note; that seems to be all. Did I miss reviewing anyone?

-chronodekar
 

Halibel Lecter

Well-Known Member
#55
*prods story* I'm almost done with the final chapter! If not tonight then tomorrow afternoon... sorry, I had school and various family obligations getting in the way.

Edit:

http://thefanfictionforum.net/showthread.php?tid=20070&pid=1193841#pid1193841

there. Done. rack out now, bye night
 

Meinos Kaen

Well-Known Member
#56
Judgment, part 2. The Sun Rises!

Chapter 1

Grammar: 11/15 (A rocky start with a mixed the, a couple repetitions and a few times I couldn’t really follow what was going on.)

Characters: 13/15 (Interesting characters. The chosen names are inventive, very superhero-like without being too corny. With the exception of the cardboard hyperactive chosen child and ‘Thunderbolt’. I haven’t seen much of the villain to be able to judge fully yet.)

Plot: 10/15 (The setting is interesting. A sunny outlook on superheroing, and... I don’t know, I just want to read more. And while the hint of mysteries about the boy’s past are interesting, there’s the matter of the chosen child trope that just nags me.

Also, what the hell? Why did the villain attack the girl? He could have successfully passed off as a child, kept his cover. Instead he revealed himself to the general superhero populace and successfully both alienated and scared his child that he was trying to befriend in one fell swoop.)

Chapter 2

Grammar: 15/15 (No problems. It was hard to read at times, but not because of the grammar problems.)

Characters: 11/15 (Hmm, even if they’re falling in great cliches, the characters are still interesting. I find Fledgling particularly so. He seems the most well rounded, because he shows insecurities and something that you’d actually expect from a teenager son of the leader of a superhero team who’s being upstaged by a small child. Thunderbolt is really getting on my nerves with his Chosen Child trope.)

Plot: 8/15 (Wow. You really wanted to hammer in that he’s the Keanu Reeves of this joint, didn’t? He’s only nine years old, he gets all the attention, can do things better than most adults after only four weeks since he’s received training, he has the worst human beings possible as parents but revels in the attention of the greatest guys around -who he can even outsmart, apparently-, and there’s a horrible secret about him that the rulers of the city aren’t telling the guys who are supposed to protect it.

That’s... No. Just, no. I still want to see where this is going, but... No.)

Chapter 3

Grammar: 15/15 (No problems here)

Characters: 10/15 (Allison, Dazzle and Blue Eagle? Great. But seriously, your main character is SUCH a... Ugh! I don’t know the exact words... A selfish prick? He can do anything better than almost anyone around him, but when he can’t get that one thing he wants, he gets angry and petty like everyone else. Also, way to not go Dazzle. If you turn someone down, you don’t suggest a double date.)

Plot: 9/15 (Okay, you’re trying too hard to make Thunderbolt the golden boy that everyone should like because he’s the best around. So much that I find myself really disliking him. He acts like every cliché in the book, and you’re manipulating the events around to make it appear so, but it just feels too forced. You’re making him appear as a petty douche. Example. From what we’ve seen of Fledgling, he was an insecure teenager who tried to act though in his father’s shadow, which wasn’t helped by a nine years old upstaging him and joking about taking his place in the team.

Now, in the ball scene you referred to him as dolt and ‘the laughing stock of the party’. The thing is, you tell us he’s so, but we’ve seen no hints to why we should think of him as so. What we’ve seen of him is being your average teenager, enjoying being at a party with his girlfriend and acting loving to said girlfriend, who loves him in return. You gave us no reason at all to dislike him, but many reasons to dislike Thunderbolt.)

Chapter 4

Grammar: 15/15 (No trouble at all)

Characters: 11/15 (Thunderbolt is not as grating on my nerves, but Dazzle ended up having to be rescued like the usual damsel in distress. Only, this time she’s a superhero. Whoopie. And Allison’s characterization... That was random. Planned, I understand, but it still felt really random.)

Plot: 10/15 (That’s it? It ends up like that? You didn’t resolve any issue, you just told us they were resolved. We didn’t see it happen. That’s unsatisfying. We can’t just be happy knowing the guy’s name. That’s not enough reward, especially after putting up with him for the whole story. And Allison only being a temptress, without any hint given to the contrary... You didn’t develop her enough for that to be a shocking revelation.

I don’t fully understand what this story was supposed to be. A try at making a new superhero universe? A coming of age story about a superhero? I don’t know, but, I can’t say I enjoyed it.)

Theme: 14/20 (The sun is about order, logic, appear warm and caring to others. The setting you’ve chosen works. Superheroes, what’s more about order and protection than that? But your main character doesn’t feel like that, it feels really aggravating. You didn’t work in making us liking him, you told us we should. Except we don’t. Also, there were some leaps and bounds in your storytelling that went past logic. Out of theme.)

Total: 34x3+36+14=

152
 

zerohour

Well-Known Member
#57
Almost forgot to score the last chapters... my bad.

Magellan

Grammar: 9/10
I think I found one misspelling, and that may be a personal preference.
Plot: 15/15
Great climax, very exciting to read. While the story could be considered incomplete, given that we don't see Magellan complete his evil plans, it is easy enough to guess and envision what happens next. Would love to see this continued, and see how much (if at all) this experience shaped Magellan.

Characters: 13/15
Again, the characters are interesting, but their interactiosn are highly limited, since they only interact with each other. While it worked well, I feel that there could have been a bit more than just these two characters. Maybe I'm just spoiled from always reading novels instead of short fiction.

Theme: 10/10
Well executed Lovers. Magellan made his choice, and when presented with an alternative, he made it again, and damn the consequences.

Tropes: 0/5

Total: 48/50



The Sun Rises

Grammar: 8/10
I think "snuck" isn't a word anymore (if it ever was,) and neither is leapt. A couple of other minor issues cropped up as well, but overall pretty good.

Plot: 6/15
You broke the "Wait for it" pattern of the last three chapters. It wouldn't have been too hard to fit it in, since the villain were lying in wait for their target at the start.

It feels like there is a lot of stuff that happened behind the scenes, and unfortunately, we need to see those things. Blue Eagle and Thunderbolt have had issues one way or another, and they never get resolved on screen, if at all. There were also issues that explicitly DIDN'T get resolved, such as Thunderbolt's father, which was the trigger for him getting recruited back in chapter one.

I just feel there needs to be... more to the story. It needs to be fleshed out, showing us what happens rather than telling us what already occurred.

Characters: 7/15
Again, not particularly attached or invested in the characters. They seem a bit flat, and while it seems you tried to develop them a bit more with Allison and Thunderbolt, but that apparently was nothing but a plot to kill Dazzle, which seems like it would ruin any sort of development between them.

Theme: 6/10
I'm not really feeling it. Sure, it's happy ending, but nothing got resolved. Thunderbolt got to save Dazzle, like I think he wanted, but it seems lackluster for the Sun card.

Tropes: 0/5
I didn't really see any use of the tropes.

Total: 27/50

Broken Laurels:

Grammar: 10/10

I didn't see any issues this time. A few extra days seems to have doen some good!

Plot: 12/15
While the story was interesting, especially once it was completed, I feel like it's the prologue to something greater. It didn't seem that anything got resolved, just set up for the main story. If you write a full length sequel, I would be really interested to see what happens next!

Characters: 11/15
Again, they were interesting, but it seemed that this was a setup for something greater. I got a better understanding of the king, and got to see Erik in action some more, though I still think the third Laurel was missing, unless that was Karl. I think you could have spent a little more time developing him as well. Right now it just seems he's concerned with himself. It might be the case, but I get the feeling that he's doing what he is for the good of the kingdom from his point of view, and any personal benefit is purely happy coincidence.

Theme: 8/10
After seeing the completed story, it was a bit easier to see the theme you were going for, assuming I'm getting it right. Either the Emperor IS the Fool, and his personal failings are being exploited to the detriment of the empire, or the Empire has grown to rigid and unable to function, and something on the horizon is stirring as a result. It hasn't started yet, but it's coming.

Tropes: 0/5

Total: 41/50
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#58
Halibel Lecter said:
*prods story* I'm almost done with the final chapter! If not tonight then tomorrow afternoon... sorry, I had school and various family obligations getting in the way.

Edit:

http://thefanfictionforum.net/showthread.php?tid=20070&pid=1193841#pid1193841

there. Done. rack out now, bye night
Just remembered that I didn't review this one. Sorry!

Grammar - 20/20
Plot - 22/25
Theme - 5/5

Total = 47/50

I'm ... well, I'm just left wanting for more. And not in a very good way. More like there's a lot left to be said. Like if the measures are implemented, what happens next?

@everyone,

Once we settle on "rankings", I guess the next step is to go about formatting the different chapters into some format we can send to a publisher. Sometime after that, I'll try to get the stuff printed. Around then, I'll PM the winners for their postal addresses.

-chronodekar

-chronodekar
 

zerohour

Well-Known Member
#60
News Everyone!

Despite the major delays caused by Laziness, Incompetence, Scheduling Conflicts, and Real Life, we are still going to have the final judging round. For the writers, this is a chance to go back and revise the story into a "final" draft. Fix up your spelling and grammar, maybe adjust a phrase or two, or if you feel particularly crazy, tear it all down and rewrite the entire thing.

We're planning to do judging this weekend, which translated into reality, means sometime after Halloween. (Unless we get our act together, but what are the odds of that?)


Edit: Also, check out the Aftermath Thread so you can tell us how not to screw up so badly next time here. The more feedback we get, the better we can make this next time around!
 
#61
>>we get more time to modify our story
>>how long exactly?
>>is adding another section as part of editing prohibited [on the one hand, rewriting from scratch isn't, on the other, that skirts the line of submitting extra chapters late]?
 

QE1

Well-Known Member
#63
My plate is pretty full right now, I will go back and edit out some of the more obvious errors but that is about all I will be able to do.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#64
Speaking as a judge, my plan is to read through all the stories on Saturday (at worst, Sunday) and give a final score out of 100. This will be in addition to the earlier points allocated.

-chronodekar
 

H-Man

Random phantom.
#66
Guys, bad news, I couldn't work on the story this weekend.

I'm not going to quit on it or anything, I just don't really believe it should be published like this, but a heavy week means no development.
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#67
I'm going to start doing my final review of the stories now. The idea is to try doing this in my live-review blog style and award points (out of 100) at the end. My browser is split into two windows for this. The story on the left and the review on the right. Here goes,

Magellan by H-Man
For better or worse, I'm the kind of guy who likes a good presentation. In our case that means formatting. Just scrolled over the story thread. The only "formatting" worth mentioning is the "End." at the very bottom and the fact that each chapter is divided by post. Nothing wrong with that (it was encouraged, I believe), but from a publication-point-of-view, I would have liked seeing some "Chapter - 01" written at the beginning of each post. Guess, I'll have to do it myself before sending this for print.

Scrolling back to the top, I'm going to start reading the story. About 10 - 15 paragraphs in, the redundancy in the text begins to strike me as odd. My fingers are twitching to point out specific suggestions, but I'll leave that for later. Right now, its important to note that some confusion exists on who is speaking. It's obvious AFTER one finishes the dialog, but creates needless confusion.

Plot point: the mage apparently made arrangements to AVOID being disturbed. Indirectly, this indicates that the locals in the area are aware of him. And yet, he gets surprised when the intruder knows his name. Unless we're going for some "Rumplestilskin" kind of idea, the comment from Magellan 'But nobody knows that' is distracting.

And speaking of distractions, the viewpoint of the narration is confusing to me. It seems to shift between a third-person witnessing the scene and Magellan's personal thoughts about Eleazar (the intruder).

Perhaps I'm reading this wrong, but at the point where its mentioned "words made his blood boil", I'm beginning to wonder what happened to the cauldron? Was it turned over in the fight or did Magellan just abandon it?

... and I'm answered at the end of the chapter. Nice bit of story-telling, author! Well done. :)

Moving on to chapter-2;

"but he had been decided to finish reading it one of these days" There is something grammatically wrong with this in the first paragraph. Can't quite say what it is, but I can think up of a few alternate suggestions. Will leave that for editing later.

Until the point where it says "Eleazar asked, pressing his head on his shoulder." I wasn't sure where Magellan was sitting. For some reason I imagined him in some corner. The quoted line, suggests that he was actually sitting in the middle of the room (with space behind him for Eleazar to stand on).

"the suits of armors around him began to move" it would have been good, if you included a description of the suits of armor as part of the library at the beginning of the chapter. I think this point is where we first encounter them in the story/chapter.

"Things didn’t change until the end of the month." Personal note - if you are in the mood for really cheap humor, this is an ideal time to make a pun about "that time of the month".

...

Yeah, that was bad. Sorry. :p

"He took the scalpel in hand, ready to get back to work on it. " I am reminded of the story 'Frankenstien' for some reason...

Chapter-3 now;
(off-topic: took a 1 hour break to watch an episode of Deep Space 9, returning to story)

Near the beginning of this chapter, Magellan cuts something with a scalpel. It's mentioned that his own blood was dripping too. I am confused as to how that could have happened. A little later, its mentioned that "Magellan grasped the scalpel tightly". This explains how he cut himself. If he was doing this earlier, it could have been mentioned more clearly.

The following statement - "“‘Why not’? Why not?! There are many reasons why you would bother interacting with someone like me, if you have an interest in my plans! Stop me! Join me! Convince me to be your minion! What kind of reason is ‘why not’?!”" It's obviously a climatic point, but just doesn't give off the vibe of someone in frustration. [GenocideHeart] would probably be able to tell you better than me, but one suggestion is to try and describe some facial expressions of Magellan in that dialog. Expand it to another paragraph, perhaps?

Not sure if it means I'm dumb or not, but the explanation of how Magellan countered Eleazar's sword swing is confusing. Reminds me of the nonsense spewed in the Nasuverse.

I do however, find it impressive that Magellan thought up of creating a rock/earth Golem to block the bullet shots. Impressive!

Chapter-4 (finally!);

More or less the same writing style as before. Specifically around here -

“…oh for the love of–”

the fight perspective shifts a lot and it is really confusing. Sure, I get it on a re-read, but should that really be the case?

And in the end, it looks like Eleazar was destroyed. Or at least, temporarily halted out of existence.

Questions I'm left wondering;

* Where EXACTLY did Eleazar come from?
* If Eleazar came from some organization, what are its goals?
* What is the state of Magellan's world? There's talk of war and armies, but ... that answer is a bit too simple. And such things are usually never 'simple'.
* And finally, the obvious; What will Magellan do now?

While it took a lot longer for me to finish than planned, I have to say, it was nice reading. As for points, I'm going to hold off till I finish reading the other stories too.

... and yes; with the way I've mis-calculated how long this would take, I'm going to have to beg for another delay from everyone. Sorry. :(

-chronodekar
 

H-Man

Random phantom.
#68
Just to point out something you got wrong...

Near the beginning of this chapter, Magellan cuts something with a scalpel. It's mentioned that his own blood was dripping too. I am confused as to how that could have happened. A little later, its mentioned that "Magellan grasped the scalpel tightly". This explains how he cut himself. If he was doing this earlier, it could have been mentioned more clearly.
No, that isn't mentioned. What is mentioned is that the blood from the scalpel was dripping down *to* his hand. Quote: "Magellan grasped the scalpel tightly, feeling the blood drip down into his hand." He had just cut a neck, and the scalpel wasn't 'clean' as he kept holding onto it and arguing with Eleazar.

Sorry to say, but I do want to rewrite this for publishing, since I'm not satisfied with it. Is that acceptable, or not?
 

zerohour

Well-Known Member
#69
Rewriting is fine, but hold off until Kaen and I do our reviews.

Speak of Kaen, I belive he is going to take the stories to a professional editor before publishing. Am I remembering that right?
 
#70
What if we want to retain rights so that we could maybe, someday, salvage it into the first four chapters of a novel? Is that kosher?
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#71
Halibel Lecter said:
What if we want to retain rights so that we could maybe, someday, salvage it into the first four chapters of a novel? Is that kosher?
Way I see things, you still have those rights. But by joining this competition, you've given the organizers permission to re-publish your submitted chapters any way we see fit.

Obviously, anything NOT submitted is your own stuff. If you feel like expanding on the story, perhaps it might be easier to assume that the first 4 chapters are a freebie? :huh:

Now, I'm no lawyer and if ANYONE has any concerns they want clarified, I'm hoping to settle things peacefully. (No lawsuits, please!)

-chronodekar
 
#72
Okay, just making sure. What I wanted to avoid was, "This looks like it's ready to be published, obviously it took years of polishing and I think it would sell okay, but some dude with a weird username says it's legally his and his buddies'......"
 

zerohour

Well-Known Member
#73
Basically, once I get an idea on how business and contracts actually work, I'm going to draw up a legal contract that basically says: "I'm giving Zerohour rights to publish this. This still belongs to me, and I can do whatever I want with it, including publishing it on my own and revising it. The one thing I can't do is sue Zerohour, because that would be a dick move."

Again, going to have to visit a lawyer to figure out how to draw up the documents without screwing either you guys or myself over. This is waiting until after the new years so I don't have to deal with it for taxes this year.

(the fact that I haven't finished my story has nothing to do with this... really.)
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#74
I just looked at the date when I posted my last "official" review. Frankly, I'm embarrassed to see that its been more than 2 weeks... :(


Chapter - 1

Scoring aside, I'm going to come out and say it. This is my favorite one of all the submissions. For some reason, it 'clicked' with me. Or at least, was easy to follow. Considering that I'm not exactly a Marvel fan, that's ... surprising. :huh:

The mental image of a child running around and 'accidentally' hitting other passer-byes is amusing. Couple of odd grammar mistakes here and there. Annoying, but not distracting.

Chapter - 2

I just noticed that you started off your chapter the exact same way as the earlier one. That's sweet. :) (scrolls to check) And you did it for the 3rd one too! What about ... awwww! Why did you break it at the end? Is an interesting gimmick if you ask me. ^_^

A hero-trainee turning to a life of crime to support a child? There's a joke in there somewhere that isn't executed properly.

Chapter - 3

the idea of "asking a girl out as a mission" could be written in a bit more ... seriously. Then, with a bang, reveal the objective. Where do you miss? The initial points of Allison's sarcasm. Nothing wrong here, just another missed opportunity.

I need another opinion on the "rejected" section. Where Dazzle turns down our "hero". Can't really decide if its natural or not.

Chapter - 4

Yeah, that ending. Where he finally says her name. It gives the feel of a *real* conclusion and that's what probably has me liking this story the most.

Let me see if I can review the next one tomorrow.

Generic question to the authors : I'm thinking of making a manuscript (or something) to send for printing. Just copy-pasting the text from the forum post won't exactly look good and I want to get a bit of editing in myself. This isn't really fair without author support and my plan is to share a google doc link. That alright with everyone? If not; any other suggestions?

-chronodekar
 

chronodekar

Obsessively signs his posts
Staff member
#75
Broken Laurels by Halibel Lecter

Chapter - 1

Not sure if to call these grammar mistakes or not, but there are words missing at some points. The general and king - Erik and Ernst; the names are so similar that I think I missed the point where the royalty was introduced. At least, it seems like he sneaked into the narrative or something.

Chapter - 2

That's an interesting statement - "most of the people who kept track of nobles' faces had no place in an army". Reminds me of the real world in a sense. Truth there is, in that; as Yoda might say.

A personal note: Maps described without pictures are difficult to understand. Can't really finger-point the author here, but I find them confusing. Not sure how to resolve the issue though. :(

This chapter was better. :)

Chapter - 3

I can't decide if the king is intelligent or lazy.

The war cry - "Kali-Ma!", I had a feeling that I'd heard it somewhere the first time I read the story and can finally remember. It's from warcraft-3! That's almost exactly the war-cry some of the orcish units use! Fitting. :)

Am neutral on this chapter

Chapter - 4

There's some ... confusion on when the elf is speaking to Erik. At times, it's obvious that the narration is Erik, but then the dialog changes and we see that its the elf.

"Ernst felt marginally better—if he was smiling, he must be happy, and happy people liked to listen to their kings." -> now, I'm sure the king is crazy. Or at least, not all here.

Incomplete. That's what I feel about this story. There's a lot of world-building going on, but ... well, we don't seem to have come to a conclusion. Or even a problem for that matter - unless you consider the irritation the general has with his king.

I guess that's it, right? Did I miss anyone?

Moving forward (with my sponsorship of actually printing some books), I need to put all these stories in some format that can be sent to a publisher. The current idea is to copy-paste the stories and put them in a document (google docs or word - haven't decided). Then I'll share that around and let's TRY and finish this up before the month's over.

-chronodekar
 
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