Every time someone doesn't read the first part of this post, Rick Santorum eats a kitten and your post may be frowned upon.
Idea stolen from Critique Circle.
The writer will post no more than the first 500-1000 words of their work (unless you desperately need to finish a sentence, I guess). If it's a script, the first four pages should suffice, since 1000 words is about four pages in most books.
The reader is pretending to be an editor going through the slush pile, and will stop reading the excerpt if they lose interest. The reader will post to say if they stopped reading, why/ why not, and offer suggestions. The critique doesn't have to be detailed, but please at least offer some advice.
Every time someone doesn't follow the second part, Rick Santorum eats five kittens and your post has a 90% chance of being ignored.
FRIENDLY REMINDER: As the title of the thread implies, if someone posted an excerpt before you, please critique it before posting your own. If you skip someone, you lose the right to whine if someone skips over you. People that have been skipped, feel free to post a polite reminder if you're getting concerned. Reading 1000 words and leaving a few comments shouldn't take too long. And look at it this way: if you critique it yourself, you don't risk waiting forever for someone else to do it for you (this thread takes occasional naps) and you don't have to hope the critiquer doesn't have an excerpt of their own to post right after.
A SHORT NOTE: By hook we mean the first thing the reader sees of the story, not necessarily some sort of inciting incident. Your beginning can be slow and steady, but it still counts as the hook because readers can still be interested by something that moves slowly as long as something is there that gives the reader a reason to keep going. So if you have a prologue that meets or surpasses the word limit, don't stick your first chapter underneath it.
DISCLAIMER: This isn't a hardcore critique thread, so don't try to milk a detailed critique for your first chapter. That's why we have the word limits. Just think of this as a preliminary screening process for serious problems so you can get started on making your first impressions sparkly and awesome.
edited 20th Aug '12 7:46:48 PM by SnowyFoxes
Apparition in the Woods
![[up]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_up.png "[up]"){kind=icon}
The cliché is intentional here. What's really going on, as perhaps you can tell, is ultimately quite a bit stranger.
Syntactical errors? Please tell. They might be intentional; the narrator rambles a bit...
I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.
@JHM: I found it a bit boring. Lots of description with nothing much happening just isn't very interesting, and definitely not the sort of thing that hooks me and makes me hungry for more.
I changed accounts.
@JHM,
I would just say "northwest."
I would say "except," or "save," as the line is rather confusing as written, to me at least.
Those were the two most obvious ones, to me.
I am now known as Flyboy.
Obsidian Proboscidean
@ JHM: I read through the whole thing, but with great difficulty. The descriptions were a little much, and it kind of seemed rambling. I think it might be all the adjectives, but I could be wrong. Maybe inserting some action or dialogue in between all the description might break it up a little?
Here's something from a story called "Stories that Make Baby Nervous Cry"
that I'm trying to get back into writing. I think it needs editing, but I can't put my finger on why.
To an outsider, the scene appeared to be merely that of an avid birdwatcher. To his friend, Ronya, however, it was something entirely different.
“You know, one day you’re going to end up in Vidcund’s trash can in multiple pieces,” she remarked, passing him and entering the house. Kaleb left the telescope and followed suit.
“You seem to forget; we’re only representations of the two actual people controlling and watching this world,” Kaleb responded, following her into the bathroom. “Even if Vidcund somehow managed to penetrate the invisible force field protecting us from harm by the other Sims, we would only be recreated by those who made us in the first place.” He continued as he and Ronya walked back out to the living room and sat on the couch.
Ronya gave him a dubious expression. “Seriously?”
Kaleb cast his eyes toward the floor molding. “Well, no, that’s really just a theory explaining why we look so much like the controllers…And possibly the elephant wall hanging in the other room.”
“Then what’s to stop Vidcund from running over here right now and impaling us both on his nose, or at least, from turning us in for invasion of privacy?” Ronya continued as Kaleb retrieved his eyeballs from the side of the room.
Kaleb sat back down, only to jump up once more in realization. “We know it’s Vidcund that’ll bring the death threats!” he exclaimed, giving about two and a half more excited jumps (his initial excitement faded somewhat mid-flight).
Ronya sat still for a few seconds. “And….If we know that, before we’ve even met this Vidcund, we must have some sort of power over the other Sims!”
“We ARE gods among Sims!” Kaleb’s two and a half jumps became three after the completion that slight leap of logic.
“Hold on a minute.” Ronya’s tone sobered slightly. “If we really are gods, we should have some other powers, like omniscience or omnipotence.”
“Or the power to not suck at cooking.” Kaleb poked at his lunchmeat sandwich before getting up to store it in the fridge. “How I managed to burn the drink is beyond me.”
Ronya rose from the couch, poking around the combination living room and kitchen. “There should be something….Aha! Here it is.” She reached under the couch and brought up a big black remote control that bore the label “STRANGETOWN.” Instead of buttons for numbers, there were color-coded buttons labeled with a last name-one for every household in the town.
Kaleb box-vaulted back onto the couch. “The Universal remote!”
“Well, not completely universal; there were others under the couch. I saw one for some places called Belladonna Cove, Pleasantview-sounds a bit like a sitcom, that one- and Veronaville. But,” she flicked on the television set, “with this, dare I say it, we could….Avoid washing the dishes for at least four hours!”
“Sweet!” Kaleb pressed a fire engine red button labeled “CURIOUS.”
The sun was just considering peeking over the horizon of the Simvanian desert. A white house sat on a sandy hill, fostering the shrillest screams known to man.
“Just sit down, and we’ll get you to a hospital!” Vidcund Curious advised his convulsing older brother, Pascal, in a not-quite-so-calm voice.
“Forget the hospital, this baby’s coming now!” Pascal screamed back, assuming the birthing position on the blanket spread over the floor. “To think,” he thought, “just a few seconds ago, life was so normal.”
Nine months earlier, Pascal had been stargazing through the telescope, as he had done for the past fifteen years. He was just about ready to call it a night, when he saw a blue light streak through the sky. By the time he was able to zoom in closer, it was too late. He was sucked into the UFO, Vidcund and Lazlo powerless to do anything other than watch and maybe play a game of Punch You Punch Me. Upon being thrust unceremoniously from the aircraft and running to the toilet, he came to the conclusion that he, just like his father, Glarn, had been impregnated by the aliens.
And now here he was.
“I’ll get the scissors!” The third, youngest brother, Lazlo, ran for the bathroom medicine cabinet.
Vidcund knelt in front of Pascal, who spread his legs for his younger brother, and worked his hands into a pair of rubber gloves. He’d hardly been looking forward to this part; in Vidcund’s view, no amount of training would ever prepare him to yank a little green person out of his older brother. He was almost tempted to yell at Lazlo to get his butt back out here and help-it didn’t take that long to fetch a pair of scissors, what could he be doing?-but that would only upset Pascal (rather unwise, considering he now had a strong hold on Vidcund’s wrist).
“Whatever you do, don’t pull him out. Alien babies hate that,” Pascal warned, his voice dropping to a shaky whisper.
edited 30th Nov '11 5:45:42 PM by BlackElephant
I'm an elephant. Rurr.
Rabid Fujoshi
@ JHM
This is honestly rather boring, confusing and doesn't make much sense. There are some writing mistakes that are somewhat disguised by the archaic style, but anyone paying attention is going to see the problems, and those not will still sense the problems. You have few flow issues (not the worst I've seen, but it needs some work), sentences aren't particularly linked by subject in some places. They don't lead from one to the other, you just say something and then start talking about something with only a tangential relation to it. You can call it rambling of the speaker but it's just bad writing. Your prose isn't purple, exactly, but it is rather close to being absolutely cliche. You are also very repetitive with words and phrases and sentence structure. You pretty much always start the sentences with the subject, I'd like to see a sentence or two start with a Gerund. Your word choice is tolerable. Your comma placement is quite good (for someone reason a lot of people are bad at it but you are doing it properly, good job there) though you have a few weird placements of periods and sentence fragments without a lot of justification. It gives a very staccato effect that I don't actually think lends itself to giving a spooky air at all.
This isn't how I would have written this, but it's how I would have beta-ed it if you handed it to me to do so. It could still probably use some work, though. I took a lot out that gives room for some added description if you wanted it:
When I was young I lived with my family* in a small town about forty miles northwest of the city where I now reside. I visit sometimes, though more rarely now than I did in the past. It is a quiet place, small and unprepossessing, with little to say for itself but that it is exactly what it appears. Mostly.*
At the very centre of the oldest part of that town there is a great, round hill. It is very tall, more so than anything else within the town's borders, wide and green, being covered with long bright grass occasionally interrupted by trees or buildings. The houses there are extremely old, being small and stout, crouching low as if shrunken and bent by age as a person might be after such a time. The roofs are browning thatch, sunken from disrepair and the mortar between their stones dribbles out slowly, the walls cracking like grated teeth. A strangeness and sense of loneliness hangs over the abandoned hill. Abandoned from fear of the high house.
Before it deteriorated, the house was still most often empty. Few stayed long in the old high house, the townspeople said, if they were at all wise, though in there eyes there was little wisdom in visiting at all. Even fewer than visited lived there, and it was long ago. No one discussed them or their judgement in doing so. One shouldn't speak ill of the dead.
The remains of that estate are easily discernible, being furthest atop the hill and by far the largest of the buildings. It once had a slate roof, or several, though they have long collapsed. Even ruined it is out of place, out of element, strange and empty and alone.
The lines after that just makes absolutely no sense. "What I know now came from a friend of sorts, not from the town but having lived there for a certain time"? What the heck does that even mean? He was sort of a friend, but he didn't live in the town, but he did for a while. Whah? That is blatantly contradicting.
"He had left in a hurry. When I asked him why, this is what he told me." Okay, this seems to be saying that what was just told was something a guy heard from someone else who left his town in a hurry, but the actual story doesn't imply he left the town he supposedly did, it implies he still lives there. Or it might be trying to say the 'left in a hurry part' is talking about how he doesn't live in the town with the hill anymore, but that isn't the impression the actual text gives, it seems to act as if the left in a hurry thing is something that happened recently. I just have no idea what it's trying to say. If this is some story being recounted anyway it should say that at the very beginning not the end, so we know what we are reading isn't actually from the main narrator's perspective.
This whole thing just has serious problems and is boring besides. If I were you I'd go through your whole story sentence by sentence with a fine-toothed comb. Also, the 'hook' actually refers to the first sentence. You are supposed to 'hook' the audience with the first sentence, or at least the second, that's the point, otherwise they won't read far enough to get to anything interesting. You don't really have a hook at all.
I think your metaphors and descriptors are actually some of the better parts of this, "the mortar between their stones dribbles out slowly, the walls cracking like grated teeth" was pretty cool, actually. I think it's your strong point and it couldn't hurt you to add a bit more. You should really start your text with something like that, IMO.
Sorry if I seemed like I cut you apart, I was just reading it and found so many things that I perceived as issues that I kind of got on a roll. I don't think it's a lost cause but I think you should think about how each sentence fits together a bit more, focusing on efficiency.
edited 30th Nov '11 6:16:32 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)
I changed accounts.
~walks in~
~sees that Noir is in slaughter mode~
Well, I'm glad she didn't do mine now. Actually, no, I'm not glad, I kind of wish she would. o_o
...
I am now known as Flyboy.
Rabid Fujoshi
I will if you want me to. Did I give you any feed back or did I skip over it? (is going to look)
I should have been a bit nicer, really, I was just caught in the moment. JHM this is not a reflection no how I think of you, I encourage you to keep writing and get better! I know you have it in you! This is by far not the worst of anything I've seen!
Ah, I think I'm just making it worse.
edited 30th Nov '11 6:03:24 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)
I changed accounts.
Probably. Then again, it's also possible I was too nice. I'm not one for ripping apart works directly to the face of authors, unless said authors happen to be jackasses (which JHM most certainly isn't).
~shrug~
I don't expect much different as an opinion from you than from the others ("it's too dense and boring"), but if you'd like I'll take any criticism offered.
I am now known as Flyboy.
Eye'm the cutest!
I'm tempted to post something of mine for Noir to try and slaughter. Partly because I can't help but think of his stuff as a case of Is That A Challenge?
Maybe I'll do it tomorrow, it's late now and I got work really early in the morning. (Also I want to try and get some writing in before bed.)
"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."
Rabid Fujoshi
I just figure if you're posting in this thread you want an honest opinion and are sort of looking for this kind of critique. And having said what I've said, no one is under the obligation to actually listen to me, I won't really feel bad if someone says "Um, no," and just keeps on with what they are doing.
I wish I had someone to tear into my stuff in depth, but I actually don't know many people as anal and critical as me in terms of style and structure. People are better than I am at grammar and spelling often enough, though. Which is good because I make a lot of type-os in my own work, that I sometimes don't notice.
edited 30th Nov '11 6:22:00 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)
Ahr river
I was. I got two responses. ~_~
Read my stories!
As was I, except I got zero instead of two. Oh, well.
Rabid Fujoshi
I'll go back and look at them after dinner. I'll try to be nicer, though (sorry again JHM). Still honest, but nicer. The cold hard truth wrapped in pretty paper with a nice bow.
edited 30th Nov '11 6:25:05 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)
Honestly, I have a very low opinion of my ability to write horror scenes, so I'd be prepared to wager there's nothing you could say that I've not already said to myself.
Rabid Fujoshi
@ Mr AHR
Okay well, I don't really read scripts much but I'll do what I can with this. It's for a graphic novel, right? In that case I'm not really going to be looking for style, but more content in terms of helping someone draw the image and in reading it from a narrative perspective. I have no experience with this so I wouldn’t really give my opinion the same kind of weight I would if I were talking about straight up writing. Then again I've read a shit ton of manga and I draw myself so I don't think I have no room to stand whatsoever.
In the overall, I don't like it, not one bit. It's not very interesting and it's even kind of misleading. You're opening shot of a GN, or any visual narrative media, should probably fall under one of these things: introduce a setting, introduce a character, and/or be visually impressive and evocative in a way that relates to the work. This doesn't really do any of these things.
Firstly we get a shot of a bar sign, which does give us a place, but the place does not relate even remotely to what's being talked about. We see a bar and then someone we can't see starts talking about things that we also can't see, while we are looking at this bar and we don't know what the hell it has to do with anything this disembodied person is talking about, all of which seems way more interesting than what we're looking at currently. There is no relationship between those to things, the narration and the visuals, especially since we don't even see the guy who is talking being in the bar until halfway through. The narrator is giving this intense description about magic and such, but there is nothing magical here, and all the description is so wasted and we can't even imagine ourselves in our heads because the image given to us is this bar and it's distracting. It's a graphic novel, show it to us. Give panels of people fighting with magic and the bloody battle and such, depicting what is being explained. Just having someone talk about it is a complete waste of the media, and it's just plain weird when you're giving an explanation od all this stuff and yet all we have to see is a bar. It really takes away from the epicness of the history given.
I say scrap every visual you have and basically go frame by frame actually depicting what you are talking about in the narration. If Mr. Seeger is an important character than introduce him right in the first panel and then drift off to the visuals as he discusses them. Skip the bar thing entirely. I'm assuming the kids are important, but I don't think seeing them is required in this infodump/prologue thing. Because that is what it is, and basically the only way to make it not boring, and to get the actual information across, is to make it look cool. A Graphic novel isn't like a book, where you imagine yourself what people are talking about, you are presented with images which you are expected to look at, it's really not easy to visualize what someone is talking about in that context. Think of movies, when a character goes off on a monologue of more than a few lines long about a great battle, like nine times out of ten, they show us some form of the battle as he does, or at least sounds of fighting and music as if he's remembering (which you can't really do because it's a GN but you see my point) instead of just making us look at some guy through the whole thing.
In terms of actual text, I don't see a problem with it, so I didn't go through and give you an edited version, since the descriptions won't be written anywhere anyone will see them but the artist anyway, so meh, doesn't really matter. Though I think they can be even shorter and to the point. The actual words Mr.Seeger says I think are completely fine, clear, straight forward and to the point as well as evocative, so all good there as well.
edited 30th Nov '11 7:35:57 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)
Detective Extroadinaire
This is chapter one, part one of The Woodnote Letter, a personal experiment in writing by the seat of my pants.
Azrael Jones, with the carry of a drunk at sea, pulled himself off what appeared to be the ground. The world sloshed and spun around him as thoughts swam.
His first thought was something along the lines of Where in bloody hell am I? This question was answered once he looked about and eventually realized that he was on the corner of Fifth and Heimer, on the outskirts of Skymoor. This fact did not reassure him in the slightest, considering his last memory was being in his bedroom, the one troublingly not located in Skymoor.
His second thought, naturally, was How the bloody hell did I get here? This was not answered so quickly as the previous thought, and he managed to slump into a park bench he had discovered beside himself to mull it over.
Azrael did his best to retrace what happened. Start with the bedroom, where he was studying his maps, plotting his escape yet again. Continue to him getting depressed, and heading to a coffee shop downtown. Cue him meeting an odd gentlemen desperately trying to warn him about something called "the Woodnote Letter" and how he had "only a month, and he's getting a damn coffee!" The rest, however, was a blur; there was some sort of disagreement between him and the man, and the next sensation Azrael knew was the taste of sidewalk.
He felt something in his pocket, and pulled it out. It was a brand-new pocket calender, the exact sort of thing he father was always begging him to get. He had no memory of ever touching such a thing, but yet “Azrael Jones” was written in black and white on the blank on this inside cover (not in his hand-writing, mind you). Azrael flipped to the current date – June the tenth – to see a notice written. “This is today, in case you've forgotten the date. Teleportation's a bitch, ain't it?” it said, in the same neat, machine-like handwriting as on the inside cover.
He kept flipping through the calender, paying no mind to the mention of teleportation (most likely a joke, or a reference he didn't catch). On July the tenth, exactly one month from now, another note had been written.
“Arrival of the Woodnote Letter.” it said plainly. “(good fucking luck)” was written beneath it.
He put the calender back in his pocket. Azrael's third and final thought before heading off down the street was this, and this only:
This is cause for concern.
read
![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]"){kind=small}
.
I am reading the actual thread. They never show up past page two. Make of that what you will.
oddly
@Black Elephant: First there was a bit of confusion on my part: if he's looking at a guy through a telescope, then how does he know what the guy is singing? Is there something I'm missing here?
Second, there's that info-dump in the fourth paragraph, which is where I stopped reading. Show Don't Tell, Say No To Infodumps, etc. etc.
Ahr river
Noir: Thank you for your review. Although, considering how this was supposed to be a framing device, either I didn't make that clear enough, or you didn't notice.
Read my stories!
turning and turning
@Noir, if you're looking for somebody incredibly picky and critical, I'm pretty sure I could manage that.
Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow
Rabid Fujoshi
I don't believe you did, though I got that this is sort of a "let me tell you a story..." thing but either way I think it's still pretty boring and lacking, and sort of throws out the point of the media. That kind of framing works better in movies, I feel, and even then they don't tell this kind of epic back story while they do it in this boring room. I don't think your GN benefits from this kind of framing, in this particular case. Especially since this is supposed to be a 'current account' or it seemed so to me, by the storyteller, it doesn't make as much sense. That was my opinion, anyway. I think you should just show Seeger in a room, have him introduce himself and start talking and then show all the things he's talking about, that's still a pretty similar thing.
I'm going to put something up here tonight for you guys to critique (or tear apart) if you so desire. It's only fair. And I'm a lot better at critiquing beginnings than I am at writing them myself, I feel, so I could use the advice. I hate when I ask people for advice and they say "it's okay" or "it's good" or "I didn't really like it" without telling my why they think this, even when prompted, so I can actually do anything about the problems they see.
edited 1st Dec '11 12:22:09 PM by NoirGrimoir
SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)
I changed accounts.
@Aniventerie,
I like it. 
@Noir,
When and if you get a chance, I wouldn't mind a critique of mine, and I'm rather interested to see what sort of fiction you like to write. 
Detective Extroadinaire
In the grand scheme of things, it's really a little silly to get completely psyched that some random internet-dweller likes something I've written. I guess that makes me quite silly .
Oh, and Noir? Permission granted to rip it to shreds. I know it's not the best thing I've ever done, and I want to know exactly why.
![[down]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/smiles/arrow_down.png "[down]"){kind=icon}
At the time I posted I wouldn't be adding anything that hadn't already been said. And regarding us "ganging up" on Noir: she has gained a reputation on this thread for having a very keen eye; why wouldn't we want her opinion? It wasn't an aggressive thing either; I seem to recall us requesting her input, not commanding it. I don't think her opinion is the only one I'll need either.
edited 1st Dec '11 4:14:03 PM by Aniventerie
Need a tall, brawny fella to come by and inspect your pickle? Perhaps I may be this fella.
Fool
Guys, maybe instead of asking one person to review all your works, you should review some of the works of others. This last page of posts seems like everyone ganging up on Noir Grimoire for a critique. I don't want to speak for her, but it takes a long time to read and compose a thoughtful review, and it can't all be done by one person. Everyone who's asked for a crit should offer one themselves— a full critique on what you liked or didn't like, not just a one off "liked it/didn't." And if you haven't critiqued anyone in the thread yet, you shouldn't even be asking for one.
*retreats back to mousehood*
For the rain it raineth every day.
@chihuahua 0,
As you saw, I have the opposite style, with long, tangent-filled descriptions of characters and settings, followed by (though you didn't see this part), extended conversations with a pure focus on the characters themselves. Your style is so... alien, compared to mine, that it rings as strange.
However, I didn't mean that as an objective complaint ("that's bad, change it") so much as a personal thing ("it's just kind of weird to me"). Suffice it to say, your last line made the save for me and I am confirmed hooked on yours.
I've been told that when I get into history my incredibly encyclopedic view of the matter tends to color my descriptions. Unfortunately, because this is only the beginning, it really looks like straight historical fiction, because people tend not to know that there never was a Napoleon VI (the line died with Napoleon IV), or that Wilhelm III was never Kaiser. Nevermind that on the next page or so I introduce airships...
Ah well, at least you were interested enough to keep reading, right?![[lol]](https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/lol2v12_4863.png "[lol]")
@JHM,
I like it. Some grammar syntax to fix, in my opinion, but overall it was fairly intriguing—even if the "creepy house on the hill" is vaguely cliche. Confirmed hooked.
I am now known as Flyboy.