The Constructive Criticism Thread

Thank you both so much for taking the time! I'll take both of your comments into great consideration.

@Haggardy: Don't worry, none of that was negative at all, everything you said up to that point was totally fair. Thanks for being especially thorough and honest.

Not gonna try and defend from any particular critique, though I'll say it's funny you mentioned the "worst regimes" line. That was originally written as something like, "as bad as the World War II regimes." Ironically, the reason I made it so broad was because I realized that the contemporary world we live in isn't exactly so different... but yeah, I'll especially consider your thoughts. Thank you.

edited 21st Jul '13 10:48:36 PM by Izon

Damn, that's good. I'm not going to pretend it wasn't flawed. Because it was, moreso than most professional first drafts. To be frank, I'm not wild about your dialogue, which kind of puts a big stopper on the potential quality of a stage play. It's not that it wasn't realistic, though that was often the problem. It's that it was neither real nor superreal, by and large; it was subreal. The excited-writer-with-a-shiny-new-concept shone through the spotty, exposition-loaded monologues and generally stilted banter.

With the problems out of the way, allow me to get to my unadulterated praise. I had no regrets about reading this whatsoever when I was done, whereas my expectations were quite the opposite. Damn, your Shiny New Concept actually was shiny and new. Yes, your self-admiration led to weaker writing, but at least the self-admiration was deserved, unlike most of the bozos who inhabit critique groups like these, who think they're the most original goddamn people on the planet for thinking of a new color to paint their dragons or a new name to call their rabbits. Despite being an amateur project, this is easily among the most mind-bending, well-thought-out takes on time travel I've ever seen. I wouldn't say the exposition is handled well, but the worldbuilding is perfect, and even when the dialogue is wooden, the character arcs wholly shine through. Every time you introduced a new facet of the setting, I groaned confusedly and thought that surely this would be the part where you lose it, stick your head up your ass, and force something unnecessary into the story. And yet every time, you continued to explain it, and I became acclimated to it, and it clicked together how well it fit. In short, your core ideas are perfect and fit perfectly together. You just need better craft to carry them with. I could easily see this being a sincerely great, even mainstream, work, if you converted it to a skeleton outline and, without changing one detail of the events, character arcs, or narrative structure, carefully rewrote it from scratch.

I only have one serious concern left, which is that I'm not sure the stage play format is ideal here. Though theatre is a noble art, I think this story may be better-suited for film. The big flashy ideas that define your work would be easier to convey with cinematic visual aids, allowing a decent fraction of the exposition dialogue to be removed in favor of characterization. As long as you were adamant that the character-focused, intimate nature of the work not be dumbed down in favor of large-scale battle sequences, I think a transition to film would be perfectly in keeping with your integrity as an artist.

I end on a note of disappointment that probably reflects worse on me than it does on you. By the end, I was sincerely expecting Amelia, Bailey, and Tayden to have some sort of bitemporal threesome, impregnating Amelia and Bailey with a bitemporal, bispecies infant. Nothing of the sort happened.

.....and so the shipping begins..... (shudder)

But no, really, thank you for being honest. I really feel bad if I was ego-stroking, could you elaborate on which points it seemed like I did that? Or was it just my over-emphasis on certain ideas that showed how much I liked them?

In any case, I'm glad you felt that way about the character arcs, structure and concepts. Those were the parts I think I focused on the most. I'm especially glad you didn't feel the superpowers were forced, since those might've appeared to be the most tacked-on thing. Anyway, I'll take all your comments into consideration when working on the story again.

If anyone else is dying to go, they can, though I'd still appreciate further feedback. If someone still wants to read it while another person it going, I'll take P Ms so it doesn't clutter up the thread.

edited 24th Jul '13 10:10:34 PM by Izon

I still want to write up my thoughts on the matter, and we'd need one more person to comment (or two weeks to pass) besides. No biggie waiting another day or two just to be sure.

edited 25th Jul '13 8:11:49 AM by Nicknacks

I also like the work very much. It flowed pretty well, and you managed to avoid "telling, not showing" even though there were a lot of ideas to communicate. I think you could improve the conversations between the three main characters, it seemed a little forced at times, but I cant think of any easy way to do that except through practice. Building that kind of writing skill simply takes time. I would consider including some sort of background description (I mean the physical background, the scenery). I like the minimalist style, but black might get boring after a while.

To be honest, in retrospect, I think I might have incorrectly assessed the "ego stroking". It wasn't good, but I think I came to the wrong conclusion on what it was. I think the feeling I got was just my knee-jerk reaction to a sturdy premise that's well-explained but accompanied by not very much exciting writing. I disagree with De Marquis. I do think you have a telling-instead-of-showing problem. The exposition leaps out as the strong part of your play because it's where the premise is, but that doesn't change the fact that it's exposition, and therefore inherently telling-instead-of-showing. Any technique by which you may shrink the exposition and convey the same information naturally by showing is a technique to use.

I think that De Marquis puts us over the five-commenters threshold, and I have something I really want to put up for critique, but I'd prefer to allow Nick Nacks to finish his thoughts, and to allow Izon to finish dialogues with De Marquis and Nick Nacks before I put mine up.

I think we are capable of having two conversations at once.

Yeah, you can go, DA. Nick Nacks can still give his feedback if he wants.

As to De Marquis' Neil Gaiman reference?, thanks as well. Seems like most are in agreement that spoken interaction isn't natural, so I'll continue to work on that.

edited 26th Jul '13 9:05:34 AM by Izon

This post has been blanked upon request.

edited 20th Dec '13 3:43:14 PM by BestOf

Ok, now I know what I'll be doing all weekend...

Will do.

Are we still using the list linked to in the OP, or have we adopted a different system? Anyway, I would appreciate thoughts on this fantasy/historical short story sometime in the future.

edited 27th Jul '13 8:22:57 AM by Jabrosky

The link listed in the OP is a standby if none of the last group's critiquers wanted criticism. I think it's gonna reset based on how old it is.

EDIT: Hell, that's not a new system; that's what it says in the opening post.

edited 26th Jul '13 3:14:21 PM by DAStudent

You are still supposed to critique the guy ahead of you before posting your own, I think.

De Marquis speaks the truth.

EDIT: Hell, why do we even keep the list that you can get onto for free? It's outdated and the odds of anything from it ever getting looked at are nil.

edited 26th Jul '13 6:36:22 PM by DAStudent

All right, let me offer a comment on DA Student's script...

I'll be honest, I am not experienced with critiquing anything written in a script format, so I'm not really sure how to approach this. I will say though that your premise as summarized under your title doesn't strike me as compelling:

Sorry, but it tells me very little of what's going on, who these characters are, or even what the setting is. Your cast list isn't any more informative because all you do is give me their personalities and nothing else. You could have at least described their occupations or significance in the script's plot.

In summary, I think you have a lot of refining to do here.

It does, however, correctly communicate the work's tone...

Reading a script takes more work from the reader. People unwilling to do the work should just not review the script.

Okay, hi. Out of sheer lack of interest from the original poster, I've unofficially taken over management of this thread. On that note welcome and I'm glad you've joined us.

That said, while I'm glad for your enthusiasm, there are people in that list who want to go next, and I've been editing the list to keep it updated. Those people have been waiting longer than you, and I feel that it's only fair that we at least check with them first. Additionally, until we get a second thread we're still dealing with one piece at a time, so if you want to have a piece critiqued you really need to get in line. Sorry.

I'm going to have to ask that you edit your post to remove the link to your piece, like other posters have done when they've gone out of turn. We'll get to you when we get to you, which is probably really soon.

Same with this, DA student. Leradny is next.

The current plan, btw, is to alternate the old and new. So after her would go Izon.

edited 27th Jul '13 5:03:36 AM by Nicknacks

Wait just a minute, here, Nick Nacks. I thought that we came to a general agreement that the old list was useless thanks to how old and long it was; and regardless, I followed the instructions in the OP about submitting my interest in going next within twelve hours of the end of the last turn. I would question my own understanding of the thread, but the fact that you say that Izon will go after Leradny (Izon just went and showed no signs that they have anything else to critique) indicates to me that you definitely don't have a full picture of things either. What's going on?

Yeah, my understanding is that Izon's critique officially finished with my own post #530. That should have completed Izon's turn, as Izon himself seems to have acknowldged. If you want to alternate with the list, then the next interested person from that list would go next. Then DA Student, I think. Correct me if I'm mistaken, please.

Yeah, my bad, I meant Leradny then DA Student. It was three in the morning and I wrote a typo.

Edit: Actually, do we just want to create a new list?

edited 27th Jul '13 10:34:21 PM by Nicknacks

Yeah, considering some people already started reading mine, this really just seems like a good time to start that second thread you've been talking about.

(Also, you can't really say I was going out of turn because, as far as I can tell, no prior indication was given of the system change. )

At this point there's not enough interest to take up a second thread. When I petition the mods, I want to be able to show that there's been a lot of continued interest to warrant a second thread, rather than asking for a second thread because one thread's too slow.

So I think having one go well makes opening a second one a more likely event.

If there aren't any objections in the next... forty-eight hours... I'll wipe the original list and PM everyone who was on it to resubmit should they feel like it. And in the meantime, we'll continue to talk about DA Student's work. Sound fair?

It does sound fair. Thanks for taking this initiative, Nick; hope we get the right activity levels!

edited 28th Jul '13 9:11:17 AM by DAStudent