The Constructive Criticism Thread

No objections here. A fresh start sounds good.

Though I'll ask for a clarification: So are we sticking with the guidelines in the first post (wherein the list is only used if nobody actively volunteers after each round) or are we changing it so we go strictly by the list? Just want to know if I need to state my desire to be critiqued after this round closes, or if I can just wait for my turn to come up.

I'd prefer to go strictly by a list.

Yeah. However glad I am to be getting feedback, in retrospect, the existence of the twelve hour rule really undermines the concept of the list, so it should really go away after my turn.

Given that I've had difficulty contacting the original poster, I might request a mod change the original post. But I'll give it another shot.

Posting history indicates the OP ragequit TV Tropes quite some time ago.

Yeah, a lot of people quit at that time, for that reason. I almost did, myself.

This post has been blanked upon request.

edited 20th Dec '13 3:43:31 PM by BestOf

About half-way through. I'm at the part where Gene masturbates. By... filling out a form........

I feel it'd be more appropriate for me to read the whole thing before giving critical feedback, just wanted to let you know it's being read.

edited 29th Jul '13 7:40:29 PM by Izon

Thoroughly appreciated. I definitely expected a while before any feedback thanks to the sheer length of the thing (as with your play) but it's fulfilling to hear signs of progress.

edited 29th Jul '13 7:45:08 PM by DAStudent

Okay, I've blanked out the list now. Anyone who wants to go next should add their names to the list. Here's my provincial list of rules, what do people feel like should be changed/added?

Edit: Anyone who was on the old list will be contacted in the next 24 hours and asked to repost their name if they're still interested.

• This thread is for helping people improve as writers. Please stay away from needlessly gushing or needlessly being mean when handing out criticism.
• No mentioning your own work when giving out criticism. This is to prevent "Let's talk about ME" derails.
• Feedback will be given to one person at a time. We're taking a deliberately slow pace; a person's turn to get feedback is generally supposed to last a week, but we're not ending someone's turn until they get feedback from at least five different people. On the other hand, the person getting feedback can end their own turn if they figure they're done.
• When a turn ends, we move onto the next person on the list to receive feedback. Should they not post something within 48 hours, we move onto the next person in the list, and so on.
• Yes, it's okay to point out spelling and grammar errors made by the person you're giving feedback to.
• If you're unfamiliar with the original 'verse of a piece of Fan Fiction up for feedback, pretend it's a piece of original fiction and criticize accordingly.

If and when you step up to receive feedback:

• Post actual writing (not world-building, concepts, layouts, character lists and so on).
• Be specific in what you are looking for, or at least mention what is troubling you the most.
• Fan Fiction is fine, but take into account that anyone not familiar with the source material will judge your piece "blind", essentially by the same standards as original fiction. This means you might get called out on flaws that fan fiction usually gets away with in practice, perhaps even justifiably so. Just like any other kind of criticism, consider it or ignore at at your discretion.
• Be ready to hear some things you probably didn't want to hear. This should go without saying, but, please: No being bitter, being sarcastic, calling people out for "going too far" or otherwise expressing disapproval of the criticism given to you. If you think people are being unfair to your writing, make your case civilly.

edited 31st Jul '13 2:15:17 AM by Nicknacks

I think this is the best way to go; I applaud you. My only recommendation is that, to better account for emergencies and move through people who've abandoned ship for whatever reason faster, perhaps the forty eight hour period could be changed to a twenty four hour period, but people removed from the list are given a one-week window to come back, in which case they are booted to the front of the list.

"Here's my provincial list of rules, what do people feel like should be changed/added?"

Are we still considering multiple threads? Because I was thinking - although I think there might be a dead thread with a vaguely similar distinction - I was thinking, what if we had different threads for different work lengths? That way, if we're dealing with a long piece on one thread (which naturally takes a little while), someone who's waiting in line just to have a couple pages looked over can go simultaneously. Two or three short pieces could go through the system in the same time it'd take for one big piece to go through on the longer-length thread.

Okay, DA - on to the critique. For any concerned, spoilers will be unmarked.

First, two minor/typographical errors.

1) Though it might've just happened in the initial copy/paste to textsave, some headers were different than others. Most of the time it's "Name, (press enter), line," but in a couple spots it's "Name: line."

2) Near the end of Act 3, the characters refer to Joe as "the Prince." He referred to himself as a couple things which parodied Christianity, but never before or after that line was the title "Prince" used, to my knowledge.

Given the surreal nature of the work, it's hard to know by what standard I should judge the characters, but regarding them, there were a few things I have questions/suggestions about:

1) I was a little confused when, in Act 2, the characters started implying that Carrie was crazy in the same sense that John was. Of course, she didn't know about the place before until she met John, but nothing seemed to stand out about her that would leave me to believe she's "crazy." John, you characterized really well in Act 1. With a group of people bigger than five, it's hard to give everyone attention, but the fact that Carrie was crazy in Act 1 just kinda fell through the cracks for me. Of course, I didn't have that much trouble going along with it, and her relationship with John worked well.

2) Something really bothered me near the end, when Emma is talking to Gene about how passive he is. The initial speech, though harsh, seemed completely fair. But then, two seconds later, Gene is finally doing something. Something big, even. When he asks for Emma's help, what does she do? She criticizes him. I understand she hates him, but after just criticizing Gene for doing nothing, and then seeing him about to do something, I... I just lost all sympathy for Emma's character right then and there. A part of it is probably because I sympathize a lot with Gene's plight, but Emma not being willing to help after seeing him about to do something just... for me, it felt like she just crossed the line. Most people might not have that specific reaction to that little thing, but it sort of numbed for me what was a good conclusive arc for the two. Barring this incident, I really liked how they decide they'll both try to be better people, and how they decide to tell Harry the story together.

3) Gene's final little speech... to me, he seemed to just mimic Alice's philosophy. He doesn't go to an extreme as much as Alice would, but it still essentially sounds like he's promoting what she lived for. He doesn't necessarily have to commit the Golden Mean Fallacy between Alice and Viola, but if you really feel like the two extremes are bad (since you have the two characters meet horrible fates), it would makes sense to distance Gene a little bit from what Alice believed. Or, if you believe Alice (or even Viola) is somewhat right, maybe they could receive a small amount of Redemption Equals Death. Or just plain ol' redemption, but I can understand that's way off the tone of your work.

4) So not only is John aware of the place before, but he also becomes aware the whole thing's a play. But... that latter part doesn't really go anywhere after it's revealed he knows this. Just to further emphasize how different he is? The "place before" stuff seemed to do that pretty clearly, but that's just me. I certainly thought his meta-knowledge was interesting, though.

5) Maybe not as much a character issue, but it does involve the characters' actions: why exactly did Gene want to bring that box into the room with Joe and the crowd? He specifically mentions that the pink slips are good, that they're from another place and Joe hasn't tampered with them yet. The other characters call him out for coming into the room and showing them off, rather than just using them earlier (like he was completely content to do with a pink sheet earlier). If there is a reason for him doing this, even if only a symbolic one, it didn't seem to fit.

Anyway, now I'd like to mention... well, the three acts in general. Of course, the entire play is meant to be a very streamlined metaphor for the rather complex story of life. But although I definitely got a sense of it with the whole reds-vs-blues thing, I don't think it was until Act 2, due to the unique way the "children" spoke with each other, that I fully understood what Act 1 represented. (And it wasn't until after I finished the play that I realized how well you conceived the character of Viola - the way she's depicted in her childhood represents the EXACT core dilemma of someone who aims to do what's right as opposed to what's fun. Of course, you did well to portray Alice in the same way during her childhood, since, at the moment she explained her philosophy, I think I might've known how her character arc would end up).

In Act 2... you really went to great lengths to make sure every well-known sex trope was conveyed using the metaphor of the yellow slips. And this makes me wonder - was that intentional? Since this strange world is meant to be a streamlined version of reality, it seemed like a LOT of time was spent covering the sexual escapades of the different characters. Of course, I can understand this being fundamental to the story, since sex(birth) and death are both a huge part of it (each one getting their own act in the story). But still, it seemed like Act 2 could've been cut down significantly. It was very, very clear early on that writing = sex; taking away the metaphor, Act 2 consists of what's basically just a long string of archetypal sex stories, as opposed to one original story like in Acts 1 and 3.

In fact, the way Act 2 was structured led me to believe I knew exactly how the third act would play out - it'd be all about growing old, and end with the characters' deaths just as it had begun with their early life. Although age and death were a large part of Act 3, I was happy to find out that you went in a very different direction by involving the pink slips, as well as a very unexpected turn with Joe's character.

At the core of this story, though, is something that is both your greatest strength, and my biggest problem with the work (though this may not be a problem for you...): through setting, character interactions, dialogue, and basic plot progression, you did a tremendously good job of depicting the very concept of life as something truly creepy and alien; you similarly depict the world we live in as broken, scary, and inescapable.

And that's just the reason I felt so sad and unsatisfied upon finishing the thing. There is very little hope in the world that's depicted here, and that hope is always eager to dash itself out before it can blossom. The way Joe dies might be the only exception, and even then, it's an exception based on death. Kit's final line, "No", leaves an especially bitter taste in one's mouth.

Of course, this can't be called an objective flaw; and it may be exactly what you intended to elicit. But depicting the world like this is going to be a hit or a miss, depending on who you have read it. Admittedly, I come from a relatively cushy background, but the idea that the world is broken is far from foreign to me.

An aside.... So, let's see if I got this straight: your ideal world is one without sex, but still with incoming babies; no murder, but eventual death; and just enough badness to keep things interesting. I see this might be a reaction to the idea of a boringly perfect world, but what if that "perfect world" were so perfect, there wasn't even the concept of boredom? What if there was just abounding love, which would fill one's deepest desires? Not a mere lack of conflict, but infinite catharsis? Anyway, just my view of the matter.

edited 1st Aug '13 1:40:30 AM by Izon

I just added myself to the list, but this time I'm looking for critique on a different, more important project:

Sekhotep and the Key to Heaven: Chapter One (1,900 words, fantasy)

Any feedback is fine, but at the moment I'm most concerned about conveying the characters' emotions and dialogue.

edited 1st Aug '13 8:18:09 AM by Jabrosky

I don't think you're supposed to provide a link to your work until your turn comes up; it's insurance from people getting on the list and then leaving TV Tropes at some point between then and their work coming up.

Also, thanks for the critique, Izon! I have some things to respond to, but I don't have time right now; this'd be a much longer post if I could. Will get back to you soon.

@DA Student: Super-meta fiction! Which isnt really my thing, so I may not be qualified to comment on it, but here goes my two cents:

"Emma: But just now someone pointed out to me that we don’t even really know that all the details exist. We could be hallucinating.

Joe: Huh."

I think you missed an opportunity here- what if Joe said instead "Was this person's name John?" (referencing the individual who just left the stage). Since it sounds exactly like something John would say.

So I take it that if we listed each character and the most salient personality traits they express, there would be a high degree of consistency? Because each character here reads like an avatar of a personality trait. This is neither good nor bad, I presume it was intentional, I'm just making an observation.

"Emma: Existential angst!"

Well, you cant make it any more obvious than that!

Gene is a disappointment to me. I was identifying with him, up until he joined Joe.

"Gene: But we’re not in a play." OK, I like him again.

Ok, I've finished Act I, and now I'm starting to think that I'm performing on a stage, so I'm going to quit now, I'll return to it later.

Okay, gonna respond to the criticisms thus far now! Well, actually just Izon's. Sorry, demarquis. I just feel like I should hold off metacriticism until you're all the way through. I don't mind you providing criticism as you read, though; gives me an impression of what goes through your mind as you read through blind. I wish you well in completing it, though!

So, Izon: While my wisdom is (always) questionable, I only used the "Prince" title once, and I feel that its sounding out-of-place is appropriate. Firstly, it comes from Carrie, secondly, it's difficult to keep track of the list of titles of a man with too much power, and thirdly, it works nicely as an abbreviated form of "Principal" (a title that he's recently claimed onstage).

I might have to work on increasing Carrie's prominence in act one. It's kind of funny - when I first finished Act 1, and wasn't quite certain how the other two would play out, my readers always told me Carrie was the Ensemble Dark Horse. I was happy about this, because I had figured out her arc with John in Act 2... But you're not the first reader I've found who's said that the direct comparison drawn between her and John came out of nowhere for them. Before I'd assumed it was a fluke, but now I think I'm convinced Carrie does need to leave more of an impression on the audience in the first act. My best idea at the moment is to open the show with a prologue wherein Carrie introduces herself ("Hi, everyone! My name's Carrie; I'm one of the characters in the play you're about to watch: Hamlet. (She laughs.) I wish. Outside Looking In.") and reads off all of the stage announcements (varying from production to production: what's the current season at this theatre like, what's playing next in this season, when and how long is the intermission, what kind of refreshments are available, who's the director, please silence your cell phones and other electronic devices, etc, etc, etc). Some of the other characters (Joe and Viola?) are sitting behind her, confused, and comment on her as she leaves, at which point the lights dim and Act 1 begins. All of this might be pushing it kind of far, though.

Although Emma certainly has a point, and that's the more important part of the scene, I did intend for her to come off as unfair, all things considered. Her personal grudge against Gene is partially Gene's fault, but its deep-seated nature is ugly and ultimately says more about her than him.

Your point about Gene's speech is the point that I'm most intrigued about. I will have to seriously mull this over before I decide what to do about it. At the moment, considering your feedback definitely makes me think the ending monologue will undergo significant change by the final draft, but we'll see exactly what that change is.

I didn't really intend for John's growing awareness of the fourth wall to represent anything except that he learned just as much from Carrie as she learned from him - all of this information on both sides equally bizarre to the other inhabitants of this world.

(Gene was definitely carrying the Idiot Ball at the climax; I realized this too late and the best I could do was have the other characters lampshade it. This probably needs some fixing in the next draft.)

Thanks for all of the compliments in your post, from the intentional ones (characterization on Viola and Alice) to the unintentional ones (depicting the very concept of life as something truly creepy and alien; congratulations, a lot of people have tried to figure out what the title "Outside Looking In" means; this is the best analysis I've seen on that topic, even if you didn't explicitly connect it to the title).

I don't think I'm cutting down Act Two because it just all flows together in my mind. I don't think there's really anything redundant or superfluous in there. I can see why you'd have the comments you do, and I considered that same issue when I was writing, but I ultimately disagree.

I don't mean to go into Captain Obvious mode, but the description in question's not actually meant to be a perfect world. :D It's meant to be "the perfect world" as jointly conceived of by somebody suffering from serious PTSD (and after an overly-sheltered life, to boot) and somebody trying to comfort her. Sex, for example, isn't absent in the perfect world because I, the author, am trying to make a statement about sex's effect on humanity; it's absent because one of the people talking was a (metaphorical) rape victim. Utopia only exists in a human's imagination, and then, it depends on the human.

edited 1st Aug '13 7:49:07 PM by DAStudent

That prologue could work. Maybe you could even use it to show the characters first coming into the world, since Act 1 starts with their childhood as opposed to their birth (unless I'm mistaken).

As far as most responses go, fair enough, and thanks/you're welcome. Best of luck to you!

Still, the way it's set up, most people are going to interpret that segment as a short Author Filibuster, and will probably take what the two characters say at face value without considering why they're saying it. Especially given the fact that it's a meta-play, rather than self-contained one.

edited 1st Aug '13 11:06:59 PM by Izon

@DA Student: Act II.

So, after last act's reconstruction of WWII, Joe is now re-enacting the Cold War? Except his soliloquy on hindsight doesnt fit Marxist-Leninism at all. It does fit the character, though.

I kind of expected more word play on what "annoying" means, where everyone gets it wrong.

More later.

Back again. John's soliloquy on spiritual mysticism, and being able to see the audience. What's missing (in so far as my naive expectations go, that is) is any suggestion that "the place before" or "the people outside" are in some way better, more real, or represent a desired state of being for John. Although on second thought, John the character doesnt need to express those things, since he experiences them. Only someone else in the cast who accepts the outside as an abstract concept, without any direct experience or memory of it, would do that. So is there a character missing? Where is your theologian?

Invitations are a really clever metaphore for sex and parenthood. Is there any casual or recreational invitation writing, I wonder? Who takes responsibility for the newcomers that result? Will there be an analogy to abortion? Gay sex?

Well, that question got answered quickly.

The invention of marriage from a state of nature. This is starting to look like a reconstruction of enlightenment philosophy. Actually, it always looked that way...

Gene invents masturbation. On stage. Logically, that should have happened way earlier.

And now he just invented peadophilia. This guy is very inventive.

Gene and Alice: my other question just got answered. Alice just invented outercourse.

Emma and Joe: Joe is a real lowlife, eh? And I bet he doesnt even care about his newbies!

Alice and Viola: and my final question just got answered. Go Alice.

""Mark You!"" Ok, that made me laugh.

And now we have a reconstruction of divorce, and custody.

End of act two. Emma invents abortion. What a downer.

edited 4th Aug '13 8:57:24 AM by demarquis

Demarquis, I'm sorry that I can't respond to your feedback until you're totally done, but I just wanted to cheer you on and tell you that I'm glad you're continuing to read my piece! One more act to go, albeit the longest one.

edited 4th Aug '13 5:28:30 PM by DAStudent

Act Three:

Joe has become a corporate executive. Or rather a metaphore for one. This guy is a one man metaphorical history of as?>&%le white men.

You know, now that I think of it, I dont remember another example in fiction where someone dies during someone else's funeral. Interesting. I'll miss him. Bad guys are always interesting.

Alice, on the other hand, gets on my nerves. Call her name. "Community Supply Closet" was kinda funny, though.

Carrie is describing a movie cinema, isnt she?

I'm starting to like Viola more. She comes across as very human.

Ah, we have finally invented religion. 'Bout time.

Of course, it turns out to be an empty, false religion, but I guess that was inevitable in a work of this kind. It will be interesting to see how much of the old Joe is still there. A lot, I hope.

It's Susan for the win!

Hmmm, something tells me Alice isnt long for the world...

Rape scene- that was uncomfortable.

This play got dark in a hurry. There's not much to comment on here. It's engaging, but not surprising or clever in the same way the rest of the play was. That might be appropriate, though, depending on how this thing ends.

Emma and Carrie arrive. Is talking a free action?

Done. Gene's advice is lame, considering all that happened. I'm not sure why the play ended up being about Joe and his issues. Still, an emotionally satisfying ending. That's all I have right now, I'll try to come up with some more in-depth analysis later.

Ooh, looking forward to it! When you do so, I'll go through and respond to all of your points.

@Nicknacks, looks good to me. Thanks from me as well, for agreeing to be responsible for this thread! I do have two small suggestions for the list:

1.) I think it might be a good idea for everybody who posts their work to also provide the post number where they provide the link or the work itself. That way anybody coming late to the thread can easily find it if they want to review it.

2.) The writer should add a mark of some sort next to their entry on the list once their turn is over (perhaps a line stricken through their name, or just an asterisk or star symbol or something). This way anybody browsing can tell at a glance how far we are down the list, and if somebody gets skipped over its easy to tell what position they were in relative to everybody else.

Oh yeah, Spoilers and stuff below.

@D Astudent Now, onto the critique… Sorry for the long wait on this. Also apologies if I just end up reiterating what other people have said (I try not to read other critiques until I’ve actually posted my own, to give an honest opinion of what I thought).

As with Izon’s piece, I’m not too familiar with the conventions for stage plays, so I’ll try to stick to the characters and the story. In all honesty, I don’t have any huge critiques so instead I’ll try to give you my impressions about the various aspects of the play, and then finish with a list of miscellaneous nitpicks or comments I thought were somewhat important.

Characters: I have to admit, I was dreading reading through the entire play when I started. The names all seemed very short and bland, and I was sure I’d get them all mixed up (Two guys named John and Joe? Uh oh…) However, once I got into it, I found I didn’t really have any trouble at all. You characterize everyone pretty distinctly, and it wasn’t long before I had created a mental image -or voice at least- for nearly everyone. The only exception would be the younger characters (Harry and Erin and Susan) who didn’t really do enough for me to get a good impression of them.

The characters struck me as pretty clear examples of different personality types. Everybody is very blunt about who they are (to the audience at least, but even to each other toward the beginning of the play) so there isn’t much need for character interpretation. They pretty much are what they seem. In fact they have almost a child like quality in the beginning, when they’re figuring out the rules. But there was also a degree of realism to them. They compromise and adapt-some more successfully then others- I appreciated, for example, how Gene’s depiction of a better world grew more realistic as Kit provided resistance to it, but his central idea remained the same. It was apparent a lot of thought went into this .

While in the beginning the play seemed like it was going to be more of an ensemble, Joe very quickly becomes the most dominating personality. His schemes and actions are what define the situations of the other characters (especially in the third act). In some ways he felt almost more like a device than a character, setting up the situations for the others so we could see how their personalities and relationships would respond to the different scenarios he devised. He also went through his own development though, I saw him as more of a schemer in the first act, evolving into a manipulative jerk in the second, before finally graduating into a sociopathic cultist.

The other characters were each interesting in their own right. I felt frustrated (looking at you, Gene!) and sympathetic with each of them in turn, and I feel you tried to give everyone their ‘moment’ to define their character. Aside from the youngsters, the one character who I felt was the least explored was Viola. We never really get to see her interact with Cult Leader Joe, or really explore her relationship with Kit beyond the mothering aspect.

My favorite character was probably Kit. The fact that she’s a newcomer who nobody bothers to explain the rules to makes it very easy to relate with especially since, as a reader, I was learning the rules of the setting you create as well. I think anybody who remembers childhood can relate to older people acting like you’re stupider than you think you are, or feeling left out of the rest of the group. (Speaking of feeling left out: Why isn’t Kit part of the main cast list?)

Setting: The setting you created was very evocative. You provided a few easy rules that pretty clearly correlated with real world situations, but in a simple, stripped down way that presented their emotional cores, without the messy real world details. (Writing invitations is sex, the voice of the announcer is death, pink papers are for murder, etc…) The mundane things you chose, along with the somewhat blunt nature of the characters, made me picture kids on a playground figuring out the rules to a new game, yet, by the time I got to the third act, I had accepted the rules you set up and was giving them the same level of import as the things I took them to represent. I read the scene where Joe rapes Kit for what it was very clearly.

The different slang bits also was easy to pick up on. Mark=Fuck and so on… that was probably the best analogy. It fit very well into the dialogue.(I also liked Joe's 'Eat Lead' comment...)

Plot: To me the play felt like a study in the growth of these characters. In the first act they were all fairly new to this world, and were just developing their own philosophies and views about it. Again, it had a very light hearted ‘kids on the playground’ feel to it. Joe’s whole ‘Reds vs. Blue’ scheme was even quite comical. By the second act, though, they being maturing, and start to develop relationships with others. This goes well for some, and badly for others, and life starts getting more complicated with things like love, adultery, breaking up, revenge, jealousy, child rearing, and abortion all brought up. Joe’s original plan has a comical end, but in the end he’s just a self centered jerk. The final act has them dealing with far reaching problems that deal with society as a whole, and, finally, death. Joe’s plans are no longer funny, but are disturbing and evil. It’s sort of hard to believe he is the same character, but the growth (of the play, not Joe’s character necessarily) felt natural to me, and I followed it easily from beginning to end, without any terrible Mood Whiplash. You did a good job of providing both light hearted and serious moments (I smirked at John’s comment about the red shirt under his blue coat. That made me like his character.) but not letting the one detract from the other.

The obvious analogies you use to build your setting, combined with the clear characterization, gives the whole play a very allegorical feel. It’s hard not to read certain interactions between the characters and think ‘Oh, now he’s talking about this.’ It was interesting that some scenarios seemed like they had very direct real world analogies (For example, the tension between Gene and Emma about who would care for Erin seemed pretty obviously a mirror of child custody disputes) while others seemed similar in a general sense, but didn’t have any direct real world parallels in my mind (For example, lots of the aspects of Joe’s cult. Other than the Heaven/Hell parts, they’re just vaguely similar to some practices I’ve heard of, but the correspondence isn’t nearly as one-to-one as all the relationship stuff from act 2). The divide seems mostly between Act 2 and 3, it created this interesting mixture of situations that seemed familiar and everyday, and stuff that seemed large and scary. The result is that the play seems crafted to make you look for parallels which are, in some places, pretty apparent, and in others sort of vague and perhaps not really there at all.

The biggest question of course is the nature of the setting itself. Is there some sort of parallel you’re trying to draw? Because the play lends itself to looking for one. In reading it, I could find evidence that they were either a.) In the Real World (It’s got sex, it’s got death, it’s got everything! But the focus on the ‘world before’ seems conspicuously out of place) or b.) In some sort of purgatory (the mention of familiar real world stuff like the Sun and animals, etc, in the ‘world before’ supports this theory, but the invitations bit is confusing. Perhaps John and Carrie really are just crazy) or c.) they’re all fictional characters in a play. Only the ‘crazy’ ones can see the audience, the others are professional actors and so ignore them. Or maybe there’s no answer and I should just enjoy the damn play.

Style: Not much to say here. I found your dialogue flowed very nicely when it was read. I’d have to see it performed to see if it translated as well.

Random Critiques & Comments:

I’m not sure what your intent was, but the allegorical feel of the work makes some scenes feel like they’re meant to pass along a sort of message or moral about the particular situations they depict. Gene and Emma’s dispute about Erin, for example, could be seen as not just a depiction of, but a commentary on, the fairness of child custody laws. Again, not sure if that's intended, but thought you should know it’s there if you didn't already.

One detail that bugged me was part of Joe’s cult ‘Call and Response’ session: the part where he says ‘We are the parents, the husbands, and the predators!’ and the congregation responds ‘We are the children, the wives, and the prey’. The inclusion of ‘Prey’ kind of bugged me. I mean, I don’t think you were trying to be subtle about Joe’s vileness, but flat out calling his followers ‘Prey’ seemed too blatant, even for him. Children and wives are ostensibly cared for by parents and husbands prey not so much by predators. It just seemed a touch too Anvilicious to me.

One moment I didn’t have any emotional reaction to was Erin siding with Joe toward the end. It just didn’t strike me as real the way the other characters actions did, partially because she got no development. I think it’s important that you showed some people have sided with Joe, but it didn’t really have the impact as other scenes.

The ending felt somewhat anti-climactic. The allegorical feel I mentioned before made it seem that Gene was delivering a moral to the audience before dying and it felt… kind of tacked on honestly. A bit too pat. I wonder if some dialogue between him and Emma before he dies, some sort of reconciliation, with a bit of arguing, some debate, etc, might not have been more satisfying. That way both of the older survivors get an equal voice in the final lines. Just a thought.

The divide between what characters know and don’t know doesn’t always seem consistent. So, they can reference Seppuku and miracles, but not know what bridges are? I got the feeling the disconnect was intentional, but it’s the sort of thing some readers will pick apart.

Questions at the end: so the first time Joe is called is a genuine mistake? That was my interpretation. Also, his final death seems to be natural, as opposed to as a result of someone writing his name. (Did I read that part correctly?)

There were a few relationships I didn’t feel were very deeply explored. Kit and Harry, for example, should have an interesting dynamic, but it doesn’t get much time. Also, the male characters seem to get more focus then the female ones (however there are more females, so it tends to balance out). Why don’t we see Emma and Carrie form an alliance and steal the pink papers away? Of course the play is long enough as is, but these were things I was thinking as I finished the play.

Oh and, again, put poor Kit in the cast list!

All in all though, this was a very effective piece of writing. You made me feel things, and even though it was long I had no problem reading it from beginning to end.

edited 4th Aug '13 8:26:12 PM by LittleBillyHaggardy

Okay, I really don't have time to do a detailed response to your critique tonight, (thanks for doing it anyways, though; I certainly will respond to it in full) but... damn, yikes, did I really manage to leave Kit off of the cast list somehow? One quick look at my document says that I did. I swear I didn't mean to; now I just feel retarded. Have promptly added her, with an overly-succinct description in keeping with the others:

Kit – A denied, traumatized student.

Hey, don't beat yourself up. We all make mistakes. (though, out of all the characters to forget, Kit was probably the cruelest)

I dont have much to add to what Little Billy just said. Like I said, meta fiction isnt my thing.

DA Student, the sheer number of social issues and human problems that you include within your play is truly staggering. This almost amounts to a commentary on all of life. They way you depict them stripped down to the basics is an engaging approach- anyone could insert themselves into your play, it could be compared to anyplace or anywhen.

The third act seems disconnected from the rest of the play to me. I think there may be two reasons for this:

1) The direction the third act takes violates my expectations. I was looking forward to your treatment of old age and mortality; what I got was a character study in sociopathy.

2) Joe as a character isnt strong enough to carry the play. His turn toward darkness seems to come out of nowhere. He was a jerk in the beginning, sure, but there was no hint of a fundamental inability to feel other people. I think the play might benefit if there were some disturbing hints in the beginning of what is to come. So that, when Joe returns from the dead, the audience goes "that makes sense". So, I guess I'm saying he needs more characterization toward the beginning. (Maybe he needs to say some of the stuff he ends up saying just before his death "I am the only person who exists" or something).

So- this is a great play which needs a little more work to hang together as a coherent work. Thank you so much for sharing this with us.