The Constructive Criticism Thread

OK, that makes sense.

There are actually three character goals:

• To become established as a businesswoman.
• Finding love (currently she may like Kara in canon and it seems mutual, I've started to plan, but this could change, but Maddie never self-identifies as lesbian, to her, "my sexuality is none of your business, and Kara, similarly, doesn't identify as lesbian, but perhaps may just be a case of If It's You, It's Okay)" and for Maddie, being called a lesbian would be a Berserk Button, albeit downplayed.
• To see parts of the UK she hasn't seen yet.

and smaller goals:

• To be accepted in an industry that's otherwise male (she owns a car dealership, but doesn't actually run the day-to-day).

She already has one goal - having friends, being accepted in London.

So far, I've just concentrated on the first and third of the bullet points.

Edited by Merseyuser1 on Jun 26th 2021 at 9:38:19 AM

So what prevents Maddie from simply accomplishing all three goals?

To be honest, I'm still working that out; also, possible racism as an antagonist too.

I've not yet figured out how to get her love life sorted either.

Honestly, feels like you're not yet in the stage where you show your work to other people. A good rule of thumb is that you don't show your story to others until you're at the point where you feel you don't have any things that you already feel need fixing. Why ask them for what needs to be fixed when you already have stuff you're busy with? But here's some feedback anyway:

• So far I'm 9 pages in and there's no indication that the story is about time travel, or that there are any science-fiction elements in it.
• The prose is a bit sloppy. You use semicolons where it's grammatically wrong, and use commas where full stops would be better, and make mistakes like "she was also its social media manager too" or "back in time for Amazon Prime to watch something good". (Amazon Prime's going to watch something good?)
• Dilbert's father didn't just live in an All-U-Can-Eat buffet in the cartoon. He also did that in the comic strip.
• You keep meandering into things that seem unrelated. You spend a paragraph describing an Amazon drama that seems to have no real connection to the plot.
• "However, there was one thing on her mind and she couldn’t shake it off; picking up the brand new unused pastry-maker from Hertfordshire that she’d won the bid on eBay for and delivering it to her friend Ellie’s new Italian takeaway shop in Sheffield that was opening, Ellie needed it within the next few days." There's no reason for this sentence to be over 50 words long. There's no need to try to cram all the relevant info into one sentence.
• Also, the flashback into her teen years seems gratuitous. It feels like it doesn't advance the plot any. The novel is about her current self, right? So does it really matter what she was like as a teen, many years before? It feels like those parts are there because you want to provide some characterization that her current self doesn't show. That in itself is a bad sign. Her characterization should come from her actual actions and thoughts at the current moment. Having her yell at a guy when she was a teen doesn't mean she's still like that, so it doesn't do much to tell us about the version of her that the story's about.

Edited by MichaelKatsuro on Jun 29th 2021 at 8:41:11 AM

OK, so I agree that you need to do more work on your characterization before you start the actual writing process. In a story like this, the central conflict is inside the character—there may be other minor challenges happening in their lives which either foreshadow or symbolize the conflict within, but in order for the character to accomplish their goals it must be necessary for them to overcome one or more personality flaws first. So for this to work out, you need the following elements:

1) A character template that includes her goals, the things she needs to be happy.

Note: In many stories, the character is wrong about what they think they need to be happy (for example—they want professional success, but they need is love). In this case the primary barrier to overcome is the character realizing what it is that they really need. I note that you have both of these listed. You should consider setting them against each other, as in she has to choose between a short term opportunity for career success against a long term opportunity to hook up with someone who would be very appropriate for her.

2) The flaws in her character which prevent her from achieving the goals—because if she had no such flaws, she would simply achieve her goals right away and the story would be over. These are the things that she will have to acknowledge and address before she can become happy by the story's end.

Note: To be compelling and engaging, stories need to be about a conflict that is both dramatic and relatable. Fighting off an alien invasion is dramatic (and due to our history of war, sadly relatable). Finding your true love, and fighting for them, is another one. A story that consists of nothing more than a series of minor, unfortunate events (2), while relatable, are unlikely to be dramatic. The stakes have to be high for the protagonist in order to excite reader engagement. If the character does not succeed in overcoming her internal flaws, she is doomed to remain very unhappy for the foreseeable future. Your task as a writer is to create a situation in which this is obvious to the reader.

Note(2): Despite it's title, "A series of unfortunate events" is actually about a villain's attempt to assassinate a family of orphans. Dramatic!

This type of character development is called internal. It focuses not on external confrontations or dangers, but on the thoughts, beliefs and feelings of the character, and how they change over time. In other words, her trip to deliver the item is just a symbolic representation of her internal journey.

This has implications for the story plot outline: in the beginning, you will want to focus on her feelings of discomfort, unhappiness, and lack of fulfillment (ie, there is something missing in her life, although she may not realize this yet). Then, toward the middle of the story, all her attempts to make herself more satisfied must backfire in the most dramatic manner you can contrive. Her negative feelings just got a whole lot worse, and her situation may even seem hopeless and doomed. At some point in the latter half of the story, she will realize that she herself is the cause of this. This realization leads directly to the last third of the story, where she finally overcomes her internal flaws and achieves the thing that she really needs.

The movie "As Good As It Gets" (Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt) is an excellent example of all this.

So my advice is to go start over (sorry!) and complete a character template for your protagonist focusing on the internal side of the development. Here's a good overall explanation, here's another. Note: despite the fact that you are focusing on internal development, your protag must develop externally to some extent as well (or else no action at all would take place).

Good luck!

Edited by DeMarquis on Jun 30th 2021 at 11:53:05 AM

One thing I'm particularly curious about is how all of these conflict threads connect to each other. How does the time travel relate to her desire to be a business woman, and how does that subplot connect to the delivery plot, and what does all of it have to do with the romance-finding?

It sounds like what you have here is a lot of loosely-connected ideas that aren't translating into a proper plot. It's like the difference between having a house, and some unconnected walls sitting a few feet away from each other with a roof slapped on top. Sure, it might be able to function as a house, but it's unstable and can collapse if someone gives it a push. You want your plot to be solid and comprehensible, and even if you're going vignette style, there needs to be some overarching theme or point that runs in the background.

If you can't figure out a way to build upon these ideas and make them connect properly, perhaps it'd be better to just find the most solid plot thread of the lot and focus on that.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 30th 2021 at 12:55:16 PM

Is Merseyuser 1's turn finished already? It's been roughly two weeks since the last post, and we're going to move on to One Young Hero by Jacksonk 987.

Moving on seems good. Mersey's post was linked about a month ago anyway.

EDIT: So do we just get started with the critiquing, or...

Edited by MichaelKatsuro on Jul 18th 2021 at 5:33:07 AM

I'll attempt to ping ~Jacksonk 987 to go to this thread for a critique.

Well, their writing is available HERE on their Tumblr blog.

EDIT: I've already started working on my critique. Should be done in one week at the very latest. (That doesn't mean it'll be super-long; it just means that I've got books to read and food to cook.)

Edited by MichaelKatsuro on Jul 18th 2021 at 6:51:46 AM

Well, I'm still working on Chapter 3, but I'm a major procrastinator, so it might take me a while.

Also, the story is on my Fanfiction.net account (my author name is AstralCat69420).

Do you want me to wait until Chapter 3 is done? Because I can do that if you like. No sweat.

Well, you can just start it now, and when Chapter 3 is published, you can also review that. I'm working on it now. Pretty close to ready.

The plot is a bit rushed. For instance, Arcanine immediately suggests that Riolu live with him and Growlithe without exchanging a word with Riolu first. That’s very, very quick. Reading, I felt that you weren’t interested in the scene and wanted it to be over as soon as possible so you could move on to the restaurant scene. That’s an important rule to remember: If you spend more time describing the characters ordering food than you do Riolu getting adopted, it tells me, the reader, that Riolu being adopted by Arcanine doesn’t really matter; what really does matter is what kind of food everyone ordered. And I’m not saying you should spend less time with the restaurant scene, which I found entertaining.

Just... Let things happen at a natural pace, you know? Let the story be a story, and not a summary of one.

Also, Arcanine’s motivation isn’t really clear. It feels like he adopts Riolu just because the plot needs him to. (Not sure if it counts as an actual adoption, but it’s close enough.)

There’s no description of what any of the locations look like. Now, I’m a guy who dislikes too large chunks of description—I don’t need to know every detail of a room that the characters enter. But I do need to know if the room is in a mansion or a hovel. When Riolu enters the house where Arcanine lives and sees his new home for the first time, it helps if we know what, exactly, it is he sees.

The beginning of the first chapter is a bit info-dumpy. You start out with an action sequence where a bunch of kids are being chased by a Farfetch’d. So far, so good—as a reader, I’m thinking Interesting; let’s see where this goes. And then, almost right away, you stop that action sequence to explain who the characters are and what they’re like.

It would be much better to sort of bake all this exposition into the plot. For instance, Machop’s obsessed with getting strong, right? So why not mention that fact at the same time as he does something related to getting strong? (That’s one of the hazards of exposition chunks—it’s easy to forget to have the characters act according to the exposition.)

You use unusual dialogue tags a bit much. A lot of new writers are terrified of the word "said," and instead they use every other dialogue tag that they can think of. A good rule of thumb is this: If it’s clear who’s speaking, then don’t use a dialogue tag. If it’s not clear, use "said". If another dialogue tag gives us information that’s not clear from context, then by all means use it. But don't use variation among the dialogue tags just for the heck of it. And avoid stuff like “I command you to release me right now,” she ordered. We know it’s an order.

Take this for instance: "I’m all ears, Growlithe," Arcanine told his grandson. We already know it’s Arcanine speaking, and the mention of “Growlithe” makes it clear that he’s talking to Growlithe. You can just skip the dialogue tag.

Or this: “That’s our new pal, Riolu!” Torchic screeched. A simple “yelled” would work better. “Screeched” seems like it was chosen more for variation than for being the most suitable word.

Or this: “Oh, uh, hi. I’m Axew. What’s your name?” Axew stammered. He’s not stammering. The dialogue isn’t written with a stammer. And another thing about this line: Axew mentions that he’s an Axew. So he doesn’t expect a Riolu to know what an Axew is called. Why is that? Or is it that he’s just making it clear that he’s just named Axew, like his Pokémon species, and has no other personal name?

In Chapter 2, Machop is completely absent from the story, apart from one sentence. I get the impression that you forgot he’s there. That’s a common mistake that writers make: Failing to remember every character who’s present in a scene.

Edited by MichaelKatsuro on Jul 18th 2021 at 11:10:59 AM

Chapter 3's up now.

And here's the Fanfiction.net version of the story.

~Michael Katsuro: The third chapter of jacksonk987 is up. It's time to critique it.

I'll post my critique in a week at most.

CHAPTER 3:

You've added a welcome sense of urgency to the story. That’s good. It’s an adventure story, after all, and one thing that’s necessary for an adventure story is the basic principle There’s a problem that needs solving, and it needs solving right away. Imagine The Lord of the Rings if Frodo hadn’t bothered doing anything about the One Ring for a decade or two. (Granted, that’s what Bildo did before the book began, but still...)

Another thing I really like is that there are two groups that might fit the prophecy. Usually, stories just ask “Is he the chosen one or isn’t he”? The idea that there are several options, and we the readers don’t know which one’s going to turn out to be the right option, is a nice twist.

You don’t need to repeat the term “Chesto Berry Juice” every time. After the first time, it’s okay just to say “juice”.

The teacher uses the word camaraderie as if it means “group of friends,” but it actually means approximately “spririt of friendship”. Also, it feels off when Axeq says the teacher used “lots of big words,” since none of the other words were very tricky ones. You might want to insert more ten-dollar words.

On a related note, “Cease from carrying out your plans” is bad grammar. It’s supposed to be “Refrain from”.

Vulpix psychically lifting Growlithe and smashing him against the wall seems a bit out of nowhere, even as a gag. It’d be fine to have Vulpix react that way if Growlithe’d had done something genuinely hurtful or super klutzy, like crash into somebody or ruin a painting somebody had just finished or something like that, but as things stand it seems like she needs some more motivation.

I’m not sure why anybody would know what an “Agumon” is. Sure, I’ve watched Digimon, but I live in the non-Pokémon world. For this joke to work, you need to make it clear, in advance, what Agumon is to these characters. Do they watch Digimon on TV too? Or do they have the trading cards? (You can compare it to if Princess Leia were to compare Han Solo to Mickey Mouse.)

You’re over-using the phrasing “Just then”.

I’m not sure what Charmander means when saying “Apparently I’m Charmander”. Did somebody tell him that Charmander’s his name? Or is it something else?

You’re introducing the name “the Leafdew Town Six” for your main characters. Not a bad name, if you ask me, but a few details need clarifying. Is this a name that they call themselves, or maybe somebody else in the story? If so, did they use to be the Leafdew Town Five?

“...utterly embarrassed by Sceptile slicing off his spines” is redundant. We already know how Sandslash feels from the spoken dialogue.

Edited by MichaelKatsuro on Jul 25th 2021 at 4:00:21 AM

So, is it time to move on to the next on queue?

Uh, I think you missed the Shout-Out to This Bites! there. (The scene being referenced in question is where Coby gets mistaken for Natsu Dragneel. More information in BeyondTheImpossible.Fan Works.)

Yeah, I missed that, because I've never read This Bites! But the thing is, a fair amount of other readers won't have read it either. So the reference to Agumon is just going to feel off to those readers. It's one thing to have a Shout-Out that makes sense in context, like having a character make an offer somebody can't refuse, but this one isn't like that.

Also, from what I can tell, This Bites! has the kind of feel where you can do that sort of thing. It mentions an iPhone in the very first chapter, and is specifically about somebody from a different world coming into the One Piece world. And in the scene you mention, a character says "Right genre, wrong universe," so it's a clear case of Breaking the Fourth Wall. It's made clear to us, the readers, that Natsu Dragneel isn't a character in this story.

But in your story, there's no indicator like that, so it's hard to get a grasp on what's going on with the "Agumon" thing. In every other instance, the universe is internally consistent and nobody references pop culture from the real world, so it's confusing. It'd be great if he'd said something like "You're an Agumon? Like in that TV cartoon!" or something.

(And like I said, Vulpix's reaction seems a bit too much. One hit would be enough.)

I have to ask: Is Tropers/jacksonk987's turn finished? Can we move on to the next work on queue?

Cool it, friend, don't pressure Jackson. The rules say his turn doesn't end until 5 people have critiqued or he gives the go-ahead.

Sorry, it's just that it's a very long wait for my work to be critiqued.

We probably wont get to 5. But give me day or two and I'll try to add a 3rd, then we can move on.