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A jam submission

Scraps of SanityView project page

Submitted by Coombsy17 — 8 hours, 31 minutes before the deadline
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Play book

Scraps of Sanity's itch.io page

Results

CriteriaRankScore*Raw Score
Concepts & Originality#104.0454.045
Overall#123.7423.742
Adherence to Theme#153.5453.545
Flow & Clarity#183.6363.636

Ranked from 22 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.

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Comments

Submitted(+1)

Since you asked for stuff to improve on in the Discord, the only thing I really have for you is to pay attention to your usage of dialogue tags/speaker attributions. 

As a note, all the suggestions in this comment are meant as examples how to get dialogue in line with how dialogue tags work. Like Buggritt pointed out in another comment, feedback for stories isn't supposed to be about changing what was written for the sake of it, but since dialogue tags are a technical aspect of writing, examples can be helpful.

Also just to clarify, dialogue tags are basically the part that connects speech to speaker, and that's about all it's supposed to do. As examples:

#"Such a nice house you have there," he said. The 'he said' is the dialogue tag or speaker attribution.

There are also beats, or dialogue beats, to use an action to indicate who is talking.

#"Such a nice house you have there." Thomas lit his cigar. "A shame we have to burn it all."

'Thomas lit his cigar.' is the beat. If you have to make it clear who is talking but you feel like you've used "he/she said" too often, you use a beat. Bonus points if th action you're using for the beat helps characterize the speaker.

In your short, you have tags like:

#"Private Jonan," Ferrin breathed in,
#"Said he saw somethin'," he sucked his lip,

The dialogue tag (if it's not "said") describes the character's speech, so what you're doing here (due to using a comma instead of a period) is basically saying that Ferrin breathed in while saying it. That Jonan sucked his lip while talking. Both of these are possible, but probably not what you meant? Especially talking while sucking your lip can be pretty awkward to actually do, and just making them beats works fine. (Maybe it's also perfectly doable to talk while sucking on your lip and having a cigar in your mouth and I'm just not built for it, also a possibility.)

#"Private Jonan." Ferrin took a breath in. The tip of his cigar glowed red. (Note: if you actually turned it into a beat, you'd probably just say something about him smoking.)
#"Said he saw somethin'." He sucked his lip.

You also sometimes use "Ferrin continued" or "he piped". Just be aware that "said" is very unobtrusive and such an integral part of writing/reading that most readers don't notice it, almost as if it's part of punctuation. Unless it's used every second line, using "said" is perfectly fine, and usually exempt from repetition and less obvious to the reader than using alternatives like "continued", "remarked" or "piped". "Asked" is the other unobtrusive tag that you just use for a question, and, depending on who you ask, "yelled" and "whispered" also count, just because they're very basic. There is an argument that an exclamation mark and the content of the dialogue should be enough to indicate yelling/someone being audibly outraged, but that's beyond this comment.

Back to your short we also have these two examples:

#"I see it in you," Jonan's voice was soft.
#"Do what you will," I flicked a hand.

These two just don't work, because none of these are speech related actions. The first example would work like this:

#"I see it in you." Jonan's voice was soft.
Sounds a bit weird, so maybe something like this:
#"I see it." Jonan's voice was soft. "I see it in you."
or maybe as a dialogue tag:
#"I see it in you," Jonan said softly.

It's not great writing, some people will argue, because using too many adverbs is often endemic of weak writing, but sometimes, especially in the constraint of a 1k short story, that can't be helped.

The second sentence would work better if turned into a beat and put in front of the dialogue.

#I flicked a hand. "Do what you will."

The dismissive gesture almost micro-foreshadows what his dialogue will mean, which is something neat that beats can sometimes do for you, like creating a tiny bit of buildup for a moment.

What you've already done really well was just skipping dialogue tags when it's not necessary. Readers are usually perfectly capable of following a two-way conversation across paragraphs if occasionally reminded by beats or a dialogue tag, and you did a good job of judging when you can just not have a tag at all.

I'll be honest with you. Did any of the examples I listed here cost you rating in the writing jam? I doubt it. Will following any of the advice I gave here improve your rating for the next time? Again, unlikely. This is very technical stuff a lot of people don't notice or care about, especially in a 1k short story submission to a writing jam, but if you want to improve your writing then this is an easy place to start because it's learnable, unlike some other things that are part of writing.

In terms of your story's ratings, Flow & Clarity was your weakest point according to the stats. In my opinion, both were very good. The only reason why I can see you losing points here would be that parts of the story are vague. I know that's by design, and there are enough hints that give you a good idea what's going on, but vagueness, even by design, sometimes doesn't sell well. 

There were also a couple of instances where a comma should've been a period which made me trip up reading once or twice, and some paragraphs that should've been joined, but that's very minor stuff.

In general, I liked how we were introduced to the fact that something was wrong or would be wrong with the point of view character. From the very first line mentioning his eyes we knew something wasn't quite right with him, and I was questioning throughout how much our general actually knew/to what degree he was a willing participant of his situation or not, or if the situation would "wake him" somehow or infect him otherwise. It was a good read, and a short I could easily see as a little snippet in an army book for example.

Good job, and I'm looking forward to your story in the next writing jam!

Developer

Wow, Panda, this was excellent and exactly what I needed.

I really appreciate the dialogue tags and beat explanation. It’s always been something I know I need to improve on, and try my hardest to make it both flow and feel stylistic, if that makes sense? I almost always take issue when I’m reading tags and they’re really odd ones, where a basic said or asked could have worked instead. I feel I did exactly that, and perhaps overdid it. I think whilst writing I want the characters to kind of feel dynamic, and have some kind of weight behind what they’re saying.

Another point you briefly mentioned were exclamation points, for some reason I dislike looking at them in prose, especially when they’re overused. Some authors are very liberal with exclamation points and can feel cheap/be unnecessary. Not sure if there is any merit to what I’m saying with that and perhaps I need to reevaluate myself with that. Maybe I need to think about utilising them better. (I know i used a few in this comment, love them for social media related stuff. It’s a paradox.)

As for commas and full stops (Periods. I’m an Aussie, sorry 😅) will be the death of me, I swear. I need to both go back and properly line edit and take my own advice and read it aloud to myself to see find those awkward phrases. 

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement too! Yeah, I kind of knew the vagueness wouldn’t gel well with everyone, but I’m perfectly fine with that. Wasn’t here to win it, but saw it as an opportunity to have people assess my writing, and to have a little fun of course.

For my story overall though, I think the ending didn’t land the way I wanted it to and does make the story as a whole fall flat a touch. It needs a few more reworks, but it is what it is and I am pretty happy overall. I scored higher than I thought I would.

Honestly, as someone who aspires to write, with too many books in the oven, this was amazing, Panda. I can’t thank you enough. I will definitely be participating in the next writing jam, it’s too much fun not too. Your critique has been some of the best I’ve received, ever, and I appreciate that. I write a lot in my free time and will be practicing with those dialogue tags and beats, and hopefully my submission in the next writing jam will be an improvement over this.

I’m afraid I didn’t get to read your work, I got to 24 rating but moving home got in the way. I will be reading through yours now though. I probably can’t provide as detailed a critique as you were able to, but I’d love to read yours nonetheless!

Thanks again,

Sam

Submitted(+2)

Felt that swampy atmosphere so hard that I need a shower. Reached out and grabbed me this one did, something did anyway.....

I suddenly have stuff to do...

Gotta reach out.,...

Developer(+1)

Honestly I needed a shower myself!

(1 edit) (+2)

Meaningfull moodboard, effective expressions (- even too much, for me as not native in English it was a little bit harder to read).

"We both looked at the corpse again. Alabain was still surprised to be staring at the ceiling. I needed to rub my own." - own what? 

"The canopy shadowing the military camp in darkness." - WAS shadowing.

"Captain Ferrin stepped out of the tent, dropped his cigar and stamped under his boot. " - by his boots? (WTH?)

"pen pusher" - I think it is not the propper term - it is "papers pusher", because especially ink pen is not to be majorly pushed, but rather pulled if you can catch my drift.

"Looking to Ferrin, something reached between us. We nodded in unison." - "something joined us" or so would be better, right?

Excuse me, but although I read teh finish thrice, I am not sure what exactly happend in that time. I am not about to making an another quote, I am afraid that even just the above were too close to spoilers.


Concept+Originality 4 / 5 (I was chasing the concept meaning, but it was too fast), Flow+Clarity 3/5 (not easy to read), Theme 5/5 (It surely was not the plan  plus I did not see that coming - and I am even not sure what exactly came).


Because of too much work, I was not able to submit in time, but feel free to read, rate (out of the jam) and comment my first attempt of the task fromsuch a  jam: Mysteries are not dead! by Ormrin Sinkalte Ged - Sparrowhawk (itch.io).

Submitted

I have to admit that I didn't get tripped up by the same things. It flowed really nicely and I grasped the presented concepts with relative ease.

"Rub my own" I picked up it was his eyes with no issue.

"Stamped under his boot" yeah, dude stamped down and squashed the cigar under his boot. No problems there.

"Pen pusher" definitely have heard this before, googled to check and it's established slang. Interchangeable with paper pusher, it tends to be someone who does the writing rather than something like data entry, filing or reviewing.

"Something reached between us." Reached, I believe, was used to link back to Private Jonan's words "something reached out to me". Made sense, made me damn suspicious.

Generally when giving feedback you want to avoid suggesting how you would write something. Personal preference is very subjective and each writer has their own style.

Developer(+1)

Thanks for your kind response! I'm glad it was easy enough for you to follow. Also seems like you enjoyed it, at least I hope so!  

Submitted(+1)

Definitely enjoyed it :) it was subtle but you could follow what was happening. I liked that

(1 edit) (+2)

Therefore I asked so much (inclding using question marks). Anyway, I am not sure what exactly happened at the end (else I woud rate it 5/5). But I liked the tension and suspicion that something is really not going as planed (so I rated it high). I learned the stuff you pointed out as OK, thank you for enhancing English of me.

Developer (1 edit)

Hey thanks for the time in reading my story, and for your wonderful feedback! Yeah you're totally right, I kind of rushed through the story in a blind frenzy, so a lot fell through the gaps. (Rubs his own what? Yes, exactly that was my bad, I should have clarified eyes better here) 

I'll give your story a read now too, and try articulate my opinions on it! 

Submitted(+1)

Really nice prose to this one.  Quick and vivid descriptions that fit the setting nicely.

Submitted(+1)

I loved the subtlety of the theme. The slow build up was great with the little details and foreshadow finishing with a beautiful ending.