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Coombsy17

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A member registered 98 days ago · View creator page →

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Because you provided such comprehensive feedback to me, I'm going to attempt to give mine!

I'm genuinely sad I didn't get the chance to rate this in the allotted time, you deserve a much higher position. But I really enjoyed it overall. I'm always down for some havoc/chaos shenanigans. 

I have a few points where I think your work needed a bit of improvement: 

1) My main gripe isn't so much the technical side of it - as it's really good - it's more the broader story you're telling. In short, you're telling us too much. It's only up to 1000 words, it's important to tell a story that can fit within this limit (I struggle with this too). As you mentioned in a comment here, you struggled with the word count, and it does show. You're telling too big a story for the word limit (I'd love to see an expanded story of this, I love Blythe). In a lot of ways to my mind, you've spent a little too much time explaining the situation.  

You'd probably still be able to tell the same story, with room to spare if you let the readers gleam from context with what's happening. You did alleviate this with the usage of breaks as they did help with the flow.

2) Speaking of the breaks, and while I liked them the second one was a bit wonky. To my mind we didn't need to know it was fifteen minutes later exactly, you already established the breaks are time jumps and I know they had half an hour until LZ pickup, but I still think the fifteen minutes was a redundant statement. 

3) Onto redundancies, and odd phrases, which is my last point. Throughout the story, you have a few spots where you needed to just go through it again and tidy it up a bit. 

You have really wonderful imagery in some points, like; "Grass and undergrowth burned away in small fires here and there. The air stank of oil and burnt flesh," really poetic and beautifully descriptive in a gross kind of way. 

But then you have some odd choices, for instance; "Five of them, apparently elves, had teleported in," why say apparently? Seems a bit redundant. You could probably describe the elves that are coming in a bit more naturally. "Five of them stepped through a crackling portal that had materialised ahead of their lander. Elves. Surprisingly heavy..." Not saying what I wrote here is that great, but by removing the apparently, the reader is a bit more sure of what's happening. 

Another one I can find right now is: "A line of purple fire slowly sliced down through the air in front of him, between the lander and his men." I actually like this bit, but it could just use a bit of work to really sell the awesome sight of the warp opening infront of him. Personally I'd say remove "in front of him" as the reader can already see that happening when you say between the lander and his men. 

4) One final point, and that's still about odd phrasing, is the "Creepy stuff" line. I know it's his internal thoughts, but saying something in creepy, looses the creepiness. It could work if you were writing a satire, with more humour, but here it doesn't fit. You could say something like "I need to get out" whilst formulaic, it doesn't sound as cheesy. 


All in all though, I actually really enjoyed this story. My critiques were very specific, and more related to stylistic choices than anything and that's heavily subjective. I loved the ending with the Havoc marines, talk about something not going according to plan, what a sight. 

There's a larger story in here, that I hope you don't abandon, give it another 4000 words or so, and you'd have a brilliant short story. The opening segment I absolutely loved. It was like I ripped a page out of Aaron Dembski-Bowden's books, it read so bloody well.

A really great read, I look forward to seeing you in the next writing Jam, and I'll make sure to get to your story before the deadline this time!

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

Yeah it’s interesting what we consider fodder for the trash with such a small word count, right? Using just the essentials to me really establishes a writers voice, and yours is wonderful. 

It’s been a lot of fun, right? From the writing, right up to the critiquing of others work, been a real blast. Hope to see you on the next Writing Jam! 

Ha, what a fun story. Witty, and tragic. Truly the best combo. Who would have known you could bring so much life and vigour to a bunch of lizards. Loved the names too!

I can only echo what everyone else is saying, what a great piece! 5 stars from me. It's really easy to read, engaging, and there's a lot of soul and emotion to the characters. Officer Bernhardt was a standout to me, authoritative and self aware. Really wonderfully done. 

Straight into the action, really great! I love a good bombastic Orc story, and what a way to end it. I wasn't actually expecting the ending. This is probably my favourite story. Along with the clean prose, snappy dialogue and wonderful scene setting there's a hint of subtle humour in there that elevates the story for me. It made me think of Sandy Mitchell in a lot of ways, bloody great work!  

Great! I love the characterisation, between the two characters. The fact he had trouble with 'postulated' made him more human and relatable.  Usually I would ask for dialogue tags, but you're able to illustrate easy enough who was speaking, so well done with that! Really cool way to tell a story, almost entirely through the dialogue, and you can even see the scene playing out without the use of descriptors. 

Hey a Prime Brothers story, I was excited to read one of these, and you didn't disappoint! 

This was a great story, your prose is clean, neat, and easy to follow. I think there's some wonderful imagery in there, I loved: "It gestured with a metal claw," ... "the rafters echoed with the thunder of their steps." Wonderful stuff.

The only issue I would say I had was keeping track of who was talking. Perhaps that was the point, but for some reason I was lost a bit and needed to do a few double takes. The dialogue itself is really well written, I think it just needed a few more dialogue tags is all. 

Great work, and wonderful read. 

Don't beat yourself up too much, it's not that bad and is still easy enough to read through! I guarantee my work has a lot more grammatical errors than yours. It was a great little story, and you had a snappy prose that kept up the pace. Great work!

Oh yeah, using this as an opening to an tabletop rpg, would be fantastic! And yes, it was like I was privileged to some documents that shouldn't have been in my plebian hands.

Tone and style are easy to miss and definitely come with just writing more. I find reading what you wrote aloud is not only a good way to catch mistakes but also helps in ensuring characters use their correct voices (if that makes sense). 

Yeah, it's a good use of images, may as well utilise that! 

Admittedly no, I didn't catch the history reference, but now I know, I love that. Drawing from history is always great, so many useful ideas to utilise too. pPrhaps if I listened more in class I would have picked it up, though I'm more familiar with English and Australian history being an Aussie. My knowledge past France in Europe quickly depletes, to my own sadness. 

I've played one game of Grimdark Future, but I'm really familiar with "Warhammer 40k" (which GDF draws a lot of inspo from, having a lot of the same factions in it) so that I used that as a baseline, and I'm sure "Apocalypse World" is another good one to help with. 

 

Oof I like this one. All I can really say is that it was a great action packed one. The dialogue was great, and felt natural and flowing, plus you had some great lines of prose in there. 

Speaking of lines, I love the ones that just hit hard, and none hit harder than: " A horrific beauty left in its wake, a statue of earth and steel." Far out, what a line. Metaphors like that really tell the reader what's happening, both in the literal sense and in how the characters are feeling at this time. Fantastic!

Ha great! What a turn of events in the last moment. I really enjoyed the build up to the confrontation at the end, mustering men to take down the vampires. 
It was like a page from some history book, once lost to time.
Good work!

To echo Last Omnitech's comment, it was great to read some space elves, they never get enough love! It kind of leaves you wanting more (in the best way), could be expanded into a longer story, or a series of stories. 

Because you did such a great job critiquing my work I thought I'd return the favour to you.

I love a good inquisition story, and this one was great too! What a great Idea setting it up like a discourse through a futuristic email. Gave me feelings of playing a video game when you'd read the logs, to give flavour to the lore. Each "email" (vox letter? I dunno) had their distinct voice, which was great. 

I will say tonally there was an odd shift in that second email from Inquisitor Tomas, he doesn't quite sound like what I'd think an inquisitor would. "It was fun to fight the Jackals," for instance caught me off guard a touch. I would have assumed he'd be more austere, and even if he did have fun, would he admit that? Just seemed like an easy going inquisitor, and perhaps he is!

Otherwise, besides a few line editing issues (missing a capital here and there) I think it was a really wonderful read. I got drawn into the world and honestly felt like I was some lowly scum reading something I shouldn't have. Love it!

Honestly I needed a shower myself!

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!  

(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! 

Fun little story, has some cool ideas in there too. I will say it could have done with some paragraphs to break it up a bit. It's kind of just a bit block of text. Great job though!