First of all, ouch. I was lambasted in this contest and it really caught me off guard. I REALLY thought I was going to do better than I did. I didn't think I was going to beat Usoki, but I thought my story was top 3 material. Well, goes to show you that overconfidence is clearly my weakness. With all that said, I don't think I got shortchanged. I haven't written fiction seriously in probably 4 years.
What entering this contest did do for me though, is help me realize some mistakes and issues I have in my writing style (The category that was bashed the most). I do however feel alot of you reading the story didn't quite "get it". This story was a kooky sort of parody of Star Trek. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously. It was meant to be ridiculous and have the reader choose how he or she wanted the story to progress. You can be a nice guy or a crazy bastard; that was my vision I guess.
But I digress; I can explain more by the ratings themselves.
This story was originally meant to have alot of other users contributing to it. This was my first story on this site and I thought I'd make 20 or so rooms, come back in 6 months and tons of people would have contributed. Years ago I frequented a site similar to this one and thats how it operated. Sadly I was mistaken and had to write all the rooms myself for a story that was intended to be like a sci fi "hall of infinite doors".
I don't plan to tie the story neatly with a bow. I knew what I was doing; this story is meant to go on forever. The adventures of Captain Darkblade are infamous and neverending. Who are you to end his chauvinistic journeys?! Seriously, WHO ARE YOU?! So I can hunt you down like the cowardly dog you are and slash your tires for giving me such low scores!
I'm half kidding of course, but I think you thought this story was supposed to be more serious and confined when I never intended for it to be that way. You of course are entitled to your opinion. I am happy you got the Q reference. Solitaire is basically Q. See how it's a parody of Star Trek?! Do you see?! DO YOU SEE?!!?!!!
And yes the Voltorb thing was a blatant reference to the exploding pokemans. I REALLY thought all those elements in my story made it clear this was a silly adventure story, but I guess I failed in that regard.
BOO on you mystery rater for not fully reading all my rooms and skimming! SHAME! I'm no hack; each room was crafted with love and I desired to spurt my love all over your face! You dirty picker! You picker and chooser of what storylines you like and don't like!PICKER! Actually, you sort of read the story as it was meant to be read. You chose the paths you liked, how you wanted Captain Darkblade to develop. I see you enjoyed the options where he was a bastard. Me too good sir, me too.
I see my in depth descriptions ruined the pacing for you. Well...I must agree with you because thats what seems to be the main complaint in both stories from everyone is that i have too much description. I don't know what is wrong with me, I must think everyone who reads my stories are stupid or something. I guess I found it tough in a sci fi setting to NOT describe certain things in detail. Should I just say "the blue alien" instead of going into a history lesson? What does everyone prefer? Thank you for the input though, I do think you are correct in that regard.
I am assuming these ratings come from Ves. I am forever shamed for dissapointing you my skinny goddess. I would throw myself to shark infested waters and be torn to ribbions for dishonoring you, but alas I'm scared of dying. First things first. You called me sloppy. You bitch. You dirty dirty...wait...I guess I was sloppy....and lazy. You happen to be correct. You know what is really sick? I KNEW about the grammar errors and I....Did nothing about them. I could of taken a couple minutes and fixed them, but...I was as you said, sloppy. Sloppy like poppy. Arrogance has bested me, I really thought my entry was good enough to take a top 3 spot. How utterly moronic of me. I'm looking in the mirror right now and all I see is an ugly tumor of a man.
Secondly, you said I go into too much detail. You mustard guzzling whore. I'm going to fillet your calves with a 12 inch razor....Oh wait...Again I seem to be in error because you are correct. I do sound like an encyclopedia don't I? A valid point I hope to impove upon in future writing.
Thirdly, you talk about how I randomly came up with the mind powers. Well, I didn't. The mysterious single contributor to my story did. I liked it, so I kept it. I understand how it seems random and "cheap", but this story was never meant to be fair. It's a silly story with kooky plotlines, but the complaint is valid.
What entering this contest did do for me though, is help me realize some mistakes and issues I have in my writing style (The category that was bashed the most). I do however feel alot of you reading the story didn't quite "get it". This story was a kooky sort of parody of Star Trek. It wasn't meant to be taken seriously. It was meant to be ridiculous and have the reader choose how he or she wanted the story to progress. You can be a nice guy or a crazy bastard; that was my vision I guess.
But I digress; I can explain more by the ratings themselves.
Write- 6
Plot- 6
Enjoy- *8
Theme- 7
I'm not a huge fan of the sprawling nature of the story. In one half, we have a captain who is doing silly and ridiculous things for no apparent reason. In the other half, we have the noble humanitarian who is doing great things for no reward whatsoever. Even the plotlines were weird... I still can't believe that a peasant uprising and a Q-like entity were in the same story, let alone the unwritten Indiana Jones bit.
Seriously, though... Volturb? Really? Gosh, where have I seen that before... Oh, I bet it was halfway through the same story, where you reverted to the spelling of Voltorb for some odd reason that is probably unrelated to the self-destructing pokemon with the same coloring.
It's not a bad story... I'm just not convinced you have any idea what you're doing with it. The plot threads have wandered all over the place, and I don't see how you can possibly end the story with a neat bow.
Plot- 6
Enjoy- *8
Theme- 7
I'm not a huge fan of the sprawling nature of the story. In one half, we have a captain who is doing silly and ridiculous things for no apparent reason. In the other half, we have the noble humanitarian who is doing great things for no reward whatsoever. Even the plotlines were weird... I still can't believe that a peasant uprising and a Q-like entity were in the same story, let alone the unwritten Indiana Jones bit.
Seriously, though... Volturb? Really? Gosh, where have I seen that before... Oh, I bet it was halfway through the same story, where you reverted to the spelling of Voltorb for some odd reason that is probably unrelated to the self-destructing pokemon with the same coloring.
It's not a bad story... I'm just not convinced you have any idea what you're doing with it. The plot threads have wandered all over the place, and I don't see how you can possibly end the story with a neat bow.
I don't plan to tie the story neatly with a bow. I knew what I was doing; this story is meant to go on forever. The adventures of Captain Darkblade are infamous and neverending. Who are you to end his chauvinistic journeys?! Seriously, WHO ARE YOU?! So I can hunt you down like the cowardly dog you are and slash your tires for giving me such low scores!
I'm half kidding of course, but I think you thought this story was supposed to be more serious and confined when I never intended for it to be that way. You of course are entitled to your opinion. I am happy you got the Q reference. Solitaire is basically Q. See how it's a parody of Star Trek?! Do you see?! DO YOU SEE?!!?!!!
And yes the Voltorb thing was a blatant reference to the exploding pokemans. I REALLY thought all those elements in my story made it clear this was a silly adventure story, but I guess I failed in that regard.
Writing - 6/10
*Plot/Creativity - 16/20
Enjoyment - 7/10
Theme - 6/10
Admittedly, Pierce Darkblade was a little labrynthine, so I only went through the paths I found the most interesting (the resort island, the self-destruct line, and the pirate alternate dimension thingy). I also skimmed over the larger storylines (like the pirates and the original good will mision), but found it hard to get into those stories. Um, which is part of why I gave an okay-ish rating for writing. While I love the plots of the Spooty McSpooterton variety (calling Dr. Liv a slut was my secret favorite part with telepathically raping the Lt. being a close second), the pacing of the more serious parts were hard to get past. There was a lot of detail about how awesome the ship was and what the alient creature were like and while sometimes it served to flesh out the story, more often than not it served to bring everything to a grinding halt. The actual premise was a little weak when you try to take the story seriously,But, otherwise, I found it enjoyable.
*Plot/Creativity - 16/20
Enjoyment - 7/10
Theme - 6/10
Admittedly, Pierce Darkblade was a little labrynthine, so I only went through the paths I found the most interesting (the resort island, the self-destruct line, and the pirate alternate dimension thingy). I also skimmed over the larger storylines (like the pirates and the original good will mision), but found it hard to get into those stories. Um, which is part of why I gave an okay-ish rating for writing. While I love the plots of the Spooty McSpooterton variety (calling Dr. Liv a slut was my secret favorite part with telepathically raping the Lt. being a close second), the pacing of the more serious parts were hard to get past. There was a lot of detail about how awesome the ship was and what the alient creature were like and while sometimes it served to flesh out the story, more often than not it served to bring everything to a grinding halt. The actual premise was a little weak when you try to take the story seriously,But, otherwise, I found it enjoyable.
BOO on you mystery rater for not fully reading all my rooms and skimming! SHAME! I'm no hack; each room was crafted with love and I desired to spurt my love all over your face! You dirty picker! You picker and chooser of what storylines you like and don't like!PICKER! Actually, you sort of read the story as it was meant to be read. You chose the paths you liked, how you wanted Captain Darkblade to develop. I see you enjoyed the options where he was a bastard. Me too good sir, me too.
I see my in depth descriptions ruined the pacing for you. Well...I must agree with you because thats what seems to be the main complaint in both stories from everyone is that i have too much description. I don't know what is wrong with me, I must think everyone who reads my stories are stupid or something. I guess I found it tough in a sci fi setting to NOT describe certain things in detail. Should I just say "the blue alien" instead of going into a history lesson? What does everyone prefer? Thank you for the input though, I do think you are correct in that regard.
Writing Style: 7*
Plot/Creativity: 8
Enjoyment: 7
Theme: 9
I was somewhat disappointed with this story, as the author's forum posts suggest that he is capable of a much higher quality of work.
This story has a lot of punctuation and grammar problems. On the first page alone I noticed issues with capitalization, spelling, and grammar such as the distinction between it's /its and your/you're. These seem to be the result not of ignorance so much as sloppiness. Rather than writing two stories, Bat should have spent more time revising and improving upon one.
Another problem is the amount of exposition. A perfect example is the following passage:
"Your ship goes into orbit around Freevus, a snowy world with a population of approx. 1 billion Freevians. A race adapted for the cold, they have thick skin and are capapble of radiating heat through their pores. The average height of a Freevian is 6foot5, so they are generally taller than humans."
Is this a story or an encyclopedia? Are you writing or reciting? This is a major stumbling block with science fiction, which slides very easily into the didactic. However, the best science fiction manages to avoid it, or at least minimize it.
Some of the choices are a bit muddled and don't lead in the indicated direction. On more than one occasion, two choices were too similar to really merit being different choices.
Another pitfall of science fiction into which you have lamentably fallen is the "Thank goodness for our blah blah blah!" feature which works as a fill-in for narrative floppiness. In an intractable situation? Just invent the super special space laser and suddenly no problem solving is required! You can do this to a point, but I think you've overused it. In your story, the protagonist's ability to control his own thoughts appears suddenly and for the first time as a way to patch up the narrative difficulty of the villain being able to read thoughts. It was then followed by utterly unnecessary exposition about mind-control training. This makes for somewhat arduous reading.
On the plus side, you had some nice brisk plot development and simple yet quirky descriptions. For instance, I liked the bit about "nailing a bug with a toothpick from 20 feet away". The villain is appropriately creepy if also somewhat prototypical, and the idea of the tag game with the killer cacti was fun and engaging.
Overall, though, there was nothing terribly new or innovative in this story and there were too many things that just didn't add up. Sometimes the plot moved too quickly and didn't leave enough room to introduce a real flavor or sense of reality to the story. The characters seemed flat and underdeveloped. The entire thing needs more work, more forethought and more dedication to story-building. However, I do believe the framework is in place already to create a potentially excellent story.
Plot/Creativity: 8
Enjoyment: 7
Theme: 9
I was somewhat disappointed with this story, as the author's forum posts suggest that he is capable of a much higher quality of work.
This story has a lot of punctuation and grammar problems. On the first page alone I noticed issues with capitalization, spelling, and grammar such as the distinction between it's /its and your/you're. These seem to be the result not of ignorance so much as sloppiness. Rather than writing two stories, Bat should have spent more time revising and improving upon one.
Another problem is the amount of exposition. A perfect example is the following passage:
"Your ship goes into orbit around Freevus, a snowy world with a population of approx. 1 billion Freevians. A race adapted for the cold, they have thick skin and are capapble of radiating heat through their pores. The average height of a Freevian is 6foot5, so they are generally taller than humans."
Is this a story or an encyclopedia? Are you writing or reciting? This is a major stumbling block with science fiction, which slides very easily into the didactic. However, the best science fiction manages to avoid it, or at least minimize it.
Some of the choices are a bit muddled and don't lead in the indicated direction. On more than one occasion, two choices were too similar to really merit being different choices.
Another pitfall of science fiction into which you have lamentably fallen is the "Thank goodness for our blah blah blah!" feature which works as a fill-in for narrative floppiness. In an intractable situation? Just invent the super special space laser and suddenly no problem solving is required! You can do this to a point, but I think you've overused it. In your story, the protagonist's ability to control his own thoughts appears suddenly and for the first time as a way to patch up the narrative difficulty of the villain being able to read thoughts. It was then followed by utterly unnecessary exposition about mind-control training. This makes for somewhat arduous reading.
On the plus side, you had some nice brisk plot development and simple yet quirky descriptions. For instance, I liked the bit about "nailing a bug with a toothpick from 20 feet away". The villain is appropriately creepy if also somewhat prototypical, and the idea of the tag game with the killer cacti was fun and engaging.
Overall, though, there was nothing terribly new or innovative in this story and there were too many things that just didn't add up. Sometimes the plot moved too quickly and didn't leave enough room to introduce a real flavor or sense of reality to the story. The characters seemed flat and underdeveloped. The entire thing needs more work, more forethought and more dedication to story-building. However, I do believe the framework is in place already to create a potentially excellent story.
Secondly, you said I go into too much detail. You mustard guzzling whore. I'm going to fillet your calves with a 12 inch razor....Oh wait...Again I seem to be in error because you are correct. I do sound like an encyclopedia don't I? A valid point I hope to impove upon in future writing.
Thirdly, you talk about how I randomly came up with the mind powers. Well, I didn't. The mysterious single contributor to my story did. I liked it, so I kept it. I understand how it seems random and "cheap", but this story was never meant to be fair. It's a silly story with kooky plotlines, but the complaint is valid.
Comment