Subject: You're missing the point, I'm afraid.
Author:
Posted on: 2016-09-30 16:30:00 UTC
Getting a second beta should've been done BEFORE you posted the mission. There really is no point in correcting your mistakes when you've already presented them to the world at large.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1yUSoExjflrutaeKiyUSytaJWwV5EmdpGzG24J8AlU/edit?usp=sharing
In which Kelly solos a mission.
It doesn’t feel like you rushed to get into the mission, so I call this progress from previous stories.
(Typo detected: er uniform came in two pieces.)
(PPC canon error detected: The mission report is what you are just writing. What lucky agents get to read before they go on a mission – while unlucky agents are just sent in not knowing what to expect – is an "intelligence report" or "Intel report".)
But then you rush through the mission. I don’t agree with other comments that the fic is too short for a mission, but we definitely need more description of what Kelly sees and we need to listen to her thoughts. Just for fun, I’ll list what I spot (not being a native speaker, not knowing the canon, and giving the dialogue some leeway for writing the accent of future pirate folks) and what I would do about it.
1. Ambiguously misspelled title "Little Treasuer" (Might be made a running gag: Every other paragraph, Kelly tries to spot the little treasure or to figure out who might be meant to be the little treasurer. Alas, it doesn’t work, because the writer repeated the title in the fic’s first line, and there it is definitely "Little Treasure". Question to more experienced PPCers: Is there a legitimate way to ignore an in-fic title line?)
2. My eyes wonder around our house (No idea. Guessing the right spelling and then taking the "wandering eyes" literally is probably not an option. If Kelly doesn’t see anything weird, she may wonder what eyes "wondering around a house" should look like.)
3. You know the rules, no sitting to the counter. (I’m not a native speaker. Is "sitting to the counter" synonymous to "sitting on the counter" or to "sitting at the counter" or something totally different? In the second case, Kelly may see Jenna in two places at the same time, or rapidly moving between "sitting on the counter" and "sitting at the counter".)
4. Speaking of witch (Kelly spots a witch in the room. I guess Treasure Planet doesn’t have witches, so what the witch does and whether she looks like a Disney witch or a Harry Potter witch or somebody else depends on the canons Kelly knows.)
5. Dropping the plats she was holding. (Probably just a misspelled "plates", not a homophone. My dictionary doesn’t know "plats".)
6. The other on looks at me. (Is there a third robot cop who is "off”?)
7. I run up to my door and push my ear agents it. ("Agents of the PPC! What are you doing here? This is my badfic to spork!")
8. its din heard enough keeping this place a flout be myself (Several lines may be spent on an inner monologue while Kelly tries to figure out what she just heard. "be myself" is probably just talking like a pirate – a language doubly foreign to me – but whose din [retranslating German translations: shenanigans, hubbub, hullabaloo, row, slapstick, ballyhoo, fuss, riot, racket, uproar] is Jenna’s mother talking about, what did it hear and how is a din even able to hear something, who made the Benbow Inn a flout [insult, offense, scathe, affront, defamation, indignity, derision, jeer, mockery, ridicule, scoff, taunt] and why would somebody want to keep it that? Confusing the agent will certainly be one of the charges.)
9. but its never his fault (Again with the missing apostrophe. No idea what to do with whoever’s never – it’s not a noun.)
I don’t see how you got from "a flout" to flutes, and I didn’t spot a door wearing pants, but that may be my different perception of a language I didn’t grow up with.
One last thing: She wondered just how a writer could use so many homophones and expect her story to be read.
Please don’t. We talk about stories, not about their writers.
HG
Thank you, but I think I am giving up on this story.
Plats would be expressed as maps. I think plats means parcles of property.
Looked it up:
A plat (/ˈplæt/ or /ˈplɑːt/) in the United States (plan or cadastral map) is a map, drawn to scale, showing the divisions of a piece of land.
I actually could see the mission working if you approached it less from the premise of Sue-fic and more from the premise of grammatical mess. That's a good point to make; while I get the sense that most people focus more on bad characterization than bad grammar and spelling in their missions, it's certainly not mandatory. Or perhaps I'm biased, as I tend to avoid badfic that's completely unreadable on a technical level.
to the Department of Technical Errors? Half their jurisdiction is grammatical messes. {= ) They also cover anachronisms, faulty logic, and other inaccuracies. The department's creator was a big Pirates of the Caribbean fan, so most of the missions are Suefics in that fandom, but not all of them, and there's certainly no reason the department should be limited to Sues, if anyone's interested in a different sort of challenge.
If not, Mara and Isaiah are worth a read anyway. {= )
~Neshomeh
You had some good ideas here that I wish you'd gone more in detail with. The part where you described the problems with the fic seemed a little rushed, especially after the loving detail paid to Kelly's getting dressed. I would have really liked to see the quote that led to a door wearing pants and the other odd ways the Word World interpreted the fic. You implied that there were a lot of funny mistakes with homophones -- it would have been more fun to see them rather than just hear about them. And to see Kelly's reaction to them. Did they make her mission more difficult?
You have interesting ideas, and I like that you write for unusual fandoms, but I think you need to work on structuring your missions. If I may make a suggestion, I'd recommend trying to line up a cowrite. One can learn a lot from collaborating with more experienced writers.
--Key
I can cowrite with Bram, if she'd like to. I think she can learn from it, and I need to get my arse into writing gear again anyway.
Honestly, while the fic as written has the bones of badfic, I don't think it really has enough content to qualify. It's not even 500 words long, and covers a single scene. In general, I'd try to pick longer fic, or at least ones that have more actual content, because it gives you more to work with.
Also, your mission needs more content as well. Short missions are fine, not everything needs to be a multi-part epic, but this is shorter than most Permission prompts and takes about ten minutes of actual time. There's no tension or humor or anything else that makes it enjoyable to read - or, presumably, write. The fact that it's a solo mission means there isn't even any inter-character banter. I have to wonder what inspired you to write this in the first place, because it feels rather obligatory, like you're writing this because you have to rather than because you want to.
I'm having trouble finding good stories to mission, and I thought that this one was good.
Might you also look at the crit from your last mission as well?
We're not going to take away Permission, but you need to work more on your writing if you want to contribute to the PPC's universe.
What was it about this fic that made you think it would be a good option? That's not intended as a criticism, but an honest question. It can be easier to help you find what you're looking for if we know what kind of qualities you're seeking out.
Scrolling the Unclaimed Badfic list can be a good way to find something that qualifies, though it only tends to turn up results from PPC-popular fandoms. If you want to find a fandom that tends to be missioned less, you might be out of luck. The other thing I'd recommend is, if you're just browsing FF.net, putting a filter on the length. Anything shorter than 1000 words probably won't have enough content to actually spork, and even that's pushing it, whereas anything too long could be unwieldy. And in general, try to pick one that seems like an opportunity for writing humorous scenes for your agents. You can find the worst fanfiction ever, but if you can't turn it into something entertaining, then it's not a good choice for a mission.
First of all, jumping the gun on Skarm is not cool. While he could've phrased things better, what you did was pretty rude (not to mention detrimental to the quality of your mission). You should, at least, apologise to him.
That being said, there are also things to say about the mission itself:
-Frankly, the badfic isn't bad enough. It's too short and consists of "Jim has an uncanon little sister" and nothing else. Remember — the PPC is about making funny (good) stories out of bad ones, not pointing at stories and saying "that's bad". Having an uncanon relative isn't bad in and of itself — cf. this WH40K x [secret] fic (the usual "this is WH40K, grimderp ahoy" warning applies, of course). Other words, there isn't enough substance in the fic.
-Related to that, "is an uncanon relative" isn't grounds for assassination, since it doesn't automatically make a character Suvian.
-The mission itself lacks the proper "buildup, climax, resolve" curve that most stories have. It's basically "Kelly went in, killed an OC, got out", except told in 311 words instead of eight.
-There are a couple small errors here and there — things that a SPaG beta would've caught, probably.
To be completely frank, I agree with Skarm: I think this mission should be taken down for revisions.
Or at least point out the SPaG that I missed?
Getting a second beta should've been done BEFORE you posted the mission. There really is no point in correcting your mistakes when you've already presented them to the world at large.
She perfectly explains the reason why I comment on every mistake I spot in every story I read, even if I don’t have the time for a proper review. I expect that they are corrected to improve the overall quality of PPC writing.
HG
Yes, the second beta should be gotten before posting if they were needed. However, yes, there is absolutely a point to "correcting mistakes" after posting. There are definitely missions that have been taken down for betaing/editing/reworking, both recently and over the last year--I could probably name some of the authors and reasons, if I thought about it. There is *every* point to acknowledging concrit, taking your story down, and reworking it into something better. That's part of being a writer (who posts online, anyway; once you've published something on paper, it's rather harder to take it off the market for editing. On the internet, though, you have a good deal more opportunity to edit).
So, yes, sufficient betaing should be done before posting. However, there is *definitely* a point to taking down a story to be edited. It's a, a learning process, and b, how you get better writing, which is a big part of the PPC. We're a writing community, no? Missions are all about writing critique and making good writing out of bad writing, no? (And some other stuff, but those are key points). So editing a mission, even if it's already been posted? Absolutely there is a point. Absolutely. There is every point.
~DF
I did not give you the greenlight to post this mission, despite my feedback, and on top of that you haven't consulted with a second beta who would probably be better at it and less busy than me anyway. I am not amused by your haste on any level, and I would kindly recommend that you take this mission offline and have it beta-read properly before any public release.
And before you respond to me trying to defend yourself, remember how angry and reckless I got when you first requested Permission due to a tense situation being made a lot worse. I don't want that happening again. We wish to help you not only become a better writer, but a better participant in the Internet community as well, so like it or not, please heed our advice.
I used your feedback and waited about six weeks for you to respond. How long should I have waited? I did forget about the second beta if you told me to do that.
Which wouldn't have been until after you got help from a second beta. Though I must admit that it was partly my fault, too, since I was too distracted by many other things to remind you of that. ^^;
Apart from that, though, apology accepted. Remember, beta reading is as important in the process of mission writing as, well, the writing itself; the latter is obvious, but it's the former that makes our missions so well-written and entertaining to read. I still maintain that you have the potential to write a decent mission - it's just that you need a few steps in the right direction, and you've still got a way to go before you make that goal.
I realize now that I ALREADY sounded angry and bitter when I wrote that response, and I apologize for that. I still think posting without my consent was a bad move, but I should probably leave the concrit to others this time. Again, I'd rather not cross the line like last time. ^^;