Subject: Depends on the RP.
Author:
Posted on: 2013-11-19 22:18:00 UTC
A lot of RPs can teach you pretty bad habits for fiction writing, in terms of style, shortcuts taken, the considerations you have to make when writing on your own vs. making a post other people will be replying to with their own part of the story, etc.
Well here goes something...
Agent Profiles
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AAYf-BKJ7VCCsA7krwUWqsM7YZp7atu7AMMKvrXkX0A/edit?usp=sharing
Writing Sample
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JUIkY2wCrNNayjR9v0ccnvfamDXZmYa9fO5OsPAgDAI/edit?usp=sharing
Badfic
https://www.fanfiction.net/s/8738702/1/Daughter-Of-Time
Well there it is.
Storme Hawk
P.S Sorry for knocking the big post off the top spot
After realizing that the fic I was going to spork has gone through a serious revision I'm going to try and spork this instead.
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/6272813/1
Although having read the first chapter it does bring up an interesting question. If the author doesn't describe what their OC's are wearing, is there a Generic Material to cover them or what?
Do whatever is funniest.
-Phobos
Well, here we are again. Let's see what we've got.
Not much change to the Agents, which isn't a bad thing. There really wasn't a problem with them in the first place. I do find it interesting that you have two ranged fighters, though. I wonder what the differences in style might be.
Your writing sample has improved, though there are still issues. hS had really good advice and covered most of what I would, so I don't need to get too far into that. I will say that the redundancies still crop up from time to time. For example, "James was comparatively lucky compared to the majority of the Powered..." That would be better written as, "James was lucky compared to the majority of the Powered..." Gotta watch out for that.
And now for something completely different. I've been keeping an eye on the Halloween RP thread and I liked what I saw from you. Your characters interact well with other peoples' and seemed to be having fun. They have distinct personalities and voices (something that was often missing in the writing sample), which makes it easy to know who is talking. However, most of the criticisms for your writing sample apply here, as well.
So, my verdict is Permission Granted. Just keep working on the things that need improvement and find yourself a good beta who can help keep you in check. Believe me, as someone who has similar writing quirks and habits, a good beta is your best friend.
-Phobos
Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Right, now I'm slightly calmer.
-Kelly is going to be more of a support person, quite a large chunk of her is based off of my Time Lord alter-ego thing we did a while back, whilst Apollo is much more offensive and is the 'leader' of the duo. Apollo's the more serious person whilst Kelly is much more laid back and slightly hyper.
-I will bear that in mind, thank you.
-No explosion? I'm disappointed. I'll be honest I've been RPing on a different site for about 18 months now, so I'm a lot more confident in a RP than in writing fiction.
-Thanks once again, for the advice and everything
Storme Hawk
If you think about it, writing fiction is just RPing with yourself. Seriously. Especially when you are writing dialogue.
There is no reason you can't use the same style in your fiction writing.
-Phobos
A lot of RPs can teach you pretty bad habits for fiction writing, in terms of style, shortcuts taken, the considerations you have to make when writing on your own vs. making a post other people will be replying to with their own part of the story, etc.
But yeah I get what you mean (and my second pair of Agents will probably include a Pokemon trainer)
Mostly because, as Phobos was the one to flag up a few problems last time, I think it appropriate that he decide whether you've adequately fixed them. But I can still offer comments, right?
-Your agents. I was going to ask why James called himself Apollo, but your sample answered that. I quite like Kelly's description - particularly that she was actually injured in the Battle of Manhattan. Her traits seem to come nicely out of being a daughter of Apollo; I'm pretty sure the canon ones have displayed all of those characteristics, so I can't really say you're overloading her!
-Your sample I only read a bit of (another reason I've got the Hat off). I like your worldbuilding and general narrative. My two negative comments are:
--Commas. You still need more of 'em. And I know at least one of your betas occasionally runs into the same problem. ;) Actually, you could simply solve it by altering your sentence structure, but... you have things like this: 'In the past few years a group of seven Powered, called the Guardians, had formed and cleaned out any Powered...' That reads, to me, like the role of the Guardians is to form Powered and then clean said Powered out. It's a clumsy phrasing; either 'a group... had formed, and cleaned out', or 'a group... had formed. They had cleaned out' would work better.
--Your dialogue. I actually spent a page or so unclear what timeframe we're in here. You go from fairly colloquial ('It’s good to see that you could make it') to either stilted, archaic, or formal ('May I enquire as to what that device you had over your eyes was?') and back ('Cool'), without really nailing any of them. I'm not sure what you were aiming at, but I think you missed. As a single example, a casual speaker would render that first quote as 'I'm glad you could make it' - the fact that he can see it is implicit in the fact that, you know, he's there. It could be 'It's good [that] you could make it', but people don't tend to use the passive voice in dialogue: we prefer to attach our own reactions.
Oh, you also have a bizarre verbal quirk: when the Powered are introducing themselves, about half of them begin with 'So, I'm [name]'. I've never heard anyone who talks like that - is it a regional thing?
Moving on...
-The badfic. I don't really know what to think - I don't have the energy to plough through to the plot. But Angry Percy is Randomly Angry.
One thing I do note is that the author claims to have recently(?) revised pretty much the whole thing. You may want to check whether this is still the version you think it is.
Ehm... I'm not sure any of my comments were particularly useful there. Good luck?
hS
Overall thanks
-I had fun trying to create Kelly and not make her too powerful or anything, I must have gone through half a dozen or so different deities before I settled on Apollo as her father, so thanks.
-On commas. Great, more of them I can hardly wait :p. I see what you mean though.
-Right, I think parts of it have become more and more formal as it goes through each Beta check and I haven't paid as much attention as I should have to how it actually sounds overall, preferring to stick with it as it sounds better to me when I read through it.
-It's more of a personal thing than a regional thing I think.
-Gah, I didn't realize it'd change so much, last time I checked on it (week and a half ago or so) it wasn't being revised, although this time I made a list of different badfic I could do before deciding to try and spork that one so I'll have to go back to the list and pick a different one I suppose.
Once again thanks
Storme Hawk