Evils and Choices

(Hi, so I'm clearing all of my stories out for personal reasons. I have copies on my hard drive if, for legal reasons, I'm not allowed to do this, but otherwise I'd prefer for this old shame to die old shame. ._.)

 

Re: Evils and Choices (Claimed)

Kinda scattered. And I'm not even going to think about how long this took me. It's insulting to you that I took so long. I apologize.

Introduction/Detail/Plot: You use my favorite non-linear introduction method—an in media res rumination that walks back around to the beginning of the story and works it way up. Kudos, there. Not only is it a fairly solid introduction method, and something that I like personally (baha)—it suits the story’s themes. The picture of the two roads is fairly symbolic of the “choice” concept (although perhaps a bit too symbolic), and the character’s situation is hinted at. I think, however, that you don’t take complete advantage of this introduction method. Most of its strengths lie in specific detail, so that the reader has a moment where they pause, think, “WAIT, THIS IS WHERE WE STARTED” and have a happy dance party because they’ve finally figured out how the main character got into whatever ridiculous situation they were in at the beginning.

This “moment” is what makes the introduction type so… good. It’s the cornerstone of the method. Without this “moment,” the introduction, while still a valid introduction, is not as powerful, or as beneficial to the story. It doesn’t add much, other than a “this is what I’m going to tell you about, children” aspect—which is more or less unnecessary. The way your introduction stands now, there wasn’t the one big epiphany flash-back that lends emotional involvement and/or awe of the author. You could have removed the intro and lost absolutely nothing—I still would have known that your main theme is choices, that Kage’s life kinda sucks, that he has this whole “I AM EVILLLL” crisis. I would have known it later in the story, yeah, but I still would have figured it all out by the end.

So if you’re going to do that sort of introduction, put it together completely, or it’ll just be a waste of space. HOW you would go about doing that is pretty simple. First off, you’d have to rectify the “where in the time-space continuum is this, exactly?” aspect. I’m guessing the particular choice he’s agonizing over is the one at the end of the story. I don’t know that for sure, though, because the wording in the introduction is vague. To maximize effectiveness, you want to paint a solid picture. Ambiguous, but ambiguous only in that you don’t know who is involved, or what the choices are. You see them, but not their relevance. In the current intro, there are two paths, one dangerous, one uncertain. Give me more about each of those paths, who they involve—the trainer versus endless isolation and likely death, as concrete images—or what they mean to Kage. Any combination works, as long as there is a sense of solidarity behind it, so that the readers recognize a particular situation.

It’s key that you pick a pivotal point in the plot that has a lot of emotional relevance to the character, so you can focus on that. While I think you did that with this, you might think about choosing a more central moment for the next time you do an introduction like this—ie, the evolution into a Gallade versus the evolution into a Gardevoir. Just because it’s 1. something unthinkable at the beginning of the plot 2. a highly emotional turning point 3. a pretty involved, concrete scene with lots of potential for elaboration (hanging from a cliff and whatnot). There are… five or so other scenes that work just as well.

The second part is bringing this full circle. Pull the reader into a single moment where they see the images from the introduction and realize this is how he got here. In some incarnations (mainly those told from first-person POV), the main characters will make this easier on the writer and reader by pointing it out themselves. You could have done this; you didn’t, though, so pulling it off is a lot more tricky. It involves more attention to what impression you’ve left on the reader, making sure that you highlight the same details and themes, or perhaps have the same thought in his head/word in his mouth. Force them to remember the beginning of your story, even if it was a long ways back. Methods are endless in all aspects of this introduction, so play around with the possibilities.

So on a whole, nice concept, iffy execution. Consider the tidbits for next time.

Plot: This plot doesn’t have quite as many “um, what?” consistency things as its predecessor piece. (Which, by the way—nice way to flow things together. I’m looking forward to seeing Kage’s backstory interact with the characters from the previous plot arc. Maybe I’ll just… read it… instead of making you wait three months for a grade.) There are, however, some standard questions about emotional motivation that any story involving evil friend-stealing dictators is going to bring up.

I’ll talk about Kage, Giru, and Kiara, to start.

In the early portion of the story, I saw absolutely no emotional connection develop between the three. If anything, I observed unfriendly tension. You said that Giru and Kage became friends, and that Kiara and Kage fell in love. But… where? How? If looking at books with people (even super-secret outlawed books) was the cause and emotional manifestation of love, I would be drooling over half the people I know right now. Shared experiences aren’t enough. You have to show which emotions arise from which aspects of their adventures. Characters can’t just declare their feelings. They have to make sense to the readers. The emotional value attached to Giru’s betrayal of Kage was nix, even though it was supposed to be this big, heartbreaking change of path. Because I never really saw them demonstrate anything that I would perceive as friendship—or anything, even, that Kage, who could have a twisted perception of friendship, would interpret as such. There was… nothing. Same goes for Kiara, and the whole “dead” thing. Okay, she died. I didn’t care about her character because Kage’s character didn’t seem to care about her (and even if he had, I didn’t care about Kage, either). There was a disconnect of idea to the emotions behind the ideas. This made the character interaction seem arbitrary and contrived—and not in a Vladimir Nabokov sort of way. To fix this, you need to build into the writing/imagery/characters’ understandings what I should think of it, or at least show me good reasons to agree with your evaluation of the occurrences.

There is also the issue of the whole EVIL LADY HAS ENTIRE COUNTRY BRAINWASHED sort of thing. For the purposes of a Pokémon fanfiction, things do tend to be fairly black and white. I feel like that doesn’t excuse a certain need for realism. There needs to be a genuine execution of control; there needs to be a genuinely competent powerhouse behind that control; there needs to be a way that said powerhouse acquired that control. You need to justify the existence of this evil dominion to the reader. Drop more hints of how it came about in the history—and have it done by characters who know what they’re talking about, not just the mindless or the ignorant. Also. If you’re going to make this woman unnecessarily mean and nasty, give her a strong motive. Even if we don’t hear it from her, you can give her minions her mouthpiece—whether they’re right or not doesn’t really matter. Giru would have been a really good opportunity to iron out the whole “why is Rila doing this?” “what exactly is Rila doing?” “how does she manage to do this?” layer of questions. Even if he had no idea what he was talking about, he could have given some face to Rila. She has power that he wants—but why does she have power, why does he think she taught him to use it, why does she tell him she uses her power in this way? She would need to be good at manipulating people—and yet, she manages to lose Kage by bringing him into something he’s uncomfortable with far too soon. It’s not that he’s strongwilled; it’s that she botched the job. How do you reconcile this with her image as someone who has an entire people group licking her floaty, ridiculous Gardevoir toes? The list goes on. Even if you don’t answer all of these questions, answering some at a more satisfying level will make the reader realize that you have put thought into this and do know how it works, even if you don’t tell them every little detail about the matter.

You’ll find that all of these problems are annihilated by detail. Include bits about the where, when, how, why, what wherever you can. There’s a lot of space in this story—not all of it contributes directly to the development. Maximize what you have. Find occasions that let you answer the questions, and use them. It’ll make the story more powerful.

Grammar/Detail: You’re at a point where “grammar” is more “writing style.” I’m not going to yell at you about rules and laws and all these pieces of junk you have to fix to make yourself readable. While you do make mistakes, you make few enough. What I want you to start thinking about is how to make your writing better. I’ve already talked to you about awkward phrasing and redundancy, which is the first step. I saw improvements, on that end—keep working on it, though. My main goal now is to get you thinking about how to say what you want to say with more eloquence, clarity, excitement, direction… wherever you want to take yourself.

First order of business. It is okay to say said. In fact, most of the time, said flows better, looks better, and works better than any manner of synonym. While words like “growled” and “rumbled” normally get the whole YOU DON’T GROWL, OKAY? complaint set, Pokémon do kindof growl and whatnot. So there isn’t a technical issue there. But. The thing about dialogue is that if you want to describe the nature of the voice, nine out of ten times, the tagged verb won’t do a thing. The massive synonym exchange bogs down writing without adding much. Saying said, and then doing what you did here…

…says far more than the synonyms. They start to blend together after awhile. Not even the strongest verbs can convey all the nuances of tone, vocal patterns, individual speaking octaves.... If you have something that needs to be said, you’re better of with said and a few descriptive sentences. Every once and awhile, a more exciting verb can be useful—but only in small dosages. Usually, it still needs supplements to pull its full weight.

NOW THEN. ON TO THE FUN STUFF.

I want you to think about your word choice on a more deliberate level. Words are not just going to tell the story—they’re going to manipulate the way your story is perceived and understood. At this point, I don’t feel a lot of intent behind the writing. The story tells itself, but it does little more than that. It doesn’t put itself out there. It doesn’t take a stand or a risk. It’s a fairly neutral story, where I am supposed to have clear-cut feelings about it, and you assume that I, as your reader, will dutifully have those feelings. But it feels like there’s a certain… lack of meaning behind your writing, because you didn’t choose strong words that really say something one way or another. It should be obvious, both explicitly and implicitly, what you are saying—not just through the plot, the characters, the dialogue, but through the words themselves. SO I’M GOING TO TRY TO HELP YOU LEARN TO DO THAT.

Now… there’s “the author” and then there’s… “the author.” Same person. But not really, because one is “you,” and the other is whatever “you” or “not you” rears its head to angle the story. There can be a difference. Doesn’t have to be. It’s entirely up to you. What needs to be present, though, is a decision. Figure out the perspective you want your writing to show, then write the piece accordingly. Don’t let it be neutral. Choose strong words that convey the chosen perspective.

What I mean by “what you are saying” isn’t so much “GLOBAL WARMING IS BAD” as “THE SHADOW BALL GIRU THWAPPED KAGE WITH IS REALLY SCARY.” But see, if you said that las thing, people would giggle at you—because that’s telling, as I’m sure you know. So how to go about showing that…

First order of word business: Verbs, nouns, adjectives, adverbs. That’s the “order of word strength” you usually hear. I have no idea where gerunds go. Verbs are key. Never, ever waste a verb. Make sure every one gives the best sense of the action that you can find. Nouns work almost as well, but lack the drive behind verbs. Adjectives… can be good in moderation, but are often used to compensate for a lack of strong verbs and nouns—not okay. Adverbs tend to be redundant, equivocal, or superfluous, none of which are admirable qualities in a word. Additionally, anything… abstract, without a sense quality to it, isn’t going to do you much good without quantification. (ie, “electrical energy” in the quoted passage below)

There’s also the matter of how everything flows together. Most of the time, even the strongest verb can’t paint the whole picture. You need imagery behind the action—how much and of what sort is up to you, but you still want to keep something that appeals to the senses and builds an “emotional” angle of some sort. Depending on the situation, how much of what goes where needs to be juggled—that’s another big judgment call. Specific details through careful combination of wording and action are the key to building up this framework.

What I’ve basically been telling you amounts to “show, don’t tell, and this is a technical aspect of how.” I’ll demonstrate a bit with this passage by breaking it down. My method is what you should pay attention to more than the results. Think of it in terms of how you use this to say what you want.

In a tense scene like this, imagery is especially important. It needs to be present, but it can’t disrupt the scene by being too plentiful. ‘s tough.

What we have to work with on the verb end: gasped, glanced, looked, paused, unclenched, fizzled, took.

None of those give me a picture. I can’t see this scene at all. I like fizzled—that’s a nice “imagery” word that works well within an electric context—but the noun (energy) is useless, and “electrical” is one of those things that could mean green, blue, yellow in color, a half a dozen different shapes, or a potato with a wire sticking out of it.

Look at gasped, for instance. What does that really say? I, for one, have no idea. “oh God no I don’t want to die”? “WHAT THE HECK KAGE, YOU’RE SUPPOSED TO SUCK”? “Damn, he got one over on me…”? “Oh, dear, I’ll just have to sit here and distract you with my gaspy wiles until I can kick you in the gut”? I don’t know what you want me to see, and there isn’t enough behind the word to let me paint my own picture. This would be an instance where additional description wouldn’t be amiss. Add specific details that illustrate the scene. There’s always the cliché “eyes wide with ____”. Maybe the gasp comes in such a shocked expulsion of air that the name is hardly a wisp in Kage’s ear—but that still leaves the question of what sort of shock. Since the POV is third limited, you’d have to take it from what Kage observed, which makes that a bit harder. Point being, gasped doesn’t say enough.

I don’t like it, but it says more—and that’s an important consideration.

For me, the entire “Kage,” Giru gasped bit is problematic, and weak. I would scrap it and find something that works better to portray his faux defeat, were I the writer. To keep it and make it good, you’d need to add a lot to it. I’d argue that wouldn’t be worth the space, and tell you to move on. It’s ultimately up to you, though.

Sooo, Giru has been knocked against a wall. He’s dazed. He’s… shocked? But he’s also playing Kage. Consider the five senses, and pick description that appeals on that front. One character standing over the other, a naturally proud figure, wielding this massive ball of ZING… the other, flowy and graceful, is more crumpled in a heap at his feet. That’s a striking situation. Good chance for imagery. Shouldn’t pass it up. Body language would seem to suit the situation more than voice, just because of what’s happening in the scene. Maybe Giru has one hand on the wall, and is trying to push himself up, and the “Kage” just slips out as a subconscious “Don’t hit me while I’m trying to stand.” Maybe his Gardevoir skirt is tangled at his legs. Maybe his hands are slumped at his side, maybe they’re in front of him for protection, or maybe he has one on his head, nursing a sore spot. Detail detail detail. Once you have the specific detail that bends the scene how you want it to go, you then might want to bend the detail itself. This could be through a careful adjective. A modifying clause or an additional sentence that adds some nuance to perspective could work just as well. Does Kage see this action as submissive? Worrisome? Violent? Is it just one big guilt trip, because his best friend can barely lift his own arms, and it’s all Kage’s fault? That’s what the adjective is for, once you have the solid basis to put it on.

Now we come to “Kage glanced at him.” I feel like this is… inadequate. You’re a violent, self-proclaimed evil, electric-ball-wielding Gallade. You have a Gardevoir who betrayed you, who undermines what you stand for, who used to be your best friend, on the ground, weak, attack unprepared. You’re angry—you’ve been wronged. You could kill him. You kind of want to kill him. And again, he’s on the ground in front of you. Somehow, it feels like the look you give him is not a glance. Definition is “a brief and hurried look.” There are sardonic glances from the corner of eyes that seem to say “…really?” There are uncaring glances at whatever just made a noise, before you turn back to your book. There are awkward glances at the old accordionist who’s hitting on your mother and wearing a few too few articles of clothing. A glance, there’s a sense of “you don’t want to be caught looking.” Kage is definitely looking, and looking hard. Probably looking with a lot of emotion. Anger, hatred—but confusion, too. “Glanced” doesn’t convey that. It’s up to you to decide what does.

I could keep doing this to the whole section, but part of this “thought method” is thinking about the important pieces—you can’t do this to the whole story. You don’t want to. It’d be icky, and boring, and hard to read. But what you do want to do is think about scenes somewhat like this, and choose aspects from them accordingly. Then use the strong words to make me see those scenes the way you want me to see them.

Also.

You forgot the comma in the dialogue tag a few times. You know how to do it—be aware that it’s something you miss in editing.

Detail Summary: More imagery. Show what’s happening. Use words to highlight what that all means—they’re a tool that a lot of writers ignore. Give me the emotion behind the pictures and characters. Don’t just show me things—show me things that say what you want to say in ways that help you say it. You can choose any aspect of any scene to portray any meaning, so work on choosing carefully. Make everything tie in. Make everything make sense not just logically, but through the writing itself. Craft it carefully.

Verdict: My grade sounded a bit dissatisfied with the quality of the detail, and some of what that affects. That’s because it was. For one Demanding level Pokémon, your story should be almost completely pulled together. The plot shouldn't leave gaping questions; your characters' motivations and interactions should flow perfectly. Both of these are achieved by detail that answers questions while painting images and furthering the story. It's really tough to do. For two Demanding level Pokémon, you should be able to keep this up for twice the length. One Pokémon captured.

Work on the concepts of detail as applied to the larger scope of the work. Don't leave me asking questions about why your characters did what they did, or how the world came to be what it is. I can't ask for perfection, but improvement on that end will get you your second Pokémon. I think you'll be able to do this. It'll take a lot of work, and you'll have to want to do it, but it's an achievable goal... and it's definitely worth working towards.

Sorry again for the wait. ._.

 

Re: Evils and Choices (Claimed)

YUM. I mean...

ANYWAYS, thanks for the grade.

This is the part of my post where I ramble now. BE WARNED.

Yeah, I must have been high or something when I wrote this... knowing full well that I would probably have to rewrite and already having another 80K+ rewrite that I've barely started... yeah... this is going to be fun.
And I think I'm gonna rewrite the other one, rewrite this one, and then make you regrade both of them at the same time. MUHAHAHAHA.

Oh, and I just realized that this is 42 characters short of being considered a new post for the wages. I AM EVILLLLLLLL!!!!!!!

Okay, rambling cut short because I have to do other stuff. ANYWAYS, thanks for doing this. That grade was about a quarter of the length of my story (which was long, filled with much less humor, and pretty much boring), and it was pretty epic, in depth, and will definitely help me if/when I ever rewrite.

Oh, and children, don't forget...

GLOBAL WARMING IS BAD.