Star Wars: Advent of Shadows - Updated 9/19/2011

[Tiana Calthye]

You're going to recreate the old RP characters... and then get a Jedi.net relative newbie (less than a year) to beta read it. Somehow that strikes me as hilarious.

 

I didn't even have internet in 02.

 

Good luck. I hope it doesn't suck too! I look forward to seeing you write something serious.

[Tiana Calthye]

I didn't say bad, I just thought it was hilarious due to the irony. Write a story about the old Jedi.net and get one of the newest fanficcers to beta read it. It's not a bad idea, I just found it funny. I hear she's a pretty good beta reader, anyway.

[Tiana Calthye]

Also, feel free to rip my writing apart.

OKAY.

 

Though I know you've been open to critique for a while, here it is: the dreaded and long awaited Tiana post. I assure you I do not consider myself a grammar expert, or spelling expert, by any means, so I'm not even going to bother nitpicking those sort of things today. I'm sure you're doing fine and the other reviewers will catch it if you're not. Nothing leapt out of the story as being particularly and dreadfully most wrongly spelt... so... rather...

 

YOUR WRITING: the critique.

 

The first thing that struck me was the sheerly obvious tone of your ordinary writing style: satire. In order to write a good satire, you take words to make things funny. Overblown, melodramatic, and all in all, generally weilding the English language as a sword to make people spit their coffee across their computer and ruin their keyboards, in general, racking up a bill for tech repair. The entire PURPOSE of satire is to make people snort, laugh, or sometimes be offended so that YOU can laugh.

 

However.

 

This is a serious story.

 

The very first sentence... made me painfully aware...

 

You write satire. You write parody. You write over the top, trolling mock versions of other people's work. You do it well.

 

A sleek, metallic colored Sho-Wing speeder sailed through the darkened evening skies above the crowded cityscape of Coruscant, disregarding all official speed limits.

 

But it does not translate to serious descriptions as easily as one might think.

 

So I admit, I dove for my books. I know you're a reader of high fantasy such as Robert Jordan's... so I grabbed one of his books and flipped it open. Sure enough, I could see something comparable: his writing was likewise wordy. However, I'm not as familiar with that series so I fell back to one I WAS familar with to really explain my critiques. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.

 

"When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton."

 

As you see, your opening sentence is not nearly as long, and it's also more in the moment. Opening sentences set the tone for the entire thing and I drew this much from them:

 

-You're a wordy, descriptive writer.

-You're writing with an active voice.

 

If you peer through the Lord of the Rings, you'll note that though it's also wordy and descriptive, it's written with a lot more passive voice than your immediate first setting throws at us.

 

The problem is, you have to pick, sometimes. One or the other. Do you want the wordy descriptions or the active, here and now action?

 

I would lean towards the active voice as being more suited to fanfiction and offer this advice: scissors. SNIP SNIP. Cut out what's unnecessary. Rather than using words to blow sentences out of proportion, which works effectively in satire, use words to tell as much as you can with as little as you need.

 

You don't need to tell us that it's sleek, metallic colored. Sleek would suffice, and if you must add that it's metallic, you certainly don't need to use the word 'colored' as well. 'A sleek metalic Sho-Wing speeder sailed through the evening skies above the crowded cityscape of Coruscant, disregarding all official speed limits.' Two less words, but it makes it an easier sentences to read.

 

Use your discression. Unlike some writers, you're already picking good descriptive words. Bundled, trumped, masses, compliance, lofty... use them to paint pictures, but use those pictures in moderation when you're going for an active storytelling voice.

 

You know. Like this one.

 

Coruscant, in its entirety, was covered by imposing, buttressed towers, but none compared to this particular structure in sheer size and grace.

This sentence is beautiful. You hardly need more words than this to sum up Coruscant--and sure enough, that's what you stuck with. One sentence, and it brought up visuals for Coruscant and... AND... it gave an idea of the sheer enormity of the Jedi Temple. It was perfect, you left it at that, and then moved on to give one sentence of history.

 

Really, writing a good description is not all unlike writing satire. Instead of chosing your words to make fun of the original work, chose them to paint another picture. And be careful with them, don't clutter your introductory paragraphs with too many pictures or you'll overwhelm the more simple readers who just came in for a simple read. The beginning can and will make or break a story.

 

In short: your descriptions are very good and often vivid in such a way that they brought up stirring mental images just from a simple sentence alone, I just felt there were too many of them at times. Be careful with the amount of detail you include. Minimalism is good. Even still, as it is, it is good. It could just be better.

 

Now, now... I feel it was your dialogue where you fell short and something I feel may have come from taking inspiration from hard fantasy, where the dialogue is often either 1) too over the top or 2) "As you know, Bob."

 

“Whatever, R4, just get us there quickly,” she replied impatiently.

 

This was plausable, it would have been better had you only used one adverb. Adverbs are great in moderation and half the time, you don't need them. Rule of thumb is no more than one in a sentence or there's too many lys.

 

Now, I realize you tried to justify the "As you know, Bob" by making the guard apparently not know any of this and Ara "dwell on details"... but... but...

 

“Also, I can see Jidai Geki. Like Faust, he’s one of the most powerful Jedi in the Order. He’s well known for some great scientific discoveries over the last few decades involving medicine and chemistry. I’ve been to a couple lectures that he’s given recently too, but I could barely follow what he was talking about. The guy is a genius, that’s for sure, but he’s a real mad scientist type. Freaky, but give the guy his due.”

 

And

 

“Well…” replied Ara. “Let’s just say that when I was training as an apprentice, I had to read his books too, and they were the only ones more confusing for me than Jidai Geki’s. He’s a philosopher and a theologian, and the expert on the Council in all matters related to the Force. He’s perhaps the most brilliant mind in the Order, right along Adi-Wan. I guess he’s really powerful too, but that’s a given. I’m not sure what else there is to say about him. There’s his wife too, standing next to him. Her name is Krystal. Supposedly, she’s descended from Obi-Wan Kenobi, a great Jedi from long ago.”

 

It's really just too much information in one shot, and way too much for someone's dialogue. For me, it overwhelmed me and I forgot most of it very quickly while reading onto the next paragraphs, and I had to keep going back.

 

Characters explaining things is GOOD, better than narrative dump passages, but... only if you didn't have her keep going on and on and on. Your NPC might be geniuely interested, but I must admit I'm not. I mean, my word, did she really need to explain who was a theologian and healer of mental ailments and whatever? All in one blow? Show, don't tell! I liked the line about "I had to read his books too" because for me, that was showing. You were showing that he was a confusing, smart guy, and probably brilliant as well... you didn't really need to say everything that the one sentence implied. I loved that sentence. I laughed at it.

 

“Wow, I’ve been excited about this all week. I guess it’s finally starting now,” said Ara to the blue-clad guard.

BUT WHAT IS IT? I mean, you've told us everything we could've possibly found out about these characters before we even met them, but not what IT is. D:

 

 

And that's how I felt about chapter one. Basically, in short, that it was really good, and you had some genius, brilliant statements, but sometimes you went a little over the top with talking too much.

 

You see, what you did was a good idea. It's a good idea to make a character introduce other characters to other characters. Put in someone who doesn't know what's going on and someone who does, and they can explain it. The point is to not go too 'as you know, Bob', and keep it short and sweet, providing more information as the story progresses rather than introducing it all at once. I understand you have a large cast and you'd like to get the Council away with at the beginning, but if they're important they're going to show traits like being brilliant minded theologians as the story goes, without it needing to be explained by your main character. And if they're not important to the story, then you don't need a long paragraph to explain their entire background, either.

 

To top it off, chapter two immediately jumps to where the Council is, and you could've slipped some more of this information into here instead of handing the dialogue to Ara.

 

Now... chapter two.

 

I felt chapter two was a sheer improvement over chapter one. In fact, had this been chapter one, I wouldn't have complained. The interaction between AP and Krystal entertained me and made me quite suspicious, even as it made her suspicious, which I feel was the intended point. You did something with chapter two that chapter one did not: I sympathized with the characters at hand, and I didn't find I really sympathized with your portrayal of Ara--in fact, I felt that she was only there for the latter half just to explain things to the guard.

 

The dialogue flowed more smoothly, and the interaction was cute. Maybe you just liked writing those characters more? At any rate, it read better and I felt as if the description fell more neatly into place.

 

You improved from chapter one to chapter two, so if you keep this up it should be novel-quality in a few chapters, right? =P

 

I like the inclusion of pictures as well. As you have a particularly large cast it certainly helps to have visuals to keep them together.

 

So I agree with Ami over chapter two: you did a nice job with the relationship between AP and Krissi and I hope to see more of the same from you.

 

And I do get that same foreboding chill from AP in the fic... that someone's going to turn to the dark side... >.> I liked the peaceful, domestic introduction in contrast with that? XD

 

I mean, we all KNOW he's going to be PURE EVIL, but anyway. You did a good job of it.

 

And look, you've even brought lurkers out of the woodwork!

 

So keep up what you're doing. Your strengths lie in picking good descriptive words, just don't overdo it. Keep up the quirky and foreboding interactions and you should have a great RP based fic.

 

Oh yeah. One final positive note: I liked that you brought out really notable seperate personalities for each character, too. Especially with the RP based fic, this will continue to be necessary for the individuality of your story... especially with a large cast.

 

It was good. I liked it. Quality fic, just with a few weak points that could easily be solved with a bit of trimming.

 

(THIS POST IS NOT AN EXAMPLE OF HOW TO EFFECTIVELY TRIM WRITING. Just because I say it doesn't mean I'm GOOD at it. )

[Tiana Calthye]

You guys are right. Unstickied!

[Tiana Calthye]

You're welcome. Now go update it. It IS an announcement, after all.

[Tiana Calthye]

I found the 'talented young gal' drove home how Raynuk thinks of Dakin... everything else is sophistocated but here he thinks of her as just 'a young gal'. I wanted to smack him too, but I think that's the whole point of the character...

 

And, Raynuk the poster, don't worry. We won't hit you. Just the character based on you.

 

To be honest, it was my favorite chapter so far. I mean, it FINALLLY got to the main event. But I think the real reason I liked it was the vibes I got from the first bit... and then the last, wonderfully action promising bit. It's like... "finally, the plot might go somewhere instead of being a bunch of Jedi talking about someone and partying!"

 

It reminded me of reading the Fellowship of the Ring, to be honest: you've started with the promise of a party, given us the party, analasized a poem, created the potential of romantic tension, and now finally there's the whisper of an undercurrent of something a bit darker...

 

Very much like the Fellowship of the Ring, in fact.

[Tiana Calthye]

Simply glorious. I love how they're very briefly making fun of Geki's speech habits.

 

I love the series of opening paragraphs to this. Wow. What an... IMPROVMENT from when you started. The pacing is perfect, it breathes nicely.

 

I find it wonderfully facinating how different characters respond to prophecies.

 

Anyway, really well done, you did a great job with this chapter.

[Tiana Calthye]

Ben, write faster, I'm very much enjoying this. [/lurk]

As long as you don't start [lurk] again. You totally need to stick around more!

[Tiana Calthye]

I have no problem also tearing apart your grammar and wording, you know. I just wasn't because you said she had that covered so I was focusing more on the story as a whole.

[Tiana Calthye]

Looks like you've gotten lots of offers, but here's another one.

I support this offer; Ami used to beta for me and she was a great one.

[Tiana Calthye]

Whaat? No comments yet at all? Madness!

 

How does this guy count as a new character if they just sawed into him? Wouldn't that kill him?

 

(But the question is: what's inside of him that they wanted?)

[Tiana Calthye]

Though I don't find the formality style unfitting, at least for a Jedi youngling who wants to come across as being older than she is, at least. AP and Krystal are definately my favorite characters, though, and I always enjoy their interaction.

 

Write more soon.

[Tiana Calthye]

It's a wonderful story--you've heard my thoughts on the chapters repeatedly, so I have so little to say here, but I can only agree that it earned the awards. For one it's the only notable fic being updated regularly at the moment (HM) but it's well written, a bit like the golden days of fanfic with epic longform stories... but dare I say, a read of the likes rarely seen.

 

I see people who never post in fanfic crawl out from lurking to review it and it's earned those reviews, and those awards.

 

We all eagerly await the next chapter. Though you'd be hardpressed to outdo this one. Intimate, foreshadowing... both appealing to those who like romance and those who're just reading KNOWING AP's going to turn to the dark side at some time.

[Tiana Calthye]

So what's a guy got to do to get an update around here?

Or WHO?

[Tiana Calthye]

Tiana, while blind, appeared was be an exceptional writer.

APPEARED WAS BE?! (DIES) I hope that was intentional because it's hilarious. I like the picture you chose for Tiana. It's pretty accurate.

 

Ar-Pharazon scooped Krystal off her feet and carried her out of the Jedi Council Chambers. As he passed through the doorway, he made a final announcement. ”œNow please excuse me. I'm going to go home and sleep with my wife.”

[Tiana Calthye]

Nicely played. I honestly think this is some of your best work... you've come a long way.