mdk

So I was playing destiny today

Back up for a sec. I was playing last week and I ran into some random person on the dreadnaught who invited me into a party. I was like "Eh..... whatever, sure, why not," and it turned out to be a girl. Cool right?

Okay now fast forward. Today I was playing and got a party invite and I'm like eh, whatever, sure, why not. And we're going for like three hours, before finally she's like "Man, it's 11:30, I gotta go to sleep." And I'm like "Whoa, that's weird, I never meet anybody who's also on Mountain time." And it turns out we live in the same town. A town of like 2,000 people. Fucking WEIRD.

End of story.

NaNoWriMo Headcount

Awesome!

Just so everybody's more or less on the same page -- our current thinking is, we're going to run more or less a standard RPGC contest, both for those who don't NaNo and for people (like me most years) who hit a super-hard writer's block on their NaNo effort and need something else to write about. At the same time, if your NaNo is going well, we'd love to read that too -- and if you haven't tried writing a novel yet, this is the perfect time to give it a shot. So we're going to incorporate NaNo into the RPGC contest *somehow*, so that you don't have to choose between the two. Of course you don't have to do both, or either, or whatever -- but this seems as good a place as any to generate some extra motivation for those slow wordcount days. We're gonna talk it over some more and come up with a good plan. If you have thoughts, do please share them -- the goal here is to make a contest you all like, so your feedback is absolutely crucial! And if you haven't checked out NaNo yet, definitely give it a look. It's a great experience.

NaNoWriMo Headcount

My thinking is, I want people who do NaNo to be able to enter the RPGC contest as well without taking time/effort away from their novel. Talking with @Terminal, I realized that RPGC gets almost the entire month, so we should really be able to make that work -- BUT, I don't want to dramatically change RPGC if there aren't a healthy number of people trying NaNo. So the headcount should give us a good idea of how much to support that.

NaNoWriMo Headcount

Hey folks, I'm trying to make RPGC plans for the month of November. November is also National Novel Writing Month -- read about it here -- a writing sprint to 50 thousand words. Before I alter the RPGC format TOO much, it would be smart to get some idea of how many people are going to try NaNo.

Even if you're not a regular RPGC entrant, feel free to leave a reply here if you're gonna do NaNo. Thanks!

RPGC #5: FEAR Voting and discussion

<Snipped quote by mdk>

You were definitely able to get a clear image through the child's eyes across with your writing, I really pictured large living monstrous trees entering the home while crazy homeless guy does make sense, in horror stories any kind of monsters possible so I didn't think the idea of evil trees was that far-fetched.

@WiseDragonGirl

I mean, Homeless Guy is who the police probably would've arrested in this story, but maybe the walking tree just got away with murder.

RPGC #5: FEAR Voting and discussion

@wisedragongirl -- the home invader wasn't *really* a tree, it was a homeless guy with camo pants. The idea was to tell it in the same way the kid would've been seeing it, like in a nightmare, because yeah he's completely and totally traumatized by it and has no way of making sense of anything. I get the 'confusing' note a lot when I do stuff like this, and I should've learned my lesson by now.

RPGC #5: FEAR Voting and discussion

Protection

@NarayanK

I'm the Form First guy. The form of this poem doesn't blow me away but it's actually pretty clever -- and it's growing on me. The irregular rhyming and meter sorta makes the whole thing feel a bit off and contributes a lot to the sort of paranoid-delusion impression. Which, incidentally, isn't all that crazy in this case, since civilian surveillance is a real thing, but still. Think, drink, go pink, I think.... it feels spot-on. This is one of those rare times where I congratulate someone on NOT using regular schemes. It works! It could've also worked with more consistency, but that's not the point. This works.

Content-wise, it's also pretty solid. Again, doesn't blow me away but it does grow on me. The paranoia feels real (*ahem* because it kind of IS real) and the whole thing gels really well with the wild, irregular structure of the poem. Basically, what you've done here is write a good poem. I mean, that's the long and short of it. Everything you're doing is right. I'd love to suggest areas for improvement, but I've got to reach for them..... maybe a broader/stronger message? Or maybe the SAME message, but portrayed in a little more regular way? After all, the speaker doesn't HAVE to be 'off' to be worried about this. Idunno. It's really solid all around and I don't have much I can add, sorry! Well done.

the elevator

@wisedragongirl

Excellent characters, and a great little plot. Also a charming take on the contest theme -- not 'overcoming' fear per se, but enduring it and dealing with it, and what that does to the people around you. I friggin' LOVED the kids, and Sarah, and heck even Rob. And the conclusion was perfect -- hopeful, but not cheaply so. Like "Yes, it's going to suck, but I'll do it."

Perfect? Close, anyway. If it's lacking anything, it's that I don't really feel like the elevator getting stuck was THAT big of a deal, and I really should. Because I know what claustrophobia is, I can infer what must've been going on in his head, but it would've been a lot stronger if I could see that too. You covered it some -- banging on the walls and freaking out and scaring his kids, all very good for a 'show-don't-tell' approach. I think I would've liked a LITTLE bit of 'tell' in this case though. The bulk of your story is about his family and friend making him feel better and that sorta overwhelms the terror he was feeling, so that at the end, when he's looking back at that horrible experience, I feel like "Well it wasn't THAT bad, Sarah and the kids were right there and they totally supported him through the whole thing." Even though I can infer that it WAS 'that bad,' it would've probably helped me to see it expressed..... not more CLEARLY necessarily, but maybe just "more." The terror gets lost in the good feels, just a little bit, just enough to mention it.

It was incredible storytelling, and not at all what I was expecting to see in a "Fear" theme. Positively touching, and it arrived at a compelling and positive conclusion. Very clever; very well written. Great job.

what war takes from me

@Dewey Deftones

What a twisted little unit these two are. That's an extremely interesting couple, conveyed well.

Here's my chief complaint: the big-picture questions, like "Why is she so self-destructive?" and "Why does he have to run off and die?" are largely taken for granted. It makes the whole thing feel a little artificial -- this sorta-doomed relationship is inherently great writing material, but we're not REALLY exploring it. In a totally trite and unfair summary, it's like "Oh, this is bad and fate stinks, WOE! And now, I die." You, obviously, did nothing to deserve that, but I'm saying it to hopefuly make you think about what you did to make your story different and what you COULD do to make it stand out more.

To clarify -- it's an outstanding thing to write about. That you chose to write about it, therefore, speaks volumes. But you didn't really tap much of the potential that's there. So you're absolutely coming from a fantastic place, but you're not going super far from there. Let's have more story, yeah? Let's really meet these people and see how they do and don't work together as a couple.

kitsune

@Dedonus

If you're following along with the reviews, this one is kind of the opposite of 'What War Takes From Me.' It's -- I'm being blunt -- not all that interesting of a premise, but you went all-out and made something out of it anyway. If I could take @Dewey Deftones's characters, or even just one of them, and give them the treatment you gave Kyra, I think we'd have an incredible story.

Let's back up. "Not all that interesting of a premise?" Why not? What I mean is, there's no reason anywhere for Kyra to be a magic fox. That is the central conflict and it's just not justified. She has to hide it with a power suppressor and confide in her also-magic friend and we're all like..... why? Why any of that? BUT! The emotional struggles and the family dynamic are all told pretty well in spite of that. Would've been better if that final line about 'fearing what they don't understand' was backed up by some event in the story, but you get by just fine on the development you've got.

I think it'd be really interesting to see what you can do with a more grounded story. Inventing new magical worlds is kind of awesome though, so don't sweat it.

the trees

@mdk

I'm not crazy about anything before the creepy homeless guy breaks in, and the end was a little rushed, but I think it works.

Damocles

@KeyGuyPerson

Once upon a time, on 'Small House,' I said that the people impacted by your grand war didn't feel real enough. I don't know if that registered or not -- but you have destroyed that complaint.

There's a few things I could suggest for improvements, but you've kinda already acknowledged ALL of them in your notes. Well..... some of the "Look at how 2015 it is!" felt a little extraneous. "Modern times" would've been good enough. You didn't have to go THAT HARD after setting a very specific year; then again, making it literally right now does add some weight to the hanging sword, so whatever. Given total authority over the story, I'd back off the Star Wars anticipation and the hashtagging or whatever, but that's just me.

The air-to-air combat occupies a large amount of the story, and like you said, it needs some more research. Fun fact -- I actually did some BFM-type training in flight school, so I totally know everything about everything on that front, for reals! Eh.... Well the point is, when something isn't researched well enough, there's always that one asshole out there who knows better, and they roll their eyes a little. No big deal. Most of the real tactics are secret anyway, but there are a few good History channel shows about Vietnam and Korea that could help -- those were great air-to-air wars for fiction writers.

Let's talk about what worked here, besides EVERYTHING. This felt significant. This story carried all the weight of the sword of Damocles -- great title btw -- and it focused on all the right places. Those spots of humanity in a monstrous war are all that the readers can ever really care about. The horror was horrible, the heroism was heroic, the danger is real in real life, oh my god, were we really saved by a stubborn Ruskie, jesus, that HAPPENED? OH MY GOD. You've got an incredible gift for picking out these spectacular moments in history and making them yours.

All in all..... what else can I say that I haven't already said? Go write novels and get rich already. Take my vote, you earned it. I think this was the best yet, which is a high bar to clear in your case. Amazing.

End of the day, I can't help it -- @vote for @Keyguyperson, because my god, that was absolutely incredible.

RPGC #5: FEAR Voting and discussion

I just finished Damocles, and now I need some time to brood before I review things. Tonight! I hope. Unless I turn lazy again.

edit: I turned lazy again. First thing tomorrow, pinky swear.

Trying to come up with cool character names like:

Well, it's because making up tons of names for things makes shit confusing. Making up a name for something that doesn't exist in the real world makes sense, but calling some sword from a fantasy culture a Dikkinshwab despite it being basically a machete with different degrees of sharpness and ornamentation is just pointless. Sort of like why the legs of a insect, despite being very different in design are still called legs. Or why a alien with a gun based on accelerating clay particles extremely fast may just be called a "particle rifle" instead of a "Zvynpc Iscc".

@Arawak

I have a rule that if a paragraph contains more than three made-up words -- including weird-enough names -- I stop reading. At some point, ENGLISH already.

Trying to come up with cool character names like:

Name them by using Cockney rhyming slang for adjectives that would describe them.

Say you're writing a blonde dude. James Bond rhymes with Blonde. So his name is James.