The writeoff.me Contest and My Review of My Story ‘Love Call’ · 3:20am Sep 24th, 2014
TL;DR summary: Thank you all for reading my story, Love Call. I have learned my lesson. My next story will be a passionate love story between Snails and Diamond Tiara written in Seiph Cuneiform with rhyming couplets formed into palindromes.
Before we even start, this is not a rant, or a crying jag, or even a frothing scream of internet rage. Turn down your “I Am So Insulted” throttles to about a -4 and chill. Trust me, if I’m going to rant about something, you’ll know it. I’m actually *happy* that all of you who read the story and commented on it went through that effort, and I would like to encourage you to keep it up, because I’m trying to get to the point where I have the courage to read *and* comment on all of the stories in a write-off too, and the last thing I need is to discourage people.
That being said, place tongue firmly in cheek and continue reading. We now return you to your previously scheduled review of my own story (totally unbiased, really), already in progress.
First, to all of you Purist-Poets who flung various hate at this beautiful and passionate piece of work. Bite me. :)
Free Verse requires no meter, rhyme, or other traditional poetic techniques. It is, in a word, free. By no means does it require a certain number of beats per line, rhyme, iambic pentameter or any of the other crutches that hobble and restrain true creativity. So all of you who read the story and moaned about it not being forced into the form that you wanted it written in, bite me again and go write what you wanted it to be. In fact, I fought to keep from rhyming anywhere, keeping a consistent number of beats on a line, or even lines per grouping (Although 4 lines seemed to hold my muse best).
This is by no means some weak modern invention by those of us who cannot rhyme to save our lives or keep our prose within certain iron fences. Think about the Song of Solomon (although it may rhyme in the original Hebrew, I’m not sure) One of the best stories/poems I’ve ever read done in this style (although full block) was done in 1933 and called Metropolitan Nightmare. Go read it. There are not many words, and it sticks with you. Heck, it stuck with me, and I’m terribly forgetful.
So for those of you who would disparage The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere because it was not done as a limerick, or Beowulf because it was not recited in the original Old Ænglisc, you may bite me yet a third time. And those of you who actually liked this story enough to make these comparisons seem rational, loosen your tie. Your air is getting cut off.
Now give me a minute to put some bandages on those bites. You guys have your rabies shots, right?
Okay, now that I’m not going to bleed to death, lets proceed into the main question:
Georg, why did you write it this way? Are you crazy?
You’re Following me and you ask that? Well, I thought about having Snips and Snails discuss fillies for 2000 words, but that didn’t spark my muse moose. I’ve been doodling a series of short Free Verse stories called “Journey” for a few weeks, and the thought of turning the trope “Shining Armor is still entranced by Chrysalis” on its head really seemed interesting. So I started with Chrysalis, the love-eating queen, being eaten up by her love for Shiny, and driving herself as far away as possible, to where the magic no longer exists, and whatever spell he used to chain her heart could be broken. And when that fails, being dragged by that love back to the Crystal Empire where she confesses to the both of them. Admittedly, I had thought of having an El Paso ending where she dies returning to Shiny, surviving the Crystal Guard just long enough to confess her forbidden love before she expired, but then I hit my second problem.
Free Verse is about as dense as plutonium.
Chrissy dies about word 800. There were 2000 words minimum for the contest. Well, maybe she doesn’t die. That got me up to about 1200 once I got done fiddling, and nothing else was coming out of the first section.
Hm. Well, I have a certain friend of mine (name starts with P) who likes the polygyny concept (a 64 point word in Scrabble), and I’ve always wanted to write an epitaph. So I wrote the second section, zoomed out quite a bit to cover the Before and After of the first section, edited like a maniac to 2044 words counting break characters, and I leave Shining Armor, Princess Cadence, and Queen Chrysalis in a nice indeterminate state. Are all three of them in that coffin? I’m never telling. But Shining Studmuffin is Best Pony.
Why did you leave the POV character unnamed?
Not only that, but I tried my darndest not to indicate a name or gender of any character as far into the story as possible, right up to Chrissy begging at the throne. I wanted the reader to be asking those questions, and if I could have gotten away with it, the POV character would have walked to the north pole to get rid of the love-curse in his/her heart so the reader would have three different characters to be thinking about.
Why Free Verse? Why not (fill in name of preferred medium here)?
98% of all human beings cannot rhyme. I’m one of those most of the time. Iambic Pentameter is a torture device dreamed up by English teachers to suck every possible bit of love of the language out of young pupils and replace it with a burning hatred for the written word. Limericks are very neat and very clever, but I doubt I could write one without it being dirty in some fashion, let alone 2000 words. I thought about mixed Free Verse and ordinary Third Person Omniscient, or even First Person, but I wanted to do it (almost) all as Free Verse to stretch my metaphorical muscles.
Now if you don’t mind, I’m going to rest in the metaphorical jacuzzi while you read about some of the other thematic nits that reviewers have been saying about this poor thing.
Horizon (and his reviews for the whole writeoff. Go read them. Very good.)
Next time I must submit my story later, so his metaphorical sword will be dulled by chopping through a number of shipfics and HIE stories before he reaches mine. :)
Misused ‘whence’ : Hm. Whence is defined as ‘to the place from which’ so that line seems to read literally ‘driven whenceto the place from which the fates desire’ or in other (longer) words ‘The Character is being driven to the place which the fates wish it to be driven, regardless of the wishes of the Character.’ Seems fine to me, but I’m an uncultured barbarian who plays Horde in World of Warcraft.
Orichalcum (Skyrim ingots) vs orchelimum (flowers) - Obvious tyop with no way to fix once the contest started. Too bad. Love and Tolerate. Dammed autocorrect.
Sword with Two Blades : What, you’ve never heard of a sword with two blades? Begone from here, oh ye who hath never seen the Infernal Prequels. 
the ice and fire metaphors just keep piling up on top of each other. : Well, of course. She’s flying North into the trackless arctic waste to beyond the touch of magic, of course it’s going to be full of ice and fire imagery. Duh.
Ozymandias : Why am I discouraged that the one thing you like, is where I steal borrow from Shelly. Sigh.
postscript turned into an almost complete repetition of the original poem. : No. You’re just plain wrong. The cenopath inscription is 12 stanzas. Only three of them can possibly be considered a recap of the first section, and to leave them out would defeat the purpose of the inscription, much like if a history of Patton left out WWII.
and I'll bet money that the entire second poem was written in a desperate attempt to fill space : That’s a sucker bet. Because it was. Free Verse is insanely compact compared to regular stories. I could have written two thousand words with Snips and Snails discussing fillies while standing on my head in a tub of alligators. It took forever to get over the 1k line with this, and I squeezed the muse like a miser with a lemon to hit that 2k mark.
I sincerely applaud you for pushing your boundaries, and the competition's boundaries, with the poem : Thanks! I really wasn’t expecting to win, place, show, or even be seen in the cast photo, waving frantically from the back row. Experimental and Daring lose, period. Somehow I doubt the fanbase is filled with budding poets, and this story was set to peave off both sets. The ‘Poets’ look at it and immediately go into poetry shock, and the non-poets look at it and say “Poetry? Really? Keep looking. Maybe there’s a Snips and Snails fic in here somewhere.”
Silent Strider
where it basically tells everything that happened, kills the (pardon the pun) magic of this entry for me : Understandable, however, some of the most frustrating stories I read are the “Everything is left up to the reader to guess” stories. I always try to answer readers who would otherwise ask really basic questions that they should have been able to discern from the story. For example, there are readers who will not figure out that the POV in the first section is Queen Chrysalis. Don’t laugh. They’re out there.
Chris
Writing freeform doesn’t give you carte blanche to ignore rhythm and the mouthfeel of lines : Yes it does. It says so right here on my Professional Poets License that I bought from the Flim and Flam Poetry License Bureau. I just have to stay below 80 Words Per Minute or I’ll be ticketed for speeding. I’m tempted to do a YouTube reading of this one just to calm the ruffled feathers of the purists. One of the problems Poetry People have with Free Verse is emphasizing syllables in an attempt to make it sound more like rhyming poetry instead of just reading the darned thing, and not trying to push any preconceived notions into the text. You get the same thing from Theatre trained actors who are doing TV/Film (*cough* Shatner *cough*), when they keep trying to push their lines instead of just saying them, and gesture instead of just moving.
Titanium Dragon
You know, I don’t think I’ve written anything TD likes. (checks his favorites list like a stalker) Nope. My streak remains intact. :)
Xepher
Wendigo vs Windigo : You know, I never even thought MLP would spell it different than what I was used to writing. You’re right, though. It does look more ‘pony’ with ‘wind’ as the prefix. Changed for the published story.
PresentPerfect
(does not understand why I did this as Free Verse) : That’s ok. I wondered about that at times too.
Thisisalongname
just felt like an overly long way of saying she ran away and then came back. : Um. Yes. How compact. Don’t take this wrong, but I’m going to mock you now. It’s in good fun. IOU One editing/assistance with one of your stories in return. PM me.
Romeo and Juliet - Teenaged lovers kill themselves.
Citizen Kane - Old man with sledding issues.
Hamlet - Some rich prince goes nuts and kills everybody
Up - Old man and boy scout steal zeppelin.
The Wizard of Oz - Young girl finds herself in a surreal landscape, kills the first person she sees, then teams up with three strangers to kill again (ok, I stole this one)
devas
Nice review, you probably hit as many of the points in the story as everybody else, because I was pretty vague. In retrospect, I probably should have identified Chrysalis’ launch point better as “Takes off, heads for Crystal Empire, supreme force of will to turn away and head north, go from there” but that might have been more distracting than informative AND would have leaked the identity of the POV earlier than I wanted. To-may-toe, toh-mah-toe
Golden Vision
No, it’s not a good idea to read poetry on first awakening. Before you go to sleep, yes. :love:
FanOfMostEverything
Yes! Somebody got sucked in by my not identifying the POV character until the end and thought it was at least interesting. One out of about… um… fifty. Then again, Fan always seems to understand what I do and appreciates it. Now if only I could get him to move out from my basement and get a job… :)
Huh.
I just now saw this story/poem pop up in my notifications.
Now I pretty much have to read it, if only to see what all the controversy and fuss is about...
Have you ever looked into Oulipo?
Correct me if I am wrong (I am certainly not a poet/historian) but was not one of the purposes of rhyme/rhythm/metre a mnemonic device to aid in the memorization and recall of oral works?
I can empathize. I need a dictionary to be certain if what I read rhymes, at least in English.
Your plan is already foiled, for the Writeoff site randomizes the entries
(I would know; the first thing I did was to try to relate when I submitted my entries with where in the list they appeared. Old habits die hard
)
2478856 Randomizes? Curse you random chance! And Discord! Maybe it's because Discord doesn't like Free Verse, do you think?
2478862
I sometimes think he is responsible for the randomization. In the Long Way Home event, my three entries ended one (the worst one) on the second gallery spot, one smack dab in the middle, and one in the last spot; either it was one heck of a coincidence, or he was playing with my entries
Edit: and they were also in the opposite order I submitted them.
Yes, but that's only because no one will pay for it.
Seriously, I don't think that people are unaware of the existence of free verse. It is just that almost all free verse poetry sucks. It is very difficult to write a good free verse poem, even harder than it is to write a good poem in general. Indeed, it is the rise of modernist poetry which, in part, lead to the death of poetry as an art form, though I suspect the real reason is that the good poets all became musicians instead.
I will note that Paul Revere's Ride as an example is a terrible idea because that poem has a ton of structure in it, particularly in the rhymes, but it also uses some structural elements in a few places. For instance, the first stanza is AABBA, and the first two lines have the same number of syllables for a reason. Indeed, while the number of syllables don't match, there is a certain cadence to the piece as a whole when it is read out loud, and the effect it has is that it makes it sound pretty.
And this is the important thing to recognize; poetry is about sounding pretty. That's what it is. That's why it uses meter, rhyme, and other things; it takes advantage of the aesthetics of language to make language itself sound beautiful. It doesn't have to use any of those things, but it usually uses at least one of them because they help to make it sound pretty.
Indeed, even in free verse this is so. As a number of poets have noted, free verse isn't actually free; there are still rules it must follow. T.S. Eliot, Donald Hall, Kenneth Allott, John Lowes, Robert Bridges, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, and Yvor Winters all agree to this point, as do many others, and note that "truly" free verse sucks.
A lot.
And this is the problem here. I read your poem out loud to myself, and while some parts of it do okay, others don't. Your omission of punctuation did NOT help in this regard, either. For instance:
You aren't salting and peppering properly. There should be a period at the end of the second line, and the loss of this punctuation makes it harder to read out loud. It also leads to uncertainty in the ending of the third line; is that supposed to be a sentence break? "I bleed into the frozen wind as I fly north, away from where my heart desires" is a legitimate sentence, but so is "I bleed into the frozen wind as I fly." The capitalization of "North" suggests there was supposed to be a sentence break there, but the final line reads awkwardly if it is taken as a sentence on its own and it is vague because "North" could also be a reference to a location (though it would be awkward if it was, as typically you would instead say "the North" if it is being used as a proper noun), and therefore a proper noun, and therefore capitalized for that reason. Given the lack of context, it is hard to say which you meant. Incidentally, if you weren't referring to a specific place, "north" shouldn't be capitalized.
When I have to guess at how I'm supposed to read the poem while I'm reading it, it makes any reading of it much, much worse because it ends up awkwardly stilted. And you do this throughout the poem. We use commas and periods for a reason!
This paragraph is even worse in that regard. How many sentences is this supposed to be? There should be some commas and periods in there, but they're not there, and there aren't any capitalized words which would help guide the reader as to when the sentence breaks are, even though there is no way that whole thing is a single sentence.
I'm not going to go through and mark everything (as the lack of punctuation in the piece is omnipresent), but I think properly punctuating this thing would go a long way towards improving its mouthfeel.
FYI, I only favorite stories that I either really like, feel like I'm going to need to go back and look at again, or am following. So just because I haven't faved anything of yours doesn't mean I haven't upvoted anything, and you've written other things that I thought were alright. The only things you've written that I've read which I didn't really like were The Young Filly and the Sea (which, as I noted, I felt like the second and third chapters weren't very good, while the first was fine) and Love Call.
I haven't read most of your work. I do have some stuff marked RL (i.e. RN). I'll get around to it... sometime.
I'm pretty sure, but not absolutely sure, that the order of the stories is random. Dawn was the very last story submitted to the contest, and yet was #9 on the list.
Whence means "from which, from where" or "from what place or source". It is an adverb, and it is a reference to a place. "The fates" isn't a place, and using "from" in that sentence wouldn't work. The word you should use here is "where", as in "Driven where the fates desire", which is what you said it is supposed to mean anyway.
Incidentally, "the Fates" should be capitalized as it is a reference to the Fates, and thus would be a proper noun.
One final note:
This is actually completely wrong. As Mark Rosewater notes, restrictions breed creativity.. And indeed, this is so. In the big wide world, when you see someone complaining about their creativity being unhampered, remember:
The first three Star Wars movies and Indiana Jones movies, George Lucas did not get his way.
After that, he made Howard the Duck, and no one told him no.
The reality is that restrictions are good for creativity, as has been noted by a large number of people, because it gives you something to push off from. And poetry by its very nature is restrictive; calling something poetry and then not actually writing poetry doesn't really work.
"A poet is a musician who cannot sing. Words have to find a man's mind before they can touch his heart, and some men's minds are woefully small targets. Music touches their hearts directly no matter how small or stubborn the mind of the mman who listens."
Ha! I'd read that. Sadly, Mudpony has left a bit of a void in me for wanting to see some dorky or dumbly goof like Snails trying to woo Diamond Tiara or confusing whatever gestures or words to mean she somehow reciprocates his feelings.
Are you sure that wasn't your muse? Møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...
In any case, as one of the 2% who can rhyme (and the 47% who know that anyone can make up statistics,) I can't empathize with your decision, but I certainly understand it. Though meter isn't quite as unnatural as you may think. To quote one of my best English teacher's anecdotes, she once heard a spontaneous bit of iambic pentameter from an adjacent apartment:
"I can't believe you lost the f
ing keys!"
I tend to see meter as a puzzle. Here is a box containing x syllables in a given pattern. You have the entire English language. Find something that fits.
Also, just because I have a job that doesn't require me to change out of my pajamas doesn't mean I don't have a job. Also, we're out waffles.
2479082
C'mon, Titey, tell us how you really feel about free verse.
2478862
In the spirit of your post, I'll just say: consider yourself bit.
It's perfectly fine to say my review is fulla crap; it wouldn't be the first time I've been wrong. (Speaking of which, I concede on the two-bladed sword; I thought it was misusing the metaphor and on deeper reflection I think the idea of "something that can hurt you as it wounds others" still works the way you changed it.) I've gotta stand firm on "whence" for the reasons TD explains, but the rest is, like all prereading feedback, designed to give you an outside data point.
And also nitpicks about orchelimums. Those are the most important part.
I still want to see more of the post-Empire-whatever world! That was fascinating and even a wiki-style entry into that world-history would be super cool. Worldbuilding is awesome.
2479607
I started to write my response in rhyme, but then I realized that poetry doesn't actually rhyme with anything.
2479607 You made me almost fall out of my chair laughing at that, Horizon. All the guys at work were looking at me funny. (but that's normal, I suppose) No, your review was not full of crap. I fully acknowledge my story was not very strong. Um. Weak. Well, it flew as well as Scootaloo, let's leave it at that. I suppose I should plead guilty to Second Degree Whenceslaughter and hope the judge goes easy on me. I'm really considering this as Art, which is something done in a particular way to elicit an emotion and make people think, even if the thought is "Did we pay money for this? I hope not."
2481162 The symmetry of poetry lacks geometry to infinity but in congruity there is no extremity that brings joviality like wishing to be a tree if you’re stuck in normality like one whose ethnicity happens a pony to be. Nope, I got nuttin.
2479474 We're out of waffles again? Darnit, Fan!
2479287 Well, if there's any young pony who could be funnier by being bitten by the love bug, it's Snails. "Yeah, I know Diamond's all tough and such, but under that shell there's a soft and squishy heart, all covered in ooze and slime like a beautiful snail."
Snips: "You're sick. Get help."
DT: "Stop following me! And why are you giving me flowers? They smell awful."
Snails: "They're not flowers. There's a Fibious Slug on the leaf... no, I don't see it any more. Wait, there it is. On your nose."
DT: (runs screaming away)
2479286 Yeah, but a man's stomach is a much larger target. And it gets bigger as they age...
2479082 Wow. Thanks TD. I really appreciate this. I really don't mind being compared to George Lucus, if I could share in the royalties for an hour or two
"Yes, but that's only because no one will pay for it. "
And I think a couple of people who read my story would like a refund, too. Still, only one downvote and.... great heavens. 18 Faves. You poor, poor people. Get help. Really.
I honestly did think about punctuating it at one time. Then I tried to figure out how many lines were broken across unnatural spots if I did. I really did read it out loud (much to the dismay of my children, who think I'm weird enough already) as I was going and once at the end, and I had thought about a youtube recording of it, but I have a life with coworkers and an ordinary job. If the darned thing went viral (hey, dumber things have), my life would be over. Besides, I would really need a female voice to record it. I suppose I could get Bad Horse to read it like he did for my There's a Zebra In My Bed, a response to one of Pen Stroke's stories that proves I can rhyme when held at gunpoint and my family is threatened with being dropped into a shark pool, but even there I had a few "why did that sentence break there?" moments.
2481306
You're a dork. I love you. Keep ruffling the squares, you're pretty cool.
2481306
Incidentally, there's actually a word for that sort of thing: half-rhymes. Poetry has quite a few half-rhymes, but no perfect rhymes - or at least, none are listed in my rhyming dictionary.
2481306 lol that's adorable. We need more genuine E rated stories that stick to the promise of delivering something more show level entertaining without being filled with much of the usual cusps of hate that can taint what would otherwise be a great story.
2481306
Been scrambling to keep up with Shellshock the past 24h but wanted to at least say that "Second Degree Whenceslaughter" is the funniest thing I've read today.
2481407 Ah, so these would be Hybrid Rhymes, a much more healthy and robust form of poetry, able to flourish in a wider variety of soils and produce larger fruit.... which I would have to dodge while reciting. Hm, maybe not a plus after all.
2481759 Well, I try. I really have problems writing anything too bloody or racy, probably due to my Lutheran upbringing, but I also have problems writing completely E. I believe the best short I have so far that shows this is Diamond Tiara buys a Little Sister, which covers unwanted pregnancy, adoption, and pre-marital sex in a nice sugar-coated fashion.
2482922 Careful, lest I slay some poor unfortunate phrase upon the altar of creativity again for the amusement of my peeps.
2482982 >>
Yes, I read it, and commented on it way back upon its release.
What I meant to convey was simply how much I've come to miss good E rated stories that stick to the show's morals, not simply just copy the show but stuff that feels Equestrian ponies would do and say due to their upbringings in a world where though many might not always get along, stuff like the word and concept of 'hate' still manages to make a pony's hair stand on end.
It really makes me appreciate the way the staff balances the concept of Equestria, while still making it feel relatable and close enough to feel human but still be its own thing. Something a lot of stories lack, especially outside of Mane 6 focused stories. It's why I like your Monster series. It has some dark undertones but it's very family friendly for all its worth. And feels very Equestrian.
I like your stories. So many people try to be 'edgy' and 'dark' that the tag has just really lost its appeal. And yet, sadly, many E rated stories end up not really being E rated at all but instead just purposely avoid detailing events that otherwise would be seen on TV as violent or too sexual for its target audience. Too many people abuse the E tag, I find, and prereaders have no honest way to police those tags unless it truly offends people enough to cause one to force the writer to change it.
Not that I don't love a good M story, if it has the 'story' part. But I'm rather sick of angsty and self-indulgent inconsistencies in fanfiction. Every time I come across it I'm reminded why I was disgusted of the fanfiction communities with its stereotypings often ringing true. One need not go far to find examples either.
I guess, what this all means, is that it's made me appreciate the ones who DO invest the time and effort to bring readers a good, fun, immersive story that I'd not have to feel embarrassed by its, often overlooked by fans, message it spreads. And sadly, many are just pleased to circle jerk the issue to justify it all as if all admit "It doesn't matter what we write because it's exclusively written for pony fans," which is an excuse for lazy writing which often boils down to 'because I want to' and then many wonder why their story fails to hit the feature box or why their other stories are so overlooked if it didn't include some fan-popular character.
You do good stories, good stories ALL can read. I think that's something worth feeling proud about. And I guess I'm just starting to realize how easily overlooked the E tag gets at times. Often an E tag with the CMC equates to poor writing. Even when written by those well known in the fandom, E+CMC=Not Worth The Effort.
I guess that's just subjective as there can be tons of reasons, seeing how a good chuck of people never finish reading many multi-chapter stories. BUT, of that survey, I wonder how many of those multichapter stories were even COMPLETED. Because more often than not, a good story tends to die long before its completion. And that sends a ripple effect throughout those who end up feeling their time investment and support were for not. Further damaging the ecosystem we so live in.
Then again, I never did like the thought of people uploading incomplete stories to begin with. Even if a handful actually do stick it out to the end, often times a story will feel different as it grows over time to the reader because the author didn't properly plan out their story and eventually throw in a jarring chapter or rush a conclusion if they get bored enough. Doesn't happen all the time, many quit before even considering doing such a thing, but it dies happen enough to be annoying.
I guess that's all there is to say. I just wish there was a way to cross out authors you don't enjoy reading from appearing on popular or featured lists. Be able to customize a page more tailored to one's interests then just 'everyone else's opinions', you know?
Eh. That'd be controversial, but quite honestly a welcomed change for tons of readers.