I finished rating my slate, I don't think I'll have the time or competence to comment on them in any constructive way, so here are a few unsubstantiated opinions:

Of Thomas Hobbes and Frontal Lobe Trauma
The narrating voice sealed the deal for me. The story is nice, the setting feels overly familiar but seeing through the eyes of the MC gives everything a different and interesting perspective.

IDDP
For a long series of reasons I'm still struggling with my personal perception and my ethical framing of this conflict and most of the others that arose in the last 15 years. I have, maybe sadly, no certainties about them (certainties are nice and fuzzy, I would like some). This story spoke to me on many levels, and it landed straight at the top of my slate.

Vehemence
Nice, fun, interesting, but needs a lot more room to breathe.

A Dinner Guest at Midnight
Nice framing of the story, I liked it.

I Would Like to Speak With The Director
Half through the story I knew more or less how it would end, nonetheless it was a pleasant reading. It also reminded me of the final scene of an Italian movie, Fantozzi or White Collar Blues, that came out in 1976. Thematically it's eerily similar, even if the ending of the movie is even more bitter (it's a comedy by the way). Sadly it seems impossible to find the clip with subtitles.

As seems to happen:

With alarming frequency, they show a Fluttershy episode, and I have a ding-dang personal revelation.

I've been writing my little comments on the Writeoff stories for the year that I've been involved, and people seem to find them helpful--I'm astonished to see my comment posts getting little green "up thumbs," for instance. But this time around showed me more clearly than ever how much I dislike writing them.

It's a character flaw of mine that I'm just plain uncomfortable having opinions--I mean, the thought of writing regular reviews like Present Perfect or Titanium Dragon or PaulAsaran is literally making me queasy typing this right now. I thought that the fictional device I adopted here, pretending to be a submissions editor and all that, might help by putting an artificial distance into the process, but it just ended up making things worse instead of easier. I didn't even post the batch I did Saturday before the prelims ended because I felt so awful about it.

So I'll apologize to folks for the comments I wrote, and I'll likewise apologize for not writing any more comments this round. Maybe it's just the tail end of my bronchitis fouling up my brain...

Mike

4826816
I can't say anything about the fact that writing reviews makes you uncomfortable, but I think you don't need to apologize for your comments, at least not to me.

And I hope you get better soon.

This was written before i had seen 4826816 this, but I'm going to retroactively quote him now.

I'm... so I said it's my first time reviewing fics traditionally, here, and I've realized it's not true. I've done in dozens of times--

-- in story comment sections, and not blogs. I've left long, rambling and critical think pieces on dozens of stories on this site, which are reviews and critiques unto themselves. I just hadn't considered it. I'm just realizing, now, why.

Something I've realized doing this is that reviewing stories without being able to talk to their authors, or with the knowledge the author can't address those points, is very difficult for me. I'm a critical bastard -- I'm aware of that -- but I don't mind that so long as I can talk to the writer of the piece in question at the time and kind of 'haggle' about the points in general. I come out of that sort of thing being a lot less critical when I can actually discuss with the author what was intentional and what was executional. Which is rather the point of critique, I feel -- to provoke a reaction from the author so it can be discussed, isolated and considered.

When I don't have that... discourse, I feel antsy. There is very little point to criticism for its own sake, because it feels purely destruvtive.

So, another revelation I'm having from doing this for the first time, apparently, is that my default review style is yelling at people, and I'm completely comfortable with that because I'm reliant on the knowledge that other people can, will and should defend themselves. I also yell at people when, or more often because I adore them and feel strongly about decisions that were made. Without that sense of response and communication, I feel like a bully kicking sandcastles. But anything else would make me feel incredibly disingenuous or dishonest.

I'm actually finding myself seriously disagreeing with -- to use a notable example and not because I'm singling him out I cannot stress that enough -- Bradel's approach for this very reason, not because I feel he's wrong, but because I feel that the... vehemence of his points without the author's input feels more a knife-in-the-back than the intended firm clap on the shoulder, like it would be if I saw the exact same piece on the story's public comments section.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, Horizon is good people and he has a skillset I truly admire, and never even realized I lacked until now.

4826816
Mike, thank you very much for the comments you've given me on stories. I really do appreciate hearing your opinion and the time you've taken to put them down, especially if that's something which is hard for you. So please don't feel bad about that? I hope you get well soon!

4826319
I didn't find anything here offensive, personally. But 'dear' and 'darling' are rather on the... feminine side, as far as casual pet names go, which was a bit odd tone-wise? Here in the south, I get called 'honey' and 'darling' by people I don't know at all, but they're exclusively women. If they'd been saying something like 'chum' or 'old chap', or more masculine terms, I wouldn't have blinked twice. Nicknames might have worked as well, perhaps?

4826816
4826837

I don't like writing reviews to anonymous authors, either. Feedback is most useful when it's a discussion, when I can ask the writer questions about their purpose and writing process, and when the writer can challenge me or ask me for clarification, when feedback is a conversation between friends instead of a critic tearing down someone else's work. None of that can happen when authors are required to remain anonymous. An author can technically respond to feedback here, but only days later, when people are too busy or don't care anymore. With writing comments here, I usually end up feeling either like I'm firing blanks in the dark, or like I'm throwing pies out into a crowd of innocents from behind a curtain.

But the thing is, I like knowing what other people think about my stories. Even when they're wrong, even when they're jerks, even when their comments aren't useful, I still want to know what they thought, and I still enjoy reading what they have to say.

Reading comments without taking the time to write any of my own feels like taking without giving anything back, and that's worse. I'm extremely skeptical of how useful any of my feedback can be here. But I'd like to think that any time spent writing a comment about what you thought of one of the stories is time well spent, and time the author will appreciate.

I don't think the WriteOff is a good format for giving and receiving criticism. But it is an excellent format for gauging a general audience's response to a story, and that's something very valuable on its own.

RE: feedback to anonymous writers here, maybe it's just that I come from a fine art background where part of the studio curriculum in college is giving and receiving critique on pieces without having a chance to directly respond to them, but I don't really mind it at all. The comments I've left have been written in mind knowing that 1) the writer is a person with feelings even if I don't know who they are, and 2) they won't be able to respond right away nor do I really expect them to respond at all. I dunno. Fimfic as a whole has engendered a certain comment/discussion culture with feedback that's rather unique, because you can converse directly with an author about a piece where you pretty much couldn't with a traditional author, but my personal feelings in regards to Death of the Author often limits how I respond to readers to a point where I often avoid that unique culture. I don't really think an author's intentions are all that important compared to how something actually comes across in a piece. I have been thinking of the feedback here as being less a direct 'review' of a story and more of a writer's workshop style feedback system, and will probably be responding to comments about my intentions I'd otherwise let alone once the voting period has ended, but for the most part my approach to feedback is one where this sort of thing isn't really out of the ordinary or more difficult than other forms of feedback.

Genre: War, contemporary, drama

Major Martin is placed in charge of an errant drone strike in Afghanistan. A drone pilot tracking an armed man on a motorcycle takes a shot at him with a hellfire missile and misses, instead blowing up a random nearby house. The major has to investigate.

This was a pretty great story. I was familiar with most of the acronyms, but there were a few - PKMs in particular - which I wasn't familiar with. I'm not sure if some of the other things should have been explained as well - I'm not sure how familiar most people are with RPGs, though I know what they are. That said, the use of the various acronyms and the military lingo lent this story a kind of authenticity to it, like it was written by someone who actually was involved with this stuff.

Not that I'm, you know, pointing fingers or anything.

Or missiles, fortunately.

This piece felt real, like something someone might have written about a real drone strike in Afghanistan that went wrong. The ambiguity of the situation, the inability to know what was true and what wasn't, dealing with bloodthirsty people who want to kill folks they see as bad guys...

The central acronym - and its weakness, the fact that the folks in charge of ordering strikes couldn't even remember what it meant - really was a great encapsulation of the story, as the major, simultaneously an outsider and insider, gets to see the full ridiculousness of what is going on on display, and sees just how little caution and care is taken in avoiding this sort of thing (i.e. far too little).

The whole piece did a great job of encapsulating the Major's feelings about what was going on - the seeming futility of the situation, the question of whether or not the strike even should have been authorized in the first place, the question of whether or not the pilot was lying or actually screwed up (the story points rather strongly towards the latter), and the ambiguity about whether the missile had killed someone (likely, but they couldn't be sure)... It was very engaging, and I followed along with the main character very well.

The one who’d figured the missile was waiting for me on a television screen in the squadron’s briefing room, wearing the olive green flightsuit that Air Force pilots loved.

Is "figured the missile" military slang, or a typo?

Anyway, this was really strong and I loved it. Well done.
]

4826816
I thought your reviews were interesting and insightful, and as someone who has actually sold stories, I find your input interesting and worthwhile.

I liked your feedback and would be a little sad if you hadn't reviewed my story.

Not that I'm saying you did :V

But you don't need to apologize for having opinions.

Of course, I have opinions coming out my ears, so maybe I'm not the best person to ask.

Still, I can understand it making you miserable. I think most of us are cool with you, though.

4826837

I'm actually finding myself seriously disagreeing with -- to use a notable example and not because I'm singling him out I cannot stress that enough -- Bradel's approach for this very reason, not because I feel he's wrong, but because I feel that the... vehemence of his points without the author's input feels more a knife-in-the-back than the intended firm clap on the shoulder, like it would be if I saw the exact same piece on the story's public comments section.

Some people get itchy over getting feedback they can't respond to, but frankly, I think that it is actually pretty helpful - and possibly useful, given that if you ever do professional publishing, there may be angry letters to the editor of magazines that you have no way of responding to, and reviews of your Great American Novel that call it drivel :V

But really, the anonymity means that we can look at the stories without knowing who wrote them, without context, and try and dig into what we think about them. Without the author being able to explain themselves, we can see how well the piece stands on its own, because frequently, pieces must do exactly that in the end - when someone reads a story, seeing what their authentic reaction is is quite valuable.

4826883
I find the feedback I get from writeoffs useful for the precise reason you noted at the end - you get people's reactions.

I actually have files on my computer which are nothing but people's feedback on my writeoff stories, and I read them over while revising my stories.

I do agree that being able to interact with editors is generally more useful than the sort of one-sided feedback we get here in terms of direct fixes, but knowing what people thought of a piece is actually pretty valuable in and of itself, and is too-often glossed over when editing stories - all too often, when I edit a story for someone else, or they do the same for me, I never really articulate in the end how well I liked it as a piece, and that's unfortunate because it is really helpful to know. It is easy to get down in the weeds in a story without looking at the big picture of whether or not it is good.

4826837
I figure maybe I should respond since I'm in the process of stabbing someone else in the back.

I know I'm a bit of an odd duck, but there are two main reasons I review the way I do. (And full disclosure, you guys may be seeing a lot less of it coming up, too, because it's the larger share of the work I put into the Writeoffs, and I can't keep this up unless I get at least three weeks between reviewing periods, I don't think.) Those reasons are:

1) This is actually how I'd like my stories reviewed.

One of the big reasons I got involved with the Writeoff was the anonymity here. I wanted to get an unvarnished sense of what people thought of my stories, when my name wasn't attached to them. I did a pretty good job building a following that would trust me when I got into this fandom, but that means I think I get more credit for intentionality in my writing decisions than another author might get. Anonymity means I'm on an even playing field with everyone else, and I'm getting evaluated without my background reputation. I get the sense that people don't generally know which stories are mine when I enter (though I've never managed to get an undetected mask so far), so that seems to be working out for me.

More than that, I generally want people to be brutal with my stories. You don't get good at a skill unless you can pinpoint your flaws and work on them. A review that just tells me, "I liked this story. I can't think of anything that would make it better," is tremendously unhelpful to me. It's ego-boosting, sure, and I do really like that. But it's not helping me become a better writer. If I'm going to be perfectly honest, there's often a point in every Writeoff where I start feeling a little disappointed that I can't really review my own stories, because I know I'm almost never going to get something like what I do.

2) Reviewing is something I do as much for me as for the author.

I see the skill of writing as having three basic components: creation, analysis, and revision. The Writeoff encourages us to do two of these—creation in the contest, and analysis in the workshop. The reason my reviews are so stream-of-consciousness read-along style is because that's the easiest way I have to distill what I'm trying to do when I read critically. It's a lot more fun (and a lot less time-and-energy consuming) to just sit down and try to read these things for pleasure, but that doesn't help me work on my analysis skills. And decent analysis skills, being able to pick apart what does and doesn't work for me in someone else's story, make it easier for me to improve my own work by identifying things I'm seeing. (I'd provide some examples from this round about things I've noticed other writers doing better than me, things I'd like to try to improve in my work, but it'd start to compromise my anonymity if I did so.)

I tend to not worry too much about how people are going to take my criticism, outside avoiding flat-out hurtful statements. Given that I'm stream-of-consciousness-ing most of my reviews, I probably slip up there, but it's one of the reasons I make mental notes to try to avoid things like trollficcing and whether English was an author's first language. Those aren't useful bits of analysis, for me or for the author. I'm more than happy to rake a hook over the coals, though, because if an author isn't making me interested in their story, they need to know that. Honestly, one of the reasons I'm such a bad fanfic reader is that my patience for amateur stories has gotten so low that unless I have a pressing need to read something (e.g analysis, voting), I'm probably just going to drop it after the first couple hundred words if it isn't doing something I really like.

I also trust authors to be able to judge whether my comments are worth anything to them—and I know that may be a bit unfair of me, because my name does tend to come with a suggestion that I know what I'm talking about, and people may be more likely to want to please me. But learning to sift through criticism and decide what's worth addressing is another skill that I think it's important for writers to learn. The first (and only) time I've ever had Skywriter pre-read a story for me, I found myself wanting to change everything to make the story best match his vision of what it should be, and he had to step in and tell me what was wrong with that attitude.

So I tend to try—and I'm honestly pretty clueless about whether I succeed—to highlight elements that aren't working for me in the stories I read, and if possible, pin down why they're not working. And avoid giving too many suggestions about how I'd make them work, if I can. As a reader, I've got a pretty good sense of what I do and don't like in prose and storytelling. That doesn't always match up with what other people like, but it lets me pick out things that aren't working for me (I think/hope), and what isn't working for your readers is almost always useful information.

I suspect we have pretty different takes on all this, though—both from what you said in your comment and from the fact that I honestly don't care about having a conversation about most of the issues I bring up in my reviews. To me, reading isn't a dialogue between author and audience. I'm very much into the Death of the Author school of writing; what the author intends is meaningless, unless it shows up on the page. So I don't care what an author wanted to do, or tried to do, or any of that. I just care what the author did, and whether it worked for me—and an author coming back and responding to my comments with an explanation kind of misses the point for me, because if you need to explain what you're doing to your reader, your writing has already failed.

4826970

So as another Death of the Author type, I wanted to throw in my 100% support of this:

To me, reading isn't a dialogue between author and audience. I'm very much into the Death of the Author school of writing; what the author intends is meaningless, unless it shows up on the page. So I don't care what an author wanted to do, or tried to do, or any of that. I just care what the author did, and whether it worked for me—and an author coming back and responding to my comments with an explanation kind of misses the point for me, because if you need to explain what you're doing to your reader, your writing has already failed.

However, while I am in complete and total agreement with this as a reviewer/author on finished pieces that are published, I've personally been approaching the writeoff here as more akin to a writer's workshop sort of environment than full on publishing. The time constraint on writing here makes everything more like a first draft than a final product, at least for me and I assume for other people since I've seen that exact analogy made elsewhere, and I think Death of the Author has a weird relationship with workshopping. If a writer responds to a critique with what they were trying to do on a finished piece, it's certainly a 'don't care' scenario, but as these are basically unfinished, I take that response as an invitation for a dialogue expanding on why what they were trying to do didn't make it to the page, and a place to discuss how they could go about getting it on the page with edits.

...Not really going anywhere with this, because I do very much agree with you in general, just a little food for thought on how I and others may be treating the feedback cycle here.

(also, for the record, I would miss your reviews, as they are both entertaining to read and insightful)

4826816

Sorry to hear that, BB. I can say from personal experience that the reviews I get of my stories are the best part of the Writeoff, so it's always distressing to me when I hear that people don't like writing them, or feel as if they're somehow doing them wrong.

Two cents inbound:

At the very least, the anonymous aspect of the reviewing helps me forget that I'm offering reviews to, like, the demigods of Fimfiction. I'm at least a little less self-conscious about reviewing stories thanks to the anonimity.

I hesitate to even call it "reviewing", as I don't yet feel confident enough in my writing abilities to pretend like my opinions will be all that helpful to better writers than I, but at the very least, I can offer my reaction to something and whether I liked it or not, as I'm not yet in the boat of always knowing why I like or don't like a story.

I'm using horizon's HORSE rating system, which you can learn more about here.

27 – A Dinner Guest at Midnight

Wait. This isn't pony fiction, but it is horse fiction. What's up with that?

The first paragraph here does some light setting work, but it's a lot of text to deliver what amount to four real punch words: saddle, badlands, moon, dusty. Those four words in the first paragraph tell me almost everything I'm learning from it. That's not to say the whole intro is a waste; it's not bad. But it is pretty light on content.

Jim has a decent character voice (Countryisms are an easy way to do that), but this is still a very slow opening section. I don't know enough about Jim's motivation to engage with him much. Letting him go snare something for dinner makes him a bit more active, but it'd help more if I had a sense of what sort of conflict I was looking at here. Right now, this is feeling like a plotless character piece.

On the downside with the Countryisms, some of the ones here feel pretty cliche, and that's less useful for establishing character voice, even if they're fairly natural turns of phrase. "[X]'s luck was turning" and "get her legs back" are close enough together to jump out at me as examples, though I know I've seen a few before that point too. I got a little sidetracked looking up "Hoss", too—I've always wondere where that came from. Turns out it's from the TV show Bonanza, but before that it was from Sweden: "In the mountain country, that is the name for a big, friendly man," says the mother of the middle son who first received this nickname. You learn something every day.

And there's a talking coyote! And it's not jus a talking coyote, this is Coyote! Well, there's not a lot of plot here still, but I have to admit to a particular fondness for Coyote stories. Also, Coyote totally sounds like you, Mike.

The Coyote story is very good, and feels like it could have been pulled straight out of a collection of such stories. Jim's story at the end, and the ending, are similarly good—but that lead-in period is really long before we get to either, and it really doesn't feel like it connects up to the end very well. Where did Albuquerque come into all this? It wasn't part of Jim's story (and it's certainly not "back East"). It'd also be helpful to know that Goldfield was where he'd been sent—my initial assumption was that he must have been sent somewhere near Albuquerque, because it seemed like the only option that made sense.

There's a lot of fun toward the end here, but for me the intro really drags and it feels like a number of threads that should have joined up never quite did. Also, Jim's voice is a little off to me, though I suspect it'll read fine to most people. (I'm going to have a hard time elaborating on that beyond what I said above about Countryisms, because it's close enough that it's basically hitting my uncanny valley, and telling someone what's gone wrong in the uncanny valley seems to be near-enough impossible.) I also kept thinking this was set in near-to-present-day, btu that's entirely my fault for looking up the (apparent) origin of "hoss" as Western slang, so I wouldn't worry much about that.

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Almost There

Thoughts on my finalist slate (minus one story I've already done). Spoiler alert: They're all pretty damn good.

IDDP: I have a feeling that this one's gonna win in a landslide, and I'm completely okay with that. The amount of naturally-incorporated detail makes all of the scenes pop in a way that's simply astounding. If our author hasn't had military experience, this is probably the most well-researched piece of fiction I've ever read, period. And even if our author has done service, it speaks volumes that they are able to so evocatively portray military life to someone almost entirely unfamiliar with it, like myself. In other words, there is no universe where this isn't excellent tone-setting. Thematically speaking, there are a lot of messages that remind me of the miniseries, Generation Kill. It investigates the morally grey nature of modern armed conflicts through the viewpoint of characters who somehow both lack the power to improve their grim situation while simultaneously having too much of it to know what to do. It's a intriguingly tragic conflict, and to see it conveyed so succinctly is powerful in its own right. If I had to make a complaint, I would say that the third to last paragraph feels seriously out of place to me. The themes and messages were already clear far before this point, and by naming them outright, you've made them feel smaller and simpler, IMHO. Minor complaint aside, this piece is well worth the medal that surely must be on its way. Beautiful work, author.

YouTube Celebrity: Okay, let me be upfront about the fact that while I really, really enjoyed reading this one, I ended up having mixed feelings about it overall. First off, the voicing here is fantastic. The reader learns so much about the characters by how they talk and how Doreen's thoughts flow when she's around them. Seeing magic in a contemporary setting is also vastly interesting. By removing much of the romanticization that usually surrounds magic when it's portrayed in fiction, the story leaves the reader with the fact that spells are goshdarn dangerous things. It works to great effect. What doesn't work as well, I think, is the meat and potatoes of the story. The plot feels, well, almost formulaic. I was gearing up to say how Sam's death seems to be the only thing that makes the conflict emotionally interesting , but then it becomes pretty much a moot point anyway, since he's not dead, after all. Also, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of themes or messages. Rural and hillbilly culture is often used to great effect to investigate the ambiguity of relationships between people (e.g. HBO's True Detective, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!) . Incestuous cracks aside, things like racism, old-fashioned moral values, strong family bonds, and isolation from outside culture can all serve to muddy the way two people ought to treat each other. I was very interested to see where Doreen's interactions with Tyrell were going, but their relationship was never really given a satisfying exploration. Tyrell just kinda did what I'd expect pretty much anyone to do in his situation, and as a result, he quickly becomes the least interesting character despite his intriguing introductory paragraph. So in the end, while I did very much enjoy the world-building and the character-crafting, the no-surprises plot and the meandering themes were definitely let-downs.

A Dinner Guest at Midnight: The mood-setting here is some really fine stuff. I don't know how you did it, but you've given a third-person limited narrator feel as intimate with the main character as a first-person narration. It strikes a great middle ground between knowing what Jim is thinking while still being able to analyze and think about his thoughts separately from how he would view them himself. While I have to admit that most of my familiarity with the mythical Coyote comes from Gunnerkrigg Court, I'm quite taken by the way you've characterized him. His story is fun, and it ties in with Jim's journey very well. Those last couple of lines pack a lot of power in them; I found myself dryly chuckling when all was said and done. In terms of what can be improved, I though that Jim might have been just a little too bad at storytelling, himself. I was really slowed down by his account of events, and I had to end up rereading a lot of those big, intimidating paragraphs. I'd suggest making him just a tad clearer so that the reader doesn't feel as bogged down about it, especially since there's a lot of crucial information, here. Besides that, though, this was a great read.

Vehemence: This is certainly one of the more creative entries I've read. The fantasy setting oozes with charm while teasingly showing off some real interesting depth here and there. The characters also feel this way; they're humorous and interestingly weird for the most part, but occasionally someone would say something that suddenly adds a new layer to their personality. I think you've gotten it to work pretty dang well for the most part. In terms of weaknesses, I'd have to say that there are definitely moments where you're at a risk of reader interest petering off a bit. The entire piece is super dialogue-heavy, to the point that even the more action-oriented sequences are also described through conversations that the characters are having with each other. It doesn't help that you've got such a wide range of characters, too, since it becomes rather easy to lose track of who is speaking to who, and what their relationship with each other is. The twist and the ending are definitely charming, but they also happen to unfold mostly through dialogue, which feels really strange. I don't know. Maybe if I were more familiar with the characters, this wouldn't be so much of a problem, but as it is it feels like you're asking the reader to read into their lines just a tad too much for how much we know them. It definitely lends the piece much of its charm, but it has the unfortunate side effect of making many of the characters feel one-dimensional.

4826970
4826995

I need to say something that's almost entirely irrelevant to this discussion that I just cannot leave unsaid.

Death of the Author is stupid.

Nothing is written in a void. A world in which intentionality and motive don't exist, or pretending they don't exist, is absurd. Analyzing a text while ignoring all outside context can be a fun exercise. But you are always, always, always going to develop a greater understanding of a piece if you also understand who the author was, where they came from, what context they were writing in, who they read, why they were writing. And you will always, always, always be a better critic if you make even the barest attempt at understanding an author's intentions.

If you say about something I wrote "I think the author was trying to do X" and I was trying to do X, then I'm happy. If you say "I think the author was trying to Y" when I was trying to do X, that's important. Now I have understand, did he misread it? Or did I accidentally do Y? How did this misunderstanding happen? How do I fix it? Would Y actually make a better story than X?

I'll say again, nothing is written in a void. Writing isn't a dialogue with the reader, but it is a dialogue with other stories, with your own thoughts and feelings, with your experiences, with other authors. Ignore all that and you purposefully limit yourself as a reader.

Anyway, Carry on.

4827833
I think I can probably speak for bats here, because I'm guessing our opinions line up well, but while DotA is originally a critical analysis concept, I've always found it more useful as a creative tool.

I agree that if you're wanting to do professional literary criticism, you can always learn more by knowing about the author's background. I think that's self-evident. In that sense, DotA leaves something to be desired. I'm not a huge fan of the notion that all readings are equally valid. But on the flip side, one has a tremendous amount of control over how a reader will understand and contextualize one's work. You get that control in the text itself.

Readers who want to dig into the intentions of the author are always free to do so, but I firmly believe that it's the job of the author to convey their intentions as clearly as possible, so that the usefulness of outside study can be minimized. Most readers will never engage with your work on that level. They'll pick up a story, hopefully read it through to the end, and put it down. If you don't put your intentions on the page for them to see, you have no right to complain that they didn't understand what you were trying to do.

Once the author publishes a piece, that piece stops belonging to the author and starts belonging to the readers—that's one idea from Death of the Author that I've always agreed with. The author loses control as soon as the work goes live.

I think 4826995 is right to point out that the Writeoff is sort of a middle ground, though, where stories are not exactly published and not exactly private. That means there's more value in the workshopping element of asking what someone was trying to do and then helping them do it, probably. I find it hard to treat them that way, though (which probably ties in to my own poor skills at revising). To me, if a point isn't on the page—if the author has failed to make it clear to me—that point may as well not exist. That can suck for how I interpret someone's work, but it's an issue that will always exist as soon as the work goes live. If you never learn how people are reading your stories and what they're not seeing that you intended them to see, you'll never learn how to improve tools like foreshadowing to get them to go where you want them to (obligatory re: stage magic comparison).

One example of that I've seen a few times this round are authors dropping setting hints for things I'm supposed to figure out, but doing them very subtly to try to keep me from catching on (or just because they haven't learned how to focus attention well yet). Seeing some of these has reminded me of how Robert Jordan used to do description work for one of the monsters in his Wheel of Time series—a type of bland, non-descript assassin who could sneak into a crowded room and kill someone without ever being noticed. He'd always describe their arrival in a scene, but he had the attention misdirect down so well that the reader would very rarely notice they'd just read a description of an assassin coming into a room until a page later when the assassin struck. Then digging back through, it was easy to see the descriptions leading up to that point, tucked away in the middle of paragraphs that were interested in completely different things. The stories I'm thinking of this round have dropped hints in a way just like this, where very few readers would ever notice that they'd read a hint at all. Understanding what does and doesn't fly in that way is an important skill—and having a conversation about foreshadowing where an author gets to point out that yes, he/she did bring this up earlier and the reader just wasn't paying enough attention, does this issue a disservice.

Authors have no control over their readers, only the texts they produce. That's why sharpening your text until it cuts precisely the way you want is so important.

I'm using horizon's HORSE rating system, which you can learn more about here.

40 – Maelstrom

Excellent opening on this one. I'd spotted the stoplights line in 4808521 's list of first sentences; it really jumped out at me. There's a lot of information density in this first paragraph, and it helps hook me right away.

Molly's personality comes through very strongly, and the weirdness of her actions is great. It's a little hard to get a sense of how long this effect has been happening, and I think dropping a very brief information tease up front might work well—something to indicate that it's an ongoing phenomenon and Molly has good reason to expect she might find people alive.

My first clue to what's going on (and when the hammer dropped, it dropped hard) was when the newspaper implied this started in Fargo and Molly thought about back when she was in Fargo: "There were plenty of roads out of Fargo, but she had to choose the Interstate." I don't like the "had to" here. I assume you're meaning for her to be chiding herself, but it's very easy to read this as an only-possible-choice thing, too.

Another nitpick, I don't really understand why Molly starts going on about 20-30 miles. It seems to become a prominent part of her thinking, but it doesn't really get explained when that happens, and I find that frustrating.

Given that I'd already picked up on where you were going, I was very pleased to see the reveal scene contain some information that was still new to me—namely reasons why Molly hadn't just been blown up by this point. All in all, this is tight and well-paced, and I really enjoyed it. The only serious criticism I can think to offer (aside from the above) is that this really feels more like a setup to a longer story than a closed narrative arc of any sort.

(Disclaimer: I've got a real soft spot for post-apocalyptic fiction. It may be my favorite genre.)

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Top Contender

I'm using horizon's HORSE rating system, which you can learn more about here.

36 – Vehemence

This... is really not my jam. A nice, solid opening here, with an active introduction to the setting and a lot of detail to pick over. But Daisy and Duncan already sound like a bit of a One Piece pirate duo before we get to the talking skull quartermaster, and for some reason once the weirdness hits that level, I basically check out with my disbelief firmly unsuspended. That's not too helpful, though, so let's continue and see what happens.

Oh, and the navigator is a Rakshasa? Well, Author, I'll be seeing you.

So I discussed this story a bit with horizon, and he mentioned a concept I think is instructive. I want to be clear, though, that I'm in no way speaking for horizon when I say anything about this story. But he mentioned that there's a sense of "Rule of Cool" here. And that perfectly encapsulates the problem I'm having with this story. It just feels jam-packed with everything that could possibly make it awesome. I assume this is what taking heroin must feel like.

My problem, then, is actually rather easy to sum up. This story has no rhythm to it, and doesn't bother earning any of the awesome it tries to have. We're getting these characters at a point of high action and adventure, with no chance to see anything else of them. Usually, I talk about how characters need to be more active and interesting so I can engage with them. Everyone here has the opposite problem: they're too active and interesting. I can't focus on anything. My attention isn't being drawn anywhere, I'm just being broadsided with Awesome. Again, this is going to my stage magic theory of writing: you need to control the reader's attention and expectations. This story isn't controlling anything, it's just relying on Awesome to win out.

I've heard people talk about heroes, interesting characters, being a blend of superman and everyman. Most writers fall down by never pushing towards superman, never giving their heroes talents to show off or victories to celebrate. This is one of those rare cases where the problem goes the other way. There's no everyman character, nor the hint of one. There's no way into this story—no person, no aspect of setting, no experience that I can find relatable.

This story's entertaining as all hell, and I just can't stand it. Come back with some character development and more than one note of tone, and maybe we can talk. Sorry, Numbers. You'll get a chance to respond in a couple days.

HORSE: ▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉▉
TIER: Needs Work

Just caught up on reading the thread. I'll be voting on the finalists soon. I'm really glad that this place is starting to do original fiction contests. I had my own idea for a story following the prompt, but it didn't really crystallize until after the deadline. So I won't get as much feedback for it when I write it, but I won't have to do anything to make it legal for publishing.

I'm going to try and keep a better eye on this group and participate more often.

4809659
I keep forgetting what sorts of literary works you and Bad Horse keep talking about when it comes to your assessment here. I can't remember anything that recent other than Infinite Jest and the works of David Mitchell, neither of which I would characterize as edgy. Oh, and The Three Body Problem, which I consider a great example of splitting the difference between the two. I usually prefer stuff that's on that border, with my favorite example of such probably being Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun.

4827833

First thing's first. +1 to everything here.

4826970

I really wasn't trying to take a stab at you. What I meant was 'delivering that same approach myself feels like'. I didn't mean "What Bradel does feels like" but instead "If I used this methodology it would feel like". Sorry it still sounded like it, because I didn't phrase the followup... well. It most assuredly made sense in my head at the time.

1) This is actually how I'd like my stories reviewed.

See, the funny thing (Ha ha laugh now) is that I'm in complete agreement, here. You also do very good quality reviews, and I seriously appreciate the one you may or may not have hypothetically done for mine. I don't mean or intend to fault you on that in the slightest.

The problem is, while I know I like harsh criticism, I don't know the boundaries of the anonymous person I'm reviewing, and just like me, they're doing this more for fun than anything else. So I find what I like and appreciate in a review is irrelevant, because I'm not reviewing myself.

The second point;

2) Reviewing is something I do as much for me as for the author.

Is also another reason why what I was trying to say was most definitely, 100% not a personal jab at you. Because, personally, you find this a rewarding exercise for yourself. Personally, I find it much moreso if I'm going to wait and talk to authors I liked after I can get replies from them. There's negative things wrong with your method, because it's always going to be a net benefit if there is more advice and critique given. I just, personally, find it very hard to do.

4826995

This, too. Most importantly;

If a writer responds to a critique with what they were trying to do on a finished piece, it's certainly a 'don't care' scenario, but as these are basically unfinished, I take that response as an invitation for a dialogue expanding on why what they were trying to do didn't make it to the page, and a place to discuss how they could go about getting it on the page with edits.

This is a much more elegant paragraph trying to convey my nebulous thoughts into a much more focused, crystaline piece. So, thanks for that, bats.

4826945

It also sums up why I disagree with

But really, the anonymity means that we can look at the stories without knowing who wrote them, without context, and try and dig into what we think about them. Without the author being able to explain themselves, we can see how well the piece stands on its own, because frequently, pieces must do exactly that in the end - when someone reads a story, seeing what their authentic reaction is is quite valuable.

This so strongly. Because a reader can be just as fallible as an author. It's also why I am so violently opposed to the mindset at the end of Bradel's comment;

So I don't care what an author wanted to do, or tried to do, or any of that. I just care what the author did, and whether it worked for me—and an author coming back and responding to my comments with an explanation kind of misses the point for me, because if you need to explain what you're doing to your reader, your writing has already failed.

It sounds so reasonable, initially. But it assumes miscommunication in a piece is always the fault of the author not explaining themselves better, and not the fault of the audience in any given situation. And I believe that is a very dangerous assumption.

Without being able to ask the followup; "What would have made this easier for you to understand?" Certain aspects of criticism are moot, to me, at best. It's also why I hedged my review of "Debts to Settle" so heavily with I am obviously the wrong audience for this. I am just as fallible as an audience as the author is for his work.

Here we're being obligated to read as many stories as possible with only the title to give us a hint of genre or content matter. We cannot avoid stories we would otherwise not connect with. And that's not going to be the author's fault. So, do we approach criticism from a purely objective point to avoid that? We can't. Art is by definition subjective. But neither can we approach it subjectively, because that punishes or rewards authors for things well and truly out of their range of control.

For me, without having that discussion between author and reader, I find it very difficult to separate my flaws as an audience with the author's flaws in communication. It's also why I so desperately frackin' want to talk to the author of A Phone Call Late at Night. Seriously.

4828326

It sounds so reasonable, initially. But it assumes miscommunication in a piece is always the fault of the author not explaining themselves better, and not the fault of the audience in any given situation. And I believe that is a very dangerous assumption.

You're thinking about this from the wrong perspective.

You don't have control over the audience's ability level. You do, however, have control over your own story.

If most of your audience here doesn't get it, most of your audience in general won't; the folks here are of above-average ability, and if you're hoping for better in a general audience, you're hoping in vain.

Without being able to ask the followup; "What would have made this easier for you to understand?"

Ask after the round is over; that's what folks generally do.

Here we're being obligated to read as many stories as possible with only the title to give us a hint of genre or content matter. We cannot avoid stories we would otherwise not connect with. And that's not going to be the author's fault.

If your story can't communicate what it is about internally, then it means your story isn't as strong as it should be. If I can't tell what genre your story is based on internal context, then you've got a big problem. Note also that the write-off lets us set up twist endings a lot better than stories with labelled genres.

As far as "stories we would not otherwise connect with" - the write-offs have always been a diverse grab-bag of genres. We have slice of life, drama, psychological pieces, horror, tragedies, comedies, romances, introspective works, meta-fiction, experimental works... even poetry. That's how it goes.

You need to hook your audience here regardless. There's no use complaining about it. Your audience is your audience; again, you have no control over who reads your story. You need to try and engage them as well as you are able regardless of who they are and what their personal predilections are.

. So, do we approach criticism from a purely objective point to avoid that? We can't. Art is by definition subjective. But neither can we approach it subjectively, because that punishes or rewards authors for things well and truly out of their range of control.

Our judgement is always a combination of subjective and objective analysis. This is true 100% of the time with stuff like this, regardless of whether or not the authors are anonymous. And frankly, your judgement shouldn't be affected by who wrote a piece; if it is, then you are being less objective in your judgement. That's why judging is anonymous. That's why experiments are double-blinded.

Art is subjective. Art is also objective. It is both of these things at the same time. As with writing, we judge as best we are able.

4828409

If most of your audience here doesn't get it, most of your audience in general won't; the folks here are of above-average ability, and if you're hoping for better in a general audience, you're hoping in vain.

But I'm also thinking at the individual level. Speaking as myself, I am an individual. Unless any of you are secretly tulpa entities, hive minds, gestalt entities or various other conglomerate personalities...?

I am not most of an audience when I write a critical piece. I am me, a singular entity. And I am fallible. I restate the line quoted.

Ask after the round is over; that's what folks generally do.

That's the intention I am stating, yes. The problem is I can't do that yet and, when it does, I'll be biased by knowing who the author of the piece is. I love the idea of anonymous criticism. I'm just at an impasse where my desire for communication with the author is directly at odds with the ability to remain anonymous in the current system.

As far as "stories we would not otherwise connect with" - the write-offs have always been a diverse grab-bag of genres. We have slice of life, drama, psychological pieces, horror, tragedies, comedies, romances, introspective works, meta-fiction, experimental works... even poetry. That's how it goes.

You need to hook your audience here regardless. There's no use complaining about it. Your audience is your audience; again, you have no control over who reads your story. You need to try and engage them as well as you are able regardless of who they are and what their personal predilections are.

You're rather arguing around my point here. That's the intent of the author, to be as widely appealing as possible, true. It does nothing to abate my concerns as an individual within the larger audience. I'm stating these concerns as a reviewer and not as an author. As an author, I have no such quibbles about the current system. That's the side of me that this argument is trying to convince, and that's the side of me with no problems.

Our judgement is always a combination of subjective and objective analysis. This is true 100% of the time with stuff like this, regardless of whether or not the authors are anonymous. And frankly, your judgement shouldn't be affected by who wrote a piece; if it is, then you are being less objective in your judgement. That's why judging is anonymous. That's why experiments are double-blinded.

Again, arguing around my point.

I'm not asking to know who the person responding to me is. That's a separate issue entirely. I'm not biased by who the author is, and if I would be, I would abstain and not review. I would be just as uncomfortable about that as anything else.

Ideally, and in a perfect system, I'd be able to hear replies from the author as anonymous to me as when I was reading their piece. That would actually be very... reassuring for me. It's not the anonymity that bothers me, it's the vacuum.

4827833

4827865 did in fact sum up most of how I would respond, but I would point again to my fine art background for shaping a lot of my feelings on art appreciation. While context might be known about the creator of a piece or the other art around it that influenced it, if you consider cave paintings, the Venus of Willendorf, or countless pieces from all of the world, there is a substantial amount of art where the context is the realm of anthropologists to guess what it could be. And in that vein, even if the context is known, a member of the audience could experience a piece of art, have no understanding of the context as it's known by academics, and have an entirely valid reaction to a piece as good, bad, thought provoking, boring, etc. Context isn't integral to understanding art and connects to an academic discourse of it, not the actual entertainment and enjoyment.

As a writer, being told the audience either entirely or in part didn't connect with a piece the way you intended them to can be a learning experience, and as a reader finding out the intended context can also be one, but it isn't something as a writer or a reader to be able to expect pretty much anywhere outside of fimfic, and it's not a reader's responsibility to delve in and find context for a piece they experience. Nor is it really the responsibility of the writer to provide. Also, frankly, the writer isn't the end-all expert on their text, either. In some ways, they're the worst person to talk to about a text because they're too close to it and understood some elements of context they had in their head when writing but didn't actually put that down in the work itself. Dumbledore isn't gay in the text (spoilers?), even if Rowling pictured him as such, because there is no detail to support that read on him in the actual work itself. That interpretation has no actual bearing on the work. It's just an academic Fun Fact about the process of writing the piece, which can be interesting to know, but isn't actually relevant to the piece itself. If an author had no intention of writing something sexist but wrote a story that the majority of the audience found sexist, they wrote a sexist story regardless of their good intentions. Books are not sold packaged with a well researched and comprehensive Cliff's Notes guide.

So sorry, but I don't find Death of the Author to be dumb, I think it's a fundamental truth about how art works. There are plenty of other ways in which it interfaces strangely with other aspects of art enjoyment—such as not wanting to support an artist for political beliefs the artist holds that have no bearing on the work itself, yet enjoying the piece ostensibly means purchasing a copy and giving that artist money—but as far as actually understanding and appreciating a piece as it exists on its own? No, I don't think the author's input on it is any more or less valuable than anyone else's input. The experience is a conversation between a member of the audience and the work itself, not the audience and author, and that is the case as soon as a piece is published.

4828496

Man. Someone could do a lot of shit with that account, if that was the case. Upvoting ther own stories, for example, comes to mind -- or changing the password without telling others just to be an ass. But dunno, maybe the peolpe in here are honest enough? I'm a first-timer, myself, so...

4828433

But I'm also thinking at the individual level. Speaking as myself, I am an individual. Unless any of you are secretly tulpa entities, hive minds, gestalt entities or various other conglomerate personalities...?

Um. Uh. No. Hahah. Of course we aren't. That would be silly. Hahah. Let's talk about human stuff, like how much we like eating food and mating with attractive members of our species. Hahahah. Hahahahahah. Individuality is so great.

As per the argument that's going on in here -- I personally believe, Numbers, that criticism should always be polite, and I think that sugarcoating is seen as a horrible beast of a monster that should be slain for no reason. When criticising a story, knowing who the author is does help you get a better hold of how you are going to review -- maybe you'll phrase it differently, maybe you'll be harsher, maybe you'll be more polite.

I understand why some might see that as adding a layer of subjectiveness, because to be honest, it kind of is; as a human I like some people and I dislike some others. If I have to review a story by HitlerWasRightLol6969_ConfederateFlag then I'm goingto be more of a dick than if I review TommyKnockersBornIn2007. If I want to be completely honest, then anonimity is a great way to do it; you forget about the fuzz and just review your heart out, god dammit.

But then again, I'd like to know if I'm revieweing TommyKnockerBornIn2007 because he's a kid and I don't want to scare him away or anything. A review for the public is not the same as a review for the author himself -- I believe you have to be polite, extremely so, because if the review is mostly "this story sucks" then you're devoting time and effort to explain that a dude's time an effort resulted in absolute bullshit.

That's a hard swallow; we've all been there. I know that some peope like harsh criticism and I salute them because holy hell guys, if somebody sneezes at me with a little too much strenght I'll put a blanket over my head and cry.

So as I said before -- if you think sugarcoating is bad, then, well. I disagree with you. I get why sugarcoating is seen as bad -- it canbe downright harmful for a writer, but there are levels and levels of sugarcoating. You don't need to sing the praises of the story and ignore all the flaws, because that's not even a review. But you can give just a liiittle tiny more weight to the good stuff, then explain what's wrong with the story, then add the bad stuff in a polite way, then some more good stuff, then add some advice and a general word of praise.

Downsides to this? Well, if you genuinely didn't like the story, maybe you're lying. Boo. Upsides? You're not potentially fucking up the entire afternoon of one particularly sensitive person, and you still gave them enough advice so they get better.

Plus, at many points, practice is what is going to turn that person into a better author. Your review might help, but just by being brutal you're not really doing them a favor, you're just doing your stuff.

I haven't seen any vindictive review in this thread, personally, so most of what I said here doesn't apply? But the reason why I'm saying is: I get why some people would just review and call it a day. That's commendable. If you feel queasy, though, just be as positive as possible while still being clear on what is wrong and what should be worked on, and call it a day.

Here, our buddy 4827833 has a phenomental blog post about criticising newbie authors that you can apply to this philosophy (so good that I spent fifteen minutes fishing for it) and I'm also going to link a blog of mine expanding on this issue if for some reason you want to read that. You weirdo.

But yeah, bottom line: feelin' queasy? Just be nice. Feeling queasy about being "nice" taking away your "objectiveness"? Well then, think of what is more important to you. I think there's a balance to find for everybody -- I personally try to be as positive as possible during my reviews, even if I'm pointing out bad stuff, because what the hell we're all people.

(Alternatively: review stories you like a lot. I do that, and it actually works wonders! I got lucky this round 'cause of that, after all).

(And when you talk to Phonecall Late at Night, Numbers, I'm joining; we're not done with that conversation).

4828548

Up-voting stories? You would have to create an account on the WriteOff site for that. All you could do here would be up-voting comments once, which is no big whoop I guess.

On-site stories, rather. As in, upvoting on fimfic.

The horror.

Kwircritique:
18. Pleasure in the Job Puts Perfection in the Work

I would like to begin by saying: people will like what they will like. I am personally 'miffed' that this one beat out other, more nuanced works such as "The King in Yellow-Gold."

What I thought this story did well... the writing is solid; descriptions were good, language was effective, structure and pacing well-suited to the intent of Slice-of-Life. (Okay, fine, successful kissytimes are almost always welcome.) If I didn't know better, I would say the characters are pretty good, though Ashley seemed a bit generic, with the exception of her situation -- which is not the same as character.

However, I do know better: this is a ponyfic using the Apple family with the serial numbers scratched through with a key. With that information, the only interesting characterization on display are the other kids, who didn't appear to be the CMC and their yayhoo shenanigans were perhaps the best bit of the story.

The arc itself seems really weak -- just an excuse to put the Apples near Chicago. Ashley -- a sweet girl, really -- has run away from a home corrupted by drugs, her work ethic may or may not be perfectly substituted with desperation, and she gets kisses without earning them... in fact, that she winds up on the Acres farm in the first place might move this into Absurd territory, but the unusual good kind. If the story is 'about' much else, I'm not seeing it.

Finally, credulity was snapped. The Apple Family dynamic lifestyle on display did not seem genuine to me, given its geographic location; were this set in Missouri, Oklahoma, or maybe Kansas, I would be more okay with this portrayal. There is also every possible issue surrounding 'fliers': any self-respecting small farm would look for help via word-of-mouth; fliers could bring in anyone, even the kind like Ashley's mom's "boyfriend"; the family doesn't even bother to inspect her before putting her to work and lodging her, a very dubious prospect given the contemporary setting. The last point lands this strongly on the side of idealism (so not so Absurd, after all), which is oddly juxtaposed with the cynical aspects of Ashley's situation.

With the exception of lesbian makeouts There isn't much here I can really get behind.

4828532

So, Aragon and I are talking in Skype, because we're secretly lovers, darling, but;

As per the argument that's going on in here -- I personally believe, Numbers, that criticism should always be polite, and I think that sugarcoating is seen as a horrible beast of a monster that should be slain for no reason.

I should specify; When I say I don't do that, it's not because I disagree, but because I lack that skillset. Sugarcoating is not a thing I do well, and I'm terrible about reading the tone of my own comments. As is rapidly becoming more and more obvious.

The point I was making wasn't trying to be critical of other reviewers, but purely an explanation of why I'd be stepping aside from the process in write-offs. I would like to review like Horizon, but I'm incapable of that. I have self-awareness of that incapability, so I was trying to explain why I was stepping aside.

I cannot write a review in the style I'd like to, even if it's the style of review I'd like to receive.

4828548 4828557

The solution here would be to have an alt account run by someone non-partial to the contest like Dodger, who could post reviews/responses sent via PM anonymously. While I would have no reason to suspect anyone here would use such an account to have an excuse to Behave Badly, doing that sort of thing is explicitly against site rules, while a user maintaining an extra account for such things is within the rules. Of course this is presupposing there's any good reason for leaving an anonymous review, which I'm not sure there is, and would also be asking someone to take on extra work for it. Plus Dodger's already provided an anonymous response from an author about a specific thing that was felt was necessary to clarify on this specific writeoff. And while one-off stuff like that probably isn't too big of a deal and doesn't come up very frequently, making it an official thing people use would be a lot of extra work for something that's just a matter of waiting a few days for the anonymous part of the contest to be over. Yeah, there might be less interest from the commenter after some cooldown time, but it's a question of actual value vs. the cost of something, and in this case it would be asking Dodger (or some other impartial person) to take on a task that would have a lot of extra steps and probably be annoying for everyone involved in it vs. a time delay of a week or so. Doesn't seem worth it to me.

4828562

...I'm terrible about reading the tone of my own comments. As is rapidly becoming more and more obvious.

Settle down, boy-o.

I didn't take your original comment as an attack on me, so no worries. All that's really going on here is that you managed to key into a point of legitimate disagreement between a lot of people. As far as I can tell, the conversation has remained quite civil, even if the involved parties disagree quite stridently in what they believe.

I don't know that I have a whole lot to add to that conversation at this point. 4828409 and 4828528 have already said most of what I'd care to say anyway. But you're fine; nobody's offended by anything you said, I promise.

4828548
4828532
4828570
I'm pretty sure that the best solution is to move the discussion threads to the writeoff site. Then there could be an option to post comments as "The Authour of X" instead of using your username.

Of course, I have no idea if/when Roger is planning to implement discussion over there.

So I'm probably about to make myself look like an idiot, but here goes.

So Dead City (I'm assuming it's okay to talk about it) has 7 reviews, but I have no idea what to do with them. I have what I think/hope is a good idea about what I'm doing wrong, but I have no idea how to go about fixing those.

Is this normal?

4828809
Yes, my idea does have some problems, and that is certainly one of them. But any system that allows authors to reply anonymously will have that same problem, unless we all send our replies to someone like Roger who paraphrases and posts them for us, but that seems like a lot of work for him.
I still think that my idea is the best solution to this problem, though it's fair to question if the new problems it would introduce make it worth it. I do think that the current system is a decent alternative solution though.

4828853
After the prelims it's okay for those authors to talk about their stories. If you have specific questions about your story or questions about a particular review, you can ask the reviewers directly (just link them so they know). Or if you have general questions to ask us about how to proceed with the rewrite, most of us are probably willing to help.

4828853 Skill acquisition is an arduous process, for the most part. I dislike re-writing, so I usually pick one or two things I feel I have some idea on how to do better, and focus on practicing those for my next story.

Next time when I write, I'll look at what I've got, and think "How can I do better with X?" and once I've done that enough, the things that help will slowly become part of my writing style.

So, I guess my suggestion would be... keep the criticism in mind going forwards, and just keep writing? Improving your instincts takes time, so don't sweat it too hard. Just thinking about it and practicing can and will bear fruit in the future.

4828433
Quit worrying about it. Problem solved.

Seriously. You're saying that your problem is that you are speaking into a void where people can't respond to you for a week. The solution is to just shrug and go with it and stop caring. You get used to it after a while.

And besides, you don't have to write reviews. They're appreciated, not obligatory.

4828570

Yeah, there might be less interest from the commenter after some cooldown time, but it's a question of actual value vs. the cost of something, and in this case it would be asking Dodger (or some other impartial person) to take on a task that would have a lot of extra steps and probably be annoying for everyone involved in it vs. a time delay of a week or so. Doesn't seem worth it to me.

If there isn't any interest in it from the commentor after a few days, was it really important to respond to in the first place?

4829364

I admit to being rather generous in assigning 'value' to being able to respond anonymously as the author in a devil's advocate fashion. I don't think waiting is a big deal either, but if other people are going to argue it's a big deal to them, then it's worth weighing that 'value' against the cost of it, which I think easily outweighs what little value there is in the desire to begin with. Additionally, I focused on leaving an anonymous response to feedback as an author, because I think the additional use of leaving an anonymous review is completely without redeeming value.

Just finished reading and voting on our finalists. For those of you who are interested, my top scorers this round were:

Bud, Blossom, Bloom
IDPP
A Dinner Guest at Midnight
Of Thomas Hobbes and Frontal Lobe Trauma
The Skies in Their Fury

I really had a hard time ranking a lot of these stories, though. There's been some really excellent stuff from everyone this round!

4829364

If there isn't any interest in it from the commentor after a few days, was it really important to respond to in the first place?

"we all respond to stress differently" ?

I present to you, Unlikely Mash-ups: The Movie.

The Subtle Art of Putting Perfection in the Work: A pair of eccentric scientists unlock the secret of creating sentient robots, with the caveat that said robots must be programmed to be lesbians.

I Would Like to Speak With The Blossom, Bloom: After enduring hellish experiences working for a soulless corporation, a disgruntled employee has his plans to kill his boss foiled when she is revealed to be a playful, immortal sorceress.

A Debt to Settle at Midnight: A lot of eyeballs are swapped around in this one.

Of Thomas Hobbes and Defense of Designated Persons: A military investigator fruitlessly searches for the cause of the misfire of an orbital superweapon, never suspecting that it was sabotaged by the charmingly simple man that sold it to them.

It’s odd. I’ve read three finalist entries so far (I haven’t had a lot of time on weekdays) and I feel like a fish out of water, even as one of the authors of the finalists.

On the one hand, the entries I’ve read so far have all given me the “artsy” vibe, and I don’t feel comfortable posting "reviews" of them because I don’t know how to interpret these stories, or even how I really feel about them, for some of them. As I’ve stated before, there’s nothing inherently wrong with writing an artsy and meaningful piece, or trying to, but I can’t tell when something is deep and meaningful or just pretentious.

Which brings me to the other hand: I can’t shake the feeling that next writeoff, if I were to write something obtuse and write in some hidden meaning to it, it’d be rated higher (or maybe I did this round, who knows?). I’m a competent enough writer that I might be able to pull it off. Do some people here (not necessarily finalist authors) have a mindset that if an entry feels like it’s trying to be deep and meaningful, then it probably is and it should be rated higher? I know I was like that when I first started the writeoffs, though I've drifted from that since. Am I just not mentally ready to be able to judge finalists?

I’m hesitant to start up the “objective vs. subjective” debate again, and I might be beating a dead horse, but I felt the need to share this opinion to see if I’m not the only one who feels this way.

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Personally, if I read a story that's trying to be deep and meaningful and I understand and like it, then I will probably rate it highly. If I read a story that looks like it's trying to be deep and meaningful, but I don't understand it at all, then I probably won't rate it very highly. I'll also usually look through the thread to see if other people's reviews and comments can help me to understand it better, and then I might give it a higher rating. But I don't give stories high ratings just because they're (trying to be) deep.

Genre: Western, Mythology

James Moore is a man with a checkered past in the Old West with nothing but his horse Bess for company. He doesn’t dare shoot his gun, but after setting some snares and catching a jackrabbit, he skins and cooks it. It is around that time the titular guest arrives – an old, notched-ear coyote with one eye, watching him from across the flames.

Its calmness would be the most unusual thing about it, until it starts to talk…

The trading of tales between Coyote and Jim, this was a fun little atmospheric piece. I liked Coyote’s story – it felt very much like the sort of folk-tale someone would tell – and while Jim’s piece was only okay, I loved the way that Coyote twisted it to match his own tale, as well as subvert the audience’s expectations about why Jim was trying to avoid attracting attention.

The one part I’m not so sold on is Zeke, and the ending.

If not, then Zeke’s betrayal feels a bit random. Yeah, I can see the boss sending someone ahead to warn the sheriff and get Jim shot, but it seems like it should have been someone else with a grudge against him.

Alright, here’s my other thought though:

My first thought on finishing this was that he was saying that Zeke WAS Eagle. I went back through and tried to pick up some hints, but I didn’t see any other than that Zeke spotted Mackey cheating.

After examining it further, I realized that the Sheriff was Eagle, given the mention of the same gold coin that was used to describe Coyote's one eye (also the sheriff polishing his spectacles made me think of someone polishing their eyes, which might have worked better for rat?).

But it was too subtle (or possibly unintentional). The ending feels kind of sudden, and I feel like it would have been better if there had been more foreshadowing about what was going on. If Eagle had been the man sent after him, I think that would have worked better allegorically - had Zeke (or the Boss) instead had been Eagle, I think that would have fit better with the overall allusion to Coyote's story. Jim's death also didn't have quite enough of an impact on me; I wanted to feel more at the end of the story, but instead it all felt a little bit pointless, as his sudden death just kind of ended the piece on the spot, and didn't really feel like it resolved the story as well as it could have. I think tying the ending more strongly into Coyote's story - making it more obvious that whoever he was confronting was Eagle - would have made it better.

Also, if you were to tie in the myth more strongly, it might make more sense for the guy he's going after to take him captive so he can find out where Coyote went (which would really just require removing the final line about the guns roaring). I'm not sure, but I feel like his death just didn't have the impact I would have wanted.

Of Thomas Hobbes and Frontal Lobe Violence

A quick note as I'm settling into my reading of the story, because the voicing is really bugging me, and I hope this will help.

Here are your first three paragraphs, hammered into a semblance of proper grammar merely by adding words: colored text is mine. (I've also underlined some of your text for reasons I'll get to in a second.)

The World is broken by fallout. Now a Husk. Once a big living thing, it is now a dead shell. It is Bad for people. but Good for business. Good for war. War is very good for business. It is Very bad for people. It Is sweet bitterness.

Maybe before you heard [things] from clever people. Or stupid people who sound clever. Maybe you are a soldier. Probably a soldier. Most people work as a soldier profession these days.

They tell you the Husk of the world is a small place, which needs to be controlled. Give you a big gun and small words. Go shoot them. "This town ain’t not big enough for both of us." Blah, blah, blah. They are All bullies. Kicking other’s sandcastles. I do not like it. I like sandcastles. They are Pretty. Kicking is bad for business.

There's a method to my color madness: grey is "semantic glue" (prepositions et.al.), red is verbs or verb conjugations, green is noun subjects, blue noun objects.

Do you see a pattern there? Neither do I.

That doesn't match the ways in which people actually struggle with language, in which they generally fail at semantic classes as a whole. If the narrator here is not a native speaker of the language we're reading, they're not going to be hit-and-miss on whether they, say, use verb subjects or not; either that's a concept they understand and vocabulary they possess, or it isn't. Same if they're young/mentally damaged/struggling with the fundamental concepts of language for the first time: it sounds like what you're trying for here is a sort of pidgin, where they've got a limited vocabulary of concepts and are attempting to put them together in ways that communicate complex meaning. (XKCD's Thing Explainer is another good reference if you want to try constructing complexity from simple word sets.) But then you start having them toss around complex concepts and complex words (if you hadn't figured it out, I was underlining the bits which required a fundamental grasp of abstract thinking and language -- analogy, ironic contrast, advanced vocabulary, and an understanding of long-term consequences), and the pidgin effect flings itself out the nearest window.

In short, I can't pin this voice down. I'm getting neither child, brain-damaged adult, nor EFL learner from it, I'm just getting words randomly hashed, and it's breaking me out of the story hard.

In the next paragraph we learn he's a merchant addressing a customer. This is the first time I have any context for why he speaks poorly: presumably a foreign language learner, as he's a self-supporting adult. Author, I strongly suggest you take a few of these paragraphs and try translating them by hand into a language you don't speak in order to get a sense for how that struggle shapes your words: depending on the language, I think what you'll find is that the syntactic glue is the first to go, and if you're really pressed for times you'll probably drop verbs like "to be" and mash subject-object pairs together. (In some languages that's actually a feature.) But once you have, let's say, learned to deploy "the" properly (and with the proper gender), you're going to use it with roughly equal skill throughout, it's not going to be a coin-flip whether you use it perfectly or omit it.

But not many like share. This is where I come in.

See, I can't take this language seriously.

When the prose suddenly got eloquent later in the scene, I was mildly intrigued what was going on that it could so deliberately slip into lucidity, but mostly I was just relieved I didn't have to wade through the syntactical swamp any more. When it got worse again later, I found myself skimming large sections. (His explanation later on for his disjointed language was more like a hint, and I couldn't shake the feeling that I was also missing something really major about Ra. I'm wondering if she's an android or hologram or something, but I don't know that there's textual evidence for that.)

Language issues aside, this has a fun plot arc and some vivid characterization. I can see why it made it to the finals. But this deserves a serious editing pass to turn the prose from hindrance to asset, especially in the early section where there's no signal to the reader that it's going to vary between the two extremes.
Tier: Needs Work

A few quick notes on some solid stories I didn't get to review in the prelims:
Props to 4825269 for The Stormwarden, 4826252 for Do Better Next Time, and Sunchaser for Fire From Ashes for stories which would have made the cutoff if I were the one sending stories to the finals. "Do Better Next Time," in particular, missed my top three by the narrowest of margins (I stumbled over the timeline a few times when reading it, and upon such trivialities do ranking decisions turn when I feel two stories are equally good), and I've just given Scramblers and Shadows a follow for it.

...Innocuous Cheese, The Man Who Can Do Anything, Looking at the Sky, and Dead City followed close on the heels of the stories above. All of them were solidly constructed stories offering cool or intriguing ideas, I just felt they had some significant flaws in execution that further editing could smooth out. I hope everyone — but these authors especially — treats this round's submissions as first drafts which can be polished up into something even better. I'd gladly re-read future revisions (or, for the stories which felt incomplete on their own, extensions) of any of the stories I mention here.

Genre: Disaster Drama

Freak storms are sweeping across the world. But there aren’t storms where Camille and Cat live – not the real ones, anyway. Camille wants to be a stormchaser, Cat an artist – and Cat loves painting the sky and the weather.

But the storms are getting worse as they get older, and soon civilization is reduced to an increasingly underground existence as Professor Kostovetsky, Camille’s idol, studies the weather and looks for a way out.

This is a pretty solid piece – Camille and Cat both have reasonably strong voices, and the overall idea behind it, and the repetition about stars and destiny, works fairly well.

On the other hand, I wasn’t really that heavily affected by it – I just never got that into it for some reason. I think that it just didn’t have enough time for me to really get invested into the fates of the characters, and thus, their decision at the end didn’t have enough of an impact on me – nor did any of their other decisions. It was all kind of telegraphed, and I only saw fractions of their lives, fractions which didn’t manage to really define them as people to me by the end, and given that it was ultimately focused on said people, it just didn’t sell itself to me. I think it might have just been too short to have much of an impact.

Genre: A Girl and her X, Slice of Life, Sci Fi

Dorothy is a girl from Earth who has gone to colonize Mars with her family. 11 years old, she’s having trouble adjusting, and so her parents buy her a robot (or ’bot in the story) to give her someone to talk to and help her acclimate. The bot is friendly, courteous, and I ended up with the voice of the robot from Big Number Five in my head for him. I liked Dorothy’s transition from treating him like an annoying object to treating him like a person, and I liked that by treating him like a person he became more like one. The central role of imagination in the story, vis-à-vis painting, was a good one, and the story was pretty tight in many ways.

That said, while I liked this, and found it cute, it was incredibly, incredibly cliché, and when the storm happened, I saw the conclusion a mile away – which, while heartwarming and would be how everyone would want a movie or short film about this to end, was totally, 100% predictable.

Is that a bad thing? Not entirely. Clichés exist for a reason, after all. But it was kind of noticeable just how much of a cliché a lot of it ultimately was; this story was very, very by-the-numbers.

The one other thing that nagged at me was the boy that Dorothy met on the way to school – the story went to the bother of having him introduce himself at the end of the conversation, but we never saw him again and he never played any other role in the story, which made that bit feel strange, as introducing a character in that manner signifies “this guy is going to be important” and then he wasn’t.

Still, this ended up pretty high on my slate overall.

Genre: Urban Fantasy

I liked the first line of this story. It does a great job of immediately establishing several important facts:

There is magic in this world.
The protagonist’s brother can cast spells.
He isn’t supposed to be casting spells, but it isn’t THAT big of a deal.

Cleatus is trying to tamper with forces beyond his control (and the ken of mankind). Doreen’s ma can’t be fussed about it. Cleatus’s friends are just as bad as he is, other than Tyrell, who is a nice black guy in racist Alabama.

This was a fun little romp, and really focused on three characters. They all came through reasonably well, even if they were kind of stereotypical. The comedy of Southerners casting magic and complaining about tampering with things man wasn’t meant to do worked really well for me as it gave the whole piece a feel of the absurd that I liked.

"I always heard cars were a safe place to be in a storm," Tyrell said. "Wasn't sure I believed it. Metal's supposed to conduct electricity and all, but my dad says they don't put that much metal in cars nowadays. Guess this is better than being outside, anyway."

While this is a minor complaint, the actual reason that cars are safe to be in during a lightning storm is because they're a Faraday Cage - they get hit by lightning, but the lightning just goes across the surface instead of inside.

Genre: Folklore

My father always warned me that, if I were to set out across the moors, and if I should then lose my way, then they – the moors, that is – would swallow me up, and I would never see this world again.

This is a pretty strong opener, but I feel like the aside (the moors, that is) weakens it, and it would be much stronger without it.

Anyway, this is actually sort of two interconnected stories, but they’re also mostly separate, and the first one – the one where he ends up winning over Delwyn – was the weaker of the two. And unfortunately, the whole thing ended up feeling kind of rambly as a result – while I get what you were setting up in the first part, with his father finding him, and then him finding his father and having to take his place at the end – it just didn’t really end up working for me very well. A lot of the story ended up feeling like a prologue, and not a terribly interesting one at that, and while it did something to establish the atmosphere, really it only gained strength when it got to the story with Dale and Lips.

That bit was decent enough, but I just wasn’t that engaged by the rest of the piece, and so while it ended reasonably well, I was left feeling pretty tepid towards most of it.

Genre: War, Sci-Fi, Drama

This story has weird voicing, but it came through very clearly in my head. That being said, it took this story a long time for it to really get going – the introduction, up until he sells the satellite viewfinder, just didn’t hold my attention, and it was only when he talked to the eggheads that it became clear that he wasn’t just a sociopath selling weapons to both sides, but a man with a plan.

And of course, the ending plays with the soldier’s quote at the start, about what World War Four would be fought with.

Overall, this ended quite well, but it pretty much lost my interest at the start, and I’m not sure if I would have kept reading it far enough to realize there was more to it than the obvious trope at work here.

Genre: Dark, Dystopian

Stuart is done with it. He’s fed up with his job, with his life. He wants to meet with The Director and get things straightened out.

All it will cost him is a couple fingers.

A story about the pointlessness of a man’s actions in a faceless corporate world, this elevates the whole thing to the level of farce, which, while possibly making its point, also makes it hard to take seriously, and I’m not really sure what the point was by the end of it. While the ending is remarkably sinister – and the Director remarkably sadistic – I’m just left wondering what the point of it all was.

Genre: Fantasy, Adventure

Captain Duncan of the Vehemence is a man with an odd job. Driving around the world’s greatest warship-come-merchant-vessel with a crew of misfits, including a talking skull, a raksasha, and a gryphon, this was… ridiculous. And while it seemed like it was going to be a comedy from all the puns at the start, in the end it didn’t really feel like a comedy so much as a bit of a farce, and I’m not really sure what the point of it all was. Why do I care about him adding another misfit crew member? Do I really even care about these people? How seriously am I supposed to take this? If it was supposed to be a comedy, I didn’t really laugh; if not, then I never took it as seriously as I would have wanted. While A Spell for Chameleon somehow managed to be a serious fantasy book despite all the puns, this just kind of felt mish-mash, and I was left without feeling this thing had a point.

Genre: Contemporary, Dark

Molly drives through a dead world in the wake of a catastrophe, looking for survivors as she drives her beat-up old Ford Truck through the end of the world. Everywhere she goes, everyone – and everything – is dead. No electronics. No radio. No people, even if some of them are still warm. There’s something out there, killing people without leaving a mark…

Is she going to be next?

If I had a complaint about this, it would be that General Stevens at the end should be General Myers (or vice-versa) – making them match would be good, unless you wanted to imply that General Myers died previously in his attempt to contain the apocalypse. I also feel like the twenty to thirty miles thing could have been handled a bit better, putting it in a final bit of the newspaper article as an evacuation zone or something.

That said, this was a compact little piece which did a good job of showing off Molly’s personality via her actions despite her isolation. The intro was punchy and the catastrophe sort of crept up throughout the piece as it all fell into place. I liked it.

And there we go! All 14 finalist stories reviewed.

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I pretty much agree with Bradel's quibbles about the ending, though I actually thought the Sam thing was alright - a lot of people get hit by lightning and survive. That said, Sam in general felt like he might have been unnecessary. Though it did raise the stakes on the scene nicely, he was an extra character and I'm not sure that he added a whole lot - I think he and the cameraman might have worked better if they were lumped into a single character, simply because there are so many introduced at the start.

I did like that story a lot, though. Magical hick Southerners - who knew they were so great? The current of humor underlying the piece was actually pretty great, as the idea of a bunch of teenagers messing around with forces beyond their control and complaining to their ma about their brother trying to do magic so he could make money on YouTube is just... wonderful. It is just the right kind of ridiculous, and the fact that they cause a serious problem with their magic works just fine for the tone of the piece.