The Gaming Den

This is just a sample of it.

At the darkened tunnel entrance, they disengaged their cloaking devices and Morrrn signaled for a halt. Using their silent hand code, he sent two expert infiltrators to scout ahead and behind. They reported back that their ingress point was not yet discovered, but they could not count on their luck holding out. The other scout reported that a dark-matter elemental guarded the far end of the tunnel. Dark elementals were of the highest order of elementals, nine-foot tall brutes capable of decimating an entire army.

“That is not good,” signed Morrrn, “I don’t think that we have the firepower to deal with a dark elemental.” Gerrross started to walk forward; ignoring the others who were consternately demanding to know what he thought he was doing. Simple, he thought, plasma is the counter of dark-matter. Out loud he said, “Vash ma tua,” as he made the sign of the Winged Serpent with his right hand. The plasma bolt formed and flew down the tunnel with silent fury, striking the dark elemental squarely in the chest, causing it to melt back into the nothingness that spawned it. The other members of the team simply stared at him with a look of shock on their faces.

“I am sorry I was forced to hide it from you, but I am a Disciple of Agwyn. The others continued to stare unblinkingly, and he realized with dawning comprehension that they weren’t looking at him, they were looking past him.

He whipped his head around in time to see something that would haunt his every waking moment for the rest of his life; the dark elemental had not been destroyed. It was so horribly disfigured that it was not possible that it could still move, but it was shambling slowly towards him. It was just five feet away when Gerrross had turned around. Reacting purely on instinct, he used his hands to create the equivalent of a mime wall while chanting “Vanta Veros Xaling, Vanta Veros Xaling.” The elemental struck an invisible wall that held it for seven seconds. Gerrross did not waste this time. He cast two more plasma bolts at the creature before it finally succumbed to the guardian magic. They made it to the base of the ladder and began to climb.

The story then goes on to deal with a guy in a card tournament (Yu-Gi-Oh!, here we come) who has budding psychic powers and is destined to stop the BBEG. Possibly through his card-playing skills.

Another sample:

Adams first opponent was a man named Bob Harrison. He won the coin toss and drew first. “Ha,” said Bob, “I will play Mind’s Eye, let me see your hand.” Adam revealed his hand to Bob, who forced him to suffer a card loss of three. With his hand decreased in size, he took his turn. This continued, eventually resulting in the victory of Adam.

I have to write a letter critiquing it tomorrow. Am I being too harsh here when I surmise that it's a turdasaur? Are there any redeeming qualities that I'm somehow missing? (And yes, this thread was mostly to showcase the bad writing. But, damnit, he's a senior in college and he should know better.)

Awesome, he made the equivalent of a mime wall!

Was that guy high or something?

Redeeming qualities: that's not "My Immortal".

The horror: by the lack of spelling mistakes I assume the author is older than nine.

Well, the first paragraph isn't too horrific...a bit stilted, but readable.

After that...

And what's with the triple Rs in the names? Eh, Psychic Rrrobot? Catharrrz? Starrrmakerrr?

Psychic Robot wrote:It was so horribly disfigured that it was not possible that it could still move, but it was shambling slowly towards him.

It's slowly coming this way?

I must admit, Uzumaki was a pretty good manga. And this is coming from someone that loathes 99.9% of the anime/manga out there these days.

Psychic Robot wrote:I have to write a letter critiquing it tomorrow. Am I being too harsh here when I surmise that it's a turdasaur? Are there any redeeming qualities that I'm somehow missing? (And yes, this thread was mostly to showcase the bad writing. But, damnit, he's a senior in college and he should know better.)

It's only slightly worse then say, Ed Greenwood. Or that Eragon fellow. By the gods, I've seen worse from college students. Much, much worse. I may even post some of it here one day.

But is this student even an English major? If he is, I feel really bad for him. Otherwise... not so much.

He's also ripping off Rifts, to some extent, and he plays M:tG. I despise wish-fulfillment characters.

In attempting to be dramatic, the writing is too detailed... Which just makes you lose any sense of suspense (or interest).

Also, the second paragraph sucks.

I suppose it might be salvageable if the dude stops worrying about the specifics and makes sure the overarching feeling is portrayed. Seriously... Does it matter the specific words chanted?

If I were editing this paper, my words of advice would be:

Go through each scene and decide the most important information to convey. Strip out the unnecessary details so you don't lose the tree in the forest. For example, "The elemental struck an invisible wall that held it for seven seconds" is trying to convey that there wasn't much time. But because it's so specific, it sounds more like a technical paper than a creative writing piece. The goal is to make time fleeting - use language to that effect.

Delete redundancies. "Silent hand code" is redundant. So is "stare unblinkingly."

My main problem is that it's all summary and no scene.

Isn't that "Show me; don't tell me" syndrome?

Maj wrote:Isn't that "Show me; don't tell me" syndrome?

Exactly. That was the first thing I thought when reading this. There should have been some dialogue when Mr. Three RRRs was getting the scouting reports. There should have been much more buildup to the confrontation with the wounded elemental.

The card-game scene is even worse. I assume this is the scene where we're supposed to establish the protagonist's leet card-playing skills. Having Adam come from behind in his first match is a good way to do that. Unfortunately, we never see what amazing trick he uses to pull out the match.

At the darkened tunnel entrance, they disengaged their cloaking devices and Morrrn signaled for a halt. Using their silent hand code, he sent two expert infiltrators to scout ahead and behind. They reported back that their ingress point was not yet discovered, but they could not count on their luck holding out. The other scout reported that a dark-matter elemental guarded the far end of the tunnel. Dark elementals were of the highest order of elementals, nine-foot tall brutes capable of decimating an entire army.

Scene, characters, bullshit. Use either vague descriptions, or keep everything equally detailed, but don't fucking mix-n-match.

There's a pile of detail at the start... then suddenly the one scout can notice an army-killing monster... and nothing is explained as to how this is possible without the scout not being insta-gibbed and being turned into a pile of long-pig chunklets.

Also, silent hand code... in the dark. I'm not buying it. Are there night-goggles on these people? If so, say so.

Also, infiltration does not ever mean "we are going to send someone back and check where we entered", there's no fucking time to do that. It's IN and then OUT. Not dicking around and making sure that no one saw where you entered.

If your entry point is so important to not be noticed, you would have just resealed or camouflaged your entry point.

The "elemental" What the fuck man? I mean, seriously, what the fuck? You put army-killers (and... 10% of an army killer) as guards?! That's fucking retarded and unbelievable.

“That is not good,” signed Morrrn, “I don’t think that we have the firepower to deal with a dark elemental.”

No shit sherlock, you already said that these fuckers wipe out armies. Unless these black-ops dudes have serious firepower, I hope to see them die like mooks.

Gerrross started to walk forward; ignoring the others who were consternately demanding to know what he thought he was doing. Simple, he thought, plasma is the counter of dark-matter. Out loud he said, “Vash ma tua,” as he made the sign of the Winged Serpent with his right hand. The plasma bolt formed and flew down the tunnel with silent fury, striking the dark elemental squarely in the chest, causing it to melt back into the nothingness that spawned it. The other members of the team simply stared at him with a look of shock on their faces.

fuck, you had to bring out "science", didn't you?

Well, I'll tell you something asswipe, do you know what is the "anti" to "dark matter"?

Everything.

Anti-matter (aka Dark Matter) is destroyed by any type of matter contacting it. Really. Read anything about particle physics, or just google dark-matter or anti-matter. This should have taken you a few minutes.

Plasma is merely a 'state' that matter can be in.

Your complete inability to do basic research in what you are writing about makes me want to yell at you and tell you to play Russian roulette with an automatic pistol, not to pass Go, go directly to Fial.

Then you follow up with... magical powers. That's a big fucking no-no. If you do this, it's either there from the start, or it's led up to. You can surprise the other characters, but don't surprise the readers.

The self-insert mary-sue bullshit magical character in a non-magical setting is a failure in any writing.

Congratulations, in one paragraph you not only failed at science, but you also failed at writing.

“I am sorry I was forced to hide it from you, but I am a Disciple of Agwyn. The others continued to stare unblinkingly, and he realized with dawning comprehension that they weren’t looking at him, they were looking past him.

Wow, so they don't flip out and shoot him, they don't ask him any questions, and he obviously cut them off by 'explaining' what he is.

Really believable. Oh wait, this is a mary-sue story, the main character only has conflicts when they want to, not when it's believable. Carry the fuck on.

He whipped his head around in time to see something that would haunt his every waking moment for the rest of his life; the dark elemental had not been destroyed. It was so horribly disfigured that it was not possible that it could still move, but it was shambling slowly towards him. It was just five feet away when Gerrross had turned around. Reacting purely on instinct, he used his hands to create the equivalent of a mime wall while chanting “Vanta Veros Xaling, Vanta Veros Xaling.” The elemental struck an invisible wall that held it for seven seconds. Gerrross did not waste this time. He cast two more plasma bolts at the creature before it finally succumbed to the guardian magic. They made it to the base of the ladder and began to climb.

For something that will haunt him forever.... he seems to well, deal with it pretty handily. It's not like it just killed his entire team and is playing marbles with their eyes, or using their bodies as dolls, or being otherwise beastly with his fellow black-ops dudes.

We never got a description of what the elemental looked like, so "disfiguring" it is only going to happen in the reader's imagination.

Five feet away from an army killing creature, and he's not even lunged at, punched, striked, hit, thrown or otherwise injured. His "armour of plot" is in fine form in this scene. Mr. RRR's (Gerrrrrrrrrr...rrross..ssssss; you don't want people to make fun of this name? Seriously? hahahaha!) special powers seem... boring, and we're not past the first page!

Which brings us to the.... mime wall. Uh, what? A mime wall? The mary-sue's biggest ability here is a ... mime wall? No shout that shatters the tunnels? no plasma fist to the face of the elemental? I guess making a mary sue really is for the unoriginal.

Also, "guardian magic" being an offensive ability =/= compute. The description of what it does, is not in line with what it is called.

It would be like me owning a Barret's Light-Fifty, and calling it a "varmit shooter."

Sure it can shoot a varmit, however it only qualifies as a varmit shooter if the particular varmits you are shooting at are humans in super-heavy body armour (aka, Bomb Squad guys) or things like a Humvee or a Jeep.

Gotta keep those pesky jeeps out of your carrot patch, you know?

Ah well, time for these assclowns to climb the ladder. Next scene.

No internal coflict, no qestions, no anwers as to where the fuck these speshul oylmpi- ... powers came from, just cut to the next scene. Way to go and ignore a chance to introduce other characters. Ohhh, mary-sue, wait, i fucking forgot that it's a mary-sue, other characters are merely a backdrop for the main author self-insert charcter. The only time a non mary-sue character is detailed is when the mary-sue is either fucking, or fighting, the character that has real details written about them.

Adams first opponent was a man named Bob Harrison. He won the coin toss and drew first. “Ha,” said Bob, “I will play Mind’s Eye, let me see your hand.” Adam revealed his hand to Bob, who forced him to suffer a card loss of three. With his hand decreased in size, he took his turn. This continued, eventually resulting in the victory of Adam.

.... "this continued" = I'm a lazy shit and can't make even a fictional bullshit card game interesting.

I'd potentially recommend reading books where poker is played, or perhaps even a star wars book where the "card game" of Sabacc is played, but really, you're looking at Yu-Gi-Oh as inspiration, and that series is about _games_, not card games. The manga had it right, the anime fails to capture the fact that their world is about competition, not cards.

That spirit of competition needs to be captured in order for the reader to even begin to give at shit about your made up card game.

=======

A little harsh, maybe.

The only observation I have's that antimatter and dark matter don't seem to be the same (in part because the solar system isn't blowing up near-instantly).

Anti-matter has nothing to do with dark matter. Please learn not to confuse the two before calling people out on misunderstanding the physics of either.

As for actual dark matter, you can't make visible elementals out of it. Plasma is not known to destroy it, but if you're doing a magic system putting it there in the rock-paper-scissors array does kinda make sense.

You know, dark-matter could refer to matter made from fabric of shadows, or tainted matter, or many things other than the physics term.

-Crissa

Calling your shadow-stuff or Tainted Earth or whatever "dark matter" is just going to confuse people.

There is some truly awful sentence construction and blending of detail levels, but things aren't necessarily as bad as people are saying. We don't have the full context, which might mean that the main character's magic has been revealed to the reader already. The refusal of anyone to even acknowledge the magic powers is pretty bad on its own, though.

zeruslord wrote:Calling your shadow-stuff or Tainted Earth or whatever "dark matter" is just going to confuse people.

I'm fairly sure that's what the author did, and that most readers don't know enough to actually confuse anything.

Gah. Looked over my own writing today. It's better. Somewhat. Does anybody fancy helping me develop a setting? I have large chunks of material, but I have a really bad sense for things like what kind of economic activity and political interactions happened in the High Middle Ages (assuming that *is* the timeframe I want)

I posted some material about it a couple times before, a post on angels and some RPG notes. It's mostly a setting for a novel though.

Is this writing as awful as I think it is?

[RANT:]
Until I see writers guidelines or a style guide and the actual assignment, I can't fucking tell.

The vast bulk of writing teachers are still stuck in the late 19th century - here in the 21st we actually have to contend with rules that are so far removed from what is considered grammar so as to render most of these sorts of exercises beyond useless to the point of actually being harmful to the student's ability to communicate.

Most actual writing will be subject to arbitrary rules:

For a example: within the span of one single day last year I had to

• Write an important memo on a message system with a hard 300 character limit.
• Write a review to be posted on a site which could not display apostrophes correctly - the ` character was the closest substitute which would display.
• Write internal office communication without using any commas, since commas were being used for some sort of search parameter or something, the precise reasons were not and still aren't clear to me.

Yes really.

Writing for any published RPG will include following equally specific and arbitrary rules about capitalization and "brand indentities" (whatever those are). Likewise with most newspapers, magazines, websites, better fanzines or really just about anyone who has even a remote chance of paying you for your work.

In fact the only writing without such things is the domain of college professors and angry posts on internet message boards.[/Rant]

Anti-matter (aka Dark Matter) is destroyed by any type of matter contacting it.

Ok, being pedantic, but ... Dark Matter isn't Anti-matter (or Neutronium, for that matter) - it isn't even necessarily any kind of special matter at all. What it is a hypothetical amount of mass which should exist to explain certain facts about the universe, but has so far not been detected. If it even exists, it may be something as mundane as dust clouds, or possibly made of WIMPs - but even then would probably have no special properties beyond being dense and not emitting or reflecting light.

Josh_Kablack wrote:For a example: within the span of one single day last year I had to

• Write an important memo on a message system with a hard 300 character limit.
• Write a review to be posted on a site which could not display apostrophes correctly - the ` character was the closest substitute which would display.
• Write internal office communication without using any commas, since commas were being used for some sort of search parameter or something, the precise reasons were not and still aren't clear to me.

I've looked at style guides and know they've arbitrary BS like the parts I didn't quote; but WTF was that day, and how do you expect it to be valid as anything more than wild hyperbole with regards to fiction writing?

name_here wrote:Anti-matter has nothing to do with dark matter. Please learn not to confuse the two before calling people out on misunderstanding the physics of either.

As for actual dark matter, you can't make visible elementals out of it. Plasma is not known to destroy it, but if you're doing a magic system putting it there in the rock-paper-scissors array does kinda make sense.

Shit, dark matter is the stuff that can't be seen when particles are interacting with each other (we see the visible particles, but the dark matter affects the visible particles, and is not visible), my bad.

Still, the science is wrong. You can't have a visible elemental made out of stuff that isn't visible, and you can't make it "dark".

Well, you can, but you can't see it.

By the way, what is this stuff from, a submission to an SF magazine?

Sounds more like shitty amateur/fan fiction.

... or part of the slushpile from some place that has open submissions.

PR said he had to write a review, which looks like something he's either paid to do or forced to do. Big publishing houses don't usually have the man-hours to waste reviewing obvious shit in any detail beyond "REJECTED", so it might be a magazine, or perhaps PR volunteered to teach creative writing not knowing he's more likely to go insane from reading Pokemon porn than to discover the next F. Scott Fitzgerald.

I thought PR mentioned he was taking a class and reviewing the writing of other students?