Issue 226 Reviews

[Dan]

Tdyans said:

Awakening
As I'm not too familiar with the Darkest Faerie storyline, I have no idea how much of this is canon and how much of it is your own creation, but I found it to be a creative history behind Altador and the Darkest Faerie. I liked the idea that the Darkest Faerie had started out as one of the protectors of Altador. And I thought it was very interesting that by constantly expecting her to be a dark faerie, the others finally forced her to live up to their expectations. It's interesting how we can be shaped by others' views of us and their actions toward us according to those views, and it was ironic, both for her and for them, that the faerie became exactly what she hated them thinking she was because of how they treated her. And, of course, then she's defeated her case that she was ever good by becoming evil and teaming up with Kastrallis just as they had accused her of doing.

In the first paragraph, your tense shifted several times, so that's something that you need to watch out for. I also found myself confused by the timeline after the second break. Since you'd already gone over the fact that the faerie was one of the protectors, I assumed that the story from this point took place after that fact, so I thought when she first fought Kastrallis that she was already a protector. When I got further down and came to the scene where Jerdana asked her to be a protector, I was very confused. To prevent this confusion, you could have either made it clearer at the end of the little history of Altador that the faerie was now going to tell how she became a protector, or you could have scrapped the history of Altador altogether. All in all, it's not very necessary-- most of the facts given in it that are needed could have been inserted elsewhere in the story and it would have gotten the action moving more quickly without being repetitive or confusing.

I felt that there was a lot of telling and not much showing in this story. Of course, the faerie is telling this story, so some telling-- and maybe more than you would usually have-- is to be expected. But, because it is in actuality a written story, you can still have more description and elaboration than a real person telling a story in real life might give. I also found the sometimes choppy writing style and the language choices to not always fit with the tone and the teller of the story. Though the faerie should tell how she felt at the time, she is still looking at it through a lens of a thousand years of anger. She's had a long time to think about this story, so I think her telling of it would have less of a "young" voice than it seems to have now-- that it would be more aged and elegant, with longer and more flowing sentences and sharper words.

Thank you very much. I have noted that showing and not telling is my biggest problem, so I've tried doing that in my stories. Can you give any specific pointers?

[Nut]

doughnut215 said:

Pictures in the Clouds

There is actually very little that I can write in the way of a review here. I loved this story, it moved with a lovely pace with plenty of description. I thought that the overall idea was very original, and the extra viewpoint from Fyora added just that little bit more depth to the tale. I like the style in which it is written very much I think there was one phrase which sounded slightly awkward, and one typing error, but other than that xD

*Superglomps you* Thank you so much for the review! ^__^ I'm glad you liked my story. Would you mind telling me where the errors were? I'd appreciate it. ^^

[Tdyans]

Dan, I will get back to you, but I want to finish up with the other two reviews that were requested first. Sorry I'm running late on those, guys.

To Pound or Not to Pound
"Hello, my fellow Neopians! I’m Sarah and if you're reading this article and you don't work for the Neopets Team, then that means I got my first article in the Neopian Times! Yay for me!" This reminds me a lot of the notes you often see on the bottom of comics, which, if you read any comics reviews around here, aren't usually looked too kindly on. I'm not a fan of such notes even at the end of articles or stories usually, so having this be the start of your article didn't really make a great first impression. It's understandable that you might be excited and want to share your excitement, but it really has nothing to do with your actual article, so it doesn't belong in the article, especially not at the beginning when you're supposed to be hooking your readers and letting them know what your article is about.

The rest of the article was fairly well-written and contained some interesting facts. But, I found myself wondering exactly what the real purpose or subject of it was supposed to be. The title makes it seem as if it will be an article about whether you should abandon a pet or something like that. Your opening paragraph says you're going to address the injustice of the pound and how it's a sad place. But I didn't feel like the article really did either of these things. The lists of facts were, as I said, interesting, but they were left at just that-- lists of facts. They weren't used to make or support any argument about the pound or whether it's good/bad/indifferent to abandon or adopt certain pets. You state at one point "Hopefully, the Pound won’t be such a sad place by the time Gnorbus are abandoned in mass," but it's not really clear what you hope to be accomplished in order for the pound not to be such a sad place (or what exactly you think makes it a sad place to start with). Basically, while your writing was good, and the various parts of the article were interesting, none of it seemed to come together into a cohesive whole. You just needed to be more clear-- with your readers and with yourself-- about what your purpose was and to use everything that you wrote about to advance that purpose, without wandering or including things that, while interesting, might not have anything to do with it. If you can work on that, I think your series on various injustices in Neopia can turn out to be very interesting and enlightening.

[Tdyans at work]

Pictures in the Clouds
I found the title and subject funny considering this week's random contest. I almost wonder if they might have gotten the idea from this. You never know.

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot to comment on. Maybe I'm just critiqued out from doing three other reviews this week, but I didn't find much to complain about. The writing was good, flowed well, was easy to follow, etc. The idea of Jhudora's day basically being ruined by her expectation of Illusen coming and doing something and by that expectation not being met (and then finally being met when she's no longer expecting it) was a fun one. And I'm not sure if you meant it to be, but I thought it was funny that the first item that popped into Jhudora's mind was an usuki play set.

The only bit of writing I have to comment on:

"Later!" Jhudora hissed. "I will come later. Now leave me! Get out!"

Bioka took the subtle hint and flew away.

Subtle hint? Yelling "Get out!" isn't really subtle in any way. Perhaps the narrator is being sarcastic, but since the narrator hasn't shown any sarcasm up until now, it struck me as a bit odd.

The ending did seem a little quick and kind of anti-climactic to me, but then I don't know what else could have been done with it. Sorry I don't have much else to say, but overall I liked it.



Now, Dan, some advice on showing vs. telling. First, I agree with the other reviewer who said this might have worked better as a series than a short story. It would have given you room to develop the characters and the plot a lot more, which is a necessity for a story like this where you're trying to get us to feel sympathetic with this character and why she's turned from good to evil.

When you're working on showing vs. telling, you need to think about painting a picture in your readers' minds. You probably can see clearly in your mind what is happening in your story; you have to translate that to the page so that your readers can see it as well. Instead, I think sometimes because you do know what it looks like, you forget that everyone else doesn't and skim over the details, just telling what happened instead of showing it. Here are a few examples of places where you could have shown more:

While villagers were screaming and running in the other direction, I simply shot a few energy balls at it, and the deed was done.

This is a rather quick and anticlimactic battle sequence. While you wouldn't want to draw it out forever since it's not the focus of your story, some more details and more drama would have helped. What are "energy balls"? What do they look like? What does Kastrallis look like? How does the faerie feel, emotionally and physically, when she sees him and when she fights him?

Instantly, I felt some negative feelings from the two other Faeries, Siyana, a Light Faerie, and Psellia, an Air Faerie. I couldn't believe that they had already started to judge me. It was infuriating.

Now this is an important aspect of your story that's really skimmed over very quickly. What do the two faeries do to make her feel "negative feelings" from them? Do they look at her a certain way? Whisper to each other? Just give her a certain feeling? Does it remind her of how anyone else has treated her in the past? How long does this treatment from this last and/or does it ever end? As you then transition in the next paragraph about her enjoying being a protector and living in harmony with the others, it might be good to show the progression of her going from feeling like these two are judging her to gradually feeling more like she belongs, even if some tension remains. Again, this is something that a whole part of a series rather than one or two paragraphs, could have been spent developing. These two faeries are the main antagonists, the main impetus for the dark faerie becoming evil, so it is important to develop their characters and how they interact with her to set up their betrayal of her later on and the impact this has on her.

I looked around and noticed there were some blasts in the Bazaar District of Altador.

And what do "blasts" look like? That's a very general term that could mean just about anything. What does the Bazaar District look like? What does she see and hear there? Give more details to really show us is going on, what the faerie is seeing and how she reacts to it.

Basically, in important scenes, take your time in drawing them out and think about all of your senses; if you were there, if you were the character or a bystander, what would you be seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling? What would you emotions be? What would what you're experiencing remind you of? If you were describing to someone how to paint a picture of this scene, what instructions would you give them? Put your readers into the story, into the place of the characters, so that they can see, hear, smell, taste and feel everything that the characters do and relate to them better.

[Dan]

Tdyans said:

Now, Dan, some advice on showing vs. telling. First, I agree with the other reviewer who said this might have worked better as a series than a short story. It would have given you room to develop the characters and the plot a lot more, which is a necessity for a story like this where you're trying to get us to feel sympathetic with this character and why she's turned from good to evil.

When you're working on showing vs. telling, you need to think about painting a picture in your readers' minds. You probably can see clearly in your mind what is happening in your story; you have to translate that to the page so that your readers can see it as well. Instead, I think sometimes because you do know what it looks like, you forget that everyone else doesn't and skim over the details, just telling what happened instead of showing it. Here are a few examples of places where you could have shown more:


This is a rather quick and anticlimactic battle sequence. While you wouldn't want to draw it out forever since it's not the focus of your story, some more details and more drama would have helped. What are "energy balls"? What do they look like? What does Kastrallis look like? How does the faerie feel, emotionally and physically, when she sees him and when she fights him?


Now this is an important aspect of your story that's really skimmed over very quickly. What do the two faeries do to make her feel "negative feelings" from them? Do they look at her a certain way? Whisper to each other? Just give her a certain feeling? Does it remind her of how anyone else has treated her in the past? How long does this treatment from this last and/or does it ever end? As you then transition in the next paragraph about her enjoying being a protector and living in harmony with the others, it might be good to show the progression of her going from feeling like these two are judging her to gradually feeling more like she belongs, even if some tension remains. Again, this is something that a whole part of a series rather than one or two paragraphs, could have been spent developing. These two faeries are the main antagonists, the main impetus for the dark faerie becoming evil, so it is important to develop their characters and how they interact with her to set up their betrayal of her later on and the impact this has on her.

I looked around and noticed there were some blasts in the Bazaar District of Altador.

And what do "blasts" look like? That's a very general term that could mean just about anything. What does the Bazaar District look like? What does she see and hear there? Give more details to really show us is going on, what the faerie is seeing and how she reacts to it.

Basically, in important scenes, take your time in drawing them out and think about all of your senses; if you were there, if you were the character or a bystander, what would you be seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling? What would you emotions be? What would what you're experiencing remind you of? If you were describing to someone how to paint a picture of this scene, what instructions would you give them? Put your readers into the story, into the place of the characters, so that they can see, hear, smell, taste and feel everything that the characters do and relate to them better.

Thank you so much! This means a lot to me. I'll definitely be using your tips! Thanks again.

[Nut]

Whee! Thank you so much for the review, Tdyans! ^__^

Tdyans said:

Pictures in the Clouds
I found the title and subject funny considering this week's random contest. I almost wonder if they might have gotten the idea from this. You never know.

That's an interesting idea. Wow, have I inspired TNT? n:P

Tdyans said:

Unfortunately, I don't have a lot to comment on. Maybe I'm just critiqued out from doing three other reviews this week, but I didn't find much to complain about. The writing was good, flowed well, was easy to follow, etc. The idea of Jhudora's day basically being ruined by her expectation of Illusen coming and doing something and by that expectation not being met (and then finally being met when she's no longer expecting it) was a fun one. And I'm not sure if you meant it to be, but I thought it was funny that the first item that popped into Jhudora's mind was an usuki play set.

Thank you for the compliments; I'm glad you thought it was good. ^^ I did think there might be some humor value in the Usuki Playset, so I'm happy you found it funny. ^^

Tdyans said:

The only bit of writing I have to comment on:

"Later!" Jhudora hissed. "I will come later. Now leave me! Get out!"

Bioka took the subtle hint and flew away.

Subtle hint? Yelling "Get out!" isn't really subtle in any way. Perhaps the narrator is being sarcastic, but since the narrator hasn't shown any sarcasm up until now, it struck me as a bit odd.

Yes, it was supposed to be somewhat sarcastic. You're right, though; it was out of place. I'll try to keep the narration consistent next time. Thanks for pointing it out! ^^

Tdyans said:

[The ending did seem a little quick and kind of anti-climactic to me, but then I don't know what else could have been done with it. Sorry I don't have much else to say, but overall I liked it.

Well, I'm glad you enjoyed it, and I appreciate your willingness to give me a review. ^^ I agree that the ending was rather anti-climactic. In a way, that was on purpose, possibly showing how I followed a bit of the style of other "rivalry" stories I've read, which often end just as one person plays some ultimate prank on the other; though, since the end scene with Fyora slowed down the pace, it didn't quite have the dramatic effect.

Thank you so much for reviewing!