For my comments on the different types of “moments of horror” involved, see
This post
Author I
This is my longest bit of criticism this time around because this
could have been great with just a bit more work, so before I go crazy and start tearing apart the story, let me just say up front that I really liked what the author attempted to do. Let me also immediately apologize to the two other authors for not going as much in depth with their work.
There's nothing quite like being dumped into a battle in medias res. It is a good way to get the adrenaline pumping so long as you can keep up the action, while, at the same time, smuggling in enough information, by hook, by crook, by inference, or by obvious reference, that the reader has a reasonable idea of what is going on the first time he reads it.
This one is a decent attempt at that and certainly succeeds in the action category, but – at least for me - it fell into the ”read twice, understand once” problem that my entry from last round of GTA suffered – not from being as weird, but from having only a few cross-references done amongst the background hints, this leaving the field perhaps a bit too wide for understanding, and from having trivial dialogue and description problems.
A few examples:
Choosing Roman naming to help guide the reader's thoughts into Roman Republic/Empire thinking is a really good trick since it sets a basic context – using the cohort/legion designations strengthen this.
Having said that, though this may come as a surprise to those who've read the story and now reads this critique,
the tech level of the story is undetermined. There's one non-lethal blow to the head, one parry (of something with something else), there's a siege line, walls give a tactical advantage, one cohort rides (something), hacking enemy troops, and one use of a sword (last line in the story). If we hadn't read those Roman names to start with and started filling in details on our own, it could as easily have been a holding action in full body armour with powerful ranged weapons, power swords, or who knows what equipment, by some futuristic infantry. So, how many hands up in favour of this being a Warhammer 40k story or derivative product overusing Latin to give it style?
Nobody, I hear you cry? Perhaps not,
but it could. That aside...
There's a downside to the strength of building so much on so little; when nothing else in the story added directly on to this, it did in fact make some of the other critics think of this as Romans (without magic) defending against an invasion by Outsiders (with magic) – a classic trope in fantasy - whereas a careful read through of the story shows that this is a completely wrong interpretation – a clear-cut counterexample being our “Romans” using a portal of their own in paragraph 1. This is side_1 with magic versus side_2 with magic with nothing to indicate who is the dominant magic side in general.
Now, none of this weakens the story critically, but it does make it more ambiguous and ambiguity in a short fast-paced story is usually bad – it carries a significant risk of making readers concentrate a bit too much on the non-essential parts of the story and having to retrace and reread. There are many ways to mitigate this – things like adding the occasional adjective or supporting reference or, for that matter, giving the short story a title that gives away the setting. Adding more description to the scenes in general would be a truly great improvement.
There's another downside, though this is not so much a failure of Roman naming as it is a failure of the author pure and simple: Name recognition. An author should always be thinking about careful naming, and me bitching about it here will hopefully help another 5-10 people remember it next time they write a story. When you have about 7 or 8 paragraphs to write something character driven, you should make damn sure that none of the characters introduced have similar names. In this case, two main characters are introduced on the fly with no background and they are named Martellus and Mattius (Venerat) and the viewpoints switch between them erratically in different paragraphs [except for those paragraphs where it is hard for the reader to discern the particular viewpoint]. Ma & Ma is completely inexcusable from a naming perspective making it not only possible, but likely, that some readers have read through it once in the tempo that the action suggests, just to have to backtrack to find out who was actually who at different points in the story once they've grasped the overall feel of the story.
This also goes for full novels, by the way – sure, in history it is common to have many peoples' names being similar (and a curse on the readers), but in general it carries no advantage to either the author or the reader that this is the case, hence why practically all authors of fiction try to make things easy for the readers by making (important) names most dissimilar except when wanting to emphasize family or rank relationships.
Overall, it would truly have served the structure of the story well to have sneaked in more information about the ongoing conflict, the source of it, how long time it had been ongoing, and which armaments were used so long as it could be done without substantially slowing the narrative.
But enough about that.
My next concern with the entry is the poor use of dialogue or perhaps, rather, the poor formatting of dialogue. Too many people speaking per chapter without making it clear who is speaking. To be fair, this is only a big problem in the first chapter of the story – but that's the chapter that is supposed to grip the reader and set the tone, and instead it is a horrible mess unless you already know the story and the characters involved. This is an obvious place for improvement.
The dialogue is also rather flat.
The Plot: Stereotypical for the genre and it works. If I might criticize one thing here, it is probably that the second chapter needlessly gives away the plot twist of the rest of the story (much like “Chief Brennan's” thoughts did in last months GTA, come to think of it). Well, unless the reader doesn't immediately realize that the second chapter introduces Ma#2, which can happen for one who is speed-reading.
The tempo: The author manages to keep it up from beginning to end, never letting up – great work!
Viewpoints: As I believe the Yogi has already covered, the story suffers slightly from viewpoint-confusion. That is not necessarily bad, if the author had intended the effect and taken advantage of it, but it comes across to me as slightly sloppy writing instead of intentional.
The writing in general: Excluding issues of dialogue formatting, lacklustre or absent descriptions etc., the writing itself was good and most words well chosen. I particularly liked the solitary “Hell....” comment when the skies turned red and the portals opened and so on and so forth – it worked truly well in a situation where a more elaborate comment might have diluted the effect.
The very last paragraph/chapter when 2MA meet up feels poorly written in comparison with the rest of the story. Mattius has just considered falling back and/or retreating to the priory, when the next scene opens he's on the way around a corner towards a cellar to the keep, then the place he is in is described as his hideout. I guess it is intended to be sometime later than the previous chapter after all defenses have broken down, and that MA#2 has been in hot pursuit with MA#1 only knowing that somebody is in pursuit but it comes across as a somewhat confused mess, which is a shame to end up with.
Author: For the use of imaginary pseudo-Romanesque troops and problems with dialogue as well as writing something I truly like, my guess is that
Comagoosie wrote this, for these are many of the same problems I had with entry #1 last time (“Chief Brennan at the picnic”) and Comagoosie wrote that one.
(On the other hand, he is generally pretty good with descriptions and details, so perhaps not, but hey, a guess is a guess).
If this story was all it could have been with another hour or three hours of editing and revision (or perhaps just half that), it would have been my favourite of the three, but it was not. Perhaps I am judging it too harshly* because I cannot help thinking of what I would have made of it had I gotten the idea to write something like this (sure, I'd have made other errors, but those would be for somebody else to criticize
) and feel that this is lacking in comparison.
* Not with regards to naming, though. Ma & Ma was a bad choice pure and simple. Imprint the primary rule of naming: “don't make it harder for readers to remember who's who than necessary”
Author II
I am going to short-change Author II in the criticism department – not because he doesn't deserve it, but because he doesn't make the sort of easily-exploitable errors that are easiest to whine about.
Well, except for this major one. Writing a story-within-a-story where the internal story is of a much higher quality than the external one
and the external one is irrelevant to the contents of the internal one is a bad idea plain and simple. The external story here has exactly one purpose (unless Rensslaer's
unreliable narrator hypothesis holds true), setting up a viewpoint for the internal story with a standard sparring setup.
I dare say that the entry, as a whole, would be better by removing the external Francis/Kriegsmariner/we are all going to dieeee story root and branch and creating a viewpoint focusing squarely on the sergeant's remembrances, because that internal story of love and the destruction of a man through its loss, no matter how classic, how utterly predictable.... is well written. It is hard to imagine anybody human, who is not a sociopath, who will not relate to it as it connects with one of the most human of horrors. This author knows how to write emotion - or he got very, very, lucky.
Do not take me wrong – purely from a form and technical quality of writing perspective the whole of the entry is well written, this is obviously the work of somebody very familiar with storytelling, but the external story is a rough shell, lacking both heart and soul, to say nothing of requiring a substantial suspension of disbelief to achieve a feeling of consistency in the reader – a completely unnecessary additional requirement.
Author: The internal story reminds me of some of Storey's work, for he is one of the few writers (from the time in ages past when I frequently read AARs) who was good at writing emotion while being, if you will pardon the pun, a really good storeyteller. Emotion being one of the hardest things to write for most people.
Rensslaer', however, came up with an interpretation so outré and unsupported by the narrative of what the whole thing was about (in which case the external and internal story would be intrically linked) that I guess it is him instead.
It is a crying shame, but though I really, truly, like the internal story the story, as a whole, falls flat for me. Even something as simple as changing it to a monologue or a discussion with the ghost of the girl (real or imagined) on the eve before battle would be hard pressed to not improve the story as a whole.
Author III
An internal monologue that persists through death is somewhat uncommon outside stock vampire-horror fiction and carries all sorts of potential problems with it and pure internal monologue itself is certainly not my favourite either, but the author manages to make it work – not without some problems - but it does work, and the reason it does work is probably that a thoroughly vile main character with no redeeming virtues whatsoever was chosen.
There's an obvious risk to such a choice as few or none of the readers will feel the slightest sympathy with him (and if any do, you should improve yourself dammit), and even empathy is going to be in short supply, so it can work as a real joy-killer for some people. On the other hand, it means that the usual cop-outs such as “he was a good man who fell into bad company/made a terrible mistake/deserve a second chance” that can lead to a happy ending are utterly done away with.
I really like it, but for a short story outside an anthology such as “Villains victorious”, conventional horror is “bad things happen to a good man” with “bad things happen to a bad man” hardly being worthy of notice – while it started gently and revealed the main character nicely along the way (and I was delighted by the description and attention to detail with regards to late medieval morality and religiosity), the story did not end up the way I had expected. An extra paragraph or two prior to the execution wallowing less in specific acts and more in personal justifications would probably have improved the story by making the paragraph following the execution – the real wallop/twist of the story - more powerful.
Though there were lots of hints along the way, a summary prior to the execution of what Gilles truly cared about (and hence was a cause for his horror in the end) would perhaps have helped: being in charge of his own destiny, actions, and temper, being master rather than servant, relying on his own wits more than anything else – stuff like that. Then again, it might just have fallen flat to have a checklist before death followed by a “by the way, let's just cross off stuff from the checklist after death one by one to show he's been well and truly betrayed by his own way of thinking”
The first line of the story: “Say this if nothing else, say he was an evil man.“, really says it all and is without shadow of doubt in my mind
the best opening line in the last few rounds of Guess the Author due to the way it sets the scene.
Overall, the story is very well written and the only major fault I can find is that the proper use of tenses, so strictly adhered to until then, is utterly lost in the noose paragraph: (My highlighting)
Sooner than expected, I felt the noose tighten around my neck, and I felt the beginning of hope arise. Surely, I would be rescued soon. Surely, Barron would grant me the power to burn brightly, ending in glory! Despair fled me! Nothingness? Who can possibly fear nothingness! And, if not, then soon, my absent friends, I shall return to the dust from whence I came and we will dine in glory on the day of the resurrection of the Lord. Either way, I would win! I cracked with laughter as the executioner, the laggard, got moving.
In my most generous moments I think it might be an attempt by the author to insert emotion by the narrator (who is remarkably short on displayed emotion in the “what's done is done” part of his story only letting feelings be visible to all in his final “that's how things are now” sequence) to show what REALLY mattered to him at the time, but if so, it did not work well, and I suspect it is just a mistake of tenses, the author running with the moment in his madness.
Author: I guess that this story was written by
me because that's what the majority, of those who've guessed at all, have been guessing. That puts me in good company whether I be right or wrong.
I deem this story my favourite story of the three, beating out number II which was twice as long as needed and killed my love for it as a whole thereby, and number I which, while a very good attempt, needed more work for it to qualify as a really good story.
I would
love to see what the author of number I could get out of it if he applied himself a bit to further work on the structure and descriptions.