[Winter Contest Entry 2015] To Become a Memory

I can message it to you if you want.

Yeah sure, thanks!

I enjoyed this tidbit of a world fantastical and medieval in nature. It reminded me both of the worlds of Strike! and also from where Innocent and Jason come from. I was also pleased to see that it was absent of most typical errors, however I did have a handful of notes to mark. Do pay attention to them so you can improve.

If I had critique, it would be that this story wasn’t very funny. Obviously it wasn’t trying to be overly much, though there were some funny bits, the overall dark theme of Isaac’s true nature overshadowed it. Then again, that could be the point of trying to find humor in a dark and dangerous world. When I think about it that way, it seems much more appealing. Also, Eadweard might have just been shoved in to satisfy the theme guideline, but I did like him as a character regardless.

I know you had a previous version of this, but I didn’t read or care about it in the context of the competition. If you would like to repost it, I would like to read it now that it’s over though.

Below are the major things I found issues with.



A bit repetitive with the “saids.” I don't mind said, but it starts getting too repetitive after so many times.



This comes as a surprise to her? Did she forget to talk about it immediately? Seems like the kind of thing you would say first before anything else.



His eyes.



Maybe "before himself" might be more appropriate. Maybe you meant "before her?" Hard to tell, though it's grammatically acceptable.



Isaac it is, then. "Then" being a follow-through like a supposition. Without a comma, it's being used like time.



Noticed.

Noted. Dawn mentioned that it's at least in part due to the tone that made this not comical for him, and I think in a way these two points are linked. I will keep this all in mind next time I try to do something that's supposed to be funny.



It is partly because of that. I also wanted Anna's travel companions to be varied and easily distinguishable since I knew going into this I wasn't going to have a whole lot of room to develop side characters. Eadweard as you know him just seemed like a good fit compared to the other characters. That's not to say it's a coincidence that he's old. However, it was mentioned that older family members in general satisfy the elderly theme. Maybe I didn't get it across all that well, but Anna's travel companions are the closest thing she has to family.



I also kinda told you guys not to, and I deleted it, so . . .



Later perhaps. I don't have a lot of time on my hands at the moment.

Thanks for the feedback!

It has taken me nearly two months to come up with this review. I am sorry it has taken so long. I find this entry written in very much your style which means I have problems with it. If you have followed the exchange between me and Sound of Destiny, you would have an idea what I will say when I judge your entry in these 3 criteria.

1. Must be readable:

I am afraid I had difficulty understanding it. That is the most important criteria when I judge the entries. As I said to Sound of Destiny, it doesn't make sense for me to deem an entry a good one if I don't understand it in the first place.

At first, I tried skimming through it then I tried to take my time to read it but I have little idea what is going on. Your entries and your writing in general tend to jump into the thick of the action with little explanation of the background of the story.

Take the first part for example, I only know that there is a campfire, the 3 actors are the old man Eadweard, Anna and Isaac. I suppose Eadweard and Anna know each other and Isaac and Anna just met going by the dialogue? This wasn't made clear so I was confused reading this entry.

I suppose you tried to imply what is happening with this line: Anna broke her gaze from the pit of the fire. "Oh! Isaac's in a bit of a bind. Can he travel with us for a while?"

What I felt was more important is to explain who are our main characters and what are they doing building campfires and travelling about in wagons. Why is Isaac in a bind and why is he following Anna? What is the relationship between Eadweard and Anna? If you addressed questions pertaining to setting then I would find the rest of the entry easier to follow.

I suppose the second part is Isaac's attempt to recount what had happened to him. However, when I first read it I thought I was reading another story altogether because you didn't refer to Isaac by his name instead you used 'he'. I understand that he has some form of amnesia but it made for difficult reading.

It was not until the third part of the story (and many hundred words into the 2000 word entry) where the main characters met up with Jacob and Leah that some kind of exposition was taking place about war. However, I can't grasp the details for the same reasons I can't understand the first part of the story.

The entry ended with Isaac abruptly leaving so it gives me the feeling that the entry is unresolved by then again I am not sure! Your entry feels as if it is an excerpt of a story. There is no introduction or conclusion.

I suppose you aren't Muslim but having 4 wives and 1 husband in your entry would certainly make it more readable to me.


2. Must be humorous

Alas, if I can't understand the plot of story, with its conflicts and resolution I am certainly not in a position to laugh at it, unless you pull off a Dawn of Dark or write it in leonard267's style.

I suppose you can throw in references to amnesia, giant frogs and cranky old men and military types. I think you were attempting humour by throwing in giant frogs but there is no punchline!


3. Must be written in leonard267's style:

I suppose I can parody it if you gave me a synopsis of what is going on.

Understandable.



Part of the reason I do this is word count. Lots of from for improvement, but I'm not doing things this way just for the hell of it.



Fair point. You know by now that I try to avoid exposition as much as possible, but maybe I should have added at least a few more lines in.



I'll keep this mind next time I write something involving a character with amnesia.



This story takes place in a fantasy world, so no Muslims.



Did you want to do a parody of this?



Well, it's taken me three days to reply to this, so I guess that makes us even.

The four wives and one husband aren't your typical Muslims though. Who binte Muhammad, What binte Muhammad, Where binte Muhammad and When binte Muhammad are women that I must have if I want to understand any story.

As for How bin Mohammed (Not to be confused with Muhammad; the last thing we want to suggest is that these are incestuous unions), I don't mind him that much. Understanding the mechanics of any fantasy world doesn't ruin the story for me. In fact it helps me appreciate whatever that is happening in the story even more.



Well, anything is possible. But I would need to know what is going on if I want to do it properly. This isn't exactly Doki Doki Suru. So, what happened in the entry?



Curses! It took me two days to reply to your reply! Now we aren't even!

That's part of the fun of the fun of fantasy stories, finding out about these cool worlds as you go through them.



Isaac is a soldier who presumably fought in a battle nearby and was injured, giving him amnesia. He meets Anna who brings him to the people she's traveling with since he has nowhere else to go. Isaac wants to take up their offer and stick with them for a while, but he begins to suspect he was kind of a dick before he was injured. He becomes worried he could be a danger to Anna and the others, but Anna manages to persuade him to come along with them anyway.



And it's going to stay that way.

Did anyone who read the entry figure that plot out? Thanks for explaining the plot though.

Yes. The 'plot' sorta lacked a drive, though. Like, it feels like not much progressed in those 2000 words.

I think so.



Well that's no good.

How did you do that?! I really can't even after reading it word for word twice!

Well, I just figured it out from the small details he gave a bit at a time...

"Isaac is a soldier who presumably fought in a battle nearby and was injured, giving him amnesia. He meets Anna who brings him to the people she's traveling with since he has nowhere else to go. Isaac wants to take up their offer and stick with them for a while, but he begins to suspect he was kind of a dick before he was injured. He becomes worried he could be a danger to Anna and the others, but Anna manages to persuade him to come along with them anyway."

Isaac saw the glow of the campfire long before the camp itself, a beacon in a world swallowed by night

- so this tells us the setting - sometime where campfires are needed

A wagon sat parked to the side of the road with a pair of horses dozing off in front of it. Beside the wagon were an old man on a trunk, and the fire.

- Medieval most likely, cos wagons and horses

"Oh! Isaac's in a bit of a bind. Can he travel with us for a while?"

- self explanatory

It can't be any worse than what happened back there, can it?

- something happened in his past

Where am I? He closed his eyes shut in concentration and tried to think back . . . back to what? Try as he might, he couldn't remember anything. He opened eyes. Several feet away on dry ground stood a girl about his age wearing a travel cloak.

- amnesia


"Anastasia, but everyone calls me Anna. What’s your name?"

- so now we know that this second slab happened before the first section, and is therefore a flashback. So we can deduce that Anna met him and somehow ended up travelling with him to lead to the events of the opening para.

"I guess you were involved in the fighting," Anna said, taking in his armor.

"Fighting?"

"A couple miles north of here. It's got the people I'm traveling with a little rattled." He doubted it was only a little. Soldiers had the right to stop non-combatants and seize their property if they deemed it necessary.

- so isaac was involved in killing and war stuff

How about I humor you with a blade in your eye? Isaac imagined what it'd be like to listen to the old man scream his throat raw. Perhaps Isaac would shove his head into the fire after--

Isaac froze. His hands shook. What the hell was that just now?

- Isaac suspects he was not a kind person before he got amnesia.


So, piecing together the parts you get a vague idea of the whole puzzle. Although it could have been told better imo - and keep in mind I may also have bias because I read the first version of D's story, which already told me Isaac had amnesia and was a dick

This is exactly the problem I have with this entry. All I have is a vague idea of what is happening even after piecing the clues here and there. d explained that in the end Isaac left with Anna and Eadweard. This wasn't how I interpreted "An hour later, Isaac sat on the back of the wagon, riding off into the dawn." though.

It doesn't say "An hour later, Isaac et al. sat on the back of the wagon..." so I thought he might made off by himself while leaving the rest behind perhaps because he is a terrible person to begin with or he wanted to keep some distance from the people he met.

I am familiar with d's writing style. He thinks explaining too much is symptomatic of bad writing. If you have read some of the many arguments between me and him you will learn that I am of the completely opposite opinion.

PS: d, may I know who are Jacob and Leah? I still can't figure out who they are.

Leah is some sort of noblewoman travelling in the carriage, and Jacob is her bodyguard. There's a line there that says it (he literally says 'I'm her guard) but I cbf finding it.

I have the answer after going through it again. Leah appears to be a merchant. I will enclose it in a spoiler. I think the reason why I missed it is because Leah is first introduced as someone Anna met months ago instead of someone of importance to the main characters. If it is stately explicitly that Leah is Anna's employer, well the story would be easier to follow.



The last few lines of that excerpt (also in bold) I do not know whether to take seriously or not. Are they Leah's bodyguards or are they her servants? Or is Eadweard wasn't being serious about them doing menial jobs? Emotions and inflections are hard to determine if everything is in print which is why I much prefer if things like these are spelt out.

Lines like Eadweard flat out saying that he will bring Isaac to Leah for this and that purpose then introducing Jacob as his colleague would have helped me understand the story better.

Well, they can be both servants and bodyguards, can't they? And to me it seems pretty obvious that Jacob likes to think highly of himself while Eadweard is the realist and recognizes that they are basically labourers.

I don't get the impression that security personnel doubling up as servants doing menial labour was the norm in medieval societies. It certainly isn't today! I however, think that Eadweard is either trying to be funny or is trying to play down or even hide the nature of his work when I first read the entry. Main reason being that I doubt a guard also does servant work.

That aside, I think I understand better why I can't understand this entry. d throws around information that would help me understand the story like Anna joining Leah, (the real person in charge) three months ago, without tying in with what is now going on.

Leah is just mentioned but it isn't spelt out that Anna is going to introduce Isaac to Leah and perhaps attempt to persuade her to recruit Isaac.

Also, d's entries are alike to watching movies but without the visuals and the audio. So, it is like reading a srt file that contains only the subtitles of a movie. The subtitles themselves don't make sense to me unless I have the movie playing.

I do believe that explaining everything to the reader isn't the way to go, however I also don't think my writing is perfect. It certainly could be the case that I'm taking it too far and leaving too much info out, or maybe I just need to get better at implying information. Could be both. Could also just be Leonard being Leonard.



I don't see the problem with that, however it was my intention while writing this that Jacob is the guard and Anna and Eadweard handle the rest of the labor exclusively.



I don't think that analogy is quite correct, but I think I know what you mean.

Sorry by the way that I haven't replied at all until now, Leonard and Yanker.

To be precise, this is not an analogy but rather what I feel when I read some of your work, this entry included.