Chance LeMont

[Guest Rhekarid]

I'm from a place were apologies are seldom heard.

You've got that right; the internet. Accepted, for what it's worth, and I wash my hands of most of the thread. I was expecting and prepared for a considerably less classy end to the issue, but one of the good things about incurable pessimism is that it's always nice to be proven wrong. If I end up hating you anyway in the future it will be for stupid things said in some other thread.

 

As a note on stylistic preferences on things like elves and mutants: part of that comes from the FPL being a creative writing site for original characters, where existing copyrighted ones are not allowed. The mutant thing comes from X-Men; people getting crazy powers because they're mutants is central to the entire X-Men universe. Anywhere else, mutation might give you a flipper hand and cancer, but that's about it. Sometimes people make a character in the FPL and pass off their powers as "because they're mutants," obviously with the X-Men in mind. The origin and reason for their powers tends to be an important part of any super-character's backstory, and at a site like this simply hijacking the setting for a well-known comic series in order to avoid a more in depth background can be seen as some seriously lazy writing, met by much eye-rolling and negative votes.

 

Elves are obviously not so much of an escape route, but ever since being popularized by Tolkien and D&D, elves are eeeeverywhere. They can be found in almost every piece of fantasy around, and for many, have become a tiresome cliche. Even if the mention doesn't directly hurt the character, people might look at it and think "oh boy...another one." It threatens the ability of the originality of the character to stand on its own. In this case, mention of Moon-Elves in particular betrays the connection to Dungeons and Dragons, which will immediately make some people leery because of the clear relation to an existing work of fiction.

 

Generally, there are three options here. Leave it, cut it, or change it. In this case I think the cut might be the best choice. Elven ancestry doesn't seem to have any impact on the character himself; Chance isn't supernaturally old, isn't really influenced by elven culture, etc. From what I can see, it wouldn't make any real difference to the character whether he's a quarter elven or not, so it would be easily removed.

 

Writing without cliche is difficult, perhaps impossible, but you'll find the FPL tends to have a fairly low tolerance for it. Those of us who've been here for years have seen thousands of characters float by. The more factors that one character has in common with all the others, the more it will just blur into all the others and be quickly forgotten. Heck, I remember one person's self-insert half-dragon humanoid princess from fanfiction. I still get dry heaves thinking about it. Anyhow, I'm pointing all this out as something to be aware of. The more you create, the easier it gets to not base characters in existing fiction.

[Guest Artemis Entreri]

You've got that right; the internet. Accepted, for what it's worth, and I wash my hands of most of the thread. I was expecting and prepared for a considerably less classy end to the issue, but one of the good things about incurable pessimism is that it's always nice to be proven wrong. If I end up hating you anyway in the future it will be for stupid things said in some other thread.

 

As a note on stylistic preferences on things like elves and mutants: part of that comes from the FPL being a creative writing site for original characters, where existing copyrighted ones are not allowed. The mutant thing comes from X-Men; people getting crazy powers because they're mutants is central to the entire X-Men universe. Anywhere else, mutation might give you a flipper hand and cancer, but that's about it. Sometimes people make a character in the FPL and pass off their powers as "because they're mutants," obviously with the X-Men in mind. The origin and reason for their powers tends to be an important part of any super-character's backstory, and at a site like this simply hijacking the setting for a well-known comic series in order to avoid a more in depth background can be seen as some seriously lazy writing, met by much eye-rolling and negative votes.

 

Elves are obviously not so much of an escape route, but ever since being popularized by Tolkien and D&D, elves are eeeeverywhere. They can be found in almost every piece of fantasy around, and for many, have become a tiresome cliche. Even if the mention doesn't directly hurt the character, people might look at it and think "oh boy...another one." It threatens the ability of the originality of the character to stand on its own. In this case, mention of Moon-Elves in particular betrays the connection to Dungeons and Dragons, which will immediately make some people leery because of the clear relation to an existing work of fiction.

 

Generally, there are three options here. Leave it, cut it, or change it. In this case I think the cut might be the best choice. Elven ancestry doesn't seem to have any impact on the character himself; Chance isn't supernaturally old, isn't really influenced by elven culture, etc. From what I can see, it wouldn't make any real difference to the character whether he's a quarter elven or not, so it would be easily removed.

 

Writing without cliche is difficult, perhaps impossible, but you'll find the FPL tends to have a fairly low tolerance for it. Those of us who've been here for years have seen thousands of characters float by. The more factors that one character has in common with all the others, the more it will just blur into all the others and be quickly forgotten. Heck, I remember one person's self-insert half-dragon humanoid princess from fanfiction. I still get dry heaves thinking about it. Anyhow, I'm pointing all this out as something to be aware of. The more you create, the easier it gets to not base characters in existing fiction.

 

 

Yeah, I understand the point of veiw. It would not destroy or better Chance if I just deleted the whole "elf" notion. More important to me is the trama he suffered as a child. His relationship or lack there of, with his mother. The *insensitivity* and mental abuse the pushed him to despite weak people.

 

I wanted to communicate that his choice to become an assassin, stemmed from the mercy kill of his mother. Even the origin of his father and the addition of the shawdow powers are really not that important to me.

 

Developing and the cliche badass is in fact vital to his creation. No matter how unoriginal it is because it's what pushes and motivates him. He cares not for the comfort of friends or even women for that matter. He's not gay but his discipline is more important than the temptation of the flesh.

 

With that said, he does have deep intimacy issues. I mean you read the bio, so one could understand why!

 

Thanks for ever bothering to debate with me Rhekarid. You aren't nearly as bad as I thought last night in a drunken hatred! LOL. I will try to incorporate a lot of what you say. Most I will keep, but I will iron out the hard to digest chunks!

[granobulax]

Well, I finally got to read it. There's nothing I can really say about your character that others haven't already pointed out. I do however, have one piece of advice.

 

Use the advice that everyone has given here to the fullest. They really know what they're talking about and can help you to really better yourself as a writer. I know they can be rather harsh at times, but it's only because they're being brutally honest. I'd much rather have an honest opinion that my character sucks than someone telling me that my character is great when it's not.

 

Anyways, other than the aforementioned criticisms mentioned, I will say that this is a descent first character. My first character was an elf as well (Although yours isn't a full elf). You know how well that character did? Two wins and three losses. I would also recommend omitting the elf parts simply because I made the same mistake. That elf character that I wrote was the only character that I've written that had a losing record when it got eliminated.

 

Gook luck with your FPL endeavors. I've got a feeling that after a few characters, you'll get a good feel for the site.

[Guest ThePoet]

Alright, I won't get in to all the politicking. But you did post this on the CA board, so I'll indulge you and give you an straightup Analysis. A couple things to note:

-My analyses don't involve a personal bias towards you the creator.

-They do sometimes involve my own pet peeves and personal opinions. For example, Landon with mutants and Houdini with elves. I do try to point out when I'm injecting my own personal stuff. So without further ado.

 

The Good: The first paragraph of the bio. Nice descriptions, good diction, all in all not bad. I did want more though. What you had was good, but I feel there's a lot more that could have been done. Next, the plot points. I'll save my thoughts on originality and source material for later. I did get a clear sense of plot points and direction. Some of the the plot was obvious in a way that I could predict what would happen next, but there were enough twists.

 

The Bad: Originality. Very unoriginal. Not to say that's bad. I've you've read some of my stuff, I'm the king of unoriginal. I'm not coming up with Quietus or the Penguin Plushie Army. But here's the difference. I've got the writing chops to kick a lot of peoples' asses around here. You don't yet. What was wrong with the writing you ask?

-The personality. I've had more subtle hints from a snowball to the jaw. Very one-dimensional, one-voice, boring.

-The unevenness throughout the story. Some parts have great description. I mentioned the first paragraph. Other parts are matter-of-fact stating the plot. If I want a statement of facts, I'll read wikipedia or a history textbook.

-Unoriginal in a bit more detail here. He's an assassin. He does it for his own reasons. He hates a lot of people. He has some cool gadgets and weapons. He's got awesome self-control. Sound a bit boring? That's because it is. That's what your current writing style for this character does. Do us a favor. Don't come out and simply say that he does it for his own reasons. Use the context. Show it to us by having him kill a rival. Go into detail on his thought process. Use the setting. These are suggestions and have a partial personal bias, but they're fundamentals of writing. Fundamentals are a great place to start.

You also tend to write in the style of Hemingway. This alludes to the plot points being listed without much else. Hemingway sucked big time.(big personal bias here) His plotlines and story were excellent, but sifting through the hidden, unspoken thought processes of the characters was more of a pain that it was worth. One final thing in the bad section, you mention several items that are not in the everyday vernacular. Elves and mines are two that come to mind. If it's not part of normal conversation for people, maybe expound a little. I know what an elf is, you know, but my wife thinks Legolas is all there is to know about elves.

 

The Ugly: Punctuation and grammar. Seriously, Microsoft word spellcheck is for idiots and amateurs. Print your stuff out after you're done with a draft. Go do something else for an hour. Come back and proof. Go eat dinner. Proof before bed. Proof when you wake up. The key here is fresh eyes. If you have a friend who can proofread your stuff, ask them to. Just because spell-check didn't catch something doesn't mean it's alright.

Ellipses. Ellipses in and of themselves are not bad. But you really overused it. It made your story and style too predictable and also disrupted the flow. As a rule of thumb, try to limit them to once per page in a word document. And that's pushing it.

Your attitude. I realize the members of this site are not very tactful when giving criticism, myself included. But all of your responses convey the mentality of a teenage girl. "I'm right. I don't have a really good reason. I've got my own reasons. I'm better that everyone, so I'm right." Sorry if I over-generalized there, but that's the honest impression I got. So when Landon, Houdini, grano, treach, Rhek or anyone gives you an opinion, take it with a grain of salt. Don't dismiss it out of hand either. Try to keep things as even-keel as possible.

 

Overall. I wasn't terribly impressed, but you seem relatively new to writing and the FPL in particular. There's room for improvement. I'd say you can use this concept/storyline to work on a consistent writing style. And work on proofreading. You're a writer. I'm a writer. The members of this site are writers. This is a jury of your peers. Your peers no matter what will hate poor grammar and spelling mistakes. Hope this helps.

 

-ThePoet

[Guest Cosmic Deadpool]

Once again, I'm late for the party. Sorry I'm responding so late Art. Now to be honest, I am probably the last one that should be giving any form of critique here. While I have created quite a few characters on the old FPL, most of them were killed off very early and the few that lasted, probably only did because of some fairly cool power sets. The overall writing left a lot to be desired. But you asked so I'll put in my two cents worth.

 

Regarding your character, I felt myself wanting a little more in terms of who he is as an assassin. Your descriptions were good but felt more like a wikipedia bio sheet than a storyline, which is what I learned about some of my own work in the past on the FPL. I guess I'm saying that I would have enjoyed your character more if his life had been fleshed out a bit more. I want to know what truly motivates him as a person and what drives him as an assassin. I want o be able to care about what happens to him, from beginning to end. Does he strike fear into the hearts of men? Do other assassins want to be him or simply want him dead? Now mind you this is just my opinion, and its because the assassin as a character really appeals to me as a reader. Once again, it felt like a great description overall that made me want to read the actual story.

 

And, as any one who has read anything I've written knows, I am the king of ellipsis. I found this definition in wiki...

 

The use of ellipsis can either mislead or insult, and the reader must rely on the good intentions of the writer who uses them. An example of this ambiguity is "She went to … school." In this sentence, "…" might represent the word "elementary." Omission of part of a quoted sentence without indication by an ellipsis (or bracketed text) would mislead the readers. For example, "She went to school," as opposed to "She went to Broadmoor Elementary school."

 

An ellipsis may also imply an unstated alternative indicated by context. For example, when Count Dracula says "I never drink … wine", the implication is that he does drink something else, which in the context would be blood. In such usage the ellipsis is stronger than a mere dash, where for example "I never drink—wine" might only indicate that the Count, not a native English speaker, was pausing to get the correct word.

 

In writing the speech of a character in fiction or nonfiction, the ellipsis is sometimes used to represent an intentional silence of a character, usually invoked to emphasize a character's irritation, appall, shock or disgust.

The last sentence is how I've used mine in the past, so I get what you're saying about creative license. Having read this discussion, I vow to use ellipsis less, but will still utilize them, crutch or no. As you said, right or wrong, they're sort of my thing.

In the end I applaud your bravery for putting yourself out there. I still haven't gotten the nerve since this new incarnation of the FPL. But I think now... I will.