Shorestar's Suggestions for Dodging Death

[shorestar]

I'm not going to post reviews here. Any contestant who wants one is welcome to request it (as some have, in PMs) but there's a lot reviewing going around anyhow.

Instead, I'd like to analyze the biggest issues each character faces and offer some very general suggestions for how the author might best try to dodge death. Hopefully I'll find time to revisit this thread each week to offer new insight... as well as conduct a postmortem for our dearly deceased. >:)

Feel free to ignore my suggestions, argue with them, or even follow them if you should happen to find them useful!

Revel

Revel has a lot going for her. The author's writing is quite good and the application has been nearly universally well-received. That being said, it could easily go south for Revel quite quickly.

Revel's author faces a serious dilemma. If Revel ceases her cannibalistic ways and quickly becomes an upright member of society, she's likely to be slain by an audience who feels the character isn't being written in a way that's true to the application.

If Revel continues in her current path, she faces different dangers. One, if she snacks on characters the audience finds too endearing, she may be killed out of sheer revulsion. Two, Revel is likely to face difficulties in interacting with the other characters if her dining preferences become known. If the stoat is sidelined out of the main course of the story, her irrelevance will likely be the death of her.

My advice? At all costs, find one or two characters your character can make a real connection with, but write your character as she is in the app 100%. There'll be time for growth later; right now you need to work on establishing who you are and why you're here.

Suellyn

Your short app nearly took you out before you began. You were able to do a lot with the little you sent in, which is great, but I wouldn't rely on that. Even if you don't feel you need the extra words, make sure that your posts are longer than at least some of your co-authors' posts.  If you don't you may risk your short posts making you look uninterested or even lazy to some people.

You've also received your share of criticism for Suellyn's mental/physical issues, and your share of warnings to make sure "whatever disorder you gave her is well-researched."  I'm going to veer from that a bit. This is Redwall. This is a medieval setting. They didn't really *do* mental illness in that time period and they don't really do it in Redwall, either. Did people still have problems? Yes. But they didn't handle them the same way.

I would suggest you work hard to keep your writing about Su, and not worry too much about "correctly" defining/portraying her illness by someone else's definitions. I won't advise against doing research into whatever you personally have decided she is suffering from, but I wouldn't let medical descriptions of her suffering or any "treatment" enter your text. I think it'll seem anachronistic and detract from the story taking place. In my mind, it would be very very strange if any character recognized what was happening to Su as a definite specific disorder, rather than just acknowledging that Su is "Not a happy beast," or "has her troubles."

Keane

Your biggest difficulty, without question, will be in winning over those unhappy with how far you've pushed canon. Even those of us who liked you and rated you somewhat highly expressed our discomfort with it. Your writing was compelling enough to make us overlook that, but you need to be cautious.

Keep in mind; your readers have ALREADY stretched for you. Bend our suspension of disbelief too far and it'll break. I'm not telling you to back off of any aspect of your character that you expressed in your app, but I am suggesting you avoid further possible anachronism and look for ways to work with the stranger aspects of your character to make them seem less out-of-place.

I am trying to avoid giving specific advice, but for the sake of clarity an example of what I am suggesting would be to use flasks and other such Redwallian methods for containing or transporting the drug, rather than trying to make old-timey analogues of modern-day drug paraphenalia.

Eliza

You face the same issues with canon that Keane does, and my advice to him stands for you as well.

However, I think you also face an additional possible pitfall. Eliza went through a very traumatic experience at the end of her app and it will surely change her, but not entirely.

I would look for ways to keep the Eliza you wrote in your app alive and well in your writing. Yes, let her experience affect her, but don't let it overwrite or erase who she used to be. I think it would be a very easy thing to come up with an all new Eliza and blame her trauma for the complete re-do, but I think that would be a major mistake.

Deadtail

I am sure you are quite aware of what I will tell you, but I'll say it anyway. You've made a selling point of your character's mediocrity, and that's dead risky.  Do I respect you for it? Most definitely. However, when cursors start hovering over the voting poll and people start meditating on who they want to see dead, it will likely be a lot easier to come up with reasons not to kill most of the other characters. The flipside, of course, is that it'll be easier to find reasons to kill them as well.  I would be somewhat surprised to see you die in the first or second week - I expect that honor to go to someone who does something the audience really despises. Perhaps one of our canon-breakers, perhaps someone with an impenetrable accent... perhaps a character they feel isn't developed enough. However, as time goes on your risk will grow continually greater, and actually winning this contest will be quite difficult. You're up against a lot of very charismatic characters, and you'll have to give the audience to pick Deadtail's sorry butt over many characters of greater excitement and pathos.

You can't and shouldn't make any major change in Deadtail at the moment. But he's going to have to grow as a character to keep living as the weeks pass by, and it behooves you to start thinking about that and preparing the ground early.

Venril

I'm a bit concerned about you, m'dear. I thought your app was well-written, but I was concerned because we saw only your moment of crisis and not how you handled it. If your character is still alive by the time the contest opens (and I'll assume he is), he must have learned something or changed somehow. But how? To be honest, you weren't part of my top nine for this reason, even though I liked your writing. It felt too much like agreeing to take whatever was behind Door #3, sight unseen.

No matter how he changed, I think some people will be surprised and unhappy with the difference.

My best advice to you is to find some way to make that incident occur as closely prior to the contest as you dare, so that Venril has only begun undergoing his metamorphosis.

Damask

First order of business: play it up, minstrel-boy. If you're playing a minstrel in a Redwall contest, I am expecting to see some impromptu songs and poetry, even if it's just a couplet here and there. I'm not saying this has to happen in every post, but if I don't see any at all I'll be sorely disappointed.

While I think that failing to exploit your role as a minstrel could kill you eventually, I don't think it places you in grave danger this week. What may get you is something similar to what endangers Venril. Your application was going for "mysterious" and landed somewhere in between there and "confusing." Exactly how close to "mysterious" and how close to "confusing" likely depends on how you ask. You need to establish who your character really is in quite short order without upsetting the people who thought they had a good grip on your character from your application post. ^_~ Since I myself harbor some confusion, I can offer no advice as to how to do so.

Bellona

We've communicated privately about your application, and I think you understand my concerns. For the interest of the general public, I feel Bellona, the war-weary veteran who is heartsick about the deaths of the young beasts depending on her, faces real difficulties in leaving those beasts to take part in the tale. Abandoning them just isn't plausible, and if she leaves involuntarily she'll likely be wholly focused on returning and not very interesting to read.  Bellona's author needs to come up with a reason why it is necessary for Bellona to leave them - at least for a time. A toughie, certainly!

Bellona also really needs to flesh out her character. Bell is probably the character we know least well from her app (fortunately, what we do know is fairly clear, so she should largely dodge Eliza's/Venril's difficulties as long as you don't contradict anything you've told us already).

Rath

The difficulty I see for Rath is this: where does he go, as a character?

He seems fairly self-secure, and he just made a decision to free himself from a situation he was unhappy in. Yes, he needs to find some way of surviving aside from pitfighting, but that's hardly the sort of motivation that makes a beast into a hero (or a serious villain, usually).

I think, without seeming like you pulled it out of thin air, you need to develop something that Rath needs. Like Deadtail, this sort of thing takes time, but also like Deadtail, I think that if you don't do this you'll be a prime candidate for the catacombs (or the cookpot) once people have gotten rid of the characters they really dislike.

[Damask the Minstrel]

Thankee, Shorey!

First order of business: yes, I knew I was going to have to compose (and am, as of this moment, trying to come up with a sonnet apiece for the ladybeasts -- fellas love a good wenchin' song, but I need something sweet and individual to woo them, should the need arise). And I promise not to steal song lyrics, but do my own work!

Also: A lot of the 'mystery' was quick-writing mistakes. I promise a lot is cleared up in my first post!

[shorestar]

Hm... at the current rate of posting, it looks like we may be voting someone to death based on a single post.

I do want a quality story, but the contestants may want to consider compromising a bit more between perfection and speed.

[Cairn Destop]

As I remember from QB-2, nobody could post a second time until everyone had made that first post.  So as of today, there are still three more contestants yet to upload their chapters, which may well be the reason why nobody has done a second post.

And it just hit the old hedgehog, YOU KNOW WHY THERE IS NO SECOND POST YET.  As somebody with access to the contestant board, you already know whatever is keeping the others from posting.  There may well be a valid reason.  And that reason should remain with the contestants.

Since time is relative, perhaps this first week can end with the last contestant's post.  Otherwise, the audience has an easy time as there are currently three nonparticipants.  Wouldn't it be weird if these characters needed replacements due to real life?

[Opal]

Well, the first voting period will not be until October 12th, so they've still got a fair bit of time. There are several posts waiting to go but I think they're still fine-tuning the exact order they'll be posted in. Should be more up soon though, I should think.

[Cairn Destop]

Well, the first voting period will not be until October 12th

Good, so everyone has plenty of time to make that second post.

[shorestar]

And it just hit the old hedgehog, YOU KNOW WHY THERE IS NO SECOND POST YET.  As somebody with access to the contestant board, you already know whatever is keeping the others from posting.  There may well be a valid reason.  And that reason should remain with the contestants.

While I can read the contestant board, I have been avoiding doing so because I felt it was skewing my perceptions of the participants. People have been posting the rough drafts of their posts up there for a bit before their finished products, and some contestants' rough drafts are more polished than others... but I still gained my first impression of a post from everyone's rough drafts. Since I plan to vote, this didn't seem very fair.

I also realized that I didn't want the "meta" information to influence my voting. If something seems confusing, I want it to still seem confusing to me, even if it would make sense if I'd read the character's bio. I felt that having access to all this extra info would make me less sensitive to sloppy writing.

I'm not saying I want my access revoked or anything (I like privileges, even ones I don't take advantage of!), but I've been largely avoiding reading them lately.

[shorestar]

Week Two

Revel

I still feel you're doing quite well overall. I like the way you've handled her cannibalism thus far. As I said in a different thread, I think you're doing a better job than most authors of getting us inside Revel's head. I am somewhat amused that Revel is so flabbergasted by the idea of woodlander intelligence whilst being, apparently, not the sharpest stick in the woods herself.

That being said, Revel's naivete/stupidty isn't absolute. She is capable/intelligent in some ways as well, and as a reader I'm having difficulty in predicting which way she'll swing on a given topic. I am almost getting the sense that she's naive/stupid when it's funny or useful and smart/capable when you need her to be. This is a dilemma I hadn't predicted for you, but I think if you don't give your readers a clearer sense of exactly how smart she is and in exactly what ways she's naive and why, it is possible that readers will start voting against you.

Keane

Your writing gets just a bit awkward in places. Phrases like this seem underthought:

The female, hunched over her walking stick but with an air that gave the impression of her back being perfectly straight, huffed.

Try showing as opposed to telling. You do a lot of telling, i.e. acting sort of omniscient without actually claiming omniscience, i.e. claiming that a character's thoughts or attitude are obvious from their actions without explaining why. Sorry. I'm sure that was dreadfully unclear.

I'm also hoping to see some character development from Keane. He may be in the desert, but his mind and attitude still seem back in the city. Your posts also still strike me as somewhat non-canon.

Eliza

I think your writing is doing very well. Her latest plan seems more than a bit... ambitious from someone with her professed lack of interest in or ability for fighting. One might even say naive? But that's alright, characters aren't required to be smart, and if and when it all goes horribly awry it could lead to some very interesting interactions.

You were correct in that I felt that your last post was a bit too undirected. I understand your explanation, but I'm not convinced that the situation couldn't have been handled better. Still... all in all, I don't see death as being too likely for you. This week.

Deadtail

As I said before, you made a selling point out of mediocrity, and that is dangerous. Deadtail is starting to come off as somewhat flat to me. Surely there is something that motivates him other than survival? Or something he's unwilling to do, even to survive?

I feel like you need to round your character out a bit to continue for too much longer. Your writing is interesting, but I'm losing interest in Deadtail.

Venril

My concerns from last week for you have mostly evaporated. Honestly you seem to be in fairly good shape overall. My picture of Venril isn't as strong as it is of some other characters, but it's better than some others as well. Middle of the pack.

I think you need to find something for Venril to do. So far he's mostly been reacting to others, and his own gambits at action have mostly been unsuccessful and quickly abandoned. I am not saying he needs to be successful at what he's doing, but the thing that I feel could kill you now is your passivity.

Perhaps something he feels he must do as Captain, even if he's bloody awful at it? Maybe there is some element of clerkdom that actually gives him an edge somewhere?

Damask

I did like Damask's quick thinking in your first post in Week 2. Had it not been for that, however, I would have had some sharp words for you. I realize he's trying his claw at this "spying" thing as well, but your previous profession hasn't seemed to have a large impact on your posts. To put it bluntly, Damask doesn't seem to think very musically for someone who claims it as such an intrinsic feature.

I do also think you have frequently tried to cover too much ground in your posts. You tend to have 4-5 "scenes" per post, and I think you could have eliminated or condensed a lot of that. It's sort of choppy and asks a lot of your reader... who is probably giving a lot to other authors as well.

I do like the energy you capture sometimes. If you had posted the first two sections of your very first post in week one as one whole and made that the entirety of your post, I think you'd have made a pretty devoted fan of me.  These were great. (Bellona could have accepted your report and written her groups' reaction her her own post, in my opinion).

In short, I recommend you try to keep the energy and to highlight it better. Don't break your own rhythm so much if you can help it.

Bellona

I still feel like you need to flesh out your character a bit more. I do have a picture of her now, but that picture doesn't feel complete. I realize you've had a lot to do in your posts, but there hasn't been much focus on Bellona herself. I can tell you have been trying, particularly in your latest post. However, I still feel like I have almost as clear of a view of Sailpaw.

Perhaps part of it is that Bell is so level-headed? Not prone to mad passions? There are so many "players" in all of your posts, and many of them go to such vibrant extremes... this probably serves to accentuate the sense we may not have a full-color picture of Bell, so to speak. Her reactions mostly boil down to "From my experience, I can tell this is a bad idea!" or "This looks like the best of bad options, and I will deal with it."

It might be nice to see her really lose her lid about something. She still has some of her team around her - if it's out of character, their shock will tell us that. And it'd be great to see what could crack that composure, when she's remained calm through all the crazy things that have happened so far.

Either that, or get her into a situation that isn't so warlike and involves fewer beasts, so she can do more of the talking and will have to show a different facet of herself than the one we've seen so far.

Rath

I'll be honest. I'm not real sure where Rath is going, character-wise or story wise. He tried to learn to do different things, he tried drugs, then he threw himself into combat with what almost seemed like joy.

I feel like I have a decent picture of who Rath is right now, but I can't say I have a real good picture of what Rath wants, or what Rath wants to be (in a general sense, I know his specific future is in doubt).

I feel like you need to do a better job of bringing us in on Rath's motivations (what drives him) if you want to keep our attention.

(Edit: I understand he wants to find something new to do with himself, but I assume he has some other motivations/criteria as well. I mean, lying in a gutter would be something but I don't think that'd be his choice. What kinds of things would he want to earn? Respect? Money? Power? Peace?)

[Rath the Whirlwind]

Well, that is interesting.  I will keep it in mind. 

Although... don't you think it is odd to have week two evaluations when not everybeast has posted?  It seems to me this is more about week one.  I expect you will update this at the end of the week, yes?

[Damask the Minstrel]

Hrm.

That's the overall impression I have. You're making content/style judgments, which is good. Technical ones should have been taken care of before the post goes up. So, style is what we need judgments on.

That having been said, I feel conflicted by your advice. In the other thread which you posted suggestions, you asked for Damask's profession to color his writing. Also, you said that unnecessary details need to be glossed over and skipped. Yet, when I actually skip them, it's overwhelming and seen as me jumping around too much. In perfect world X, I might write smaller posts (thus removing the 'jumping', as I stick to a scene or two), however as I commented, I can't afford small posts. Also, the contestants are in a consensus, for the most part, that one-a-week with 2000-2500 words is the format we're sticking to. So, while I may try to tune down the jumping, don't expect it to disappear. If we were doing 3-posts-a-week at 1000 words, it might eliminate it, but we aren't. ^.^ Also, as I said in the other thread, expect my posts to stay in this realm and be some of the larger ones, as I work to make sure Damask has enough face time.

As for his profession coloring his view of the world: you present a good point. And... well, just keep reading. I'll take that into account, but it's going to be an interesting ride for Damask, in the near future.

And, you'll get your first big piece of poetry from the bird, I promise. Which will hopefully satisfy some of the muscial craving (I know that's not what you were referring to, and I'll think about that "make him think musically" comment, but... I don't always think in my profession's parlance.)

[shorestar]

Rath - Maybe I should have said "Set Two?" No, I don't intend to post more until another character dies. The first set were made purely based on applications and intended to aid you in week one. These are made based on the posts so far and intended to aid you in week two.

Damask -

In perfect world X, I might write smaller posts (thus removing the 'jumping', as I stick to a scene or two), however as I commented, I can't afford small posts. Also, the contestants are in a consensus, for the most part, that one-a-week with 2000-2500 words is the format we're sticking to.

Hey, fair enough. I feel that this format is harder on writers and readers, but I am a mere spectator here. It would be a bit strange if everyone agreed that all of my suggestions were excellent and exactly how things would go. (Sort of cool, sure, but also kind of creepy, like I was brainwashing people).

Also, you said that unnecessary details need to be glossed over and skipped. Yet, when I actually skip them, it's overwhelming and seen as me jumping around too much.

Hm... I am trying to locate where exactly I said this. I believe you when you say that I did, but I can't find it and I while I don't remember precisely what I meant feel quite certain that I didn't mean what you appear to have thought I meant by it. If you can link it to me, maybe I can better explain. In absence of that, I'll give it a more roundabout go.

If I were an author in this contest, I think I would have wanted to begin the story as the ship crashed onto the beach, with you and Bell already in the area. Yeah, I know there was a lot of concern in the contestants' forum that this would lead to a week full of flashbacks, and that's certainly a valid concern in a lot of ways.

However, I also feel two things:

• There are ways other than flashbacks to justify the characters' presence/situation. There'd be some, I'm sure, but not necessarily to the extent that everyone feared
• The presence/situation needed a lot less IMMEDIATE justification/explanation than most authors felt it did. Thus, to me, a lot of the first week was an unnecessary detail

So I suppose I am confused at how elimination of unnecessary detail necessitates frequent jumps - from my perspective, I would rather expect the reverse, i.e. that you'd realize that a lot of the scenes could simply be implied rather than explicitly detailed.

At any rate, keep in mind that while I offer advice to everyone, I'm not going to spitefully go out and say "Ah HA! Damask made 4 scene changes. Clearly he spurns my advice... the foolish little ingrate can ponder his folly from the dark forest!" =) So take this for what it's meant to be - a helpful outsider's perspective, not dictation.

[Keane]

Try showing as opposed to telling. You do a lot of telling, i.e. acting sort of omniscient without actually claiming omniscience, i.e. claiming that a character's thoughts or attitude are obvious from their actions without explaining why. Sorry. I'm sure that was dreadfully unclear.

...This is a bit unclear.  >.>  Could you rephrase it?  

I'm not sure what to say about the canon-ness of my posts, because I have a feeling it's not going to get "better".  To be honest, I don't consider this contest canon, and when people make comments on how canon this or that is, I think it's more of a personal preference.  

[shorestar]

when people make comments on how canon this or that is, I think it's more of a personal preference.  

I agree. However, the purpose of this thread is to call out those things that I feel could lead to your death, so I felt it ought to be mentioned. I will fullheartedly admit that there are members of the audience in both camps here. :)

I think I could give you a better idea of what I meant by show vs. tell, but it might necessitate using some more examples from your posts and making my own suggestions for how it could have been written differently to be more "show-y." If you're cool with that, I'm cool with that, but without a request from you, I didn't want to get too in-depth in a public forum.

[Damask the Minstrel]

Ah! Finally found it:

"A lot of the action so far (for example, describing what took place on board the boat) could have easily been skipped or glossed over."

That's the quote I was referring to -- and that you answered in your reply, here.

Well, you know as well as I do my own confusion over the prologue/first week (my... "huh? time paradox?" that I encountered), however I would love to not bring it up. Since it brings out the ugliest in me as I vociferously defend my castmates.

Still, saying that I'm jumpy and that my style should reflect musicality is a valid point to make, so I do appreciate it. However, I will say that I can't write like Revel and Eliza. Their narration is character-unique, and I feel that a slightly more generic narrator fits best for my abilities and Damask's character *shrugs*.

[Keane]

Pulling out examples is great by me!  I want to get better, after all.