Concrit for unspeakablehorror

[unspeakablehorror]

I want to receive feedback by :
- AO3 comment
- comment on my DW post in this community

Here are the works I want feedback on (optional: and my safe works are...):
All 5 works on my AO3 are fine (same username of unspeakablehorror), Rescue and Little Lost Maul are both under 10,000 words, but if someone wants to write concrit for my longer works (Cut Strings, Heart of Shadow, Ascent), that's great too, just keep in mind those are all currently unfinished. I'm fine with someone focusing on concrit for just a few chapters (or whatever amount they want) of the longer works if they prefer.

My works' fandoms and content notes are:
Star Wars and Legend of Zelda. Only Star Wars has any complete stories under 10,000 words, though I'm fine with people focusing on any extract of their choice for one of my longer works.

Please see AO3 info and tags. Besides that, there are no main character deaths in any of the stories, but secondary characters do occassionally die and flashbacks may contain scenes depicting character deaths. Characters that were dead since the story began may also be discussed.

I have these questions for readers:

(Please feel free to answer as few or as many of the following as you wish. I just want to give ideas on areas of interest to me. I think different readers may feel better able to comment on some questions than others.)

What was your favorite character or characters? What did you enjoy or find interesting about them?

What thoughts do you have on characterization in the story?

Did the character's motivations make sense?

Were there elements to the story you found offputting? If so, what do you think would make those less so for you?

Thoughts on dialogue?

Thoughts on descriptions?

Was the worldbuilding well incorporated?

How would you describe the plot? Did you notice any plotholes?

Thoughts on story pacing?

What themes did you notice in the work, if any?

Anything else you want to say about the work?

The style of feedback I prefer to receive is:

I prefer directness in feedback, and want to know both what did and didn't work for the reader, but don't want exclusively negative feedback. The reader should be able to mention something positive about the work, so I prefer feedback from readers who who don't entirely hate the story. But I'm otherwise fine with whatever balance of positives and negatives the reader wishes to discuss. I appreciate praise, but I also find other people's assessments of issues and flaws in my works quite useful, and have made a number of changes to my writing due to such feedback.

While I don't require sugarcoating, I would ask the reader to refrain from being overly harsh or insulting towards myself as an author. Please feel free to point out any negative qualities of the work--but please be tactful and keep in mind that the purpose is to evaluate the quality of the work, not the author.

I also prefer concrit to not assume there's one single correct way to write. Different pieces, even ones from the same author, can have very different goals and target audiences. Therefore, when giving negative criticism, please try to give background on what expectation(s) of yours were not fulfilled, what specific goals the narrative choice may clash with, or what particular audiences you think would take issue with it.

Comments to this post will be:
unscreened

Comments

[ancslove]

Hi! I'm reviewing Rescue.

Overall, I thought this was a fun and action-packed story! I loved Palpatine's machinations, and everything Vader. Palpatine's questioning of Vader and his instructions regarding Ahsoka read very well and I love seeing all the ways he motivates his underlings behind the scenes. Even when one of his underlings is Vader! And I enjoyed the blend of Legends and New Canon, bringing in a young Mara Jade.

One thing that stood out to me was the scene of Ahsoka catching Hera up on Ahsoka's life and career. I liked how it was done, where you didn't feel the need to summarize the entirety of Rebels! But I was left wondering why Ahsoka was trusting this stranger with so much honest information, especially when she could tell that Hera wasn't being honest with her. I think maybe a little bit more insight into Ahsoka's mindset here and why she feels she wants to trust Hera would explain her immediate motivation here and set the groundwork for their later sex scene.

Ahsoka and Vader's confrontation was interesting. I liked Ahsoka's desperation to know what really happened in those last dark days of ROTS. Their conversation does tread a lot of familiar ground, and maybe could use some more detail on Ahsoka's feelings of Anakin becoming Vader now? Not just her nostalgia for the past. And let us see what exactly led to her horrifying realization about the truth of Vader. Vader just leaving seemed a bit abrupt. I would've loved a deeper peek inside his head, going into more detail about his internal conflict.

I liked Veris, although her conversion seemed a bit quick. And the burgeoning Ahsoka/Hera romance and Creepy Temple Made Them Do It had nice moments of sweetness.

Personally, I found the ending with Vader, Mara, and Rax a bit puzzling. The tone shifted from more serious action-adventure-with-feelings into comedy. I wasn't sure if Mara's behavior on the ship was a deliberate attempt on her part to irritate Vader, or if it was meant to show that she's quite a bit younger here and not quite the hard-bitten professional Emperor's Hand. Also, was she really shot? The story says she was hit by Rax's blaster bolt, but then she's up and around without any seeming injury. Rax seems to be simply following Palpatine's orders, and Palpatine's specific motivations here are quite opaque. I would've loved a little epilogue from his point of view! Did he really expect Vader (or Mara?) to kill Ahsoka? Was this entire mission just to prove his absolute control over his people?

Overall, it was an enjoyable read! Fast and snappy, with good action moments. My suggestion would be to slow down on the introspective and interpersonal moments and give us more emotion and motivation. There's a lot of dialogue and action, but I'd love some more feeling, especially when it comes to reaching and resolving the highly emotional moments. Big Character Development moments (like Vader leaving his confrontation with Ahsoka, or Veris switching sides, or the entire ending with Vader/Mara/Rax) pass very quickly. Slowing them down would add contrast to the fast-paced action. But the vibe was very recognizably Star Wars!

[unspeakablehorror]

Thanks for your observations! I'm glad that the action was appealing. This was very much meant to be a fairly self-contained story that nonetheless draws on ideas from Rebels and across both Legends and Disney canon.

I appreciate you pointing out places where there could be more introspection, too. I rely on dialogue and external actions a lot to try to convey character personality, but I think I do tend to forget to show introspection sometimes. I think the parts you mentioned could use more introspection would definitely be good places to add it.

I agree it would have been helpful to make it clearer in-story how Mara got back up so quickly. My reasoning is based on powerful Force sensitives being able to recover from injuries more quickly, and Rax not shooting to kill, but the story glosses over that part without really having anyone think about or remark on it.

I do tend to add a certain amount of humor throughout my stories, but I think it may seem uneven partly because of the lack of introspection you mentioned, but toning some of it down a bit might help too.

If I continue or do a rewrite of this, I'll keep your feedback in mind! I also think this is a good reminder in general for my writing to ask myself regularly if I should be adding more introspection, and if anything particularly surprising (like Mara getting up shortly after being hit by the blaster) is adequately explained, perhaps by dialogue or introspection.

Thanks again for your detailed observations!

[morbane]

Hello! I'm here with thoughts on the first fourteen chapters of Heart of Shadow. I have not actually seen the Prequel Trilogy or consumed other parts of canon from that era of Star Wars /o\ but have osmosed a lot and done some wiki reading. I hope these reflections are of interest!

I think what surprised me the most about the story is that it wasn't tagged with humor, even though you're obviously having a blast including a range of jokes and ironies of various tones. Is that because, as you mention, Sith redemption fic is relatively rare and it's most important to you that the reader should take that aspect seriously when they begin reading? Your overall style matches what I'm used to think of as "crack taken seriously" - with weight to both aspects of that. Though I also see from your notes that your tagging choices for this story have changed a few times over the course of writing.

It was interesting to me that you particularly mention having gone back to the first chapter to expand the flashbacks. I get the sense that you added a lot of darker details in that later edit. There are a lot of different moods even in just this chapter - some of the violence lands a little cartoonishly, though I thought other lines were really affecting - and you end that chapter with a lot of deep emotions! I particularly liked Sidious realizing that he only thought he'd emotionally processed the earlier events. And in fact hadn't at all.

But - again, possibly because of the earlier edits? - the change in mood immediately following that chapter is a little surprising. You focus on the droller aspects of the situation in the following chapters, and references to his ongoing reflection on those scenes as trauma are few and far between - for example, it's not until chapter 14 that you mention his nightmares. That was a slightly jarring experience, because it felt as though the most serious internal consequences for Sidious were kept out of sight until, fairly rarely, useful to you as an author. Though as a tangent, I really liked this reflection when we get it:

He'd begun to have nightmares about their deaths, made all the worse because the nightmares were only minor variations on the actual events, and so waking provided no real escape from them.

- the description of how waking up brings no relief is effective and evocative.

One way in which the overall tone of the first chapter did really work for me: I thought it was really clever to show us a self-congratulatory, disaffected teenage Sidious, and then show us the adult Sidious' frustration with teenage San Hill.

Humor is one of your clear strengths, and another thing that stood out to me when reading was your command of technical descriptions. When Plagueis is analysing the liquid and working through theories about the mechanisms of its effects, and later when he's discussing brain scans with San Hill, I found it easy to follow the logic of the specific things he focused on, and why, and I also thought the parts you handwaved (what kinds of machines for analysis? What do the brain diagrams look like exactly? What were some of the specific ways Plagueis eliminated early theories about the liquid) were deftly chosen. You convincingly depict Plagueis as someone capable of methodical investigation, possessing a variety of technical skills and with a sufficient frame of reference to ask relevant questions, you give enough detail to be interesting and to have a sense of narrative, and you don't let details take over.

Other kinds of descriptions, especially of locations and actions, were less consistent. I get the sense that you can picture what's going on consistently - but either you don't find it interesting to describe, or you have to remind yourself frequently that the reader does not automatically see the same thing you do. Sometimes we're halfway through a scene before you give it a physical setting. For me, the experience of reading this story can be like watching a play where the stage is lit only by one or more narrow spotlights. Other characters and various items from the set may be present on stage, but unknown to the reader. When you mention that another five Nightsisters are "outside" Palpatine's apartment, I can't really imagine what that exterior looks like. Before Sidious and Talzin went to collect captives for Plagueis, they discussed Talzin's possible involvement - but then Talzin wasn't mentioned for several of those scenes - so her appearance near the end of one felt abrupt to me.

Similarly, Talzin's overall scheduling felt a little convenient: I didn't have a sense of what she was doing for most of the time after leaving Dathomir. Her desire to be close to Maul made sense as overall motivation, but I struggled to imagine how she spent a typical day. She also agreed with a vast number of Sidious' scheduling and travel plans; although, for example, she and the other Nightsisters had objections to how Sidious planned to handle the Jedi, they felt a bit token. (Of course, as far as I am through the story, there could be plenty I don't know and plenty of ideas about Talzin's strategies that are yet to be revealed - but it's a little difficult to tell they're driving any particular behaviour.) I can see why you'd want to stick to just two main viewpoints (and I am enjoying the alternation between Plagueis and Sidious and the occasional perspective from Talzin) and I don't think the story needed to use Talzin's perspective more frequently, but I think some more information about the aspects of her ongoing life Talzin had had to set aside when leaving Dathomir, and she liked and disliked about her new (temporary?) existence, would help avoid a slight feeling that when not referred to directly, she was idling in a corner.

You didn't ask about formatting or phrasing details, so the only thing I think may be useful to mention is that I struggle with your choice for representing dashes. Usually I just think that the right way to format dashes is "consistently". Em dashes, en dashes, spaced, double hyphens, whatever. But writing dashes identically to hyphenation meant that I sometimes came to an abrupt pause to check meaning. I'm talking about something like this:

"Yes, and I will resolve this-setback."

I don't know if you'd consider it remotely worth it to change up your formatting for dashes in a 60k story, but I might suggest that if starting a new WIP, you consider one of the many other styles of dashes, so as to provide a more immediate clue to your reader. There are a lot of ways of writing where the reader WILL eventually - or quickly - figure out what's going on, but it's nice to avoid making them pause and guess, when possible. /soapbox.

You asked about characterization. I enjoyed Talzin's confidence and unconcern, amusement and slight detachment. I enjoyed Sidious' indignation, flecked with darker notes. I enjoyed Plagueis' cerebral focus and the way some practical things took him completely by surprise. I enjoyed the differences in the ways you showed Sidious and Plagueis dealing with Unexpected Emotions - and it was hilarious each time one of them was surprised at the other's emotional journey taking a parallel route, or one of them felt they couldn't quite challenge the other on a suspicious statement because it would expose their own vulnerability, which each considered such an outrage.

There were points where Plagueis' naive or foolish actions broke my suspension of disbelief, and I felt that you'd sacrificed a little bit of consistency for humor. Very subjective, of course! Specifically: when he instantly drinks the liquid; I can see why you needed that to happen, and you did have him at least check for poison, but that seemed hugely in contrast to his methodical actions later. I also was amused by his escalating estimates of the amount of money he should transfer to freed prisoners/experiments, but I would have expected that to come with a bit more uneasy self-reflection: I would have expected him to pay more attention to how out of character he was acting. And then:

Unauthorized creature disposed of, he thought smugly.

-that struck me as the self-congratulation of someone who is vastly, vastly incompetent in all things, if this is the kind of achievement he is proud of.

All of these were funny, but they made it a little harder to see a consistent throughline in Plagueis' emotional journey.


I hope the above thoughts are useful, even though they're only a selection and concern an extract rather than the whole of your current fic.

I thought I'd close off with a selections of other lines I really enjoyed from my reading so far:


Sidious tilted his head. “Is this another child? I don’t have need of it. The last one was perfectly sufficient.” - :D

Talzin’s expression became one of mock seriousness. She put a hand to her breast. “You’ll feel things. Emotions are evil.” - Her exaggeration of what Sidious would consider the truth is brilliant misdirection - I love it

something about where someone could go cancel their inequalities - delightfully idiosyncratic, I really like this phrase

Understand, though, that I don't accept compliments in lieu of compensation. - I laughed. A very suave line.

His hearts just weren't in it anymore. - you built up to that beautifully

its tiny nose moving almost as furiously as its tiny feet - excellent phrase

"What's wrong with you?!"
"A question I'd like to know the answer to myself," - excellent multiple meanings

[unspeakablehorror]

I apologize for the delay in this response--I certainly appreciate your detailed thoughts! This is very helpful! It's interesting to get a perspective on the story from someone who's not as familiar with the source material. Thanks for reading such a large excerpt!

I definitely consider this first and foremost a redemption story, even if the humor is kind of an inextricable part of it. Part of the reason I've avoided tagging the humor aspect is that I don't want to give the impression that this is intended to be an uncomplicatedly lighthearted story. I've also had trouble deciding how I want to characterize that aspect, though your suggestion is a good one. I'm glad the humor was a largely enjoyable aspect of the story, but it's also helpful to hear what didn't work for you and why.

This story probably has the largest, most abrupt changes in tone that I've written, so it was most helpful to get your perspective on that. And yeah, the flashback additions at the end of the first chapter actually ended up changing the trajectory of the story a lot, because I reference that repeatedly later on. I didn't consider at the time how much it would change the immediate tone shift, though.

I will look at the dashes. I try to express dashes as -- and hyphens as -, but it seems like somehow the two dashes are getting compressed into one. I do know that sometimes my formatting gets mangled when I transfer it to AO3, so possibly the dashes were one of those casualties.

I'm glad to hear your take on the character's respective personalities, and what worked and what didn't for you with them. Talzin does play more of a role as the story goes on, but I do agree it could be useful to hint a bit more early on about what she's up to. Glad you enjoyed the transition from teenage Sidious to adult Sidious' annoyance at having to deal with teenage San Hill. I didn't want to spend too much time peering at Palpatine's internal pain, both because that is and will be explored throughout the story and because I like to keep the narrative moving briskly along eventwise, which is hard to do with a lot of introspection, but I do think I could benefit from adding a little more introspection here and there. And I certainly understand how the change in tone can be jarring in places--I think transitioning between my, at times, vastly different tones is something I should continue to try to think about.

I love writing evil scientist characters, so Plagueis is a lot of fun for me. It's probably why I devoted more effort to describing all his science stuff.

To be honest I don't know what Palpatine's apartment looks like on the outside either! That was a casualty of my tendency to ignore descriptions, I suppose.

I appreciate seeing some quotes that stood out to you as well. Those were all lines I deeply enjoyed writing.

Thanks again for your detailed comments, and thanks for hosting this event!