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Power Hungry

15 Sep 2016 04:49 #50252 by fats
Power Hungry was created by fats
Hi all,

Please post your comments of the new story "Power Hungry" by a new author "whatever".

Fats

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15 Sep 2016 07:30 #50253 by circes_cup
Replied by circes_cup on topic Power Hungry
Welcome to the site, Whatever! You;ve got a great writing style.

And the story is right down Dru's alley. And Conceptfan's. And SHTL's. And I am sure others as well. Hope we can see more from you!
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15 Sep 2016 11:37 #50255 by AuGoose
Replied by AuGoose on topic Power Hungry
That was good fun! Guess her heart's not so weak after all? Set mine all aflutter :).

I liked the initial trigger and the escalation, branching into new powers and her self-determined appearance. Good awareness of the senses. Smells, temperature, odd sounds. Playfully one-sided combat. Inspiring, really :woohoo:.

There's some temporal transitions that are marked out with an extra empty line - due to the way the library displays text they end up looking like long gaps. You might just pull the extra space out, as the back-and-forth is mostly clear on its own. A few minor typos (e.g. vessels instead of vessel's) you or a proofreader may be able to pluck out - perfectly normal in any piece. Also felt like there were a few points where you had such heavy emphasis on a word or turn of phrase you might want to go back and add italics. "It had felt amazing." Really croon in the reader's ear. She's got a sensuous quality to her you can bring out with little tricks like that :).

A remarkable debut. I hope you'll share with us further!
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15 Sep 2016 14:49 #50258 by lfan
Replied by lfan on topic Power Hungry
I echo Cup and Goose's sentiments! An entertaining piece that screams for more from you! :)

ElF
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15 Sep 2016 16:01 #50260 by Whatever
Replied by Whatever on topic Power Hungry
Wow, thank you all for the kind words!
It was my first time writing, certainly very fun. I am flattered it reminded you of conceptfan's work, that was certainly a great influence for me.

English is not my native tongue, and though I believe I am sufficiently fluid in it, certain mistakes can easily slip by- having set my autocorrect software to something other than English certainly doesn't help ;) I'll be on the lookout for that in the future.

Let's see, maybe I'll get around writing some more. It's a fun time waster.

Whatever
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15 Sep 2016 18:35 #50264 by fats
Replied by fats on topic Power Hungry
I have to say that this is the first story that I've enjoyed reading on this site for some time.

Fats
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15 Sep 2016 23:51 #50274 by Whatever
Replied by Whatever on topic Power Hungry
There is one thing I would like to inquire, though- I did not name anyone in this story, for two reasons- one, I am absolutely not good in naming characters, and two, I wanted to stick to this Feeling of unknown danger in order to befit her power level.

I do wonder though, if I should (have) change(d) that, even if just for a couple of times where it doesn't disrupt. Looking over it again, I did try to change up vocabulary use as much as possible, however, I do believe calling a character "she" all the time may result in some repetetiveness, even when appropriate.

What are your thoughts on this matter?

Thanks in advance
Whatever

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16 Sep 2016 00:58 #50275 by AuGoose
Replied by AuGoose on topic Power Hungry
Given her quick rise to 'force of nature' level, the absence of a name didn't really strike me as taking away from the story. It may have enhanced her slightly inhuman aura of terror :). I just took it as a sign her old existence wasn't that important to her after that first bolt.

There's some grammatical tricks to avoid using 'her' and 'she', allowing an action to speak for itself even if it belongs to 'her'. "She crushed the tank with a mighty blow" vs. "the tank was crushed by a mighty blow". Another alternative would be to refer to her by nick-name or poetically. in the absence of a definite name, the soldiers and other people of the Earth might just apply a title to her, or you could speak of her occasionally as something like the 'living electrical storm', 'a female Zeus' or the 'blue-clad goddess'. A title applied by the public might be used a few times, while the more poetic descriptions would probably only appear in the text once where they seemed most apt to her actions in the moment. Either way, attention to over-repetition and the flow of the text is good technique to practice :).

For naming - particularly characters from other countries - If I don't have something in mind I specifically need for sound or connotation, I tend to do a web search for "most common baby names" for the country I'm using as their birthplace and back enough decades to loosely account for their age. Usually you'll get a list of 50-200 and I just browse the first 20 or so looking for something that sounds good :).
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16 Sep 2016 12:04 #50281 by Woodclaw
Replied by Woodclaw on topic Power Hungry
This is a pretty good first piece Whatever.
You have a very good eye for the details and you don't focus just on purely visual elements, but provide a comprehensive show of multiple senses. The lighting element add a bit of aunique twist to the character and makes her stand out quite a bit.
I believe that the lack of a personal description does actually help the final effect, it removes the sense of empathy that a name create. We human being tend to name what we love or are attached to because it's a way to make it closer to us, by removing any kind of name you made your character much more alien and detached from humanity.
I think that a different formatting would have helped to make the flashback sequences stand out a tad more making the two halves of the piece clearly distinct, but this is a bit of refinement that it's not that common.

I don't think there are many negative, aside from some translation problems: in the first half you relied heavily on the past perfect, a rather uncommon occurence in English, but there's nothing that some good proofreading and exercise won't fix.
AuGoose provided a good suggestion saying that a good way to avoid too many repetitions, one of the curses of the English language is to twist some senteces the other way around.

Still, I like what I read and I think you're on to bigger and better stories. ;)

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16 Sep 2016 14:29 - 20 Sep 2016 01:15 #50283 by AuGoose
Replied by AuGoose on topic Power Hungry
I particularly liked the creation of her costume. For some reason it keeps making me think of the character Unknown from Tekken Tag Tournament. Sort of a dark liquid splashed on gorgeous woman. :)

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Last edit: 20 Sep 2016 01:15 by AuGoose.

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17 Sep 2016 04:09 #50290 by Whatever
Replied by Whatever on topic Power Hungry
Damn, that is a great fit actually!
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