My explanation of why Cara looks flat. It was based on the dialogues:

Cara's Dialogue 1. "Oh, you're not from around here? Me either. I'm still trying to figure out what's scandalous to do and say around here, since it's completely different from where I grew up. You may want to be cautious yourself – I heard it hasn't been that long since someone was lynched for heresy around here."

This line sounds crafted, to warn the player not to poke around carelessly. It sounds crafted because I don't think a person would bash a town before a stranger and warn them that the town is dangerous if they hadn't been there for a while. Therefore, to me, this isn't what Cara would say, but what the game designer wants to tell the player. This dialog did not contribute to building Cara as a character. It deconstructed her.


Cara's Dialogue 2. "Sir Millcraft has been very kind to take me in, but he isn't concerned with what would make me happy so much as with making sure I fit into his orderly town like his mental image of a proper young lady. I know how dangerous it is out there, but I can only stay here if I can find a way to be myself."

This line sounds like what Cara would say. However, the personality I get is that Cara is someone who has things happening to her, but isn't really doing anything about it. Not only is she not acting on it, she also isn't feeling particularly emotional about it. In this line, I feel that Cara is too passive and too calm. Before I read the dialogs, I thought Cara would be in distress, but her dialogs didn't show any distress or discomfort about the situation. It feels like the player isn't talking to Cara but an imposter, and that the real Cara is already locked up in her room. In my opinion this dialog undid the interest you created in the description.


Cara's Dialogue 3. "Before I came here I trained as a craftswoman [or transmutationist]. Although I don't have any equipment here, there are still many things I could craft or teach another to craft."

This line sounds crafted. It sounds like the designer telling the player that there is a reward instead of Cara talking to the player.


Cara's Dialogue 4. "You think Jareth wouldn't be scandalized or disapproving of me even if I was completely myself around him? But, Sir Millcraft doesn't like him, and watches me like a hawk. How can I meet Jareth to see if he's truly someone I would want to marry?"

This line sounds a little inconsistent because I was getting the impression that Cara doesn't act, but now she is trying to meet. Another thing that sounds odd is that the line has too many specific words that shouldn't be omitted if it was taking from an actual conversation. The words that stood out are "Jareth", and "marry". "Jareth" should be replaced by "him" and "marry" should be implied in the context. I also feel that there is a cognitive gap. I think the order of the three sentences should be this:

1) Cara asks for confirmation
2) Cara expresses her desire to meet with Jareth
3) Cara expresses concern about Sir Millcraft.

What you have is 1-3-2 instead of 1-2-3. I think the order should be 1-2-3 because once Cara learns that Jareth doesn't mind, her immediate emotion should be overjoy. The situation I imagine is this: Cara already likes Jareth, but thought that Jareth doesn't like her. If she learns from the player that Jareth actually likes her, she shouldn't be thinking about meeting him in order to learn more about him. Instead, her emotion should be that she wants to marry him because she already knows him. But just as she reached this possibility by surprise, she recalls that Sir Millcraft is in the way. Therefore, your line didn't make sense to me because the order of her thought wasn't quite right. What I read from her dialog is this:

Cara actually doesn't like Jareth, and she doesn't trust what the player said. She doesn't want to meet Jareth, therefore the next thing that came to mine was Sir Millcraft, who was her excuse of not meeting Jareth. The last line wasn't sincere. I don't know why it was there. It would make more sense to me if it was dropped like this:

"You think Jareth wouldn't be scandalized or disapproving of me even if I was completely myself around him? But, Sir Millcraft doesn't like him, and watches me like a hawk..."

If that last part is dropped, that it carries the possibility that Cara likes Jareth enough that the player's report cleared her last doubt that Jareth truly likes her. But when you have the third part is again sounds like the designer prompting the player instead of Cara speaking.


Overall, my impression was that the dialogs had more game-related content than emotional content. Cara feels like someone with some key phrases that the designer has assigned her to tell the player, but doesn't get to speak her own feelings. Therefore she appears flat to me.


I want to compare your dialog to TechnoGoth's

Tessa Dialogue 1. “There are more of them every day, they walk and talk and move past people unnoticed from the rest of the crowd. But I can see them. They’re hollow. Empty on the inside, I don’t know how better to describe it than that. It’s like a monster movie when there is the odd zombie walking through a crowd of people. Except in this story they don’t eat people they’re just there and no one seems to notice. There was only a few at first but now I can’t walk down a street without seeing dozens of them. I wonder how long it’ll be before the city is nothing but hallow people. Will anyone else realise it before that happens? Will they care?”

In this line, Tessa is telling the player how the circumstance affects her and how she feels. She isn't telling the player to do anything. To me this sounds like Tessa is expressing.

Tessa Dialogue 2. “Haha, you want to save me? That’s sweet. A year ago I would have thought that was a bad pickup line and got you to buy a drink to see where the night would take us. Not that I’m going to complain if you want to buy me a drink now. But maybe I can’t be saved, maybe I deserve this…”

Again, this isn't Tessa asking the player to do anything. Dialogue 3 is also like this, so I guess I made my point. In Dialogue 4, Tessa was responding to the player's request.

Tessa Dialogue 4. “I spoke to Id about that problem you were having. He was as cryptic as ever. But he did have some advice. He said that sometimes a door isn’t a door at all, that to go forwards you’ve got to go backwards while looking over your shoulder. And that when you least expect it 4 right turns will lead you to your destination.I tried my best, but I’m not sure if any of that will help you. Be careful though if you’re determined to carry out this plan of yours. The people you’re after are dangerous. And I’d hate it if anything were to happen to you.”

Dialogue 4 also warns the player. But when I read this, I feel that the player already knows the people he is after are dangerous. It would be redundant for the designer to warn the player that the situation is dangerous. Therefore, this line shows that it is Tessa, the character, who is worried.


Comment:

I didn't understand the meaning of "a piece of dialog". it didn't occur to me that it means a continuous block of spoken text in one set of quotations. I thought that "a piece of dialog" means an excerpt of a conversation, but not the entire conversation.


* * *

On posting for critiques:

I think I was posting a lot, but my reply ratio was like 1 : 20. For every 20 posts I get one reply and it ends up looking like I was blogging here. On the other hand my critiques don't sound nice, and I definitely can't tell if people actually appreciate. I am not going to critique further unless specifically asked to, because I feel awkward. I feel that the more I say the more alienated I become.

Critique-related stuff:

[color="#1C2837"]

[color="#1C2837"]It has always been allowed to post stuff here asking for critiques, it's just rare that anyone does

[color="#1C2837"]I did once and got smacked for not posting it in the announcements section.

[color="#1C2837"]It doesn't make any sense to post there, though, if I want to discuss something with folks in the writing forum, so I don't.
[/quote]
Ugh whoever did that was wrong. It certainly wasn't me. It says right in the writing forum faq that pieces of fiction and synopses and things may be posted here for critique. Please do fee free to post things like that here (although, make sure you explain at the top what kind of critique or other feedback you are looking for). If another moderator messes with it PM me and I will fix it and tell them they're doing the wrong thing.

On posting for critiques:

I think I was posting a lot, but my reply ratio was like 1 : 20. For every 20 posts I get one reply and it ends up looking like I was blogging here. On the other hand my critiques don't sound nice, and I definitely can't tell if people actually appreciate. I am not going to critique further unless specifically asked to, because I feel awkward. I feel that the more I say the more alienated I become.

I'm familiar with several forums where fiction and art are critiqued and they all suffer from a lack of replies. In real-life writing circles this happens a little because most people don't want to put the work into critique or take the risk of offending the person they are critiquing, or they feel they are not experienced enough to critique anything. (I personally rarely critique material posted here because I often look at the piece and think "Ok, this is technically adequate but I have no idea why anyone would want to write this content. I must not be in the target audience.") Lack of critique does not happen as much in local groups because everyone knows they will get deservingly guilt-tripped if they show up to a meeting having not critiqued the pieces which were handed out at the last meeting. To combat this online some forums have a rule that every member is required to post at least 4 critiques before each piece they post for critique. I'm not interested in trying to run a system like that here because we don't have the population for it, but I will recommend one or two such sites to you if you are interested.

I do personally enjoy reading your critiques because your perspective is so different from mine that it often results in me having new thoughts. On the other hand it's common that I find a paragraph or two where there has been a big communication gap, and I wonder if I should spend a lot of words trying to explain, or just let it pass and move on. Part of my training as a person being critiqued was that the critiquee is strongly discouraged from talking, especially arguing. The work has to stand on it's own and it's bad form for a writer to be defensive, and will result in the writer being accused of being thin-skinned and "butthurt" (I hate that term).

[color="#1C2837"]

I'm very interested in the fact that everyone seems to agree that Cara was difficult to sympathize with or care about despite having an interesting problem

[color="#1C2837"]There's two distinct but important reasons for this, one is in what you're presenting and the other is how.

[color="#1C2837"]You write:

[color="#1C2837"][color="#000000"][color="#1C2837"]

[color="#1C2837"]had a similar problem last time I posted a story synopsis[color="#1C2837"] ... Fortunately I don't seem to have this problem with the actual fiction[/quote]

[color="#1C2837"]The first is that this and that are both not writing. These are like outlines or internal-use notes or high concepts and thus don't use many tools of writing. Thus they fail to engage or people read into them things you did not put in order to be engaged.[/quote]
Hmm, see I write almost as much non-fiction as I write fiction, so to me both are writing and ought to be engaging the reader and communicating clearly. If a synopsis fails to give a reader a clear impression of a character I consider that a serious failing.

[color="#1c2837"]i[color="#1C2837"]n my mind she was quite a nice person, who cared deeply about things and tried to be a good person[/quote]

[color="#1C2837"]The second is content related. With this character, the key theme is that her only problem is other people. She just fails to generate or have any tension or be interesting or make any assertions or any kind of thesis. There's an effort to make the character liked rather than interesting.[/quote]
With my characters the internal problem is typically fear. In Cara's case the fear of abandoning the safety of the town vs. the fear of a miserable future where she can't be herself. It's true that this problem is basically created by the situation she finds herself in, do you consider that a bad thing?

[color="#1C2837"]

Molly is a tension-machine. She creates misery. A few days after I wrote that and had some time to stew over it I rewrote it as this here. (Please forgive the bad sentences, it was not meant for public display.) Molly is a shadow[color="#1C2837"], not an ideal self.[/quote]
Hmm, I thought Molly was really funny and intended as a parody, a stoned hick. Like she could have fit right in to a slightly raunchier version of The Beverly Hillbillies". I can't take her problems seriously, but that's fine in a situation where I'm not being asked to. I could see writing a character like her as a comic villain or sidekick, but never as a main character.

[color="#1c2837"]

I don't like to say "flaw" here because I think it frames the discussion the wrong way and can lead to token flaws, which are bolt-on defects which usually fail to relate to the character's role. (e.g. Rom-com lead females who are clumsy and think they're fat.) I would take a hard look at the character and see if you can look at her in a different perspective. How is she wrong? And what's her mask[color="#1c2837"]? What does she project onto others and how does that relate to her self? And how does it all relate to the story in front of you?

[color="#1c2837"]In that line of thought, I note the perception of her as potentially manipulative. If I were writing her I would play that up and somehow have her mirror the guy who wants to "civilize" her, or find some interesting juxtaposition there.

[color="#1C2837"]Instead the fact that her actions in the plot were rather conniving and manipulative was what readers reacted to ...[/quote]

[color="#1C2837"]My mind actually filled in some of the blanks and saw her as either a sociopath or someone who's exhibiting "learned helplessness".[/quote]
My thought about character flaws is that I particularly like characters where their strength and their flaw are two sides of the same coin. For example, a character who is very decisive and has a forceful personality. In one situation this works out to their advantage - they manage to pull off some dramatic coup. In another situation the same trait hamstrings them because they don't listen to the timid person trying to warn them they are heading for the edge of a cliff, they just charge confidently ahead and fall off.

The "conniving and manipulative" character was read as sociopathic by the readers of that synopsis too. Not anything to do with helplessness because she's being quite active in that story - sneaking around in disguise, dosing people with potions, and carrying out a kidnapping. There isn't a guy who wants to civilize her, she's perfectly civilized. Her manipulations _are_ her actions as the heroine, much as a hero's actions often involve physical violence. Her internal problem is again a type of fear - she needs a particular person's assistance but is afraid that 1. he will refuse, 2. once he refuses he will take precautions preventing her from just taking his assistance, 3. Whether he give his assistance or has it taken by her, he may afterwards decide he either regrets this or wants to meddle further in the situation. So the heroine decides what he doesn't know won't hurt him. She dons her disguise, kidnaps him without harming him at all, takes his assistance by deceit and without explaining what she is taking or why, then disappears so he can't investigate. She's quite worried about the ethicality of her actions and careful to cause the minimum amount of distress to him. She also does him an anonymous favor, and considers that to have karmically made up for kidnapping him. She screwed up at an earlier step though, leaving behind a clue that allows him to track her down and demand an explanation. Does she still seem sociopathic or otherwise crazy or unethical?

My explanation of why Cara looks flat. It was based on the dialogues:

Cara's Dialogue 2. "Sir Millcraft has been very kind to take me in, but he isn't concerned with what would make me happy so much as with making sure I fit into his orderly town like his mental image of a proper young lady. I know how dangerous it is out there, but I can only stay here if I can find a way to be myself."

This line sounds like what Cara would say. However, the personality I get is that Cara is someone who has things happening to her, but isn't really doing anything about it. Not only is she not acting on it, she also isn't feeling particularly emotional about it. In this line, I feel that Cara is too passive and too calm. Before I read the dialogs, I thought Cara would be in distress, but her dialogs didn't show any distress or discomfort about the situation. It feels like the player isn't talking to Cara but an imposter, and that the real Cara is already locked up in her room. In my opinion this dialog undid the interest you created in the description.

It didn't occur to me to be concerned about the lines sounding crafted because that is so common in games. In a game the player needs to come to a clear understanding of what they are supposed to do next; the NPC dialogue is just there to provide meaning to the actions the player is being asked to take. I was thinking that every piece of dialogue needed to have a gameplay function to justify its existence, the same way every scene of a story needs to develop characters and advance the plot, and scenes which do neither are weak and need to be either cut or made more functional. But, I do agree it's bad if dialogue sounds false or breaks a player's suspension of disbelief. Certainly Cara's dialogue could be improved a lot.

I agree Cara is too passive (this is a general problem with NPCs, it's both tradition and basic game functionality that an NPC stands still and sends the player to solve their problems for them). But, I dislike characters who are too distressed and like those who are calm. When I create a main character it is a goal of mine to create a calm person, although this does not always apply to minor characters, because it's ok for those to be someone I am a bit irritated by, or I could give them other pleasant traits to balance out them being panicky or anxious; I have a male character in one story who I think manages to be anxious yet adorable partly because of this anxiety.

Cara's Dialogue 4.

"You think Jareth wouldn't be scandalized or disapproving of me even if I was completely myself around him? But, Sir Millcraft doesn't like him, and watches me like a hawk. How can I meet Jareth to see if he's truly someone I would want to marry?"

This line sounds a little inconsistent because I was getting the impression that Cara doesn't act, but now she is trying to meet. Another thing that sounds odd is that the line has too many specific words that shouldn't be omitted if it was taking from an actual conversation. The words that stood out are "Jareth", and "marry". "Jareth" should be replaced by "him" and "marry" should be implied in the context. I also feel that there is a cognitive gap. I think the order of the three sentences should be this:

1) Cara asks for confirmation
2) Cara expresses her desire to meet with Jareth
3) Cara expresses concern about Sir Millcraft.

What you have is 1-3-2 instead of 1-2-3. I think the order should be 1-2-3 because once Cara learns that Jareth doesn't mind, her immediate emotion should be overjoy. The situation I imagine is this: Cara already likes Jareth, but thought that Jareth doesn't like her. If she learns from the player that Jareth actually likes her, she shouldn't be thinking about meeting him in order to learn more about him. Instead, her emotion should be that she wants to marry him because she already knows him. But just as she reached this possibility by surprise, she recalls that Sir Millcraft is in the way. Therefore, your line didn't make sense to me because the order of her thought wasn't quite right. What I read from her dialog is this:

Cara actually doesn't like Jareth, and she doesn't trust what the player said. She doesn't want to meet Jareth, therefore the next thing that came to mine was Sir Millcraft, who was her excuse of not meeting Jareth. The last line wasn't sincere. I don't know why it was there. It would make more sense to me if it was dropped like this:

"You think Jareth wouldn't be scandalized or disapproving of me even if I was completely myself around him? But, Sir Millcraft doesn't like him, and watches me like a hawk..."

If that last part is dropped, that it carries the possibility that Cara likes Jareth enough that the player's report cleared her last doubt that Jareth truly likes her. But when you have the third part is again sounds like the designer prompting the player instead of Cara speaking.[/quote]
The situation I was imagining is that Cara literally has not met Jareth, at all, because she's not allowed out of the house without a chaperone. At most she would have seen him and possibly said hello, but they would never have had a chance to have a conversation. Similarly Jareth cannot like her yet because he hasn't met her; the player's investigation of him was to determine whether he wanted to marry (someone) and specifically whether he would be tolerant of a wife who did and said some scandalous things. I was indecisive while writing this because I was thinking an MMO-style escort quest would be a suitably difficult quest for the climax of Cara's quest chain, but I was also thinking that a lot of people hate those and the game was not specified to be an MMO or have the technological capability for escort quests. My overall goal in writing the character description was to create a module which could easily be plugged into a variety of game designs and mesh well with other people's similar modules. I was imagining a different writer would be creating unrelated quests the player would perform for Sir. Millcraft, among others.

Re: sunandshadow

I think what I wrote has a lot to do with key phrases that I thought I understood but in fact misunderstood. For example, when I read in Cara Dialogue #4 that "You think Jareth wouldn't be scandalized or disapproving of me even if I was completely myself around him?" I thought that "completely myself around him" meant they had met and Cara was self-conscious enough to recall that she was too into herself when they met. The scenario I imaged was that they met but perhaps Cara was talking about herself all the time and didn't really try to let Jareth talk; or possibly caught up working on her crafts and was ignoring Jareth a bit. Jareth might have said Hi or tried to talk but she appeared annoyed or busy.

What is the actual meaning of "completely myself around him"?


I still stand that for the modular reason, your entry was the best in terms of my perspective on "design". I understand that people can always explain why a character is a perfect fit for a design, I don't mind explanation because I want to know if my critique actually means something, and I can't know it unless the critiquee is allowed to explain. I don't routinely give critique so I am "below the water level." I don't even know if my critique is relevant.

What is the actual meaning of "completely myself around him"?

It was intended to build on "I'm still trying to figure out what's scandalous to do and say around here, since it's completely different from where I grew up. You may want to be cautious yourself". Currently she is "being cautious herself" and recommending the player do the same; she is pressured to be not completely herself by hiding any scandalous thoughts and behaviors from Sir. Millcraft and his household and guests. For example, perhaps she was not raised in the religion that almost everyone in town belongs to. If the town thought heresy was very bad they might exile her or even burn her at the stake.

I still stand that for the modular reason, your entry was the best in terms of my perspective on "design". I understand that people can always explain why a character is a perfect fit for a design, I don't mind explanation because I want to know if my critique actually means something, and I can't know it unless the critiquee is allowed to explain. I don't routinely give critique so I am "below the water level." I don't even know if my critique is relevant.[/quote]
Thank you. I had the idea that I wanted this contest to teach participants things about "working within a team" because I think that's something writers in the industry regularly do that indie writers don't get much experience with. But I think that any piece of writing which captures the interest of readers is better than any which doesn't, regardless of whether it strictly follows a format. And it has been my experience that non-writers use personal taste as their primary criteria for judging writing, not adherence to format.

IMHO your critiques are super useful and you approach it looking at the close-in detail work really well. I realize you're not malicious and maybe shy and wouldn't think less of you for a critique. I'd assume everyone else feels the same way. In any case, hearing critiques and utilizing them even when very blunt or unclear is a necessary skill.

I fully agree with this, both the usefulness of attention to detail (I find it very hard to direct that at pieces I have written, I see my intent instead of what's actually there) and the fact that it is important for all writers (artists too) to develop the skill of hearing a variety of critiques and learning to reinterpret others' personal language and mindset into something they can use in their own personal language and mindset. It's very common for people to misunderstand each other over the internet, but fiction is just the same, we only get words to communicate our meaning and we can all use regular feedback on whether people are understanding what we write the way we imagined it would be understood, or whether we could have written it a bit differently to better achieve the reader understanding we wanted. So Wai it's not just you who has difficulty with that.

My housemate was just telling me last week it's amazing what a large percentage of his conversations is a result of him and the other person having different personal definitions of some word. I just wrote an email two days ago where I spent a paragraph explaining why I thought something could not be described as feminine, and got a response back where the other person said since I had used the word pretty to describe something I must think of it as feminine. I was non-plussed because to me the word pretty is a type of appearance involving having facial features which are fine-boned instead of square (which would be handsome for a man or queenly/regal for a woman instead) or round and childlike (which would be cute instead). Has nothing to do with femininity. So, I think miscommunication is a common and normal part of communication, and not necessary to worry about.

Speaking of details, I was trying to figure out the point assignment of each rank. I am posting my thought as a puzzle:


The Puzzle:

The writing contest has 4 entries. Each voter is asked to rank the 4 entries, presumably each rank corresponds to an increasing, presumably non-negative integer. The final score of an entry is the sum of these points. In addition, each contestant is required to rank their own entry the highest. Here are some facts about the result:

Fact 1: There are at least 4 voters.
Fact 2: The sum of all the points is 60.
Fact 3: The lowest score an entry could get is 9.
Fact 4: The highest score an entry could get is 21.

The question: How many points does each rank worth?


Analysis:

First, let's say the value of the ranks are A, B, C, D, where A > B > C > D. Since each voter contribute the same number of points to the overall sum total, 60 / (A+B+C+D) = the number of voters. Therefore the reasonable possibilities are:

4 voters, 15 points each
5 voters, 12 points each
6 voters, 10 points each
10 voters, 6 points each

Let's see if it is possible to have 10 voters. Since A > B > C > D >=0, when there are 10 voters, the only possible rank value assignment is {A=3, B=2, C=1, D=0}. However, in this case, the highest score an entry could get would be 3 x 9 + 0 = 27. Therefore, it is impossible to have 10 or more voters. The sum total isn't large enough to give the possibility that there are more than 10 voters.

Now let's check the case with 6 voters. For this check, I sub divide the possibilities by the values possible for D. Since 10>= A > B > C > D >= 0, the possible values for D are only 0 and 1. If D is 0, Then the lowest score happens when an entry is ranked D by everyone other than D's Author. This dictates that A=9. But that is impossible because C would have to be 0. Therefore D cannot be 0. If D=1, then the only possible value assignment is {A=4, B=3, C=2, D=1}. In this case, the highest possible score for an entry is A x 5 + B = 23. Therefore D=1 is also impossible. Thus, it is impossible to have 6 voters.

Next, let's see if there could be 5 voters. If there are 5 voters, the possible values for D are still only 0, and 1. if D=0, then the only possible assignment is {A=9, B=2, C=1, D=0}. In this case, the highest possible score should be A x 4 + B = 40. Therefore this is not what happened. If D=1, the lowest score 9 = A + 4 x D implies that A=5. However, since the highest score is 21 = 4 x A + B, it implies that B=1. Therefore it is also impossible. So there aren't 5 voters.

So the only possibility left is there were 4 voters. But let's see if it is actually possible. If there are only 4 voters, D can only be 0, 1, or 2. If D=0, then A=9, which brings the possible highest score above 27. Therefore D cannot be 0. If D=2, then A=3. This is impossible because it leaves no integer for B and C. Therefore the only possibility is that D=1. If D=1, then A=6. The highest score dictates that 21 = A x 3 + B, therefore B must be 3. Since B=3 and D=1, C must be 2. However, the sum of A, B, C, D is only 12. Therefore this is also impossible.

When all possible outcomes are impossible, at least one of the facts must be wrong. Which is it?

a) There are at least 4 voters.
b) The sum of all the points is 60.
c) The lowest score an entry could get is 9.
d) The highest score an entry could get is 21.
e) A > B > C > D >=0.
f) A, B, C, D are integers.
g) The final score of an entry is the sum of its rank values from each voter.
h) Each voter must rank the four entries without tie
i) Each contestant must vote
j) Each contestant must rank their own entry as A.
k) There are 4 entries.
l) Something is wrong in the analysis.