Talk:Knights of the Old Republic: Convict's Dawn/1-2 archive 1

Chapter 1
Pretty good so far. I have some comments for you, though.


 * When you start talking about the Jedi Order, there’s no transition. It goes right from the ship to the Jedi and it’s like “wtf just happened?” I also don’t think you really need to give all that backstory on the Sith. Some context on Revan and Malak would be helpful, though. One thing Ataru always said to me was don’t just write fan fics for those who are in the know.
 * The beginning isn’t very catchy. It reads like an article does, as it really is just giving you a lot of info about planets and organizations and ships. I have that same problem too sometimes (and I say that so I don’t sound like a hypocrite), so one thing you might want to do is go back and find what you can chop out without losing anything important.
 * In reference to the above, one thing I see a lot of is explanations about what the Subjugation is and does. You could probably “flower it up” a bit with some beefed up prose.
 * I don’t know if this is intentional or not, but I really liked the comment about how the asteroid would be the perfect hiding place. It was a nice reference to Obi-Wan hiding on an asteroid in AOTC.
 * Another thing that would be nice if you gave a bit of descriptive info about what the main characters here look like. I don’t really know if they’re Arnold Schwarzenegger or Verne Troyer.
 * I’m not really feeling the battle scene, and when I say that I mean there’s still a lot of telling going on. I’m not getting the adventure, excitement, adrenaline, etc. I’m getting some information. While that’s not really bad in and of itself, it should be accompanied by the flowery prose.
 * The bridge sequences where they talk about engine damage and firing weapons, etc., almost seems like a battle scene from Star Trek. Now obviously I like Star Trek so I’m not saying that as a bad thing, but you may want to consider steering away from that, or at least make sure you don’t do it often.
 * Unless I missed/overlooked something, I didn’t really get a feel for where this novel is headed from this chapter. Now obviously you don’t have to lay all or even most of your cards out on the table in the beginning, but so far I’m mostly seeing stuff about a battle rather than a plot. If I missed something, by all means please point it out.

Despite these comments, I found the chapter rather enjoyable. I’ll certainly read more of the novel. It's "good stuff". - Brandon Rhea (talk) (contribs) 07:57, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

From The Desk of Ataru
Okay, well, I momentarily waffled between giving you a normal review, or hammering you with a beta-level read. It was a short debate, since you'd just hear these things from me during FWN review anyway. You can strike the mechanics and other complaints stuff if you wish, or after you fix them, or both.
 * 1) Mechanics
 * 2) *I believe the proper grammar is either "Interdictor cruiser" or "Interdictor-class cruiser". But not Interdictor cruiser.
 * 3) *"and he had compensated for his error in lack of sleep" Awkward wording.
 * 4) *"Quickly handing Luus the insignia of a Captain" -->captain.
 * 5) *"Though Luus didn’t know why Karath himself presented Luus with the rank of Captain" --> captain. This is a persistent and annoying error that needs corrected throughout the segment.
 * 6) *reflector or deflector shields?
 * 7) *"sub par"-->"sub-par"
 * 8) *"each of his craft’s proponents" You might want to check the definition of "proponents"
 * 9) *"Gaiel barely noticed the flickering of his comlink channel. “Yeah?” Gaiel called, barely acknowledging" Barely . . . barely. Diction, please.
 * 10) *"Hammerhead-cruisers" should either be "Hammerhead cruiser" or "Hammerhead-class cruiser".
 * 11) *"that were idling waiting inside the deepest area of the asteroid field" Awkward wording/missing punctuation.
 * 12) *Gah. Go read the ranks section of the tutorial again.
 * 13) *"Luus’ didn’t want to surrender just yet." Kill the apostrophe.
 * 14) *"However, one of his wingman" Plural error.
 * 15) *"the Shining Flame" Ital. consistently missing.
 * 16) *"butte of her rifle." Buttes are topographical features. Butt is the stock of a rifle.
 * 17) *"managed downed one of them" Ugh.
 * 18) *"piercing Nyalla’s light flightsuit and seared her legs." Tense disagreement.
 * 19) *"Without the Jedi’s aide" Aides are people.
 * 20) *"he had unarmed," --> disarmed.
 * 21) *"manning a Jar’Kai defensive stance" Awkward wording.
 * 22) Non-mechanics complaints
 * 23) *"Divided into dorsal and ventral subsections, the Subjugation flew through the reaches of empty space, utilizing the benefits of its durasteel-grey, streamlined body to the fullest extent. " This just doesn't make sense. It's a fun little descriptive sentence, but what performance benefits does it have to exploit? Streamlining a ship will have no effect on interstellar performance&mdash;there is negligible drag unless you're flying through a load of dark matter or something. You can have all the protrusions in the world from your ship, but since there's no airflow boundary layer, there's no real point to it from a performance standpoint. I suppose having too many protrusions would affect stability by shifting the center of gravity, but that has nothing to do with streamlining, which affects surface drag.
 * 24) *Per Brandon on the opening. It reads about as excited as Morgan Freeman's narration of March of the Penguins. A good opening grabs my attention and then adamantly refuses to let go until I've finished the story.
 * 25) *A mite heavy on Luus's introspection. If you're going to take that approach, give him some more action to accompany him. A lesson I've been trying to implement is to rarely/never have more than 1 or 2 paragraphs of introspection in a row&mdash;it's called a "feeling dump" and gets monotonous fast.
 * 26) *"Frenzy Wrath and Suicidal Shotgun" Epic meh. The Sith have some really dumb naming conventions for their ship. What poor sap got to captain those?
 * 27) *A little better intro for Gaiel would be nice.
 * 28) *"This is Syme Dvor, or Gizka One, reporting in." If you have a callsign, use it. The pertinent people should already know his callsign, no?
 * 29) *Chapter Two starts off much better, but some physical description of characters, principally the 3 Jedi in the strike team is badly needed.
 * 30) *Nyalla recovers her blaster to hit him with it? Is this the broken one, or does she not feel like shooting him?
 * 31) *"Gaiel shut off his lightsaber and attempted to heal the few blaster wounds" I'm wincing here. Unarmored people taking numerous blaster injuries more serious than a graze should not still be standing, depending on the species. Contrary to game mechanics, a blaster shot to an unarmored humanoid torso is either a serious injury or lethal.
 * 32) *"Finally recovering his stance, Penen used his sharp, elongated incisors to grasp and crush Luus’ right shoulder blade. " This is positively the dumbest thing that Cathar could have done. He's stronger in the grapple, so he bites the guy just to get off and abandon his advantage? Is he supposed to be that stupid?
 * 33) *More descriptive detail on interior of Subjugation would be great. Do we just assume it looks like Leviathan on the inside? What about those of us who haven't played KotOR in awhile?
 * 34) Comments
 * 35) *The plot is much like the first draft of Convict's Dawn that I remember from years ago, except that I don't remember Nyalla. Unfortunately, this segment is kinda skimpy on detail at parts and doesn't have the greatest opening ever. The suspense factor is almost entirely missing from Ch. 1&mdash;it's not the best hook ever. I should be fighting with all my willpower to put this story down, not yelling on the talk page about how I'm not. A few niggling mechanics errors, some of them persistent also detract from story quality. While I'm looking forward to the rest of the story based on my memories of the first draft, I think this could have been better. The space battle scenes, except when told from Gaiel's POV, seemed very reminisicent of a video game and Danters' dialogue was not much better. Now, don't get me wrong. This isn't terrible. It's not in need of a drastic rewriting, IMO. The story's as good as ever, and introduces some particularly memorable characters (Okay, one in particular). However, given that I have a vague idea of the potential you have as a writer, this is a bit below average for you. Final caveat: I'm probably being unnecessarily harsh here. I gave you the sternest review I could muster, because I think this has a lot of untapped potential. So don't despair. There may yet be hope.   Have a Super Terrific Friendly Un-frustrating day.  Atarumaster88  [[Image:Jedi_Order.svg|20px]] ( Talk page ) 22:43, 19 February 2009 (UTC)