Title: Fulcrum
Author: ElaraSilk
Rating: T
Genre: General
Status: Ongoing
Fandom: Worm
Summary: "This is a fic of Wildbow's Worm, where I focus on what's going on in the UK. Should be largely canon-compliant, other than details of canon I have forgotten/misunderstood.
Don't expect any of the following to feature heavily: Taylor Hebert; school lockers; Emma, Madison or Sophia; the Wards; the PRT. The Guild and Dragon may come up, the Triumvirate may get a mention here and there, Cauldron might slither into the plot somewhere, but the first few chapters at least are much more focused on the lower level stuff. All critique welcome."
Link: Spacebattles
Alt Link: Sufficient Velocity

Featuring an entire cast of OCs, with their own adventure in Britain (pre-Scion, of course), this is a completely different take on the usual Worm fics and is not only creative about it, but is well written. I admit, I'm hooked to fics that show more familiar characters, but I'd still rate it 5/5 - largely due to the fact that it's fresh. Also featuring its own rating system for capes, compared to the 12 classes of the PRT.

 

I've been watching this from the first post, and am a big fan of the idea and the execution. It's a great little bit of constrained world building that does very well to stay faithful to the feel of canon Worm while also maintaining its own particular feel and consistent character voices. My only complaint is the slow update rate which has left it feeling like it hasn't quite got off the ground yet. We've been given a series of snippets rather than a fully fledged opening act so far. 4-4.5/5

 

A story composed entirely of dialogue and telling instead of showing. The writing is fucking bad. I read half the available story but I could not force myself to continue. The characters are flat. It's like the written puppet show.

It's an exaggeration but not by much.

If it was isolated parts of the story it'd be one thing, but it's way too common for me to even slightly enjoy this.
1/5

 

I'm really starting to think you're too quick to hand out 1/5 ratings, Iztiak.

 

I mostly hand out 4s and 5s. I think with Worm fiction everything is just so bad people tend to bump their ratings up.

I mean, it's understandable, after reading this and that Nero story I almost feel like retroactively changing my Cloudy path rating to 3/5, because it's better when compared to stories like this.

But I try to rate them independently rather than in comparison to other stories.

 

Um, thanks Vern...I guess?
I was planning to get a few posts up myself, get to know some people and then post a link in WbA.

gs17 thanks for the kind words - I apologise for the slow update rate. This is a project primarily aimed at exorcising a few of my own writing demons, and it is already at least a partial success in that aim. If other people enjoy it along the way then even better.

Iztiak thanks for being blunt and to the point. I am trying to improve my craft, so all critique is good critique.
I agree that the passage you highlighted is a bit clunky - I re-read those lines of dialogue and cringed.
I was going for a stripped down, spare style - partly because that's how Wildbow writes much of Worm, and I wanted to capture the feel of the early parts of Worm in this; I have perhaps taken it a little too far.

Was there anything else you picked up in the bits you got through?

 

ElaraSilk

Alright, I was focused a bit more on criticism than on being constructive because I didn't think you'd read this, so I'll try to be a bit more helpful in this post.

For what it's worth, I could recognize that you were trying to mimic Wildbow's style of writing Worm. However, I think the primary problem is that too much happens in too few words in your story, and many of the words are just long strings of dialogue.

What's helpful for my following comparison is that your story openings were essentially the same.

Taylor taking down Lung - Amir taking down Regulator
Taylor speaking to Armsmaster - Amir speaking to Lt Banner
Taylor goes home - Amir goes home

Since you start with the fight, if we cut out Wildbow's introduction, and compare wordcount from the start of the Lung/Regulator fight to the end of the conversation with Armsmaster/Banner, Worm's section is roughly 3x longer.
2.9k words vs 8.5k.

Don't get me wrong, more words does NOT equal better. It's a tricky balance to strike. A Cloudy Path uses probably 8x more words than either you or Wildbow and it's terrible (In my opinion).

The problem is that Taylor's conversation with Armsmaster did not have dialogue sequences like this:

For reference, here's Taylor's conversation with Armsmaster: https://parahumans.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/gestation-1-6/ Even if you cut out Wildbow's exposition, you can still tell a difference.

I think just comparing the two should illustrate my primary problem with your story.

You did alright at describing your world outside of dialogue, but you really need to work on your dialogue sections, in my opinion anyway.

While Wildbow's writing isn't perfect, I still enjoyed it, and I'd assume you would want to mimic it just a little bit closer, since it's a Worm fanfiction.

In terms of positive things to mention, I like how you went with your own characters in a different part of the globe. Far better than another random story that gives Taylor a different power. Almost nobody does that, and I think it was a great idea.

Don't let my criticism discourage you either, just because I didn't like it doesn't mean I think you should stop writing or anything. There's no other way to improve except through practice.