Unfortunately, no. The kind of editing I'm thinking of is very structurally intense - I'm not very good at it myself, as I prefer to stick smaller nudges and correcting mistakes, but when I was betaing for VotN, I saw Grinning Lizard's edits, and they were impressive, both in scope and in how they improved the story.

 

I agree with a lot of what was said so far. The story as it stands is good, and the quality of writing very good, but it doesn't feel like we're getting to the meat of the story yet. It's difficult to rate when I don't have a broad sense of what the story is actually all about.

I also have trouble appreciating stories where Harry is essentially an OC. I'm hoping that we learn more about this story's Harry in the next few chapters. Without putting words in Jon's mouth, I think maybe this story should be viewed as a story about Ahsoka that Harry features in, instead of a Harrry-centric fic. If you go in with this mindset, then it's got a ton of promise. Tentatively a 4/5, though, like I said, it's early.

 

I have this epic idea of how Harry could potentially blow the minds of the entire Jedi order. If he has the elder wand, there is a good chance he has the stone. Use the stone and magical portraits to create a copy of every famous and powerful know force user, both of the light and the dark . not only would it allow for knowledge through out history, but it would make the whole order quiver at the revelations. Think about sith and Jedi battling in painted form yet having no way to achieve victory.
I personally hope it exposes the order to force alchemy, so they create all sorts of item to mimic and enhance their techniques. For every dark one, there is a light version. The thing is the sith would be desperate to claim the artwork for themselves. The war has made them focus do much on combat, alchemy allows them to use the force to create.

 

Well I have gotten some feedback that rightly suggested I ought be wary of posting a denouncement of a story based solely on the prologue and first chapter. Thinking back I had wanted to apologize to the board for taking this piece to task. That is until I read the Author’s Note above threatening to ban me for disliking his story.

As this was not posted solely in the WBA I, through my own squibbly inattention to detail, failed to notice that it was a piece from within the forum. I merely assumed this was a standard For Review piece, as it is in truth, and accordingly offered a, frankly more than fair, review of its merits. Mostly, that it should never have been placed in For Review in the first place.

Yet the Author decided that I was handicapped, which I am thanks to a drunk driver. So let’s see how far I can get through this questionable sandwich before I have to wheel myself over to the porcelain throne and find a respite from this festering turd.

Most importantly, the author has failed to read the forum threads dedicated to writing style, https://forums.darklordpotter.net/showthread.php?t=16988, and clearly has failed to achieve an Exceeds Expectations during her(his, but who can tell I ask you?) elementary school English classes. The ENTIRE story is written in the past tense; and what’s worse with liberal use of pansy, passive structure that not only detracts from the uninspired storyline, but also outright destroys the meaning of many passages.(That’s what a semicolon is for you twat, for cramming into your own colon, wide as it may be.)

To be fair, I meant to apologize, but this guy sucks, which is fine, but is a prick, which isn’t! So I have since decided to line by line demonstrate the inherent, emetic stench befouling the whole thing and be damned getting banned.

It’s just too easy, like a no-talent ass clown poking fun at a girl in a chair, so how about the first 2 paragraphs instead.(See that’s how you use a cliche to your story’s benefit, hack.)

Chapter One​

As it turns out, the first sentence is misleading - Tano is having a, poorly described, hard time adjusting to the life of an average citizen. She wants off Coruscant in a big way. Don’t look for any meaningful explanation of what this sort of life is at its heart, or indeed what Coruscant is really like geographically, politically, socially, or historically; there will be none forthcoming. Redundancy of the word ‘galactic’ in the second sentence is demonstrative of the general lack of attention to detail which haunts this piece, meaning the prologue and first chapter.

For an example of particularly nauseatingly poor (non-existent) editing - “and it was only thanks to a timely intervention by her once master—Anakin Skywalker, that she had survived.”

What the author was trying to convey here is contentious(utterly unclear because of poor execution) to be sure, but the use of an em dash on the one side and a comma on the other is a sure sign of incompetence. One could envision a dozen ways to properly craft this paragraph and surely this would not be among them - The simplest would be deleting the whole discharge - Yet one must also forge ahead in the face of adversity.

What is most telling about this story is actually summed up here in the first paragraph. The author is attempting to create a time-envelope, wherein a brief statement and subsequent prose form paints a larger picture of the protagonist’s backstory and thus efficiently communicates to the reader a ‘Hit the ground running’ feel to the opening salvo.

A simple re-read of the first few paragraphs could have shown the author that this envelope was crafted improperly, specifically that he said one thing and meant another. She (Y-Shocker) hated being a Jedi, she was discontent with that life. Only a month had passed, since the end of her trial. Surely this long term discontent extended into the pre-trial, Jedi trainingepochof her life.

Goodness, but this thing is getting muddled quickly. Ahsoka Tano hated being a goddamn Jedi? What an entitled, stupid bitch. I hate her already! If this is not taken in the spirit which it was given, please forgive my handicaps, but it seems that it was given in a spirit of excretion, rather than creation, as far as the handi-literate can perceive.

Please note that the protagonist has been put on trial in front of the “galactic community”. Without explanation and in context, then, it seems that everyone for a thousand parsecs sat the jury for her trial.

Oh, is that not how it works? It’s called a delete key, use it on the parts that are subpar. Of course there is more wrong with this opener but let’s move on so as not to bore the “peanut gallery” shall we?

For the sake of brevity I shall praise the author for his use of repetition in order to create a stylistic movement - A month since it was quite poorly executed, you go girl!

However, please direct your attention to the second sentence which has no meaning whatsoever and I am sure it will read less like the remnants of an undercooked taqueria-style chorizo taco shlopping frothily from my anus “a month since”, yet there it could be in the DLP library "a month hence”. It’s not a sentence. This is what your 7th grade English teacher was trying to tell you. Foul shit doesn’t smell better when it’s on a spaceship. Just ask Mal, it means ‘Bad’ in the Latin.

Even worse in the English. There is subject-verb disagreement here, there are tense issue, "...to which she, after being exonerated, turned her back upon them and left the only life she had ever known," this is a cluster-fuck of a sentence.

It is not a sentence, reading this story is sentence - Because it has not been edited, much less thought out by a creative minded person, nor seemingly developed by even a competent English speaker. BTW if anyone else writing here is also ESL, I teach ESL to kids at the elementary level and there is help out there for you.

Now is that a shit review? It’s the internet, not a box of tissue paper your Mom buys for you every week, wanker.

Sure 5/5. 5/5 literate people would prefer to be tazed.

By the way “Ahsoka Tano was persona-non grata.” should be “Ahsoka Tano was persona non grata.” But only if you wants to fill dozens of pages with poorly conceived and stupid bullshit you don’t understand. This story is like BabbleFish partially translated a bunch of shitty, knockoff Chinese 'Magic the Gathering' cards to english and posted the result as a fanfiction.

And a bow for the handi-capable. Which is typically written with a hyphen and used almost exclusively by douchebags.

Regards,
HappyG

 

No?

That's not right at all.

 

I see Narf edited the post, so I really don't know if that's an actual review or Narf fucking around. Either seems possible.

That being said, the above quoted sentence is just completely wrong, you dunce. Jon's usage was entirely correct. If that's indicative of the quality of the rest of your review (which admittedly I couldn't be bothered to read), maybe you should stick to getting hit by cars.

For the story itself, it's a lot of exposition without much happening plotwise so far for me. And it's not a character study either, so it's just a slow moving plot. I wouldn't have put it up for review yet myself. 3/5 if I were to rate it now, but that could easily go up as we go along and more of the plot is unspooled.

 

Narf just stripped the formatting, because it was bright white and it sears the eyes. Unfortunately that means we got to miss out on a lot of important underlining.

 

The only commentary of merit in happyg's review is that the story needs betaing to remove silly mistakes such as word repetition, subject-verb disagreement, etc.

The rest is just a series of unfounded stylistic opinions lifted straight from the shit-show that is Strunk & White's "Element's of Style". The prime example being the nonsense about avoiding the passive voice.

There isn't any real comment on the characterisation, plot, setting, etc. All happyg is doing is pointing out technical errors, which is the most easily fixed part of writing. It's valuable assistance but not really deep analysis.

Not sure why y'all have such a huge boner for her.

 

Care to elaborate? EoS is pretty dogmatic in its statements, but I do find a lot of value in most it says. Brevity, for one. Avoiding redundancy for another. And for creative writing purpose I would also agree on the passive voice. Yes, there are sentences where a passive voice is appropriate, but in general I do agree with the notion that sentences become stronger through using the active voice.

That's something I notice while reading too. Too many passive sentences bog down the writing.

(I agree on the rest though, as style is something very subjective and mistakes in sentence structure can be fixed far easier than the other aspects of a good story Taure mentioned.)

 

Elements of Style is full of errors. For example, in the section on the passive voice, only one of the four "examples" of the passive voice actually uses the passive. "Don't use the passive voice" apparently actually means "don't write awkward sentences" which is both incredibly obvious and entirely unhelpful, as if you knew what sentences were awkward already then you wouldn't need to be reading a book on basic writing.

Most of their advice is either a) plain wrong or b) an obvious maxim that does nothing to help you achieve the result.

This review states it better than I can: http://chronicle.com/article/50-Years-of-Stupid-Grammar/25497

Highlight:

 

Fiction doesn't adhere to the same grammar rules that formal writing does. Formal writing is dry, dry, dry. A fictional narrative is driven by its author's ability to write in such a way that you never get tired of reading. Doing that without breaking grammar rules is rough. Fragment sentences are a blast, I prefer my commas fast and loose, and passive voice is great. We're on opposite ends of the spectrum- I get put off when there's little to no deviation from the hard rules. It feels like too much short, not enough sweet. There's such a thing as too much brevity, you know?

Obviously rules are there for a reason, and it's deceptively easy to get comfortable ignoring them and go completely off the rails. But even so, I think grammar should fit the narrative. Whether that pushes you towards one extreme or another should be up to your story.