Originally Posted by
WaddyisOsvaldo
KY Matty and all my other fellow Talent Hunt losers -- let's not squander all the hard work and good will we've invested here. This is a call for us to use this experience to become better writers, to crack the code and to figure out why we didn't win. What made our scripts lesser-than? What will make us winners? The best way to do this is to have others rip our work. Then we should go back and dissect our stories once more, after they've been critiqued. Let's tinker, learn from our mistakes, embrace what worked and come back next year to win this thing.
I propose we start a program of Pay-It-Forward critiquing. I've written up a brief critique of KY Matty's script and posted it below. All I ask in return is that KY Matty write up a critique of someone else's work posted on this site. It doesn't have to be too in depth, but try to give some constructive feedback. For the rest of you, if you have your work critiqued, you should in turn, critique someone else's. Or better yet, even if you haven't had your work critiqued, click on one of the script links in this thread and read/critique one right now.
Of course, critiques should be respectful, but we also shouldn't feel like we have to pull punches either. What do you say? Let's dig in and make our failure count for something. And with that, I give you my critique of "Tsin-Tsen's Inferno" by Matt Rogers.
I considered doing a Tsin story for my entry. He’s a great character and I think you’ve done a very nice job of telling a powerful emotional story here that pushes this character forward in interesting ways.
In a general sense, I think the dialogue/captions are a bit stilted, while it’s tough to put my finger on why sometimes. However, below I’ve pulled out a few examples.
On page 2, I don’t know what these demons look like. It may be my unfamiliarity with the Witchblade universe, but at least a little description would have been nice for me. … I think some of Tsin’s exposition is a bit extemporaneous. There are times when you can write a bit tighter. And other times, when I feel you can open up wider and make your descriptions bigger and more vivid for the artist to inspire your artist.
I like the opening fight scene. It’s crisp, and his voice over about being an improv artist guides us nicely though it. That moment when he snaps the demon’s neck, “*CRACKLE*” — great stuff. (A style note, you should keep to the present tense in your action if that’s the tense you’re working in. PAGE 3, Panel 4 should have read: Tsin snaps the demon’s neck.)
Your panel count is off on Page 7. Personally, I consider these kinds of things minor mistakes that an editor or artist can easily catch and fix. But some people get mental over this kind of thing.
Write tight, ie: Page 7 Panel 2: “Over Father’s shoulder the swords hang on the wall in the background.” They’re over his shoulder on the wall — we can assume it’s in the background, unless the artist has a better way of showing it. Nevertheless, I really like this page, with “flame tongues licking the ceiling from off of (Mali’s) body.”
Page 12, I like the echoes of the back-story we just left behind on the previous page.
I think the writing can be a bit stilted at times, where the dialogue can sound more conversational, the captions more crisp, and the descriptions more detailed and immersive. Here’s an example from Page 17: Panel 2: “Mali stands in a gateway that is surrounded by fiery fog. Above his head is the bottom half of a sign reading, “ye who enter here.”
This is a great image, and I think you can feed your artist a lot more here, and then of course, let him or her riff off of what your imagination conjures. Tell me more about Mali? What emotion is imprinted on his face? Is he hunched about to pounce or grasping at pillars to hold him up – still run down from his last run-in with Tsin or is he running his fingers through his hair like Jennifer Beals doing the dance to “Maniac?” That sign that he’s stepping on, is it wrought iron? I assume it is, but tell me. I think there are a lot of opportunities throughout for even more descriptive or engaging writing that are squandered.
All in all however, I think this story is well structured and entertaining and I enjoyed reading it. I think you could definitely be among the 40.