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Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Basic plot synopsis:

So, a bunch of middle/high schoolers in our ordinary world in a city (we'll call it Greensburg, but subject to change) find special rocks/gems that seem to bond to them. Then, one day, in the middle of their sleep, the gems activate and open a portal to an alternate world, a fantasy dimension named Draconia currently suffering from a bad case of the Evil Overlords. 

The gems, in fact, are fairies who were sent through the dimensional boundary to find people with noble traits and bring them back to the home dimension. By fusing with the gems, they can transform into heroes with special powers to fight against the villains.

Unfortunately, time passes equal in both worlds-an hour in Earth equals an hour in Draconia, and vice-versa, so they can't spend all their time there in the other world fixing their problems-they have to balance their school and social lives with dealing with the other world.

Characters (So far):

Jakob "Jake" Clement- A 16 year old boy who loves sports and art. The focal character in the CYOA. With the help of the Flame Fairy Ignis, he can transform into the Blazing Knight Vermillion, which fights with sword and shield and the power of fire.

Cyrus Eingard- A 14 year old boy with high intellect but low social skills who loves video games. Can be selfish, but not intentionally. Can use the Wind Fairy Ventus to become the Tempest Archer, Hawkeye, which wield winds to help with trick shots.

Amy Colrich- A 13 year old girl who doesn't take shit from anyone. Rides horses and hates bullies. Uses the power of the Water Fairy Aqua to become the Sea Sage, Ursula, who uses magic to deadly efficiency, as well as heal.

Midoriko Kohaku- A 15 year old girl who likes to make friends and read books. Shy. Uses the power of the Earth Fairy Terra to become the Ground Monk, Iris, who uses her body as a deadly weapon.

Jean-Francois Bernard- A 17 year old delinquent who went rogue after recieving his powers and defected to the enemy's side. Using the power of the Thunder Fairy Tonitrus, he becomes the Dark Sky Sage Clapp, who's magic power is matched only by his cruelty.

Demon Emperor Belial- The dark overlord who has taken over Draconia, with unmatched charisma and cruelty. Master of the blade.

Dark General Dullahan- Belial's military strategist and assistant with regards to quenching rebellions and defeating armies. Honorable, but loyal to only Belial. His lancework is powerful.

Dark General Fafnir- Belial's assassin and spy, whose stealth skills are unparalleled. They say that anyone who sees him dies-but that has to be a rumor.

Dark General Teatha- Belial's personal spell-weaver, who assists his rain with her dark magic.

Take an Isekai anime, add a layer of more American characters, add in the double-life twist and a hint of self-awareness (Cyrus: "This is like something out of a video game!") and that's what you're getting out of this CYOA!

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Dark Thief Jarken- An opportunistic self-proclaimed "Phantom Thief" who steals increasingly improbably things. A light-hearted joke villain who appears to break up arcs and offer a bit of character development.

Berserk Bull Griede- A bandit who is under Belial's pay, who loves making mischief and causing chaos. Starter villain.

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Fairy King Berono - The man who sent the Faries to Earth to find heroes. A kind, loving king who cares for his subjects (but has a quirky side)

Jet - A cool-headed street rat turned rebel who fights against Belial.

Cross - A wandering student of the sword on a pilgrimage ordained by his master, Sword Sage Krow. Fights using a special sword known as a katana and a stance based around drawing from his sheath and slashing in one motion.

High Priestess Alania - A maiden of pure heart who seeks to help purify the world from the dark Haze that Belial has set loose.

Grek and Kreg - Two dumb demonic minions who often try to assist Belial or the others but often screw things up.

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Fags. 

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Very observant of you to notice this early on that Dullahan has a crush on Belial and that Amy is a lesbian! Gold star for observation, but that is a very outdated and homophobic term.

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Wait, didn't you leave this same exact comment somewhere else?

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

What do you think of this so far?

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Dreaming of Things to come

"...Hero..." You hear echo through a void of black.

"...e need a hero..." It echoes again.

"We need a hero to stand against the darkness..." it repeats.

"You... can do it... Vermillion..."

"...ake."

"Wake up, Jake!"

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago
Commended by EndMaster on 7/29/2018 7:07:47 AM

Doesn't seem that you are asking for feedback, so I'll look at this more as more of an advertisement.

Presentation
I don't know if you are using the rich text editor or not, but regardless, bolding some words to make the two sections stand out would be a great improvement, something like:

Basic plot synopsis:

[text]

Characters (So far):

[text]

Further, if you bold the way I did, capitalising the main words would also help, (so "Basic Plot Synopsis" rather than "Basic plot synopsis"). Also, when using the dash, I'd have a space on each side, ie:
"Dark General Fafnir - [text]"

I also believe that listing the characters might help make it all look nicer, something like:

  • Dark General Fafnir - [text]
  • Light General Evil - [text]

An alternative method I'd suggest is bolding the character names, and fully capitalising the section names (CHARACTERS etc).

Other than that, I don't really have any feedback regarding making a good advertisement. Your writing seemed to be properly written, and you didn't just have simple sentences. You also knew how to not post a text wall. I'd give it a solid 7/10, based on the main post that you made.

PRESENTATION

If you really want to go above and beyond, using complementary fonts for the body and headings while also conveying a relevant tone could help. Using italics to emphasise important things, like "Coming soon to a new storygames list near you!"

This can be helped by modifying the size of text, be subtle since you want it to still look nice, but small increases for certain things could give it an oomph. Also, if you are using html rather than rich text editor, avoid depreciated code because potential publishers won't like that... (maybe idk).

Use of colour and images could also bring the thing to life, if you use images pay attention to make sure they fit well, look at the margins and padding as that can help differentiate quality and ammeter work. You want things to stay simple, but beautiful. Don't forget to give alt="text" to your images, you ought to keep your advertisement accessible to as many people as possible to ensure maximum attention!

Colour is also tricky to use due to sticking out big time, so you really ought to be wise with it's implementation, unless you want people getting pissed.

Also, the last paragraph is where you give a short summary, but emphasis is heavy on the Isekai anime part, which I question because I feel calling it a 'modern/fantasy adventure' would likely get you more hits. After all this is a written work. Obviously it could be turned into an anime or something, but right now it isn't, so I'd avoid labelling it as if it were an anime.

Following platform conventions, namely recognising how one categorises cyoa's is what will help you here, as you want to conform where it will be beneficial. There is a reason phone and computer sites look different! (Sometimes...)

Finally, getting some famous people to review your story and then give it a review that you can cherry pick a sentence from and put five stars beside would also be beneficial, as a quote with five stars beside it really does stand out.

Oh also don't forget to call it a Bestseller (even if it isn't being sold, or even out yet).

TL;DR
Presentation isn't the best thing ever, but you didn't make any fundamental mess ups, they actually seemed pretty solid.
P.S. This post might have been structured as more of a joke... if you want feedback regarding the content, feel free to ask.
Best of luck with the story!

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Derp.

It's going to be a storygame, on this site, not a book. And yes, I am looking for feedback somewhat, but I'll do what you said and edit.

Or I would, but now I can't.

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Ah, I should have worded some parts a little differently, but it was clear that you were talking about a storygame. Also only admins can edit posts once someone has responded to them, which is why you can't edit at the moment.

Anyway, keep in mind this'll just be my opinion based on what I have gathered about your idea, so it's up to you to evaluate it to see if you can get something useful from it.

PLOT GRIPES

So, a lot of this will depend on what sort of world you are trying to establish and what not, but here are my attempts at tearing into your setting to see if you can respond (mind you, there is more than one 'correct' response, it is your setting after all!).

Gem Fairies
They were sent to "find people with noble traits", yet you don't mention what the character's noble traits are. Is "lov[ing] sports and art" a noble trait? Is "lik[ing] to make friends and read books" a noble trait? Or what about my favourite (which I'll get back to,) cruelty? That sure is a great noble trait, specially when it matches the power of the gem...

The reason I got caught up on this is because the idea of something larger than everyday life causing young people to suddenly be a lot more important isn't really something unique, and I know that at least at times, there is no real reason that it is kids and teens being chosen to have super powerful magical powers granted upon them. Yes, sometimes the why doesn't matter, but in this case, I can see finding people with noble traits as a pretty valid reason for younger people being selected (as opposed to 'pure of heart' [granted I can imagine this being handled well, but usually it isn't]).

Another questions I will have to pose is why the gems didn't find people in their own world who had noble traits? It seems like there are some good characters who seem to be pretty capable as is, imagine if they had the boosted power from the gems! Now I'm wondering if one person could have got them all... (I'm assuming no)

Back to the gem wielder gone rogue, how'd that happen! I'm sure answers can be given, but right now I just find it weird that gems designed to find noble people would go to someone super cruel AND stay with them, after all the gems are actually fairies, so why can't the thunder fairy go find someone else? Also why was a fairy that turns people into a "Dark Sage" created? Also a thunder fairy is all about sound, I assume? Or is it just called thunder because Thunder Gem sounds cooler than Lightning Gem?

School or World Saving¿
So I can see that the reason for them balancing their lives between two worlds, one more mundane than the other, is to give a neat contrast and be a sort of selling point for the premise. However, my question is how they hop between the two worlds. It is because of the gems I assume, but why are the gems allowing these 'noble' people to ditch saving their world from pure evil to go study algebra!?

My issue here is that if someone is given great power, in the words of Spiderman, they are also given great responsibility. Don't get me wrong, I think school is important and all, but I just find it a bit weird that people who are given power to save a world would still be going to school for half the day. Also I wonder how they'll explain this to their parents, specially the 13 year old (youngest) and 15 year old (shy, something their parents hopefully noticed, so it'd be weird for her to suddenly be spending all her time outside of school 'with friends').

Names
Ah, the age old tradition of using cool popular names for your own characters, nothing wrong with that, but when you think of it as a parent (supposedly in a modern setting) naming their kid after an Ancient Greek character of tragedy, I have to wonder how that happened.

I also wonder if the names hold any significance, but I guess that'll be answered through reading the finished product.

WRITING
Looks good to me, the pacing seems decent and you don't waste time introducing characters, which is great for something that has a large cast. Granted, not much to look at yet, but I'd say you are definitely on the right track. Will be interesting to see how you handle major exposition when it comes up in story (along with choices, always a pretty important aspect of storygames!).

I'd be happy to give more feedback on the writing once you have more actually story related stuff prepared. I will mention now that leaving editing and polishing for later can be a good method, so you shouldn't worry too much about having it be 'perfect' right away, as that is something pretty unrealistic to aim for.

TL;DR
Keep writing! You seem to be doing that already, which is great. I throw quite a few questions your way, so see if you can answer them or dismiss (for yourself), in order to build up a stronger world by having a more concrete idea of it in your head. It is very possible you already have this, in which case I might have wasted a bit of time, but I do enjoy questioning other peoples work.

P.S. I am getting the feeling that what gems turn you into depends on you, otherwise the prophetic dream is even smarter knowing to call Jake Vermilion before knowing what fairy would go to him.

P.P.S. If anything I wrote doesn't quite make sense, call me out on it, I was in a bit of a rush so didn't have time to proofread as much as I would have liked. Hopefully you still get what I am saying, and manage to get something useful out of it. Also, once again, keep writing!

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

I should mention each fairy was coded to a certain trait:

Ignis: Courage

Ventus: Intelligence

Aqua: Honesty

Terra: Kindness

Tonitrus: Ambition

The idea is that Jean exerts his will over Tonitrus's, and tames it to his power.

It's not "Dark Sage", it's "Dark Sky Sage". Dark Sky = Thunderstorm clouds. And, yeah, I chose Thunder because it sounded cooler, his powers are electrical.

The idea is that while an adult in real life has to deal with all the stresses of real life, like a job and his kids and so forth, kids, while still busy in their own way, have a lot more lee-way as to how they spend their time, which lets them get away with what they do.

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Jake's mother shakes his bed, trying to wake him up.

"Honestly, Jake, you're getting a bit old for me to wake you up in the morning."

"...five more minutes, mom..." Jake says, groggily.

"NOW." Jake's mother, Patricia, says, with a fire behind it. Jake gets up and stretches.

"Now get in the shower while I make breakfast and get your brother and sister up."

Jake steps into his bathroom and cleans himself up in the shower, before getting out and putting on some fresh clothing and heading down to the dining room. Cassandra is eating her waffles while Patricia feeds Raymond in his high chair. Jake sits down in his own spot and begins to eat his waffles.

"You two excited for your first day of school?" Patricia asks, wiping a bit of snot off Raymond's nose. Cassandra nods, excited for her first day of fourth grade, while Jake can only sigh at the tedium that will be his sophmore year.

"Now, don't you take that tome with me, Jacob Clement." Cassandra gasped, and even Raymond seemed to turn.

"Alright. I'll try to make it better than last year..." Jake sighed as he ate. Soon, he was finished, and started packing up his backpack to leave for the bus.

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

The bus pulls up to Jake's stop and he gets in with the others. He looks around for a place to sit as he walks in... There are three positions that seem most obvious.

 

The first is next to a brown-haired white boy who's playing on his Nintendo 3DS.

 

The second is next to a girl with a blond ponytail and fairly muscular physique, who's just looking at her phone.

 

The third is a black-haired Asian girl who has her nose in a book.

 

Who to sit by? Jake thinks.

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Jake sits down next to the brown haired boy, who seems lost in his own little world. A cursory glance at the screen indicates that he seems to be playing Bravely Default.

 

Soon, the bus pulls into the high school, and Jake gets up to leave. The brown-haired boy gets up and joins him.

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Jake sits down next to the blonde girl. She turns to look at him. "Hey."


"Hey yourself. What's your name?" Jake asks.

 

"Amy. I don't recognize you. What school are you going to?" She replies.


"Jake. I'm going to Polk High." Jake answers. Amy has a moment of realization.


"Oh! I'm going to Greenwood Middle. I'm 13."

 

"I'm 15." Jake answers. "But you seem like a nice girl." Amy blushed a little.
 

"Thanks."
 

The bus ride passed quickly, and soon it arrived at Polk High. Jake got off and walked towards the school.

Dealing With Double Life In Two Worlds (CYOA)

5 years ago

Jake sits next to the Asian girl. She notices him, but seems to shrink further to the window.


"Oh, hi. My name is Jake. What's yours?"


She mumbles something, a little too quiet to hear.


"What?" Jake says, trying to get her to repeat her voice louder.


"My name is Midoriko." she says more audibly.


"You a sophomore?" Jake asks.


"...Junior." She says.


Midoriko says nothing for the rest of the car ride, and gets off at the high school with Jake.