Talk:Cracked

LoganWoerner Story Review: Cracked
This is my official review for Cracked, a short story written by RaiserOfCain for the Spring Writing Contest 2014.

This story revolves around a character named Gantrax, who has a mortal wound in his torso. I'm guessing that the plot for this story is that Gantrax must find a way to heal himself. I'm not particularly fond of the plot, because it is a bit cliché. There have probably been several other short stories on CBW that resort to having a character be killed gruesomely just for kicks, or to make it "gritty". There are other ways to have a gritty story.

Also, the plot doesn't seem very "springy" to me. I think that the point of the Sprig Writing Contest was to promote the writing of spring stories. And no, I don't think that the phrase "Spring was arriving" is enough. I don't mean that you have to make it all happy, with cheerful birds and squirrels all around, but the general feeling one should get after reading a spring-related story should be, well, a springy feeling.

I also dislike the use of all-caps, bolded, and italicized dialogue. It's a bit distracting, and it almost sections off the pieces of text above and below said dialogue.

The prose is good, so I won't say anything bad here. Also, I like the power that Gantrax's Kanohi has. It seems to cut out a wound identical to the one the wearer has, and then heals the wearer's wound I like that.

Final Verdict: There is some well-written pieces of text here, and Gantrax is quite an interesting character, but the plot is too cliché, and not springy at all. How many times has a story been written where someone dies in the most gruesome fashion, to make the story seem "gritty". This is another story that would have worked better as a smaller piece of a larger story.

Score: D

&mdash; Logan Woerner   (Blog) 15:21, March 11, 2014 (UTC)