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Attack Of The Bohrok: Review Topic


Axilus Prime

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  • 9 months later...

ECC Charity Reviews: They're like normal ECC reviews, except you didn't ask for them.Anyway, time to get onto the review itself:First, I like the idea of retelling the story of the Bohrok. 2002 was one of Bionicle's best years, IMO, if only because of the Bohrok. I think retellings of official Bionicle stories can be fantastic when done right, so I was interested when I saw the direction you were taking this story in.But -- and I'll be honest here -- I was massively disappointed with what you did. While your description is about average, your characters are very shallow and you have an inconsistent point of view style. Not to mention you make some questionable stylistic choices.Take, for example, this passage:

Give me back MY MASK! Takua charged at the creature, but changed direction to confuse it.
Why does "my mask" need to be capitalized? It's unnecesary. You use all-caps unnecessarily in other places, too. You should only use all-caps occasionally and for emphasis, not randomly like here.Here's another stylistic concern:
Well, I never played before, but...TIME TO TRY KOLI!!
Aside from the unnecessary use of all-caps, you needn't use more than one exclamation mark in a sentence. In fact, some authors argue that you shouldn't use exclamation marks at all, although I'm not entirely sold on that idea, personally. Still, it's a good idea to use exclamation marks sparingly.Also, Takua is hit by acid from the Lehvak several times throughout the story and he somehow survives. He doesn't appear to suffer from any serious injuries, nor does the acid appear to eat away at his and kill him slowly and painfully. I just find it bizarre that this acid that can eat through solid rock apparently only injures Takua slightly, which either speaks to Takua's resillience or to your lack of thinking through the consequences of being hit with acid.The characters aren't much to write home about, honestly. You probably assumed readers would be familiar with them alredy, considering they're all from the canon, but that doesn't excuse you from writing them as believably as you can. It's hard to feel any sort of empathy for them when they are so shallow.The worst part of this story, I think, is Turaga Vakama's infodump when Takua returns to Ta-Koro. It is boring and slows the story down considerably. You could have found a much more interesting way to deliver this information to readers or even done away with most of it, considering most Bionicle fanfic readers are probably already familiar with the Bohrok. If they forget something about the Bohrok, they can just go to BS01.I noticed a minor plot hole here:
The Toa arrived here [Ta-Koro], after seeing them [bohrok]. They warned me [Vakama] and the villages.
So you establish here that the rest of the island has already been warned about the Bohrok. Okay.But then you go on to say here:
Keahi sounded the alarm. Turaga Vakama, we are being assaulted by these Bohrok you told us about!Takua was surprised. You told the whole island?Vakama facepalmed. Of course I told them! Use you common sense, Takua! They must be ready. Left unchecked, the Bohrok will destroy the island in one day!
It can't be that Takua wasn't listening earlier, for you gave us no indication that he wasn't. It's a relatively small thing, but it's often the small things that trip us up, so I recommend fixing it.Your point of view (POV) choices are inconsistent. It looks like you're trying to do the omniscient POV, in which a narrator outside of the story narrates the story and can look into the minds and thoughts of any character at will, but the omniscient narrator is very hard to pull off. In this chapter alone, you jump from Makuta's POV, to Takua's, to somehow all of the Toa Mata collectively, back to Takua, and back to the Toa Mata again. All without giving us a smooth transition.Point of view is very important because POV is how you choose to let the read view the story. Do you want the reader to know the objective facts about the situation and characters? Or do you want the reader to view the story through the lens of a biased and possibly unreliable character?The answers to those questions can drastically impact how you present the story, so it's important to know how you want to tell the story and then try to consistently stick with that POV type. I will admit, though, that it can be easy to slip up where POV is concerned, even if you are an experienced writer, so don't beat yourself up too much if you keep messing up. Just learn from your mistakes and try to do better next time, which is really all any writer can do.Overall, I'm not really impressed by your story. The infodump in the middle bogs it down, your POV is inconsistent, your stylistic choices are questionable at best and annoying at worst, and the characters have no life in them.I apologize if I was harsh in some places, but I feel that the best way for a writer to improve is if he or she is given honest criticism. And if I am wrong anywhere or you disagree, feel free to say so.Keep on writing!-TNTOS-

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt

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