Din of the Drums

Din of the Drums

Fliaflalfla 05 Aug 2020 14:29

Seeking Greenlights: Yes

Page Type: SCP Article

Genre: Comedy

Elevator Pitch: A set of two timpani which can be heard from any distance when struck. Manufactured by Yamaha and acquired by the London Symphony Orchestra in 2008. The drums also seem to have some awareness and motivation for their properties to remain undiscovered, as they are able to return to normal function if someone tests them.

Central Narrative: Caused mass hysteria when played due to worldwide reach. Took the foundation a long time to locate the source of the drumming. The foundation initially believed the drumming to be without a source, and had to make up all kinds of excuses such as earthquakes and construction to quell suspicion. Only when the drumming was found to coincide with LSO concerts was the source of the terrifying drumming suspected to be a single set of drums. However, the two anomalous timpani are part of a set of four, and due to their ability to play normally as well, the foundation had to trick them into revealing themselves by monitoring a real concert visually, with an outside listener far away to figure out which drums were causing the problem.

Hook/Attention-Grabber: I plan on detailing all the trouble caused by the drums prior to their containment. The real hook here is what can be caused by something as simple as the sound of drums, from mild annoyance to fears of doomsday.

Last edited on 06 Aug 2020 17:39 by Fliaflalfla Show more

Re: Din of the Drums

REDESERT 05 Aug 2020 15:52

Hello Fliaflafla! let's take a look! :)

The secrets of the desert:

+ show block

The concept:

Elevator Pitch: A set of two timpani which can be heard from any distance when struck

The skip is quite vague, while I don't hate the idea, there isn't enough here for me to understand what exactly it is, why/how its here and how all of this is important. The drums themselves don't seem to have much of a purpose, which in tern makes the effects feel unneeded/unnecessary. Unfortunately, due to the lack of detail in the pitch, this comes off as thing that does a thing.

The narrative:

Central Narrative: Caused mass hysteria when played due to worldwide reach. Took the foundation a long time to locate the source of the drumming.

This is also quiet vague, as there is only a basic outline of what happens here, the story doesn't seem to have any real conflict or payoff. More or less feels like a series of events, that lead to an SCP being found an contained.

Final thoughts (out dated)
Personally, there is something I like about this. The skips simplicity and effect have potential, though there doesn't seem to be much done with it in the end (I'm not seeing much of a payoff). I think giving the skip some kind of history/purpose would really benefit it overall. And the narrative would greatly benefit from some sort conflict and payoff.

Here are some links you may find helpful while developing this.

http://www.scpwiki.com/how-to-write-an-scp

http://www.scpwiki.com/yourjouney-part-1 - the other two pages are linked at the top.

If you would like me to give this further advice/feedback, then feel welcome to shoot me a PM or ask via IRC. response times generally range from 2-12 hours over PMs. If your looking for additional critiques in general, then I couldn't recommend the Butterfly squad more:)

Cheers,

-The Desert

---

Heyo follow up!

More secrets:

+ show block

The concept:

Elevator Pitch: A set of two timpani which can be heard from any distance when struck. Manufactured by Yamaha and acquired by the London Symphony Orchestra in 2008. Furthermore, and in response to critique, the drums themselves are meant to serve as a vessel to ground the story and keep it from getting too esoteric, as opposed to drumming without a source.

While I can see you have elaborated on this more, the pitch here feels more like background information than anything else, as the time and place it was created don't really add anything to the skip/story. The info given here should at least offer some insight into the its purpose, or relate back to the skip itself in some way, what about this information is important and how does that effect the story?

The narrative:

Central Narrative: Caused mass hysteria when played due to worldwide reach. Took the foundation a long time to locate the source of the drumming. The foundation initially believed the drumming to be without a source, and had to make up all kinds of excuses such as earthquakes and construction to quell suspicion. Only when the drumming was found to coincide with LSO concerts was the source of the terrifying drumming found to be nothing more than two fluke timpani, which were contained in 2019.

As for your story, I'm still not really seeing much of a payoff, as the Foundation pretty much looks around, eventually finds the thing and then contains it. Even though they face issues in covering up why there is random drumming, It still doesn't feel like enough of a conflict imo. Perhaps they run into issues finding it due to the owner realising its anomalous, which results in the Foundation needing to be more and more aggressive in their efforts to find it.

Red or green?
For now I'm still going to say no Greenlight. While I think there has been improvement, I would still say its a little ways off. Overall, try linking the purpose and manufacturing information back to the skip itself, try to find a reason why including that would be important. The story here could benefit from more of a conflict, the events feel a bit stale to me considering the Foundation only really goes on a search party for it. The skip still gives me "thing that does thing vibes", as there isn't much done with the skip, its more of a; anomaly is causing an issue, the Foundation finds eventually tracks it down, then the world resumes being normal.

With that said, feel free to let me know if/when you decide to elaborate on this further. Response times range from 2-12 hrs over PMs. Do note the butterfly squad is a great place for second takes if your looking for more critters. :)

Cheers,

-The Desert

Last edited on 06 Aug 2020 13:18 by REDESERT Show more