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Here's the link to my sandbox: http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/lukorios
It's roughly 2800 words.
Here's the link showing my 2 greenlights: http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-13742161/never-or-always-has-been-2-2-greenlights
This is my first draft, so you may find some things that can seem pretty dumb in terms of story telling or explaining the SCP. Be completely honest in your critiques please, even if you may sound harsh.
Placeholder. Will crit soon.
Note: Not a pro reviewer.
containment is not possible. In case of a containment breach,
I thought containment wasn't possible? I think I know what you're going for, but the wording here is still strange.
SCP-XXXX is a phenomenon that manifests after a containment breach, or any other disaster and accident of the same level or worse, all detrimental to the Foundation; that affects individuals present in the site where the breach took place, causing in them a general feeling and aura of unusually intense and strong distrust, confusion, suspicion and doubt concerning who could have caused the breach.
This is a run-on sentence to beat all run-on sentences. Oof!
Note: I'm not a clinical tone pro in the slightest. Nor am I a pro, period, but I'll see if I can help with it.
Try: 'SCP-XXXX is a phenomenon that occurs after a containment breach or after any disastrous event that can lead to one. It affects all individuals present in the site where the event takes place. SCP-XXXX causes the personnel to feel suspicious on who the initial perpetrator may have been.'
I'm sure my version has its own share of flaws as well, but I will continue to help as best as I can.
This usually results in one person being blamed as "guilty" or "imposter", and in a bickering physical and verbal fight between affected personnel that can't seem to resolve their disagreements.
Try: 'In most cases, this will result in one person being labeled as, 'guilty,' or as the, 'imposter.' Following this scenario, personnel will engage in verbal as well as physical arguments and will become seemingly unable to resolve their disagreements. Personnel under this effect have been designated SCP-XXXX-A. Those who show immunity to it are designated SCP-XXXX-B.
SCP-XXXX affects all personnel present at the incident's site (example: if a breach takes places in site A, then everyone within site A's facilities would be affected by XXXX, but the effects don't seem to spread to personnel in site B, unless they are to come to site A, although the affection becomes weaker). This includes Foundation personnel, such as scientists, doctors, engineers, workers, security guards, janitorial staff and even D-class; irrespective of their age, gender, race or any other factor.
Try SCP-XXXX affects all personnel at the site of the incident, however, its influence does not extend to nearby sites. Personnel who are not there for the initial onset of SCP-XXXX but enter a facility undergoing the effects will, in turn, be affected by it at a reduced intensity.
That blackbox redaction, I feel, is unnecessary. Usually, blackbox redactions are very unnecessary, because they're meant for covering up extremely confidential information.
Info like locations, last names, and death tolls, I feel, are not necessarily redaction worthy. I'll link a guide to redactions after this crit.
That said, I'm not going to cover each and every single example of improper clinical tone; I would feel like I'd be rewriting your entire article if I did.
Just know that you should avoid overly wordy descriptions, avoid needless redactions, and try to be more concise with your wording.
Clinical Tone doesn't mean fancy shmancy lingo to sound professional. It means providing a precise, concise description free of emotional influence. You're describing something with a complete emotional detachment from the object/anomaly/whathaveyou.
Also, I have learned along the way that adverbs/adjectives like, 'immensely,' or 'extremely' are usually not clinical, so avoid those.
Dr Luke: Well, I think it was about 10 am, or maybe 10:30 ? Anyways, somewhere around that time, I was sitting with Dr Mend, Dr ███ and Dr ███, we were simply eating at the cafeteria, everything was normal. I recall Dr Mend going to the toilet, while the rest of my colleagues and I were just conversing. Suddenly, the alarm ran off, declaring an emergency and urging all personnel to evacuate immediately. We all quickly got out from the cafeteria and rushed to gate B. As we were running, I remember falling down the stairs, hitting my head very hard. I was unconscious for about 5 minutes, maybe ?, and later woke up with Dr Mend helping me to evacuate the facility. And that's pretty much it.
This doesn't feel like someone speaking. Feels like someone writing expository prose.
Also, both the interviewer and interviewee feel and sound identical in this interview. This will need a good deal of fixing.
But I'm free now, so I can't complain.
I don't think a scientist who was wrongly convicted of something would be this nonchalant, diary entry or not.
I've heard he's a man of renown in the Foundation,
I know that's how renown is used, but this still read strangely…is it just me? Probably is.
He probably has suffered the same fate as Mend, poor bastard.
I'm not really a fan of the line, 'poor bastard.'
It just feels so… stereotypically…what's the word for it? Like it feels so overused in any horror story to show pity for someone. This is more of a nitpick than anything, so feel free to ignore this bit of you want.
A massive explosion just took place at site 11, so I immediately rushed there.
'immediately rushed there' doesn't sound right out loud nor does it read smoothly.
I think, 'rushed there immediately' sounds better, but not still not…believable? Not for a diary entry.
Could it really be that me falling down the stairs and hitting my head cancelled this anomaly's effects on me ? I can't seem to come up with another explanation.
If this is actually the plot twist and not just a red herring, then I would have downvoted from this point.
I personally think that sufficient head trauma being the solution to fixing this anomaly is a really, really weak answer to what it is. I don't know what solution to offer here, but if bonking all the personnel on the head is all that's needed, then that makes this entirely containable. Just keep the one immune person and a mallet on standby at all times.
Interviewers: Dr Luke and Dr Jeremy
Interviewees: Dr ███,
Redacting their names is unnecessary. It would logically be better to know who the personnel being interviewed would be, wouldn't it?
*He chuckles but quickly stops as he realizes not even his partner is laughing*
This made me cringe. This is so unprofessional on so many levels. This isn't even a -J or lolfoundation so this isn't even warranted.
Yea, shut up D-boy,
I think this was funny, but at the same time, this was also cringe.
Dr Luke: Ha ha, vey funny.
Unprofessional. Foundation personnel wouldn't deign to sarcasm to a D-class.
We must report these findings to [REDACTED].
Still unnecessary redactions. Is it that dangerous to mention the person who has the authority to take the reports?
Listen Luke, you're my friend, but [DATA EXPUNGED]. Do you understand ?
[DATA EXPUNGED] means that it's been completely wiped from the entire database.
It's not in the system.
Was what this guy said that important that it needed to be expunged?
Overall, I'm not really all that big a fan of the concept.
It seems like just simple human nature being turned into an SCP. Naturally when something goes wrong, fingers are likely to be pointed and tensions will be high.
Turning it into a psychological phenomenon sorta interests me, but making the solution as simple as bonking someone's cranium just takes away most of the tension that could have been achieved.
Honestly, that plot revelation made me think of Super Mario and that's…something I never thought the SCP wiki would make me think of.
The dialogue sounds stiff and every characters sounds the same. The only time someone sounded mildly distinct was when the D-Class got beaten upside the head and got scared, but it still wasn't believable.
Panic and finger-pointing aside, none of their behavior was believable. It just read as overly angsty and as thought it was trying too hard.
I apologize for all the harshness so far, but I say this requires a significant re-write.
Don't be disheartened, though.
I'm happy you pursued this idea and pursued something you're interested in and passionate about. Just know that the first attempt in anything is almost always the worst.
You can only go up from here, friend.
I wish you the best of luck.
Just remember I'm still very inexperienced, so be sure to seek out more critique from others.
I'm sure they can provide a good deal of help.
Good luck, friend!
o7
-Quadraginta
P.S. I completely forgot to mention my thoughts on the picture.
I personally like it, but I don't know if it's really fitting to use a symbolic representation of something as the picture for it…
Um. Keep that in mind, I suppose. Sorry if this part came out of left field.
P.P.S.
The guide on redactions.
It seems then that I'm the one that must receive a bash in the head.
Jk, words cannot express how thankful I am. You really took your time reading my draft, and your response was harsh, which is exactly what I wanted. Don't worry, I'm not disheartened, just like you said: the first attempt in anything is almost always the worst. I'll definitely take in consideration everything you've told me, change the description, the dialogues, remove those cringy lines, and I'll definitely change the containment procedure and add more tension to the story.
Once again, I'm extremely grateful. You call yourself inexperienced, but to me, that was a really good critique !
I thought containment wasn't possible? I think I know what you're going for, but the wording here is still strange.
I'm referring to a containment breach caused by an SCP different that XXXX. It's not XXXX that's causing the breach, what I mean is that XXXX manifests after a breach takes place.
As for the dialogues, does everyone really sound they same ? Is it the way they talk, their behavior or something ? I think it's pretty okay, or am I being completely oblivious and my dialogues really suck ?
As for the final part where I wrote the [REDACTED] and [DATA EXPUNGED], I think you're right. I wanted to give some mystery to it, like I was thinking that maybe the higher ups wouldn't easily take well the discovery or approve with the proposed procedure, but it ended up being a massive fail. I'll think of something else.
As for the picture, I personally liked it (I made it with Paint :sadface:), and I think it really represents the concept/phenomenon of the SCP, as it's not really a "thing", so you can't have a literal representation of it.
P.S. English is not my first language, so maybe that's why I had trouble with the wording, phrasing and grammar.
You're welcome!
👍
Aa for the dialogue…uh, it's hard to explain now that I know English is not your first language.
Okay, I'll give some… extreme examples to see if I can get the point across.
Note: I'm not a dialogue expert either :P
A variety of responses to a situation where something is beyond someone's control.
Optimistic person: "Well, just gotta keep moving forward with our head held high!
Realist: Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.
Pessimist: Of course. Shit always goes south. Nothing good ever fucking happens. Fuck my life.
Apathetic: Whatever.
Angry: Why the goddamn fuck?!
Also have to take certain speech mannerisms into account.
My examples are not 100% perfect or maybe not even accurate, but hopefully I got my point across.
Edit: I wrote these examples at around 3AM and I was loopy and tired. The examples I gave you were, IMO, subpar. I apologise for that.
I recommend seeking another reviewer for help. I think I've done all I can so far.
The first thing that really catches my eye are the clumped-together collapsible in the addendum sections. Readers really aren't a big fan of those, if you're looking for ideas on how to make it a bit more appealing there is always (a) Taking everything out of the collapsible or (b) spacing them out to be a bit more aesthetically pleasing, such as SCP-5982.
SCP-XXXX is a phenomenon that occurs after a containment breach or after any disastrous event that can lead to one.
This is wordier than it needs to be, perhaps "SCP-XXXX is a phenomenon that occurs subsequent to a containment breach."
Disastrous event is too vague for me to understand what that means, and I think you're safe with just containment breach.
It affects all individuals present in the site where the event takes place.
This is unneeded with the subsequent sentence.
2017 at site 12
Site should be capitalized.
SCP-XXXX's strong psychic power has resulted in the death
"Strong psychic power" should be replaced with "influence"
In your interview logs, there are spaces before question marks.
Same thing with exclamation points in the diary log and interview logs.
That won't be necessary, cuz we all know you did it.
If this were to be transcribed, the slang "cuz" would be written as 'cause.
said the D-class while the guard was cuffing him to the chair
These commentary segments should not be written in prose like this. "The guard cuffs him to the chair" is appropriate here.
This is not doing anything for me.
I'll start with the real issue here. Which I think is best encapsulated in the following:
Procedure Skull Basher is an approach suggested by Dr Luke that consists in hitting SCP-XXXX-A's head, particularly the frontal hemisphere, with a force of roughly 2600 Newtons, which is enough to knock someone out and render them unconscious for some minutes, but below the chance to fracture bone and causing visible brain damage. This results in SCP-XXXX-A losing his/her memory for some time, basically "resetting" their minds and negating SCP-XXXX's effects. As of now, this is the only action that effectively deals with the anomaly, as other options, like the use of amnestics, drugs or other SCPs failed without satisfactory or lasting results.
As funny as the Foundation punching people in the head is, this feels like a misunderstanding of the Foundation's practices. They have amnestics to wipe people's memories.
I'm also confused about what exactly the anomaly is. The description is very odd and isn't very clear. I read in your Idea Forum post that this was a persistent, general feeling of suspicion and unease. This especially needs to be more clearly stated.
As for the addendum, they largely didn't add anything to the story, all of the interview logs basically add up to everyone is angry at each other and no one knows what's going on. You could largely cut the diary unless you are trying to characterize Luke but he came off a vindictive more than inquisitive. My advice for you is to focus on this site as a whole, have them hold large meetings with the Site-Director acting as the judge and jury meanwhile we have Luke who's the only sane one here. Eventually, he realizes that something like this happens every containment breach and eventually he figures out that there's an anomaly afoot.
I saw the premise I stated above partially in your idea post, but it's unrealized throughout this entire article.
Placeholder! Will get to this ASAP
Turns out ASAP was longer than I expected… My apologies!
Due to the nature of SCP-XXXX, containment is not possible.
I always have problems with this kind of stuff in the containment procedures. Even the most uncontainable entities have containment procedures to at least attempt. Maybe they aren't perfect, but procedures should at least be proposed. Maybe these are proposed procedures instead of accepted procedures.
In case of a containment breach, Dr Luke's team is to be deployed immediately to the Site.
What will Dr. Luke's team do? What if Dr. Luke's team is in another country or busy?
If XXXX's effects are observed and confirmed, the entire place is to be quarantined.
What does a quarantine look like? How do staff confirm an SCP-XXXX effect? What observations should they be aware of?
SCP-XXXX is a phenomenon that occurs subsequent to a containment breach.
Is it subsequent to the breaches or is it a result/part of the breaches?
SCP-XXXX causes the personnel to feel suspicious on who the initial perpetrator may have been.
What are the symptoms of this? What happens when they know who was the cause of the breach? Which personnel are suspicious? Is there a pattern of who people become suspicious of?
In most cases, this will result in one person being labeled as, 'guilty,' or as the, 'imposter.'
And what about in other cases?
Following this scenario, personnel will engage in verbal as well as physical arguments and will become seemingly unable to resolve their disagreements, leading to violence and murder.
Again, I struggle to know if I should be visualizing two people arguing or a whole room erupting into a brawl. It might also be worth breaking down the progress of this event in a more prescriptive way since events usually are pretty consistent between instances.
Personnel under this effect have been designated SCP-XXXX-A. Those who show immunity to it are designated SCP-XXXX-B.
What determines if someone falls under the effect and what determines if they don't? Until this point it sounded like everyone always gets effected.
As was mentioned before, SCP-XXXX affects all personnel at the site of the incident, however, its influence does not extend to nearby sites.
Clinical tone needs work and this kind of goes against the prior statement. Or does this mean everyone at the effected site are designated as SCP-XXXX-A, those in nearby sites are SCP-XXXX-B, and far away sites have no designation?
Personnel who are not there for the initial onset of SCP-XXXX but enter a facility undergoing the effects will, in turn, be affected by it at a reduced intensity.
How far after start does this count? If I walk in 2 minutes after the start will I be just as reduced as someone who enters 30 minutes later? How does the Foundation measure that the intensity is reduced?
Since the breach of 2017 at Site 12, SCP-XXXX's strong psychic power has resulted in the death of over 50 personnel, either from violent fights and murder between members of XXXX-A, or from termination sentences ordered by the Foundation; all prior to it's discovery.
Rough suggestion:Since the breach of Site-12 in 2017, SCP-XXXX events have resulted in the death of over 50 personnel in the various fights, murders, and termination sentences of SCP-XXXX-A instances before the anomaly was discovered.
Thanks to Dr Luke's investigations and contributions, the death rate caused by this anomaly has been reduced by over 90%, with almost all cases resulting in a successful handling of the situation.
How did Dr. Luke do this? What counts as a successful handling? We also don't have a specific number in the previous sentence so the 90% reduction doesn't mean as much. To make the percentage matter you might want to make the "over 50" into a specific value.
Addendum section could use a title before the collapsibles start and some context to why they are included would incentivize the reader to want to click on them.
An interview at the end of the breach of Site 12, year 2017. All individuals present at said site were interviewed as rumors stated that Dr Mend was responsible for the breach in one way or another. So far, everyone testified by declaring he was guilty, with Dr Luke being the last interviewee, waiting to give his opinion.
Needs an overhaul for clinical tone. Rough Suggestion: Following the breach of Site-12 on dd/mm/2017, interviews were conducted with all present individuals to determine the cause of the breach. Dr. Luke was the last to be interviewed and has been explicitly included in this documentation due to discrepancies with all other interviews. Prior to this interview, all personnel had identified Dr. Mend as the cause of the containment breach event.
I thought the breach has been taken care of…
If he was the final interview why does he not know why he is being interviewed. I assume he watched everyone else at the site go through the process and had probably been waiting for a while without being able to talk to other witnesses beforehand.
Researcher Chuan: I just need to hear from you how Dr Mend was behind all this.
Researcher Chuan: Every single person that I've interviewed before you claimed that Dr Mend caused this breach. That's testimony from more than 30 individuals, pretty strong evidence. You were present there and managed to escape with the rest. You really don't know what I'm talking about?
Leading the interviewer. A good interviewer/investigator doesn't give the interviewee the answer to their own questions. I recommend sticking with asking what happened generally or asking him to identify if he saw anyone do anything suspicious before the events.
I just told you he helped me escape. If he truly was behind the breach, then surely he wouldn't have done anything to help me.
This is a bit of a leap to make.. This might be Dr. Luke's opinion but maybe not taken as fact or evidence of Dr. Mend being innocent.
You're the only one defending him, which means that you were working with him, making you a suspect.
This is also a jump. Without any evidence of this I don't see why they would be arresting him just based on him saying that he doesn't think Dr. Mend is guilty.
How come? Did everyone just go completely insane?
If you want to make this claim it might require Dr. Luke seeing some evidence that makes blaming Mend more unconvincing. Like maybe Dr. Luke saw who did start the breach or that the breach was started in plain view of a bunch of people so it is extra anomalous that nobody pointed to the correct person. Right now it just feels like Dr. Luke is upset because his friend was blamed which doesn't sound like a good objective scientist.
I have been given access to see the interview recording after the breach, and everyone blamed Dr Karl.
How is Dr. Luke not being blamed again? They have now been present at 2 different breaches and their only evidence that something odd is going on is that they like the person who is being blamed. They still have no evidence so this doesn't seem very anomalous. And how did Dr. Luke get access to the recordings?
He recognizes that everyone is blaming each other, but doesn't really conclude anything about it. Could it be that I'm immune to this effect? Could it really be that me falling down the stairs and hitting my head cancelled this anomaly's effects on me? I can't seem to come up with another explanation.
Let the reader figure this out rather than just telling me the answer. I was already assuming this and putting the puzzle together and then I feel like I was robbed of my discovery.
Addendum XXXX-3: Initial testing interview
This interview doesn't teach me more about the anomaly or characters or events. It just shows me what I already knew but in a different format and now shows me that Dr. Jeremy believes Dr. Luke. But the fact that the three people argued doesn't prove anything. A containment breach could result in paranoia or psychological distress so I'm still looking to know what makes these events look anomalous to Dr. Luke other than that it was their friends who were blamed.
The final two logs
These last two logs don't really confirm anything or add to the article beyond "concussions cause memory loss" or "torture makes the witnesses give a different answer" which still doesn't convince me of the anomally.
Total critique: Look at the questions I have asked you and answer them for yourself. They don't all need to be in the article, but these answers might help you form the article in a different way. I think the idea of an anomaly that happens during containment breaches to cause chaos is really interesting and I want to see this idea continue to grow! But it still needs a lot of work on making the anomaly clear and connecting the addendums to the anomaly.
pm me when you've had a chance to review and revise!
