Walpurgisnacht

Summary:

Witches gather on Broken Mountain to throw a party and plan for a disaster for the arrival of spring

Walpurgisnacht

Dr Ch_M 16 Jan 2023 21:26

summary: "Walpurgisnacht" A night in the German heritage, in which it is mentioned that the witches gather at the top of Brocken Mountain to hold a party.

My version of the story but with more foundation lore

Link to the sandbox: http://scp-sandbox-3.wikidot.com/dr-alex-blast

Link to the green light: http://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/forum/t-15087847/walpurgisnacht

I think the article needs more spelling checking in some lines, and maybe removing or adding other ideas, I hope it's good enough

Thanks for reading (:

Crit!

Reverend Fox 18 Jan 2023 07:58

Let's see what I can do for you. As this is a much longer draft than I would normally tackle, my Specifics section will not be as in-depth as I would like. That said, though, I will give you enough information that you can hunt down and correct the remaining issues.

++ Show Advice ++

• [Borrowed from Zyn's boilerplate.] Writing-wise, you have a lot of simple errors, including [missing and incorrect punctuation, run-on sentences, mechanical errors, grammar, etc.] To find and address these, we highly recommend using a writing assistance tool like Grammarly, or a spellchecker. Additionally, if you haven’t encountered clinical tone or writing analytical essays in school yet, it can be hard to write an article that possesses the unique "flash fiction as written by a professional scientist" tone the site audience is looking for. For your own self-study, we can recommend some materials you can study up on, such as these college resources for clinical tone:
  • http://www.aje.com/en/arc/editing-tip-maintaining-formal-tone-scientific-writing/
  • http://academicguides.waldenu.edu/writingcenter/scholarlyvoice/tone
  • https://healthcare.utah.edu/brand-and-style-guide/writing-guide.php
• Your clinical tone seems a little weak in places. I'll show you a few instances of this in the specifics, but in the meantime, check out these awesome and helpful articles on tone:
  • How-To-Write-an-SCP
  • Clinical Tone Declassified
• There are some unnecessary redactions in your draft that don't really help your story. Check out this helpful article on the topic:
  • Avoid the Blackbox by MalyceGraves
• Keep your descriptions concise to avoid confusion or, even worse, reader fatigue.
• For small numbers, write them out. "5 inactive …" = "five inactive …"

And now, on with the crit:

++ Show Full Crit ++

CONCEPT:

• As awesome as this draft is for using actual esoteric pagan lore and ritual, I feel that the story itself got lost in the details.
• Don't let this discourage you, however, because you have the framework for something fuckin' epic here.

SPECIFICS:

SPaG
At the risk of sounding dick-headed, the sentence structure and grammatical inconsistencies are extremely confusing, and some of the phrasing was quite difficult to follow.

• Sentence structure:
  • "… as an urban legend, civilians who have been …" -> There should be a period here, not a comma. Whenever you have two independent clauses, there should be proper punctuation.
  • "… instance of SCP-XXXX-A immediately and staff working on the project are …" -> There should be a comma before 'and' because this also indicates two separate clauses.
  • "hexennacht event" / "Mages Academy" / "Magis Academy¹" / "Walpurga-301" and others do not need to be within quotations.
  • These errors persist throughout.
• Inconsistent grammar:
  • "hexennacht event" -> Hexennacht is a noun. In German, all nouns are capitalized similar to how proper nouns are capitalized in English.
  • In reference to the mountain, you refer to it in the following ways:
    • "Mount Brocken" - 1x
    • "Broken Mountain" - 1x
    • "Mount Broken" - 3x
    • "Brocken mountain" - 1x
    • "Mountain Broken" - 1x
  • "… the sky inside SCP-XXXX appears always tends to be …" -> Either something appears as such, always is such, or tends to be such.
  • "SCP-XXXX-B Refers to a large …" -> 'Refers' does not need to be capitalized as it's a verb.
  • "… and their age ranges from …" -> Plural/Singular switch. Try, "… and their ages range from …"
    • A conceptual issue exists here as well. You reference that their ages range from 20 to 80 then turn right around and indicate that there's no way to ascertain their ages. You can tighten this up like this, "… and their ages appear to range between 20 and 80 years."
• Clinical tone:
  • "Civic knowledge of the "hexennacht event" should be kept …" -> From the outset, you indicate that the ConProcs are merely suggestions and don't need to be followed by using non-official language².
    • I would suggest absolute language like "must" and "is to be".
  • "… are not anti-damage and …" -> Oddly casual tone here. Try, "… are not invulnerable to damage …"
  • "… the cult of the sarkic and orgy …" -> I'm not actually sure what you're trying to say here, sorry.

Unfortunately, given the length of your draft and the amount of errors present, I will leave it there.

~ Show Conclusion ~

I'll say it again, you have an awesome concept here, but it needs a lot of work.

My biggest suggestion would be to visit #thecritters chatroom on the IRC and work with some of the Critters there to tighten up your tone and develop an overall narrative!

Secondarily, I would like to re-suggest Grammarly for the SPaG errors.

Thanks for reading, and good luck!

Footnotes

1. Typo?

2. "We should contain it in a large kennel, but I think this cardboard box works well enough to OH GOD IT'S EATING RICHARD'S FACE! If only they told us that we must keep it in a large kennel…"

---

"Sometimes you can approach feedback with a scalpel, sometimes only the sledgehammer approach will make your point clear."
~ Zyn - Forum Crit Team Captain @ The SCP Foundation

Last edited on 20 Jan 2023 03:58 by Reverend Fox Show more

Re: Crit!

Dr Ch_M 20 Jan 2023 11:29

Thank you very much for your feedback.

I want to say that I understand the complaint about the grammatical and spelling errors, as I am not a native English speaker, but I will see what I can do to improve it, in addition to everything else.