First round feedback -TF

Judging is always an arduous task as Suresh  mentioned. In school, some teachers have this idea of making the most problematic kid the class leader. It was something of that sort for me - becoming the judge. Because usually I  am the one to raise the flag of rebellion against the judging process everywhere. To date I have not been satisfied with the judging process anywhere and I don't harbor notions I would be doing a much better job either. Its much more fun being on the other side and cribbing about the judges. But anyways CS got me into this and I had to volunteer myself.

So moving on to the feedback part. Actually Suresh's feedback has been so comprehensive that I have very little to add without repeating whatever Suresh has said. I and Suresh discussed out ratings and to a large extent I agree with his ratings especially in the aspect of selection of the first three. So let me focus on a different aspect that I generally look for in stories as a reader- what I call the X-factor. I am one of those who believe any amount of perfection can not substitute for sheer genius. Of course genius can not be learnt in a workshop like this but definitely the workshop can help identify, nurture and leverage  effectively what you already have. It  often happens that somebody's genius lies somewhere else but they end up barking up the wrong tree.

So coming to the X-Factor, these are those invisible things that make a story work. We often wonder why Chetan Bhagat novels sell or Rohit Shetty' movies are block busters. It is of course easy to castigate them. But in the world everything happens for some reason. In spite of their obvious deficiencies in some critical aspects, the X-factor was so overpowering that people just ignored the deficiencies and gave a thumbs up to their works. So it would be helpful to identify and familiarize ourselves with these X-factors and see which of them comes to us naturally. So I will list down a few X-factors that come to my mind and the stories in this exercise that have used them. This list is by no means comprehensive and it is of course possible to use more than one X-factor in a story. Some of you have done that as well in this exercise itself but I will put the story under the strongest X-factor according to me.

1. Empathy - Most popular blogs posts work on this factor. It is about creating characters that reader relates closely to and can easily gets into the mind of. Some themes especially romance and tragedy lend themselves easily to this factor. However this story was not one of those. So lot of effort was required from the writer to create empathy. Deepa, Rajrupa, Jayashree, Nabanitha and Medha have empathy as the X-Factor in their stories. Deepa was the most effective followed by Medha in my opinion. Rajrupa, Jayashree and Nabanitha are generally brilliant at empathy  but this plot brought them out of their comfort zones, which is reflected in their stories.

2. Backdrop - Sometimes one can create a certain mood in a reader by the right setting. For instance Mohabbatein was not a great movie as such but the school campus atmosphere and the falling autumn leaves created a  certain mood in the viewer. Same thing can be done in a story as well.  Some of the people who used vivid descriptions to take the reader to a different plane were Leo, Mahesh and Pradip. Leo was the most effective in my opinion as he brought the settings to life. Pradip and Mahesh could have done a bit more to give a stronger and more distinct mood to the settings. All three of them I felt however somehow missed giving the basic plot the minimum attention it deserved.

3. Exploration - This is not something that works with all readers. But there are lot of people who view books as an exploration into the unknown, a flight of fantasy. Here the game provided a very strong opportunity to take the user literally on a ride. But since many of the people here were not gamers, only 3 people took this approach - Sandeep Nair, Indolent Insomniac and Srijith Nair. Sandeep was the best since his game description was just out of the world and at the same time other elements of the story were well maintained. Indolent came close in terms of game description but there were gaps in basic aspects such as smoothness of flow. Srijith on the other hand let the basic plot go taut.

4. Style - Often style trumps over substance. We forget even plots but a few memorable lines from a story linger with us for life.They became quotes and statuses on facebook. Again to take an example from Bollywood, Om Shanti Om was a crappy movie but dialogues have become etched in the minds of thousands of Indians. Here Arvind Passey, Yatin Khurana and Pramod Lohia have attempted to create some style. Mr. Passey especially is a master at one liners. But all three of them lost the plot and let their pieces take the form of essays rather than stories.

5. Cliff Hanger - This is what most best seller novels and Holly Wood movies do best . The idea is to keep the reader on the edge and always keep the reader guessing what is going to happen next. Asteria has interestingly taken that approach but unfortunately in doing so has changed the original plot.

6. Vantage points - One of the critical thing about narrative is the point of view. It is point from which you are seeing the story. Its like photography. You can take an aerial shot, a side view, a close up view, a zoomed view or whatever. Stories can be told from the point of view of a main character, a bystander or from a God view where you are an omnipotent entity overseeing the story. One innovative narrative I have come across is a story told from the view point of a lizard in the house where the events are happening. Other ways are through twitter messages, Facebook conversations, diary entries etc.  Harshal has made an interesting attempt to portray the story through dialogues on a game chat window. But of course needs more fine tuning to make it seem more realistic.

7. Humor - Humor could have also been the X-factor. Suresh has mentioned in his post how that could have been done. But no one seems to have taken that approach. I am planning to attempt that sometime soon. Not sure how effective I will be. But will share with you guys as and when I attempt it.

So that was the feedback from my side. Sandeep and Deepa are clear winners for excelling in their respecting X-factors at the same time not losing track of other hygiene factors that are integral to story telling. For the third, it would have been a tie between many people. But I and Suresh decided to go with Indolent Insomniac based on the insightful feedback he has been giving as the winners have to be judges in the next round.

 As far as X-factor goes, one final word. Though there can be multiple x-factors in a story, like how too many cooks spoil the broth, too many x-factors can ruin the story. Also not everyone is strong in every x-factor and some x-factors just don't work for certain themes. So one should be careful to focus on the ones that comes to them naturally and the one that is natural for the plot as well. Also x-factor alone cannot guarantee success. If you screw up the pizza base, however good the toppings are, the pizza will still taste bad. So the basic factors also need to be worked on.