Talk:Santa's Other Workshop/@comment-26475800-20170114040848

Well that sucks. I wrote this really long review about this story and when I went to publish it, it got deleted and told me to refresh the page. Anyway, I'll write it again.

This story was pretty damn good, there were some really good points to it and some things that could be improved upon. I'm going to start with the cons, because let's get the bad stuff out of the way first, and have all the good stuff at the end. Now, keep in mind, that I'm going to give you, and the other three winners a bare knuckle review of your stories, calling everything as I see it and not pulling any punches. With that being said, this story was pretty good.

Okay, so the biggest issue I had with this story was that it did more telling than showing. It told use about the North Pole, about the other work shop, the back story to the elf. There was a lot of stuff that could have been shown, which wasn't I kind of which you would have shown more, the murders, the banishing, the other workshop. Now, I say that because the first half of this story comes across kind of like a documentary. There is a lot of explaining, and telling us what's happening and where we are before the story even gets started. Then, once the story does get started, it goes into backstory, which is just more telling. That's the biggest issue I have with this story, the other ones aren't really that bad at all.

As mentioned above, the first half isn't much of a story, and doesn't really help the story that much. If you started off with the elf working in the other workshop, or killing the other elves, that would have gotten the story in the right mood, right away. It would have given a little more meaning to the elves strung-up from the rafters, or even if he was just collecting the magic juice from them as they are dying, would be a pretty cool scene. Sorry, I'm getting a little carried away.

Well, I guess that's all I really remember about the bad things I've written down before; so lets get onto the pros.

Your imagery was beautiful. I know that I was a little hard on you opening with the North Poll and all that, but the visuals for that were great. The bodies hanging from the rafters to drip dry, another thing, even though it was just a short blurb, really stuck with me and was a great addition. Although, I would say that it kind of came out of no where. Also, when he was building Pepe and how Pepe looked, great job.

Your creativity with this story was also better than I thought. When we first gave this prompt, I thought it was going to be Santa kidnaps the bad kinds and takes them back to his workshop to murder them. It was the easiest story to come up with, but you didn't go with that, and that should be applauded. It shows that you have thought about this story and what you were going to do with it. You didn't just write the first thing that came to mind, but thought the entire story through. The amount of time and effort you put into this shows.

Also, there was only one error that I saw while reading this. It wasn't anything big, and it didn't take me out of the story at all, so that's also a plus. Over all, this story was pretty damn good. You took your time to get it right, and you did a great job. Your work is appreciated, and congratulations on winning the contest. It was no small feet with the amount of talented writers we had, so very well done.