Terepy Promptrope

[terepy]

hey everybody its your homegal terepy

okay i have no idea how to start a thread but heres the deal: i wanna get better at writing and ill probably use this thread to update with any prompts i have and look for some criticism because lord knows i need it

so without further ado, heres a prompt i wrote just now in a sleep-deprived haze so it might not be my best work, but i was trying to take chairubplays advice on making narration have some FLAVOR so i hope i captured some terezi in this

heads up this is an nsfw prompt with warnings for blood and creepy alien stuff, ill make an ooc later

In the middle of a rainy night at some humdrum, unimportant forest in New England, Earth made first contact. Smoldering in a patch of downed trees lie a space craft totally and utterly totaled, its radical red sleek finish dented and scarred from a shaky entry and a less-than-graceful landing. Vivid green slime frothed across the metal floor like a river of super rare and decadent lime grub sauce, mixing into an earthier, neon-streaked sludge with the outside downpour. For an intrepid, shocked explorer, the ship screamed of scientific discovery. Wonder! Mystery! Advancement! Well, at least it DID, until everything of remote technological value to the Galactic Empire of Alternia anticlimactically self-destructed with a resounding, earth-shattering boom, one that reminded the single former pilot of a mighty dragon landing on the unsuspecting landscape! Gracefully, of course. Without the whole fireball of defeat, shame, and failure deal.



In this stormy night, Earth had made first slime-coated, bumbling, totally unplanned contact.



That lone occupant, sniffing dumbfounded at the candy reds and tangy oranges of the explosion and controlled fires, stood with her head cocked to the side, buggy red alien eyes blinking slowly as she comprehended the situation she found herself in. First the left eye, then the right, out of order and with slow, careful consideration. Even as the downright indulgent scents faded into a pavement gray smokey ash, the alien pursed in her licorice-black lips, beginning to nod slowly in understanding. Mhm. Aha! Of course! Upon thorough investigation, Terezi Pyrope, intergalactic legislacerator and beacon of justice and hope, could say beyond a shadow of reasonable doubt that she was royally, legally, and auspiciously boned! The verdict passed unanimously from the lone juror, a white dragon-shaped plush stuffed into her bag of absolutely necessary belongings, who was likely nodding along in silent approval of the sentence.



Of course, being boned was no laughing matter! It was quite a serious sentence reserved only for the most incompetent of operators, one that this tealblooded troll from far-away Alternia would attest to the last strangled breath that she had fully and deftly avoided, even when all prevalent evidence and testimony pointed to the undeniable truth of her ongoing boning. She most certainly did not divert her ship's path towards a particularly tasty-smelling galaxy on a pure whim, and she definitely would never dream of breaking the proper scouting fleet formation and cutting all communication with her superiors to hide such a shameless change in course! And never. Would she EVER... be so unprofessional as to dip into the recuperacoon for a few z's! That would be entirely reprehensible, irresponsible, and all around unflatteringly unbecoming of such a prestigious troll! And it was totally the farthest from the truth, as far as Imperial records would ever know. Someone tell her how she was supposed to resist the twinkling cotton candy pink stars of the nearby nebula? Or that scrumptious little blueberry orb she had so spontaneously crashed right into without the common courtesy to take on a nice dinner date first.



Plus, with such a slippery, smooth customer like this unexpected invader, anything could be turned into a laughing matter! Namely, a chittering, clacking, shrilly laughing matter, a cacophony sounding akin to a warbled tittering accompanied by some ritualistic rattling of bones, as if a group of stereotypical B-Movie shamans stumble into and joined the mirthful celebration. Should she have been a little too worried about hostile alien life hunting her down? Perhaps! What about the potentially toxic atmosphere she was so heartily inhaling with her laughter? Definitely! All in all, didn't this situation call for far more serious consideration? But of course! Yet, this is Terezi Pyrope here, the girl who would probably guffaw it up like a hyena should her lusus explode in front of her like so many invaluable, crash-landed alien ship parts.



The only thing that stopped the creature's giddy chucklefest was the scent of cool raspberry slushie, the coldest of the cold and baddest of the bad, interrupting the minty green environment. In fact, it was like a damn smorgasbord of raspberry, like the Troll 7/11 busted its ICEE machine and accepted their fate of steadily drowning in the frozen, delicious flood with awaiting mouths and soiled uniforms. Terezi finally turned her head downward to note the gash so rudely oozing out her lifeblood without even the slightest concern for her own goodwill. Who would have thought crash landings would have been messy, even dangerous? Thankfully that head-turning alarm was enough to get the alien out of her lonely and downright creepy 'laughing at expensive, despairing destruction' deal and into actual action. Namely, action to find something to clean this increasingly concerning wound. Not only was it mixing with the remaining jello-like slime of her interrupted sopor nap, but it was also seeping into her best wannabe legislacerator suit! A tragedy in its truest form.



With one red glove clutched to her bloodied side and the other slinging her bag of totally necessary, not frivolous supplies, Terezi set out for the wild green yonder. Slithering through the trees around her, the eerie stalking form of the insectoid alien being explored the area around the crash. Unless the entire population of Earth was as deaf as she was blind, SOMEONE was surely hot on the trail to investigate the meteoric explosion rumbling in the quaint forest outside of their neighborhood. And this skittering troll, alternating between long strides of her short legs and crawling on all fours like some pitiful excuse for a weird-looking lizard, was all but devoted to getting the jump on whoever came here first. Oh, and finding some first aid. That, too. Maybe that kit should have gone in the bag instead of her box of half-gnawed chalk... Nah! She made the right choice. For sure!



Partway through her ill-conceived reconnaissance did a noise perk up her long, elfish ears. The predator approached! Or was prey more appropriate? Only time would tell, as the suddenly feral-acting troll clambered towards a nearby tree, glowering towards the source of the noise with a crinkled nose and flared nostrils hot on the trail of whatever the hell was out there. She sniffed loudly, inhaling once loud and clear before letting out the breath with a low giggle. A lone, good citizen, trapped alone on a planet of unknown, hostile beings, left with nothing but her wits and incomparable smarts to fend for herself... Had Terezi known she was starring in her own pusher-pounding drama fit for prime time on any channel worth its salt, perhaps she would have taken care to not continually gush inhuman amounts of teal blood across her Sunday Best.



Suddenly, the troll locked onto a scent, potentially finding the source of the approaching noise and leaping towards it. Should there be a human there, gazing in awe at the ship so far away belching out smoke, their attention would be immediately and harshly stolen by the mighty form of the legislacerator! And by that, naturally, it is meant that they would come face-to-face with a creature unlike any other they would have seen, made of some strange mixture of gray skin and hardened scale-like exoskeleton, wrapped up in bright neon red and teal cloth that would probably look more apt on a nighttime traffic controller. A row of razor sharp teeth grinned out in amusement as she let out a strange, shrill noise; an exclamation akin to a "Gotcha!" in her own alien tongue, but totally incomprehensible to human ears. And then... she waited, smiling unblinkingly. Hanging off of a tree, bleeding profusely with wide bulging eyes focused entirely on some poor creature wandering the wrong place at the wrong time. There it is: Your first contact.

[terepy]

sorry for thirst-bumping this thread but id really like some feedback on this. ive tried throwing it to the crowd but i havent gotten a connection in DAYS (namely, 2) and im really getting anxious that im doing something horrible with my writing thats making it completely unappealing to everyone, especially since my last prompt went ignored for a good 4-5 days until i quit with that one

[entwaifu]

Bless your heart, this is really hard to read because of the many adjectives and adverbs. The sentences are all clogged up and hard to read. Lean on your verbs harder, allow only desperately needed adjectives and adverbs. The narrative voice is either too tight up on Terezi or not tight enough; there are phrases that seem to be straight-up internal monologue and other phrases that sound like a different snarky narrator. The unrelenting mental FLARPing is Terezi-accurate but maybe a little extreme. Also I thought she was literally getting boned and I was even more confused.

xoxoxo xo xoxo rewrite it and it'll get better! Everything gets better every time you rewrite it!

[terepy]

May 3, 2016 12:04:08 GMT entwaifu said:

Bless your heart, this is really hard to read because of the many adjectives and adverbs. The sentences are all clogged up and hard to read. Lean on your verbs harder, allow only desperately needed adjectives and adverbs. The narrative voice is either too tight up on Terezi or not tight enough; there are phrases that seem to be straight-up internal monologue and other phrases that sound like a different snarky narrator. The unrelenting mental FLARPing is Terezi-accurate but maybe a little extreme. Also I thought she was literally getting boned and I was even more confused.

xoxoxo xo xoxo rewrite it and it'll get better! Everything gets better every time you rewrite it!

Thank you for getting back to this! i really do appreciate it! though im afraid to sound super needy or doubtful or ungrateful or anything, but is there any specific instances you could quote where something was very confusing? it might just be because i wrote it, but i have a really hard time narrowing down which parts exactly are tough to read through, and id really appreciate help in seeing where exactly the problem is!

also, in regards to narration style, since this is an entirely new style for me, whether i should drop this style or not. i have a TON of prompts written in a different, more objective and disconnected style, but i felt like i didnt want things to be dry or boring, but at the same time i wanted to avoid terezi painting the whole narration and leaving out vital information so that might have caused the whole narrative divide. do you have any sort of specific recommendations on how to balance that out? i think a huge amount of the problems come from the fact that i play terezi as really extreme and fond of adjectives in her rping. if thats too much of a turnoff for the narration itself, would it just be better to cut her out of the narration, or how would you suggest toning her down without tossing out a lot of her eccentricity? 

[entwaifu]

Okay, I'm going to try to take it apart and find the skeleton.

> Having crash-landed in a forest on a dark and stormy night, Terezi watches her spaceship explode, pretending it wasn't her fault. She has a good laugh, notices that she's injured, and wanders around aimlessly until she runs into a native.

So now that we can see the actual events that occur, we can decide whether they make sense and are interesting. This is up to you, but for me, the delusional excuse-making and insane laughter at things that aren't funny is overshooting Terezi a bit. She sometimes acts crazy in front of people for reasons, but her private FLARPing is highly competent and sincere.

Sorry, I only meant to talk about the prose. That was my only character complaint.

I will try a couple experiments with the first few sentences. First, I just rewrite as simply as possible:

> In the middle of the night, in a forest, a spaceship first touched Earth. It had crashed.

Well, that was not good. Let's try removing all decorative adverbs, adjectives, and similes:

> In the middle of a night at a forest in New England, Earth made first contact. A wrecked spacecraft lay smoldering in a patch of trees, its finish dented from entry and landing. Slime frothed across the floor and mixed into a sludge with the downpour. The ship represented scientific discovery, or it had, until it self-destructed in a fireball of defeat.

That was sort of better. The "patch of trees" bugs me because a crashing spacecraft probably would have slid for about a mile and gotten torn up into a thousand pieces or just made a crater instead of a patch of trees, but here you have it nestled sweetly in this patch of trees like they grew up around it. If you picture in your mind what exactly has happened, that will help the details be vivid and make sense.

As for the narrative style, a pinch of sugar is sweeter than a pound. You can break this style out at intervals for effect, you just can't stomp the gas pedal on it at absolutely all times. It is just too exhausting to read. The things you're describing are flashy and dramatic anyway, so your prose should be transparent, to let the flash and drama show through without the huge cognitive overhead of processing all this chunky-style English, you know? Then lay down a neat swath of Terezi in the foreground where we can see and enjoy her, rather than trying to stuff her down our eyeballs all at once.

I hope the way I'm talking about this is not too harsh, I'm just trying to get across these intuitions I have about how to make the writing more effective. <3