Let's see what I can do for you.
Be forewarned, I use sarcastic humor here and there as a way to lighten the mood. Crits are always a bit awkward for both parties involved, so it breaks up the monotony and, hopefully, causes a chuckle every once in a while.
Also, for personal reasons, I'm going to keep this as short and blunt as possible. When drilling into the specifics, I will only point out the first or first few instances of a given mistake, offer a solution to fix it, and leave you to do the rest. Trust me, it helps to develop the tools for yourself rather than having someone handhold you through the process.
Some advice first.
- Your clinical tone is 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:
- The formatting is incorrect as well. I'll put an example in the specifics.
- Your draft falls into some of the old cliches. Now, cliche isn't always a bad thing, but it has to be used properly. Check out this helpful article for more information on the pitfalls of cliche:
- Mackenzie Pitfalls (see: Magic Object)
- Keep in mind, as well, that humanoid objects are quite difficult to properly write. Have a gander at So You Want To Write a Humanoid SCP Object.
- There are some unnecessary redactions in your draft that don't really help your story. Check out this helpful video on the topic:
- Are Redactions Ridiculous? by
Doctor Cimmerian (YouTube)
- Are Redactions Ridiculous? by
- Always use factual statements to describe your object such as, "SCP-XXXX is a regular slice of white bread."
- Use metric for your measurements. Imperial is not a scientific unit of measure.
- 13x15 feet is 3.96x4.57 meters. Although, this specific measurement is unnecessary. I'll explain in a moment.
- Parenthetical enumeration [eg: ‘one (1)’] is not necessary.
- For small numbers, write them out. "8 year old" = "eight-year-old"
- You're Wrong About D-Class. <— Check out this video by
Doctor Cimmerian.
And now, on with the crit:
CONCEPT:
- Okay, so an immortal entity that is angry because… humans.
- Now, this isn't to say that you have a boring or uninteresting concept here because, admittedly, I'm rather intrigued by this thing.
Note: Before getting into the specifics themselves, let me show you the proper format for things here.
Format:
**Item #:** SCP-XXXX
**Object Class:** Euclid
**Special Containment Procedures:** x
**Description:** y
**Addenda:** z
//Interview Transcript XXXX-Y//
> **__Interviewer:__** [name 1]
> **__Interviewee:__** [name 2]
> [blank space after `>' even if there is no text to follow]
> **Dr. Blair:** First line of each name, you will want to...
>
> **Dr. Hamilton:** ... write out the full last name of your researcher, doctor, etc. and then abbreviate after.
>
> **Dr. B.:** With exception to SCP-XXXX designations, of course.
>
> @@[@@//Actions should be easily distinguished from dialogue. I've always found it useful to use these strange tidbits of code. Bookend the actions with them, in the order you see here, and you'll have a better time of it!//@@]@@
> **Dr. H:** @@[@@//Short action performed in-line. Dr. H. spills his drink on his //brand new// labcoat.//@@]@@ //Nooooooooooo.....//!
That comes out looking like this…
Item #: SCP-XXXX
Object Class: Euclid
Special Containment Procedures: x
Description: y
Addenda: z
Interview Transcript XXXX-Y
Interviewer: Dr. Blair
Interviewee: Dr. J. Hamilton
[blank space after ‘>’ even if there is no text to follow]
Dr. Blair: Hello, Dr. Hamilton.Dr. Hamilton: Hello, yourself, Kate. Why am I in the infirmary, and, more importantly, why can't I feel my legs?
Dr. B.: Because you're already dead, Jim.
[Dr. H. exhibits signs of severe distress.]
Dr. H: Nooooooooooo…..!
SPECIFICS:
- "… kept in a 13x15 cell …" <— 13x15 what? Feet? Meters? Inches? Use metric, firstly, and secondly… this information is unnecessary unless the specific measurements are important to the containment of the thing. Like, if it's a centimeter too short along one wall, is it going to break containment?
- Also, just call it a ‘standard humanoid containment chamber’ and move on. Calling it a ‘cell’ makes it sound like the Foundation is running a prison.
- "… designed to resemble a hotel room, with appropriate furniture and amenities." <— This just needs to be tightened up like this, "… designed and furnished to resemble a generic upper-class hotel room. Amenities will be restocked weekly by D-class personnel."
- "SCP-XXXX currently takes the outward appearance of …" <— There is no evidence to support the ambiguity here. However, if you want to preserve ambiguity, try this out, "SCP-XXXX is, at present time, an eight-year-old human female of Caucasian descent. It has long, grey hair and black eyes."
- "… X-Ray analysis …" <— Weird capitalization. It's just ‘X-ray’.
- "… has shown a lack of any internal …" <— "… has revealed a lack of internal …"
- "… any structures whatsoever." <— See, this comes across as one of those lame-ass doctor jokes that everyone hears when they're a kid. I think you mean ‘skeletal structure’.
- Doc: Whoa, John-boy! It looks like you ate a whole cafeteria!
- John-boy: What?!
- Morgan Freeman: Little did John-boy know, the good doctor wasn't being serious, and he didn't really have a whole cafeteria in his stomach.3
- "SCP-XXXX is unusual in that it …" <— Oh, good. I thought it was usual4. This sort of verbiage is overly casual and can be excised.
- "… turned itself into the foundation at Site [REDACTED]" <— Eh, "… turned itself over to the …" or "… willingly submitted itself into the custody of the …"
- Always capitalize ‘Foundation’.
- Also, the formatting for Secure Facilities Locations is ‘Site-██’, but choose what Site or Area.
- "… for a normal civilian trespasser …" <— This sentence makes it sound like civilian trespassing is a normal occurrence at Site-██.
- "… but was taken into custody when it was realised that SCP-XXXX was immune to bullets …" <— This, I'm not entirely sure about. You may want to pass the idea around the Forum Crit Team IRC Chatroom (location: #thecritters) for help there. It just… sounds too easy or something.
- "… immune to … interviews." <— You remember the opening to the classic comedy Spy Hard where Weird Al Yankovic's head explodes from holding the last note for too long? Yeah… the WTF from that just came back to me.
- I'm not sure what you mean by ‘immune to interviews’. Do you mean that its schedule is always booked so inconveniently that it always avoids them?
- The interview is fine if you're looking for something overly enigmatic, but the object comes across with a little too much exposition… almost like a Bond villain who is about to kill 007 but decides, "Fuckit! He's loosely tied to that chair. I'm going to monologue my entire plan at him… for some reason."
In all, you have an interesting base idea that could potentially build into something of a Source Artifact. We already have a couple, so the real challenging question is this:
How do you plan to set your source apart in your canon?
The reason I phrased the question as such is simple — for something like this to work, you would have to be setting up a canonical foundation that you plan on building upon. Does this sound daunting? If you said ‘yes’, then you're on the right track.
All canons have to start somewhere, and this may be the path to a new one.
I do hope this critique will help you out, or in the very least, gave you a few chuckles. Good luck, author!
Aaaaand that's all the shoulder pain I can deal with for one day. Back to R&R for me!
"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
Thanks for the response! I’ll make sure to read the articles you linked and take the criticism into account when I create a redraft of it.