The Void by ? - Short, Horror - Beings of infinite power and knowledge are still no match for the seduction of power. - pdf format

Writer interested in feedback on this work

I didn't get any vibe of a creature feature from this one to be honest. It was more of A High Fantasy somewhat reminiscent of the story from Diablo 3.

There was some nice imagery and I liked the idea of Death becoming incarnate.

Logline needs work: If beings have infinite power, why would more power be seductive?

Kind of cool but a little confusing. I do like the ending, thou. I almost called you out on how many characters you introduced without any way to know who they were until they voted and spoke their own names. A bit slow to get going and, besides the images of interesting beings, not a whole lot to draw your eye if illustrated. A bunch of beings sitting around a table. You need to check your dialog, too. Many lines with missing or wrong punctuation.

Interesting story and take on the creation of man. Good work, writer.

It was hard keeping track of so many characters in such little time. Not sure if this would work as a comic. at some points it felt over written.

I liked this visual :

The table streaks blood red from under every palm and meets in the middle, finalizing their oath.

The overall writing was decent


Good job on entering

This is brilliant and would look amazing if illustrated. I'm a bit worried that all the talking is going to cover up a lot of the artwork.

I really love this idea. It’s very well thought out, and it’s the work of a skilled writer.

The big, big issue for me is that this isn’t a creature feature in any sense of the meaning. Regardless, at the moment this is my favourite.

No females on this Astral plane?

Ordained in armour?
To be ordained means to be bestowed as holy, so 'ordained in armour'? I suppose it's just the material - bronze, gold, symbol of his stature?

Hmm, isn't an Astral plane where consciousness goes when the physical body dies? Heaven, for example.

All credit to you for creativity and it may well translate to a comic very well but it left me a little cold in terms of their struggle.

Azrael meets souls and helps them in the transition of death, in addition to helping newly crossed over souls adjust... This is what Google tells me. I plead completely ignorant.

Azrael is the closest to being a scary creature - mummified with fangs?

This is creative like I said and there is opportunity here for some wonderful comic book images but emotionally it didn't hit me . Just seemed like a group of testosterone infused blokes fighting over existence, territory, life, sacrifice.

I'll give it another read later see if it's just gone over my head the first time. It's quite possible. :D

This was a great read, I enjoyed the heck out of it. I suppose the zombified form of Azrael could qualify as the "creature" in this feature, but I'm not sure how well this would translate to comic format, as the majority of this piece is simply a bunch of talking heads. The idea is what drew me in though. So essentially boredom is what led to the creation of man? I've always suspected as much :) Well done.

First, let me say... not a creature feature.

That out of the way, I loved the ending. Can definitely see this as a comic. And, I think it fits HyperEpics fairly well.

There are logic problems for sure. But, in the context of an Old Testament God (jealous, egotistical, prone to violence), maybe those logic problems melt away a bit.

The ending made the story... which is a nice way of saying the story needed something big to save it. But, you pulled it off.

The concept of "before the beginning" is brilliant, though.

Not sure how much I'll knock you down for ignoring the creature feature part of the requirement. But, I'm also not sure how much you should care about that anyway.

Good job.

An epic idea for sure and one that would work well as a three page HyperEpic comic. It just needs trimming and a polish.

Almost all of the first 3 pages are impressive looking beings chatting and voting. This is quite dull and takes up most of the story! Cut this down to the bare bones, start off with the vote and focus on the last one rather than showing all of them, then straight to the attack, followed by the consequence.

I’m a bit unsure as to what happened between Azrael being swallowed up by the book and coming back as Death that drained life like a vampire. Just make that a bit clearer as it’s great imagery, just a bit confusing.

The ending is what makes this, that’s perfect. I love this take on how life was created.

Lots and lots of gods in a throne room jiber-jabbing.
Lots and lots of angels and demons in the Void jibber-jabbing.
Everyone calls everyone "brother" yet this makes no sense when you mix up religion and mythology.

Lots of mumbo-jumbo, dialog is fine if you are up lateat night with a serious hangover by taking too much cough medicine.

I need more cough syrup. I'm all out.
I'm out of this short too. Way out...there...

FYI, I decided not to knock this down for missing the mark on creature feature.

The concept of "how God came to create the world" is strong enough to overcome what would normally be a deal killer for me.

Good ending but the opening treads water. I honestly think you could skip the debate entirely and go with a bit of VO instead. Or start us in on the voting. The last few pages really turns this one around.

Well...your title page is a terrible start, with "Written by", and nothing else.  Seriously, everything matters to astute readers and you're off to a poor start by being lazy.

"shrouded beings" needs to be CAPPED, as this is your initial intro to these characters.

Missing lots of punctuation in your dialogue and action/description lines, and the read suffers mightily because of that.

OK, 2 1/2 pages in and we have these creatures sitting around chatting, spewing meaningless dialogue.  Normally, I would be out by now, but it's short, so I'll stay in, but IMO, you've completely missed the challenge, as in creature feature, and in no way does this transfer to the comic idea.

Page 3, Another Slug no one could visualize, followed by a 5 line passage, repeating the Slug, run-on sentences.  Not good.

Oh man, not for me...at all.  I just read the comments and am literally shocked some appear to think this is more than it is, which is very little. IMO, this obviously doesn't meet the parameters at all, and even worse, is so dull and goofy.

Maybe it's just me, but I am not a fan.

Grade - *

A lot of Exposition and OTN dialogue. For example:

Code KORAM Odin, you sacrificed your eye to the well of knowledge, did you not?

They know each other so Koram would not say this. This is said purely for the benefit of the audience and it comes across as fake.

Well, that was... not good. I found it a slog to get through and couldn't enjoy this partly because I don't believe in any of the characters and don't like stories based around religion.

First some obvious typos:
Page 1          third graph:   “ordained” should be something like “covered”
Page 5          Osiris’ line:   “gilt” should this be “guilt”?

Neat take on the biblical creation story, but it was all dialogue, and way too much of it. So the story is too long to fit the challenge’s requirement, and there is no “creature” as also required by the criteria.

Wonderful idea. Very creative and skillfully written. It took me some effort to keep track of so many characters at the beginning but then all paid off with the ending. I liked a lot the imagery and I think it would look awesome in a comic. Good job, writer.

Definitely not a creature feature, and too short for what this story is about. It’s all rushed to fit the page count.

Outside of the challenge, this would make a cool animated short, or even something more with the right story arranged to it. The writing is rough, it needs a lot more care and attention, but it could be a great tale. It’s too ambitious for this OWC though.

Good try, congrats on getting an entry in.

I thought this okay as a standalone story.  But I don't think this quite fits in with the theme.  That said, a few tweaks and it could if Aszrael returned as a creature.  The story was quite creative.  And reads like a scene from a much longer script.

All the best.

Ambitious idea.  Choice of characters felt a bit random - though perhaps that’s my own ignorance as to what they all represent.  A little heavy on the character count for the page constraints with a lot of talking heads that don’t deliver quite as visually as some other entries.

The ending pulled it back a notch, made me think at least so kudos for that.  Not my favourite, but that’s more down to personal preference than execution.