Uncyclopedia:Pee Review/UnBooks:The Night I Chased Slender
UnBooks:The Night I Chased Slender[edit source]
SirPeasewhizzdeNewYork Click here to talk 19:55, December 27, 2012 (UTC)
- Go on then, I'll have a look at this one later. --ChiefjusticeDS 09:52, December 28, 2012 (UTC)
| Humour: | 4 | Right, before we get going with this let me just say that the scores are not the most important aspect of this review, by all means look at them and consider them but do not run away with the idea that just because you have a 4 for humour you aren't funny. The article in general was more remarkable to me for being unsatisfying overall; the premise in of itself is a good one and there is some real potential in some of the jokes, however the finished product does not make the most of these attributes.
The first thing that struck me was that you don't seem to have a coherent idea of where you want the article to go from the beginning, the preamble assumes that we are all on board with who and what the Slender Man is as well as having a working knowledge of the game Slender, and as such were I unfamiliar with this subject I would have been lost after the first 4 lines. This is not to say that you need to insert a brief history of the Slender Man at the very start of the article, but that you may wish to consider ways that will help the reader understand at least some of the jokes if they are not already familiar with the subject matter. Assume that you have no knowledge of Darth Vader and I were to start an article on the same by going "He's a man and a robot with the power to crush the throats of his enemies". You might think that the person sounds like a good villain but you don't know who he is or whether th. The context to the jokes is all important. You start your article by launching straight into a description of the context but you don't really make anything of it. Perhaps starting with something like "My name is Rufus Urinestains, emeritus professor of paranormal studies and generally cocking about at King's college Oxford, and the following are the notes of the evening I spent in the woods near my house pursuing the so-called Urban Legend: The Slender Man". I'm not saying that you have to use that as an opening but note the way it establishes context for the narration and also allows the writer to move onto the next paragraph with a description of who the Slender Man is. Moving on from the context and back to my original comments, the article doesn't seem to know where it's going, I struggled to maintain my understanding of the narrative as we moved from the authors home to the forest and finally to the home of the Slender Man , and on finishing the article I felt that these needed to be better realised. You start off by having the author going to check on his dog and then... nothing happens for a moment and then the Slender Man appears. You have done a number of jokes like this and in this particular setting they aren't helping you. It would be better to say something like "I went and opened the door to check on the noise, there was nothing there except for my Dog, Slander. Reassured I shut the door and walked back towards the bed, where I was choked into unconsciousness by the tall thin faceless man standing behind it. As the darkness closed in I suddenly realised why I had been seeing all that static even though the TV was switched off." The reason this is better is because every part of it has some purpose to the overall point of the paragraph. The person going to the door provides the opportunity to use the name of the Dog to laugh at the author for being obsessed with Slender and then the final part allows us to involve the Slender Man and have a second laugh at the author for not realising that he had been stood behind him all evening. This is a humour wiki, people expect jokes, but jokes do not have to be elaborate set pieces, they can be worked into the text and I would strongly recommend that you go back and read through the text, ask yourself where you want this paragraph to go and where should the laughs be coming from, are we laughing at the author or are we laughing at the things he discovers. If you are trying to make jokes randomly the impact will be far less than if you plan them out, have one joke, e.g. the author's stupidity run throughout the article and make your other jokes while keeping this in mind. Finally, and probably the most petty gripe of all, the ending. The article ends with the author discovering that the Slender Man just wants a friend and they sit and play Call of Duty. With the best will in the world I urge you to reconsider this, the joke falls flat and for me just smacked of missed potential. You have some flashes of excellence throughout this article and I would urge you not to be disheartened by my criticism there are parts of your article that are good, but you need to consider overhauling quite a few parts. Plan your article decide for yourself what you want it to be. Don't be afraid to experiment with different styles until you find one that works best for you. Consider this article as an example, it's one of my favourites and the way the jokes are made can be invaluable to you in changing your article. |
| Concept: | 6 | I've already made a few of my points on this in the humour section above and I will endeavour to avoid restating those here. My main focus for this section is on the way you are tackling the concept. I'm very keen on the concept and I wish it had occurred to me prior to my writing Slender as it allows you an interesting and original take on the concept. I'm not certain that the best way for you to tackle it is to give no background to the author. As I mention in one of my examples above, it might be worth considering to give the author a backstory to enable you to flesh out the subject matter. In my example I go about casting him as an academic type whose fascination with the study of Slender means he actually runs after the Slender Man when he appears instead of running away, equally you could cast the author as being ignorant as to what the Slender Man is and have him pursue him through the forest in order to find out why he keeps following him. You can even drop in more examples from the game, indeed, I was surprised you did not do this to a greater extent. Quick asides to the game such as "As I pursued the beast he appeared to drop several bits of paper, confused I picked these up and left them near the landmarks we passed as we ran through the forest". Something similar to that would allow those who have played the game to enjoy an in-joke without detracting too much from the reading experience of those who have not.
Beyond that I genuinely like the concept and you seem to have a reasonable grasp of your tone, the problem is more with the material you are working with rather than your execution. |
| Prose and formatting: | 5 | Your prose aren't too bad, though there are a couple of grammatical and spelling errors that I noticed, I have corrected a couple of these for you but would generally suggest that you adopt proofreading as a practice after any major changes to the article. This not only ensures you miss any little grammatical errors but also allows you to re-read your work, something I loathe doing with my own work, but something it is always worth doing. You could also use a couple more images, the template linking to UnBooks is fine, but unnecessary, take a look at some other UnBooks for examples of choosing images or have a word with someone who is good at photoshop and see if they can bash out a title page for you. Otherwise you've generally got a decent handle on links and formatting so I will not bang on about it unduly. |
| Images: | 6 | There's nothing wrong with your existing image itself, as I mentioned above you could use a couple more images in the article, but you may wish to consider a caption. I really like captions on images they can make mediocre images much more amusing and can make excellent images brilliant. Take some time to come up with a caption for your image, try to relate it to the text and use it to compliment the article. Have a look at some featured articles for some excellent examples of this. |
| Miscellaneous: | 5 | My overall grade of the article |
| Final Score: | 26 | As I have already said, don't be disheartened by a low grade, everyone gets them, I did when I joined the wiki and people who have gone on to become writers of the month have started off having their articles savaged at Pee Review. I'm not here to find ways to put your work down but to help and to encourage you to improve it. Ultimately the above is just my opinion, and you should take it as that as opposed to gospel truth. You display the ability and the potential to make this article much better, but you need to step back and re-assess, find a way to make your article stand out, look at ways you can make it funnier and experiment with those. You don't have to request a Pee Review any time you want help or an opinion, just ask someone, most people will be more than happy to help.
If you have any questions or comments about this review then please let me know on my talk page and I'll do my best to help you out. Good luck making any changes. |
| Reviewer: | --ChiefjusticeDS 15:01, December 28, 2012 (UTC) | |