Eskobartique
Prefabricated Critique for Eskobar (or whoever):
If an Author Writes Something, and You Don't Know Why They Wrote It Like That:
Okay, looking over Xiao's critique and what you have here, it looks like you've done most of the cosmetic tweaks, so that's good. I'll do a quick concept critique here and then go over the lines in the article that probably need the most work.
The concept is [CONCEPT SUMMARIZED IN ONE SENTENCE.] [CRITIQUE ABOUT WHAT IS PROBABLY NOT GREAT ABOUT THAT CONCEPT BEING USED IN GENERAL, NOT EVEN REFERRING TO THIS SCP.] That wouldn't be a complete game-ender if this were a perfectly written SCP, but it still has issues. Namely:
* none of the origins or nature of this object really have any explicable background,
* [ISSUE 2]
* [ISSUE 3]
The first issue needs to be addressed by you thinking hard about the backstory here. Any good SCP is written by someone who "knows" way more about what's happening than they write in the article, or someone who's really good at pretending they "know" way more about what's happening. Any good SCP[[footnote]] obvious caveats: "any good SCP that I can think of offhand", "in my opinion," etc. [[/footnote]] isn't just a collection of "this is a thing that does these weird things bleehhhhhh"; it should be a snapshot of an object at a moment in time, where the writing describes the snapshot in a way that suggests its background (past), its function (present), and its implications (future). So with that in mind, for the background part of that, you, the author, should be able to answer the following questions, even if only to yourself:
* Why is it in a hotel room in Kansas? How did it get there? Who put it there and why? Why didn't they put it somewhere else?
* How did the hotel room get "pseudo-Telekill" in the walls? Was it built like that for this purpose? Why is the Telekill in this room different from regular Telekill?
* Why is the furniture "tough"? What does that feel like? Is it fabric and cloth around anomalous furniture, or is it literally just granite shaped like a bed and chairs and desk and stuff? Who built that? Who installed it? Why?
* Why is the program installed on such a shitty computer? Why upgrade a shitty older computer instead of using a newer computer?
* Who made this program? Why did they give it such an on-the-nose name as "Multi-Universal People Finder"? I mean, even Google isn't called "Internet Search Engine Website".
* How is that Foundation logo modified and why?
> The program's description page describes a process similar to a debunked foundation project2 involving SCP-████, SCP-████, and SCP-███.
* What SCPs are those? **You** should know what they are and what they did and what the experiment/project is and why it existed and why it was debunked.
* How does the program work? How does it find people? How does it bring people to this universe? What does that feel like? How do the people who come over here respond to what's happened? Are they traumatized? Curious? Injured or damaged?
Please understand, I'm not asking you to answer these questions for //me//. I'm suggesting you answer these questions for //you//, and be able to answer them, because the problems with this article can basically be summed up as "I don't know why any of this is happening". Because I don't know "why", or at least have enough clues put before me that I can take a stab at "why", or invent my own "why", or something to that effect, I don't think this is real. Some part of the article needs to feel //real// to me, or feel like it could have possibly existed, so that I can suspend my disbelief in the supernatural/unnatural/fantastical or what have you and immerse myself in what the implications of your object are.
If I can't do that, then your article is not of interest to me, and I don't want to read it, and I won't upvote it.
If an Author Is Bumping Their Own Thread:
TITLE: Forum Criticism Team - Junior Staff Post
Author, please be aware that we see your draft and the Forum Critique team will be around to critique it as soon as an available member gets a chance. There are several drafts that have not yet received critique, and as [http://www.scp-wiki.net/forum/t-2295410/how-to-use-this-forum-drafts-and-critiques explained in the instructions to this forum,]
> * **Be patient and polite!**
> * It can take a few days to get critique. No one here is paid to review. If you can't wait, go to [http://www.scp-wiki.net/chat-guide chat] or message a [http://www.scp-wiki.net/meet-the-staff staff member] (politely) asking if they can ask the people in chat to look at your thread.
When It's Just Extra:
I think my biggest concern here is how busy all of this is. Keep in mind that in any story about the fantastical or outlandish, it helps to keep as many concepts normal and stable as possible, so as to highlight one or two specific attributes that are exaggerated to the point of being interesting. Imagine someone is coming to the wiki and this article is the first thing they ever see. The reader, from the first time on the wiki, now has to process the idea that:
* there are pocket dimensions (i.e. the universe contains pocket dimensions as a normal thing that just exists, like gravity and bananas and stuff)
* whatever a pocket dimension is, the technology to create, maintain, and access it can be stored in a box
* humans can be and have been bioengineered
* the GRU-P and/or the Sarkicists exist (keep in mind that this new reader doesn't really know what the Foundation is about yet)
* bioengineering humans by modifying their bodies a la CRISPR can essentially give them superpowers without drawbacks (at least, that's how it's described here)
That's five new facts that you're asking readers to swallow into their worlds. That's a lot. Any one of those would be enough weirdness for a single article, and you have five of them. I can only imagine how long an article would have to be just to fit all of these components in there, and with that much unbelievable stuff to have to believe //while// I'm reading all of that, I'm getting tired just imagining it.
I often see new writers want to make a splash by making something super out-there and extraordinary, and the best advice I can give you is that the best writing isn't "more", it's more //believable//. A reader can more easily accept something new into their environment if the rest of the environment is what they expect it to be.
And yes, to answer the obvious, if you go too far in that direction, the result is more //boring.// The challenge in writing anything, here especially, is finding the line between those two extremes.
I'm glad you brought the idea here first, because this summary is much easier to read than the Moby-Dick-like draft you would have had to have written to convey all of this, and I would have had the same conceptual complaint after having taken longer to parse it out. Good luck in your future endeavors!