Contest entry for threshold.
Sorry if I did something wrong in uploading, haven't done this in a while.
I will make fixes to things if asked to do so.
Bermuda / Discussion
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This is the discussion related to the wiki page Bermuda.
This is a good entry but overall I feel like it doesn't do enough to focus on what has potential in the setting. In my opinion, the most interesting parts are the communities (not including the UOTS), and the layers of the ocean and the imagery of there being a bunch of abandoned ships and planes strewn about. I LOVE that kind of ocean imagery, along with deep sea stuff. But the article doesn't really focus on trying to paint an image in the reader's mind, which is unfortunate. In my opinion, the article would be way better if you focused more on setting the scene and capturing the mood and atmosphere of the location. There's potential for something very rich and intriguing with that.
About the communities:
- The UOTS feels very generic and uninteresting, basically just a cookie cutter of what I know about the backrooms group.
- The pirates, however, actually are interesting, and could easily be developed into their own full section of the article.
- The divers are kinda interesting. They definitely have the potential to have a lot of character depth if you wanted to develop them more.
- 5335 is interesting. The mystery aspect is good, so I don't think it needs much more development. But if you wanted to develop it more, I think you could tie it into other parts of the article without losing the mystery aspect. Might be hard to do well though.
I don't want to tell you how to write your article, but here's one thought that comes to mind for how you could restructure it to focus more on these things I pointed out. You could reframe the article to be the notes of a single adventurer (or a small group of adventurers), a bit similar to the threshold "Cult of Finnis Mortis". It would allow you to describe things through the eyes of a person, which would make it more natural to capture the awesome imagery of the threshold, but also possible to develop the characters from the groups.
Reading notes about how an adventurer interacts with the divers or the pirates would be a great opportunity to develop the character of those groups. You are totally fine to break away from using the usual backrooms format if you can do something better, so don't be afraid to drop or change the "communities" section or the "entrances/exits" section.
If you want an example of a story written from one adventurer's perspective, you should look at my contest entry about the Sewer because I did a similar thing. Also I'd recommend taking inspiration from how Bridgespace is written so you can get a feel for how to best describe imagery and set the scene of a liminal space article.
The image caption is confusing because it made me think that the threshold would exist inside the ship at the bottom of the ocean, but the first paragraph says otherwise. I would change the caption to something like "Shipwreck in the depths of the Bermuda Threshold Region, presumed to be several decades old."
It might help the article feel more grounded if you describe the shape of the area (is it circular? squarish?) a maybe give approximate coordinate locations. It might be worth including an image of a map with the location marked.
Note: After reading the ending and realizing that the threshold isn't actually located at a different place on earth, but is actually some kind of extra dimensional location accessible from Bermuda, I think this could be way more clear.
The Shallows contains the remains
contain*
The residents call the entity "The Shark," The Shark's appearance does not match that of any known shark. The Shark is made of a collection of ship parts and bones that resemble the shape of a shark.
What's the point of saying it doesn't appear to be any known shark? If it's made of ship parts and isn't actually a biological shark, then no shit it isn't a real species of shark. Also the first sentence is a run-on.
The Shark can be avoided as they do not swim as fast as most people.
I think you meant to say "it does", not "they do", because there's just the one shark. Unless this shark happens to be a Tumblr user.
The Depths are very dangerous and contains several entities and anomalies.
contain*
The Depths are much darker than The Shallows and contains the remains of larger ships and planes.
contain*
In the first half of the "Abyss" paragraph, you use "The Abyss" way too often. It feels repetitively worded.
fished up from The Surface, these include; Crabs made of utensils
The grammar here is a bit wrong. Change "Surface? these include; Crabs" to "Surface, including: crabs". The rest of the sentence should be fine if you make this change.
two of is tentacles
its*
Theses ships
These*
one ships is for meetings
ship*
Entrance into Bermuda occurs when a vehicle moves through a large grey storm in the Bermuda Triangle. Upon the storm passing the vehicle will find itself in Bermuda and missing communication devices.
Oh, okay. This line recontextualizes the whole concept, which is not a good thing because this is context that should be given at the beginning of the article. Unless you were trying to do a twist ending but I don't think that was your goal.
Maybe this would feel more natural if it was heavily implied that this area is a graveyard for ships from Bermuda, but not directly stated, because it's a bit cliché to do bluntly.
This was my first draft of the idea, originally I was going to try and make it from the perspective of a crew on a ship as they entered and went insane meeting the other groups and such.
After the contest I'll rewrite it and get crits to see if I can post it as a threshold
Once again thanks!
I really like the visuals but I feel like the text needs to be rewritten from scratch. There's a lot of wonky inefficient prose, repetitions and weird description that needs revision. I'll be glad to help if you want to rewrite this.
This was just a first draft idea. Didn't finish the threshold in time so I uploaded this one. I am currently working on a more story based version. Following the journal of a 1900's cargo ship worker as they and the rest of the crew get lost in this threshold. It will have mystery and will generally be better than this one… hopefully.
/forum/t-14416112/bermuda#post-
