Kuiper

@Robinski Certainly! I'll shoot you a PM when the draft is ready (aiming for tomorrow).

Hey guys, I'm putting the finishing touches on a manuscript that I hope to have finished later this week. It's an urban fantasy about people who hang out with the (un)dead in an abandoned tram depot. Current length is under 35k words. Would anyone be willing to give it an alpha read? I can do a swap if anyone's interested. Hoping to get alpha feedback by the end of June, as I'm also going to be hearing back from my local writing group's alpha read by that time.

Kammererite; I'm actually willing to take a step back if you'd rather go, I've decided to do more than a little line editing myself (last night I decided to remove a character and I'm re-writing a lot of dialog because of that).

Can I get in for May 9? (Not this upcoming Monday, but the one after that.)

A lot of people have expressed that they don't fully understand how the magic works. My big question in response: does the lack of information make you feel curious in a way that makes you want to keep reading future chapters? Or does it frustrate you in a way that would discourage you from continuing to read? I am pretty stingy in revealing details of the how the magic works and the world these characters inhabit--part of my intent for this "series" was for each of the vignettes to explore a different facet of the setting. At some point there will be a vignette which is focused more on the nature of the bar itself, and others exploring "mechanics" of the magic system. But I don't want to dole out the information so slowly that people get frustrated and confused. I mentioned this in the opening "recap," where I described the bar as a place "that is open to both the living (who can enter and exit the bar freely) and the souls of the dead." Basically, at the end, Samantha insinuates that she was never dead to begin with. This is a place where living people (who can enter and exit the bar "normally") and dead people (who only have a temporary body for as long as they are in the bar) are indistinguishable from each other as long as they are in the bar, so it's possible for a living person to masquerade as a dead person--or visa versa. That being said, it's possible that Samantha lied about lying--maybe she really was dead the whole time, but decided that pretending that she was alive the whole time would be a good way to mess with faux-Nakamoto's head before she left. Whether Samantha is a living person masquerading as a dead person or a dead person masquerading as a living person is left as an exercise to the reader. The first flashback is weird and jarring: I'm not sure if there's a way around that (though it is certainly possible to minimize the extent of how jarring it is). Actually, the first (opening) flashback is probably the least-necessary part of the story, and it wasn't part of the original draft. The thing I realized is that no matter what I did, the first time I jumped into flashback, it would be a little jarring. So I decided to get the weirdness out of the way at the beginning, to prevent it from disrupting the story in mid-flow. And because the first flashback is unnecessary, the reader doesn't miss out on much if they spend that time being confused. Maybe there's a better way to handle the learning curve, but if there's going to be any confusion, I'd prefer to front-load it. I'm certainly open to suggestions on this. Remarks on Interpol: Shame on me for not doing proper research. My thinking was "Japanese crime syndicate operating in the US, that's international and therefore the domain of interpol, right?" My thought process really did not go any further than that. Based on a bit of Wikipedia research, it seems like the guys actually coming to make the arrest in a Los Angeles bar would be FBI. I believe rdpulfer is correct in that Interpol, if they were involved at all, would likely act by bridging/sharing intelligence between foreign and domestic intelligence agencies, and that the guys actually marching. I'll try to get my facts right next time. Samantha speaking Japanese: "omae wa mou shindeiru" means "you are already dead." (Those who share my affection for 1980's shounen manga may also recognize it a signature line from Hokuto no Ken.) The real significance of this line is Samantha demonstrating that she has the ability to speak (and understand) Japanese, but including the translation for the reader likely adds more to the scene than it takes away, so I'll include the translation it in future drafts.

Hey guys, thanks for all the feedback, especially the remarks on individual details of the story, it'll definitely be helpful on the next editing pass. It also seems like people liked the twist, which I'm really glad to hear; there are lots of finer things that need to be ironed out, but it sounds like at its core, the story is functioning as I intended it to. There are some individual points I'd like to address when I have the time to type up a more substantial response (hopefully within the next 24 hours), but this one probably sticks out the most: Regarding the situation with the bartender: I agree, it is a bit weird in its current form. Eileen the Chinese-American bartender is intended to be a semi-permanent fixture of the setting (I'm actually working on a re-write of chapter 1 that gives her a more proper introduction). The first draft of this story opened with a bit of banter between Samantha and Eileen (and give her a bit more dialog after faux Nakamoto showed up), but in the end I decided that having Eileen participating in the story to that degree distracted from the story I was trying to tell, so I attempted to minimize her role and make her more of a background character, even going as far as to strip out references to her name to emphasize her role as a background character--but I did an incomplete job of that, and so halfway through she suddenly becomes "Eileen." At this point I'm not sure what the best way to handle her role in the story is. On one hand, I feel like giving her a name early on gives her more attention than perhaps she is due, but on the other hand, leaving her nameless could lead to more awkward interaction and narration later on.

Hey guys, sorry to be getting this one up late. As mentioned before, "Thresholds and Footholds" is intended to be a series of vignettes that can function more-or-less independently of each other, but I'm not taking the time to "reset" and introduce the fantastical elements of the setting each time. For the sake of having context for everyone's remarks, I'm curious as to whether you read the first "chapter" before reading this one, and how (not) reading it shaped your impressions of this one, especially since there are key plot points in this story that revolve around an understanding of the rules of the magic as it's introduced in the first chapter.

I just finished a piece, can I get in whenever the next available slot is? I assume that would be a week from now (week of the 25th), but if somehow there's an extra slot free this week after all the dust settles, I'd also be happy to submit today.

Hey guys, thanks to everyone who took the time to read and respond. I do agree that the piece is in dire need of a line-edit, particularly when it comes to repetitive wording, so I appreciate everyone who took the time to point out the places where my language is especially in need of improvement. This was intended to be the "heart" of the story. The crux of the setting is that it's a place where the dead are given (temporary) corporeal bodies, making them indistinguishable from the living. (Though it might have been poorly presented, this was the intent behind Courtney's line about how "as long as you're here, you a physical body with very real blood.") In this setting, dead and living can interact as peers in a way that sometimes makes it unclear who is living and who is dead (both to the reader and to the other characters in the story), and that dynamic is what made me want to write stories in this setting. It's intentionally ambiguous as to whether Ashley is living or dead, up until the end. The "big reveal" was supposed to be that Ashley and Ben step out of the bar, Ben vanishes, and Ashley stays in her corporeal body; for Ashley, life goes on (she was alive the whole time). Unfortunately, I don't think I got this across clearly. I think viewpoint might be a problem for this story: if an "objective" narrator had conveyed the final scene, the contrast between the dead guy who vanished and the living girl who kept existing might have been more apparent. However, because the final scene is third-person limited from Ashley's POV, it's not really clear what is happening. The piece also doesn't capitalize on a lot of the advantages of third-person limited; even though we get scenes from both Ashley and Courtney's POV, we don't get a very clear picture of the motivations and internal thoughts for either of them. I may try experimenting with a more "objective" viewpoint; I don't write omniscient often, but this story might be a place for me to practice with it. This was intentional. The reason that I chose to tell two separate "stories" in this first chapter was that I wanted to set up a contrast between two characters, one living and one dead. The soldier has spent a lot of time feeling "numb" due to being a disembodied spirit for many years, and he contemplates whether hell might be better than feeling nothing. Ashley has spent a lot of time feeling "numb" due to a chemical imbalance in her brain, and has decided that physical pain is preferable to feeling nothing. The parallelism here is deliberate, I wanted things to sort of "rhyme" thematically, but I may have overdone it a bit, especially when using nearly identical language in the dialog for both Ashley and the soldier.

First off, I really liked the sequence of events toward the end, with Idris summoning the different wind spirits. I loved the magic, the explanation of how the demons are born and how they become proper gods. I loved the exchange between Idris and the spirits, and I could feel the grandeur of the spirits as they spoke in about who they were and what their virtues were. I also liked the part where we get Alssia's internal commentary on the demons/gods, particularly the part where she compares Bash-Irem's virtues of justice and retribution to Siad Amak's careful and cautious nature. The exchange with both the desert wind demon and Bash-Irem inspired a real sense of awe and wonder, which in my opinion was the real high mark for this story. The ending line was also great. That said, I didn't get the same sense of wonder and awe from the beginning. The first few pages read more like a prologue, feeling more like summary than scene. This may have been the intent, but I had a real struggle trying to understand the world based on that "prologue." It felt very abstract to me. The entire introduction, Siad Amak didn't feel like an entity that existed in the world, he felt more like an abstract idea. Even though the first page described a battle between Siad Amak and a bull, I couldn't really paint a mental picture of what was happening. What does this god look like? Is he a "super-human," a 7-foot man with incredible strength and powers, or is he a majestic 30-foot monstrosity who towers over entire armies? Is the bull also some kind of "god" or supernatural being with god-like powers? By the time I got to the end of the first chapter, I felt I had a pretty good idea of what the gods were, and what their role in the world was, but I felt mostly in the dark during the story's intro, and even now I couldn't tell you exactly how big Siad Amak is--I assume that he's a bipedal man, but I'm not too sure of even that. I was also initially confused about Alssia's role in the story at first. Her name is dropped in the first sentence, but here's the place where I first became aware of Alssia as a character: At this point, I'm thinking, "Oh, Siad Amak was the god of Belmaladh, he needs to be replaced, and so Alssia was chosen to replace him. She must be some kind of goddess of the hunt, like Artemis." I made it several paragraphs past this before I realized that Alssia wasn't a goddess herself; she was a "regular" person on a mission to capture a new god. I presume that the intended viewpoint is third-person limited, from Alssia's point of view. With that in mind, this line feels like a viewpoint break: How does Alssia know what Idris is thinking about? I feel like pronouns were used a bit too liberally. I was never mislead or confused by what was going on (being that all the female pronouns must be Alssia, and all the male pronouns must be Idris), but there was a point at which I actually forgot Alssia's name, there are places where we go for entire pages without ever reading her name. There's no "hard and fast" rule for this, but generally I'm fine with seeing someone's name the first time they appear in a paragraph, and then after that they can be "he" or "she" for the rest of the paragraph. Otherwise, you get confusing paragraphs that start like this: I know that Idris is a dude, so "she" in the second sentence must be referring to Alssia, but this did force me to do a double-take and pulled me out of the story. On a similar note, I think I could have benefited from seeing more dialog tags. I don't mind seeing the word "said." This exchange in particular forced me to do a double-take and re-read multiple times to make sure I was understanding what was going on: If I understand correctly, the dialog goes: Idris, Alssia, Idris. But there's nothing in the first two lines of dialog to indicate who is saying them. I inferred it based on context (based on the fact that the last line is spoken by Idris, and it must be a back-and-forth exchange, and also it makes sense for Idris to be expressing concern for Alssia at this moment rather than the other way around). This issue could be fixed simply by ending the first line with "said Idris." Overall, I loved the world and the magic, the interaction between the human characters and the demons/gods was great, I think the huntress/priest relationship is an interesting one and it made me want to keep reading. There were some mechanical issues that kept me from getting really into the story until I was fully in the "swing of things," and a few places where things like syntax left some room for doubt, but I think those are relatively easy fixes. I struggled a bit with the introduction, and this felt like a bit of a "slow burn" to me for early on, but I think things really got paid off in the end.

"Thresholds and Footholds" is a new project I'm working on, a bit different from novels/serials that I've submitted to the group previously. It's intended to be a series of vignettes in a shared setting. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this first chapter, both about how you think it functions as a standalone piece, and how well-acquainted you feel with the setting afterward. Is the first chapter "satisfying" by itself? Does it make you want to read more? I'd love to hear your impressions and remarks.

Hey, it's been awhile since I've shown my face in these parts, but I have a piece that should be ready for submission by February 7th.

General remarks: I enjoyed this story throughout. The description in the beginning that builds the world and the action scenes are both well-executed. However, I didn't feel that they tied together as well as they could have. If I have a complaint about this story, it's that I don't feel like I understand the stakes well enough in advance. It wasn't until Linaeve discovered her fellow merfolk turned dryad that I felt like I really understood exactly what kind of story I was reading. (Maybe this is intentional, and you were aiming for a continued sense of discovery throughout the story. However, as it is, this feels more to me like the first chapter of a larger work than a standalone story.) By the time I got to the point of investing myself in the chemistry between Linaeve and Isidor, the action had ratcheted up to the point where I felt like I was being railroaded through the story at a rather exhausting pace. In terms of events, it felt like things were paced out appropriately, but narrative I felt like this wasn't always the case. Like on page 21, I would have liked a bit of time to catch my breath--ease off the accelerator, and give me a bit more description to provide a foothold before we launch into the next action sequence. Specific issues: Page 29. The line "Amazing." pulled me out. I don't want to be told that the spectacle is "amazing." If this line is to indicate that Linaeve was amazed by the sight before her, I rather would rather see the amazement on her face--a gasp of surprise, or a jaw left hanging for several unblinking moments. (Show, don't tell.) Page 20. The line that begins with "Isidor was so resourceful and fast" really seemed out of place in the context of a line following shortly after that begins with "Hands were around Isidor’s neck." The bit with Linaeve admiring Isidor comes across as contemplative, yet the action that immediate follows has me fearing for Isidor's life. Both of these things are good alone--I want to be scared for the characters, and I want to see Linaeve developing an admiration for Isidor. But the proximity here bothers me--it feels like whiplash. I generally operate under the assumption that in moments of high tension, the characters' instinctual animal brain takes over, and while it's possible for the animal brain to register things like admiration and awe, the point at which she becomes aware of her own admiration to the extent that she's able to begin articulating adjectives like "resourceful" is a moment when I'm no longer in the scene, as I'm more concerned with what is happening inside of Linaeve's head than with the events transpiring in front of her. In general, I feel like there are a lot of elements vying for my attention--the sense of discovery, the action, Linaeve's relationship with Isidor--and that these elements, while all well-represented, are sometimes compressed together in a way that makes it difficult for me to enjoy them.

Hey guys, thanks very much for your feedback. After reading your comments, it appears that my execution did fall short in a number of places, and some of my intentions didn't come across very well. To address this, I'd like to offer some explanation regarding my intents for the story. None of this is intended as justification; merely explanation. The ambiguity regarding the setting is intentional and by design. The soldiers' weapons could be swords, or muskets, or automatic rifles. They could be fighting on earth, on an alien world, or in an entirely different universe from our own. Ultimately, it doesn't matter for the purposes of this story. At its core, this is intended to be a story about two opposing cultures, how they react differently when presented with similar circumstances, and what the consequences of those actions were. My intention was to convey a sense of comedic irony, sort of a la Catch-22. This irony comes in several forms: the fact that the circumstances on both sides of the chasm evolve so differently (yet both sides assume that the other side's behavior is mirroring their own), the fact that the western soldiers that were isolated to the place where they would have the least impact actually end up having the most impact, and the fact that the victory of the "heroes" of the west is regarded with disdain rather than celebration. The entire third act of the story which involves the engagement between the two armies is also intended to be somewhat comedic as well. The effect I wanted to achieve was a comedy of errors in which two sides go to battle by accident. (This is also why the battle scene was not particularly graphic—I didn't want to try to present a comical scenario along gruesome depictions of bloodshed.) As stated before, this is a story about two opposing cultures. Central to this is the manner in which the two sides are presented. The scenes on the eastern side contain absolutely no dialog. None of them have names. For all we know, they may be speaking a different language than their western foes, or be an alien species that communicates entirely non-verbally. (I don't expect the reader to entertain that as a possibility, but it is still within the realm of possibility.) The scenes on the west side, meanwhile, are very dialog-centric. (In fact, in the first draft of this story, I wrote in a very experimental style in which I excluded dialog tags entirely—each side was either 100% dialog or 0% dialog. Some artifacts of this can be seen in the frequency with which Johnson addresses his captain as "sir" and also how often the privates address each other by name—this was originally my substitute for dialog tags, which I phased out because I felt that the stylized dialog took away more than it contributed.) I did not model it as a story about human characters—even the western soldiers who have names are intended to be abstractions to some extent. Williams, in the grand scheme of the story, is not actually a significant player. The collective of bloodthirsty men on the western side do collectively constitute a significant player, and Williams is intended to serve as the "face" of this group. By a similar token, the captain and lieutenant are caricatures of them men they preside over. The lieutenant is competent with a low tolerance for incompetence and for that the bureaucracy has punished him. The captain is bored and mischievous. All of these elements combine to form a volatile powder keg that is ignited by a single cry. So, with that out of the way, on to responses. Specific points: The uselessness of the pass is owed to its inaccessibility (alluded to in the early portions which discuss the difficulties faced by supply lines into the mountainous terrain, as well as the portion toward the end which highlights the disaster of placing your back to a narrow corridor.) The central idea is that the pass is a bottleneck, but once you push past that bottleneck, what awaits you on the other side? Another bottleneck. And another after that, all part of a series of chokepoints in a terrain that is not at all conducive to travel. I'd be willing to concede this point if I felt that it would add to the story, but I like the idea of the easterners giving up the fight solely due to misinformation rather than an actual strategic loss. It was the captain, who was the commanding officer in charge. (I agree this should have been more explicit.) More general responses: I agree that the story is generally lacking in tension and has a definite blandness to it, especially in the no-dialog reports on events of the east; the first half of the story has an atrociously high infodump/action ratio. I really struggled with the first few pages, because while "bored and stagnant" describes the circumstances of the players on the stage, it's also difficult to present in a compelling manner—this is only exacerbated by my choice to shy away from "humanizing" the characters. Perhaps this was a mistake on my part to choose this approach, or perhaps there's a better way for me to capture interest. One thing that I think may be an issue for this story is that the idea of abstracting things so that they could be happening any time at any place between any two nations is holding the story back in a big way. In one of my earlier outlines, I considered modeling the story as a conflict between two different species on an alien world, and described the easterners as a race that communicated entirely non-verbally, explaining their lack of dialog and the inability of the two sides to communicate. The original idea for this story was actually a mutation of an old piece of flash fiction I wrote in a fantasy setting with dragons; after typing it out I decided to remove the dragons and all references to archaic technology. One of the main reasons I decided to go ahead with the abstracted, omniscient viewpoint version I submitted is that I wanted to experiment with different writing styles that I'm less experienced with. It could very well be that the best version of this story is one that uses third-person limited narration in a science fiction (or fantasy) setting. I think that many of the issues you've all noted with the story could to a large part be addressed in shifting to a third-person limited narrative, coloring the soldiers on both sides as more "human" characters with very specific motivations and character traits, and filling in the setting more by building it through action and blocking. (All of the conversations essentially take place in empty white rooms in the current version of the story.) There's a good chance I'll do this at some point, because I still like the core idea of this story and want to find some way to tell it effectively. What I'd like to consider right now is whether it's possible to tell an effective version of this story through omniscient viewpoint. Considering Orson Scott Card's MICE quotient (which describes stories as being based on milieu, idea, characters, or event, suggesting that short stories focus on one), I think the most fundamental issue with my story is that it doesn't really focus on any of these--it's probably closest to being an "idea" story, but the way in which it presents the conflict doesn't really draw any compelling questions or investment from the audience. I'm thinking perhaps it would be better to approach this as a milieu story--the standoff between the two sides is inherently part of the setting, and at the end of the story, that setting is effectively dismantled.

Holding up the North (working title, alternative suggestions welcome) is a bit of an experiment on my part, as it diverges significantly from the kind of stories that I usually write. I'm eager to hear what you think about it.