2012 July 8 - Mandamon - Dreams of Dust - Second Half[L] [V]

[Mandamon]

Hello all,

This is to discuss the second part of Dreams of Dust. In the first half, Prot breaks out of his prison cell, finds out people are disappearing, has various mishaps, and finally meets a rotund and surly guard who sends him on a quest to get medicine for the mysterious "sleeper."

[JamesW]

Sorry I was late posting this up, was out of internet access for the last two days.

I stumbled several times early on in this, some of the sentences lost momentum, the first one in particular. Relating to the chairman of the prison comment perhaps some of it could be broken up two sentences, or maybe change the analogy.

The other sentence was the one following "the inflamed liver." The sentence was almost an entire paragraph, and It lost a lot of the quick, snappy feeling that was present in the first half.

I like the analogies that you use, some of them are quite funny, but it feels overdone in some cases. However after I type that, I read the "I-can't-believe-it's-not-rancid-lard" and laughed out loud, so maybe the voice of the character is growing on me.

The Analogies vs metaphors comment should be made again, the character doesn't need to tell us again that they don't know the difference. Later on though (Pages 5-6) that commentary on the metaphors seemed superbly well done. Correcting his metaphors works better for me then commenting again that he doesn't know the difference, may just be personal preference though.

I found the rest of the story fascinating, I didn't get jolted out of the story at all and the rest of it just pulled me through it rapidly.

I'm quite curious about the ending though, I understand the guy taking the place guarding the sleeper, but I was half expecting it to be "Hey sleeper forgets everyone except me, I'm the last human in existence, this'll be fun" or expecting him to suddenly look down and see a pile of ash, and then he turned out to be a ghost. It almost felt like a broken promise, when you mention that this sleeper might just be the one keeping the entire human race alive and in existence, It kinda set me up for some world ending calamity.

Either way, great story, I enjoyed the latter half of the story, the pacing seemed to pick up and the interest was certainly there. The metaphors worked a lot better after around page 7.

Whatever you did from page 7-17 that worked really well, if you could do that for the first part then this would flow exceptionally well.

Overall excellent story, looking forward to more stories in these settings.

[Jack the Halls]

Sorry about the late reply.

I don't want to restate all my critiques of the first half of this story, but I think most of them still stand. When the story is going, man is it going. It draws me in and 5 pages have passed before I know what hit me. However, when the story meanders, it meanders hard, and 5 pages of meandering feel like 30 pages of the good stuff. So, just to reiterate one thing, I'd strongly suggest taking out any details that aren't directly pertinent to the Sleeper plot line.

- The first thing that comes to mind is the Three Act Format. I think it's already there, but it doesn't feel like it is because of the aforementioned meanderings.

- One of the things that didn't ring true was why the drunk doctor hadn't been robbed yet. This might be like a gun nut telling someone that, "That model didn't have a safety feature until two years after this story was supposedly written," but I worked in a prison. There is no way any prisoner, no matter how dumb or smart, wouldn't notice that the man holding the medicine could easily be robbed. Perhaps his medical supplies are the only ones that are resupplied from outside regularly, and if they attack him, those supplies will stop going, and all the prisoners know this and leave him alone. But to think that he hasn't been taken advantage of just because nobody noticed he was a drunk incompetent? Nah...

- My favorite line was: "It just better convince me, or I’m going to dismember you so thoroughly that each greasy portion of your lardass doesn’t have enough substance to satisfy a bulimic, calorie-counting beauty queen." I don't know if you experimented with this or not, but I like that his metaphors actually get better right at the end, when he's about to basically become the Sleeper's guard.

- Is the fat guard the psychic one? I thought he was this whole time, but then I got confused at the end.

- I need more about the Sleeper. I think a lot of LOST fans might let you get away with something like this, but at least a better physical description. Maybe he brushes her hair and it feels soft. Or something, anything, more that solidifies her/him/it in my mind. Considering the content of the story, I think the Sleeper should be the most concrete entity, rather than forgettable, ya know?

- I read this aloud and I think you really found the narrator's voice. Most of the time, even when he's rambling, he sounds solid and real. However, you might want, during one of your edits, to read it aloud as well. There were more than a few places where I stumbled, and I don't think it was my reading aloud skills.

- This was my favorite piece I've read of your so far, and I think it's because it's the first one where you've shown that the story has an actual direction, like the story was going toward something.

[Mandamon]

Thanks for all the feedback!

So this came out better than I hoped. As I said, this started as sort of a throw away story (which is why some things aren't researched enough), but has grown a lot bigger. Looks like I need to go back and do some heavy editing for this one to trim out the fluff, meanderings, and analogies (or metaphors).

I'm quite curious about the ending though, I understand the guy taking the place guarding the sleeper, but I was half expecting it to be "Hey sleeper forgets everyone except me, I'm the last human in existence, this'll be fun" or expecting him to suddenly look down and see a pile of ash, and then he turned out to be a ghost. It almost felt like a broken promise, when you mention that this sleeper might just be the one keeping the entire human race alive and in existence, It kinda set me up for some world ending calamity.

I need more about the Sleeper. I think a lot of LOST fans might let you get away with something like this, but at least a better physical description. Maybe he brushes her hair and it feels soft. Or something, anything, more that solidifies her/him/it in my mind. Considering the content of the story, I think the Sleeper should be the most concrete entity, rather than forgettable, ya know?

I had trouble with this ending. I knew I wanted it to be a "bad" end, but I've gone through a few rewrites and can't quite get it right. What I'm going for is 1) realizing that the sleeping had been dreaming all the people Prot met and 2) the revelation that Prot must be a lot more important than he seems, to be the only one left. Suggestions?

Jack--thanks for the advice on the prison doctor. I'll go back and edit that. I was originally trying to make it so all the prisoners avoided him because they knew they would be killed if they went in there, but I think it would be fun to have him robbed blind except for a few hidden vials in the back room.

Is the fat guard the psychic one? I thought he was this whole time, but then I got confused at the end.

This was supposed to be a little confusing...small spoiler, the guard has more than one personality. This comes in with the later stories.

I'm glad you found the humor funny (that sounds strange...). Growing up with Pratchett and Adams, and even some of the jokes in serious stuff like WoT and The Belgariad, the parts that stayed with me the longest were the funny parts.

I do actually read my writing out loud (to myself) when editing. It surprises me how often the little things that I tell myself readers won't pick up on are exactly the parts you complain about. Looks like I need to pay attention to that little voice...

I'm editing "The Best Kind of Present" at the moment, but this one is next on the list, and now I think I should start submitting the other short stories in this series. The feedback here is great (by the way, they are all in the Dropbox folder, if anyone wants to read ahead).

[Jack the Halls]

Just a comment on the spoilers you mentioned. If you have plans of submitting this anywhere where it won't have the connected stories in the same book, I'd get rid of the multiple personalities confusion. You can still hint at it without it being confusing, I think, and then in subsequent stories you can make it so people look back and go "Ooohhh..." But this falls into the same category as most of my critique of this piece about taking out stuff that isn't immediately relevant to the plot.

I think the ending is okay. How he takes the place of the walrus guard and you sort of see how the guard became so fat and whatnot. I was sad that he was immediately forgotten once he was off the trap door, and I think you might want to play that up a bit because it has to be on the narrator's mind when he sits down. As for what I said about needing more, what I mean is more description about the Sleeper and the room its in. Like... What kind of bed is it? Are the sheets crisp and clean or disgusting? With small details like this, you can say quite a lot.

[cjhuitt]

I'll start with the end. I noticed you said you've had some problems working on it, and in my opinion it was one of the weakest parts of the piece. For me, it was because I didn't feel like there had been any payoff. The fact that he didn't, in fact, successfully get the drug kind of reinforced the feeling, to me, but mostly it was because I didn't get any sense that the main character had accomplished anything, or been forced to accept much of anything.

Now, the good news is I can think of a few ways it might be improved. Fundamentally, they all come down to some concepts from WE, primarily relating the ending to the beginning in as many ways as possible. The MICE episode is one that I'm thinking of, and I think it's been referenced in others. A few ideas:

• Similarity in position. For example, he could be sitting at the opening (forgive me if he is, but I recall him being ushered into his room) and lamenting that he wants to escape, and finally not have to sit around waiting for others. Then in the end, of course, he's escaped, but still has to do basically the same actions.
  
• Unexpected fullfillment of desire. If he has a goal to (eventually) remove the rest of the prisoners and guards, have him realize the job is done because everyone else had been "forgotten".
  
• Confrontation or reconciliation with the idea he's not the most important person there. This one seems especially lacking to me, because there seems to be a lot of evidence pointing at this, yet he seems to continue on the assumption that he is the most important person there.
  

A couple more things about the ending. First, I didn't realize that everyone else had been smoked before reading it here in the comments. Also, I was kind of confused about who was providing the voice in Prot's head, since it seemed to be mostly associated with the guard, and doesn't appear after the guard disappears from the story.

Now, a note on the ashing and Prot's desire to kill. I actually thought it might be more humorous if the trend of some people becoming ash before he could kill them continues for all of the people he tries to kill. Going by memory, the only one he succeeds in killing outright is the doctor, and it seems to me that could make for some amusing frustration if Prot realizes then that he is unable to kill them. That could also add to the end, since he was contemplating killing the fat guard and it turns out that guard turned to ash also. It may even make Prot slightly more likeable, if he doesn't actually kill anyone on screen.

I have to say, there were many good humorous places in the story, and I did enjoy this line in particular:

The result was that the prison was in a highly chaotic state, with deranged psychopaths doing almost as much damage as the accountant fraud cases.

[Mandamon]

Thanks for the feedback, late though it may be! I have yet to do reworks on this one anyway.

Good ideas on the ending. I hadn't even though of applying MICE or something like that. That might clear things up a lot. I think Similarity of Position comes closest to my thoughts when writing it, but I like the other two as well.

I like the frustration with people he tries to kill turning to ash...might snag that idea too!

I hope to get to this one after I get through editing the Best Kind of Present, and I'll certainly repost after I edit.