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Jan28,2013 - turos22 - Star Souls:Scene 1


Turos

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First of all, I would suggest you use something that's closer to standard manuscript format. Makes it easier for us to read and critique your work and once it's good enough to actually submit it to a magazine or writing contest or whatever, you'll have less work reformatting your stuff.

Your prose seems good overall to me. However, some of your descriptions are a bit verbose. In a novel that would be fine, but it's probably a bit too detailed for a short story.

I like the world building you've done so far. This is the first time I've seen flying fish used as a means of communication :)

The problem I see with this beginning is that it lacks conflict. I'm not sure how long your story is supposed to be, but in any case, 1k words is already a good chunk of a short story and we haven't seen any real conflict. Maybe you should consider starting your story later, closer to the conflict.

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I really like the inventive worldbuilding. The flying fish is a great courier, and I really like the starlight-powered machine (astral power rather than solar power?) and the orb-messages.

I see where Syme is coming from, and I agree to an extent. There's a conflict possibility (I got a surprise message!), but the follow-through is in the wrong direction. It's the end of a conflict rather than a beginning. Seems like a war should be beginning, not ending. Or his brother has been eaten by Derig-spawn, or something.

The formatting is a bit strange, but easy enough to fix. I do want to see more, though. The world seems very interesting, from this brief glimpse.

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I was intrigued by the world building - although I agree with Syme about lingering in detail on a short story. Short stories are an exercise in restraint- instead of an oil painting it's a sketch. But when well done a sketch can be very powerful.

I thought that the messenger fish and starlight data retriever were excellent (and original) ideas and actually did more for your world-building than the physical descriptions you spent time on.

The formatting was ok- it didn't throw me. Some of your word choices and verb tense was off. "shone" instead of "shined"

The detail that pulled me out of the story was at the very end. The Capital decided to let a single soldier know the war was over before his commanding officer?...That doesn't jive

Maybe instead Jastin sees the flying fish deliver messages to his CO and he gets his message from him while the CO gives off an air of excitement or stunned shock or ..whatever

That might cut down on the unnecessary detail while still keeping your original ideas intact and help you get to the meat of your story faster.

Would like to see where it goes!

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