Coop - 9/19/2016 - Clouds pt. 4 - 3490 words

[Coop]

Hey everyone, thanks for reading!

 

 

Synopsis to this point:

 

Sira is a 12-year-old girl who finds an unusual path of moss in a forest. At the end of the path she discovers an underground chamber that contains a chest full of colorful costumes and strange bronze objects. She takes the golden-colored costume and leaves.

 

She reluctantly returns that night to her grandfather’s farmhouse where she is staying for the summer while her mother is overseas. She doesn’t like anything about being there, most particularly her grandfather, whose seriously disfigured appearance was the source of trauma for her as a young child.

 

She tries out the equipment on the golden costume but can’t figure out what it’s for. She is back inside the underground room when the only door suddenly shuts her in and she sees a flash of red pass outside. She is relieved to find the door unlocked and hurries away.

 

Days later, Sira is startled by a figure in red who chases her through the woods. In attempt to escape, she triggers one of the devices on the costume and it sends an anchor into the sky and solidifies a cloud, dragging Sira up to it. She manages to get back down to the earth, but not before falling a short distance and being caught by the same figure in red.

[kais]

Overall

Well the beginning was a bit choppy but you fell into a groove after about page five and the story went really well! It had good tension, good flow, and I really enjoyed it. There are some inconsistencies and dangling issues, but overall I think you're doing a great job!

As I go

- page two: the cloud swinging imagery is great! The writing is a bit choppy, but that is an easy fix

- page seven: good tension here. I'm really engaged

- page nine: why doesn't she wonder about the male voice she heard? Has she already forgotten?

- page twelve: why is her grandfather not asking how Sira got that far into town???

- not sure I feel the 'I hate you' so much at the end

 

[Hobbit]

Hello Coop!  I didn't enjoy these chapters as much as I have enjoyed Sira's chapters in the past.  I think it might just be a polishing issue - I didn't get as much of a sense of Sira's silly, imaginative playfulness, and I got confused with the blocking in places.  But I liked the trajectory of the chapters.  The whole time she was on the clouds, I was wondering where she was floating off to - and it turned out she floated all the way into town!

More specifics:

It also gripped easily against her glove.
This was confusing to me.

I'm not a huge fan of her being "the girl" instead of "she" - it makes the whole thing sound like we're out of her viewpoint.

For the first time in her new experience in the sky, Sira was filled with exhilaration.
I got the impression that her previous experiences were exhilarating, so I'm not quite buying this line.

...just as a better idea struck... ...The idea that had come too late was to fire upon a cloud...
I like the idea of this, but it played out in a way that left me confused.  Again, it's really just a word-smithing edit.

On page six we're getting some tension, and I think it would benefit the story to get here sooner.  Will the cloud trap Sira if it touches the triangulator?  And then especially, will she be able to get above the cloud to solidify it in time?  This really upped the interest for me.

hyperextension of her knee
Is this a thing that happens a lot?  I don't think I've ever worried about it.

...costume was probably important to her and that Sira would want to be buried in it.
I love this line.  Such good adolescent reasoning.

...unsteady as a new doe.
Maybe a new fawn, instead?

I also thought the end felt more unsympathetic than I wanted it to.  Does she know she's being unreasonable?  Because sometimes that can make someone more angry at someone else, rather than less.  Just an idea for another angle on her feelings.  Feel free to take it or leave it.

My last thought is that I feel like I didn't learn anything new about the suit or the man in red - I would have liked a little morsel about where they came from or who this guy is, and I was a little sad to not get one.  Oh well... I guess I'll just have to wait until your next submission!

[Robinski]

In the interests of freeing up time for writing, I'm going to try a more summarised commenting style on some submissions. Apologies if this seems briefer than usual, but hopefully there is still something useful in here!

·         (Chapter 10) – “She ran her finger again along the smooth ceiling of cloud. It was firm, but had a little spring to it. It also gripped easily against her glove” – So, this seems odd. We know that clouds are formed of water vapour, and that aircraft flying through them, so this firmness is puzzling. I'm thinking the cloud must have been affected by the triangulator.

·         I'm a bit disoriented by the description of Sira’s movement. I think, from time to time, it could be clearer where she is and how she is moving.

·         (Chapter 11) – Ah, okay, she is solidifying the cloud – wow.

·         “Gee, if only I was at Alayna’s. We could be jumping on the trampoline right now” – This is a strange line, given that she has just proclaimed this the best afternoon of her life. Is she trying to be ironic? How is a trampoline better than jumping on a cloud?

·         “What she saw was the collision of two clouds” – This is cool.

·         I don’t like “desolidified.” I commented on this elsewhere, Vreeah’s submission last week in relation to aerified. My comment, which seems to apply here, was... “I’ve got no issue with made-up words, but there is a ‘proper’ word for this, I feel. Depending on what process is at work here, something like sublimate (solid to gas)...” There are other, less precise words, like ‘disperse’, of course, but I understand why you wouldn’t want to use that.

·         “Panic assaulted her brain” – not fond of the phrasing here. I feel that panic does not just target the brain. Even though reactions originate there, limbs could be shaking, she could be hyperventilating. This phrase is telling, not showing.

·         I find myself stopping and wondering at the end of each chapter. I'm noticing increasingly that the final line often doesn’t seem to land as satisfyingly I would like it to. In this instance, I cannot understand why she steps off. Is she supposed to be moving toward the figure, or just moving blindly forward? Or is she moving away from the figure? I think this goes back to earlier, when I was struggling a bit with picturing Sira’s movements between the clouds.

·         (Chapter 12) – “Then she wished she’d aimed” – Good line, but before that, as she is falling, I was thinking that I had no sense of panic or fear. Then, you say “ripping the baton from her fingers” – which makes me think that she’s freefalling, but is the line in fact still attached to her? To some extent that is WRS on my part, but a subtle reminder of the operation of the triangulator would be no bad thing in general, I think.

·         Her imagining of her fate is well done – just a cruel and gruesome as I would expect from a child’s imagination at that age, and nicely in tune with her earlier daydreams. However, see my earlier comment about not feeling terror from her as she fell. That earlier lack of emotional reaction (that I could see) seems inconsistent with her present condition.

·         Her reaction at the end of Chapter 12 is wining, but I guess that’s okay, as she is still near the start of her arc towards being a likeable character, hopefully!

·         (Chapter 13) – I like the opening image. I can picture this nicely, and when we get to “like she’d crashed her flying saucer in the woods”, I'm thoroughly onboard again after wavering a bit during the cloud encounter.

·         “Sira’s eyes averted the woman’s” – I don’t understand this line.

·         “just not this woman’s phone” – Ooh, ouch. You'll need to explain why she has instantly taken against this woman on the basis of her outwards appearance. I don’t get it.

·         “with Cal’s face leaning out” – not just his face, presumably.

·         “Doing some…shopping?” – ROFL, great line – I have taken in instant liking to Cal.

·         Good ending to the chapter. We can see that Sira has a long way to go in the hoped for conversion to decent human being. The ending of the chapter punches that home nicely.

Good chapters generally, some issues note above. The main turn-off for me was the disorientation I had when she was moving up to and around then down from the cloud. I think the cloud scenes could really benefit from the blocking being tightened up so it’s crystal clear what the movements are.

Overall, I am still enjoying the story. It’s moving at a decent pace and there are nice little nuggets sprinkled throughout. I'm hoping after that all that action and activity that we are going to get a certain amount of scene-sequel as Sira analyses, possibly in discussion with Grampa, some of what went on.

Nice job.

<R>

[Robinski]

On 21/09/2016 at 3:25 PM, Hobbit said:

I got confused with the blocking in places

Yup - as did I.

 

On 20/09/2016 at 3:27 AM, kaisa said:

not sure I feel the 'I hate you' so much at the end

I agree, but I think it fits Sira's mindset, that her grandfather is only out to humiliate and infuriate her.

 

On 21/09/2016 at 10:11 PM, Ernei said:

I feel like Sira's fall was a tad too short, and the mention of the leaves seemed out of place - would she really mind them when she is fighting for her life? Even from a low-level cloud she should be falling about 20 seconds (with air resistance, though it's just my approximation. Without it's still about 15 seconds, and it's presuming that the cloud was only 2000 meters above the ground).

Yes. Thank you for doing the maths @Ernei! Even if the intended audience doesn't know how to do that math, there's a good chance that some of them will still think the timing feels wrong, without knowing why. I think youngsters see enough of the world, even if on-screen, to learn something about how it works. Consider some U-toob footage of a bungee jump, as an example in this instance.

 

Edited September 26, 2016 by Robinski

[Coop]

Oops, btw, big shout out to those who took the time for this submission! @kaisa @Hobbit @Ernei @Robinski @krystalynn03  Each week I put all your comments into a big file and start working through them systematically, picking things that need revision. You have been incredibly helpful!

[Mandamon]

Sorry for the very late response...intending to comment on pt 5, so I wanted to get caught up.  I think everyone else caught the same things I did.  Mainly disbelief at the time falling (thanks @Ernei) and that Cal and her grandfather would only laugh at her ending up miles away, in town.  I liked that Sira starts to see the consequences of her actions, but I'm not completely on board with her hating her grandfather at the end.

pg 1: "She ran her finger again along the smooth ceiling of cloud. It was firm, but had a little spring to it. It also gripped easily against her glove."
--(C) this is not normal cloud behavior...

pg 2: "The anchor unhooked and the girl dropped into a quarter-mile swing beneath the second cloud. For the first time in her new experience in the sky, Sira was filled with exhilaration."
--(D) I was wondering about the drop. I'm good with heights (stood right at the top of the Grand Canyon), but this is some vertigo-inducing pants- wetting stuff.

pg 3: "set her feet, and jumped—just as a better idea struck. She twisted around for the ledge but her upper body ricocheted off it and she somersaulted into the atmosphere."
--(C) don't understand this blocking.

pg 3: "what sounded like one long letter i"
--(D) I have trouble imagining this sound.

pg 3: "The problem was that it looked like she was resting on thin air. The cloud looked like it couldn’t hold up a paperclip."
--Which it can't, being water vapor. I'm okay if there's magic involved, but we haven't gotten a hint of that yet.

pg 4: "She really had frozen a cloud—made it solid."
--ok, this would have been helpful earlier.