Paracosmic_nomenclator Posted July 31, 2017 Report Share Posted July 31, 2017 Another 2-part short story. I wrote this one a few months ago, and am having trouble getting it published. Any and all feedback is welcome. Thanks, ~PN 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
industrialistDragon Posted August 1, 2017 Report Share Posted August 1, 2017 This is very well done again! Technically it is well put together and the characters are distinct and interesting. However, the first thing I noticed about this piece is the number of times the narrator goes off on a tangent about a bit of information, then sums it up with something along the lines of "but that's not important." So then, I have two things I think of: first is "if it's not important, why is it in here," and the second is "He said it's not important. I need to absolutely remember this for later." Five pages in and I'm getting overwhelmed by the amount of "not important" important things I'm trying to keep track of. I really feel like this piece could use some condensing. Not just cutting irrelevant parts (and it could probably do with a trim), but reworking parts so that the events in them happen faster or are said more succinctly. The details are great, the characters are good, but nothing much is going on and by the end of this segment I'm still waiting for something to really grab me and make me say "No, I won't go to bed yet, I have to finish this story." Right now, my feeling is sort of ho hum. 15 pages and barely even a hint of the meat of the story. It's not quite stagnant, but it's definitely sluggish. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rdpulfer Posted August 1, 2017 Report Share Posted August 1, 2017 - Good start - I'm really engaged in the plot. There are a few places that seem too "tell-heavy", like when Ed says he associates the walls with the cancers of the crew, which could use a bit more detail. - I like that you also set up how competent Ed is with dialogue. That said, I don't like that the older mechanic goes on to expound about his motivations . . . that he "choose" to be here" . . . that seems a bit too much, and it'd be better for Ed to just come out and say rather than have someone sing praise to it. - Otherwise, I think this is a really great start and I'm really curious to see where this goes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kais Posted August 1, 2017 Report Share Posted August 1, 2017 (edited) Hello again! Overall Well written, as always, but I'm not sure what the point was? The story seemed to lack direction and purpose. I agree with @industrialistDragon that you could cut a lot of this, probably up to 50% of it. I'd also like to see an actual start of an arc within it and connect with the protagonist well before halfway through. I think it has promise, just needs some tidying up. As I go - if the botanist is female, then she isn't a 'classman'. Same goes for the manager - you've got tense jumping on page two - page four: okay, I'm ready for the story to start. The asides are getting a little too info dumpy and are stealing any tension build up we might have otherwise had - page five: botany is not a proper noun - page eight: while I enjoy the tech, since I have no interest in the protagonist, it is hard to get invested. I also don't know what the direction of the story is, what the protag's goals are, or the general purpose of the narrative. For subbing, you want to get those things front and center pretty early - page eleven, and I now have enough information on Ed to care about him - page twelve: always write out numbers. - page fifteen: wait, that's it? I'm confused. Aren't we basically where we started? Edited August 1, 2017 by kais 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robinski Posted August 2, 2017 Report Share Posted August 2, 2017 Very much looking forward to reading another one of your stories. For me ‘trepidatious’ is kind of overblown for the first line of a story. It may be the right word, but I feel it distances me, rather than including me. I don’t feel excited about the story, I feel like the writer is using big words. I like the man nervously anticipating what he’s about to do, which I feel is something on the planet, but actually he’s just thinking about the act of going to the planet? I feel a tiny bit let down, as I thought it was going to be something more momentous/mysterious, then it’s revealed straight away. “a single classmen” – plural disagreement. “found it nice” – not a very meaningful word, doesn’t convey anything much “I indicated the ones that had captured my interest” – are they not out of sight in the cargo compartment? That’s what I’ve visualised with them going into the passenger compartment. “nadir interior hull” – I take his point, but the part of the ship he’s describing is still the floor. It’s designed to be a floor and functions as a floor in all but those limited times when they are in freefall. Sorry, I have to bow out at this point. I’m not a fan of hard SF, and this is hard enough that it turns me off. I'm an engineer and I read and write to get away from it. More importantly however, I think my lack of interest stems from finding the character unengaging, pretty boring in fact. This story seems all about the intellectual ‘mystery’ and very little to do with character, location, action, intrigue. Sorry about that. I’ll be back on board for your next story submission. <R> 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
aeromancer Posted August 3, 2017 Report Share Posted August 3, 2017 Thoughts As I Go: The ‘at the time’ line you use at the beginning frames the story as being a retelling, but this isn’t consistently kept up in the narrative. Pg. 2 - Stone walls through me for a loop, until I realized they were actually in a hollowed out asteroid. Except asteroid are made of metal. Stone is porous, generally, to some degree. Bad idea for a spaceship. Pg. 3 - I’m not sure why they’re crying wolf when a botanist’s emblem is on the side. I mean, plants need air too. It’s probably a tree, isn’t it? Pg. 4 – The assistant goes through kind a mood whiplash from amused to suspicious. Pg. 5 – I actually think the thought process of ‘how to kill’ should fits well with Ed’s character. Good tangent. Pg. 6 – The parentheses segment is a bit awkward Pg. 7 – Okay I’m going to go all ‘Hard sci-fi nerd’ here. Skip this bit if you want. Relativistic speeds are impossible for a ship with a meter-thick asteroid hull. Even if the asteroid was made of an extremely dense and hard metal (like say, a hypothetical osmium-tungsten superalloy), at relativistic speeds, the stray molecules hitting the ship have the inertia of near-lightspeed. Remember, Newton’s Third Law: every action has an equal and opposite reaction. At relativistic speeds, the molecules won’t just leave radiation. They’ll leave mini-nuke craters And should something like a micrometeor come along – well, let’s just say it’s not hard to clean up messes in space ‘cuz there’s always a vacuum. Put inertia dampers on the exterior. Force shields. Deflector plates. Something. Pg. 12 – A cooking blog? I just … It’s fine, technically. Fleshes the character out, breaks the stereotype. I just … this isn’t Hard Sci-Fi. It's breaking my wonderful immersion of ship parts and zero-G. Pg. 13 – You can’t hear a cricket in a storm. Overall: I’m going to save this until the second part. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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