2.17.14 - Dark Matter Memories 002

[hawkedup]

Here is (2 of 4) of Part 1 - "The Crazy Cat Lady"
 

My book Dark Matter Memories is separated into 5 parts. While each part ties directly to the ones that come before it, I also want each part to be its own unique, though interconnected, story.

Part 1, as you guys can see, focuses primarily on setting up the story, world, characters. I know it's a little infodumpy, but my hope is that it is still interesting enough, and poses enough mysteries, to keep you reading so that, starting with Part 2, which is the actual extraction of Kara, I can start delivering all killer no filler from then on out.
 

What bored you? What excited you? What confused you?
 

The story so far: A group of interdimensional travelers known as Team Magenta try their best to save people like them from a group of human-shaped monsters known as the Sapphires. Meanwhile, the Sapphires gather, each with different plans concerning the apocalypse.



*PS - Sorry about the early submission, but not sure if I'll get a chance to submit tomorrow.*

[neongrey]

Okay, first notes on 'Emily'. As an aside, I'm doing fairly detailed style notes in comments on a google doc, I can link it to you once I'm done the lot if you think it'll be of help.

 

First off, I'm not that comfortable with some of the first thoughts (in a section, anyway, I don't know if she's had viewpoint before but this still holds if she has) being about a man, not like this. It's unnecessarily male-gazey and isn't really advancing the character. I would cut it or make it about something else entirely if you want to show her being modestly easily distracted. If it has to be about this librarian in particular for plot reasons, I think making it about a conversation or something that they had would feel more natural.

 

Next, I am definitely noticing your infodumps, and I'm noticing them in conjunction with either very long or run-on sentences. I think if you break up those sentences more, that'll go a long way to concealing them naturally within the text. I think this is a problem that reading out loud, if you can, would help with a lot.

 

Last big note for this section is that you are concealing information from the reader and you are calling attention to the fact that you are doing so. This doesn't read that well.

 

Specific points where it occurs: the italicized 'he'-- your characters are very obviously avoiding using this person's name and the fact that it's italicized makes it clear that they're doing so. I would drop italics there in all cases.

 

Next obvious point of concealment: "If what we foresaw has finally come to pass" is a very circuitous phrase, and it's very openly avoiding saying whatever it was that they foresaw. I would consider something like "if the rust is finally hitting the fan", it's within her affect, it still avoids saying what exactly is going on, but it doesn't carry the implication of telling someone something they already know.

 

Last big point of concealment: "and bring out what she had hidden there." This is saying that there's something hidden there but that you're not telling what. I think you'd be good to just cut that part of the sentence entirely-- the reader can still be wondering why she needs to reach into her purse so quickly. The surprise of the gun is still foreshadowed that way.

 

Style issues aside it's a pretty good and snappy scene, you're leaving pretty good breadcrumbs that something big and bad is going on. I will continue with Jester either later tonight or tomorrow.

[andyk]

I agree with Neongrey's point about deliberately concealing information from the reader and drawing attention to that concealment - it's a tactic that's usually frustrating to read, and this is no exception. Even reading Guy Gavriel Kay's beautiful The Lions of Al-Rassan I got annoyed when he pulled that sort of trick. (And thanks to Neongrey for helping me identify an issue I couldn't quite pin down as I was reading)

 

Emily seems a bit inconsistent. Something amazing and world-breaking is apparently happening, and she's OK heading down the library to read away the last few hours (which makes for an interesting character) but thinks it's silly spending that time dreaming about a boy (an attitude which seems at odds with how seriously she isn't taking the world ending). Also, phrasing it as 'daydreaming about a cute boy' makes her sound really rather young - is that deliberate?

 

I realise that Emily's mental ramblings are meant to demonstrate her mental state early on, but I found them too long, slowing down the story without adding much in return. You could make them shorter and still achieve the effect of demonstrating where she's at mentally while speeding up the pace.

 

Some of the descriptions in the Jester scene remind me of Steve Aylett's style of prose, in a good way. If you haven't read Aylett then, based on this, you might want to give him a go - but be warned, he's very much an acquired taste. Similarly, there's a quite deliberate and distinctive style to your prose here's that's playful and un-serious - I'm enjoying that when it works, but it works best when it's snappy, and I think you'd be better off cutting down the longer descriptive or reflective bits when you're playing iwth that style.

 

The evident conflict between the Jester and the Historian keeps their scenes moving even when not much else is happening, but this still feels like it's mostly exposition and not much event, a common feature of this whole chunk of story. I think you could get away with explaining less of the background, just hinting at it, while making clearer what's actually going on now and why.

[neongrey]

Okay, I paused House of Cards to go over Jester's section. On the whole it flows and fits together a lot better than Emily's-- you've got some flow and back-and-forth that keeps things moving. Some off commas and homophones.

 

There's a lot more information being slung around here-- some of it feels unnecessary, like the fact that the scrolls are tucked away safely; that's usually the sort of thing you can bring up closer to when it's immediately relevant. I feel like the information parses pretty well except when, again, you get some really big, weighty sentences. Things like "Distance did not exist in the void, that was true, but The Jester had never come into physical contact with a planet that wasn't some alternate version of Earth, and truth be told he thought the Sapphires who lied about extra-terrestrial travels were insane." and "If another Sapphire had made it out of the void four years ago instead of him, the events now recorded in the green scrolls, which were tucked safely and secretly away, would still come to pass." feel really overloaded.

 

"Everyone knew he could do this because it was important that everyone knew he could do it." is a sentence that is kind of a chore to parse, it really sticks out.

 

I also feel like some of this stuff that's conveyed via infodump-- what happened when the Jester found the aurora-- could be conveyed via a prologue or something where this actually occurs.

 

One more instance of obvious witholding, "As the Queen laid out her plans, the Jester had to admit that while the plan wasn't original, he himself had entertained it many times in the past, it really could work, but only if they implemented it today."-- obviously you don't want to detail the plan in advance for later tension so I might consider starting that plans bit with killing the Professor and cutting out before the plan is detailed at all.

 

Early on too, some of the perspective feels a bit wonky, you're bouncing back and forth between the Jester's and the Historian's thoughts/reactions, at first I thought it was in the Historian's perspective and then it went to Jester's and then it went back to the Historian's and then it went back to Jester and stayed there, most of this goes on really early in the section so it should be pretty simple to patch up.

 

Annnd I'll do Jaime tomorrow afternoon before work.

[jagabond]

Hey neongrey, you said you have a gdoc with critique. For my Drive it converts it to a Zoho word doc, are those as easy to share as native gdoc formats? Because I've got a bunch of comments on mine, too.

 

 

Alright man, let's get cracking. Bear in mind, I lean toward minimalism and subtlety, and I'm an editor by trade, so expect a lot of cutting...

 

Emily

 

Emily needs the most work, I think. One thing that I think really kills your pacing is when a character calls attention to her own wandering thoughts. Having her remind herself to Focus is unnecessary and could easily be dropped. You also want to look out for "Anyway", or "All in all", or "So, she..." The character's thoughts aren't linear, and you don't have to cover for every wandering thought.

 

In general agreement about the 'thinking about a cute boy', especially tied into the first point. Wandering thoughts are fine if they explain a worldbuilding element or show insight to her character, but "Ugh why can't I stop thinking about this guy" is almost always better shown in action, so we can intuit that a guy is on her mind. Otherwise, if she does things that don't involve the guy, you don't have to mention that she's thinking about him.

 

 

 

 

Someone stood directly behind her!

This stood out to me. Could be the exclamation mark. 

 

What stands out the most to me is how much we're straight up given about her thought process, her opinion of Ricard, a former office romance. Then you have the aurora, Dr. N, "He", and the thing in her bag, all kept more subtle. It mostly stands out because it's inconsistent with how liberal you are with explaining more mundane things, like the sensory details of the office.

 

Another reason to bring it up is because in your email you said you wanted each piece to stand on its own. So if this is my only scene with Emily, I can only base my opinion of what I'm given, and the SFnal details that might add to her character (or, why she's there at all) are withheld.

 

 

She was no exception.

Then why bring it up?

 

 

 

Maybe this really is the end, she thought, entertaining the thought truly for the first time.

 

Might want to rework this, most likely by moving "truly" around.

 

In Emily and the Jester's chapter, you would benefit a lot, I think, by dropping the final line of dialogue. 

 

 

"She cocked the piece and pressed it to the back of Ricard's seat", I think is a great way to end, because it speaks for itself and the dialogue following it is snark for snark's sake.

 

Jester

 

Man, the difference is really noticeable, but please take that as a compliment! I much more enjoyed the flow and dynamic of this one. I'm still seeing a lot of telling though, so depending on the length of the piece, you may want to pick and choose your information release, and cut down on some of the character details. We're being given a lot of info about them that we should be inferring through dialogue.

 

Cheesy seems like an unusual adjective for someone's voice. I get it, but it feels off.

 

 

The Jester bowed deeply to show just how ashamed he was for existing.

Really liked this.

 

There are a handful of adverbs (daintily) here and in other places that I think you could cull without damaging the integrity of the piece.

 

In some disagreement with neongrey here; I thought the explanation of Sapphires was woven in pretty well. It's infodumpy without feeling like it, and because I warmed up to the characters a bit, the info was more accessible to me. 

 

However, without returning to the void, there was no feasible way to get to these other planets, not until human science went further than it had in even the most advanced dimensions, which were experimenting with space travel but hadn't yet come to close to perfecting it. I think that first part stands on its own pretty well.

-

“Still, we had a good thing going for us. A very good thing indeed. In the three-hundred odd years since I took physical form, here on Earth--” He had to add that bit, of course. “--I never knew a better time than the years right before...(perhaps unnecessarily ellipsis) you showed up. Should I even mention how hard it is to find a vamp these days? Back when our only competition was the Saints it was hard enough, but the past few years...”

 

Why can't we ever just wait in silence? Could probably lose this, I think.

 

 

And finally, as said above:

 

Fate brought him to the worlds so he could write the green scrolls and prepare for the apocalypse.

It has to be fate... It has to!

 

I feel like ending on that apocalypse note is much more powerful, even though it's still Jester's chapter.

 

 

 

"The Jester could, from a few key words, suss out the underlining meaning of any situation. Everyone knew he could do this because it was important that everyone knew he could do it." -It was very important that everyone knew Jester could, from a few key words, suss out the underlying meaning of any situation. I think combining these two will make the telling aspect of the first sentence a lot more relevant.

 

 

“Danger,” the Jester said, “is my mother-in-law's aunt on her father's side's hyphenated last name.”

The Queen rolled her eyes,

 

I've heard it said that having characters laugh at one another's jokes can be awkward; I think the same is true for eye-rolling. Or maybe I just don't care for the joke. Not a big deal either way, but something to be aware of.

 

 

 

“Great,” the Queen said. She rubbed her hands together as if viewing an appetizing steak. “Let's kill the Professor.”

 

Bam. There we go. Good dialogue ending.

 

Jaime

 

Alright for the most part. Probably the most solid of the three. Dialogue is fine, a few points where the telling is getting in the way, but I don't have any huge problems with it. "The sight of a woman in a hijab taking shots still seemed weird to Jaime, even after all this time."

 

You have three ways of telling us time has passed, when you only need one. "Still seemed weird" is fine, IMO.

 

 

 

She was somewhat attractive, in a malnourished TV actress sort of way.

Not really sure what this means...

 

 

 

The moment lingered and then, like most moments, ended.

Yeah those moments, they do that. But was it a moment, or a moment?

 

Ending sentence was so-so, but it ties into my overall critique that I'm not sure how well you wanted this to stand alone. If you mean, is it accessible if it's the first chapter someone reads? Sure, a little bit. I didn't read chapter 1 and I don't feel lost. But it clearly transitions into the next chapter, so forgive me if I sound pedantic about that.

 

Overall impressions: I like the ideas, but the telling is getting in the way most of the time. Your dialogue is good, too, so cram those external details into it and make it more natural. Show us what the world is like, why it's different. I'm a big fan of grand, dramatic statements, but you want to use them sparingly. Well-crafted mundane paragraphs will make single sentences shine (Matthew Stover is a big fan of this).

 

I hope I was helpful, this was my first critique for the group and I'm really enjoying getting to read even more. I never get to critique when I do slush, so it's very liberating to exercise my editor muscles. 

[hawkedup]

Hey guys, thanks for all the great critiques! Already I've been able to go back and make the story much stronger, and since I'm applying ya'll's advice while I'm writing the current chapters, I feel like my submissions will only be getting stronger from here on out.

 

I have a few comments and specific questions for ya'll but right now I'm focusing on critiquing everyone else's piece.

 

One thing I want to point out, though, is that I must not have been very clear about what I want to have a stand alone feel. You see, each of my books is separated into four individual parts of about 80 pages or so. Every four of my submissions equals one part. Those four submissions combined is the story I want to "stand alone" and not the individual chapters you read during each submission. Does that clear things up?

 

Does putting the names of the characters who will have POVs at the beginning of each part help?

 

*edit* Yes, I would really like to see all your comments! Is it easy to do? It sounds very useful for my own critiques.

Edited February 18, 2014 by hawkedup

[neongrey]

Jagabond: What I did was I saved the doc to my Google Drive and opened it in Google Docs, that converted it over to that format. 

 

And, hah, about the editor thing-- it's not my day job but I'm editing some RPG stuff for a Kickstarter. Very different from this though, I have almost free reign with that for reasons, haha.

 

I think we're on the same page with a lot of this-- on my end I noted but didn't mention on the exclamation point and highlighted 'she was no exception' as a good line to cut. In general if something is that ordinary I tend to feel it's not something that needs to be noted.

 

Re the information in Jester's chapter, I think we're not far out of alignment; most of it is fine, I just think there's some overly-lengthy phrasing there.

 

Re Jaime I don't have a lot to say there, I definitely think it's the strongest of the three. I noted the attractive bit too-- I prefer to avoid couching description in terms like that; you can colour whether your viewpoint character thinks them attractive or not by how they describe whatever features you choose to note. I tend to feel that when you use attractive as an anchor word in a description, it's kind of objectifying, and you want to avoid that except when that's exactly what you're trying to do.

 

Other than that, not a lot to comment on there.

 

I made a folder and stuck the doc in there, I sent an invite to your mailing list email address, I can add people as I get emails. https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BxMEKK9ljUSdRTFFWTNPOXhrNlU&usp=sharing is the link, just click on the doc in the folder and my comments will be on the right with what they pertain to highlighted.

[Mandamon]

Seems like this one has ben picked over a bit already.  I agree with the comments about Emily and the hidden object--it distracted me too.  I have some specific comments below:

 

 

pg 2: "Even though he was twice as tall as her"

--really?  I'm imagining the combinations:  She's 3ft tall, he's 6ft.  She's 4.5 feet tall, he's 9 feet...etc.

 

pg 3: "yellow collars"

--I had to look this one up.  Evidently it is someone who works in a creative field, contrary to a white- or blue-collar.  Never heard of this before and I'm guessing most others haven't either.

 

pg 8: "The Historian's voice was deep and cheesy"

--sorry, but this just makes me think of a pizza.

 

There's a couple loose POVs in the Jester's section again.  I presume this is from the Jester's POV, as that's the title of the section, but things like:

"He couldn't think of the right word so he just waved it away." (referring to the Historian)

"The Historian knew the Professor would have stopped listening to..."

are not really from the Jester's POV.

 

and on the other side:

"the Jester said, sounding overly sincere. "

makes it seem like the reader is out of the Jester's head, listening to him, rather than in his head, seeing and hearing what he hears.

 

The Sappihre's location is a bit of a white room.  I"m not sure where it is, and is Kara near them, or are they just observing her somewhere else?

 

pg 14: "after a long silence that would have been awkward under other circumstances."

--was it not awkward here?

 

You put a lot of effort into saying that the Jester finds the Historian foolish and stupid.  Most of it ends up as "tell" rather than show.  If the reader can't pick that up from the subtext, I'd cut it.  Instead work to show how the Jester feels about the Historian.

[Robinski]

There was a fair bit that I enjoyed in this submission, but I had some issues with these chapters / sections too.

 

Maybe it’s just me (I shall read the other comments after posting), but I found it difficult to follow what was going on in the Emily and Jester sections. I'm sorry, but Jester especially felt to me like an explosion in a MacGuffin* factory. There are so many strands, the interrelationship of the Sapphires, their background and origins, what is possible, what is happening in the world, the aurora, the green scrolls, the Howill sisters, the Professor, the Void, and I don’t feel that any of it is really explained, just referenced, linked to other things that haven’t been explained before moving on. I think it is all confusing and I'm not sure I care about any of it, hence = MacGuffins³.

 

(* Tell me I don’t need to reference that – if anyone doesn’t know go stand in the corner and Wiki it.)

 

I think there is a highly entertaining story going on, but I think the Jester, and to a lesser extent Emily, sections need some polishing / explanation.

 

After that, coming to the Jamie section was a relief, and I enjoyed the simple interplay between those characters, and the instant sense of tension / conflict because of knowing what Team Magenta are going into. Although, we haven’t really seen a demonstration of the Sapphires’ powers, just their nature – but I'm presuming they are bad-chull and there are major fisticuffs coming up – bring it on!

 

---------------------------------------------------------

 

Page 1 – Whoa, whoa, whoa – that’s a doozie to start with – ‘when crime still existed...’ You’ve put that in as a throwaway line, but that is a hugely significant thing, and I don’t see how it is possible. The human condition is such that there will always be rules, and where there are rules and society, there will be people who are going to break them, so how can you say that there is no more crime? I find that very hard to believe.

 

Page 2 – I struggled with the order of events here. Ricard is standing right next to Emily, but she goes through all these various tangential thought processes before she even acknowledges him, and then talks to him. That seemed to me a very dysfunctional way to respond to a person’s presence. Also, if he is shy / timid, I find it hard to accept that he would stand so close to her.

 

The whole point of their little group was because they had to think that the impossible was possible.

 

Page 3 – By this point I'm struggling to keep up, there seem to be a lot of references dropped in that aren’t explained, but are skipped over without any real consideration before we are onto the next new reference or idea. For example;

 

 - There is no crime – massive social implications,

 - Daydreaming, this doesn’t seem relevant to anything, and tends to make Emily look a bit dumb,

 - Dr. Shayne – enough to start me thinking about him before we skip on without knowing his role,

 - Emily’s sister and social classes – no explanation of another significant issue for story’s setting,

 - We’ve gone from daydreaming to the love of her life – the jump seems very sudden and rather trivial because of the brevity with which it is treated,

 - Now she’s leaving a place that has changed her life, but we don’t really know how or why

 

Page 4-6 – I appreciate that she needs to move fast, but we don’t really know why. It feels like an absence of foreshadowing, so when the reason appears on Page 6 it doesn’t have the impact that I think it should. Nothing in the story so far has hinted at what the role of machines in society is so, for me, the revelation felt empty, and we skip away from it without any exploration, which seemed dismissive.

 

Page 7 – Busted! If there’s no crime, why isn’t Emily’s revolver legal? Also, it’s the revolver that’s illegal not the case, surely. Notwithstanding my concerns up to this point, there is a good conflict at the end when Ricard seems to double cross Emily and she gets the drop on him, I liked the way you did that. The ending of the section stands out for me because it is pretty well foreshadowed and creates an effective conflict, whereas some of the other stuff felt like telling-not-showing.

 

Page 8 – The tone here confuses me, the first paragraph reads like broad comedy, like some dialogue from ‘Death’ in early Terry Pratchett (Mort, etc.) or lines from ‘Death’ in Bill & Ted. I'm presuming that’s not the tone you were going for, was it? I’m losing all sense of The Historian being and powerful and terrifying presence.

 

Page 8 – I think there is a risk in cracking jokes in fiction, in that people’s funny bones tend to be in very difference places, and the danger is that a significant proportion of the audience might not be amused. In this vein, I think there are many ways to ‘fool’ without being one and the punch line made me grimace.

 

Page 8 – Something threw me about the tea drinking. Does The Historian know it’s spiked? He seems to by the fact that he’s cringing, and he’s drinking it like whiskey. To me, cringing implies that he doesn’t enjoy it, so why is he drinking it? I'm not sure what we’re supposed to take from this passage, or what it tells us about The Historian.

 

Page 9 – I'm not sure that anyone is arguing against living brains atrophying – just look at Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, etc.

 

Page 9 – if the Sapphires in question are lying about extra-terrestrials, why would they be insane? Would they not be considered insane by Jester’s definition only if they believed that extra-terrestrials existed and therefore thought they were telling the truth?

 

Page 10 – I found Jester’s ruminations on extra-terrestrials confusing. On the previous page, he considers his disbelief that any Sapphire has possessed an ETI, because he’s never been to a non-human world, but he goes on to accept that such worlds exist, and that it is possible to reach them from the void. He seems to contradict himself.

 

Page 11 – Who are the Saints? A couple of words would probably be enough to give the reader some kind of understanding.

 

Page 12 – What are the green scrolls? This may have been mentioned earlier, but I’ll be honest, I’ve forgotten.

 

Page 12 – What is the significance of the Howill sisters? Without knowing that I'm not sure how to make sense of the Jester’s comment that they exist despite him, but then later he thinks about his reliance on Kara.

 

Page 13 – I thought the Jester had come through the aurora, but he must have already been here, and this is a different aurora? His plans all seem to depend on the Sixth Sapphire trying and failing to possess Kara, but then completely dismisses the idea of a Sixth Sapphire.

 

Page 14 – If the insult is obvious, why does the Historian have to try to discern it? And if the Sapphire has no choice in his host, why is the statement an insult to the Historian? Alternatively, if the Historian is sensitive about his previous host being a sewer worker, does that not mean he understands the insult, and therefore doesn’t need to discern it?

 

Page 17 – Why is a poodled pink skirt exceptional?

 

Page 18 – I like the humour when it’s knowing, but less so when it is overt and sounds rather forced. So, for my taste, ‘...my mother-in-law's aunt, etc.’ wasn’t funny, whereas ‘...it wasn't a conspiracy if everyone didn't lean in and whisper loudly.’ made me laugh out loud.

 

Page 18 – I don’t know who the Merk is, and I don’t understand how or why he has his hands full with Kara, so those statements knock me out of the story wondering about something that isn’t given a context.

 

Page 18 – The end of this section is certainly impactful, although not difficult to see coming given that the Queen wants to have a secret pow-wow before the Professor arrives. What I don’t think the reader would understand is why they want to kill the professor.

 

Page 22 – Hmm, we’ve had a reference to machines taking over, and now we’ve got a reference to Skynet – that’s somewhat straight out of Terminator, am I missing something?

 

Page 22 – Jamie makes a serious point. Does Vibali’s downing of shots combined with her wearing of the hijab mean that she is a lapsed Muslim, or that Islam has changed fundamentally? Or is her hijab just a fashion decision?

 

Page 23 – I like the ending of the chapter, because it’s not all that often that the reader gets to be ahead of the protagonist. I'm looking forward to the trajectory of the brown stuff intersecting the speeding impellor in the next chapter.