Chuck Hossenlopp Posted January 22, 2018 Report Share Posted January 22, 2018 Thank you all for your feedback on Chapter one. I am hereby oath bound to redo that intro from scratch. Moving on! Yes, this is a DONE manuscript. I can feed it to you as fast as you're able to digest it. Though I'm not sure about the wisdom of doing so. On with the show... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kais Posted January 23, 2018 Report Share Posted January 23, 2018 Hei @Chuck Hossenlopp - did you request a sub spot for today in the email and submissions thread (top pinned post)? Did I just miss it? 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Hossenlopp Posted January 23, 2018 Author Report Share Posted January 23, 2018 I did NOT. Now I feel bad. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandamon Posted January 24, 2018 Report Share Posted January 24, 2018 Overall, I'm interested by the concept of the story, and feel like we will see the anachronistic skeletons in action later, somehow. They seem too well-described to not also be characters. However, I think this could be cut down a whole lot, taking out some of the banter that doesn't progress the story, and cutting down on the technical jargon. Also, why on Earth is J included? He's literally someone who doesn't believe in evolution. No self-respecting scientist would have him anywhere near. Notes as I read: pg 2: Still don't really know who is who save that S. is the one they met at the dig. pg 3: The facial expressions talking is cute, but goes on for a while. pg 5: "creationist angle on things" --I didn't get this from J before. Actual creationist, or does this mean something else? pg 7: each conversation tends to go on a bit too long here, taking just another sentence to stuff in some worldbuilding fact, or overexplain something. Once or twice is fine, but this is starting to drag down the narrative for me. I'm also waiting for them to get to the skeleton... pg 7: The above is demonstrated in the discussion about jobs. A lot of this reads as fluff. I'm ready to see the body and find out what this is about. pg 11: Takes half the submission to get to this point. I think much of what is prior to the point could be cut in the interest of getting to the point. The banter is fun, but doesn't really build character, and isn't relevant to the plot. pg 12: So J is actually a creationist? Why is he here? No scientists in their right mind would invite someone like that to a dig. pg 12: "I usually weigh in on both sides just to stoke the fires. It’s fun." --I would disagree. Second section: The descriptions of the four skeletons were interesting--I get the feeling we will see these in action later in the book? However, this still felt dragged out by the overlong archeological explanations. I'm completely confused as to why J is here, and narrating parts of the video. Some of the reasons for the crew to get excited were pretty technical, and I don't think it got the emotion across that well. For example: "That’s the same matrix material as the bodies. That means there’s something from the same burial event here!” Doesn't really get across the excitement of "There's another body buried here!" 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kais Posted January 24, 2018 Report Share Posted January 24, 2018 (edited) ETA: Forgot to mention that I'm really interested in the story, as I love anthropology stories! Also, revision is the joy of all writers. Keep at it! Overall I clearly had a lot of thoughts about this. Most of the text made me pretty angry, if I'm being honest, because it shows a deep misunderstanding of how science works. Also, issues that were pointed out last week have not been edited for this week (such as the genus species thing and bringing friends along on a research project). The gender imbalance continues to grow, and for no discernible reason. Women and gender minorities do science. We're professors and grad students and skeletons and all sorts of fun things. Please fix this. Note that the perpetual confusion of race with species was probably just misunderstanding at first, but now having shown up again is bordering on some racism issues. Human genetics are pretty complicated but, again, race is not a thing. Species is. It might be worth taking the time to look up the definitions of genus, species, race, and see how all of those interplay. 4 hours ago, Mandamon said: Also, why on Earth is J included? He's literally someone who doesn't believe in evolution. No self-respecting scientist would have him anywhere near. If I were the professor I'd have punched the kid. Flat out. As I go - page two: we know the skeleton is male? When did we learn that? - Gah! Species is not capitalized, and Latin is always in italics! It should be Homo floresiensis, not Homo Floresiensis. Please fix throughout because A) it makes your science look not legit and B.) my brain is going to explode - page three: info dumpy start, and I'd argue that wolves have never been an actual threat to human safety. - page three: I'm confused. Is there some question in the minds of these boys that neanderthals are not real? Cause we have tons of science on their existence - page three: the fold between his eyebrows spoke? - this dialogue does not feel natural at all - page four: very confused. Body parts are talking. What is going on? - You haven't proven definitively that the race that this corpse represents is the basis for mythological dwarves. <-- They haven't proven anything yet. We don't even know the sex of this thing, despite all the male pronouns to the contrary. And again, race is not the right word to use here. You have species, probably genus and species to content with. Race is a social construct mostly used for racism, which is what this narrative is threatening to veer into. - page five is mostly infodump - page six: Professor W must not take on graduate students very often, and not oversee them at all. This is how I would react to this situation: Me: Oh, great. The grad students are here. *sigh* Grad students: OMG I AM SO EXCITED TO BE PART OF THIS FIELD WORK Me: Go change your clothes into something field appropriate and eat something. And who are these people with you? Grad student: I brought my friends! Me: No. They go back on the plane. Now. Grad student: But they're free labor! They want to help! Me: They're a lawsuit. They're not allowed on this site. Leave. Now. Grad student: BUT! Me: Not negotiable. Research sites aren't for screwing around. Get your act together or find a new advisor. I paid way too much to bring you here and have invested four years in the NSF grant funding this. They're not authorized to be here, they can't legally work on university research without at least a volunteer form filled out and signed, and you didn't even ask. That doesn't bode well for our future mentor/mentee relationship. #realacademiclife - page six: advisor greets them and I am shaking my head in disbelief. This is a parallel dimension, right? The darkest timeline? - top of page seven: I LOLed. No advisor has ever spoken to a graduate student like this. Your writing styles were so compelling, yet accessible. Your notes are empirical, accurate, and concise! Nope. Not how graduate students operate. This is how this convo would go IRL: Me: Did you ever send me your notes from last year? Graduate student: Well I was going to, but then I had this thing come up and... Me: Did you at least bring them? Student: Yeah! *hands over field notebook with handwritten notes* Me: *sighs* They're just numbers. Do you have any analysis to go with this? Grad student: I can work on it tonight maybe? Me: It's been a year but sure, why not? *dies a little inside* - page ten: no part of 'I found this site with a divining rod' is even remotely publishable. - page eleven: carbon dating. Please tell me that's going to be in here somewhere cause.... - oh look, there it is, and nonsense arguments are being attached to it. These arguments make J unpopular because it shows he has no idea how to read scientific literature - page four: It's a skeleton. How does it have a face? - .... this thing is open to the air but still has a chin? Is it a bog body? Even then, decay would be rapid once removed. This isn't how decay works - all the new skeletons are male, too? Are there any females in this book? - page 21: establishing a new species takes years. It doesn't happen just because a grad student or grad student friend thinks something looks weird. Edited January 24, 2018 by kais 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Hossenlopp Posted January 25, 2018 Author Report Share Posted January 25, 2018 I always noticed the Genus species formatting thing, but didn't know the significance. Thank you for that. I did correct it in Chapter 1. My characters are college educated, I am not. I took just a little bit of anatomy and archeology, and there is a saying about a little bit of knowledge being dangerous for a reason. The blatant inaccuracies, like the Neanderthals being an ethnicity or a sufferers of some kind of deformity, come right out of the creationists' playbook. J's role is to make rational roll their eyes, and put a very popular tin foil hat belief on trial. The tinfoil hat that I actually want the reader to buy into is that Neanderthals and other extant hominini were the basis for the creatures in folklore. So this is going to take some severe overhauling. You're going to see some a lot more of my ignorance in chapter 3. Right now, this chapter is a load bearing structure. This is how the McGuffin gets discovered. I'm going to have to come up with a better way to get the McGuffin to the place. The guys are front and center in the dig site for story reasons. But I agree that, for plausibility reasons, the guys should be on the periphery of the dig. I wanted to keep all four guys together for the discovery. When it comes right down to it, Sam is the only one that has to be an archeologist. Maybe he can live stream with the other guys back home? Chapter 3 finishes the dig site scene and Chapter 4 truly begins what the rest of the book is. I'm thinking that the first three chapters should be streamlined into one quick chapter. I hope I can workshop some ideas here for getting the important doodad where it needs to go in the story. You'll have to read 3 and 4 before you can weigh in on that, though 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kais Posted January 25, 2018 Report Share Posted January 25, 2018 35 minutes ago, Chuck Hossenlopp said: I hope I can workshop some ideas here for getting the important doodad where it needs to go in the story. You'll have to read 3 and 4 before you can weigh in on that, though In terms of resources, you have a university professor who does field work right here, and I'm happy to help fellow RE subbers! However I'll add a caveat that if some non-male characters don't appear soon, I won't have much interest in reading. I can't suspend my disbelief that much unless you want to introduce the backstory of how all the other genders died off in a plague or something. 37 minutes ago, Chuck Hossenlopp said: The tinfoil hat that I actually want the reader to buy into is that Neanderthals and other extant hominini were the basis for the creatures in folklore. This isn't a big leap. We know that dragons were based on dinosaur skeletons, and unicorns were based on an extinct version of the rhino. There's also been a few discoveries of very small Homo sapien and I think also Homo erectus on some isolated islands, and scientists suspect much of our mythological gnome-type characters stem from those groups. There's a lot of science to back this sort of story up, so you have a strong lead already. 40 minutes ago, Chuck Hossenlopp said: When it comes right down to it, Sam is the only one that has to be an archeologist. Maybe he can live stream with the other guys back home? I'd like to suggest an alternative. Professor is on the last year of grant money and can't afford to hire laborers. Sam volunteers his friends, who all sign the relevant paperwork and Sam forgets to tell Professor about the creationist among them. This sets up a lot of potential, too, with antagonistic character interactions between the prof and the student / friends, and gives a much better explanation for why these kids are hanging around. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
industrialistDragon Posted January 25, 2018 Report Share Posted January 25, 2018 9 minutes ago, kais said: I'd like to suggest an alternative That's a better suggestion than mine, which was just: Sam's friends are all stupidly rich and since the dig is happening over a long break, they all decide to fly over to bother Sam on their own dime, and just, like, annoy him via Facetime until he's off the clock for the evening. Anyway, sorry for the lateness, but here's my feedback. I had a lot of feelings about this, but in the end, it was a struggle to finish. I had to walk away for about 4 hours and ended up skimming the last 3 or 4 pages. Most of the issues with this section are the same as the issues that were brought up with the previous section. I could really feel the characters excitement, that was conveyed very well, but unfortunately, I still barely could tell any of them apart and had little idea what it was they were so excited about. Again, the premise is interesting, the writing is clear and easy to digest, but the addition of a professor (?) whose sole purpose seems to be fawning all over his students doesn't help me differentiate anyone at all. The science and the set-up are unreal to me to the point of distraction. I had a difficult time figuring out what's going on, and the large amount of talking-head scenes didn't help me get a grip on the timeline, who was doing what, or even who was speaking sometimes. I'm disappointed, because I like urban/modern fantasy and I enjoy the heck out of "it's all true" sorts of pseudoscience, so it wouldn't take a whole lot to get me on board, and I want to be aboard. As I go -- I'm really not sure about this restatement-of-the-premise speech right at the beginning of chapter two here. Coming right after the one in ch1, where there was a speech very close to this one, it feels redundant to me. -- Were wolves ever a realistic threat to human civilization? At least, mere centuries ago? For certain dire values of wolves and certain prehistoric family group values of civilization maybe.... but ... -- I'm not sure the talking body parts really work. It's amusing, but I feel like it could be done in a way that doesn't attribute driect vocal speech to strange portions of anatomy. -- I am unsure what the inclusion of a creationist naysayer on a dig would bring to... any field research work, really. The validity of any "debate" engendered by creationist views might be a matter of opinion, but I doubt it belongs on a site whose primary purpose is to acquire data. The opining, analyzing, etc would happen back in the university I'd imagine and the debate would happen in academic journals i'd think. -- "speaks very highly of you" The professor is taking the recommendation of his grad student? This feels very odd to me. Like, if whathisname (I still can't tell them apart, sorry) was a medical resident and his doctor-in-charge agreed to let the kid's bowling buddies help on his rounds based on what the resident said about his friends, it would be very odd, wouldn't it? -- Discredited research, taking callow grad students' opinions over their own, and now claiming layperson-friendly language in a scholarly journal publication is a good and desirable thing (not to mention grad students getting anything other than a end-of-the-list-behind-et-al byline for their research, regardless of how much work they put into the report)... I am beginning to wonder if this is even a legitimate university, if professors like this are around and still getting paid field research grants... I've completely lost track of the plot at this point. I'm too busy questioning what is going on at all even. -- Like, i was under the impression that most western European nations had pretty stringent archaeological digging rules and regulations (maybe not as strict as say Egypt, but still), since their "young" cities often have a good couple centuries' worth of history underneath them (unlike here in the states, where half a century is storied and old). which makes me wonder what is actually going on here, if this is even a legitimate dig? It just seems so laissiez-faire about everything... -- Wait, they're not even archaeologists? Pre-med, engineering, and "catch bad guys" which i'm translating as criminal justice ... WHY are they on an archaeology dig again? I'm so confued -- A divining rod? That's one of those stories that go into #fieldworkFails, right? -- Can half-dug up artifacts even be dated in situ without the "heavy machinery" that's supposed to be arriving later in the week? especially with the amount of oddities going on around the rest of the site, I'd really question any field-diagnosis... -- Wait, run the DNA? how'd they do that without machinery at a field site? what is even going on here? -- Do women even exist in this world? Their lack, along with all the other weirdness makes me think that this might not be Earth? Did something happen to them? This is where I had to walk away. I don't have comments for the back 3 to 4 pages because I was struggling to finish. None of it was particularly bad or offensive to me, but my credulity had been stretched past and beyond the breaking point, even for lighthearted urban fantasy. Sorry. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Hossenlopp Posted January 26, 2018 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2018 Chapter 3 is full of my shrugging guesswork on how field work functions. Worse than that, the dig is really just set up to get the magic stuff to happen in Chapter 4. These three chapters are in need of serious triage. If I can manage the time this weekend, I'm going to digest all of the notes that all of you have given me to get an all new streamlined intro to the story going. I just might hint at the existence of a human being that can survive and function without a Y chromosome. (How did I not see that?) Stay tuned 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kais Posted January 26, 2018 Report Share Posted January 26, 2018 2 hours ago, Chuck Hossenlopp said: (How did I not see that?) LOL! It's not just you, really! It's a pervasive issue. You're not the first person it's been pointed out to on this forum, and you won't be the last! And you're still ahead because not having any women in your story means you haven't fridged any, either, which at this point is basically a running joke. Newbie submits, and in my head I'm taking bets on if the female character dies in the first chapter. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robinski Posted January 26, 2018 Report Share Posted January 26, 2018 Loved your role-play interjections, above, @kais. Sounds like you're a hard(/long-suffering!) task-person. 10 hours ago, kais said: And you're still ahead because not having any women in your story means you haven't fridged any, either, 10 hours ago, kais said: ...which at this point is basically a running joke. Newbie submits, and in my head I'm taking bets on if the female character dies in the first chapter. You don't get very good odds on that these days! 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Hossenlopp Posted January 26, 2018 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2018 I really hope that fridging has trended down since the 90's. One thing that I'm worried about is that adding a bunch of spear carriers to the opening scene could add confusion to the intro of the four main characters. Would that confusion be alleviated at all of the spear carriers were no-name pronoun people? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mandamon Posted January 26, 2018 Report Share Posted January 26, 2018 Or rather than adding people, you could just make any number of the four main characters female instead of male. S's name is already gender-neutral, for example... 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Hossenlopp Posted January 26, 2018 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2018 I actually have a reason for my four protagonists being male. I want my story to deconstruct the martial hero archetype, and expose the toxic masculinity at the heart of the myth of redemptive violence. I also don't want to hit the reader square in the face with it either. Believe me, I thought of gender swapping the mains, but toxic masculinity just doesn't translate well to a female character. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robinski Posted January 26, 2018 Report Share Posted January 26, 2018 10 minutes ago, Chuck Hossenlopp said: I want my story to deconstruct the martial hero archetype, and expose the toxic masculinity at the heart of the myth of redemptive violence. I also don't want to hit the reader square in the face with it either. Seems to me the best way to do that is to show it starkly against the backdrop of at least one main female character. Is /could the prof leading the dig be female? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Hossenlopp Posted January 26, 2018 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2018 Done deal. Both the American and the German Professors are female now. I have to come up with new first names for them, and oh so many pronouns 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Hossenlopp Posted January 26, 2018 Author Report Share Posted January 26, 2018 19 hours ago, kais said: I'd like to suggest an alternative. Professor is on the last year of grant money and can't afford to hire laborers. Sam volunteers his friends, who all sign the relevant paperwork and Sam forgets to tell Professor about the creationist among them. This sets up a lot of potential, too, with antagonistic character interactions between the prof and the student / friends, and gives a much better explanation for why these kids are hanging around. @kais I'd like you to read my unaltered Chapter 3. I have to warn you that the experience of doing so will make you slap your forehead often enough to sound like applause, but I'm leaning on you to introduce some semblance of logic to my dig site. I think your input will be crucial to my rewrite. What field are you in? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kais Posted January 26, 2018 Report Share Posted January 26, 2018 4 hours ago, Chuck Hossenlopp said: What field are you in? A subset of biodegradation. I spend every summer in the Peruvian Amazon mucking about in... muck. With graduate and undergraduate students. Hence my massive feels. I'm going to make an odd suggestion for research on your part. PhD Comics, while amusing, is also a really accurate view of how graduate school works. It doesn't have much of a timeline, so just dig in. Particularly of interest for your early chapters will be the professor/grad student interactions, and the grad student frustration (no such thing as a happy grad student. Sleep? Yes. Angry? Periodically. Stressed? Definitely. Happy? Ehhh, maybe a few pints in.) 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Hossenlopp Posted January 27, 2018 Author Report Share Posted January 27, 2018 @kais This is what makes you an amazing find for me. You know what an entertaining story needs, and you can call me out on my BS. I really hope you stick around for the whole ride 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kais Posted January 29, 2018 Report Share Posted January 29, 2018 @Chuck Hossenlopp new research just came out that pertains to your story! Check out all the embedded links in it, too, for more reading. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chuck Hossenlopp Posted January 29, 2018 Author Report Share Posted January 29, 2018 Thanks for this find! "The jawbone was discovered in 2002 by a freshman on his first archaeological dig with the group." Now that I have more of @kais's perspective, I have the nightmarish vision that the kid dug straight through the entire cranium only stopping when someone over his shoulder saw the teeth and screamed for him to stop. Sigh. The civilizations represented at my fictional dig site date back to about 30k years ago. This jawbone dates back to nearly 200k years ago. Could sophisticated societies risen and fallen during that time in our real world? I'd like to think so. Everything is true until disproved. At least that's how it works for speculative fiction writers 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kais Posted January 29, 2018 Report Share Posted January 29, 2018 This timeline might help. Societies definitely rise and fall, but what tools they have vary by the age. What we consider human today first emerged in the Paleolithic era. 30K years ago is quite modern, so I would expect most of the same things we have now. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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