10/12/2020- SarahB-PlagueShip-chapter1-(v)(g)(medical)-3,300

[Sarah B]

Well, here is the first chapter of my ill fated story. Please see the warning in the email about a potential stress element.

This story is Space Opera/Social Scifi

I love hard scifi, but this is definetly not hard scifi. That being said, if any of the tech particularly bugs you, please feel free to call it out. 

Thanks for reading!

Sarah B

[ginger_reckoning]

I, for one, am not bugged by the subject matter. While it is definitely a funny coincidence (or at least an interesting one) I think that stories like this are timely. Though it is true that we will probably see a lot of plague stories in the near future, I am not bothered by the premise on principle.

So, to the story itself! It seems like a really cool premise, with interesting non-human aliens that can shift shape and have some kind of hive-mind thing going on. And the thought of a plague that can traverse multiple worlds seems just downright horrifying, especially since it seems to have nearly wiped out their species and forced them to consider bringing out the big bad. That, and a doctor who is willing to risk his career and an alien's life to find a cure. However, all of these cool concepts get a bit lost, I think, and it's hard to follow what's going on at times. 

For instance, the story really started for me once D started talking to the general. Before that, I wasn't really sure what they were fixing or why, and there were a lot of terms being thrown around without any explanation. I didn't even know they were an alien until they started twisting their body around (which may have been what you were going for). I can tell you've done a lot of worldbuilding, which is awesome, but I was a bit confused by all of the names getting thrown around without any explanation. For instance, I don't know what the S aliens even look like other than they might be bipedal. 

I was also a bit unsure why he was talking to the general in the first place. They apparently had tried to sabotage the ship, and seem angry at D for something, but its not really clear. I can tell that the thing in the tube isn't good, but I don't really know why. I think the description of some horrible thing floating by itself in hibernation is very creepy, and its obviously foreboding for D, but I really wanted a better sense of why. Will it help them get out of their quarantine situation? How is the plague even affecting their species, and why are they on this spaceship? Even if its a few vaguely threatening recollections or something, I think if you went harder on the threat the plague presents, it could do a lot to draw the reader in. 

Which brings in the last section, with K. Again, it seems like a significant thing to be looking for the cure for this horrible plague, and it seems like he is taking a big risk to be experimenting on this alien (even with its consent) but what I really want is for the drama to be bumped up to thirteen. I like how you point out that the species could be facing extinction even if they do find a cure, And the fact that A feels the need to inject itself since K won't do it seems significant. I think if there was just a little more clarity to the situation, it would go a long way to show how desperate the situation is. 

I am very interested to see where this goes! And the quote at the beginning is a very nice touch as well. Mainly, I want to see more of the cool aliens you described, and learn more about their situation. Please keep submitting!

[Mandamon]

I have similar thoughts to @ginger_reckoning. It's an interesting concept, but I think the lack of description of an alien POV and some confusing terms in the first few pages made this hard to follow. There is also some awkward sentence structure, some of which I've noted below, which made things even more confusing. I think drilling down into the motivations for the characters will help a lot to lay out a clear case of who has done what and why. Then we can see why the tension is so high in these starting chapters. It's there, but it's buried behind a confusing overlay.

Interested to read more, however.

 

Notes while reading:
pg 2: "and crept towards him along the floor"
--Is the guard creeping or the vapor?

pg 2/3" Some of D's rantings are a little hard to follow since there are a lot of embedded quotes and stops and starts. Could be streamlined some, but I am enjoying it (especially as an engineer...).

pg 4: "at the cold and the warming of the cold "
--not sure what this means

pg 4: "which fools he"
--they?

pg 5: "even the fact that the also steel frame triple level beds were painted a hideous brown color was meant to show consideration "
--awkward sentence.

pg 5: "D huffed out a puff of air, permanent guests"
--I think this sort of sentence construction is what is confusing me.

pg 5: "why worry about something that was only fatal to the one silicon based in the alliance?"
--silicon based species? Also, a bit confused. The disease D was fixing the wall containment panel for only affects his species?

pg 5: “Do you know where the General is?”
--I think D just asked the above question basically twice without waiting for an answer?

pg 7: "the only occupant who never left the tank"
--I got confused during this paragraph. I thought F. was the one in the tank at first.

pg 8: "If you all have decided to die, there are better ways to do it."
--So the general was trying to kill everyone to...get the other alien out of the tank? Except all the others would die? I'm not completely sure what's going on here.

pg 9: ok, so the general is trying to kill everyone except the Al. on the ship?

pg 10: "even with their permission, was beyond illegal"
--so it's illegal to find out how to cure the one species suffering from this plague? That seems plotful...

pg 10: "A healthy population takes more than a couple hundred individuals, assuming that their reproduction was anything like most other species."
--except they're obviously very different from other species, so how does he know?

pg 11: "There just wasn’t any president" -> "precedent"

pg 12: "A. didn’t answer, didn’t need to."
--wait, is this in A's POV or Ks? I thought it was K.

pg 12: "A. to be locked into general quarters from a lab he helped design with a lock built based on technology given to them by D. years before"
--Also very awkward and confusing sentence.

[sniperfrog]

I will start off by saying that sci/fi has never really been my bag.

That being said, I really like the first character and I feel that they come off as being the brilliant sciencey type while also being a bit of a loner. I think that there are a lot of terms being thrown around at the beginning that do not really get any sort of descriptions, which makes things a little hard to follow.

The dialogue between the general and D comes off as confusing and I am having trouble following the plot here. Why is the general trying to kill off their own species? Or is that even what is happening? Did the general sabotage the coolant thing that D had to fix? This could use a bit of clearing up for me. If some of the terms were a little better explained, then it will probably help tremendously here. 

Also I am left with quite a few questions regarding this plague. Is the Z word the name of the disease or is it another species of aliens? The idea that it only affects one species is intriguing, but I feel could use a little more elaboration. Also, I'm not positive that the general wanting to kill off those that are left makes sense. Perhaps it is a combination of the aforementioned things, but I feel like a species on the brink of extinction would be more likely to try to survive, rather than commit mass suicide. 

The section with K reads a lot better, but there still were a few things that could use a little more explanation. I feel that these could all be addressed before this, though, so it probably is fine. I like how A just goes for it. That is a really good way to show his determination and resolve to do what needs doing. 

I feel that this is a good start, but without more explanation of the terms and disease, it falls a little short. Expanding the exposition in the beginning can go a long way to helping with these issues. Some of the sentence structuring also comes off a little cumbersome in places, as @Mandamon has already mentioned. Cleaning up these will also help make things a little easier to read. 

I hope this helps. I look forward to seeing where this goes!

[ima willshaper]

I agree with what other people have said so far -- I think the worldbuilding is clearly very deep, and I don't appreciate long physical descriptions anyway so the vague physical descriptions that add detail over time are kind of nice. It would be easier to understand if there were less proper nouns thrown around all at once for sure. I think the beginning scene is interesting, but I also didn't have a really good idea of what was going on, why D was fixing something and how they were fixing it, which might just be because I'm not a technical person, but I'm still confused. The story did start picking up when D went to see the general, but the dialogue was a little hard to follow. Again, there were lots of proper nouns that didn't make sense. The dialogue also didn't have a lot of dialogue tags, especially on page 8, so I had to keep going back and looking at who said what. I get that nobody wants tons of tags, but a few more in there would make it less confusing.

I also agree with others that the sentence structure is clunky in some places, but I think @Mandamon covered that pretty well. 

pgs. 7-9 - I really don't know what's going on in this part. So the general is trying to wake up someone... and the someone is powerful, and they will kill the entire species? It's very unclear why they would want to wake up the guy in the tank, why anyone would be in the tank in the first place, and why the guy in the tank is dangerous. The only thing I really got out of the conversation was that the general wants to do something, and D said no.

pg. 9 - The whole thing about the body language makes no sense. Do they usually use body language? Do they always hide their emotions? What is "laziness" with body language?

pg. 10 - Again, lots of proper nouns that I don't understand, and while I might understand them later on, they don't really seem to add much to the narration.

pg. 10 - "non Carbon based life forms" -> "non-carbon-based life forms" (Also, I'm confused about this non-carbon-based life form thing. I think the A species isn't carbon-based, and it sounds like the A species doesn't talk about their own biology much, but it's hard to have any concrete information or deductions here.)

pg. 11 - Whose understanding is embarrassing? I'm also really confused right here about what species K is a part of.

I think the second scene is just very confusing as well. So... the Z thing is what's making everyone sick, and they're doing tests to figure out what's wrong with it. I think the A species is the only one affected by it, but I can't really tell for sure. I think the description is great, and I can really visualize what's going on, but I feel distant from the story, like I'm watching from the other side of a window and I don't have any context. I love how the worldbuilding is looking though -- I can tell you've done a lot of work to make it detailed and just overall really cool. I would like more information, though. I can tell you're trying to avoid info-dumping and you're trying to make the reader immersed in the world, but this does the opposite. I don't know what's happening or why this is important, so I disconnect. I also don't feel like I know any of the characters very well or how the species interact with each other, but that will probably come with time. More information about who's in charge here (the A or the S?) would be nice.

Your story is coming along great, though! I love the A species already. A race with literally no bones?!? So cool! But I have a hard time understanding most of the story. More detail would be awesome and make the story more engaging. Hope this helps!

[kais]

Overall

I... don't actually know what is going on. There are a host of beings on a ship (?) and some sort of biological control problem? Yes? What is the through-line of the book? What are the stakes? What is the issue trying to be solved? What is the arc of this chapter and why did we need two POV characters, when neither of their sections had arcs?

I think this reads more like a draft scene sketch, which is fine, and necessary, but not really a chapter. When you write your chapters, think about the arc of each chapter, and how that forwards the arc of the book. In the chapter, what did you accomplish? How did it forward the plot? 

The writing style isn't bad at all, and appropriately sparse for space opera (which I also write), but we need more descriptions of the aliens and setting, at least at first. Usually you just do it at first introduction and then don't bother again, but here we got one bit midway through and that was it. If we are going to be thrown into space (and I love being thrown into space) with a space opera, we need to know where we sit in the well-established tropes of space opera. Space opera is, at its heart, a giant ball of tropes. Like romance books. This is useful for writing because you can lean on tropes to do a lot of the work for you, but you have to give the readers some clue as to which way you are going and which tropes you are using.

Good start! Looking forward to seeing a revised version.

 

As I go

- pg 2: we've got 2(?) alien species right off the bat but I don't know what either look like and that is keeping me from getting invested because I can't picture anything

- pg 4: “Well, we don’t die today.” <-- were they in danger of dying? This was not clear from the flippant attitude. If there are these kinds of stakes, they should be clear because right now I'm not invested. I don't know why we care about these characters, what the world stakes are, etc. And I still don't know what they look like.

- pg 5: the pg 5 descriptions come a bit late and come along with lots of words I'm not yet familiar with so it all gets kind of lost. Also I still am not invested in the characters. I need some meat

- pg 6: some tense changes through here that need to be cleaned up

- pg 6: did I miss something? Are they on a ship? A planet? I feel like a ship but I'm not sure

- pg 8: I feel like there are way too many named characters for page 8. I can't keep them straight

- pg 9: Like hell I will. <-- Random first person switch up?

- pg 10: new POV mid first chapter is not recommended. I don't yet care about our first POV, so switching it up now makes me not want to keep reading. Give me a few chapters to get situated into one POV before introducing another. 

- pg 10: had done nothing morally questionable as a scientist <-- I don't believe this. Science is inherently morally dubious. And scientists are pretty much morally grey across the board. We have to be.

- pg 10: carbon is not a proper noun

- are any of these named, talking people women or other genders than men? Does Ar use they/them pronouns?

 

[Silk]

  Overall: Definitely some good stuff here! I certainly have the sense that the world is well fleshed out, although I don’t always feel like I quite have the information to follow along with the information that we’re getting, and I’m definitely intrigued by the potential hive mind thing and the way our friend in the tank is being floated as a potential solution to… something. I’m really not sure on what the something is, though, as I really don’t see how a hive mind solves a plague, so a little more information here might be warranted.

I wasn’t quite clear on the sense of urgency I should be feeling. The information we’re getting about the situation the characters are in, especially TD, suggests that they’re facing some pretty immediate and implacable threats, but I didn’t get that sense from from the POV characters, both of whom seemed to treat everything that was happening as fairly matter-of-fact.

I’m also curious as to why the narrative starts where it did. It’s certainly good setup with some sense of the stakes, but nothing in this chapter seems to have actually changed.

As I go:

Top of p2: “He backed away from…” having a hard time who is doing what here; it reads like the guard taking the actions, but I think it’s actually TD.

If TD knew he was going to be fixing a system that would expose him to superchilled fluids, why didn’t he wear something that afforded him adequate protection?

A couple pages in, I f eel like I’ve gotten a reasonably good sense of TD’s character, but I’m not particularly sympathetic towards him.

“...spew liquid turned gas that was lethal…” and again I wonder, if it’s so lethal to the S, then why isn’t there some sort of containment system or protocol (not necessarily technological) to handle it? Having the guard in the room if this stuff is so deadly to them seems ill-advised.

At some point on page 3, TD’s pronouns seem to have shifted from he/him to they/them.

“If D had a spine…” Another paragraph where I’m having difficulty picturing what’s going on. What is D doing that they might have broken a spine? And if D doesn’t have a spine, I guess they aren’t human?

“Well, we don’t die today.” So D was in danger from this malfunction as well? I hadn’t gotten a huge since of urgency from D so far.

“...before any of that mess could fall on them.” Hah. Fair!

P4 I think this is the first indication we’ve had of sabotage. Would be good to see this a little sooner, or to have the scene start closer to this revelation; the scene was starting to drag by the time I reached this point.

P4 “...the one silicon based in the alliance?” Slicone-based species? Missing word here.

“T was a political type.” At this point, I like the way you’re slipping in minor details about the world, but at this point, I’m starting to feel a little lost with it. The details are great but I don’t have enough to hang them on. Is “political type” a subspecies? An occupation?

Bottom of pg 8: “There are more ways to die that from…” should be “than”

P10 “there just wasn’t any president” …precedent?

[Mandamon]

7 hours ago, Silk said:

P4 “...the one silicon based in the alliance?” Slicone-based species? Missing word here.

Now I'm imagining a silicone-based lifeform...

[Silk]

3 hours ago, Mandamon said:

Now I'm imagining a silicone-based lifeform...

Whoops. You're welcome.

[Sarah B]

On 10/12/2020 at 2:28 PM, ginger_reckoning said:

 However, all of these cool concepts get a bit lost, I think, and it's hard to follow what's going on at times. 

 

On 10/12/2020 at 2:28 PM, ginger_reckoning said:

I was also a bit unsure why he was talking to the general in the first place. They apparently had tried to sabotage the ship, and seem angry at D for something, but its not really clear. 

All very accurate! I'm afraid I was trying to rush to the 'good parts' and wasn't laying the ground work to get there. I was trying to avoid the dreaded scifi first chapter info dump, but instead ended up leaving all the important parts out.

On 10/12/2020 at 2:28 PM, ginger_reckoning said:

I am very interested to see where this goes! And the quote at the beginning is a very nice touch as well. Mainly, I want to see more of the cool aliens you described, and learn more about their situation. Please keep submitting!

Thank you! 

[Sarah B]

On 10/13/2020 at 8:47 AM, Mandamon said:

I have similar thoughts to @ginger_reckoning. It's an interesting concept, but I think the lack of description of an alien POV and some confusing terms in the first few pages made this hard to follow. There is also some awkward sentence structure, some of which I've noted below, which made things even more confusing. I think drilling down into the motivations for the characters will help a lot to lay out a clear case of who has done what and why. Then we can see why the tension is so high in these starting chapters. It's there, but it's buried behind a confusing overlay.

This is something I need to work on for sure. I've added some exposition and stripped out some of the more garbled prose for the next draft :-)

On 10/13/2020 at 8:47 AM, Mandamon said:

pg 5: "why worry about something that was only fatal to the one silicon based in the alliance?"
--silicon based species? Also, a bit confused. The disease D was fixing the wall containment panel for only affects his species?

Yes and yes. Instead of exposition, I added confusion!

This is cleared up in the next draft I hope.

On 10/13/2020 at 8:47 AM, Mandamon said:

pg 8: "If you all have decided to die, there are better ways to do it."
--So the general was trying to kill everyone to...get the other alien out of the tank? Except all the others would die? I'm not completely sure what's going on here.

 

Not intentionally, no. D is an unreliable narrator and a bit if a fatalist. I think I need to bring this out better because it's a core part of their character, and has a lot to do with the arc for this character. 

Definetly some work to do going forward. I re subbed the first scene as a revised Chapter one after some extensive editing. Now that I see some of the problems, going forward I hope to clear them up before I send them out. Drama and emotion is not my strong suit, but something I am trying to improve on. 

 

Great feedback, Thanks for reading!

[Sarah B]

On 10/13/2020 at 3:18 PM, sniperfrog said:

I will start off by saying that sci/fi has never really been my bag.

Thanks for reading dispite this not being your genre! I have a similar situation critiquing fantasy

On 10/13/2020 at 3:18 PM, sniperfrog said:

That being said, I really like the first character and I feel that they come off as being the brilliant sciencey type while also being a bit of a loner. I think that there are a lot of terms being thrown around at the beginning that do not really get any sort of descriptions, which makes things a little hard to follow.

The dialogue between the general and D comes off as confusing and I am having trouble following the plot here. Why is the general trying to kill off their own species? Or is that even what is happening? Did the general sabotage the coolant thing that D had to fix? This could use a bit of clearing up for me. If some of the terms were a little better explained, then it will probably help tremendously here.

Glad you like them! You make a good point, I can see where I need to dial down the ranting. D is fun to write, but their voice tends to run away without the plot. 

I'm going to focus on clarifying and reducing terms going forward. 

On 10/13/2020 at 3:18 PM, sniperfrog said:

I feel that this is a good start, but without more explanation of the terms and disease, it falls a little short. Expanding the exposition in the beginning can go a long way to helping with these issues. Some of the sentence structuring also comes off a little cumbersome in places, as @Mandamon has already mentioned. Cleaning up these will also help make things a little easier to read. 

Yup! This is definetly a recurring theme in the critiques. I'm adding some exposition and a heaping dose of grammer to the next draft!

 

Thanks for reading!

[Sarah B]

On 10/14/2020 at 3:00 PM, ima willshaper said:

Again, there were lots of proper nouns that didn't make sense. The dialogue also didn't have a lot of dialogue tags, especially on page 8, so I had to keep going back and looking at who said what. I get that nobody wants tons of tags, but a few more in there would make it less confusing.

Good points! 

On 10/14/2020 at 3:00 PM, ima willshaper said:

pgs. 7-9 - I really don't know what's going on in this part. So the general is trying to wake up someone... and the someone is powerful, and they will kill the entire species? It's very unclear why they would want to wake up the guy in the tank, why anyone would be in the tank in the first place, and why the guy in the tank is dangerous. The only thing I really got out of the conversation was that the general wants to do something, and D said no.

pg. 10 - "non Carbon based life forms" -> "non-carbon-based life forms" (Also, I'm confused about this non-carbon-based life form thing. 

Yeah, there are some issues with introducing PS. 

I meant to toss in that detail as a hint for later, but it didn't work out. Oh well, next time :-)

On 10/14/2020 at 3:00 PM, ima willshaper said:

 I feel distant from the story, like I'm watching from the other side of a window and I don't have any context.

I think I need to write this on an index card as a reminder! This is a recurring issue for me in multiple stories. 

On 10/14/2020 at 3:00 PM, ima willshaper said:

 I would like more information, though. I can tell you're trying to avoid info-dumping and you're trying to make the reader immersed in the world, but this does the opposite. I don't know what's happening or why this is important, so I disconnect. I also don't feel like I know any of the characters very well or how the species interact with each other, but that will probably come with time. More information about who's in charge here (the A or the S?) would be nice.

 

On 10/14/2020 at 3:00 PM, ima willshaper said:

But I have a hard time understanding most of the story. More detail would be awesome and make the story more engaging. Hope this helps!

Yup! Mission accepted.

This critique is a huge help, thanks!

[Sarah B]

On 10/16/2020 at 11:47 AM, kais said:

Overall

I... don't actually know what is going on. There are a host of beings on a ship (?) and some sort of biological control problem? Yes? What is the through-line of the book? What are the stakes? What is the issue trying to be solved? What is the arc of this chapter and why did we need two POV characters, when neither of their sections had arcs?

I think this reads more like a draft scene sketch, which is fine, and necessary, but not really a chapter. When you write your chapters, think about the arc of each chapter, and how that forwards the arc of the book. In the chapter, what did you accomplish? How did it forward the plot? 

Good point. I think I was rushing through to get to the parts I wanted to write. This story died on the vine a few times in the first five chapters so I was just powering through. Now's the time to clean it up and dig deeper though. 

On 10/16/2020 at 11:47 AM, kais said:

As I go

- pg 2: we've got 2(?) alien species right off the bat but I don't know what either look like and that is keeping me from getting invested because I can't picture anything

 

- pg 10: new POV mid first chapter is not recommended. I don't yet care about our first POV, so switching it up now makes me not want to keep reading. Give me a few chapters to get situated into one POV before introducing another. 

Good advice. It will take some pretty big restructuring to get around it, but I'm going to simmer on this. 

On 10/16/2020 at 11:47 AM, kais said:

- pg 10: had done nothing morally questionable as a scientist <-- I don't believe this. Science is inherently morally dubious. And scientists are pretty much morally grey across the board. We have to be.

Well, I am now terrified :-) 

In all seriousness though, would this line bother you if it was "ethically" instead of "morally"? Or another term?

I was trying to show that K is a very conscientious and In-the-lines sort of person since most of the characters around him aren't. This makes him a bit naive but also drives much of his actions. 

 

Thanks for reading!

[Sarah B]

On 10/17/2020 at 10:21 PM, Silk said:

  Overall: Definitely some good stuff here! I certainly have the sense that the world is well fleshed out, although I don’t always feel like I quite have the information to follow along with the information that we’re getting, and I’m definitely intrigued by the potential hive mind thing and the way our friend in the tank is being floated as a potential solution to… something. I’m really not sure on what the something is, though, as I really don’t see how a hive mind solves a plague, so a little more information here might be warranted.

Thanks! Yes Indefinetly need to do some work here on clarifying. 

On 10/17/2020 at 10:21 PM, Silk said:

I wasn’t quite clear on the sense of urgency I should be feeling. The information we’re getting about the situation the characters are in, especially TD, suggests that they’re facing some pretty immediate and implacable threats, but I didn’t get that sense from from the POV characters, both of whom seemed to treat everything that was happening as fairly matter-of-fact.

If TD knew he was going to be fixing a system that would expose him to superchilled fluids, why didn’t he wear something that afforded him adequate protection?

This is going to be a hard balance to strike because the situation is serious, but D's nature is to be flippant about risk. Something to work on for sure. 

On 10/17/2020 at 10:21 PM, Silk said:

A couple pages in, I f eel like I’ve gotten a reasonably good sense of TD’s character, but I’m not particularly sympathetic towards him.

Fair, D is pretty abrasive on average. They will be surrounded by more likable characters later on so hopefully that helps :-)

On 10/17/2020 at 10:21 PM, Silk said:

“...spew liquid turned gas that was lethal…” and again I wonder, if it’s so lethal to the S, then why isn’t there some sort of containment system or protocol (not necessarily technological) to handle it? Having the guard in the room if this stuff is so deadly to them seems ill-advised.

Good catch!

On 10/17/2020 at 10:21 PM, Silk said:

At some point on page 3, TD’s pronouns seem to have shifted from he/him to they/them.

Yes, this is going to be a tough one for me to catch. D and all the Al's were he/him in the first and second drafts and are now they/them. Unfortunetly he/him and she/her are pretty invisible to read so I keep missing them. 

Thanks for catching that!

On 10/17/2020 at 10:21 PM, Silk said:

“...before any of that mess could fall on them.” Hah. Fair!

P4 I think this is the first indication we’ve had of sabotage. Would be good to see this a little sooner, or to have the scene start closer to this revelation; the scene was starting to drag by the time I reached this point.

I'm shortening up the first bit to hopefully solve this. 

On 10/17/2020 at 10:21 PM, Silk said:

“T was a political type.” At this point, I like the way you’re slipping in minor details about the world, but at this point, I’m starting to feel a little lost with it. The details are great but I don’t have enough to hang them on. Is “political type” a subspecies? An occupation?

Sort of all three. The Al's form is customized to purpose for the individual. I've got more of this later but I definetly take you point that I am hinting at a lot, but not actually saying much.

My World Builder's disease was showing pretty badly in this chapter, I'm going to try to clarify and clean up a lot of these issues in the next draft. 

 

Thank you for reading!

[Silk]

18 hours ago, Sarah B said:

Quote

 

This is going to be a hard balance to strike because the situation is serious, but D's nature is to be flippant about risk. Something to work on for sure. 

I wondered if this was the case. Is there a nervous twitch or thought D can have? Something they'd rather not think about? I don't think you actually need much - just a couple subtle hints to cue the reader that something is Up, rather than having D seem totally cavalier. I think having D kitted out properly to whatever job they're meant to be doing would also help. 

18 hours ago, Sarah B said:

Fair, D is pretty abrasive on average. They will be surrounded by more likable characters later on so hopefully that helps :-)

Yep, and I don't hate them or feel so far that it's necessarily a chore to spend time with them, so all good. 

18 hours ago, Sarah B said:

Unfortunetly he/him and she/her are pretty invisible to read so I keep missing them. 

I think I noted the switch happening around p3 and don't recall noticing many/any pronoun slips after that so hopefully that helps narrow it down!

 

[Robinski]

On 12/10/2020 at 5:32 PM, Sarah B said:

Well, here is the first chapter of my ill fated story. Please see the warning in the email about a potential stress element.

This story is Space Opera/Social Scifi

I love hard scifi, but this is definetly not hard scifi. That being said, if any of the tech particularly bugs you, please feel free to call it out. 

Thanks for reading!

Sarah B

Hi Sarah, I'm keen to read this, and apologies for the delay. I think I'm going to head over to the resubmitted Chapter 1, if that's okay. Hopefully, it will give a slightly different perspective. Although, that's a big word count difference!

Oh, and not at all worried about the subject matter.

Edited October 22, 2020 by Robinski

[Sarah B]

2 hours ago, Robinski said:

Hi Sarah, I'm keen to read this, and apologies for the delay. I think I'm going to head over to the resubmitted Chapter 1, if that's okay. Hopefully, it will give a slightly different perspective. Although, that's a big word count difference!

 

No worries at all! Thanks for going over this. It's a good idea to skip ahead, the second sub is the same again but hopefully better :-) 

Also, the word count difference is because I shoved a second POV to later in the book, not because of a slash and burn edit.  Although I'm not ruling that out for later sections. :-) 

[kais]

On 10/19/2020 at 11:38 PM, Sarah B said:

would this line bother you if it was "ethically" instead of "morally"

I think ethically is a great switch!