7/14/25 - PaulSB - Twilight's Rift, sub04 - 4987 words (L)

[Paul SB]

Hey Rocky, watch me pull a submission out of a hat!

That trick never works!

Okay, this one has three entries, one where Rey further explores the ship while everyone else sleeps, one where the creepy company telepath manipulates a musician on tour, and one where the protagonists decide to have a night on the town before they go into the more serious business of crusading against slavery in the galaxy. 

Any suggestions are appreciated. One thing I'm looking for is if any of this material seems like it could be cut. The first entry might be okay if I can squeeze in the foreshortening elsewhere, but maybe you'll like it anyway for the ambience and the character dev. The second was one I cut from my original, 250 kiloword draft, but beta readers wanted it put back. I'd like to know what you think about it. The third kind of has to be there, as it leads into the nightmare of the next few entries.

Enjoy!

[Appol PhD they/he]

All right time to get reading!

Overall: Similar comments, with my biggest hangup being that the plot doesn’t feel super cohesive. I can see why the characters would want to go drinking after getting their ship and money, but if the story’s about A taking on the universe and freeing laborers then why is this important enough to show us? There’s nothing wrong with it per se, but as is currently it doesn’t feel like a necessary part of the story.

The interpersonal conflict with ME has some promise, though right now her worldview doesn’t feel super fleshed out and her dialogue feels like she’s regurgitating ideology without much characterization to it. I believe that there would be people like this in the setting, but I don’t believe that this is the most interesting version of this type of person the story could show us.

For a lot of these comments, I recommend zooming out from these individual chapters and thinking about what really matters to the larger story instead of tweaking this individual submission too much. A lot of my comments are broad because I don’t think there’s one clear easy fix, and making the story feel more cohesive could involve some high-level plot restructuring. At least, that’s my approach when I’m trying to iron out these issues in editing.  

As I go:

Pg 2. So far this scene doesn’t feel like it moves the story along, and the exploration also doesn’t answer my most burning question (why the ship is here and what happened to the earlier group of people). Right now this feels like an arbitrary stroke of good luck

Pg 3. If they know that ME is going to be like this, why did they bring her along? Are they scared she’ll lead the authorities to them if they let her go?

Pg 5. It’s good to set the scene with possibilities, but this feels like quite a bit of exposition in dialogue

Pg 7. The interpersonal conflict with ME feels like a good focus, but right now the pressure that’s on the characters to work this out feels a little nebulous. ME could snitch in a day, a year, or never, so it’s hard to know if attempts to resolve the situation are meaningful.

Pg 8-9. Right now I’m not getting a good sense of the conflict. It seems like things are going fine for our PoV character, and it doesn’t feel like an important moment for their (probably evil) plans

Pg 11. Not sure what this scene adds to the story right now. I'd say it could probably be cut.

Pg 14. Similar comments on this chapter so far. It’s hard for me to get a feeling of the plot, and I’m not sure why this is important enough to be showing us

[Paul SB]

2 hours ago, Ace of Hearts said:

Pg 2. So far this scene doesn’t feel like it moves the story along, and the exploration also doesn’t answer my most burning question (why the ship is here and what happened to the earlier group of people). Right now this feels like an arbitrary stroke of good luck

Actually, I went back to the previous chapter and had them ask the computer and it explained that the crew are all dead, so they are now the crew. And yes, it does feel like a stroke of good luck, but there is more to it that you won't find out about that until much later. It has to do with the character who led them to the ship in the first place.

Pg 3. If they know that ME is going to be like this, why did they bring her along? Are they scared she’ll lead the authorities to them if they let her go?

Partly it's that she's been one of their roomies for years, partly they're not sure they want to leave her on the ship alone, but also partly because much of the explanation was edited out several drafts back.

Pg 5. It’s good to set the scene with possibilities, but this feels like quite a bit of exposition in dialogue

Are you referring to the aliens they mentioned? It made sense that they would consider the possibility, given how tenuous their existence would be in the Meritocracy.

Pg 7. The interpersonal conflict with ME feels like a good focus, but right now the pressure that’s on the characters to work this out feels a little nebulous. ME could snitch in a day, a year, or never, so it’s hard to know if attempts to resolve the situation are meaningful.

Sure, but obviously they have to try.

Pg 8-9. Right now I’m not getting a good sense of the conflict. It seems like things are going fine for our PoV character, and it doesn’t feel like an important moment for their (probably evil) plans

You're probably right, though like I wrote before, beta readers wanted to see more of the antagonists. I had a couple more entires with these two that I didn't put back. At the midpoint the protagonists run into the telepath and cellist, and I felt like the encounter was more meaningful when we knew more about those two.

Pg 11. Not sure what this scene adds to the story right now. I'd say it could probably be cut.

I'm considering it.

Pg 14. Similar comments on this chapter so far. It’s hard for me to get a feeling of the plot, and I’m not sure why this is important enough to be showing us

It will make more sense when you see the next entry. One of the things I don't like about doing this chapter by chapter instead of reading the whole story before commenting is that no one is going to see how things fit together until close to the end. Obviously you can't reveal everything at the beginning, or else there would be no story left to tell. Perhaps I can trim this, but if it gets cut out entirely then the following events don't make sense.

 

 

[Appol PhD they/he]

6 hours ago, Paul SB said:

And yes, it does feel like a stroke of good luck, but there is more to it that you won't find out about that until much later. It has to do with the character who led them to the ship in the first place.

Would be great to have foreshadowing for this!

6 hours ago, Paul SB said:

Are you referring to the aliens they mentioned? It made sense that they would consider the possibility, given how tenuous their existence would be in the Meritocracy.

Yep. Like I said good to acknowledge the possibilities but there's a lot of exposition

6 hours ago, Paul SB said:

Pg 7. The interpersonal conflict with ME feels like a good focus, but right now the pressure that’s on the characters to work this out feels a little nebulous. ME could snitch in a day, a year, or never, so it’s hard to know if attempts to resolve the situation are meaningful.

Sure, but obviously they have to try.

The point isn't about whether they should try and more about how the story is framing it. The story can choose to set up this conflict however it wants and right now it doesn't feel like it's fully putting in the work to establish the stakes

6 hours ago, Paul SB said:

Pg 14. Similar comments on this chapter so far. It’s hard for me to get a feeling of the plot, and I’m not sure why this is important enough to be showing us

It will make more sense when you see the next entry. One of the things I don't like about doing this chapter by chapter instead of reading the whole story before commenting is that no one is going to see how things fit together until close to the end. Obviously you can't reveal everything at the beginning, or else there would be no story left to tell. Perhaps I can trim this, but if it gets cut out entirely then the following events don't make sense.

Doing it weekly can make for a slow reading pace but I think that catching plot issues early on is actually one of the advantages of the format, not disadvantages. If a reader gets disengaged, they're not necessarily going to wait until the point the author wants them to. Obviously the way everything fits together isn't to be fully developed until the end, but if the point is to see how everything fits together and there's no progress on that until the end then it means everything before that is unnecessary. That sounds like an oversimplification, but it's the mindset that has produced the best results for me.

At the risk of projecting my personal mindset as being the "right" way, I think it can really help to reframe thinking around these kinds of story matters (which I've had to do--some of my early drafts are far more scattered than this). Instead of viewing this section as necessary for having the next sections make sense, I think it's better to ask what's important about this larger arc and the most interesting way to lead into it. Maybe that means summarizing this, maybe it means tweaking bits to add foreshadowing, or maybe it means completely rewriting this and changing the plot to better explore what the story is interested in.

This is also connected to how when I want a stronger sense of plot, it's not necessarily related to reveals. Some slower paced works can feel very tight in terms of plot (though I have a hard time doing that) because the narrative is focused. An idea that's helped me from the literary sphere is called narrative control, which basically means that the story should feel like it's in control of where it's going and what it's showing us. This isn't a story about a group of people stealing a ship and taking it to a bar, so if the story includes that scene it should be because it's using that scene in a specific, intentional way to develop the story rather than as a necessary evil to get us from point A to B.

The reason I'm saying all of this is that a few years back I submitted the first 4-5 chapters of a story here and was told that there was no plot, despite all the things happening that I thought were cool. And while it was hard to take at the time, that feedback was the best thing that happened for my writing because it got me thinking about plot in this way. Your process might not be the same as mine, and I'm certainly not done learning how to make a plot, but I hope it's helpful to at least consider.

[Paul SB]

1 hour ago, Ace of Hearts said:

Having this conversation is very useful. I'm going to have to consider how I might accomplish all the story's objectives, including the character building, with a substantial rewrite of the first several entries. Hopefully more people will chime in here with suggestions. At this point, though, I can say that you're critique is probably more useful than the guy I paid for.

 

Edited July 16, 2025 by Paul SB

[Appol PhD they/he]

57 minutes ago, Paul SB said:

Having this conversation is very useful. I'm going to have to consider how I might accomplish all the story's objectives, including the character building, with a substantial rewrite of the first several entries. Hopefully more people will chime in here with suggestions. At this point, though, I can say that you're critique is probably more useful than the guy I paid for.

I'm really glad it helps! Like I said I don't expect the way you conceptualize stories to be the same as mine, but for me that mindset shift was both the hardest thing I learned (or at least started to learn) and also the most helpful. For me it ended up being liberating to figure out the process of making larger changes instead of feeling stuck tweaking the existing chapters over and over.

And agreed on hoping more people are able to comment. Especially for the big sweeping changes I'm suggesting it's good to see if people other than me are seeing something similar.

[Paul SB]

It occurred to me that the entry where R consoles a small child could be reworked into a flashback and used later. That would speed up the plot a little bit, though it would lose the empathy building that should give readers reason to care about the characters.

I also went over my beat sheet to see how close the word counts match the beats to the end of Act 1. It's supposed to be around 25 kilowords, and it actually come out to 27 kilowords. Close, but there's always room to trim.