PaulSB - Incompatible sub13, 4737 words

[Paul SB]

Time for lucky 13. You're not triskaidekaphobic, I hope. Entry 22 has A meeting with the corporate sponsor who dredge dup her customer base to talk about her expansion plans, but on the way out she sees R smooching with someone else.In Entry 23 her cheating gf shows up at the club for a very loud and public breakup.

In trying to find a balance between Dickens and Hemingway, it's always a matter of how much to tell and how much to just hint at so the reader can feel clever when they figure stuff out instead of feeling like you are holding their hand or lecturing them. 

 

[DcD25yhtdA8 he/him]

Interesting approach to the topic.

[Paul SB]

1 hour ago, DcD25yhtdA8 said:

Interesting approach to the topic.

That's the art in the science of writing, I guess.

[Silk she/her]

Oh hey, I forgot about lobster guy.

All these references to expense accounts have me wondering about the practicalities: Does A get paid a salary? What happens when the money runs out, will her benefactors just provide more? Etc.

LOL at “them cooties”

P2 we’re already thinking about making the club bigger? Now I’m really curious about the practicalities. Right now it reads like A just has endless money through her benefactors. Or – wait, has there been a time skip? I’ll admit I read right over the dates in the entry line for this one.

Ahh okay. P3 and we are starting to get into the brass tacks. This is good, but again, might help to seed a bit of this earlier—I don’t really have any sense for example that A doubts she can do any of this, or has bit off more than she can chew, is struggling with the business side of things, etc.

Glad to see a reminder of the lab here as well, but there doesn’t seem to have been any motion on it.

P5 this is also the first time I have started to like R. (I find the exaggerated flirting and such as weird as R does, for the record, but then I don’t exactly have much experience with gay bars so maybe that's a me thing.)

P8 A wonders how to “get this” to R without offending him, but I’m not certain why she thinks she needs to pass it on to him?

P11 “some kind of weirdo” she seems pretty well-educated on gender and sexuality, I was surprised she doesn’t seem to register “asexual” as a possibility.

P13 I wondered whether R was going to show up again, or attempt to make any sort of contact with A. A has referenced being sad about her a couple of times, but really has spent very little thought on her.

P14 “Don’t worry, we’re still together” – this is fantastic characterization.

Overall: I was glad to see some sort of confrontation between A and R here while I realize she’s using work as a distraction from her relationship woes, it feels a bit like she really mostly just forgot about R until R showed up again. This actually feels like it’s kind of broadly true of my experience with many of the other chapters. Sometimes it’s that stuff just seems to come fairly easily to A, other times she encounters conflicts or obstacles but we don’t really spend time digging into those obstacles or what they mean and the narrative just moves on. Which isn’t to say the stuff that’s happening isn’t interesting! I think there’s lots of interesting threads here—it just feels like the story is more focused on moving between them than exploring those threads in more depth, so it makes the story feel very “slice of life” which may or may not be what you want.

Probably related to the above, I think what I'm most longing for is a little more emotion from A. Sometimes she stops to tell us how she's feeling, but she's mostly going from one thing to the next in a way that doesn't leave a whole lot of time for interiority. I don't think you necessarily have to slow down a lot for this (though that's not always a bad thing either!) - you do a good job of keeping up the social commentary while keeping things moving, for example, and I'd love to get a little more interiority from our protagonist the same way. 

[Paul SB]

Oh my! I didn’t expect you would start from the beginning after this many entries have gone by! If I had known I would have sent you the revised versions, as I have done a fair bit with the other fine critique partner here.

Emotionality is definitely something I always need to work on. Others have commented on how Hemingway it gets. Probably a lifelong condition that results in alexithymia isn’t helping me any. Years of medication and therapy haven’t fixed it.

In a way you have actually anticipated an important aspect of the ending, but I probably shouldn’t give that away.

Thanks for all the work you’ve done here!

[Silk she/her]

56 minutes ago, Paul SB said:

Oh my! I didn’t expect you would start from the beginning after this many entries have gone by!

Yeah I tried to keep my comments on the others pretty brief because I figured you might've done work on them, but I wanted to at least read them to get to Ch13.

 

57 minutes ago, Paul SB said:

In a way you have actually anticipated an important aspect of the ending, but I probably shouldn’t give that away.

That just means that some of it's coming together! I look forward to finding out more. 

[Paul SB]

I would gladly send you my revisions, but you seem to be strapped for time more often than not, so it probably wouldn't be fair for me to expect that.

"Oh hey, I forgot about lobster guy."

-- I must be getting old. The B-52's reference seemed obvious to me.

[Silk she/her]

On 3/13/2026 at 8:36 PM, Paul SB said:

I would gladly send you my revisions, but you seem to be strapped for time more often than not, so it probably wouldn't be fair for me to expect that.

Yeah, time-wise I expect to be treading water for the foreseeable future unfortunately. 

On 3/13/2026 at 8:36 PM, Paul SB said:

-- I must be getting old. The B-52's reference seemed obvious to me.

That one might have more to do with my general pop culture immunity than your age... 

[Paul SB]

1 minute ago, Silk said:

Yeah, time-wise I expect to be treading water for the foreseeable future unfortunately. 

That one might have more to do with my general pop culture immunity than your age... 

I didn't pay attention to that band when I was in high school, but now, after decades of hearing little else but rap and headbanger music I've been craving music from back then. Rock Lobster was a silly song, though it actually did have a point. It's kind of funny that I heard an interview a few months back and didn't know that they were gay. I mentioned that to my son and he said, "How did you miss that?"

 

[Appol PhD they/he]

Overall: Mostly I agree with @Silk. I think this has some of the best scenes in the story so far (I think Rac is a great character to play off of A when tensions get high), but it also felt choppy and constantly switching focus. I think the issue has less to do with pacing and more to do with needing smoother transitions, less logistically and more thematically. The story can put these scenes in whatever order it wants, so why is it important to see them in this order? 

On 3/13/2026 at 8:47 PM, Silk said:

Probably related to the above, I think what I'm most longing for is a little more emotion from A. Sometimes she stops to tell us how she's feeling, but she's mostly going from one thing to the next in a way that doesn't leave a whole lot of time for interiority. I don't think you necessarily have to slow down a lot for this (though that's not always a bad thing either!) - you do a good job of keeping up the social commentary while keeping things moving, for example, and I'd love to get a little more interiority from our protagonist the same way. 

I think this is important to consider too, and I think it's important to address without leaning heavily on long sections of internality. One of the things I've been noticing throughout the novel is that it's often hard to tell why what's happening in the scenes is important for A and what she's trying to get out of them. I think about it in particular at the start of chapters, which tend to ground us in physical space without establishing why what's going on matters. I think an example this submission of where this is done well is the end of the first chapter where A starts to form different opinions of Rac and Ran, and crucially it affects how she plans to approach them. Ran is a cultist that she wants to treat with compassion, and Rac is a wild card she has no idea how to deal with. It's touches like this that really bring out the characterization. 

As I go:

Pg 1. This could shape up to be a fun interaction, but I think we need more of a character hook/stakes for A. What is she trying to get out of this?

Pg 4. I was just thinking that A should be feeling a bit more overwhelmed here. I think we could benefit from seeing it more on the page in addition to having her say it.

Pg 5. I like R’s dynamic with A, where he’s supportive but crosses the line a bit and also can’t quite give her what she needs. I think we should see more of A grappling with that and deciding how that affects her plans.

Pg 7. Feels like we’re bouncing around a lot without the story guiding us through.

Pg 8. I like counterpointing Ran with Rac. Shows that A’s opinions of them are starting to affect her approaches.

Pg 11. I like A giving credit to her team, even when she’s feeling down. I mentioned before that setting up the restaurant felt a bit too easy, so maybe it could help to see what the others are actually doing to draw people in?

Pg 14. I really like R’s character writing here. We get to see how all of her traits come together, and the same rebellious nature that makes her like A in the first place is also making her cheat. That’s a great way of showing multiple sides to a character while still having them feel cohesive!

[Paul SB]

Your comment about A feeling overwhelmed on page 4 prompted me to grab my copy of The Emotion Thesaurus, find overwhelmed in the TOC, then consult the appropriate entry. I picked a couple from the list of physical signals and behaviors (sagging into a chair, rubbing the temples while closing the eyes) and added them to the scene. These are the kind of subtle show-don't-tell hints that the book is so good for. Silk said she was interested in checking the book out, so I'll copy this and send it to her directly. As I have said before, it's a very useful tool for just about any fiction writer and I can't recommend it too highly. My only problem is remembering that i have it.

[Silk she/her]

11 hours ago, Paul SB said:

I picked a couple from the list of physical signals and behaviors (sagging into a chair, rubbing the temples while closing the eyes) and added them to the scene. These are the kind of subtle show-don't-tell hints that the book is so good for.

Yes, I think this is exactly the kind of emotional signalling that would add a ton to your story! 

Edited March 16 by Silk