Paul SB - The Battleship Lysistrata, 2281 words

[Paul SB]

I have only just started the sequel to Incompatible, and since I don't get enough writing time I can't be sure I'll be able to knock out a chapter each week. It would make sense for me to go ahead and start posting the sequel to Twilight's Rift. But I can't resist tossing out the one chapter I have so far. 

I have always been told that the first chapter has to center around the protagonist, but it's quite common to start out movies with exciting scenes that don't feature the protagonist at all but set the plot in motion in a dramatic way. This chapter is very much that sort of thing. I could turn it into a flashback and write a different beginning, but it's doubtful I would be able to come up with a better hook than this.

[Appol PhD they/he]

Hi Paul, 

I haven't received the chapter (and checked the spam folder). Would you mind forwarding it to me?

[Robinski he/him]

Okay, here we go. (Not promising to read every submission, but starting at the beginning seems like a very good place to start...)

[A while later...]

Okay, so I enjoyed lots of things about that read. We don't go deep into the characters, but I did get a decent sense of them as individuals; enough for what I think you've said is a 'prequel' sort of chapter. I think the drama could be dialled up a bit, in terms of stakes for the humans, but also for the 'aliens' (sorry, don't recall their name, if it was given). A few details stuck out for me, which I can't read past with my editor head on; notes below. Interestingly(?), I'm editing a short story of mine at the moment which contains many of the elements present in this submission: cargo bay doors, people doing EVA, dead bodies on 'dead' space ships. So, it was nice to get a different perspective on those components right now. Thanks for submitting!

Detailed comments

p1 - "dipole" - I don't know what this is; having it in the very first line is quite disorienting. It make me wonder how many readers will instantly be confused. TBF, context gives an idea of what's going on, but I'm progressing into the story with doubts, and I don't think that's a good place to be when first lines are so important. (Even after looking up the meaning of dipole, it still doesn't explain the application to this world, and this situation.)

p1 - "There were eight of us in a ring, each with an extra bubble attached behind our own" - again, I do not understand, and I'm now officially struggling to get a solid footing in the story.

p1 - Evacuations of what?

p2 - There are three instances in the story of "breath" which should read 'breathe' (i.e. nouns that should be verbs).

p3 - "peaked my curiosity" > 'piqued my curiosity'.

p3 - "Toe jelly!" - they've just spotted some toe jelly?!

p3 - "Our usual calm demeanor went tense" - really not fan of this wording, it implies the calm demeanour transformed, but it doesn't; calmness disappears, to be replaced by tension. I guess what I'm saying is I dislike the use of "went", compared to like 'was replaced by' or something like that.

p3 - "so everyone turned their heads" - I gather that these are non-human creatures: do they each have multiple heads? Because that is how this is worded.

p4 - There are a lot of words (names?) around there that I don't understand, and it becomes clear to me at this point that this sequel is not written to be particularly welcoming to someone who has not read the first book. That's fine, but it does rather hamper my ability to critique it. There is a school of thought, employed by many(?) big trad pub authors (I think) to write sequels in a way that is accessible to first time readers. I've never truly understood that approach in the sense that anyone would knowingly pick up a 'Book 2' and start reading a series there. But, I think writing a sequel as if the reader has not read the previous book provides a kind of 'previously in this series' recap of names, terminology, locations, etc. that most readers would find useful, even having read the previous book. Ultimately, terms like "kl1ba" and "an r1 kl1ba" are quite confusing to me.

p5 - "There's more bodies..." - Grammar: 'There are more bodies...' - I know that characters have the right to speak however they want, but having a character use incorrect grammar does alter a reader's perception of that character. If that's what you want, fine, but this came over to me a typo.

p5 - "there’s people still alive in there" - grammar again; 'there are people'. As an editor, this sort of thing bugs me. If it served a function in terms of character, fair enough - for example showing a character was lacking education, a street kid, or uneducated docker, whatever, but it doesn't seems to serve any function in this story.

p6 - "For all we know,” Id... said, “They they could be..." - Sorry, editor brain won't allow me to read past things like this. Second part of dialogue is part of the same sentence.

p6 - "more air for the rest to breath breathe while waiting" - typo (as noted earlier, p2).

p6 - "but the stakes for the people on that ship must have been enough to relax her diaphragm" - It's really only around here that I start to get a real feel for the stakes. When you talked about opening with drama/action/excitement (in medias res) I had thought it would be a bit more immediate in this segment. Not that I wasn't okay with the buildup. Back in the day, I used to not read the post before I read the piece - maybe I should get back to that! Anyway, long way round to saying I think there is room to dial up the drama a bit more - not in a melodramatic way, like "They're all going to die!!!", but possible with the urgency starting to appear a bit earlier in the piece.

p6 - "it just rolled off the the dock on its" - typo.

p7 - "several of them have concentrations of lead in their bodies that is not natural to their species" - plural / singular disagreement.

p7 - "to bring on serious insane behavior" - not keen on the language here; what does non-serious insane behaviour look like? Also, the word 'insanity' is pretty outmoded, post Victorian times.

p8 - "but most of the people aren’t. Dies of explosive decompression" - grammar off here, and I think it's just a typo... 'Died...'?

p8 - "safest if only one of us went in to begin with..." - After reading this line, I was then confused when they formed up into a line to approach the ship together. I thought the intent of this statement was that only one bubble would approach the ship. So, I guess there is a (minor) lack of clarity about what "went in" is referring to.

p8 - "took the standard electrical meter from the little toolbox ... and placed on the ... hull beside the door" - It seems that the meter is used to open the door, which made my engineer stop and frown (I guess). The purpose of a meter is to measure a given metric or property, but this meter does not seem to do that, it seems to open doors. To me, that suggests a different type of machine. I can't help thing this reads like someone opening a window with a Gieger counter (for example).

p9 - "I helped her take the field generator [...] shut hers off." - I don't find this sentence terribly clear in terms of being able to visualise what's happening.

p9 - Also, it weirds me out that a door in the hull gives entry into a corridor, although it is described as an airlock. I think some reference to the inner door of the airlock would be useful here. Also, what happened to the proposal for only one person to go in? Looking back, I realise that the dialogue suggesting one person enter doesn't seem to be attributed to a particular character - so I'm not sure who said that, but that good advice seems to be ignored when they all go to the ship then more than one goes in.

p10 - "looked at each other awkwardly for a couple minutes" - Should that not be a couple of zins? Also, a couple of minutes is a looooong time to be just looking at another person - for humans, certainly.

p10 - "What do we do if no one answers?" - Can they not just use the same 'meter' to open the internal door as they did the outer one? Perhaps they can, but they are concerned about letter the atmosphere escape?

p10 - "There’s people moving in there" - 'There are people' - no really, not correct grammar

p10 - "I saw it on one of those movies the Humans love so much" - This doesn't feel in tune with the tone of the story; I'm afraid I found it a bit disorienting, and rather flippant in what is supposed to be a serious situation? I totally get the whole point of levity at a moment of high stress (I mean, whole franchises are constructed on that style/trope, of course), but I have felt the tone of this has been quite serious from the story, and so this felt a bit anachronistic, to me anyway.

Also, is it Close Encounters? I struggle with the notion of knocking on a door producing something identifiable as a single note, but I think I am probably overthinking that.

AH! No, but, "A Shave And A Hair-Cut" is six notes, with two answering, 'haircut' being two syllables.

[Paul SB]

Thanks for taking the time. So far there has only been one person critiquing my work here, which is a little disappointing. Our host jumped in once, and when I first started there was a dwarf who read and critiqued a couple times, but not for long. I guess dwarves aren't exactly in my target audience ... 

Most of your critique is of the I-haven't-read-the-first-book variety, so I will see how I can make some of these things more clear without killing the tension. Naturally I would be absolutely thrilled if you went back and read the first book, but we're all busy people. The other issues are mostly grammatical, which is a little embarrassing, especially given that I was raised by a Dutch mother who speaks five languages and is absolutely obsessive about grammar.

Nonetheless, it's useful, and nice to have another pair of eyes on it. It's very easy for a person to know what they mean and not even consider the possibility that a reader would not immediately see the same thing (like not wanting to open a door for fear of blowing the air out when there are likely people inside).

Much appreciated!

Since I haven't written any more of this story, I will be starting with a different one next week. It will be the sequel to the first story I brought here, called Twilight's Rift. If you're interested in reading that one I can send it to you. But of course your time is yours. Everyone I have ever met who writes even semi-professionally is always busy.

[Appol PhD they/he]

Overall: Not a lot of issues with the writing here and I like the aspect of how human infighting makes it trickier for these people to step in. My main comment is that a lot of the conversations here don’t feel as important as they could be because we don’t know how they affect the plan. How does their approach change for humans compared to the other species? If the humans did do this to each other, what extra precautions are the protagonists taking to protect themselves while going in for the rescue? Having the plan incorporate this information will make it feel more like they’re solving problems and less like they’re just setting the scene.

As I go:

Pg 1. This does a good job setting the scene, though I think we may need a clearer emotional hook. What unique elements do these characters bring to the table?

Pg 3. It’s good to have a plan and the reasoning behind it, and I think this makes sense. Though again, I think we could use more hints that this isn’t going to be as quick and easy as they hope.

Pg 4. I think even as someone who’s read stories in this world before, it should be clearer why it matters which species it is. They think these people are humans, so how does that change their approach compared to AR or M?

Pg 6. They come to this decision pretty easily, which isn’t necessarily bad, but right now I’m not feeling a lot of tension and this could be a good place to add some.

Pg 8. I like that the humans having fought each other makes the situation more complicated, and I think we need more of that complexity (not necessarily this specific reveal) earlier on

[Robinski he/him]

On 5/29/2026 at 4:01 PM, Paul SB said:

Most of your critique is of the I-haven't-read-the-first-book variety, so I will see how I can make some of these things more clear without killing the tension.

Yeah, I was certainly conscious of that, and in a way that's a good sign, I suppose?

On 5/29/2026 at 4:01 PM, Paul SB said:

Naturally I would be absolutely thrilled if you went back and read the first book, but we're all busy people.

Yeah, I'd love to, but I'll be honest, I couldn't give it any kind of time ATM.

On 5/29/2026 at 4:01 PM, Paul SB said:

The other issues are mostly grammatical, which is a little embarrassing, especially given that I was raised by a Dutch mother who speaks five languages and is absolutely obsessive about grammar.

Never any need to be embarrassed about that. It's all other eyes. I can't crit a piece without mentioning that sort of stuff, my professional engineer brain won't allow it. And it's all line-level stuff, but is never going to be perfect at this stage.

On 5/29/2026 at 4:01 PM, Paul SB said:

Much appreciated!

It was definitely a pleasure to read, and not a little coincidental that the form of the action in this part is so very close to what I'm writing in the Moth short story I'm editing for submission to Bill. A thing I think I forget to mention (and I always tend to forget to say more about the positives; sorry!) was that I really felt that tone was evocative of much SF from around the 70s, and I mean that as a compliment. I thought the piece had a strong sense of identity, and a confident sense of place, which I enjoyed.

On 5/29/2026 at 4:01 PM, Paul SB said:

Since I haven't written any more of this story, I will be starting with a different one next week. It will be the sequel to the first story I brought here, called Twilight's Rift. If you're interested in reading that one I can send it to you. But of course your time is yours. Everyone I have ever met who writes even semi-professionally is always busy.

I will defo try and take a look at the next sub, since it's an opening. I think you mini summary is very useful, and probably all that I need.