20130617 - andyk - Beta Three Leader (LV)

[andyk he/him]

This week's submission from me is a military scifi short story. Looking forward to seeing what you all have to say about it.

[Mandamon he/him]

I enjoyed this I think the most out of what you've submitted so far. There were only two points I had problems with:

 

First, the dialect doesn't seem quite right.  I can't put my finger on it, but every time I see "Ain't," it throws me out of the story.  I think maybe the dialogue isn't fluid enough to for slang to work correctly?  Or it may be that it's not consistent throughout.

 
Second, you say the Scarlet Dawn company is catching up to them, but there's no sign except for explosions in the distance.  Nothing really threatening.  It's a false tension.  I realize it's a Mcguffin, but I think it might give away the real villains a little too early to those who are familiar with the military trope of "our commanders are willing to sacrifice us."

 

Other than that, I did enjoy the story as a whole.  It was a very familiar alternate planet/war setting, not in a bad way, but one I could relate instantly to.  "They put us in this hell and we're going to fight through it," a la Predator, Alien, Avatar, Veitnam, etc...

[Robinski he/him]

First things first, I enjoyed your story. It really cracks on at a good pace. I whomped through the 4,000 words, and could quite happily have read more about the fall out of McKee's double cross, and Cooper's actions. There's some snappy dialogue between Cooper and McKee, some really nice lines, and I found their relationship and their conversation convincing, well handled, especially that parting shot where we see a vulnerable side to Cooper.

There were some actions and reactions that I was not entirely convinced by, I though Cooper could have been a bit more perceptive at certain points. Like Mandamon, I had some issued with the voices, the words 'pet' and 'lass' had me thinking Yorkshire and Lancashire, they seemed a bit 'unamerican', which was the overall tone I was getting. I didn't mind the swears, but wonder (like M) if the accent was a bit too broad in places.

The other characters didn't get a lot of development, but I appreciate you don't have much space for that in 4,000 words, and the most important thing is to build the central pair.

 

I didn't have a problem with not being able to see the enemy (I bet in Vietnam a lot of G.I.s never saw the enemy before being cut down), and, for me, there was enough going on to maintain the momentum.

[Guru Coyote he/him]

I, too, enjoyed this one. I thought it was solid and worked well. Not being native speaker, I didn't have problem with the dialect/accent, in this story it worked well. I also thought that the emotional motivation (Cooper herself being an orphaen etc.) worked.

 

I don't have a lot to add to what has already been said, so just one observation from me:

A lot of the troopers are female, which I like. But, on several occasions, I was slightly jarred out of the story flow by realizing this fact too late. A trooper is introduced/mentioned by name and I somehow assume them to be male first (bad assumption, I know)... and only a bit later there is a female pronoun, which prompts me to adjust my assumption. 

I guess quite a few readers of military sf might have that problem... maybe you can address this by making it clearer earlier? 

[andyk he/him]

Thanks folks, a bunch of useful insights as always.

 

On the voice thing, I think the problem may be with Cooper. Her accent, and that of the troops, is meant to be a bit Yorkshire, while with McKee I aimed for a fairly broad American (I don't have much of an ear for more specific American accents). I put some 'ain't's into Cooper's dialogue based on a Yorkshireman I know, but I think it undermines the written accent, so they'll have to go. I may tone down the accent on both a bit, given how much that stood out. Because if I have to explain my intent then clearly it's not working.

 

As a wider point, I think I need to look for tools other than accents to give characters distinctive voices - I've leaned on that quite heavily in my last few stories. If anyone's got any thoughts on this I'd love to hear them.

 

Interesting point about gender from Guru Coyote. I had made a deliberate effort to achieve gender equality, but that goes against some expectations in this sub-genre, and I don't want it to pull people out of the story - if it doesn't feel natural it'll be counterproductive. I'll try to think of ways to make it fit better.

 

Going to try for a more immediate external threat as well. It was interesting that this drew differing views, but on balance I'd like to draw attention away from the McKee conflict, make my intention less obvious.

 

Given how positive you folks were, this has given me a boost and become my easy edit to start the day. I should be tidying up my submission for today, but that needs way more work before anyone but me sets eyes on it.

[andyk he/him]

Just read through the story and realised how many 'ain't's McKee uses. Now they're all going.

[Robinski he/him]

The gender mix didn't phase me, I thought it was state quietly and not overtly drawn attention to.

 

Greater threat from the pursuers would certainly distract from the central relationship.

 

Good news on the 'ain'ts'!

 

I think that sentence form (length and grammar) and word choice (vocabularly as opposed to accent or dialect) are good ways to distinguish between voices, and can be more subtle than accent. The danger would be becoming too wordy (a real failing of mine), but I think it only takes one word to draw a distinction between a character that tries to use words proper, and another who uses language correctly (or thinks they do!!).