20150817 - Scfi Story Writing Prompts (2596) - Mandamon

[Mandamon he/him]

As-yet-untitled SciFi story:

I’m using writing prompts from this year’s W.E. master class to put together my next book.  Here’s some of the first sections I’ve written with the prompts I worked from.  I’m looking more for what’s identified in each prompt (what promises I've made, and what the "gee-whiz" is), but all general comments useful as well.

[Shrike76 he/him]

This one's tough to critique, because you've got a lot going on, but let me see what I can do.

 

1) I'm going on the assumption that the fourth section is the actual beginning of your story, and that the rest is exploratory rather than an actual lead-in to the story. If that's not the intention, I apologize but it was what I gathered from the structure of the writing exercises. If the story starts when the people born on the planet are hitting twenty, then we don't really need any of the initial three sections.

 

2) Section one hints at an alien life-form but what they're doing confuses me, and falls pretty flat. They keep noticing specific things about what I presume is a spaceship, but they're noticing things for reasons I don't understand. It feels like you're describing what you would have seen if you were an observer, and then transcribing that clumsily into an alien lingo (Why would they even notice hull markings at all?). What I'd be more interested in is what the alien life form is actually doing, hinting at me that what is there might be a spaceship, even if I miss most of it in translation. I think what's happening is happening after the colony settles, but I only got that after rereading this section, and after reading the rest of the pieces. And since I missed that part, I didn't get a sense of a threat.

 

3) In my opinion, this is the most interesting of the three, but you don't carry the ball in the direction I expected. We get a sense of time passing, of lost generations when the ship traveled, and a low-level Processor who DOES NOT WANT to go from space to planet. What I was hoping for was for him to attempt to sabotage the landing or the data, but the fact that a colony exists a generation later is proof that what he wanted didn't matter at all, so it's kind of a waste of a POV. I'm not sure at all what promise you had in mind when you drafted this, but I don't think it was the sabotage I saw/wanted/expected.

 

4) Section three was basically just an extension of section two in a different POV, and didn't tell me much, aside from a better sense of the hierarchy, and that the other worlds the found were ravaged by the alien life in the first section (which I didn't catch the first time in the first section because it wasn't obvious to me that that's what was happening. One thing that struck me as off was the genetic drift you spoke of. They mention it as a concern and decide to stop traveling through space partly because of it, but why would the genetic drift stop on the planet? Whether in space on a ship or in space on a surface, they're going to diverge from human stock on Earth because the selective pressures are going to be different. If there's something specific they're going to do to curb it on the surface, then it should have been mentioned, otherwise it's bad science.

 

5) In the opening chapter, you have a woman who has a parasite controlling her actions. This is an interesting premise, but it has a few issues. Firstly, I don't get a sense of the fear or desperation I would expect of someone who has no real control over their body and is the host to a sentient parasite. Secondly, if your POV character is someone who doesn't have control over their own actions, then you have a very boring narrator for your story. I don't even get a sense that she's trying to find alternate ways to communicate that she has a parasite. She tried telling someone once, and it didn't work, so now she's just going around? Lastly, if the parasite is capable of making its thoughts/wants/needs known to its host, I would like to know more about what it is actually doing and why. If it has control over the host, then it doesn't matter if the host knows what it's doing.

I assume that the gee-whiz moment is supposed to be a) that there's a parasite: but you deliver that very early and I found it boring for the reasons mentioned above, or that the other woman is a parasite and the parasites are working together for something, but that was expected so it didn't register as special at first.

[Mandamon he/him]

Shrike--thanks for the extensive critique!

Just as an explanation, these are potentially prologue/starting points to the story, but I haven't actually started writing yet.  

 

Interesting to see the response on the first section.  I was playing around with writing in only passive voice to give an alien feel, but I was concerned that would make the entry fall flat, as you say.

 

I think you've identified the promises I was going for, but obviously there's some more work to be done.  Great comments on where you expect this to go.  That will help me out with outline planning.

[Shrike76 he/him]

Shrike--thanks for the extensive critique!

Just as an explanation, these are potentially prologue/starting points to the story, but I haven't actually started writing yet.  

 

Interesting to see the response on the first section.  I was playing around with writing in only passive voice to give an alien feel, but I was concerned that would make the entry fall flat, as you say.

 

I think you've identified the promises I was going for, but obviously there's some more work to be done.  Great comments on where you expect this to go.  That will help me out with outline planning.

 

Okay. As prologues go, I think the first is the one most likely to work, because it appears to directly relate to the story in question but gives us very different information than what we will get from the rest of the book. In short, it does what a prologue is supposed to do. The second and third potential prologues, happening more or less in the same moment in time from 2 POVs, I think works least well as a prologue because they're too interesting, which is probably going to need more explanation.

The second and third introduce interesting characters, with interesting problems. You have the social and technological aspects of a generational ship centuries into a voyage (and one person who doesn't want the voyage to end), and you bring up the genetic changes as well. There's a lot going on here that would make the reader interested, but then you would skip decades into the future when all of those little things you've made us interested in become irrelevant, more or less. if you aren't going to follow through later on all of those interesting tidbits, then I would suggest that they need to be wrapped up and resolved within the prologue itself.

 

Still, I like what you've done with the exercises. You've explored a few different options, which was the point, to see what effect they had.

[rohyu he/him]

1:

Promise: Detailed sci-fi story regarding the interactions between the aliens and the lifeform or its creators. The details are specific, so it makes me think the entire story will be detailed. I think the story might turn into a mystery. I think it would also make sense if this started a story about a war or a colonization effort.

 

I think it is a satellite/spaceship. I came to that conclusion at the line, “Much thought and many rotations were devoted...” I don't really know why I came to that conclusion at that line.

I think you did a good job hinting without outright saying what is orbiting the characters.

 

2:

Promise: Character driven story about a planned invasion or planned colonization. I think it would make sense if this started a horror story, or a war story.

 

3:

Promise: Character driven story about improvised colonization. This had the same feel as 2, but written from the perspective of someone waking up rather than someone who has been 'awake' their whole life. I think this one works better than 2, because it seems the story is going to be one of a massive scale – an entire planet, and possibly the entire galaxy- and a leader's POV is more relevant to the big picture.

 

 

I agree with Shrike76 about the prologue. The first one gets me way more interested in the story than the others. This may be my own prejudice though, as I do not like prologue's with specific characters we aren't going to see again.

 

4:

I think the gee whiz moment is when Phyllis makes the hand signal. I got the impression that the 'rider' infects both Agetha and Phyllis at this point.

When you said, “Agetha tried to change direction, but the rider was insisting she go into the gamma radian of the city.” I got the idea that the story might be about Agetha being forced to commit some sort of crime.

[Kashimir he/him]

At first, due to the structuring of the document, I thought there were two different beginnings(beginnings 1-3, 4) instead of four, and I have to say I really enjoyed both of them.

 

As separate four beginnings I still did like them, but depending on what promises the story will aim to fulfill the actual beginning should be a mix of many.

 

My understanding of the definition of the gee whiz factor is fairly vague so I'll use words that I actually understand instead. I'll list what the main conflict of the story would seem to be with different beginnings. And delivering on that conflict would be the promise.

 

It's kind of hard to separate the knowledge in my head from one beginning to another (especially because of my initial misunderstanding) but I'll try.

 

The first one:

The conflict between the colonizers and the alien sentience.

There isn't much else to be said about this. Still, outside of the exercise such beginning might work fine to set the scene.

 

The second one:

The conflict between the people that want to land on a planet and the people who will have massive problems with gravity. Either the fight of the POV character to stop the decision to land, or how he -and his kind- will deal with gravity.

 

With this beginning, especially if the POV character remains important through the story, the gravity would be a bigger enemy than anything living on the planet.

 

The third one:

The conflict of actually managing the colonization of a planet.

The fact that the viewpoint character is one who's in position of power suggests that there will be an emphasis on the actual complications that arise from trying to start anew on an unknown planet.

 

At this point the thing that I'm really looking forward to is the settling down on the planet, and then the gradual and possibly painful realization that the planet is alive and sentient under their feet (or whatever it is that lives there).

 

One minor point that came to mind:

-"A few hours later, she floated into the room a generational had indicated was where Higgens was waiting." This line tied my brain in a knot. The sentence is convoluted and it's the first time the word "generational" appears so I read it as an adjective.

 

The fourth one:

There is a feel of mystery to this. Sure, there's a lifeform that is influencing people's behaviour, but why? What is its goal? Is there an actual biological/evolutionary reasoning behind it, or is it sentient and working out of "higher" motives such as curiosity? So I'd say the thing I'm most interested in is this lifeform that seems to be collecting people for reasons unknown.

 

I'm not expecting Agetha to end up in a position to actually decide what the whole colony should do. The questions that arise instead are: How will she cope? Will she escape her mind and manage to let someone know what is going on? Will she defeat the rider or learn to accept its company by coming to some sort of an agreement with it? And how will all this affect the colony as a whole?

 

One possible problem is that she has begun to accept the rider's company already, but I assume that something she will see/experience in the gamma radian will become a trigger for more conflict.

Edited August 18, 2015 by Kashimir

[Mandamon he/him]

Thanks folks!  This is really helpful.  It seems like you're catching the promises I'm setting up and what the concepts for the book will be.  This bodes well for the plotline.

 

Royhu--interesting that you picked up on the horror aspect so early.  I wanted to introduce some of that in the story a la "The Thing" or "Alien,"where the new lifeform is so totally alien that communication is very hard.

 

I'm glad everyone's got the colonization and different "castes" of people, as well.  I want that to be another aspect of the story.

 

Something else Shrike picked up on.  I really like exploring what happens in a generational ship bound to colonize a planet, but I also want to deal with the lifeform on the planet.  I want the story to be set on the planet, but I feel like a lot of that conflict takes place prior to that on the ships.  I don't really want to skip around between decades, but I also don't want to miss out on that part of the story.  I'll have to ponder on that...

[Shrike76 he/him]

I really like exploring what happens in a generational ship bound to colonize a planet, but I also want to deal with the lifeform on the planet.  I want the story to be set on the planet, but I feel like a lot of that conflict takes place prior to that on the ships.  I don't really want to skip around between decades, but I also don't want to miss out on that part of the story.  I'll have to ponder on that...

 

Yep, that's one of the parts that hurts - deciding which part of the story you're telling and dropping the rest. There are certainly interesting stories to tell on the colony, on the generational ship before that, and on Earth before they even leave, but the key is "in late, out early". If the story you really want to tell right now is what happens to the colony and the colonists when an alien arrives, then you should start there.

That doesn't mean that you can't reference things that came before, after all these people did have lives before the colony (some of them anyways), and it doesn't mean you can't tell those other interesting parts later in a prequel or an unrelated story. I've only got these short sections to go on, but they did feel like separate stories to me. (As an example: If you've seen Aliens, that movie would not have been improved by 10-15 minutes of showing us what Newt's life was like before Ripley and the marines arrived. Although I'm sure the specifics of how the colony worked and how she survived before would have made a fascinating story, it wasn't necessary to the movie)

[Mandamon he/him]

 (As an example: If you've seen Aliens, that movie would not have been improved by 10-15 minutes of showing us what Newt's life was like before Ripley and the marines arrived. Although I'm sure the specifics of how the colony worked and how she survived before would have made a fascinating story, it wasn't necessary to the movie)

I think that's it in a nutshell.

My plan so far is to have the "generationals" as an older working class on the planet at odds both with the native-born and with the highest-levels administrators, who had longevity treatments before they left Earth (and have been in coldsleep most of the time).

[Shrike76 he/him]

My plan so far is to have the "generationals" as an older working class on the planet at odds both with the native-born and with the highest-levels administrators, who had longevity treatments before they left Earth (and have been in coldsleep most of the time).

 

That sounds like something I'd love to read!

[rdpulfer he/him]

- You used a lot of "to be" verbs in the opening, in particular was/were. These are okay for expressing thoughts, but you might try beefing up your description to get rid of the overuse. This is actually someone recently pointed out as a weakness in my own prose

 

- "He eyed Watch Sergeant Higgens while trying not to show he was watching." Since watch is already part of the Higgens' title, you might want to try find another word for "watch".

 

- The last time they were woken, they had been near their original target - way too much use of "they" in this sentence, makes it unclear who is whose target.

 

- "some sort of Asian and African descent" - this seems a bit odd wording. I like that you explain the intermixing of races, but you might want to describe the woman in further detail.

 

-  I think it's a big learning curve in a small amount of space. The reader is trying to learn about what these lifeforms are doing and what the people on the ship are going through in a small amount of time. But I think it would make an awesome anthology or novel though. 

[Kammererite]

Assuming they are separate stories

 

Prompt 1:

Promise: The humans will try to colonize the planet and the plant/aliens will not let them.

Gee-wiss: Not sure, these is a lot happening, I would say it is that humans are recolonizing a planet after generation in space.

 

Prompt 2:

Promise: That there is a conflict between the humans/aliens. possibly the aliens using the human social structure to eliminate them.

Gee-wiss: the aliens (riders) controlling people from the human population.

 

 

However, unlike everyone else i think it can work as one story.  I am fine with the first three scenes as a prologue even though it goes against most advice I have heard. I do not read much Sci-Fi, but the one series that i do read (Safehold by David Weber) does something similar. I think as long as the "current story" makes sufficient reference back to the events and characters in the prologue it can really add to the story to have seen it rather then just being told it later.

 

The first scene felt awkward to me until I realized it was an aliens POV(took me a bit) then I was fine with it as why would a human think like an alien.

 

I found you referring to Jane as administrator Brighton very confusing. I thought this was a different administrator also being woken up. I think you either need to stick with just Jane in the tags or mention her last name earlier in conjunction with her first name.

 

Finally I missed that the rider was an alien in the first paragraph. I thought she was fighting a horseman or something along those lines, which was kind of jarring. Maybe italics or capitalize "rider" to make it stand out as different definition.

 

 

Overall I think it would be an interesting story.

[Mandamon he/him]

Thanks all.  Lots of great feedback on this, and it's helping me develop where I want this book to go.

 

Shrike: Glad you like that idea.  I think that's going to be one of my main focuses

 

rdpulfer:  Good catches.  Sorry about the steep learning curve here, but I was trying to cram as much as possible in the 500 word limit.  The full novel should be a little easier to get into.

 

Kammerite:  Great comments, thanks!  Glad this worked for you.  I've been reading a bunch of hard SciFi lately and I was thinking along the same lines with the prologue from multiple POVs to set up the story.

 

I think I'm going to go against my usual advice (Robinski will laugh at me) and go for many POVs in this book to really see the world from all sides.  This seems to be done more in SciFi than Fantasy, and I'm interested to see how it affects my writing different characters.

[Robinski he/him]

Interesting set up. Not a great deal of characterisation, other than the sergeant, but interesting premise. Clearly there are environmental conflicts, but I'm not sure I immediately see the human ones, which may be between the 'infected' and non-infected?

Intrigued to read more. I'm interested, but I'm not sure I'm wowed, yet.

 

(You've got my more detailed comments on SWN.)

[molah]

I liked the first part. I got the concept of the alien life form that seemed to span a big area. It was a bit difficult to get into though and I felt that some things about the priorities were repeated too much.

The second part was okay. The twist of not wanting to touch down felt a bit forced. Maybe the guys reaction read too weak, don't know.

I really liked the third part. I liked the flow and the character.

I was a bit disappointed by the amount of time that has passed in the fourth part, because I started to like the administrator. But it gave the story an epic feeling to it.

Personally, I wasn't too fond of the mind control. Such stories seem always such a hassle to me. As a reader you're in the know but you have to see how the characters are clueless. I find that very tiring.

All in all, I really liked the setup. I hope to read more about the conflicts between the alien life form and the colonists. E.g. the ways the life form five to defend itself.

[Mandamon he/him]

Thanks Robinski and Molah for the comments!

 

I'll have to post some more here when I actually have a story.  Hopefully in a few weeks.