July 15th- Trizee- Royal Control

[Trizee]

Here's my newest short story. Tell me what you think!

[TracerTK]

Hi Trizee, I just finished your story and I have to say that I've never read a Roman arena type scene where bugs where the gladiators and audience so I do have to give you some points for originality on that one.

 

The first couple of issues I had though was that the sentences seemed to be very short. A small sentence was given and then I had to stop at the next one. I soon found myself almost ignoring where you put periods and just kind of mentally adapted the paragraph structure in my mind to help me read.

 

I liked the battle scene but was a bit thrown off as to why the ants would use a praying mantis to fight in place of three or four ant soldiers. It seemed odd to me and didn't explain why this was. 

 

The protagonists battle stance was a bit peculiar in that he was holding a shield in his upper left arm and lower right. In a battle scenario this would make the most amount of sense when looking at it from a strategic point of view. However, since he wanted to buy time wouldn't it make more sense to put the weapons in his dominant arms, i.e right hands? The logic behind this would allow the grasshopper to show more strength which would in-turn cause the praying mantis to think more about his tactics instead of charging in.

 

After the queen died, it really threw me off when the ants just sat there and allowed themselves to be slaughtered. I think still function in reality but how can another ant become queen if they're paralyzed like that? This part needed more explanation or elaboration. 

 

The part that made no sense was where the king ant came in. I don't think ants have kings and even the ants that fly work for the queen. This part took me out of the story and just didn't have any relevance. It seemed like you were trying to include a plot twist of some kind with another ant coming in and taking control but the ant king rushing in was too convenient and had no foundation.

 

The last part was the part I really didn't like and I'm sure most readers hate. But I really hate it when a chapter or a book is ended with "And then he died." If the plan was for that character to die then you could have added what it was like for his life to drain away, sensory experience, memory flashes, ect.

 

Overall it does need some work and refinement but I think you have a very interesting idea here that you can take quite far. Keep writing and I look forward to the next installment.  

[Carcinios he/him]

I actually found the Ant King an interesting concept although I think it would only work in the context of a longer story. As it is I think it would have been stronger if it had been another younger queen taking control; something familiar to the POV character so there isn't a sense of mystery about it and then there would be some kind of closure at the end. In a longer novel you would have the space to explain the Ant King more fully.

 

The assassination scene didn't work for me. The Queen is isolated and Corkle can fly. If he knows that killing the Queen will destroy the hive mind and immobilize the ants he could have killed the Queen himself. I think that would have given him a more significant role in the story and made it stronger over all.

 

The hive mind part actually worked really well for me. It has been done a lot oftewn without much justification but the insect theme is one of the few places where it can be legitimately deployed and I think you do it well here.

 

Finally the death scene at the end. I don't really have a problem with Corkle dying at the end although I think the line 'and then he died' was superfluous. His death is obvious after he is wounded and the downer ending of the death is offset by the fact that his fight appears to have worked. Ending on 'I've given us a chance' makes the ending much more definitive (maybe with a bit of tweaking to give that line more emphasis)

 

But good effort and I liked the setting.

[jParker]

I hate to be an echo, but Tracer and Carcinios have really hit the nail on the head. 

 

I too was confused why a mantis was representing the ants (are there mercenary bugs in this world?) but the fight scene worked for me, even if it was a little clumsy--the detailing of which arm did what was necessary but did lessen my interest. The ant king didn't make any sense to me; I only have an elementary knowledge of the insect world, but aren't ants largely matriarchal, with a smattering of males for breeding? 

 

And "then he died" almost lost me entirely. It didn't work for Bram Stoker--why would it work for you?

 

Honestly, I thought it was a pretty cool story. If I hadn't gotten the feeling that it was a gritty reboot of A Bug's Life (something which has been done to death over the past decade), I would have loved it.

[Asmodemon he/him]

I’m going to have to echo the others before me as well, they’ve said most of what I wanted to say. I enjoyed it, but it felt like this was part of something bigger, rather than a fully rounded short story. Having it end the way it did was a bit of a let-down, truth be told.

 

Initial worry: I was a bit worried at the start that the whole story was going to be one big fight scene in the arena while other characters were doing interesting things, like assassinate the queen. Good thing that didn’t happen, though why Corkle was needed as a distraction is a bit beyond me. The flight capabilities of the grasshoppers seem like such an advantage and there wasn’t anything stopping him going up to the box when the king appeared. Now maybe things were different when the queen was alive, maybe there were defences against flyers (if so, how did the assassins reach her), but I saw no signs of that. The assassination went a bit quick as well.

 

Conflict: I didn’t get a sense of what the conflict was about. Why are the ants the enemy and why should we care about these assassin grasshoppers?

 

The premise behind the arena battle didn’t work well for me. It’s clear there is a conflict between ants and grasshoppers, but why would a contest, one against one, settle things for two entire factions? Personally I don’t believe in such single combat stratagems, but more than that, why is a mantis representing the ants in this conflict? If that’s allowed why haven’t the grasshoppers used a proxy and have Corkle lead the attack against the queen?

 

King: I liked the idea of a king as twist in the story, but if felt like there should be more to it. Who was he? How could he do what he did?

 

Resolution: Corkle dies at the end, but nothing gets resolved. Why did the assassination occur? Who was the ant king and how  could he do what he did? Who is winning the battle after Corkle dies and why should we care which side wins? It felt more like this was the first chapter of a larger story than a fully rounded short story.  

[TracerTK]

I have to add that I didn't realize that this was a short story until after other members commented. It feels like this story could turn into a novel. You have a good foundation so far. Two rival factions warring against each other, a new stranger that replaces the queen's control, grasshoppers have to make new plans to deal with the new threat.

 

There's a lot you can use.

[Mandamon he/him]

Okay, by now I'm repeating things, but I have a few different comments as well.  Notably, you never actually say Corkle is a grasshopper.  I assume so, but given that the ants hired a mantis, who knows?

 

Comments:

 

Descriptions are a little confusing on the first page.  "Left shield/right shield".  basically he's holding each diagonal to the other.  I had a little problem with hand-dominace, as TracerTK notes, but then I thought he might not even have a hand-dominance,

being a bug.

 

How big are things?  I sort of assume the mantis is large, compared to the ants.  Maybe bigger than the grasshoppers.  How big/what is Corkle?  Are they all bug-size, or is this some magical/evolved future with giant bugs?

 

pg 3: "He turned to survey the crowd. The grasshoppers were cheering wildly at his small success"
--I guess he's fighting for the grasshoppers, then?

 

pg 5: "There was a short skirmish, resulting in the death of the mantis and two of the grasshoppers."
--this seems anticlimactic, after all the fighting Corkle did.  Maybe a few sentences about how the grassoppers killed it, when Corkle was having so much trouble?

 

pg 6: "Their comrades were just killed, and they’re laughing, Crokle thought. Are we so inured to death…?"
--I'm not invested enough in the characters to sympathize here.

 

pg 6: “Why don’t you stay here and rest,” the older one said Corkle. “We’ll go join the rest in killing off those ants.”
--The repetition of "rest" with two meanings throws me off.

 

pg 6: "Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement in the box. A tall, thin figure had climbed in, and now crouched beside the dead queen."
--So the grasshoppers created an intricate plan to kill the queen, but then didn't anticipate someone else would take control?  Seems odd, as Corkle knows a lot about the ant colony structure.

Overall, I didn't buy this story.  I couldn't suspend my disbelief long enough to get into it.  Several points contributed to this:
1) Still not sure what species Corkle is.
2) Why are the ants and grasshoppers fighting, and why has it come down to Corkle fighting a mantis?  we know nothing about how he got here.  He's not suited to fighting, so there's got to be a story behind it.  Also, he doesn't believe either side wil keep their word after, so how would the two side have agreed to start?
3) There's no such thing as an ant king, and the ants wouldn't freeze without their queen--they'd probably frenzy.  I know this comes under writer's license, and it's your story, but the reason I bring it up is your setup depends on using bugs as they exist in nature.  Aside from somehow building an area and roping a mantis into fighting for them, they are basically bugs.  So then you have to tell us how they are different (the ant queen has absolute magical control over her subjects), or use another species (the buglike alien Antzes are fighting the underdog Grs'prs over land rights) and then use the Earth species to give us an idea of how their bodies work.

 

A couple others have made similar comments.  I think the main issue is this doesn't work as a short story.  It could be part of a longer story where you give us the setup for why this is happening, but not here.  I didn't have a big problem with the end, mainly because by that point I wasn't cheering for Corkle.  There needs to be more information to get us to where this starts.  I think there could be a good story in here, but it stil needs some work.

[Robinski he/him]

I like the idea of the story, but I think there are some fairly significant questions that need to be answered, and issues addressed, which would make it a much stronger story.

 

Page 1: The first line is engaging, and we are quickly into the action with an ‘in late’ approach. The notion of ants conducting gladiatorial combat is intriguing, although battles between anthropomorphised creatures are not completely original, of course (I'm thinking of ‘A Bug’s Life’ and ‘Antz’ – but also the book ‘Empire of the Ants’ by Bernard Werber).

 

Page 3: After three pages, we are well into the combat, and I am still keen to know the outcome of the contest. There are some grammar points that are a little distracting in places, but not to the point that I was taken out of the story, but still worth fixing.

 

In a classic underdog situation like this, I am expecting the grasshopper to win, otherwise the story would not seem to be going anywhere, but it has already been indicated that the rules are not likely to be honoured, so I know that victory is not enough, and that there is a ‘plan’, nothing of which has been revealed other than its existence. All in all there is enough background to keep me interested, and reading, an enough action to divert me away from scrutinising the situation, which I know little about, too closely.

 

Page 4: Despite his pessimism, Corkle (like the name), didn’t seem to have too much trouble getting an advantage, albeit a small one, and the fight seems more balanced than was indicated through Corkle’s thoughts.

 

Page 5: Both the ant queen and the mantis seem to die rather easily.

 

Page 6: I'm not keen on the new ant queen ‘showing up’; I think a more specific comment (without going into detail) would sound better there. Also, some of the behaviour seems a little odd, and I'm not sure whether I should be thinking in terms of the ants and grasshoppers following the behaviour of their genus as we know it, or more humanoid behaviour patterns. For example, is the red ant likely to turn and run when grievously wounded? Is that human or ant behaviour, and is it consistent?

 

Page 7: I like the reveal of the ant king...,

 

Page 8: ...but I don’t like the word ‘swordsbug’.

 

Overall, I like the idea of Corkle suffering a reverse after beating the odds, because the first outcome is pretty much a given, since he is the protagonist. The victories, first over the mantis, and then over the ant queen, do not seem to be very difficult to achieve, they happen so quickly. My other concern is that I am judging the behaviour of the various species against what little I know of them in nature and, while that is not very much, I found myself doubting some aspects. That said, having an ant king is interesting, because (as another noted) it brings something new, but then there is no explanation of his role in the colony, which I think was the biggest frustration for me.

 

I think you’ve got a good idea here, but some of the aspects need some reworking.

Edited July 29, 2013 by Robinski