20150914_ChuckHossenlopp_EpochWin_Ch01

[Chuck Hossenlopp]

This story began with:
20150907_ChuckHossenlopp_EpochWin_ChapterZero

This was a fake out opening where the fantasy elements were all part of a video game. It introduced the multiple first person style, the characters, and the plot hook.

 

Sam was on an archaeological dig in Germany when he found a Neanderthal buried with anachronistic grave goods. He called for his friends Al, Jack, and Hank to join him on the dig. The friends suspect fraud and are motivated to go there to support his friend when the fraud is inevitably revealed.

[rdpulfer]

- The first line is awkward and probably passive. I'd rephrase it to something other than "got picked up". Also, what picked them up? A shuttle? A taxi? A limo?

 

- Make sure to note the professor is addressing the narrator (Hank) when they first meet. Before, he's just shaking everyone's hands.

 

- Overall, a very good chapter. I liked how you mix pop culture references to speed along the obvious exposition, establishing character and build up the mystery.

 

- At the start, I was worried the characters would all blend together, but you've done a great job differentiating their voice so far. However, if you're going to alternate between characters, this makes this all the more crucial. So far I really like Al and Hank, but the only thing we get about Jake is that he's some sort of Biblical scholar . . . there's not much else about his personality. However, I'm still very interested and very curious to see where this all leads. 

[Shrike76]

An interesting chapter. I like most of the premise but it still leaves me confused in some places.

 

I'm not sure how much they're archaeologists and how much they're their other jobs mentioned. Were they minoring? Why don't they want to be archaeologists and why were they doing it in the first place (as recently as the previous year in-story). These details would help the story out and would do a lot to help us distinguish them as individuals. The characterization is pretty good so far, although with so many 1st-person POVs they do tend to blend together. 

 

I'd like to see more of how Jack's justifies his Creationism in his field of work, and why others don't challenge him on it more (the carbon dating was a good start, but how does he do Archaeology this way, how exactly is he weaving his mythology into what he finds?)

 

P7: Too much Archer for my taste. It's enough for me that there's a shirt and that Al remarked on it. He and the professor don't need to go on about it quite so much.

 

P9: Here the banter between them started to get tiresome "You didn't just say 'highfalutin,'". It's okay that they do it but it feels like it's all they do. It's almost like a sitcom.

 

As they uncover stranger and stranger bodies, nobody remarks on it. They go there on the heels of a fantastic discovery, and then it gets weirder and weirder and I don't get why they're all so blasé about the whole thing. "Did you watch the game last night? Yeah, there's a giant here. I need to pee. Oh hey, a tiny adult. I'm totally going to talk to the red-haired girl." They even refer to it as "playing in the dirt" when it's noted that there may be more discoveries to be made at the end.

 

So: Interesting discoveries, and I'm a little bit curious to see where it's all leading, but in the end I'm only going to be as curious as your main characters are to see what's coming next, which is currently not very much.

[rohyu]

I liked the banter. I think we are about the same age, so nostalgia is helping a fair amount. I don't think utilizing nostalgia is a bad thing at all.

 

I felt like the conversation about archaeology went on a little too long in Hank's part of the chapter. I felt the same way about the section where the other bodies were discovered. I think Shrike made a great point: the characters didn't seem amazed by the findings, so I wasn't either.

 

Not much happened in Hank's part of the chapter, but I think if it had ended a little earlier I wouldn't have noticed.

 

I'm excited to find out why the corpses were buried in a pattern.

[molah]

As always, in order to give unbiased feedback, I haven't read any of the other comments yet. I try to be honest with my feedback and not sugarcoat it, because I think you'll benefit more from it that way. I hope you don't mind.

 

I'm impressed by the flow of the conversations and how well-crafted the text is. It felt like a clean read without any stumbling stones to make me trip up.

There was only one thing that made me stop for a second: The flight times of 72 and 82 hours. It made me doubt whether this story was set in the past, not the present day, because this seems awfully slow. In my experience, you can get half-way around the globe in about 18-24 hours.

 

Maybe it's because I haven't read the first chapter (it never arrived), but I had a hard time caring for what was happening for most of the story. There was a lot of banter between the friends, but nothing really happened. I kept thinking that this may be interesting to someone who studied archeology, but for me there was no problem/mystery or reveal that motivated me to read on. Only on the last three pages did it start to get interesting to me.

 

When the viewpoint changed to Al, I didn't really notice any difference. I would expect his voice to be distinct from Hank.

 

 

All in all, I have to repeat how much I liked the banter. There was only too much of it, and too little going on. However, I am interested to see how this continues. Right now I expect this to involve some time travelling.

 

Cheers,

Helge

 

 

[Robinski]

Detail follows, summary below.

 

I liked the ‘pronounce it’ line – you know that’s what most readers are thinking.

 

“morning local German time” – we know it’s Germany already.

 

“He tends to be sedentary most of the time” – Repetition of the idea. I'm reminded about the over-writing I felt was common last time.

 

“You guys must be exhausted. But I’ll bet you want to see the Neanderthal before you guys settle in.” – Repetition again. I think your story would benefit a lot from a good, hard edit. It’ll flow much better without all the unnecessary words and double ‘telling’.

 

“You gotta be short on sleep if that’s what you thought I meant” – This is implied in the previous sentence. I think you can cut all this telling the reader. Trust their intelligence and experience of reading.

 

“the ones that jive with our ancestral memories” – not sure I’ve heard ‘jive’ used in this way, but I have heard ‘chime’ used in the sense of ‘That rings a bell.’

 

I'm struggling with the amount of telling. It sounds like the chapter has turned into a history lecture.

 

It’s refreshing to hear Weisman’s dialogue, because of the marked similarity between all the other voices so far. I mentioned that last time as a difficulty I was having.

 

“Each of you has a talent for this” – I’ve got to assume that Weisman is just buttering them up. It seems a bit of a stretch that suddenly they’re all brilliant archaeologists. He makes it sound like they’re better than any student that he’s got. I thought it was a bit much.

 

It strikes me here that, so far, writing in First Person is bringing nothing to the story that a Third Person narration couldn’t handle, especially with the multiple POVs.

 

I think your reference to Archer is going to date your story significantly in years to come. I'm not convinced many people are talking about it now, but in years to come I can assure you it will be all but forgotten (consider the shows that your parents talk about). Do you spend much time thinking about ‘24’? Biggest thing in the world when it started, 15 years later all but disappeared.

 

Why are they standing around discussing their names? Really not interesting, and have they completely forgotten the reason they came here that they were all hopping about a page ago?

 

“Guessing is part of the scientific method after all, especially when it comes to figuring out where to start.” – don’t buy that at all. We have a show over here called Time Team, been going for decade(s), where they have geophyse guys and landscape archaeologists, not to mention experienced diggers, who make educated deductions about where to start digging. I can’t believe this is actually how Sam did it. It does nothing for my impression of his competence.

 

“we’ll have less fewer people” – maybe his grammar is not good, but this one always bugs me.

 

“It was 82 hours.” I don’t get it. Clearly that’s not right. Is he supposed to be joking?

 

“if I wasn’t qualified” – but they’re not qualified, they’re just students, and not even archaeology majors.

 

Once again, all the voices merge into one. I'm not seeing any reason for having all these characters. I feel that three would be plenty. None of them is saying anything that couldn’t come from the mouth of another, as they all seem to have the same skills and experience.

 

“was a few thousand years older than the other end of the same bone?” – I like that. As an engineer, I am thoroughly relieved to hear someone talking about practicalities and the shortcomings of empirical method.

 

“He’s a hardcore bible thumper” – I had no sense of this until you mentioned creationism earlier in this submission. If you want all these characters to work as separate entities, I think that should be right up front in the story, and that he should have a difference voice, somehow.

 

The side bars into popular culture really drag the pace down.

 

“Over the next few days we uncovered a total of four bodies, including Gimli.” – Surely, Gimli was uncovered already. I would have thought a better description would be “another three bodies”.

 

“Our giant is named Goliath now” – Where is Weisman in all this. What is his role? He seems completely incidental. It’s the find of the century in the hands of unqualified students. Hard to accept. I'm still trying to can-of-worms it as artistic licence, but my left brain in struggling.

 

“Curved etched grooves shined shone with...”

 

“shot through with swirling colors that changed in the light like a soap bubble or an opal” – It’s a Palantir!!!! Someone throw a bag over it!

 

“The four corpses were carefully packed and loaded onto trucks bound for Professor Weisman’s lab at the college” – I'm struggling again here. The artefacts you describe would be like finding Excalibur or something, but no one is the slightest bit amazed!! I don’t understand. I feel that they should be buzzing, rolling around grounding, gaping dumbly – but there is no immediate reaction at all.

 

I like how you end the chapter, it really pushes thing forward with the promise of more discoveries, but I'm struggling badly with how nobody has reacted to the astonishing artefacts  they unearthed, not to mention having increasing difficulty in suspending my disbelief about how they have free rein here.

 

In summary: It’s getting more interesting in terms of what’s going on, but I'm not convinced about their (lack of) reactions to it. I'm also still toiling with the number of characters and POVs. I don’t see what it adds. Fair amount of info-dumping and potential maid-and-butler too. Sam is the only one who I feel I know something of his character. I’d be perfectly content to see everything though his eyes, First or Third person.

[Robinski]

Reading the other comments, I must agree about the banter being distracting.

 

I'm also at a loss to the reference to nostalgia. It's not nostalgia if it's two years old!

 

I'm with Shrike on almost everything. I also disagree about the flow. I found myself skipping sections which seemed random and irrelevant.