CommandanteLemming

So, I've realized that after next week, I run out of pre-written continuous material for "Millenial Reign". I have a ton of stuff written for later in the plot - ranging from near the beginning to near the end, but it's not in order. I bounce around writing skeleton scenes and then try to connect the dots later. So, for your purposes here, do you prefer to read chronologically from beginning to end - in which case I slow down my submission until I figure out what happens in the "next chapter in order". Or do you want to see the unconnected later dots (of which I have plenty)? I'm probably about a chapter or two away from connecting my first big sequence into the continuous chronology, but it's still a valid question,

Thanks both of your for the input. Since both of you flagged tense inconsistencies and one of you caught the Davis/Priscilla dichotomy - sorry about that. I've been retrofitting this and trying to remove all of my "Davis" and "Dragovich" references in favor of "Priscilla" and "Dan", and adding and cutting paragraphs, so hopefully I'll get it cleaned up soon. Also I'm definitely working on making Nina more active - I'm trying to figure out how to get her "protagging" when she's at a point where she hasn't yet figured out that she has a problem. Mandamon: I'll work on the stomping around - Dan and Priscilla have a pretty openly hostile and contemptuous relationship by this point in the story, but I can see taking the edge off. As for Sinead, I'm definitely going to work on taking the edge off her, but she's a weird one to handle because her behavior is supposed to seem unnaturally hostile and somewhat non-sensical - half the office thinks she's psychotic. She's a walking red-flag, and she doesn't make sense until you realize that you've only seen the tip of a very large iceberg. But she still probably needs cranked down from 11 - so thanks. Jparker: Glad you liked it and liked the characters. The Justin Bieber thing is definitely getting cut - almost cut it before sending it this week but figured I'd see how it played. I have a lot of post-hoc references on purpose but I need to cut out the ones that don't actually move the story (Bieber) so that you aren't sick of them when I get to the ones that are actually important (Madison's extensive collection of vintage Taylor Swift memorabilia *oops spoiler* :-P ).

Haha no worries - actually I have the same objections to the text that most readers have. It's fixing them that's the hard part :-)

I'll definitely work on the excessive detail. It's funny to me because a lot of my earlier submissions to my in person group got tagged as too much dialogue, not enough description. Guess I'll go back to being more dialogue heavy, I tend to do better there. And maybe I'll skip ahead to action next go round. I wrote a lot of my exciting later stuff first and then went back and tried to write the beginning to set it up...and now the beginning is dragging. Oh well, onward and upward.

I like the overall tone here, and on balance I think it's a good scene. I particularly like Benam's flashback. It was visceral and I felt it with him. That said, the placement of said flashback after the introductory action broke up the scene for me and felt out of place. I would consider placing the flashback either right at the beginning as a sort of dream sequence, or close to the beginning, right after we find Benam in his cell. I don't like the fact that it interrupts mid-scene after his dialoguer with Ghintor. ...speaking of which, I thought the exchange with Ghintor was the weakest part of the scene. It felt slow, I didn't understand what was going on or why I needed to see it, and I'm not sure it did much to move the plot along As for the exchange with Ahma - I think that went very well and I like the interplay between these two hardened characters. Probably could use a little polishing but good on the whole. What I didn't necessarily like was the thought-quotes interspersed with a dialogue on the third page - for some reason that really threw me out of it and I had to go back and re-read it to straighten out who was talking and what Benam was referencing in his thoughts I like it, I want more of it. I'm a lot more interested in Benam now than I was before. That said I miss Covelle and Dyllis, particularly Dyllis - but I know they will be back soon, and what's going on with Benam is just as important :-) Looking forward to the next submission.

Last Week on "Millenial Reign": It's early 2034, and young reporter Nina Constantinos has just arrived for her first day as a national correspondent for a major news network (WWN). However, her morning meeting with editor-in-chief Priscilla Davis has been interrupted by breaking news of the death of Pope Stephen XI. Davis has made the snap decision to invite Nina to participate in the story as a sort of baptism-by-fire. Worth noting that the other character you met last week is Sinead Szerbiak, Priscilla's overly-blunt secretary. This week you'll see the rest of that meeting, and meet most of the rest of my cast (although Nina's sidekick/co-protagonist is going to have to wait until next week). Given some of the feedback I've recieved in the past few weeks, this may be more time spent leading up to the action rather than jumping into it, but it's also a chance to introduce most of the supporting cast. So thoughts on whether this is the best way to do that. Also would appreciate input on whether I'm introducing too many characters at once, as I'm, doing exposition on three of them in this chapter (Dan, Madison, and Sinead). Lastly, you will find an awkward gap labeled "TRANSITION" in bold letters. I was hoping to write some action in here before feeding this to you all - but I've been stuck here for some time, so maybe it's better to ask you how to fill it. Note that certain characters have pretty vulgar vocabularies, so this edition does come with a "Rated R for Language" warning.

I think I'll do some rough edits and fire off two chapters late tonight. The stuff I have next is some of the better raw stuff anyway.

If people want reading material I have some unrevised stuff I can dump. Wasn't planning on submitting today but if it's a light week I can just go a week early with the stuff as is.

Oh and I don't know why - but I had pictured Dyllis as being 7 or 8 years old. Maybe I misread "girl" as "little girl" somewhere, or maybe because she seemed so helpless and passive at first. Either way, that's easy to clear up in revision.

I'll tell you a story about names - I'm a perfectionist, and occasionally at my office I have to serve as a greeter for groups who have had nametags printed. I'm obsessed with making sure that I can pronounce names correctly, so I alway look through the nametags, pick out the one or two names I can't pronounce in one try (be they Indian, Polish, etc) and rehearse a few times to make sure I get it right...mostly because when somebody walks in the door, I want to be able to say, "Good Morning, Mr. Andrzejewski" without missing a beat (and I've known a guy named Andrzejewski - it's pronounced Ann-Gee-Ev-Ski). If I encounter that name in a story, I'm going to do the same thing, back out of the story and read it three times trying to get it stuck in my head so that I can move on - which is why I keep tripping on Lufmatho every week. I think I'm getting it dome but I keep mentally skipping it in the text and mentally remind myself not to back out for pronunciation. That may be an individual quirk, but I think it's the type of reading experience that Card was talking about. At the end of the day there are far more important things to talk about. As for Aadarshini Brahmaputra - I made that name up on the spot yesterday. The character's name has been Vinya Jain almost since her inception, and she couldn't have any other name. Naming rhythm also has more importance in my story as my characters are all TV newscasters and therefore the ease of name-pronunciation actually figures into whether or not they get their job (a potential issue since my main character's last name is Constantinos). But I may add a background character named Aadarshini Brahmaputra just to have a laugh - I already have several background characters with long names on purpose.

Thanks everyone for the input - good stuff as usual. Obviously digesting the whole thing takes some time, but here are my randome comments and questions. 1) On the date stamps - would appreciate input on fixing that if people find them jarring - the reason they are there is that, as the narrative progresses, the time jumps are not going to be uniform. I could jump two hours between chapters, or two months. Some chapters have internal time-stamps within a given day as well. So I need to be able to clarify passage of time, but without breaking the narrative. 2) How did people take the cultural references to "hepkits" and such? A big challenge in previous drafts has been building this weird future moment where part of the pop-culture is fleetingly obsessed with the 50s/early 60s retro themes. 3) Glad the subway scene mostly worked - will think a bit more on that moment where Nina bumps into Sophie. The fact that Sophie is reading Davis' book was half the point of the interaction, but maybe you'll see that later (I won't spoil Sophie's relevance if you haven't spotted it yet, but she's going to become a very minor character with some major implications). 3a) Speaking of which - do you guys prefer to throw around spoilers to work with foreshadowing, or would you rather be surprised? 4) I'll work on giving the characters more time than the photocopier - but the photocopier itself is ok, right? That's a big gun on the wall. Comments: Dating the story heavily is actually my intention. I plan on having one heck of a laugh at this thing in 2034, and Back to the Future's 2015 is a major influence. I loved reading old Heinlein novels about the swamps of Venus and skating on the Martian canals - the stories were timeless and the fact that science had passed the narrative was part of the fun. Definitely agree the car thing needs cut down - originally the car had some pretty advanced artificial intelligence and actually had dialogue, but having cut that I should be less info-dumpy for sure. Will fix the Gus reference - that's Nina's dad but I need to either use his name more or not at all. Actually the reason for the watch was that I knew I would get in trouble for having her look at her watch instead of her phone - but the proliferation of smartwatches and smartglesses is something I work a lot with later. The characters will be less cardboard next week - I promise (the fun people are coming - problem being my protagonist and antagonist are the hardest people to write well.)

I'm a little late and haven't read all the preceding comments as thoroughly as I could, but I liked this. The POV of the plane is great. The Icarus reference is great and you might even re-use it. I'm not even going to bother breaking it down chunk by chunk, because for me it was a fast read and flowed together. I did particularly like the one with the female pilot who actually cared - maybe even a bit more of the plane remembering her. I did not particularly like the next pilot, the military man who didn't care - because he was a letdown after the one who did...which is probably your point, but I want to feel that sense of lost love more than I did. That, and my pet peeve is the assumption of a near-future world war...it's used too often in my opinion. But then again I'm writing a near future so I'm really, really biased in that regard so don't pay attention to me there. I do think the last bit could use a little more work. The plane has emotions now and since we're essentially talking about a suicide I think it needs to be deeper and a lot more sense of loss, futility, and particularly the crushing feeling that he is a death-trap to his pilots. One last minot point - since your last vignette makes clear that the problem is now the plane's internal emotions, it should not say "pilot-glider integration is zero" again...but rather "glider-pilot integration is zero"...the pilot is fine, and the plane is probably ready to fly, but the problem is now that the plane is depressed and unwilling to integrate. On the whole, great stuff!!!!

I really, really, really like this. By far my favorite look at Covelle and Dyllis - much better grasp on who they are and what's going on. This is genuinely touching and well done. And I'll echo the kudos on the whole "magic comes with a cost" angle. The one thing about the scene that threw me is how easily Dyllis gives up her info after finding out Covelle's parentage. I would think that would throw her guard up a little farther and she'd have to be talked back down That, and Covelle's moment of internal revelation is a bit too much - he can soften a little, but he's questioning far too much of his own cynical view of the world in one fell swoop. This is all really good emotional stuff, but just a bit softer touch on his internal monologue might work - convert him piece by piece. How old is Dyllis? She's pictured as a little girl but she's extremely well spoken and eloquent - this is either going to need explained or changed (I'm assuming she's not secretly like 300 years old - in which case it's fine). Children, even highly skilled and educated children, will always be children. Boy-geniuses who get into college at age 11 are still kids, still want to play football with their friends, probably still have a drawer full of action figures, and still speak in childish ways - they just happen to be really good at quantum physics. Dyllis is probably wise beyond her years and robbed of her childhood her station in life - but if she's a kid, she needs to come across as a kid. Like the description of the house and the advantages of living up the hill. Good stuff. Also like that Dyllis' eyes "went round" instead of "widened" - love that word choice and may steal it at some point. At one point he murmurs an apology - I'd like to hear what he actually said - the sincerity or lack thereof would be telling. Minor note, I would give some thought to how easy your place names are to pronounce. As the resident ugly-American, I stumbled a bit on "Lufmatho” and "Cwidagth". Orson Scott Card wrote two good lessons on naming conventions and noted that all names should be easily pronounced by American (or in your case British) readers - because we try to mentally pronounce things even when we read silently, and names we have to think about throw us out of the story. See: http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/2003-03-05-1.shtml http://www.hatrack.com/writingclass/lessons/2003-03-05-2.shtml I feel your pain here as I like multicultural characters - you'll probably meet my Indian-American co-protagonist in the next few weeks, but there's a reason that her name is "Vinya Jain" and not "Aadarshini Brahmaputra".

I'll wait for others to chime in before responding or asking anything in detail - but I did want to answer the "why 2034" question up front. The idea behind the story is to check in on the Millennial Generation at age 50 (hence the working title), and as a corollary to check in on "Generation Z" (today's toddlers) as they come of age. Basically the idea is to look at what I see happening if my own generation chooses to act based on their generational flaws rather than their generational strengths. Also...suddenly re-thinking my already-written airport scene.

Just now re-reading all the stuff on contractions and Hebrew-English conversions and I agree that lack of contractions could be a good element of voice. Especially seeing as your narrator encounters actual English people, it's important to the story that your narrator is not a native English speaker and hence his internal monologue is not in vernacular English. If you want, you might even consider referencing this in the story. If you think or mutter anything in Hebrew or about Israel, it would give us a sense that we should think of the character as Israeli and fill in our mental details with whatever it is we think an Israeli looks like. As a corollary, we will also assume that he doesn't think, look, or act like a German, Brit, or American - and will forgive him for not sounding like one. Definitely keep with this story - I think it's very good.

LOVE THIS! I like your voice a lot and the ending was awesome. I live in Washington, DC - so my city is constantly overflowing with confused tourists, and I can definitely identify. Without getting too far into the weeds on line-edits, I'll agree that the "English needs a little polishing" - stuff like "But I could not blame them" would be "But I can't (or cannot) blame them". Also you used the word "decided" a lot - I would get rid of this and make your sentences more action-oriented rather than thought oriented ("I did X" rather than "I decided to do X"). If you want us to see thought, maybe actually make your thoughts more detailed and have us see the characters internal deliberations - but personally I think just go with "I did X". There are also long phrases, "without having discovered anything I did not already figure out on my own." that you might consider shortening to things like "without discovering anything I didn't already know". Just think about ways to do the same thing with fewer words. Minor point, I would spell it "Friedrichstrasse" instead of "Friedrichstraße" - if for no other reason than people unfamiliar with Germany may not know how to pronounce it mentally. Overall, good stuff. Some of the language is a bit labored and needs some fine-tuning - but the overall concept is brilliant.

Previously on "Millenial Reign" - we've seen a young journalist named Prissy Davis freak out for no good reason at a baptism in 2014 Washington, DC. Then we fast-forwarded 19 years to December 2033 in Wisconsin, where a young local news reporter named Nina Constantinos has just been offered the promotion of her life by Priscilla Davis, the powerful Editor in Chief of WorldWide News network (WWN). This week we finish up Nina's time in Wisconsin and follow her to Washington for a somewhat shocking first day as a WWN National Correspondent. I'll offer my standard "this is not a sci-fi story" disclaimer inasmuch as it's meant to be a newsroom drama that just happens to be in the future, and the technology takes a back seat to the characters and social movements. This has not gotten as much revision as I would like, and honestly I wrote some new material here just today, but these chapters are ones I really wanted shopped. The first of the two is a bit more of the unmitigated sappiness that pervaded the first submission - although I'd like to think it's a bit better-written than it's predecessor. The second is when Nina finally gets dumped into the wild world of 2034 Washington DC. This was originally my beginning, and this is the third version of it, but it's still going to need work. I'm interested in feedback on the blocking of the scene on the Metro - what helps, what doesn't. This is my town and my neighborhood, and I'm very familiar with this particular Metro stop's odd layout. I don't want to bog down in detail, but I also want it to make sense. Also, tips on foreshadowing and worldbuilding without being ham-handed - the blonde on the train is important, just like the Indian family last week really needed to be there for reasons you'll find out next week, but adding people to the scenery without slowing things down is something I'm still working on. I'm trying to take a softer touch on painting the culture (it used to open with a long description of the people waiting for the train), so let me know how that goes for you.

If you want to send details by all means pm or email.

In repentance for last week's misfire I will ask way early to get in on Monday. Also I have sentenced myself to 100 lashes with a fettucine noodle. :-P

PM me. I know it pretty well (yes I'm religious but I've helped atheist writers with this stuff before) and know the Judaic cultural content pretty well too. The good news is you don't need to read the whole new Testament. The chronology is just the first four books of the New Testament (the Gospels). Better yet, you don't even need all the Gospels. The Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke all repeat roughly the same series of events (they are called the Synoptic Gospels for that reason). So you can read just one of those and get basics - Mark is the shortest and probably earliest. Matthew is written mostly for a Jewish audience and focuses the narrative on Jesus as the prophesied Messiah of Israel. Luke is more written with an eye on Jesus as a worldwide redemption figure and appeals more to a non-Jewish audience. The fourth gospel, John, was written specifically as an appendix to the other three - it's "oh and this stuff also happened"....but it's also the most cited gospel and the only source for a lot of iconic events. So my advice to you would be to read one synoptic gospel and John. Much easier than whole New Testament. The only other historical book in the New Testament is Acts - which covers the foundation of the early Church starting from the aftermath of the resurrection and running through the ministry of the Apostle Paul (coincidentally, Acts is written specifically as a sequel to the Gospel of Luke). The rest of the New Testament after that is mostly letters from the apostles elucidating doctrine - not useful in your context - and the last book (Revelation) is end-of-the-world prophecy...Jesus is in that one too but if you just want historical detail then future Jesus is not going to be important for you.

Yeah I'll make that clearer - there's a big difference between Prissy Davis at 27 (somewhat screwed up) and Priscilla Davis at 47 (extremely messed up)

Also because someone mentioned it - did I make it sufficiently clear that Chapter 1 takes place 19 years after the prologue? Are date stamps enough or do I need to flat out say "19 years later".

Thanks everybody for all the feedback! There's a lot of good stuff in there that neither I nor my in-person writing group picked up on the first pass. I think the stuff about some of the characters being "paper figures" rings true - especially as Appleton is actually a new location for me and most of the characters there end up being bit-parts in the larger narrative. I'm only planning to spend two chapters in Appleton before dumping Nina into the main narrative, but I want that time to count. I do have a number of questions. 1. I'm very interested in feedback on the random family at the beginning. Their presence is totally random compared to the rest of the prologue but they need to be there for reasons that don't come up until later in the story. Originally, they were at the back end of the prologue and Dan bumped into them on his way out of the church. They work a little better at the very beginning, but still not well. So any thoughts on where to put them or how to integrate them? 2. If I'm not planning to spend much time in Appleton, how much time should I devote to painting it without bogging down? I think I definitely miffed it here, as everyone assumed it was a one-horse town. The real-life Appleton, Wisconsin has 72,000 people and forms the core of "Fox Cities Metro Area" which has 225,000 people. It's a smallish rust-belt city with an industrial past and a not-so-industrial present. I wouldn't mind spending more time on detail, but I also am worried about slowing down my pace before the story moves to it's main setting in Washington, DC. 3. As a corollary - I'm wondering how much explaining I need to do in order for Nina's "Hollywood promotion" to make sense. Right now it asks far too much in terms of suspension of disbelief. However, in my backstory there is a reason why she's being considered for this promotion (she stumbled face-first into a major national scandal revolving around an Appleton-based politician that forced her to make appearances on national TV as a subject-matter expert). There's also a somewhat malevolent reason that Priscilla often hires doe-eyed naifs as opposed to more seasoned reporters, but you're not all supposed to know that yet ;-) However I work it out, Nina's naive attitude about big-city journalism is a major plot point, so I need to preserve that without being too cute. This entire sequence in Appleton is an addition to help explain her - originally I started with Nina's first day on the job in Washington and threw her straight into the fire. I'm worried about backing up farther as the story isn't about Appleton, but I need what happened in Appleton to make sense. 4. Rest assured that the main tone of the story is not this sappy - normally the prose is cynical and sarcastic. But I'm trying to figure out how to paint Nina's (relatively) idyllic existence in Appleton and her extremely tight-knit family at the diner without going over the top. Also, while her dad's speech is too much as is, I do kind of want to show in a benign way that he has one major flaw. He loves the limelight too much, is prone to speechifying, can be overly grandiose, and is overly comfortable with the idea that he is a minor local celebrity - at least to his mob of regulars. It doesn't become apparent until later that he may have passed this trait on to his otherwise humble daughter. As for all the rest of it...great stuff and thanks for reading. I'll probably inflict one more chapter of hopeless sappiness on you next week if I get the chance - but hopefully you'll start seeing where it's going.

Robinski, Still enjoying the basic premise and like Covelle and Dyllis' characters and storyline - also liked the look at Benam I got this week. You have a taste for detailed descriptive language, which works both for and against you. I'm staring at the copy I printed, and I have a bunch of word choices circled and marked "NICE!", but also a bunch of word-choices that I marked as suspect. Specifically I thought the first paragraph on the first page felt like a clinical description of the scene that might be a little too much detail. I also occasionally questioned word choices like "highly effective violence" and "as if the wrongness needed emphasis" - both for being somewhat vague, but also for being somewhat of a modern-sounding commentary on an otherwise anachronistic setting. So my biggest advice would be to double check your descriptions don't sound like clinical records of a crime scene, and that your choice of language in description fits the overall tone of the story. Your voice has to pervade the entire manuscript, not just the dialogue and the action - it's not a script, which means we don't need to see everything, and what we do see has to keep in tone. (Says the guy who just got busted for writing too much like a script himself) I really liked the interaction between Benam and the guards - especially when it's primarily heard by Covelle in the other room. I'm going to flag the unattributed dialogue issue again - especially when the guards come in. When there's a two way conversation, you need to at least identify who is talking the first time they speak - even if the speaker is unknown, we need to know that someone new has entered the room. Specifically, I had to stop and think about who said, "You're Benam" at the bottom of page four. And most importantly I still haven't figured out who said "Stay there, damnation you!"...which is extra important seeing as that quote is the title of the chapter. It's either Covelle or one of the guards - and I think it's Covelle - but that needs an in-text attribution. Also I'm still trying to figure out what Dyllis did to the doorknob - I think she heated it up the latch until it came loose - but don't know. I particularly liked how you describe Nertin's "searching grey-eyed gaze" and how he wrinkled his nose and such - you seem in touch with the guy. I'd lay off the descriptions of his clothing a little - but I'm only picking up on that because my submission got busted for the same thing this week. Although, I thought he left too easily without smelling a rat. Also - I don't know why but I love how you said that he heard the door "splinter" - loved the use of that word. On the whole, I'm getting more engaged - and I'm particularly curious about what Dyllis is going to be able to do going forward.

I messed up on the process and have sent an apology to Silk. Didn't know if it went to the rest of you but since it apparently did, I'm sorry about that to all of you as well.