Shrike76

Me neither. I even dug through my spam folder.

I really enjoyed this, with only a few things throwing me a little bit out of it. I would have liked an earlier hint that our POV character was male, but it's not critical, and that probably varies widely by reader. Maybe it's just me, but I read the whole thing with a British accent. I was sure that the POV character was from somewhere in the UK right up until I found out they were in Michigan, and then that made me pause. Are they ex-pats or is this just your natural writing or speaking voice coming out? A few things that really set the accent for me, as things you don't usually hear North Americans use: - "the lot of them" - Even when North Americans use this phrase, they usually do it with a mock British accent. Very not local. - "Skrillex was my idol of the moment" - at the moment, maybe, but this didn't sound right for Michigan. - "Don't be cheeky" - Cheeky doesn't much get used in North America. Neither does "mum". - There are others, but no sense pointing everything out if the speaking style turns out to be relevant later in the story. On page two, I assume the ashtray was thrown? That could have been clearer, as I needed to reread it a couple of times to come to that conclusion, absent any other evidence of the fact. P2: - "Oh no she This post has been reported for attempting to skirt the rulesing didn't" - I think this should at least start its own paragraph, and maybe merge with the following one. P3: - ""i mean it was almost glowing" - the i needs capitalization. I enjoyed the characterization, even though most of the characters seemed pretty stock from just this short sample. The quality of the writing really carried me through and made me want to keep reading until I could see what really sets these people apart (hopefully something does). The dialogue itself was crisp, and I felt the ratio of dialogue to description was spot on. A very fluid read. It would be easy to say that very little happens in this story, but getting absorbed in the character means every little thing happening to the character becomes an event. The reflection on the current situation, the conversation with the father, the ashtray, the little brother, the costume, the mother offering an exorbitant amount to wear the costume. It all works, and I found that it worked very well. That being said, if this is going to be a short story then you've spent four pages setting up character and I haven't identified yet what might be the conflict to be resolved (unless there's something really special about the costume), and it might be getting too late for short fiction. I'd love to see the rest of this story, and have to compliment the fact that the writing itself is about as clean as can be. Very well done. *Edited: Because I seem to have made a mess of the paragraph on accents*

Well, you'd have had to post in this thread to raise your hand for this week: http://www.17thshard.com/forum/topic/785-email-list-and-submission-dates/ Silk is away temporarily, so I think even if you had followed the instructions and messaged her, you probably won't have been added to the list so you won't receive the other submissions by email.

Yes you can but it isn't obvious. You can edit the first post in the topic, then you have to click "Use Full Editor" and that will allow you to change the Topic Title.

Read the Intro thread. You need to have Silk add you to the distribution list. Once you're on there you post and ask if there's room for you to submit or if the week is crowded. Then when you have the okay, you email your story to the email address specified (That you apparently found, since you sent the email already, but didn't put an attachment)

I didn't know there was an alpha readers dropbox. I really had to dig for the thread, does the dropbox see a lot of traffic?

I'm going to separate my answer into different groups, for simplicity's sake and not-at-all-because-I-have-too-many-favourites-and-I-can't-decide. Bloom County and Calvin and Hobbes for newspaper comics. Favourites for comics by issue - Sandman, Transmetropolitain, Watchmen, Alan Moore's Swamp Thing run, Planet Hulk, Locke & Key, and Unwritten. Current stuff I'm loving but it's really new so I'm not ready to call it a classic yet - All the IXth Generation lines from Top Cow, and Letter 44. Webcomics - XKCD, Schlock Mercenary, Least I Could Do, Looking For Group, and Oglaf.

Thanks, Kammererite. You bring up some good points, I'l definitely keep your comments in mind when I do a rewrite.

It was clear to me, as I was writing the story, that Sia's and Abromir's families were family (cousins, I think, I don't have my original notes). Not making that clearer in print was very much a mistake on my part. Thanks very much for your other feedback as well. It's helping me see which scenes don't do what they need to do.

No they are not. Vulnerabilities are vectors for exploitation by either malicious or poorly-written code. This is not even remotely the same thing as a virus, although the nuance may be lost on laymen. A vulnerability could be something as simple as something like the way a web site is coded will make your web browser hang. The point is that the number of vulnerabilities that affects a version of software is not the only marker for that software's safety. Having code with more found security vulnerabilities in a given year does not make it bad code to run, because those security holes can be coded shut very quickly. Malware and viruses coded to run and compromise your computer do not need to exploit a vulnerability in order to infect, and they very rarely do. You can run an operating system that has precisely 0 vulnerabilities (if you can find one) and have it be infected with a virus if you do unsafe things with it. You can't code shut a virus in the OS, you can only run AV software that specifically targets it. As long as Windows is more popular OS than Mac, Windows will be a bigger target for malware and will be harder to keep safe. In the same way, Android has more malware coded for it than IOS does and Blackberry viruses are unheard of.

I'm good with that.

Yes. There's a huge difference between the money being worthless and it being worthless to Renfield, and that could be played up to great effect - him having an abundance of what he needs but in the wrong format. "Water, water, everywhere; nor any drop to drink" and so forth.

In alphabetical order: - Michael Chabon (Kavalier & Klay) - C.S. Friedman (Coldfire trilogy) - Neil Gaiman (Literally anything. I'd read his used toilet paper if my bookstore sold it) - Guy Gavriel Kay (Also literally anything) - George R.R. Martin (AGoT yes, but Dying of the Light was amazing) - Terry Pratchett (Discworld) - Melanie Rawn (Dragon Prince/Star, Golden Key) - Dan Simmons (Hyperion, Ilium, Song of Kali) - Jo Walton (Farthing, Among Others) - Peter Watts (Blindsight, or anything else) If we can diverge into comic book writers as well... - Berkeley Breathed - Warren Ellis - Garth Ennis - Neil Gaiman - Matt Hawkins - Joe Hill - Allan Moore - Grant Morrison - Greg Pak - Bill Watterson

As soon as I started writing this one, there were some things I wasn't sure were going to work. The flashbacks were one, and the fact of Esther being more or less in complete control was another. I knew that it would telegraph the ending but I wasn't sure to what point. I appreciate you giving me your reaction to that. As to your second point, I think I agree. It doesn't make sense for her to resist unless she has other motives, but then those would have to be communicated better. Certainly Esther shouldn't seem smug until after Sia is incapacitated. I'll have to work on that, and on the suspense in general, providing or concealing the right amount of information. Thanks to both of you for your feedback! It's much appreciated,

A decent pair of chapters, though the wording during the action sequences often gets a bit muddled and could be cleaned up for the sake of brevity and clarity. I was glad to see Stephanie acting with some sort of goal in mind, but would have liked to see more from Renfield besides him needing a place to nap. C7P2: "Worthless in the near future": Nope. If you have an old $500 bill on you it's still worth the face value of $500, legally. They just don't make them anymore and the banks pull them out of circulation when they receive them. Their value as a collector's item will vary based on rarity. C8P2: - "Blood flowed from his throat..." - It shouldn't be flowing. Blood stops leaking out of a body pretty soon after the heart stops. It can be pooled there, or congealed there, but it shouldn't be flowing by this point. C8P10: - The safe house. Stephenie knew where the safe house was (she had them all memorized). They know enough that a trigger goes off when someone uses the safe house, but she doesn't know exactly where it is behind the wall? Seems strange. C8P11: - After all the effort by Stephanie to be quiet so as not to wake Renfield she... wakes him up. If she'd been quietly snooping looking for information, that's one thing, but she had the gun pointed at him already. Just wake the guy. And probably from a bit of a distance, not inches away, for the sake of not having the gun knocked out of your hand. Throughout: - Renfield's chapter alternates between "my Master" and "The Master" and "his Master". At least you're consistent with the capitalization of Master, but "my Master" should probably be reserved for 1st person narratives. The exception would be if Renfield has been conditioned to use "My Master" as a proper name rather than simply an identifier, in which case all instances should be "My Master". At any rate, it's confusing to have lots of different identifiers. Pick a standard and run with just the one I think. Things I would have liked to see: - Exactly what Renfield was looking for. He spends a lot of time rummaging, then decides he needs sleep. If he didn't actually need anything in the room, and was just looking for a safe place to lie down, the rest is largely irrelevant, apart from providing exposition. The downside of that is that it's obvious that it's exposition. - More of Stephanie's thought process in the scene with Irving and Jason. She's like a dog with a bone when she's grilling Irving at gunpoint. Then she's sobbing into Jason, and then she's Black Widow again and he's out cold. By the end, I knew what she was doing, but this chapter was in her POV, we should have seen a bit more of her intentions. Make it so that I know what she wants to do and am worried about whether she'll pull it off, rather than make me wonder what exactly it is she's doing in the first place. Grammar stuff not already covered by others above: C7P1: - The elevator lunched to life - It must have been hungry. launched. C7P4: - Hampered with experience - inexperience? C8P1: - "his hands shaking his own" - Not sure what you were going for originally but this is wrong. Is he shaking Stephanie's hands, or were you implying that his hands were just shaking? Throughout: - You're still using Westerna instead of Westenra. - "descending down" - Redundant, and you did it once in each chapter. You can't descend up.

I thought this was good, and interesting. The premise is similar to one you had in the other submission of writing prompts, but we get a more clear look here at how an alien parasites functions and grows. Yes I would have kept reading after the first paragraph, but I think you could have put more information, or more specific information, early on. In particular, the second paragraph line of "his words exactly what I expected him to say", I would have liked to have known why that is significant. In some instances, someone saying exactly what you expect is normal, so what was special today? The biggest drawback to this story is that you telegraph what's happening very early (paragraph 6), and then we're just waiting to see what the POV character does with the information (which turns out to be not much, as he gets a plant of his own). Typically in flash fiction, if you're going to put a twist in, the reveal should be as close to the end as possible. Once I knew that biomass was encroaching and that he had something under his hat, I pretty much knew exactly what it was doing there. One unresolved question is why the weather was such as it was the previous week. Was that by design of this biomass, or really an accident? As an accident or coincidence, it feels forced. I think you have a missed opportunity with the hats. The friend produces a hat from out of nowhere in the last paragraph, but you could have shown it to us earlier and it would have been something we would have been curious about, and which would have closed a loop in a satisfactory way later on. Another punch that was held back was the nature of the biomass. We know it wants ideal conditions for itself, but is it just looking out for itself, or is it malevolent, or is it beneficial to the host? Possibly tough to expound upon in a very short work, but the payoff would be great. Unnecessary words: The paragraph where he asks if Chuck has had a cough could go. So could any mention about what's under the hats until the last 1/4 of the story or so. The character doesn't even need to be suspicious until the reveal. I think that would tighten the piece up quite a bit.

This is the first draft of a short story I wrote, but am not overly satisfied with. I’d like to know what does or doesn’t work for you. I think I know what some of the problems are, structurally, but I’m curious if other people notice the same things and are bothered by them (or not) and to what extent, or if there’s anything I haven’t thought of. I’m open to any feedback or suggestions for improvement.

If it's not crowded, I'd like to submit on Monday the 31st.

Even for something like alcohol, I can look at a bottle of beer and it will tell me it's 5% or 8.8% and based on my past experience with my body type I can guess what the effect will be, and know that one or three or five of them will affect me a certain way. I can guess at how long it will last, but I'd never say that I'd be drunk for 70-80 minutes or what have you (and I certainly would expect the label to tell me the duration), and it certainly wouldn't be affecting me one minute and gone the next, the rate of it hitting me, like the rate of it going away would be gradual. And at any rate, even if it WAS alcohol in your story and not essence, I'd rather have them look at the strength and then be shown exactly what it does for them and for how long, rather than for them to try and constrain the time-frame. Show me what it does. Show me how long it lasts. Show me the consequences of them taking too much. That will make me buy into the story so much more. That would have helped a little, yes. Again, I would like, rather than having the rivers simply described, to have seen the effects of him opening the dams and having the essence flow through his body (and why it seems as though, as soon as he stops focusing on the dams and clicks back to the real world, the effects of the essence seem to have moved on). And again, this seems like a cool magic system to me, it just needs a little bit of polish In case it was also covered in the first chapter: Are the vials the only source of this essence that powers the magic? And how are the vials made, or what are they distilled from?

General Stuff P1: - "Pools of blood and torn bodies once again decorate the main hall..." - This has happened before? P2: - "The water boils, steam curls up from the pot" - Over the low flame of a lamp? This should never boil, and take hours to even get warm, but it feels like it's almost immediate. P3: - The first gryphon should be the first. The second should be the dead one P4: - I dislike the potions having such a definite time limit. It feels like I'm in a video game where time-based effects are important, but we don't think of real life effects in that way (like how long a cup of coffee will actually affect your alertness). I'd much prefer seeing the effects in action, and seeing how long they last (with a fade out if there is one) than having him tell me "This will last 30-40 minutes". P5: - I'm not sure what's going on with the glacier. It feels like that's part of the magic system, but I'm not sure how it works. Does he need to break down the dams for the potion to take effect? Is he trying to limit it? I got the impression that the dams breaking made the effect more powerful, but he's talking about lowering the dams (the shattered dams) more, but then all of a sudden he's out of it and the smells around him are irrelevant? I'm very confused. P11: - More of the potions duration/potency. POV character seems to know exactly how they'll affect him but we don't really. He runs numbers through his head but doesn't tell us what those numbers are (and we should know since we're in his head). How close is he to his limit, what is his limit, and what exactly are the consequences for him going over? - He should be getting naked, or at least stripping layers. Being hot or cold is one thing, being wet is another. Nobody who knows anything about survival allows themselves to get and stay wet in cold temperatures, especially through sweat. Throughout: - One thing that felt off through the chapter was the internal monologue. It felt too much like an actual conversation than a flow of thoughts, which felt weird. Specific examples like on page 11 where we get "Haven't you had enough Essence for the day?" really feels like a voice in his head rather than internal monologue. Grammar: P2: - If it's a figure in a black cloak, it's a black-cloaked figure. A black cloaked figure means the figure is black and has a cloak. - viciously, not "viscously" P3: - "was train to hunt" - trained - "better camouflage then" - than - "bearish-neetut" - either bearish tracks or bear-Neetut tracks would work. P6: - "begins to glide the right" - to the right P4: - "I open it to a myriad" - to find? to see? to reveal? P7: - "turn the tiler" - tiller P8: - 'the horizon is races" - races, or is racing P11: - migraine, not "mind grain" Wordage There are several words you misuse/overuse - Several instances of "stubble" where it should be "stumble" - Several instances of "sent" where it should be "scent" - Several instances of "dames" instead of "dams" - I'd recommend you go through and kill off as many of the instances where you use "begins to" as possible. It's a lazy word choice and usually can be cut out completely. Just tell us what's happening, not what's beginning to happen, unless it's important that it's just beginning to happen. - ie. "I begin to hyperventilate", "begin to disappear", "begin to merge", "begins to glide", etc. - If you'll allow me to get a little bit more pedantic about why these word choices are poor and a little bit lazy, let's single out "I follow the tracks for a hundred paces as they begin to disappear": Does he really quit when they only begin to disappear? The tracks visibly keep going but they've started to fade, they've "begun to disappear", so to hell with it, he's gone far enough? I doubt that very much. Or does he follow them until the last trace is gone, until they're indistinguishable from other markings? If we take it even further: Does he struggle to see where they might lead, even if he can't see the tracks which prove it? What do the tracks look like and is he looking for just footprints or also lost/discarded equipment or blood drops? There are probably a thousand ways you could use this to show us his nature and his skill set, but we only get that he follows the tracks for a little bit, and then he's done. Overall, I think the world is interesting and has a lot of potential, and I think you have the seeds of a very interesting magic system here, but it isn't very clearly represented. I often find myself wondering what's going on and having no idea what the character is trying to accomplish with his dams. With more information, or just better information, I think it could really shine. As to your comment about what's missing, I'd say it's desperation. Your POV character is doing things, dangerous things, in order to accomplish something, but I don't get a sense that he really feels as though he needs to do it, or what the consequences will be if he doesn't succeed.

Quick note regarding punctuation and grammar: There were a lot of errors in the second half but I noticed that the first several pages were cleaner than your previous offerings and wanted to complement you on the effort. General: P1 - Is "Westerna" deliberate or should it be "Westenra" throughout, like it is in Dracula? P11 - I actually cringed reading the description of Quaris employees practicing their shooting in the middle east. I think what they're actually doing there needs to be clarified, because it almost sounds like they're there for sport, casually shooting locals. P16 - Stephanie almost kills herself on the stairs and Jason's reaction is to laugh. If he's visibly worried first, then laughs once the tension is gone that's one thing, but the impression this paragraph gives is that he's bit of a sociopath. P17-18 - Where is the pressure to have kids coming from? I'd rather see this as a conversation with someone else than as an internal monologue about how she needs babies but doesn't want them yet. It's a little bit cliche P20 - Maybe it's because I missed the first few chapters, but where did this darkness come from that it engulfs her "once more". Am I supposed to be familiar with this darkness, or with the symbol? Also, after the scene break, if the dark liquid is over her, how can she see figures emerging from it? Language: P2 - "medium-size desk" - It can just be a desk, unless the size is important later P3 - "replaced the shadows" - by/with shadows? P5 - alternatively should probably be alternately - "made her more away" - move away P7 - "not that both her brother" - now that both P8 - "Sean putting his hands on the desk" - put - "private-owned company" - either private company or privately-owned P10 - "coming in the fold" - in to the P12 - "tired being ignored" - tired of P13 - "get another changed" - chance - "I announce this as the assembly" - to the - "about be demoted" - about to be. Also there's a superfluous quotation mark at the very end of the paragraph. P15 - "to descend down" - Too wordy. Descend is fine alone, or go down. P18 - "It's not that life with Jason Harker." - This sentence is missing stuff - "But she did have to have them now?" - did she P19 - "faded into the back of his head" - I think there's a better, clearer way of writing this. You're writing about supernatural stuff so it's plausible that his eyes actually did fade away, but I don't think that's what you meant.

This is chapter three, the fog is nothing short of tedious at this point and isn't adding anything to the story. Also, Theavis still hasn't done anything besides observe. Having him be around while potentially interesting things happened wasn't enough to keep my attention, and I find that having such a passive POV character is both boring and annoying. It makes for reading that's easy to skim ahead on. I assume "jokee" means the two guys who had a joke played on them? I have to say it's not my favourite word. P1: - "I figured it would be more fun ta tell ya I can fall forever" - Except that he didn't tell him - "bent his knees, including his third leg" - This conjures meaning I'm sure you didn't intend. Just say he bent his three knees. P2: - "As soon as they landed [...] within a few seconds." - Which is it? It can't be both for this action. P3: - "...so their peaks touch the atmosphere." - Grass, pebbles, and people on roads all touch the atmosphere. That's probably not the word you wanted. Chapter Four: - This entire conversation between Relvaris and Ponsing is one long info-dump. It didn't make for a very interesting read at all.

I definitely do less line critiquing here than I do in a face-to-face group, especially since some pieces seem to need a lot of work. How many passes I do depends on how much time I have, and often on how much time I feel the writer put into the work. If it reads like a lazy first draft, I'll give a lazy first draft critique. If I feel they put effort into it, I'll put more effort into my feedback. I think once you become "writer" it's hard to toggle, the same way I doubt anyone well-versed on movie criticism can have an easy time watching a movie just for fun without noticing the scaffolding underneath. If someone asks for something specific when I'm critiquing ("I just want to know if the tech seems plausible or if it reads like I'm puling it out of my butt"), then I find I'm more able to not look for other errors, but it's rare that you get such a direct request from a writer.

I've been part of a couple of in-person writing groups. Grammar and spelling would be important, as you say, because trying to figure out what a sentence is saying throws you completely out of a story, but we didn't spend much time talking about them. Generally I would print out a copy of the story for review purposes and go over it two or thee times. I would spend time in-group talking about the pacing, the characters, the dialogue, continuity errors, the things that were unclear. The last thing I'd do was hand over the paper with all the corrected spelling and grammar mistakes back to the writer. I never felt those needed talking about, but it's important to point them out so that they don't survive to the next draft. The only exception was when a misspelled word had multiple alternatives that completely changed the tone of a sentence and I wanted to know which direction the author was going.

An escape attempt might help to liven up these scenes. Honestly, anything that gives me the impression that Theavis is doing more than just watching things happen (or even if I were to get the sense that he was watching with a purpose) would keep my interest more.