Syme

sorry it took me so long to reply to your question.

ok, the first thing that struck me is the lack of detail. I know it's a short but but using a few specific details that are unique to Greece (Laurium in particular) will really help solidify your location. you speak of 'low hanging galleries' and 'barracks' but honestly that could be set pretty much anywhere. There's nothing really grecian about the story other than the names.

You've got me on this one. There is indeed a lack of setting detail and that's something I'll address in my revision.

The other thing is the use of contractions. Contractions are a 20th century thing.

That's an urban myth. Contractions have always been used in English all the way back to Old English (though they aren't as easy to make out there because back then the omitted letters - or runes to be more precise - weren't marked with apostrophes). As an example of contractions in early Modern English you can pick up some Shakespeare, which absolutely abounds in contractions. Back then there were even many contractions in use that we no longer use today, such as ones with the "i" from "it" disappearing as in 'tis, 'twere, for't.

Aside from this, of course none of my characters speak English so what you read in the story can be thought of as a translation into current day English. I do try to create a historical feeling and avoid any new words and words that are very particular to a certain dialect or culture, but at the end of the day it's still modern English because anything else wouldn't be understood by modern audiences (and I couldn't write it either ).

You kinda fall out of PoV here. He was a soldier so why would he stop referring to what he himself used in battle and revert back to what "Greeks" use. It feels a little generic.

Actually he isn't Greek.

A really good example of historical fiction is Naomi Novik's In Her Majesty's Service. It's set during the Napoleonic Wars and follows a British Officer...but there are dragons in this universe-domesticated and used for battle. Her use of detail and writing style are so authentic that it makes you think "wow, this could really have been an alternate history....if we had dragons of course."

Check it out if you have time.

I'm not really a fan of dragons, but I will check it out if I run out of stuff to read (which is unlikely^^).

I didn't think the scene at the start was particularly out of character (but then I've only read one previous chapter).

Not really a fan of the infodump here; it doesn't fit well into the story at this point and it sounds more like the author giving us the backstory than Fen actually thinking about it.

I liked the interaction with the two scholars and the way the info dumping was presented here was much more elegant and interesting.

A decent chapter over all. Hope to read more from you soon.

I like the interaction between Rowana and her siblings in the interlude. As for the whole assault thing, that suffered from the prequel problem: we already know what's going to happen, so there's a lack of danger. Both Liza and Row are still alive today, aren't disfigured in any way and if they had any sort of major mental scars from that encounter we'd have seen them by now. Therefore, we know that nothing seriously bad can happen to them.

Another problem with that scene is that the conflict here is resolved through a lucky coincidence (Bleys and Alex being nearby), which is always problematic.

There was also this particular paragraph in there:

The sound of a body hitting the wall echoes close beside me. Elizabeth slides down, dazed from the force with which the man holding her has thrown her up against it. She is still for a moment and then a hand tentatively slides up to her head and she shakes it slightly as if trying to clear her sight. If possible my heart plummets even further. We’ll never escape if she’s been hurt.

This paragraph was really confusing and I still don't understand the second sentence.

As an aside, I'm very much in favour of keeping the normal font size in the preludes. It get's very hard to read in 10 pt.

I think the interaction between Elizabeth and David is very well done in this chapter. It's also good to see that the pace picks up a bit here and there's more conflict.

One thing that bugged me a bit is the formatting of the dialogue. You should strive to have gestures and other actions during dialogue in the same paragraph as that person's speech. Here's an example from pages 112f.

“Yeah, I hurt it last Tuesday. Why is something wrong?” Doc looked up again at the dread he heard in her voice and hastily assured her she was fine.

“It’s just that, honestly… you shouldn’t really be healing this fast...

Everything starting from "Doc looked" should be moved to the next paragraph.

Another thing is dashes. Consider for instance the following sentence from page 112:

She was too engrossed in watching David- discreetly of course.

If you want to use a regular en dash, it needs to have a space on both sides. Alternatively, you can use a longer em dash, which in standard manuscript format is denoted by two en dashes (--). Em dashes--which to the best of my knowledge are the preferred alternative among most writers--are typically not surrounded by any spaces.

Another two good set up/transition chapters.

I haven't researched this in any way, so I may be completely off here, but I don't quite buy how easily Sam is dealing with his agoraphobia. I don't believe that being technically inside would be enough in a large city for someone who previously hadn't left his house for years.

I'm a bit confused by the ending of the second chapter. I'm not entirely sure what Origon is oblivious of. Not sure if that's intentional.

Good work overall and I look forward to reading the next chapter.

Let me know what you think.

If there's enough room, I'd like to submit again tomorrow.

As for the whole length thing, I think the occasional 7 or 8k submission is fine, as long as that doesn't become the norm. I don't think I want to read four 8k submissions every week. Going up to 8k on a single submission is pushing it, I think and once you reach 9k I think it's better off being split in two (and with such a long chapter or story, there probably already is some fairly natural stopping point along which the story can be split).

Thanks for your comments, I'll take them under advisement.

As for feeling too much like Mistborn, I can see where you're coming from. I did set out to write a story with a clear rule-based magic system. I've read and enjoyed all the Mistborn books and I'm obviously influenced by them on some level, but at the same time, Brandon Sanderson doesn't have a patent on rule-based magic systems and none of the abilities described here appear in Mistborn. The only real similarity is that both magic systems use metals.

As for the choice of silver, that had nothing to do with Mistborn. I wanted to write about the Laurium mines since I stumbled across them in my research for my novel and silver was the most important output of Laurium, so it was a natural choice to base my magic system on it.

Also I am a fan of historical fiction and it jarred me out of the story when history didn't add up. I think perhaps you might need to do a little bit more research if you truly want it to have a more authentic feel.

Can you elaborate on that? What in particular struck you as wrong?

I liked the flashback scene with Alex at the start. I think this is a very good way of letting us catch a glimpse of Alex's powers without spelling everything out. My only issue here is that I think it should be moved earlier in the story. I think this scene would be more effective if it comes before the backstory infodump of the last chapter. Particularly the mystery of what the grandmother is hiding from is just no longer interesting at this point because we already learned the reason in the last chapter.

As for the main chapter, I liked Liza's reaction to her situation and to New Guy (sorry, I keep forgetting his name). I also liked the atmosphere in the coffee shop.

Since you asked for advice on grammar and punctuation issues, here's some nitpicking:

When you want to italicise a word for emphasis but it's within an italicised passage, you don't put it in bold, you simply put it as normal text. That way it will stick out from the italicised passage in the same way an italicised word sticks out in a normal passage. Thus the sentence on page 82 should be like this:

Did I really just think about his delicious mouth?

Another thing is the way you handle thoughts. Apart from the italics and lack of quotation marks, thoughts should be handled just like speech. So if you have a dialogue-tag (or in this case thought-tag), it is separated from the preceding sentence of thought by a comma (if the sentence usually would end in a full stop), question mark or exclamation mark. The thought tag then starts with a lower case letter (unless the first word is a word that's already capitalised on its own). Thus the paragraph following the sentence mentioned above should read as follows (changes highlighted in bold):

She stared at the slushy road moving past beneath the car. Get a grip, she thought sternly to herself. If his behavior is any example of his personality then he has probably kissed every female at the Lodge by now! Stupid jerk! she branded him uncharitably. Don’t think about someone like that. He isn’t worth the brainpower.

The chapter was a bit slow in some parts, especially the scene with Liza and Row seemed a bit superfluous, but for the most part things flowed along nicely, making this a very solid chapter.

This is another strong chapter. I like the way Origon reacts in this chapter.

I agree with the others that Sam's reaction were a bit subdued, but this didn't really bother me while reading, only something I noticed afterward. So at least for me that part fell into willing suspension of disbelief.

What did stretch my disbelief a lot more is that apparently people from this alien civilization that doesn't seem to have any connection to Earth speak modern day English. Maybe you'll provide some explanation of that later, but it did pull me out of the story.

I also found it a bit too convenient that Sam gets pulled through a portal into a another world and just happens to pop out right next to the book's other POV character. Maybe there's a good in-universe explanation for that, but it does make me a bit weary.

Aside from these criticisms, this is a solid chapter and I look forward to finding out what happens next.

I like this opening. The pacing is quite good and you give us some nice glimpses of worldbuilding without any egregious info dumps.

I especially liked the scene in the repair shop(it did have a weird name though--was that supposed to be German?), the atmosphere in that scene was spot on.

Some smaller things did bother me, however.

In the scene where the cops are checking Dimas's ID, there is a confusion of pronouns. Everyone is just a he or a him and it takes you out of the story when you have to go and look at the context to see which way a sentence makes sense. It may seem clumsy writing to use names constantly, but the reader will hardly notice and it's almost always better to err on the side of clarity.

Then there was this bit:

“Did they give him the helmet?”

Dimas stabbed at a chunk of protein and nodded. The Weir 2, or ‘the helmet’ as it was commonly known, though it more resembled a baseball cap than a helmet. An electroencephalogram to register spikes in brain activity triggered by images. “I doubt they found anything.”

This is a small, but ugly bit of infodumping because it breaks POV. This reads entirely like the narrator explaining what the helmet is, not Dimas thinking about it.

Some advice on formatting:

It seems you're trying to follow standard manuscript format, which is good. There are however two little problems with your formatting. First of all, you're missing the page header. The page header should be right-justified and read like this:

The other thing is a rather subtle issue that I myself only recently learned about. You should avoid typographical quotation marks in your manuscript and use straight ones instead. See here on how to change it if you're using MS Word.

It's always easier to write about problems than it is to write about things done well, so please don't think that the proportions of this critique spent on praising and criticising are indicative of the quality of your work. I liked this opening and hope to read more from you next week.

Let me know what you think.

I'd like to submit tomorrow if there's still room.

And thus you have hit upon the reason I am most unhappy with this chapter. I know it's an info dump and I don't like it. However I am having trouble figuring out exactly when and how to introduce little snippets that will ease some reader confusion and also fill in back story WITHOUT turning into an info dump. This is where I could use some help. I do have places in chapters 3 and 6 (happier with chapter 6) where more back story is revealed in a much better fashion.

The most important thing is to spread out the infodumping. Having a paragraph or two thrown in there here and there is much more palatable than having one multi-page giant glob.

The guide line here is to reveal things as they come up for your characters and plot. So Elizabeth gets complimented on her ability to work with kids, which is due to her being an empath. This therefore is a good place to reveal that she is an empath and that she has to hide her talents, but we don't need all the rest of the back story for that.

I don't agree. This is actually based in fact that I have researched. In order for pretty much ALL of current technology to work today we are in fact absolutely dependent on REM's or Rare Earth Metals. There are very few deposits of these left on earth. One is in California and the others are in fact in China.

I did a little research of my own on that and from what I've found, there are plenty of deposits all over the world, it's just expensive to mine them and the prices for REMs aren't really all that high. So I think it's very unlikely that everyone outside of China will be cut off.

But point I originally tried to make is that even if that happens, we wouldn't go back to living on 1980s technology, we'd develop new technology that doesn't require those metals.

Necessity is the mother of invention- so when REM's were found on the moon all the innovation went into development of harvesting THEM not into development of new tech that wouldn't need these minerals. Humanity is by nature short-sighted. So when war DID come up (which I kept obscure on purpose) and they started destroying communication Sat.s and each other's tech, they were concentrating on tech to win the war.

From what I read, the embargo on REMs happened before the discovery of deposits on the Moon, so there should be considerable interest in REM-free technology even before that discovery. Those researchers wouldn't just abandon their research. After all, in the real world, we keep finding new oil reserves and improve mining techniques to access deposits that were previously out of our reach or to inefficient to harvest, but that doesn't stop all the research on alternative energy.

It also seems implausible to me that the first thing nations would reach for would be nukes. In the wars since WWII in which nukes were used- have you seen them used since? No- instead we get long drawn out wars like Iraq and Afghanistan and the Vietnam where people just pound on each other until nothing is left hardly. I just took this concept to a global scale. Also a few nukes WERE used- I just haven't talked about them yet. I don't buy the concept that humanity has no sense of self-preservation in a bunch of these post-apocalyptic stories. 2 A-bombs were enough to end war with Japan. I don't see why just because we HAVE nukes nowadays necessarily means everyone will try and USE them ALL at once when they know it would be the end of humanity as a whole.

There haven't been any large scale wars since WWII. All the wars since then have either been between countries without nukes, civil wars in countries without nukes or one-sided affairs where a powerful country or groups of powerful countries fight against a much weaker country and therefore doesn't need nukes.

But when two major powers or coalitions clash, I find it highly unlikely that they would come to some sort of mutual agreement not to use their most powerful and efficient weapons, especially when the first strike advantage is so large. I find it even more implausible that both power-blocs would use a few nukes without bringing about an escalation of the conflict.

I disagree with Aubrey there. I don't think it would be good to put this as chapter one as that would give readers the wrong impression. Based on this chapter, the reader would probably be expecting an urban fantasy of some sort. I think leading with the secondary world is indeed the correct move here.

On a related note, I also have a sneaking suspicion that the supernatural stuff in this chapter was somehow caused by the Drain.

I have a problem with your backstory here. First of all, it's all presented in a massive infodump, which is inelegant and also a minor POV error since people don't think in such a linear way for such a length of time. This reads entirely like Elizabeth telling us a story, not Elizabeth remembering the story.

Giving out your backstory in one big chunk is also much less interesting than just giving out bits and pieces and hints that the reader then can gradually piece together into a coherent picture. That way, your readers are actually curious and interested in finding out more about your background.

A good example of this is The Second Apocalypse, an epic fantasy series by R. Scott Bakker. The backstory here is the first apocalypse, which happened about 2000 years before the main story. The main character Achamian has dreams which are the memories of Seswatha, an important figure that lived during the first apocalypse. Through that, we gradually learn more and more of the backstory, which is very interesting and rewarding. If Bakker had just spelled it all out in chapter 2, it wouldn't have been half as interesting.

And then there's the problem that your backstory is implausible. You said last week that this would explain the lack of future technology, but it really doesn't. Even if we grant the assumption that those rare metals have run out all over the world expect for China, that doesn't mean that technology simply stops. Technology isn't some arcane art that runs on magic crystals (or rare metals), it's simply the creative use of natural laws. If one particular set of magic crystals has run out, it doesn't mean that technology is finished, it just means you have to find ways to use other materials.

I'm also confused about the war. Why was this war fought? Wars never happen without reasons.

And if there was an all-out war, why isn't the world a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland?

On the plus side of things, I liked the scenes where Elizabeth taught her class. Her interaction with the children was fun to read.

The scene with Mr. New Guy was confusing. The blocking there didn't really work for me. I wasn't really sure how he brought her back to the lodge after injury.

Apart from that, I liked the interaction in that scene. New Guy seems a little creepy, but in an intriguing sort of way, which I think was your intent.

I don't see this as a problem. Presumably he just got the books delivered to him. I haven't bought a book for myself from a bookstore in years.

Not anything specifically. More my usual (maybe thinking too hard) reaction of seeing anger, lust, greed, hate fear... all the usual human reactions. There weren't any particularly lacking or added, except the lack of attachment to a body. I don't think you necessarily need to change anything. As humans, we react best to human emotions in stories. Do aliens feel the same emotions we do? Probably not something to be addressed in a nine-page story.

I tried quite hard to make poquats distinct from humans. I gave them hands, language and intelligence so that they could reach similar levels of sophistication as humans, but tried to avoid all other similarities that cannot adequately be explained by convergent evolution.

Yes, poquats feel anger, lust and fear, but I think those are pretty much universal among animals. It's hard to have a functioning sexually reproducing animal without these emotions.

Not sure where you saw hate in this story. The only thing I could find is in the first sentence where Sartaqua says she hates her body. This isn't real hate, just a strong dislike.

As for greed, I wouldn't even call it an emotion. It's just an overly strong desire for material wealth. Material wealth will seem useful to any intelligent creature not living in some sort of utopia, so striving for it isn't anything human specific.

I was confused from the first sentence in the story. I had to go back and retread it a couple times and honestly I am still a little bit confused.

Sorry for confusing you, that's entirely my fault. A crucial word is missing there. The sentence should read like this:

As yet another male passed me by without a second glance, I was reminded of how much I hated this body.

As for the descriptions of your creatures (I have not read sweet nectar of memory) do they have hands or pincers or both? Sometimes you use the word hands and other times you use pincers. I think you need to make that distinction a little clearer for those of us who have not read the other story. I was pulled out of the story trying to figure out how they can use swords and axes with pincers???

They have both pincers and arms with hands. I thought I was being clear on that, but in rereading the relevant passages, I realised that my wording was more ambiguous than I thought. Thanks for bringing this up.

I also agree with mandamon about this creatures reactions. First of all using the term "people" when referring to your non humans this early in a story lends the reader to thinking that they DO behave more or less according to human behaviors. I.e " That's just what people did."

I don't agree with this. I think it's quite clear that in the context of the story, "people" doesn't mean "human beings".

Second, I did not get the sense that a female mindset was all that different from a male mindset. Is there not much of a difference in this species because of the memory transfer or what?

Yes, there are no significant differences between the sexes outside of reproduction and mating behaviour and the memory transfer additionally lessens the differences. Most poquats have memories of being either sex, so gender is not a central part of their identity.

Does she feel any sense of remorse of struggle or ANYTHING at killing her fellow criminal comrades? At the last second she saves the leader but I am not really sure why. She didn't seem to have a whole lot of compassion a moment before. Why would she have some now?

Poquats don't feel compassion and are largely amoral. It's quite hard to show this in a story without any humans involved. After all, how can Sartaqua as the POV character remark upon her lack of morality or compassion when she doesn't even know those concepts. I tried to solve this problem by her not showing any signs of a conscience and in how offhandedly she kills someone who worked together with her.

As for why she let Quatrop transfer his memories to her: It didn't cost her anything (only the one transferring needs sugar) and she gained new memories and experiences for free.

Check out A Deepness InThe Sky by Vernor Vinge

The way he writes non human species makes them very unique and separate from humans while at them same time making them relatable

I downloaded the free sample on my Kindle and tried to read it, but I couldn't really get into it.

It also seems to be from the perspective of humans, which is very different from what I'm doing in this story.

Thanks for your critique and glad you liked it.

As for a story from a wholly un-human viewpoint, as I think about it afterwards (and I did not when I was reading...), Sartaqua has very human reactions, but then what else are you going to do?

What specifically struck you as too human behaviour?

I like pretty much everything about this chapter.

Sam seems like an interesting and likeable character from what I've seen so far. The whole orphan as protagonist thing is maybe a bit clichéd, but I don't really mind it (and I'm not entirely innocent of this either ).

The pacing was good. You took time for adequate descriptions, but never went overboard with them.

The only thing that worries me a bit here is that it comes a bit out of the blue. I was expecting this to be a secondary world fantasy (or slipstream or whatever), so I'm a bit surprised to see this chapter being set in what seems like the real world.

(And another thing that worries me a bit is that I seem to be using the words "a bit" a bit too much in this critique.)

Hope to read more next week.

So according to the backstory presented in this chapter, this story is set in the 24th century. I don't believe a word of it. If this is the 24th century, where are the general AIs? Where are the nanobots? Where is biological and genetic engineering? Where are the spaceships? So far we haven't seen even the slightest hint of future technology. I can see how some of it is non-functional after the Crash, but surely most of it would continue working.

I also find it wildly implausible that all the major technological advances come from one organisation that employs only a few hundred scientists. After all, even today there are millions of scientists in the world and the number is steadily rising.

And why can't they rebuild the lost technology? Surely they haven't lost all the know-how and research.

If it was meant to be a false backstory, then good job with that, but if not you've just stretched my suspension of disbelief way past the breaking point.

One little nitpick on page two. You wrote:

“Never could fool you. Fine,” he nodded.

Nodding isn't saying anything, so you shouldn't use that word in a dialogue-tag. You don't need any dialogue-tag here because it's already clear who's speaking, so you could write it like that:

“Never could fool you. Fine.” He nodded.

However, I would just completely omit the reference to nodding. His agreement is already clear from the dialogue.

At the end of the chapter, we have some nice rising action. It seems a bit odd how much Emily knows instinctively about the magic system, but maybe that's a deliberate part of her abilities.

This is the discussion topic for my short story Bodily Escape. Tell me what you think, especially if there were any parts which were confusing or seemed implausible.

I'd also like to submit tomorrow.

The major problem I have with this is that it doesn't feel the least bit like SF. If it weren't for the brief reference to the lunar colony, I'd sooner believe this to be set in the 1980s than in the future. Given that chapter 1 takes place at least ten years after we have a functional lunar colony where people even bring their kids, I'd say this has to be at least 30 years into the future, probably more.

With how ubiquitous computers already are today, I'd expect them to be practically everywhere in this story. I'm not looking for flying cars here, but at least show me in some way that this is the future. I mean, Elizabeth's boss even has stacks of paper receipts on his desk.

I like the overall prose and tone of this chapter and you do a good job of portraying the relationship between the siblings and Bleys. The two sisters are distinct and recognizable, which is a very good sign.

One thing that worries me a little bit is that despite the relative prominent role that Bleys plays in this chapter, we haven't seen much of his personality. So far, he seems a bit like generic good guy boyfriend #4728. We're still early in the story so this is okay, provided you flesh him out more in subsequent chapters.

I'm not sure how I feel about the long flashback. I don't really think it should all be in italics, I think normal text would do just fine as long as you make it clear where the flashback starts and begins. And long detailed flashbacks like that are often not a good idea. This one in particular seems a bit overly saccharine and innocent to me, but maybe you have to be a teenage girl to fully appreciate this scene. And then there's of course also the possibility that Elizabeth might not remember everything exactly the way it had been.

Another thing I noticed is that you started new sentences for your dialogue tags (things like he said or she asked). Don't do that. If a sentence of dialogue ends in a full stop and is followed by a tag, put a comma instead of the full stop and don't capitalize the first word of the tag (unless it's a words that is usually capitalized, like a name). If the dialogue sentence ends with an exclamation mark or a question mark, don't replace it with a comma.

"Here's how you do it," the forum poster said.

"Does it also work like that for questions and exclamations?" the confused writer asked.

"It sure does!" he said.

You said you were going for a slow build, but maybe it's a bit too slow here. Spending over 5k words just to introduce us to the characters is a bit much. You should look at ways to also introduce conflict during the first chapter or shorten it (preferably both). As it is, this chapter is pleasant enough to read, but it doesn't grip or excite me.

First of all, I would suggest you use something that's closer to standard manuscript format. Makes it easier for us to read and critique your work and once it's good enough to actually submit it to a magazine or writing contest or whatever, you'll have less work reformatting your stuff.

Your prose seems good overall to me. However, some of your descriptions are a bit verbose. In a novel that would be fine, but it's probably a bit too detailed for a short story.

I like the world building you've done so far. This is the first time I've seen flying fish used as a means of communication

The problem I see with this beginning is that it lacks conflict. I'm not sure how long your story is supposed to be, but in any case, 1k words is already a good chunk of a short story and we haven't seen any real conflict. Maybe you should consider starting your story later, closer to the conflict.

I didn't like this chapter as much the previous ones.

The first part of the chapter was all right, but nothing much happened there. Could maybe use a bit of shortening.

I liked the scene at the gathering. Short and sweet and we have some rising tension with Origon discovering a suspect for the assassin.

I was confused by the last scene. Why does Origon suspect Rilan of being a traitor? Why does she attack him when he enters the room? Why does he suddenly become convinced of her innocence? Why does Rilan suspect the Mayor?

I guess the last one is unknown to Origon as well, so it's natural that I as the reader don't know this, but the other questions should definitely be answered in some way in the text.

On to the more positive stuff. I'm beginning to like Origon more and more as a character. His speech is also much better now.

Although I didn't like this chapter all that much, I'm still eager to read more of your novel and learn more about your world. I'm looking forward to your next submission.