Paul SB

I got it, I've just been too busy to read it until yesterday, and even then I didn't have time to critique. I hope to have more time today.

If I understand it correctly, anyone can comment on anything submitted here, the more the merrier as a general rule. If you just joined now I'm at the very end of my story, but the other guy only just entered his third chapter, so you might see if he can send you what he's done so far.

Thanks a bunch! You're absolutely right about the labor resellers showing up out of the blue, so I went back to the first day a was on Mars and mentioned them, then again a couple chapters later. As far as being trigger happy, everyone was in a bit of a panic, then they heard a shotgun go off, and they didn't know that the resellers were using taser rifles. It makes sense, though, that she would berate herself over that after the fact, though, which I added. I suppose I could have her hit the goon in the arm so he doesn't die, just loses the arm, or would that be too chicken? R is a real mess, isn't she? I haven't decided what I want to do with her in the sequel, but I do plan to have her mother make an appearance. That should get awkward.

Did anybody get this? I don't have it, and I checked my spam filter.

Hello again, it’s time for it to hit the fan. I n Entry 33 A’s missing sister arrives, but as they are exchanging stories R calls A and confesses that she told a labor reseller company about her safe house, and warned her that the company was coming to clean “that nest of sin” out. In Entry 34 A manages to get most of the customers cleared out before the acquisition team arrives. I won’t give away how that goes, but anyone who reads it is welcome to comment on how it went, if it seems realistic, if anything feels too coincidental, or if there is anything important missing from the scene. Thanks for your attention to this matter. It’s almost over. The big question is: are you glad it’s almost over or do you wish it would keep on going?

Next question: Have you been reading the submissions?

Here comes another Monday, and the exciting climax is about to begin. Slot please?

Overall this is pretty fascinating and engaging. You have a lot of room to explore themes in some depth (no doubt deeper than William Golding). One thing you might look at is that your narrator has a lot of thoughts but doesn’t really show a whole lot of emotion. There’s little in the way of visceral reactions to events, which gives A the look of either a pretty cold fish or else someone who is deeply disassociated. And as I have noted before, you aren’t doing a whole lot to put the reader into the scene. There was an anthropologist back in the ‘70s and ‘80s whose famous phrase was “thick description,” the point being that when explaining what is going on it’s important to put in enough and sufficiently vivid description that the reader can envision and judge the external factors that may have influenced the actors in the scene. It’s an easy thing to skip when a writer has so many other important things to juggle, but that’s what revision is for. “Something about the atmosphere makes the stars visible at both day and night…” — That’s quite the trick. The only way I know of for that to happen is if there is no atmosphere. People are likely to ask … “I’m sorry,” he says. “I didn’t mean to push you away. Let’s go back. We can do whatever you want.” — This is really generic and vague. The non-specificity makes it seem unreal. “Ending your existence is bad, but becoming like me is worse. Isn’t that how you felt too?” — These are awfully harsh words for someone who just saw someone they cared about kill herself. It really makes A seem very self-absorbed and unlikeable. “Holding onto the crystalline post of his bedframe, I see that Sparrow appears even more vulnerable when I’m looking down at him.” — I don’t see how A is looking down on S unless it’s a top bunk. “They never told Lunaria outright that she was a nuisance, but when she knocked over appliances while playing alone with her toys they reminded her how everything they were doing was for her education and her future.” — What F-ing miserable-ass excuses for parents. That kind of upbringing can literally give people PTSD, MDD, or any number of depressive and anxiety disorders. “You can’t do… what Lunaria did without hurting me.” Neither could she.” — This is a seriously important thing to point out here. “That’s when it hits me that I’ve won someone over. With his help, I might have a chance with the other twenty-seven.” — Plot-wise I get it, but at the end of that conversation that thought makes A seem a bit callous and manipulative. It might be good to add at least one sentence to mitigate that impression. “At least she can never violate Sparrow again.” — As a sexual assault scene, this is pretty mild, and it’s ambivalent enough that it leaves a lot of questions. She didn’t pull a gun on him, or threaten him in any way. Unless there was a big social status gap between them, it gives more the impression that she was just so distraught she was desperate to keep him from leaving, and resulted to using sex to try to keep him there. She was taking advantage of his politeness to not freak out on her, and she didn’t actually do anything that would have satisfied her drive, if she was actually feeling any. It looks to me like S should have felt guilty for leaving her and not trying to get her some sort of help. You don’t leave suicidal people alone, though at his age S couldn’t have been expected to understand that. Not a lot of frontal lobe myelin yet. Still, it seems like the guilt was dismissed far too easily for the circumstances. It wasn’t really a black-and-white, simple situation, and I’m hoping that these characters will reflect on it again in the future. The suicide should nag at both of them for a long time, and since you are more interested in the emotion and atmosphere than action, this should be a good source. “I find myself with little confidence in a group of teenagers to hold a fair vote without bribery or intimidation.” — Or cliquish behavior, like making it into a popularity contest. “The stoic and rational Ignian spirit goes into outer space as soon as one is presented with a carrier of the dreadful gender disease.” — This is taking place in a distant future, and there doesn’t seem to be any clear signs of backsliding, so the gender ignorance seems a little out of place. “We can be immortal. Young forever. Free from this dying world our parents handed us. All we have to do is accept it.” — Immortal, but trapped forever in one place, and at one level of maturity. I suspect A has a more reasonable take on these options. (Okay, the first paragraph in Chapter. 4 makes that clear.)

Okay, I've expanded a bit on A's conversation with G. I'm not sure how anyone would get an ecofascist vibe from her, since ecofascism is a weird variant fascism that accepts the reality of climate change but scapegoats non-white people and especially immigrants for it. But bioessentialism and eugenics, absolutely (though nowhere near as messed up as what happened in Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake). G's issue is really about hubris, the assumption that she knows the right thing for everyone and has the right to impose her will on the whole species, even if her intentions were to solve problems facing the whole species (like potential extinction). Here's some of what I added: “That’s why you wanted a virus that would sterilize them, not kill them.” It made me feel better that she was not driven by hate, the way so many other people are, and not just men. My forehead scrunched together. It might have been my one chance to get some real answers from someone who actually knew what she was talking about. However, “Either way, though, you were kind of trying to play god with humanity. How do you know your plan would work, and not cause problems you didn’t think of?” Gladstone’s face fell. The look on it said, ‘guilty as charged’ clearly enough. “At least I can claim that I was young and have learned since then. But one thing I can’t shake is the feeling that we have to do something or we’ll go extinct. I’ve often been told to think of free market capitalism as being the economic equivalent of biological evolution. That’s used as an argument against the idea of having any sort of economic planning. But more than ninety-nine percent of all species that ever lived went extinct. If we just do what’s natural and never plan anything, our chances aren’t great.” I nodded, but wrapping my head around her words took some serious effort. I kind of understood. People looked at business like a kill-or-be-killed, dog-eat-dog world, and the ‘winners’ claimed that their success proved their worth as human beings. But most people aren’t that vicious, really. I didn’t see how people could survive if everyone acted like self-centered sociopaths. Gladstone was probably right that being constantly told that you are a worthless lazy bum if you aren’t rich motivates people who aren’t naturally that competitive to become self-centered, greedy sacks of rust. It seemed like I needed more time to mull that stuff over, so I changed the subject. BTW: Did you recognize the Robert Sapolsky reference?

Here we are again! Thanks as always for taking a look. This submission includes two entries. In Entry 31 A finds someone creeping around in the secret lab. The incident explains the existence of the lab, and the motivations behind its creation. It does not, however, resolve the issue, and the lab remains an unresolved issue at the end of the story. I’m planning two more books, but I haven’t actually decided what to do with the embryos and the virus. My question is: do you think it’s necessary to tie up this end for the story to be complete, or is it okay to leave it a mystery? Entry 32 starts with A watching the news and getting pissed off when the Bishop of Mars opines that the aliens should be thrown out of the Solar System. A new escapee arrives and he’s in terrible shape, with a story that reveals something important about the role of the Church in society. The entry ends with a major bombshell cliffhanger, which will lead right into the climax of the story. It’s a slow-paced chapter, but I feel it should be, given what is about to happen in the next few entries.

Something Monday this Way comes

Prologue: “We will dissolve and incorporate aer into ourselves as we have done across the galaxy, spreading and consuming and desolating the way the Igneous empire taught us how, until there is nothing left to take and we too will cannibalize ourselves like every successful creation of human expansionism has.” — This does not sound like a happy ending. If this being sees this end as inevitable it might not do its task with much enthusiasm. Does it have any glimmer of hope that it can escape this fate? Chapter 1: “Okay, so it dissolved our memories instead of hanging onto them. Mildly disturbing.” — I would think this would be more than mildly disturbing. “What teenager is going to wax poetic about hope when everyone else is around to judge them? “— A major key to the adolescent mindset. Is being Touched what makes tis character immune? “I am also something that is not of this world …” — Is the Biblical reference here intentional? If so, what is the intention? Chapter 2: “… the type of anxious boy who only gets noticed by middle-aged women who forget their Ignian sternness and call him “sweetie” like they’re helping their own son work through his problems.” — Great observation of human behavior. This is the kind of thing that makes the difference between Joe or Josephine Average and a good storyteller. “Out.” And so he leaves.” — A have the feeling he’s going to regret this. A fit of pique rarely bodes well. While I understand the character’s reaction — the feeling of inadequacy driving his to want to be alone and not seen — I hope he’s smart enough to reflect on his reaction and make amends at some point. It might be good to have A reflect on this, if only for a sentence, or even just a clause appended to that sentence. “I do still intend to leave, but I dither for long enough …” — What does he do while he dithers? Pace with his hands behind his back? Glance nervously around the room? Stand there stone-still, lost in thought? “Many cultures on outer planets believe in cycles of rebirth, and it does not make healthy people end their old existence to move onto another.” — This statement does a lot to point out the usefulness of religion. With that belief people can be exploited until the day they die, while maintaining hope and motivation in the belief that the next life will be so much better. Ditto the Western variants. Ominous ending. However, after two chapters the nature of the Calamity and its agenda aren’t very clear. Telling a story is always a matter of knowing when to reveal what information, so I suspect that you are keeping some of that hidden for future use.

Are you familiar with the variation on the trolley problem where instead of just turning a switch, you have to push a fat guy onto the track? That version completely changed the results, even though the net effect is exactly the same. The visceral action of having to push someone to their death overpowers the frontal lobes that say there's no actual difference. You see the same phenomenon with fighting a war face-to-face versus by remote control. But getting to the original question, I've study gender and sex as an anthropologist and what people usually think is almost always the local, cultural norms rather than actual biology. There are plenty of books on the subject, but there's a couple things I think are worth thinking about before you write a story that is intended to deal with gendered behavior. For one, most of what people think testosterone does is dead wrong. The effect T has on the brain is to make ego. Ego, in turn, often makes people very competitive, but even that is very culturally expressed. One of the best neuroscientists out there, Dr. Robert Sapolsky, once wrote that if you inject a bunch of monks with testosterone they will suddenly become very competitive over who can do the most random acts of kindness. The old "Man the Hunter" ideas that were popular in the 1950s were largely myth. We have been taught to think that men are "naturally" strong and gritty and resilient, but then we ignore the same qualities in women and end up valuing men more because of it. I like to point out the Dani people of New Guinea, where the women do all the hard farming labor and the men sit around doing their hair. There's a classic old 35mm film of them at war, which men participate in, but it looks more like a dance than a battle. When it started raining they called it off because the rain was ruining the feathers in their hair. Only one person out of dozens of warriors actually got hurt. The whole thing is just a way for the men to show off their physical prowess.

Thanks again! You've given me some ideas to work with. I'm glad you noticed the title, but I used the line in an earlier chapter (when our happy salamander couple drop A off on Mars and Ch tells her that these people are very hierarchical, and hierarchy is incompatible with love. The repeat in this chapter is meant to connect the love on the individual, romantic scale with love on the larger, societal scale. Is this something you think I need to be more explicit about? I might be able to expand on Ast's little lecture by reminding A of the history she was learning, specifically the Gilded Age, the propping up of fascist dictators by rich industrialists, and how neoliberalism introduced by Reagan & Thatcher jacked up so much of the world. That could be fun, but it I have to be careful not to ramble on and on.

No problem! That's what we're here for. Humans are social animals, though sometimes it doesn't look that way with writers.

Did you send the email? I don't have anything from you for today.

Hello, and thanks again for taking a look. In Entry 30 A’s alien buddy goes back to work, leaving A alone with the baby. She acknowledges that she is beginning to find some meaning in life running the safe house, which is why she’s ambivalent about going back to the alien planet for safety. While discussing this with D, R calls to apologize for what her friends did, but A rejects the apology. Hopefully readers will recognize that actions reflect attitudes, and with their belief in their own superiority, rich people cannot generally be trusted to behave with any level of decency toward their fellow human beings. I also hope that A’s teen let-down at the end seems realistic and not out of character. Of course the computer has to get in its two cents worth, the more clinical Mr. Spock sort of understanding. Facts have to speak as loud as feelings, or it isn’t exactly science fiction, is it? Are these points better stated explicitly, or left for the reader to figure out or not?

Can I sneak another one in?

Creepy ending! Overall I think this is a great start. By putting us into the mind, and the hallucinations, of the POV character, it does a good job of sucking the reader in. In the spirit of In medias reis, I’m tempted to suggest beginning the story at the first scene break in Ch.1, then bringing the first scene back as a flashback, or internal monologue as the character tries to process what is happening to him. Ch.1: Very creepy ending. I like how you sprang the bit about hallucinations on the reader suddenly. One thing doesn’t exactly make sense, though. Does this character (still no name?) know he has schizophrenia, or only suspect it? You mentioned the age of onset, so he obviously already knows something about the condition. Who is Daniella? His case worker? Ch.2: You missed a perfect opportunity to give the reader a little description of what the character looks like when he met his doppelgänger. That and how he reacts to his own physical appearance would give the reader some insight into his level of self esteem and self concept more generally. Your writing often misses the five senses. For example, when he opens the door to the psych lab, does he notice the subtle smell of snow, does the cold raise goosebumps on his arms? Did he ever get frostbite and has a tiny patch of skin that stings in the cold? It isn’t exactly clear why he distrusts the doppelgänger. In those circumstances I probably would, too, but I’m a wee tad of a cynic (even though I know how unhealthy that is), so maybe other readers would benefit from seeing a little more of his thought process. I don’t know how you feel about using symbolism and foreshadowing, but I think that if you were a little more descriptive in these chapters some opportunities might present themselves. The hat would be a great place to start, and I hope you’ll bring that hat back in some form by the end. If nothing else his eyes should register some details about it, like texture, any contrasting colors, maybe he would even remember how it felt on his head, and unconsciously gesture to his head. Another thing you might consider is place, since schizophrenia leaves people with difficulties grounding themselves in the actual world they live in. Given that he’s a foster kid his associations with place would not be especially strong or emotionally charged to begin with, but at some point he might start in a sense collecting features of places in his mind to help ground himself.

These are Entries 28 & 29, and the story tops out at 36, so we're getting close to the end. These two entries are mainly aftermath, both of the incident and the publicity. 28 takes place immediately after the attack, while 29 has the leader of the local EU presence arrive at the third space to see the mystery lab for himself. I'm not sure, in this case, if I have placed enough emphasis on the precariousness of the situation. Have Loads O'Fun and Excitement!

Me too, please.

This chapter gets juvenile, spoiled rich kid juvenile. I hope it isn't too over the top. After last week's critique I consulted my notes from a book on story theory (K.M. Weiland's Structuring your Novel, if anyone is interested), and started going through chapters with a sort of scene check. This is probably better to do before you write, but I know plenty of people who are way over on the pants side of the Plan/Pants Continuum who will disagree. So for this entry I have this (skip it if you don't want the spoilers): 3 Parts: Hook, Development, Climax 1. Flowers from the Cracker 2. Attacked by Rachelle’s friends 3. Brendili rescues Aspen Character Goal: Cheer up Conflict: High Society/classism Domino Effect: Consequences of Brendili’s participation in the fight Hopefully this helps.

I’m down for Monday

I could email them to you, if I had your email address. Normally when we post a chapter it goes to one address and that distributes it to everyone who's registered, so if you just joined the group everything after now will go to you, but I don't know if there's a way to get the older submissions.

Your response here reminded me of a story theory book I read a few years ago. There were a couple chapters about writing scenes that I think are what you are taking about, though in a lot of detail. I took notes on it, mainly because I've had a memory retention problem for a long time. The book is called Structuring Your Novel, by K. M. Weiland. I'll paste in the notes I took for those chapters so you can take a look. I might need to print it out and staple it to my forehead so it's right in front of me when I write. Hopefully this isn't a copyright violation ... Chapter 14: Scenes have three building blocks: a hook to begin with, a development in the middle, and a climax at the end Establish a goal for the character for the specific scene. Make sure it reflects on the entire story goal. You must know the purpose of the scene Establish a conflict for the character for the specific scene. Make sure it arises organically from the scene goal. It doesn’t have to be anything in particular Make sure the conflict ends. Sometimes to get the plot going the protagonist will get what they want but for most scenes, the conflict does not end in their favor To create meaningful and effective scenes, you first want to ask yourself about how the scene moves the plot forward, how it builds from the previous scene, and how it leads into the following scene. Then ask yourself about where the conflict is. Finally, ask yourself about what’s under the surface of the scene. The subtext allows the scene to be a lot more powerful. Choose your setting, dialogue and narrative with care. If you have to write a low key scene, make sure that readers understand that more is at play than just what they see on the surface. Also keep the characters in motion as they talk so that they can advance the plot, if not at least look interesting. The readers won’t get bored of that in time for the scene to end If a scene you’re writing feels boring, maybe it’s because your characters aren’t moving. Try closing your eyes and envisioning the scene in your head Chapter 15: Your scene goals are essentially your story dominos. If a goal is out of place then the line of dominos stops awkwardly Overarching goals do not negate the need for scene goals. Partial goals are goals that will take place over several scenes but do not substitute scene goals and especially not overarching goals. Everything is intertwined The contrast between protagonists and antagonists is only powerful when there are similarities for them to be compared to as well The most important similarity that you can create between your protagonist and antagonist is their primary goal. They reflect each other, ultimately. If their personalities and values are similar then that’s even better. It’s like you’re highlighting who the protagonist could become if they give in to their flaws with the antagonist Five common goal categories are: 1) Something concrete, 2) Something incorporeal, 3) Escape from something physical, 4) Escape from something mental, 5) Escape from something emotional Some common tactics include: 1) Seeking info, 2) Hiding info, 3) Hiding self, 4) Hiding someone else, 5) Confronting someone else, 6) Repairing or destroying physical objects Ask yourself the following questions once you’ve identified your scene goals: 1) Does the goal make sense with the overall plot? 2) Is the goal inherent to the overall plot? 3) Will the goal’s complication/resolution lead to a new goal/conflict/ disaster? 4) If the goal is mental/emotional can it have a physical manifestation? 5) Does the success or failure of the goal affect the scene's narrator?