Hey neongrey, you said you have a gdoc with critique. For my Drive it converts it to a Zoho word doc, are those as easy to share as native gdoc formats? Because I've got a bunch of comments on mine, too.
Alright man, let's get cracking. Bear in mind, I lean toward minimalism and subtlety, and I'm an editor by trade, so expect a lot of cutting...
Emily
Emily needs the most work, I think. One thing that I think really kills your pacing is when a character calls attention to her own wandering thoughts. Having her remind herself to Focus is unnecessary and could easily be dropped. You also want to look out for "Anyway", or "All in all", or "So, she..." The character's thoughts aren't linear, and you don't have to cover for every wandering thought.
In general agreement about the 'thinking about a cute boy', especially tied into the first point. Wandering thoughts are fine if they explain a worldbuilding element or show insight to her character, but "Ugh why can't I stop thinking about this guy" is almost always better shown in action, so we can intuit that a guy is on her mind. Otherwise, if she does things that don't involve the guy, you don't have to mention that she's thinking about him.
This stood out to me. Could be the exclamation mark.
What stands out the most to me is how much we're straight up given about her thought process, her opinion of Ricard, a former office romance. Then you have the aurora, Dr. N, "He", and the thing in her bag, all kept more subtle. It mostly stands out because it's inconsistent with how liberal you are with explaining more mundane things, like the sensory details of the office.
Another reason to bring it up is because in your email you said you wanted each piece to stand on its own. So if this is my only scene with Emily, I can only base my opinion of what I'm given, and the SFnal details that might add to her character (or, why she's there at all) are withheld.
Then why bring it up?
Might want to rework this, most likely by moving "truly" around.
In Emily and the Jester's chapter, you would benefit a lot, I think, by dropping the final line of dialogue.
"She cocked the piece and pressed it to the back of Ricard's seat", I think is a great way to end, because it speaks for itself and the dialogue following it is snark for snark's sake.
Jester
Man, the difference is really noticeable, but please take that as a compliment! I much more enjoyed the flow and dynamic of this one. I'm still seeing a lot of telling though, so depending on the length of the piece, you may want to pick and choose your information release, and cut down on some of the character details. We're being given a lot of info about them that we should be inferring through dialogue.
Cheesy seems like an unusual adjective for someone's voice. I get it, but it feels off.
Really liked this.
There are a handful of adverbs (daintily) here and in other places that I think you could cull without damaging the integrity of the piece.
In some disagreement with neongrey here; I thought the explanation of Sapphires was woven in pretty well. It's infodumpy without feeling like it, and because I warmed up to the characters a bit, the info was more accessible to me.
And finally, as said above:
I feel like ending on that apocalypse note is much more powerful, even though it's still Jester's chapter.
I've heard it said that having characters laugh at one another's jokes can be awkward; I think the same is true for eye-rolling. Or maybe I just don't care for the joke. Not a big deal either way, but something to be aware of.
Bam. There we go. Good dialogue ending.
Jaime
Alright for the most part. Probably the most solid of the three. Dialogue is fine, a few points where the telling is getting in the way, but I don't have any huge problems with it. "The sight of a woman in a hijab taking shots still seemed weird to Jaime, even after all this time."
You have three ways of telling us time has passed, when you only need one. "Still seemed weird" is fine, IMO.
Not really sure what this means...
Yeah those moments, they do that. But was it a moment, or a moment?
Ending sentence was so-so, but it ties into my overall critique that I'm not sure how well you wanted this to stand alone. If you mean, is it accessible if it's the first chapter someone reads? Sure, a little bit. I didn't read chapter 1 and I don't feel lost. But it clearly transitions into the next chapter, so forgive me if I sound pedantic about that.
Overall impressions: I like the ideas, but the telling is getting in the way most of the time. Your dialogue is good, too, so cram those external details into it and make it more natural. Show us what the world is like, why it's different. I'm a big fan of grand, dramatic statements, but you want to use them sparingly. Well-crafted mundane paragraphs will make single sentences shine (Matthew Stover is a big fan of this).
I hope I was helpful, this was my first critique for the group and I'm really enjoying getting to read even more. I never get to critique when I do slush, so it's very liberating to exercise my editor muscles.
