Crashers

[Karl]

Nifty!

The prologue is okay. I have no complaints about it other than perhaps to revise and tighten it up a bit.

I had reservations early on about the debate. I dreaded reading through a transcript of someone else's business meeting/club minutes, etc. However, you did pretty well with them. You may wish to push the antagonism of the rival debaters a bit.

And I think I missed something about why your MC was offended by the other kid's comment. Perhaps it didn't offend me, therefore I read right over it. Her reactions seemed out of proportion to what was said. So rewording it such that the reader would be taken aback might help.

I like that you are using Sci-Fi to tell a contemporarily relevant story. Sci-Fi has a long history of using cautionary tales.

I don't care why the picture fell (yet). That will be explained in due time. However, I think Remington has a crush on the MC!

[little wilson]

Hahaha....a crush! I never thought of that...Well. Not seriously....I can kind of see where you get that though. I actually think it's pretty funny.

And the story actually isn't sci-fi. It's seems that way at first, because of the technological talk and stuff, but it's actually fantasy....you'll see. I think. If it doesn't become apparent in Chapter 2, it should at least in Chapter 3....I hope....

And I know that her outburst isn't proportional to the comment....I'm working on that. Gradually....Actually, I'm not really, right now. I gave up, and moved onto writing further, but I will come back to that because I'm well-aware that it's not right...

And thank you. I appreciate all the comments. They're helping. A lot.

[Karl]

Okay, I like that you are telling a post-modern, post-hi-tech, non-sciency-despite-the-techno-babble fantasy to tell a contemporarily relevant story. Potato, potahto.

Science and magic are indistiguishable at significantly high levels.

[little wilson]

haha...That description. Funny. Lots of 'posts'....

And yes. There are some books that it's very hard to classify between sci-fi and fantasy. Most of the time I can do it, but sometimes.....with this one, it's got both, but I think I classify it as fantasy because it's MORE fantasy than sci-fi...But I guess technically it could be both...Hmmm.

....

I need to stop thinking about this. I've now got myself confused about the genre of my book.

[Silk]

Responding to the discussion, someone mentioned that they didn’t see precog, tekenesis, etcetera, as technologies. I didn’t have a problem with it; I figured it would be explained eventually, and I don’t think I need to know right now.

Regarding whether the prologue is a problem, or whether it adds or doesn’t add anything to the story by being a prologue, I think it’s too soon to say. We can’t see whether a prologue needs to be a prologue until we’ve read the whole book, I think. And I assumed that the star would become important later.

It didn’t seem too preachy to me, when it comes to humans destroying the world, but that IS something that will put some people off, and if that’s important to the characters or the story I think that’s just something that you’ll have to be aware of. *shrugs*

I was a tad bit iffy on the debates, too. It’s not that I wasn’t engaged, it just, I don’t know. By the time it got to the second debate it did seem awfully like a device to get more important information out there, not to mention the first bit of the plot. Maybe if we had something else to break up the two debates that would help.

I wondered along with Karl if Ashley’s reaction wasn’t somewhat overblown. Of course, she’s also a teenage girl. Though I think they’re supposed to have stopped being uber touchy by that age. (Because, you know, I was a teenager so LONG ago *cough*)

Also: Let the agent worry about the genre of your book. You worry about writing it.

And now, for my comments:

The prologue has me wondering who the narrator is. It’s not an urgent question, but something in there signals to me that the way the story is told might somehow be important to the story itself. If that makes any sense.

As for the start of chapter one, this doesn’t really seem like a class. This seems more like the professor proposing a question, sitting back, and letting the students take fire. Which I guesss is fine if that’s what you want, but it seems a little strange.

On the top of page six, you write, “Who wouldn’t be interested in the group that caused the fall of technology, setting the world back 300 years in terms of technological reach?” To me, this just screams infodump. I think it’s because you’re reiterating points already made: We already know Ashley’s interested in them, and we already know that they caused the fall of teleportation at least. If it’s the fall of ALL technology and that or the 300 years bit is something we absolutely need to know, you can string those details in in a more subtle fashion, I think. Nor do we need to get them all at once.

That's about it from me.

[Manyang]

The world seems interesting, and I would really love to know how they managed to invent teleportation and such, and then have some terrorist group destroy it all. These particular scenes however didn’t work for me.

To me none of the characters managed to rise above the talking head status. I’ve been smothered with information and background about a world I don’t know, and frankly have no reason to care about yet.
If all this information is absolutely vital for us to know I’d prefer having a prologue in which you get all that dirty work done so we can get to the story in chapter one. Give a year in which teleportation was invented, a year when it was destroyed by the crashers, throw in a fireball and an explosion to make it interesting, mix it all up and then start the story you want to tell.

If all of this is not vital make us care about the characters before throwing us into a theoretical discussion.  The story of an eighteen year old girl heading for class is something we can understand without the entire backdrop needed to understand the world.

[little wilson]

I was a tad bit iffy on the debates, too. It’s not that I wasn’t engaged, it just, I don’t know. By the time it got to the second debate it did seem awfully like a device to get more important information out there, not to mention the first bit of the plot. Maybe if we had something else to break up the two debates that would help.

And THIS was the scene that I didn't finish....I do have something in between the two debates. It's not complete yet, and I didn't have time to complete it before I sent it, so I just took it out (It was only about 150 words so far) for the copy I sent.

Also, you both make VERY good points, and I can already see the prologue and chapter 1 (at least) changing to support what's going on in my head....I rather like the change that's taking place....Now I just have to write it.

[wcarter4]

Chapter one was pretty good just make sure that none of the general dialog gets too preachy about this or that resource being used. I don't think having one character who likes to argue would be a problem though.

My main issue is some of the language was slightly stuffy "...bell tolled 11 o'clock" that would be great for steam punk but I don't think someone from the future would think using language that proper. Run with it if they do, I'm just going on the bare introduction to the characters I've had so far.

[maxonennis]

Prologue: I usually don’t like prologues of this nature—the third person omniscient, and then switching back to third limited for the rest of the story--, however I thought the prologue did that well. A bit of info dumping done, I’m not sure if any of it isn’t something that isn’t explained in the next chapter, and farther more it didn’t seem necessary to the occurrences that take place within the prologue. Of course I have no idea about the star and what it has to do with Ashley, but it makes me want to continue reading.

We go from mommy and daddy during Ashley’s birth, to two scenes in a class room without any show of the parents, where are these characters? I ask this because we “meet” the parents in a few paragraphs in the prologue, and don’t see them again. Then we meet Ashley, Remington, Kyle, and Mr. Silvan, and aside from Kyle and Ashley’s love of debating the Crashers, I don’t know anything about either.

How predominate the class room is supposed to be in the rest of the story? From the first chapter I would expect it to be a large part of the story, after all using that much time building one setting, it will probably get reused. Also, I’m slightly bothered by the fact that it went right from one day at school to another without anything happening between to let me get a better feel of Ashley’s character. Because of the class room scenes you get away with some information dumping. It wasn’t over board, but felt a little much.

I’m still searching for what level of technology they have. In one instance, I assumed that they’d invented teleportation devices and were now using them but from the last scene in the first chapter it says that that isn’t the case. From that chapter I know nothing about the world outside of the class room.

I, over all, like the story. Your writing style is easy to read, and I’m looking forward to the next chapter.

[Dangerbutton]

I liked it. I found it very easy to read, and I found myself wanting to learn more about the setting. However I did feel that, at times, there was a bit too much of an infodump.
   I liked the debates, but I agree that two in a row was too much. I'm glad you're planning to put a scene between the two.
   I liked the little part about her doodling for the remainder of the class time. That pretty much sums up my schooling experience. . . and I find it continuing into college....
   Anyhow, as others have said, the characters seemed like little more than voices. They could use some more description, even if it's only brief (actually, in my opinion, brief descriptions are best). I also would have liked to see a bit more of what the main character was thinking.
   Again, I really liked it. keep it up!

[Flo_the_G]

I'm with Raethe on the "not a class"-thing, the fact that the class seemed to consist only of debating was a bit irritating. And, of course, I'm with everyone else as regards the need for a scene between the two debates.

What I didn't get at all was the feeling that the scenes were merely there to accomodate an infodump. Maybe this means that I'm part of exactly the geeky technology-loving target audience... In any case, while reading I made no notes whatsoever, because I simply wanted to know how the story goes on - in fact I still do, and not only due to the mysterious falling picture.

[Chaos]

Actually, for the "it's not a class" people, I have seminar classes which are exclusively based on the teacher just loosely guiding classroom discussion. Usually there is some kind of reading to accomplish before classtime to focus the discussion--that's the only element I see missing in this class. It's more of a collegiate level thing, and a high-level collegiate class. I'm not sure if the seminar class would work in a high school setting, but then again, I don't know too much about the setting here.

First of all, wilson, you need to be praised. Your story intrigues me! I really, really want to read more about the setting. You have me totally hooked.

However, that prologue... To put it lightly, I strongly dislike the notion of this prologue. It is not the omniscient perspective in it, because if you were going for omniscient all the way through the book, that's just the perspective of the book and it can work very well for you. I don't even mind that the piece transitions from omniscient to limited. Mechanically, the prologue worked fine. It was intriguing nonetheless. It still didn't mesh with me.

It just seems to totally preface the story. Now, I suppose that is what a prologue is defined to be, something that happens before the main story, so I guess it is a little silly to hold that against it. My problem is that it does not tell a story in its own right. It does not give us a picture of any characters, it does not give us a lens to view the world, it merely introduces them, and only on a basic level, too. The prologue was not particularly informative, instead just setting up an obvious plot point in an extremely obvious manner. Subtle foreshadowing, this is not.

Now, a prologue does not need to have character. It is completely acceptable to have an omniscient prologue. Take the prologue from Elantris, for example. That prologue does not introduce anyone, and instead introduces the key concept which will override the story. It worked perfectly because it clearly conveyed something, and it was an idea so cool that it makes you want to read further. Your prologue is not so powerful. It did intrigue me, I will admit, but not in a way I particularly enjoyed.

"But this tale doesn’t start with the transportation system." That entire paragraph makes me cringe. It makes it sound like the narrator is directly talking to the reader (because you are, obviously). It's not a flaw in itself, but you need to ask yourself: is it really necessary to do that? In my opinion, the reader knows it is the beginning of the story, you don't need to tell them what the beginning is. You show scenes to portray the beginning. It seems that would be a far better way to convey the mystery of the light. By having a character experience its mysteriousness, the reader's emotions should also parallel that feeling.


As for the classroom setting, it worked well for me. It was fast paced enough to keep me reading (and thoroughly interested) despite the fact that I was dead tired. Good job!

I really can't comment more on chapter one than what was already said. I'm extremely interested to know more about the world, and I am extremely interested to see the plot develop. You don't give any clues to the plot in this first chapter, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

If the classroom setting isn't very prominent, though (which you say in this thread), then it needs to be toned back. Since you are planning to add another scene before the second debate, I believe that would solve the problem. On the other hand, I actually liked the fact that there was no transition between the first and second debates. It had a very good feeling of being close to the action, which I like a lot. You didn't fool around with unnecessary information.

It's a fine balance, I think.

[M]

I'm not sure I can add anything constructive that already hasn't been said.  Great job.  I'm interested to read more.  Sorry, lame crit, but I don't believe in overkill.  I will try to read yours first on the next submission so I can give a real crit.  Sorry.