Sept. 14- RavenstarRHJF- Stranded- part 2

[RavenstarRHJF]

Finally!  I listened to you guys and put in more emotion.  I have two iffy areas with this part:

1. I'll be the first to admit I'm not great at hard sci-fi, so any suggestions you can give me on the technical details would be much appreciated.  (like why the moon has air.  I need it to, but I don't know how to scientifically accomplish that, so it's just there. )

2. I was considering an alternate ending, one that would focus more on life after the adventure.  Do you guys think this one works, or should I go with the other one?

Don't hold back!  And thanks for reading!

[Chaos]

Hmmmm...

To give you an idea of mental state, I had my acting class today. As I was reading your piece, I got thinking. So while this critique might be rather critical, I hope it's at least descriptive and helpful. Smack me if I get prescriptive, but I just will go and retell an anecdote. That's not prescriptive, right? 

Short version: You're better with showing Shandi fixing stuff than practically everything else. To which I mean that those sections are the strongest prose, as they were in the last section. Criticism? A lot of parts were telly and displayed redundant information. Redundancy is your worst enemy in short stories, because well, we just read the other part a minute ago. It told the same redundant information. ...Yes, I'm trying to work in the word "redundant" another time for effect.

Redundancy of redundantness!

Silliness aside, the other major problem I had was your entire segment with the Phyllis Brown. Act 3 of a short story is a special place, and it felt weird to introduce an entirely new set of characters who really don't add anything to your Hmmmm...

To give you an idea of mental state, I had my acting class today. As I was reading your piece, I got thinking. So while this critique might be rather critical, I hope it's at least descriptive and helpful. Smack me if I get prescriptive, but I just will go and retell an anecdote. That's not prescriptive, right? 

Short version: You're better with showing Shandi fixing stuff than practically everything else. To which I mean that those sections are the strongest prose, as they were in the last section. Criticism? A lot of parts were telly and displayed redundant information. Redundancy is your worst enemy in short stories, because well, we just read the other part a minute ago. It told the same redundant information. ...Yes, I'm trying to work in the word "redundant" another time for effect.

Redundancy of redundantness!

Silliness aside, the other major problem I had was your entire segment with the Phyllis Brown. Act 3 of a short story is a special place, and it felt weird to introduce an entirely new set of characters who really don't add anything to your establishment. You could accomplish all that in a single paragraph of Shandi dazed, seeing the ship landing on the moonlet. Ultimately, all the Phyllis Brown does is save them; that's its only plot purpose. It's weak for an ending. We have no emotional attachment to these people, just Shandi and Jerran. The ending would only work if you wove the Captain and the Shandi plot concurrently, and I don't think that would work effectively.

You also aren't particularly good with technobabble. (Also note, I spent four hours today reading TVtropes wiki, so I may be unfairly vicious in this regard, too) It seemed like it came out of thin air. ...which is kind of the definition of technobabble, but my personal tastes in an Act 3 is a reveal. Your story is held up, seemingly, from the pure awesomeness of Shandi fixing stuff and the conflict between Shandi and Jerran. These are your pillars. Use them Weave them together and make a satisfying final act.

You have excellent building blocks to make a sweet story. Refine them and make it as awesome as it can be! I can't emphasize that enough, the part of the excellent building blocks. It feels like I'm being so critical, but I really don't want you to throw the whole thing away.

Time to wrap things up! I shall end on a nitpicky note, to give that bittersweet aftertaste in your mouth, I suppose. Basically, these are line comments, mostly commenting on telliness which should be axed:

This line really struck me as plain off. Which reminds me, a lot of the telly parts ruin the parts which should strike a chord (note to self: tell that anecdote).

At the moment she didn’t care if Jerran was dying or not, he would answer for what he had done.

Also telly:

She glared at him, waiting for some kind of response,

Yeah, we know she's waiting. The fact that she's paused is usually an indicator of that.

Jerran cried out in pain and went limp but she didn’t care.

Not quite sure why I reacted negatively against this one. Perhaps it's mixing a snapshot (showing what's happening) and a thoughtshot (showing internal feelings/thoughts) in the same sentence, which doesn't feel like a logical transition. On the other hand, it seems slightly telly, but I'm not sure why.

All of a sudden the rage and fear found an outlet in tears.

We're not close to Shandi here. You are telling us, on a high level, what the emotions are instead of illustrating them.

feeling an overwhelming flood of revulsion for him- the man responsible.

Same sort of telliness, but at the same time, the readers have figured out he's the dude who is responsible. Cut that phrase or have Shandi actively react against it. As it is, you aren't adding anything new.

Now he looked at her.

The "now" feels superfluous.

Shandi had discovered the unpleasantness of their food long ago, and managed to choke her portion down with a minimum of gag reflex.

The first clause is telly, the second clause is showy.

Conversely, I really like this:

In fact, the heavy damage appeared to have been confined to one corner.  She thought, looking at what was left.  She hadn’t lied when she said she wasn’t an engineer, but she had taken some advanced electrical courses while still in school.  It paid to be able to repair your own tools.

While sort of telly, it also lets you display character. New information we didn't know before. This makes it a lot better, and is fairly acceptable in the short story genre, I think. People should know important things right off the bat, and this one gives us a window into her state of mind. Or at least, justification.

We transition into the technobabble moment!

Yeah.  But it’s the signal itself.  You know, the programming bit that tells people who we are and sends a traceable signal.

This threw me out of the story. Anyone who has used Wi-Fi ever (or used a cell phone) can figure out what a signal is.

Aha, I see where you were going with the signal. People can probably figure it out without that telly portion earlier. (Note these line comments were made in chronological order of reading)

Okay, I would close, but as I said, I went to acting today, so there's an applicable anecdote. I, however, must sleep. So you'll get it... later. Bug me if I forget, okay?

[Recovering_Cynic]

Ravenstar, I really like the story, and you tell it well.  As to your questions about the ending, well, something needs to be fixed, but I'm having a hard time putting my finger on what it is.  The story works well, no logic flaws, no plot holes or anything like that.  I think the main problem I'm seeing is the "so what" factor.  Let me explain with a question (and don't hate me for that, please ).

My main question is, what is this story about?  They are flying in space, ship malfunctions, they escape on pod, pod malfunctions, crash landing, stupid captain injured, distress beacon has malfunctioned, get it working--sort of, girl is rescued, captain dies.  So out of all that, what is the story really about? 

Here are my thoughts on that question.  Your setting is good (look to someone else for techno/physics stuff or any fixes), and it makes for an interesting backdrop as events unfold.  The events (lifepod crashing, etc.) are interesting, but not interesting enough to carry the story by themselves.  They are events that have been written into a multitude of sci-fi stories, so you're only going to get so much mileage out of them.  So I guess the answer is (at least in my opinion) that your story has to be about your characters, their personal interaction, and how they react to the events that happen.

Now, your characters interact well and are believable, that's not the problem.  I think for me, if the story is going to be about the characters, we really needed to see Jerran's death.  If their relationship really meant something, then the death scene is going to be powerful in some way.  It would be the most meaningful event, but we don't get to know a thing about it. 

Of course, you don't have to show the death scene.  In fact, I think what I really feel is missing is closure between Shandi and Jerran.  You end their story with the two of them finally figuring out how to get the beacon working.  Great.  That's an event, part of your backdrop, but what about those two human beings?  What about them?  Do they have a reconciliation?  Do they have a poignant moment?  For me, they have to carry the story, but the last thing we hear from them is that they made a break through, one that only saved one of their lives.

Okay, enough rambling, I think you get the idea.  I need to see what happened between Shandi and Jerran to feel really satisfied with the story as it stands, and that is my one and only real critique.  The story is done very well.  Write on. 

[Chaos]

Of course, you don't have to show the death scene.  In fact, I think what I really feel is missing is closure between Shandi and Jerran.  You end their story with the two of them finally figuring out how to get the beacon working.  Great.  That's an event, part of your backdrop, but what about those two human beings?  What about them?  Do they have a reconciliation?  Do they have a poignant moment?  For me, they have to carry the story, but the last thing we hear from them is that they made a break through, one that only saved one of their lives.

Okay, enough rambling, I think you get the idea.  I need to see what happened between Shandi and Jerran to feel really satisfied with the story as it stands, and that is my one and only real critique.  The story is done very well.  Write on. 

You said what I was thinking much better than I was saying it, Cynic. Closure, that's what we need. I agree entirely.

[RavenstarRHJF]

Thanks guys!  I can do closure.   Good thing it's still a first draft.

Also- Argh!  I thought I WAS "showing" instead of "telling."  So those points are really helpful, Chaos.  Now I know what I need to work on.

More advice/opinions welcome!

Also, Chaos?  I see what you did there... what you did there... what you did there...

[Chaos]

Also, Chaos?  I see what you did there... what you did there... what you did there...

What did I do now?

I shall use my confusion at this moment to make the anecdote. It's made by my acting teacher, and I think it has a lot of relevance as to why we even bother with show/don't tell.

Abbott and Costello, way back when they traveled across the country on a bus, had this one part which always killed the audience. Costello would ask for the butter, and the crowd roars in laughter. A couple of months go by and eventually, the joke no longer gets any jokes. Costello is utterly perplexed, so he goes to an old Vaudville performer who is on their bus and asks him, "I just don't understand. I've been telling this line for months but it doesn't get laughs anymore."

"You started to ask for the laugh," he replied. "Just ask for the butter."

So there's no need to get over-emotional. Just show the emotions naturally and the readers will respond accordingly.

[Frog]

Thoughts While Reading:
Wow, she's good and found the vein on her own. In nursing classes, most of us needed help the first time finding it from our instructors. And if she is jabbing him a couple times, where is she getting all the needles? Or is she being unstarile? Not that there is anything majorly wrong here or that you have to use tons of detail, but it is my field so I feel a great need to comment on it.

She felt a tentative touch on her head and flung herself away from Jerran, feeling an overwhelming flood of revulsion for him- the man responsible

. hyphen bit was jarring and probably unnecessary.

Her reaction seems very sudden with not enough build up. I can understand her wanting to hide it a little, but she just seemed to have a complete schizo mood shift for me.

Shandi had discovered the unpleasantness of their food long ago, and managed to choke her portion down with a minimum of gag reflex.  I’ve probably said enough about his judgment… she thought.  But I just can’t resist!

Bit too much here. Kills the joke.

And then we cut in with this new guy and I am afraid it goes all down hill for me after that.

Overall Impression:
Mechanically and on a scene by scene basis, this was a great piece for me. Good character, decent descriptions and some good actions. I even thought you did a fairly decent job in the showing vs telling department. It just, right now, seems more a reporting of events or a journal entry and not an artistic or an emotionally driven story that I can really get behind.  Now that you have your first draft out the way, you need to check the flow and make sure you have a story arch that grows gradually to a main climatic conflict where something changes for the MC from the beginning of the piece. Along those same lines, especially since this is a short story, I would NOT cut to her rescuers at all, or at least not in place of anything you do with your MC. She's a great character and I want the arch and conclusion from her.

What did she gain/lose from this experience that we can take away as readers? Did she have any change her opinions of Jerran and how did his death effect her? Did she question her choice in profession? Or anything more that you want to bring out as a main theme/moral? Make her story matter, at least in her own life, or it won't matter to me.

So just show some more expression and emotion in pulling together your next draft, make it all flow and build and you'll get full marks from me. Great job!

[RavenstarRHJF]

Posted by Chaos:

Redundancy of redundantness!

Silliness aside, the other major problem I had was your entire segment with the Phyllis Brown. Act 3 of a short story is a special place, and it felt weird to introduce an entirely new set of characters who really don't add anything to your Hmmmm...

...

Redundancy of redundantness!

Silliness aside, the other major problem I had was your entire segment with the Phyllis Brown. Act 3 of a short story is a special place, and it felt weird to introduce an entirely new set of characters who really don't add anything to your establishment.

[ryos]

First, on the technology front, I have two gripes: one minor, and one major.

The minor came when Shandi took off the glove of her airtight, pressurized spacesuit. It would probably be *possible* to make a spacesuit with removable gloves, but why bother? Who's going to take off their gloves in a vacuum? No; those puppies are sealed to the sleeves.

The major was the whole section dealing with repairing the radio beacon. Have you ever seen a scene in a TV show where two characters are talking about computers and it's just complete nonsense? Like the writers just looked up some computer jargon and threw it randomly into some lines of dialog, hoping nobody would notice that they know nothing about computers? Well, the bits with fixing the radio had that effect on me—they just made no sense at all.

Yes, hooking the hatch controller into the radio broadcast hardware would produce a completely meaningless radio signal. They could get the same effect by just connecting the antenna into the power supply. Now, with a brilliant grasp of electronic circuits one could conceivably rig a circuit to transmit morse code, but far more likely would be that they'd have to take turns tapping out an SOS signal on the airwaves.

Finally, the ending. Others have already commented on how it doesn't really work; how it provides no closure; etc. I'd go so far as to say that the story was over when they jury-rigged the beacon, and the rest was just wasted space. I can see why you chose to cut away from the characters at that point—mostly what they would be doing is sitting around freezing and starving to death. Nobody wants to see that; it's boring! But you can't skip it here or you won't have a story! I mean, isn't that what it's about: them being stranded?

Is there something in the setting that could be used to create tension and interest? Is there some character conflict worth exploring? There must be something that will make this story interesting; I'm sure you can find it.

[Silk]

I liked Shandi's breakdown. I thought it was well-handled.

I have no idea how much time has passed between the time when they send out the beacon and when Berry finds them. I was consequently pretty surprised to hear that Jerran was dead--as far as I knew he had a few broken bones and a fever, but he didn't seem REALLY ill. I was just as surprised to hear that Shandi was in rough shape. I suppose we could blame the death(s, potentially) on privation but... Yes. I have absolutely no indication of how much time has passed, except for the three-hour time limit that Berry gave his men. Jerran and Shandi hooked up the beacon, and the next thing we know they're dead (or half dead).

I'm afraid this just doesn't feel like an ending to me. What I'm missing here is a "so what". So these two people get trapped on a moon, and one of them dies, and the other one maybe survives. So...? I'm not looking for a moral or anything like that, but I'm not really certain what I'm supposed to take away from this. The character arch doesn't feel completed and I'm not sure what it was leading to. (I wrote this part before reading Cynic's comments, by the way.)

I don't think that switching to another point-of-view, in this case Berry and the Phyllis Brown, is necessarily a no-no technique. But in this case it doesn't really feel justified. It comes back to that question of "so what?": what are they contributing that couldn't be done from Shandi's point-of-view? Not just in terms of the actual plot, but in terms of the story, the character arch, whatever else you want us to take away from this ending. You can switch POVs here if you want to. But it needs to add something.

But the big thing is the tension between Shandi and Jerran. It fizzles out without any closure whatsoever. We don't know what happened to them after the beacon we went out, we don't know how Shandi felt after Jerran died, we don't know, well, anything really.

Ryos might have a point. You could, potentially, end the story when they rig the beacon up; maybe the last bit isn't necessary at all. That doesn't change the fact that you need some sort of closure, though. You would just have to give it to us a little sooner.

Aaaand I've been doing these things for what feels like forever, and now I'm out. No more from me.

[Flo_the_G]

The moon could possibly hold an atmosphere if it was very dense, i.e. rich in heavy metals or something of the sort.

Staying in the hard-sf department, you should factor in message delay when transmitting over large distances. Or you need some gadget that allows hyperlight communication. Then it wouldn't be hard scifi anymore, though. Going with your alternate ending would bypass that problem nicely, of course. It would also get rid of the Star Trek-iness of this ending, which detracts greatly from the preceding story, I think.

A note on veins and needles, because Frog brought it up: I don't think you necessarily need a new needle for every jab. I once had a whole staff of doctors and nurses stick one and the same needle repeatedly into my arm in their futile search for a vein.  On the other hand, if they were stumped by that, what would they know about sterility, right?

Overall I'd follow the general opinion: good storytelling with a few redundant parts and missing a proper ending (which, apparently, you already have waiting on the sidelines).

[RavenstarRHJF]

Thank you all for the marvelous feedback!  Much appreciated.

I got this from several of you, but I think Frog said it best:

...you need to check the flow and make sure you have a story arch...

I totally agree with you.  This is one of my weaknesses, since I tend to get a flash of a scene that excites me and I just start writing from there without thinking it through to make sure there's an actual story and not just a really cool scene.

Silk:

I have no idea how much time has passed between the time when they send out the beacon and when Berry finds them.

I was actually kinda going for this; I thought Jerran's death would be more shocking without a time-frame.

Ryos:
T

he minor came when Shandi took off the glove of her airtight, pressurized spacesuit. It would probably be *possible* to make a spacesuit with removable gloves, but why bother? Who's going to take off their gloves in a vacuum? No; those puppies are sealed to the sleeves.

The major was the whole section dealing with repairing the radio beacon. Have you ever seen a scene in a TV show where two characters are talking about computers and it's just complete nonsense? Like the writers just looked up some computer jargon and threw it randomly into some lines of dialog, hoping nobody would notice that they know nothing about computers? Well, the bits with fixing the radio had that effect on me—they just made no sense at all.

Hm, I was picturing the spacesuit as more like the ones featured in Apollo 13, with detachable gloves and helmets.  Otherwise, how would you get into it without a lot of help?  It doesn't need to be pressurized at the moment, since the only reason Shandi's still wearing it is for added warmth.

The radio... yeah, I'm going to need to do some more research there... you're totally right on that.  No more technobabble for me.

Flo:

The moon could possibly hold an atmosphere if it was very dense, i.e. rich in heavy metals or something of the sort.

Thank you!