Dec 7 - Chaos - Operation Cop Out

[Chaos]

Hey, that'd be a pretty cool name for a story. Unfortunately, this submission isn't it, and this submission isn't the story you actually would like to see (like another Rebirth submission). It's not even chapter one.

What is it? Hmmm What indeed

One thing is for certain: this is the shortest Reading Excuses submission to date (as far as I know) and by far the most cop-outty.

[Recovering_Cynic]

Er... I liked the bit where you said "Prologue"

Anyway, it was very short, and very... abstract.  There really wasn't much to latch onto here.  It wouldn't make me want to read the story, but it wouldn't repulse me either.  I guess, in the end, it didn't excite me, which is probably a bad thing.

[Frog]

Thoughts while Reading:
Us- who is 'us?' Him and other Gods? Him and his creation? Who?
I think the parallel structure you seem to be searching for with the first and second line of the second paragraph would work better if you said 'death' instead of 'sacrifice' to end the first line.
I thought he was waiting for a 'world slayer,' but then it sounds like he destroyed the worlds himself.
I think the last line isn't as strong as you probably want it to be. Second to the last is probably better.Though, if I were his creation, I wouldn't be very reassured by any of this.
Overall:
Well, before we had a character (albeit a wishy washy one) but now I am not sure what we have. No clear conflict, just a some inner musings about... something. It is confusing and confusion is a turn off, but so short that you may be able to get away with it. That is, if I get something to latch onto closely following this.

[lethalfalcon]

I never saw the first time this was submitted, so I can't really compare the two, but to me, this sounded a lot like the Lord Ruler in Mistborn 3, in the little chapter pre-text blurbs.

I agree with Frog that God seems to be talking to someone, but we have no idea who.

Is the Worldslayer his creation as well? I get the feeling that he is and isn't, depending on the sentence.

He starts out talking about the Worldslayer, but then goes on in the next paragraph to recollect every universe that has been destroyed. They should probably connect. "I recall every other world that has been destroyed..."

Worth what moment? The final days of his Plan? Well, everything is just going to be sacrificed, killed by the Worldslayer, so really? His moments aren't very worthwhile, in my opinion. I mean, at the end, you speak that "freedom awaits", but that's not made clear until after.

Most people understand that God is timeless, world-less, and fate-less. That's mostly the definition of a god anyway. Would he really be monologuing such? It sounds a lot like "take pity on me; just because you're going to die, remember that I've seen countless deaths in my existence and cannot escape them." An emo god is really hard for me to comprehend. He's all-powerful, but he can't deal with these fiddling emotions? Maybe he shouldn't have signed up for the job.

This was all for Good and all Life.

Wha? This sentence makes no sense. It's some sort of holy sentence fragment.

I really don't like the last sentence/paragraph, either. You have this powerful "Know that" repetition, and then you switch to "Remember that". If you're going to be telling people to know something, you can't assume that they originally knew that everything happens for a reason. They need to know two things (that they should already know), but just remember the third.

So there you go. My critique is successfully longer than your submission. Cool, eh?

[ryos]

I never knew this was a contest. Maybe next week I'll submit one of those tweet-length stories that are all the rage these days.

My main issue with this is one of form. It's written as a note from God to...anyone who'll listen? This might work if God is a viewpoint character in the story...and he's the sort of god that writes letters to mortals in the first person and drops them off at the post office. No, I don't see it working, really; I doubt it would fit into the book your likely to write.

My second issue is one of tone. Others may not share this, and feel free to take it with a grain of salt, but your God's voice still sounds off. I recognize that this is because I, having read the Mormon scriptures often throughout my life, have a preconceived notion of how God sounds. I know that your fictional God is not that God, but this is a subconscious reaction that doesn't care what my rational mind has to say, so it still feels off.

Lastly, as others have said, it's a little weak and falls a little flat. The last sentence lets all the air out of your balloon. I thought you Overused the Capitalization of various words that Probably shouldn't be capitalized. And you used too much allusion to things that nobody understands anyway, so most of it reads like nonsense.

I really want to see you get it right, because the world has so much potential, so I'm pushing you hard here. At this point I'd ask yourself whether you really need a prologue, because both the drafts I've seen don't pull their narrative weight and I'd probably recommend cutting them as they stand.

[Andrew the Great]

So how much critique material is it possible to get out of 15 ish lines?

No, I really don't know what else to say that hasn't already been said. So I'll just go ahead and say that I really have no opinion about this. It didn't make me push it away, but I really didn't like it that much either.

[vegetathalas]

Hooked me. I like it. If I picked this up, I'd probably read this book. But I guess I'm in the minority...

I agree that Good and Life probably shouldn't be capitalized.