Timewaster's Guide Archive
Local Authors => Reading Excuses => Topic started by: RavenstarRHJF on September 01, 2009, 02:55:14 AM
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It turned out pretty long, and I didn't want to overwhelm anyone so you get it in two parts. Comments, criticisms, nitpickings... let me have it!
Oh, and thanks for reading. ;)
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I got everyone's but yours.... :'(
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Yeah... nothing here mate.
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Hm... I sent it to [email protected] originally. I sent it again to the same address, if that doesn't work, I'll send using my prior list of addresses.
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Got it this time :)
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Today's special word is: atavistic (I liked it)
Really, really good start, I only noticed two things when reading that I can comment on.
she nearly gagged- there was something white poking through the wet fabric of his pants
People can correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think a living bone looks white at all. It's almost yellow or brown. Anyway, minor nitpick.
The big thing for me was lack of hooks to go on to the next chapter. But if this is just the first part of chapter one, you're probably ok.
Those are the only two things I can think of, and they are both minor. It was interesting and easy to read. Nice job!
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Okay, so writing a critique at one a.m. is generally not a good idea, but I'm already awake, so here goes:
First, you description is awesome. Well done. I especially enjoyed the space patch scene.
As to problems, well, it may very well be that it's the fact that I'm half asleep, but I didn't get any real emotion out of this portion. I mean, we're going through a major space crash/catastrophe, and the main characters seem to take it in stride. I just kind of felt emotionally detached, like it was too easy. 'Course, I'm kinda detached from the world right now, so you might get a second opinion on that. Even the part in the cave (I was a little confused at first--wondering how on earth they got inside a cavern--you might mention at some point that they landed) when the MC is restraining her anger, well, that felt wrong. There needs to be some sort of emotional breakdown/release. Anger, hitting things, crying, etc. Of course, that may well have all happened off screen, but that's not very helpful in letting your reader empathize with your MC.
Anyway, that's my two cents. Hope it helped. I might post more later when I'm more... coherent.
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I've been up for almost 24 hours straight now, but since I'm at the front desk and in danger of falling asleep, I've decided to critique instead. :)
Minor thing:
Back inside the airlock, she felt the slight tug of the ship’s gravity pulling her boots towards the floor of the compartment, getting stronger as she approached the interior hatch.
I've just been doing physics homework, so forgive me, but there's no way she felt gravity there, unless there's artificial gravity in the ship (even then, I don't know if she'd feel a tug, she would just be accelerated to the plane of the artificial gravity. Remember, if there's no resistance the tug won't feel noticeable). Doing some quick number crunching, if that ship is 10,000 kilograms and shes only a meter away, the most gravitional force you'll get is something like 7 times 10^-14 Newtons. Feel free to add plenty more zeroes onto the ships mass--you'll need a lot more to counteract that universal gravitational constant (6.022 * 10^-23). Gravity is a really weak force.
Also, I must ask
Surprisingly, the pod glided away without so much as a jar. It didn’t have view ports, but they did have front and back image feeds, and they got to watch the ‘new’ ship collide with a moon-sized asteroid. One moment the ship was heading right for it, the next there was nothing more than a cloud of shrapnel.
One of our moon's size? That's uh, really big.
The moonlet has air? That's quite, uh, interesting. And surprising.
Physics nitpicking aside...
I'd like more description about the location of where they crashed. I didn't precisely understand until she mentioned it in the dialogue. A little description can go a long way.
The writing was solid. I agree with Cynic, the part fixing the ship was quite well written. Overall the prose is solid, though I wonder about your character development slightly. She seems to blame him for the engine exploding unjustly. It's not his fault it blew up, and his plan to get out of there was sound. She didn't have any other plan to get the pod to safety, so his was as good as any. ...That sounded harsh. I'm sorry. During reading, it really wasn't that big of a deal, it merely irked me a touch.
Is this a short story? If so, I'm definitely interested to see the resolution, but I worry it won't have as much impact as I expect an Act Two/Three to have.
But solid writing. That's always good :)
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I second Chaos on describing the moonlet they land on. From reading the piece as is, we have no idea what anything looks like. The description there is so barren in comparison with your awesome description of the patching procedure.
Oh, and I also second him on your prose. Well done.
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Thanks for all the feedback! I'll freely admit that in this version I'm focused more on practicing "showing instead of telling." I realize it's rather dry emotionally right now and I promise the next version will focus more on characterization. :)
It is a short story, still in progress. Part two is as long, if not longer, and will resolve many things. ;D
She seems to blame him for the engine exploding unjustly. It's not his fault it blew up...
um, it kinda is... but you don't know that yet.
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Thoughts While Reading:
I think some of the narration when you are explaining her bosses' possible motivations is unnecessary. And some of the initial dialogue isn't as natural as I would like, but this is me being really nit picky.
I need some foreshadowing or at least a clearer transition when the asteroids hit. Right now, it comes off as random more than sudden.
She seems rather detached to the ship crashing. You're either going for the shock factor for the full emotional crash later or just not giving me enough.
I think I might have wanted at least a taste of the struggle and emotions she had in setting up their camp, some descriptions at the very least.
I don't know how necessary I find the description of the latrine uses at the end, but I suppose it all depends on what comes next.
Overall Impression:
Very nice read. Need some more character and emotions but descriptions and action were pretty good and I enjoyed it. Can't help much with the physics, but I am willing to fight Erik on the bones. They are white and tend to yellow as they age/decay/are removed.
She seems to blame him for the engine exploding unjustly. It's not his fault it blew up...
um, it kinda is... but you don't know that yet.
But she does?
Good work! :D
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She seems to blame him for the engine exploding unjustly. It's not his fault it blew up...
um, it kinda is... but you don't know that yet.
I'll second Frog here: but she does? If she knows, we should probably learn that, considering we are in her viewpoint.
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I pretty much second all of the above. You definitely need to add in a line or so telling the reader that they've landed and left the lifepod, the way it is now, establishing the new setting in dialogue, is just too confusing. Maybe you could hint at the fact that they're headed towards the moon they later land on while they're still in the pod.
Speaking of dialogue, I liked the initial banter very much. The fact that they're speaking of things entirely unrelated to the goings-on at hand makes it seem very genuine. However, I also thought that the bit where they're running to the pod and whatnot was somewhat bereft of emotion. They're a tad too calm, considering the situation they're in.
I would also agree that the strongest part is definitely the beginning, but overall the prose is solid, at the very least. Good job!
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Jerran grabs Shandi and drags her towards the lifepod. I'm starting to wonder how many other people are on this ship. Are there any other people on this ship? Is Jerran planning to do anything about them/for them?
Doesn't her suit include gloves? Might be kind of difficult to feel for a pulse wearing those.
Normally I'm fine with not knowing things the characters do know, but Shendi is going on about how Jerran doesn't know, and she just wants to shake him, etc, and I don't know what she's talking about. And for some reason I find it a little bit irritating.
(However, it does mean that I can answer everyone's "but she does?" questions from above. Yes, it would appear that she does. :P)
I think Recovering Cynic is right... sort of. I think there will probably need to be an emotional breakdown of some kind eventually, but I'm okay with that happening in the second half of the story.
It does, on reflection, feel a little bit detached--but that isn't necessarily a problem. It could be the shock of the situation taking a while to set in. Or whatever. You can always play that angle up more.
I was a bit surprised to find that the moonlet had air, yes. And I would like to see more description of said moonlet, yes.
"Show don't tell" goes for characterization too. In fact, in my opinion that's probably the most important part of "show don't tell".
But yes. I'll second the opinions that the beginning is so far the strongest part, and that the second part seems a little emotionally bereft. Nothing that can't be fixed, though.
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I pretty much agree with what everyone else said, but there were a few lines that kinda bugged me. I wasn't going to post them, but everyone else said what I had in mind, so I'll be nitpicky.
An engineer, I’m not!” - I realize that it is technically proper, but I dislike this wording. It annoys me, inexplicably. <shrug>
I wonder if this is what it feels like after a beating. - I'm not sure why this line bugged me, but it did... Seemed out of place... It's kind of a random thing to think... <shrug>
On the other hand, I really liked this part... thought it was funny. <grin>
"I’m only thirty-three!”
“…years older than me,” she cut in, clomping down the passage toward the suit closet. “Rugged good looks I’ll grant you, but your hair would be white if you didn’t have implants.”
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Heh. I'm glad you all think I can at least write well. ;)
And thank you. All of your comments are very helpful and constructive. :D
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Everyone already mentioned everything I liked about the story, and the plot/characterization issues, so when I fill my critique with only nitpicky nerd stuff, don't think it's because I didn't like anything.
First: the crash.
"Nav computer’s sunk. It won’t let me pilot, and it doesn’t believe in asteroids.”
The minor issue here is the ambiguity—does the nav computer not believe in asteroids because it's sunk, or because its designers were idiots? Frankly, a functional computer would be much better at avoiding asteroids than a human pilot.
The major issue is that it's implausible. It's hard to swallow the idea that a space ship would be rendered unpilotable by a single point of failure—especially if that failure is a computer crash. And this wouldn't be just any computer crash, it would be a hardware failure. What could even cause such a failure? A power surge from criminal undermaintenance? Even then, the computer should be protected from the rest of the ship's electrical system by breakers.
Next issue - the escape pod engine explosion. What kind of propulsion is it using? The circumstances seem to imply chemical rocketry, which I find implausible. Do you know how much rocket fuel it takes just to get to the moon? We're talking millions of tons here. A chemically-propelled lifepod would have enough fuel to set a trajectory and drift, but not much else.
In any case, it's unlikely that the lifepod would even survive a catastrophic fuel explosion. If it did, the acceleration wouldn't last very long and the pod would be left tumbling. (This would, or course, be rather unpleasant.)
Next - there's no way they're actually close enough to this moonlet to crash land on it so soon after the engine explodes. Space is big. Unless they were already in low orbit around it, it would take at least a few days of drifting to even approach it.
Then when they do get there, how do they survive reentry without burning up? Remember the Space Shuttle Columbia? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Shuttle_Columbia_disaster) A little chink in the heat shield made the whole thing go boom, and it was being piloted on a carefully planned reentry trajectory. What are the odds of a critically damaged, unpiloted lifepod on a random trajectory becoming anything more than a meteorite?
But, of course, (as others have pointed out), to even have air this "moonlet" would need to be bigger than our moon (http://lunarscience.nasa.gov/kids/moon_air).
Okay, yes, I am a space nerd. Guilty. And I know you're not writing "hard" science fiction. That's fine. But that last page I linked was targeted to kids. This is kiddie stuff! We may let Star Wars get away with this stuff, but literature is (for whatever reason) held to a higher standard than film.
Have you read Arthur C. Clarke's "Space Odyssey" books? If not, I'd recommend it, if only because anyone trying to write this sort of story needs to study at the metaphorical feet of that particular master of the genre.
Speaking of Star Wars,
An engineer, I’m not!
Yoda an engineer is not. A Jedi master Yoda is.
Finally, my last nitpick is that there wasn't really much in this story that caught my interest, much less made me sit up and pay attention. I don't know much about the characters so I don't really care about them, the plot seems fairly run of the mill, and nothing in your sci-fi world has stood out to me yet. Maybe part 2 will change my mind.
*ryos goes off to read part 2*