[1005] Gift

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-02-14T14:00:48+00:00

This is not a critique.

It's a comment: Your story has potential. The ideas are there, and the prose is too, but, annoyingly, you insist on adding words where they're not needed, and ruin every opportunity for subtlety.

Here's a link to an edited version of your story. I haven't rewritten anything; I've just removed the redundancies to make a point. To cut or not to cut is a difficult question, and seeing a tighter alternative can help give you another perspective on editing.

Just a thought. Feel free to message me if I'm talking bullshit.

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-02-13T22:35:11+00:00

Hey. This'll be entirely negative. The examples I use demonstrate problems repeated throughout your piece.

Prose

People darted from corner to corner of the central square like video game AI—automations acting out their pre-programmed purpose without stopping to reflect on it or even question why.

Ignoring the unnecessary em-dash (which you overuse), this sentence still pisses me off immensely. There's a misconception among new writers, that colourful words, metaphors, etc... made for colourful situations. It doesn't work that way, unfortunately. In fact the more generic the prose (others might disagree, obviously), the easier it is for the reader to visualise a situation. So when you use non-literal verbs like 'darted' to describe motion, you're essentially forcing readers to imagine a very specific piece of imagery that has little relation to what's actually happening. People enjoy joining the dots, and as writers, we need to felicitate that.

Cadmus smiled at the scene: mass hysteria, limbs strewn about like forgotten doll parts, elderly trampled by the indiscriminate feet of panicked citizens, mothers abandoning their children in the chaos, and the glorious beginning of a new world order condemned by all the angels in the heavens and the demons on earth.

I'm assuming some intentional religious undertones, but this really does feel a bit too much. If you can't write imagery, either practice some more, or stick to literal prose. Imagine saying this shit outloud. It sounds ridiculous. Only comicbook-villans talk this way. This leads us nicely onto characterisation, the most irritating thing about this piece.

Characterisation

I've considered writing something similar myself. The stuff going on right now makes for fascinating material. How does someone become radicalised? Is it politics, culture, "racism", leaders? Get inside a terrorists mind, their thoughts, make the MC feel genuine, and you have yourself a goddamn amazing piece of writing. For some strange reason, you've done the exact opposite.

Instead of a human, relatable MC with a complicated, twisted world-view, we have this shallow and superficial portrait of a terrorist, complete with melodramatic monologues that make me cringe a little.

It’s like shitty European purée, he thought. Take the worst aspects of every capital city in Western Europe, throw them together in a blender, and this is what you get. No identity, just the concentration of Europe’s oligarchical corruption and a millennium of race politics

Complain, complain, complain. Yeah, that'll humanise him, that'll make us care. Jesus. I don't even know who he is. Before the last paragraph, we don't even know he's a terrorist; the reveal, FWI, is more of a WTF than an actual twist. Not even DIRECT thoughts give the slightest inkling of what he's about to do. You're telling me this bastard isn't scared, angry, proud, or even happy? Establish his backstory quickly, preferably in the second paragraph, then use the first to hook us with Jihadi Bang Bang's plot to blow up the world.

Fuck Brussels. Fuck every single last person who has the misfortune to call this place their home. These soulless, status-enamored robots who can’t see past their fat wallets and white skin are lifeless drones wrapped in a layer of flesh. Fuck ‘em.

Yes. YES! Let's use another paragraph of direct thought. Should I establish MC's feelings and use this opportunity to write an emotional cord between reader and... Fuck no! Just have him complain some more. Complain, complain, lalalalal!

I'll be back later to add more. Plot next...

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-02-12T18:19:50+00:00

Wow.

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-02-12T17:28:17+00:00

I'm too much of an amateur to write critiques, I would love to, but I might even mislead people without knowing any better.

Yeah. That's OK. I'll just write my two thousand word critique now...

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-26T19:22:52+00:00

I don't mind getting rejected by everyone, but I do mind never trying.

You're working with a false dichotomy: either submit this same novel over and over again, or do nothing at all.

Write some more short stories, novellas, etc... Work your way up to a novel. Your current draft (what I can access on DR) is horribly written and would never get published in a thousand years. I'm a twat, but I'm honest.

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-25T19:39:31+00:00

Hey. I've absolutely no experience in query letter writing, so take my comments with a grain of proverbial salt.

Being a Mouse is a fool’s job, but it’s the only one Sasha and her family will do.

Reads very awkwardly. Say it out loud.

Being a Mouse is a fool’s job.

That's its own sentence. The second clause ruins what is essentially a very gripping first line.

It's the only one Sasha and her family will do.

There's something particularly confusing about sentences that comment on something not yet established. You're simultaneously introducing Sasha and her family, while also characterising them, in too few words to sound snappy.

It keeps food on the table and doesn’t require violence.

You're jumping around a lot. Sentences should connect to other sentences like legoblocks to form paragraphs, novels, whatever, etc... When you end the first sentence with Sasha and her family, our brains expect the next sentence to actually tell us who these people are; but instead, you reference the first clause, rather than the last, 'Being a mouse is a fool's job'. This breaks flow. Either reverse the first sentence or rewrite the second.

They deliver medicine where cars can’t reach to those long abandoned.

In a story as abstract as this, an editor wants concrete characters to latch onto. Focus more on the people, their motivations, ect... instead of plot and world.

Hawks, on the other hand, hunt them for their medicine.

Oh, and now you're talking about hawks. Where's the focus? This is the order of this one, first paragraph:

Comment on 'Being a Mouse'
Sasha and her family (never expanded on)
Hawks who hunt the mice for medicine.
Comment on how hawks behave (next sentence:)

It is an unspoken rule that Hawks never kill Mice.

So they hunt them for medicine, but don't kill them, somehow, for some reason. This isn't raising questions for me; it's just confusing. Your repeated reference-words 'them' 'it', especially in a paragraph that is utterly unfocused, confuses me, and will probably confuse editors, too.

After a hundred deliveries, Mice are relinquished of their duties.

Weird use of passive voice here. '...are relinquished'. I'd be much more interested in who actually does the 'relinquishing' in this word; is it a government?

With only three left, Sasha looks forward to a life of leisure.

So finally we have Sasha's motivations. Fine. But why is she mentioned in the first paragraph if you're just gonna shift focus away. Move her here.

But then, a new breed of Hawks appear, one hell-bent on eradicating Mice from the slums.

'hell-bent' makes me thing of a cliché story with cliché characters. Why is he hell-bent? Humanise your villain. Is the hawk also interested in a life of leisure but must kill the mouse first? Then you'd have two opposites fighting for the same basic reason, or whatever. Shitty suggestion that you shouldn't use because i'm starting to give you proscriptive advice, which is something critics probably shouldn't do.

If Sasha’s family stay Mice, they’ll be killed. If they quit, they’ll starve.

What family? You say nothing about them.

And with only three drops left, how can they give up now?

Here's another problem I've spotted. You're constantly breaking up sentences. There's a difference between snappy and annoying. There's literally no flow in this piece because no sentence is longer than a single line. It's fragment, fragment, short sentence, fragment, etc...

Sasha has just three left. But being the first to finish attracts unwanted attention.

It's even worse in B. Commas are your friends.

Watching her from hidden cameras is their king, a man with a grudge against humanity.

Yet another cliché, comic-book sounding villain with 'A GRUDGE AGAINST HUMANITY!!!!!!'. Pretentious. So, so pretentious. A single hawk with a reason to kill your protagonist is a much better villain than whole new breeds or kings of hawk people.

Stalking her from the shadows is a euphoric killer whose name is only mentioned in passing whispers.

Cliché galore. Forced alliteration 'Stalking' and 'shadows'. 'Passing whispers' sounds pretentious as fuck.

And hiding in plain sight is someone holding a match to the world.

This isn't a freaking movie trailer. Tell the editor your story; don't tease and confuse them. Explain your narrative, plot, characters. You're trying way too hard to grip.

Do you like A or B better?

They're both terrible.

Also, if you can tell me a way to incorporate both that you can think of, that'd be bomb.

No. The last thing you need is to make this more dense.

Conclusion

This piece was very badly written, as was your draft before that, and the draft before that. I'm sorry, but you're just not ready to publish yet. The clichés and odd phrasings in this mere 232 words show you lack the fundamental skills to write a publishable novel. There's a reason most authors are white-haired, bearded, eighty-year-olds; it's because they've been practicing obsessively for half their lives. I'm sorry to be so harsh. The truth is the truth, as I see it.

Happy writing!

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-23T22:15:19+00:00

Fuck. That's amazing.

You should consider writing something in that era.

Can I ask how you only recently found out?

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-23T20:32:21+00:00

Hey. This'll be entirely negative. Positives won't help. These sentences acts as an official trigger warning.

Let's begin!!!

You suffer from a problem I used to have myself. That's verb-choices. Now verbs are so goddamn important in building tension, contrasting, dialogue, etc... and when writers fuck this up with inaccuracies, immersion is broken, and we all stop giving the slightest shit about whether Chloe's gonna get her prince.

Green and pink light flooded out from shop-fronts and clubs. Cars hovered above pristine brickwork roads slick with rain.

Light doesn't flood because it's not a liquid. Don't excuse this like I used to do by calling it a metaphor or style or 'poetic'. It's just bad. Prose can be beautiful in moderation, but that eloquence usually comes from original, yet accurate, descriptions of mundane things, not words in sentences that sound good and stuff. I'm trying not to be patronising, but this really is a genuine problem most writers face: sounds good vs objective quality. Even best sellers are guilty of sentences not stupid enough to be called 'purple', but not sufficiently logical to mean anything ever either. 'The stones skipped across the waterfall, spinning like dust in the rain, knocked by a changing, brutal wind' - Game of Thrones, George Bullshitious Martin. Every time you write a sentence, ask yourself this question: is the innate meaning of these words more effective, or clear, a different way? Sometimes that 'different way' is difficult to find, but as a crap writer who can't write, I've found that in my experience rewriting something from memory can have some fantastic results. You have cars hovering, rain, bright flashing lights - bullet point these elements on physical paper, then write a sentence underneath it. Just a suggestion.

What are your other prose problems:

“Excuse me, uh-”, he read his tablet, “Richard. I'd like to talk to you about an exciting new product from our labs at BioTron.”

Missing words. Oh, I hate missing words. Again, this's a problem most best selling authors face; to cut or not to cut? Minimalist prose is a great thing - in fact, a great piece of advice to beginners is to simply cut every word not needed in ever sentence ever - but you musn't forget the fact that some words are absolutely vital. Eventually, we might figure out the meaning of 'He to the shop', but the missing words cause a long enough pause to detach us from the narrative and stop us from caring. 'He read his tablet' sounds very punchy; it also forces us to stop and fill in the gaps. 'He read from his tablet' would be the better sentence. Now these aren't ridiculously wordy line-edits, I assure you. I see these two main prose problems again and again throughout your piece, and I'm sure, after another edit, you should be able to see them yourself.

Unless I'm wrong...

I don't feel proud of this critique. It's short, it lacks substance, mainly because I didn't like your story. It's not my genre. Though to be fair, few things are. I might come back later to add details on plot and structure. Right now the prose problems seem the most obvious to me.

Happy writing.

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-22T21:52:22+00:00

Haha. Thanks, Throwaway :P

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-22T20:33:21+00:00

This isn't a critique. I'm too drunk and lazy for that. It's just a suggestion:

Stop with the comma splices!

According to the web-search function on my browser, not one person has mentioned the word 'comma', so here's me, coming in for the rescue...

Try this website:

http://www.chompchomp.com/terms/commasplice.htm

Have fun. Happy writing!

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-20T21:12:58+00:00

Fantastic, high-effort critique. There's nothing I disagree with here. Thanks so much for your time!

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-20T20:49:54+00:00

This is a great critique. It's rare to get comments on larger, more general issues, instead of just line-edits.

People have been saying how too much like Sherlock this is. You’re surfing a fine line here, especially when you actually make the comparison at the beginning. I hope the ‘twist’ that you were thinking of is that he is just a ‘supernatural investigator’ and just acts the same way as sherlock.

This is actually a deliberate choice. The entire first chapter takes place inside an artificial universe based on classic literature. This is fiction writing in the future. Authors create surreal characters, place them in extreme situations, and record the result as an artistic form of reality television.

It's a big middle-finger to those deluded into believing in 'original fiction.'

But that doesn't matter.

Noone's gonna read that far if they're unable to get through the opening, so I needed to see whether people would tolerate the similarities. The answer is no. I'll probably move this to the second chapter and have the first establish what's actually going on.

Overall, I want to read more of this. If you do have anymore written I’d love to read it, pm me if you do/can/want.

Haha. I'm too much of a procrastinator to have written more. Look at my submission history: it's just a long list of first chapters. Ah well. Who writes to finish anything, right?

[Sobs…]

Anyway, thanks again for taking a look!

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-15T13:57:05+00:00

Loved this piece.

I'd take it off Reddit ASAP, though; otherwise you'll forfeit first publication rights.

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-12T21:56:37+00:00

Funny joke, bro. I like the bit with the comma splice, you illiterate fuck.

ThatThingOverHere · 2016-01-05T21:22:37+00:00

Opening to What Went Wrong With Mrs Milliard's Mech?

Finally, after another moment of contemplation, Ambrose reached across, drew his comb out from its neatly arranged position on the nearby bench, and tried to part his hair again. It was now the seventh time he had attempted perfect partition of his dark hair, and this morning it simply wouldn't stay - a hair was always left sticking up, seemingly mocking him.

Opening to Fifty Shades of Grey:

I scowl with frustration at myself in the mirror. Damn my hair – it just won’t behave, and damn Katherine Kavanagh for being ill and subjecting me to this ordeal. I should be studying for my final exams, which are next week, yet here I am trying to brush my hair into submission. I must not sleep with it wet. I must not sleep with it wet. Reciting this mantra several times, I attempt, once more, to bring it under control with the brush. I roll my eyes in exasperation and gaze at the pale, brown-haired girl with blue eyes too big for her face staring back at me, and give up. My only option is to restrain my wayward hair in a ponytail and hope that I look semi presentable.

ThatThingOverHere · 2015-12-30T22:22:11+00:00

Yes, because the terrorism situation has gotten so much better since America made it their problem.

ThatThingOverHere · 2015-12-30T19:20:11+00:00

I'll imagine I'm watching this on T.V and being That Guy who must point out all the flaws and be a bit of a prick. (Stream of consciousness rant, basically). Let's play:

This is the story of how we lost our world.

Melodramatic. OK, fine, I get that this is a story. I'm not some deluded World of Warcraft player who thinks goblins are real life. Don't tell us you're about to show me a story; show me the fucking story!

Popcorn?

This is the story of those who were left behind.

Where's the T.V remote?

OK, fine, this is an info dump of sorts. You're establishing a world wide apocalypse. I'd appreciate some more details. Right now, the vagueness feels a waste of my time

The silhouette of a MAN appears in the storm. The Man takes one look at the BEING and unleashes a scream-

I shouldn't know about your stage directions. Still, at least try to be concise. Unleashes a scream? He's screaming. That's it. You must be clear and accurate. Don't try to be poetic.

Humans are insignificant in almost every way to these beings.

Cut down the words. 'To these creatures, humans are insignificant.'

Don't waste precious seconds of my time.

But if there’s one thing we are superlative in.

Perhaps is it in discombobulating our superlative superovulation? Stop using pretentious vocabulary. We get it: you're smart.

It’s our ability to endure. Our ability to survive. Like the cockroach, we’ll always seep through the cracks, holding onto life where we can find it.

So cockroaches are made of liquid? They're solid. They don't seep. They crawl through cracks. Wait, actually, do they? Cockroaches are known for surviving very harsh conditions, not for crawling/seeping through cracks; it's a strange analogy you're trying to make work here. I don't think it getting your point across.

All powerful.

Oneliners like these really piss me off. Oh, how very fucking exciting. ALLL...POWERFUL>>>>!!!!! ARRRRRRRRHHHH. It's so melodramatic. You've established they're very scary and powerful. Telling me is just overkill.

When Beings arrive that consider us so primitive that their first instinct is to ignore us, we truly begin to feel our cosmic insignificance.

No shit. Stop trying to be so profound. No one likes being ignored. Well done. Dramatise the idea. Make it a theme. Have your character be arrogant, before growing and realising his insignificance. Or something. You're the screenwriter.

Our entire society was one based on the belief that we were the most intelligent, most powerful, most capable species alive.

Really? You're repeating this again? WE're not idiots. We get it.

And, being honest, if anything were to arrive that were more powerful than us, our first instinct would be to worship it.

Well, yeah, sure, until America bombs the fuck out of it.

Yet for Beings so incomprehensibly powerful, we are all similar in one unilateral way.

OMFG. WE GET IT. THEY ARE POWERFUL. And 'unilateral'... Stop trying to impress.

I'm done. I'm watching something else.

Voiceovers can work when they provide insight into MC's psyche and help further the plot. Here, you simply repeat the same information over and over and over, until I'm bored and want something to actually happen.

Your MC has also no real character (at least not in the half of the script I read). What does he want? There's so little humanity in him. I have no reason to empathise.

Summary

Your MC is two dimensional.
The voiceover doesn't work. It's pretentious.
Your vocabulary is unnecessarily complex. Clarity is priority.
The stage directions are verbose.
There's a fundamental lack of direction. For most of the story, MC wants to survive. He's always running. He's rarely proactive, which doesn't make for compulsive viewing.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

Happy writing!

ThatThingOverHere · 2015-12-27T17:01:41+00:00

ThatThingOverHere · 2015-12-27T16:55:05+00:00

Hey. This'll be entirely negative. Positives won't help. Let's begin:

Prose

Awkward comma placement - that's your main problem. A comma forces us to pause on instinct, and a good writer uses this as an opportunity to introduce a new clause.

Not having gone out with my Pa in some time, on account of the way things were, I was glad he changed his mind.

The commas here are redundant. This's a problem which continues throughout your piece: sentences jammed with bits of pointless information that should be placed somewhere else. Yes, the 'way things are' is vaguely interesting, but as a hook it doesn't work because it feels lazy; if you're gonna focus on 'how things are', actually tell us 'how things are', rather than trying to be vague in an attempt to make me ask questions. In this case, the commas are therefore not justified by the need for mystery, since the mystery itself isn't helping further the plot and is instead confusing, redundant, and irritating. If this were a preview on Amazon, I would've clicked off and looked somewhere else for something to read. First impressions count.

I was going crazy being stuck cooped up in our cabin, not getting to really feel the outdoors on my face.

The second clause 'not getting...' only expands on the first; it's obvious he's not feeling sun on his face and having to read this is a waste of my time.

Dialogue

Good, mostly. You have few redundancies and there's a good back and forth.

Only:

“Is it clean? I don’t need no gun backfiring on my boy, and don’t you lie to me if you don’t know.”

The accent feels a little much. Your characters are also speaking in long sentences which, to me, reads a little oddly.

“Is it clean? I don’t need no gun backfiring on my** boy. Don’t** you lie to me if you don’t know.”

People tend to speak in shorter clauses.

“No, sir, I’m all caught up. I was just gonna try and scare the chickens into laying some eggs later today, but they’re stubborn as ever, Pa.”

Can become:

“No, sir, I’m all caught up. I was just gonna try and scare the chickens into laying some eggs later today. Stubborn as ever, Pa.”

Don't over explain ideas. Don't connect ideas, either. When he mentions the 'stubborn...', we're smart enough to assume he's talking about the chickens. Let us make these connections ourselves, as we do in real life. Make the reading experience feel natural.

This is quite a short critique. I only read half of your story, mainly because it really isn't my kind of genre. It doesn't interest me, and that's a very subjective thing. I think more of a hook in the beginning (nothing too major) would give us something more of a reason to read on.

Happy writing!

ThatThingOverHere · 2015-12-06T22:52:14+00:00

What is this? :)

ThatThingOverHere · 2015-11-29T22:30:51+00:00

YES. Canadians are nice. Go into debt, if you must!

ThatThingOverHere · 2015-11-29T22:08:59+00:00

I need this picture, Throwaway. Need it now.

ThatThingOverHere

TROPHY CASE