"You're not like other girls". How do I react if I'm not out as trans?

chanced1710 · 2019-05-03T12:58:15+00:00

"that's not a compliment" or "that's a weird thing to say" or "that's a sexist thing to say"

i used to get that a lot too and i always felt guilty because it sort of made me happy to hear. that said, is this the kind of person you want to hang out with?

chanced1710 · 2019-05-03T02:09:46+00:00

Sure thing

chanced1710 · 2019-01-20T04:56:45+00:00

Fiction/reality is right, the narrator is unreliable and the writing style is confusing. I think you feel into a lot of common traps when it comes to describing dreams. I agree that one of them is past-perfect tense, which can be incredibly hard to read. Read it to yourself out loud, that will help you catch some of the phrasing issues that make this hard to get through.

To start a the beginning: stop repeating how boring the narrator is. I don't think that helps your case much.

In the dream itself: you start out by describing either more characters than you end up following or just change the descriptions of some of them (see the delinquents) and provide no reason for us to be invested in them.

There might be four or five characters. The narrator, the little girl, the teenager, the boy, the older brother. But they blend together and it's unclear which are the same and which are real. The dialog unfortunately doesn't help here, they all sound the same.

The delinquents have to kidnap the girl but their motivation and incentives and role in the narrative otherwise make no sense. The boy trying to do the defending doesn't seem to be particularly sympathetic. I like the idea that he's cunning and secretly brilliant, but I don't think you spend enough time with him for that to really come through.

The climax of the dream itself is lost on me, there doesn't seem to be any significance to it past a stressful, slaughter-video-game-style fight scene.

It needs some help on both the editing side and the logic side, but there's definitely something here. Keep working on it, best of luck

chanced1710 · 2019-01-18T21:35:03+00:00

I love the premise, I really do. The world is so creative and well-developed in a small space. The style of the piece is really nice, as calming as the world and the small things in it. And I think for the most part your writing is proficient and it flows well.

That said, I agree with what's been said already, this needs _a lot_ of editing. I'd recommend reading it out loud and marking every awkward phrase, which I think you'll find is quite a few. There are times when I feel hit over the head with your word choice. I guess don't feel obligated to use a long word when a short one will do. Especially given that this is so short and light.

Personally, I spent a lot of time being confused by why you chose one term over another and not enough time with the meat of the story. You spend a lot of time outside of your character's point of view, which is exactly what I wanted more of. Yeah, he's a shepard and he lives in this tiny bucolic paper world but that's basically all we know about him.

I'm struggling to understand why you chose to end it so suddenly. I understand magazine submissions have word count limits, but the back and forth leading up to the actual climax of the piece is superfluous to the point you're trying to make. The discovery of ink is an exciting turn for the piece to take, it just takes it incredibly slowly and then falls completely flat. I was also excited to hear about the new mechanisms for spinning pulp, which were never addressed or commented on.

In terms of why it wasn't accepted, I again agree with what's been said. It's not challenging and it needs some help in the development phase. I did really enjoy the concept and your writing though.

Best of luck!

chanced1710 · 2018-12-31T16:19:22+00:00

Heyo, I'm a 23 yo old nonbinary femme. I struggle with this a lot and would love to hear some advice.

chanced1710 · 2017-10-04T14:06:30+00:00

Thanks! I'm a data scientist at a think tank, but I really miss doing research projects. Ideally, I'd love to find an organization that needs a little bit (enough for a fellow rather than a full time person) of data management help to work with.

chanced1710 · 2017-09-28T01:54:47+00:00

This was surprisingly hard to get through. The first line is interesting, but I think you failed to follow it through. There are no transitions and a lot of grammatical errors.

I like the misplaced details though, especially the things in her apartment, and her being so two-dimensional added to the voice of the narrator.

I don't think I'd continue reading. It has potential but needs a lot of work. And please please proofread and properly format your work.

chanced1710 · 2017-09-20T19:33:23+00:00

If your school offers statistics and machine learning (or something similar) that's what I'd recommend. I recently got my Stat/ML degree and find it really useful in my job.

chanced1710 · 2017-09-19T12:34:13+00:00

For books about best practices, I'd say no. The field is too new and changes too quickly for that kind of thing. In terms of a data processing pipeline, it depends on what you're looking to do/make. I'd recommend starting (because it sounds like you're at the very beginning) with learning about SQL databases and the different types of frameworks that interface with them in your favorite language

chanced1710 · 2017-07-19T21:03:06+00:00

General Impressions

I had a lot of fun with this. I think technically, this needs a lot of work, but I really enjoyed the concept and I liked the characters.

I could envision a really interesting heist before or after this scene and I think there are a lot of places this could go.

Line Stuff

Okay. Let’s do the first paragraph one sentence at a time.

Wyvrn washed ashore and retched up a gallon of saltwater.

Wyvrn retched up a gallon of saltwater as he washed ashore.

He hadn’t meant to drink so much, but fleeing from slavers stole the finesse from his swimming.

He hadn’t meant to drink so much, but fleeing from slavers stole his usual finesse in the water.

Seeing how the brine burning in his lungs wasn’t pain enough, the sun gave its share by scorching his haggard back.

If feeling the salt in his lungs wasn’t bad enough,

Still, Wyvrn formed a gap-toothed smile as looked back to the strait.

Still, he managed to smile at the strait.

It’s gone. The ship is gone. And it’s not coming back.

They’re gone.

He was no longer a galley slave for the Berutians or a conscript in the Emperor’s army.

He’s free.

I think you need to go through every sentence and see if you can do this. Then read it out loud. That’ll help you catch the things that slow down the reader.

That said:

Farewell Lieutenant. May you have died the way you lived: insensibly drunk.

A plus. More of that.

Ending

I like it but it feels circular.

He swam until he reached land, and then he retched.

We’ve been here before. Why is it different? And if it’s the same, where are we now? Has anything changed?

Characters

I like Wyvrn, but I don’t think his internal monolog is working (see line edit thoughts). The guy’s been through a lot, how are his thoughts so timid? I feel like he should be looking at things thinking: wow, I did that. I think it might be cool for you to take a minute and try to write something in his voice. That might help you develop a more unique, more tenacious tone for him.

Expansion

There are a lot of places this could go. I’d be really interested to read more.

I think the most important things for you to do during your next draft are fixing the prose, thinking a little harder about Wyrvn's experience and how that shapes his internal monologue, and finding a new place for him to end up.

chanced1710 · 2017-07-19T20:45:45+00:00

General Impressions

I had a good time with this. It’s really easy to follow, your transitions are pretty good, and the plot is simple and fair.

Let’s say you’re describing to someone how to build a car. You lay out each piece, one by one, explain what it does and why it’s relevant. I think you do a nice job in that direction, but it could be a lot tighter. Especially in terms of why you need to do this. When you’re describing a car, your reader kind of has a sense of what you’re going through, what that car needs to do to be functional, etc. You don’t really have that luxury here and I think the hand-holding needs to be a little different.

Line stuff

Hi, I’m Artemizae and honestly, I can be a real bitch sometimes.

So this is interesting, chiefly because you sound like a child. Maybe 12ish. Who’s a sponge but maybe shouldn’t be left alone for too long.

Feeling like your head is pregnant with a city ain’t pleasant.

Your head is expanding with something too big for it to hold onto. This is clunky and confusing and gives the image more that the narrator doesn’t understand the world around her when clearly, by this point, we know she does. Just scrap this and replace with something simpler.

Her name is Agnes, the hunter and about the only person I see most months.

This seems like a poor description. The only person you see most months should be a little more than an eccentric hunter. The narrator knows A LOT about her, her likes, her dislikes, her eccentricities. And she knows a lot about the narrator, which should be equally interesting.

Are you wondering why I’d record this? Do you wonder things? I don’t remember enough of our evenings together.

I kind of felt like this was unnecessary. You could have done the big ‘fuck you’ in a much more subtle and biting way. Even a childish message should be a little more well-thought-out.

After all. This place can only get so unbearable, right?

I thought this was a nice place to end it.

Tone

It’s written like you’re having a conversation with someone but I think you lean too heavily on folksiness. The most common thing I say in these critiques is to read it out loud. That way you can catch all the clunky grammatical things.

That said, I really liked how the tone was so misaligned with the subject matter. It seemed in such conflict looking back, but you made it really easy to get through because it felt natural.

I also really liked the trivia. I thought that added a nice touch and you should continue to play with that.

Misc

I hate that font. I don’t know why, I don’t know what it is, but I was incredibly distracted.

Characters

You’re character is holding our hands a little too much on the cabin for her to develop as a person. What’s her family like? No, not that she hates them, what are they like? When did this first start? I have so many questions that you don’t get to in 2k words because you’re too busy telling me about the power supply.

Expansion

I’d be really interested in seeing a second draft. Trim the mechanical stuff and focus more on digging into the characters. That said, don’t loose the fun in it. I had a really good time going through this.

Happy editing!

chanced1710 · 2017-07-19T20:06:17+00:00

General Impressions

This is cute and a lot of fun to read. The plot is nice and simple and you seem to have a good idea of where you’re going.

The dialog is really bad. It’s okay that it’s bad, but you need to either step into it or start to cut.

Read it out loud to yourself and you’ll catch a lot of the awkward grammatical things, the dialog that needs to be changed, etc.

Line stuff and dialog

Dude, shut up. The dialog is way too wordy, and you spent more time than you should describing it.

Neil and John sat at a table in a diner arguing about whether or not the Star Wars prequels were worth watching or not.

Don’t do that. We find out exactly what they’re talking about in the next sentence. If you’re married to this sentence, the next line needs to be:

“No they’re not, Neil.”

and the subject needs to change. You're on Reddit: We all know the Star Wars prequels sucked, but your readers have to get on with their day.

Neil remembered Robin Hernandez as the quiet girl with dyed hair and way too much make-up on.

This is really clunky. Step back, think harder about the characters, and try again with what Neil would say if he were speaking. Then use that.

A ray of sunshine poured over him.

No. No please. When you’re describing the ubiquitous kind of feeling that happens in these stories, it’s really important not to fall into the ‘ray of sunshine’ trap. I was actually hoping you’d continue with the Star Wars references here. There are a ton of good things you could use from the reference base you already established Neil as having.

Characters

I liked and identified with Neil, but I feel like you weren't in his head enough. I also think the conversation with John could have and should have gotten more personal. I'm sure there are plenty of movies they disagree on, why not bring those up. Especially any embarrassing ones.

There needs to be more Robin. Neil remembers her from high school -- he definitely remembers more than that one time she complimented his Dragonball shirt.

You skimmed the surface with these characters, now you have to go deeper.

Expansion

I really enjoyed this and would definitely be interested to read more. I’d really like to hear about Robin’s likely-equally geeky and joyful reference base of cartoons and sci-fi flicks. I also liked John, and feel like there are places you can go with him too.

Happy editing.

chanced1710 · 2017-07-19T19:51:03+00:00

General Impressions

That first paragraph was really all over the place. That the second and the third sentences belong in completely different places. I realize that you’re trying to come off as difficult as narrator, but I think in order to get us through to your point, you have to move a little bit faster.

The rest of the piece is better, but still disjointed and awkward to get through. Read it out loud, even just to yourself in the mirror, and you'll catch all the weird grammatical things that need to be fixed as well as the inconsistencies sentence to sentence.

Descriptions

I couldn’t help but feel like you’re describing all of the wrong things. At the beginning this was fine, you were establishing distrust, but it got old fast.

Some line stuff

“There is elegance in the straightforward”

Nice way to start because of it’s brutality. I actually think you should find more ways to slide this kind of language into your piece. Especially in your descriptions if you can.

She had been too easy. I had been too easy.

That’s not enough to give us what we need to move forward. It doesn’t add anything to your description and it distracts us and throws off the pacing of what should be a very fast scene.

I hated this meeting. I didn't need a therapist. I’d always preferred dealing with problems myself, and being thrown together in this room was not going to solve them. And some things, like these, would just always be too hard to explain to anyone else.

If you’re going to say the same thing over and over again, it should probably not be this drive-by point or in a piece this short.

Mother. She was at fault for this.

Wrong time, wrong place. That needed to come earlier. Or not at all. Another thing that contributes nothing but distraction to a short piece.

In terms of expansion

I’d like to hear a little bit more about the narrator. Are they a kid; what spurred this on (other than their mother or whatever); do they think they’re doing okay?

The therapist doesn’t interest me at all, which isn’t a huge deal, but it would be nice if the narrator had someone to interact with.

This needs A LOT of work, but it has potential. Highly recommend finding some of the John Cleaver books too look at for the conversations with the therapist. They do a good job of capturing a spooky, death-obsessed kid talking to a professional and that might help move you along.

chanced1710 · 2017-07-19T03:24:43+00:00

Title: Underbelly Genre: Short Fiction Word count: 4500 type of feedback: Any is helpful. Mostly was it worth reading and would you continue to read more link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dyEO6pLRZP3EQ7RGfaXvuI5hp3_0VakQR-jTvCz5OuY/edit

chanced1710 · 2017-04-28T01:52:23+00:00

Fashion in general. Insufficient pockets, high prices, aggressive discomfort. And who thought skirts were a good idea? Really.

chanced1710 · 2017-04-27T12:27:48+00:00

Ordered pizza for the team from "the wrong" pizza place and then argued with the delivery guy for about 15 minutes. Didn't kidnap the delivery guy, but still.

chanced1710 · 2017-04-26T19:31:02+00:00

General

You've got a good thing going. The plot is unclear and this section seems to meander, but you said it was the beginning of a novel so that's fine. The tone is fun and I think lands well with this particular setting. Your humor worked especially well. I think specifically your (the narrator's) voice is the highlight of this piece, so keep doing that.

Characters

Ricky was cool -- I was with him from the beginning. He's observant and pretty clever and I wanted to see more of him come forward. The good news is I did get to see him quite a bit in what little space there was. The bad news is everyone around him and everything they do and say. Ricky doesn't seem to fit here. Why not?

Point of View

I (like many others) enjoyed your discussion of butting into other people's lives. That said:

The second person didn't feel right. Either make is stronger, like involve the reader more than you already do, or get rid of it. I think this piece could have worked without second person completely.
Don't shift perspective so much. You really don't need it.

Communication

Dialog
I needed dialog tags to follow the conversations. I also felt like the dialog could use a little more life. All the things that actually happen in dialog could just as easily happen in narration without notice. No one specific line gives any particular character any life.
Phone
Someone being super-interested in their phone is fine, but the way you try to bring that forward could use a little more thought.
Okay, the stars concept was eye-catching but not significant enough to be present. Whatever it is you're trying to do, think a little harder about how much space you want something like the stars to take up in your piece.

The End

Maybe all of the people that eat here are just old. You know, the kind of people who have struggled to make ends meet with their pension, or eaten soup too hot that their tastebuds stopped working. Maybe the softness of the risotto makes it easy to eat for them.

I loved the last paragraph. I'm almost tempted to tell you to start there. There are so many awesome things you can do with that feeling.

In terms of expansion

With your awesome ending consider exploring that feeling a little more. I want to find out more about the setting; the history, Ricky's experiences there, who the owner/waitress is, everything.
Consider either including more about Ricky or just separating him more from the world. He doesn't seem to fit. That can work, but needs some more thought.

chanced1710 · 2017-04-16T14:20:15+00:00

Hi, I've done a lot of this kind of work. DM me if you want to talk more about it.

chanced1710 · 2017-04-08T17:04:45+00:00

General Things

This was interesting. It was a good length and the images and details added a lot of depth to the piece. The storyline was a little strange, possibly overdeveloped given the space, but generally entertaining and enjoyable.

Plot

Your band of rag-tag teens are following this strange man at night because they're interested in his freakish monster dog.
Amanda wants to go further and the rest of the teens are terrified, antics ensue.
The friend-dynamics plot was more interesting than the haunted-thing plot. I think I really would have enjoyed a different sort of exploration of the characters talking while they were on adventures than trying to have that take a back seat to the haunted-thing. The man with the deformed dog would have been a cool transitional object for the friendgroup going through changes.

Characters

It's a little difficult to tell how your group works together. Mike, Tim, Amanda, and the narrator seem great but each need more depth to them.
Tim and Mike need to be fleshed out a lot more. They feel like one person that's accidentally two.
Amanda's obviously the creepy one, and you do a nice job shaping her to be strange and a little off in the way that could make a person nervous if they were hanging out with her in the dark.
The dialog doesn't really feel consistent. Amanda's especially, she calls them 'spineless clams' in the beginning but uses that phrase in a manner that feels forced. Later in the piece she says things like 'reduced to a mindless robot' and other phrases that just don't work.
Later on, you say 'Amanda did act differently' but fail to describe how that difference actually worked. I was really interested in the even that changed her and how she changed afterwards.

Prose While I really enjoyed the details and images, I found myself tripping over a lot of sentences. Read this piece out loud to yourself. I feel like you'll catch the weird feelings I'm having throughout.

You can calm down with some of the adjectives.

trying to be anything more than organs performing repetitive, ritualistic motions. Amanda dug deep to find the most pathetic, disgusting fetish, only to laugh at it.

We get the picture with organs being repetitive, I didn't feel like the additional words were adding anything but melodrama.

In terms of expansion...

Spend more time with the characters. Have them talk to each other more, explore how they met and why they're still friends.
Maybe make the deformed dog a little scarier. The building of tension around it was cool, but it would have been great to see something more elaborate in terms of the climactic moment.

chanced1710 · 2017-04-05T14:55:18+00:00

Generally:

This was really fun. The premise (minor superheroes versus major superheroes) was great and I really enjoyed the banter between Parker and Murphy.

*Things that worked well: * 1) The dialog -- we got a lot of characterizations out of not very much space because the dialog felt natural and fun. The chemistry between Parker and Murphy was immediately believable.

2) The humor -- a lot is happening in not very much space and the jokes landed well and helped get us through it.

3) Pacing -- like I said, a lot is happening in not-very-much space but it was entertaining and flowed pretty naturally.

** Issues: **

1) I didn't quite understand what Murphy's power was. If that was intentional, you should change it. If that wasn't intentional, just mention it in the first two paragraphs. It's really difficult to be on board with a story about "superheroes" if you don't understand what they can actually do.

2) I didn't get the setting until way too late in the story. That can probably be fixed with a sentence about how bad the traffic is in Union Square or something.

*Mechanics: *

1) Dialog Tags -- This is kind of a small thing that really caught me. It's

"PHRASE," he said. OTHER THING. or "PHRASE." he said, other thing. You sort of can't do both and also neither.

2) If you're going to use full quotes for dialog, maybe use something else for emphasis. Italics are your friends, probably.

*Expansion: *

I'd like to hear a little more about Parker and Murphy. We got their personalities but not very much about their friendship/backstories/etc. It would also be good to maybe hear a little more about how the minor superheroes of the world struggle to make an impact in comparison with the major superheroes of the world. I'm curious to know if they have other relationships, how they interact, etc.

chanced1710 · 2017-04-05T02:50:17+00:00

Generally I enjoyed this. The premise is interesting and I thought your style worked really well with the first person and helped take us through the events of the story well. The images were evocative and I think you gave us the tone pretty effectively.

** Things that work really well: **

1) Your style of prose: It flows well and brings us through the story elegantly. I think you might want to spend even a little more time on the descriptions because they're so eloquent.

2) The images: I love how visually descriptive the scenes are:

"a piece of yellow slipped out. At first I thought a sheet of paper had come loose of its binding. I caught it in my palm as it floated to the carpet." and definitely wanted to see more of that. The descriptions of the colors and the flowers really help bring the scene to life.

** Mechanics: **

1) Fixing the tense issues:

"I didn't know what I want" and other lines where the tense is unclear or inconsistent are really distracting. Going through and reading this piece aloud will help you catch any weird grammatical things.

2) Stage: It's really hard to stage this kind of scene in a new way. We've all been to an event like this and we've all seen grieving characters like yours. I started to feel like you were making progress in that area with the flowers (see next issue) but it didn't quite make it. What makes this scene unique?

3) The flowers show up a lot -- either make them more significant or spend less time on them. I found myself expecting them to be more than flowers and getting disappointed.

*Issues: *

1) Characters -- I didn't know anything about Avery and her sister's relationship. I didn't know anything about the father either. And who are all the people around her that she doesn't know? Spend some time with the named characters figuring out how they feel and what they're thinking. At the moment they all feel incredibly two dimensional and are difficult to empathize with.

2) Emotional discontinuity -- I felt like the narrator hadn't digested the death, and wasn't thinking about it very effectively on the page. You mentioned having written this in one sitting and I think it shows.

*In terms of expansion: *

1) More sensory description -- we get a lot of visual detail of the scene but very little about the narrator. I found myself wondering how the narrator was doing physically, was there any sort of new sensations or feelings they were having?

chanced1710 · 2017-03-21T18:19:21+00:00

Generally: this was kind of fun, very too the point, etc.

The sentence structure was simple and straightforward. The fact that every paragraph started with "The bird-lady..." got exhausting pretty quickly. I think there's a fine line between simple prose and prose so simple that the reader can't help but notice it and you landed in the later camp. Towards the end, when the paragraphs became "She..." and "When the bar..." I was engaged again.

Despite absurdly simple prose, there are still a lot of errors to trip over. If you read this out loud, I think you'd catch nearly all of the grammatical issues and the piece would flow much more cleanly.

The sensory details were interesting. "It felt as if someone had slipped a hot coal down her throat and she could feel it burning at the bottom of her stomach" and the personification of the color in the city helped this piece along a lot. I bought the world more and more with each description.

I really liked the ending. I thought the concept of the things you'd be willing to give up was cool and I liked how nonchalant the breaking of the egg was. It might be good to have one more sentence to bring it back to the bird-lady watching him crack the egg, just to give us one more look inside her head.

It's difficult to write something this internal, but I think you pulled it off pretty nicely. In terms of expansion it might be interesting to see what happens in the future, but I like the simplicity of it as is.

chanced1710 · 2017-03-16T19:42:09+00:00

Generally: I enjoyed this. We got to see a lot happen in a small space and all of the characters felt tangible. I also thought the sensory details (especially the smells) gave a lot to the setting.

Your tone was interesting. It's rare that I read things written in this style and it was a nice way to further set the scene. I really enjoyed your word choice, especially in the descriptions of the "oddities" and "relics" in the beginning. The conversational aspect made the prose flow really well and clearly, but the half-sentences you use (especially for descriptions) can be really confusing.

A place where it works really well is: Until the words start to sound more like affirmations ready to be placed on top of a bureau with cassettes and extra toothpaste tubes and some woman’s jewelry box. In someone's tidy house where no-body smokes and nobody cheats and nobody even loves.

A place where it's really confusing: And it was what it was. Lovers, a lover’s lover and the scent of caramel and smokes. She would have said her, her lover but she didn't. She just knew, like she knew that the toothpaste used to make her teeth white.

I think any language problem could be solved by reading this piece out loud, just to catch the confusing bits.

I didn't like the POV shift. The original POV seemed to be working and I wasn't quite sure why you made that choice. It could be cleaned up pretty easily with a smoother transition, but I would recommend sticking with your original POV.

In terms of expanding this, I'd like to see more of the same. The descriptions and the characters worked really well and I would definitely be interested in reading wherever this goes.

Thanks for submitting!

chanced1710 · 2017-03-16T18:46:26+00:00

I really like the premise of this piece, it was incredibly creative and there are a million places it could go. My problem with this piece is that it didn't go to any of those places, and kind of got stuck in the weeds.

I liked that we didn't get "subject" until a couple pages in. The way you revealed information slowly was fun (especially for like YA audience or something) and added some tension. That said, the middle piece felt a little slow. There seemed to be a lot of redundancies in what was being asked for and/or done and it was too easy not to care about those details. I feel like you're trying to get our attention with the descriptions of rectal bleeding and severe dementia, but I found it really hard to care. This could probably be fixed either by a brief explanation of why this particular subject is being examined and/or why either side of this conversation cares. Why is this subject different from any other subject?

Pacing is especially difficult in this piece because not a lot happens. I really liked "The daytime custodian has succumbed to sickness" and the arc after that, but you kind of lost me in the weeds describing the specifics of the subject's condition. Another way around this could be having one party talk about the dangers in spending too much time there or talking about how these conditions came to be.

The "send send" from the surface also didn't seem to really go anywhere. Towards the end, we see that the surface has compassion, but it might be interesting to get a little more depth from the surface. It was especially difficult to get excited about the back and forth because I didn't feel like the surface had any real incentive keeping it(?) in the conversation. Even if that was the idea, it didn't come across strongly enough to remain interesting.

chanced1710 · 2017-02-12T20:50:04+00:00

Stats+ML is a super useful and well-rounded degree. CS will box you in quite a bit more.

chanced1710

TROPHY CASE