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+--- Thread: Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. (/showthread.php?tid=4130)
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 17th December 2006
Your task: Read the first four chapters of Great Rumbler's book and tell him your thoughts on it.
Difficulty: Assume that you are the head of the submissions department of a large publishing firm that receives hundreds of stories every month and has to sift through a mountain of fan-fiction in order to find one really good [and interesting] story.
Questions: Is the story too "wordy"? Does the main character "talk" too much? Does the story have the right tone? Does it feel like something is missing? Does it feel like something doesn't belong? Do I feel sympathy towards the plight of the main character? Does the use of words feel right? How does the voice of the author aid/hinder the underlying story? Does the story have too much detail? Is there too little action? Are there any incosistencies or contradictions present? Does everything make some logical sense? How would I change the story if I were the author? What works? What doesn't work? How can the story be made better?
Remember: Great Rumbler likes lots of details on how he can make his story better, so please write as much as you can about it.
Reward: My ever-lasting thanks.
Text: http://www.boomspeed.com/greatrumbler/Ruins.doc
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - DMiller - 18th December 2006
Winter break starts Thursday so I will get to it then.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - EdenMaster - 18th December 2006
I will try to read it when I have some time, but I warn you now: I am not a great critic of literature. My input will be of little help.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 18th December 2006
Anything I can use to make this story a little bit better will help. Little things won't matter too much [at least ones that are in later chapters], but I've got to make the best first impression I can if I ever want to get this thing published.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Weltall - 19th December 2006
I've been reading it, and I'm about halfway through so far, so I can offer a little help. Please don't be too sensitive, some of it is criticism, but it's only intended to help. Also keep in mind that my thoughts may include differences of style and you can make of them what you will.
I like the basics of how you portray the centennial celebration in New York, but I'm the kind of reader that loves detail, even the trivial, because to me it makes a scene more realistic. Perhaps that's because I tend to the trivial and I note the little details in life, I dunno. Anyway, we were all around for the millennial New Year, and we remember how crazy it was. It wasn't that your description seemed dismissive, but I wanted to better feel the atmosphere of the moment. I want to see how people seven hundred years in the future celebrate such a milestone event in more than just the generalities. I can see and appreciate the analogs to our own time, but people will change in such a span of time, and how are they celebrating the end of 2699?
Eric Dalton is a character I'm not entirely sure I like, however, I was left with the impression that he may factor into the story again later. If so, I feel okay not understanding why he is such a misanthropic asshole and why he (and, for that matter, this shadow organization he seems to belong to) feels justified when he causes billions of deaths. If he'll be back later, it's no big deal, but if he will never appear again, I'd feel cheated not knowing his motivations.
I also thought that, just as I wished to know how future people celebrate New Years, so too do I want to know what is going through their minds as the world collapses all around them. I want to know the fear, the terror, and the shock through someone's personal perspective. The attack on the space station, and the resultant disaster, are obviously the main catalyst to the events in the story, and I want to know all I can (unless, of course, it is something that will be explained later... this is tough to do!)
That's all for now. The story idea is very interesting. I think another draft or two is definitely in order, and I would like to see more detail, just as long as you know where the line between meat and fat is, and how to keep from crossing it.
I'll review more as I progress.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Dark Jaguar - 19th December 2006
I too love trivial details, and that's one of the things I love about Lord of the Rings. LL differs with me on this, preferring to get to the "meat", so to speak.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 19th December 2006
Quote:If he'll be back later, it's no big deal, but if he will never appear again, I'd feel cheated not knowing his motivations.
Eric Dalton is definitely coming back [literally!!], so don't worry about that. Everything he did will be explained in detail, most likely near the end of the second book.
There's a lot more to his story than what's in the prologue. Also, remember that the prologue is from a book and not all writers are unbiased about their subjects...
Quote:Please don't be too sensitive, some of it is criticism, but it's only intended to help.
Don't hold anything back here, guys. The editors at Tor [or wherever] aren't going to say "Well, Great Rumbler is a pretty great guy so we won't be too hard on him, even those his story isn't all that great [this is of a course a LIE, but anyway, not my point] and just go ahead and publish his story anyway so that we won't be mean to him". I WANT you to be hard on this story. If there's something you don't like, TELL ME. I'm desperate to make this as good as I can, and there's just some things that I'll miss if it's just me trying to critique it.
Quote:I want to see how people seven hundred years in the future celebrate such a milestone event in more than just the generalities. I can see and appreciate the analogs to our own time, but people will change in such a span of time, and how are they celebrating the end of 2699?
Okay, that's something that I've been hearing from others as well. I'll delve into the prologu again tonight and see what changes I can come up with.
By the way, the second half of the prologue [with all the death and destruction] has had a lot of stuff added to it.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Dark Jaguar - 19th December 2006
The sort of thing I'd like is a description of an event as though we all know exactly what they are talking about. "Well it's New Years so we put the traditional walrus tongue over the threshold. It's getting a little crazy though. That cloning vat contamination really cut into what we could get ahold of and as a result we had to make do with ol' "rammy" if you catch my meaning." I also like the idea of mentioning various things everyone in that era would "know about" by default but which we have no idea (even more obscure, only reference them indirectly at first or with future-slang for it) and then slowly as the story goes on bit by bit the reader is able to piece together exactly what they are talking about.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 19th December 2006
Yeah, I'm definitely going to give that part of the prologue another look and see what I can inject into it.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 19th December 2006
Thanks for the giving me the idea, Ryan. I've since taken in it and run with it for a touchdown. I added a little bit in there about how people use the coming of the new year to remember different events that happened in past years. I bring up three such events, two of which are what you might expect while the other just goes to show that the more things change the more they stay the same. Here's the paragraph in question:
Quote:Scattered among the flags were also some white coats and jackets. Many in the crowd were wearing them to honor the anniversaries of several major events that had occurred over the past twenty years. Some were marking the fifth year since the accident at the Southern London fusion plant, which had resulted in the destruction of three square miles of the city and the death of thousands; others marked the twelfth year since the explosion of the Everest II passenger ship, which had caused the death of 560 people including the Secretary General of the European Union; and still others marked the twentieth year since the North American Free Trade Zone won fourteen gold medals in the 178th annual Solar Trilympics in the Free City of Qatar. Each group denoted the event it was remembering by placing a number on the back of their jacket or coat that corresponded to the number of years since the event had taken place.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Dark Jaguar - 19th December 2006
The Solar Trilympics, with SPACE CANDY!
I joke, but seriously there is one other major thing to consider here. You really don't want to go overboard with "futuring up" every aspect of your story. In a way, this goes directly against "a lot is going to change" but my point is just that a lot of readers may think (and possibly rightly so) that adding "spacey" terms to modern day stuff is a little cheesy. I don't want to be harsh, but it's something you should consider. The last thing you want is to add Jetson style rings to everything and call it "space tennis" or some such thing. Nothing is nearly like that, I'm just saying things are just a tad overboard in that revised paragraph in those terms. Just a suggestion, take it as you will.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 19th December 2006
I thought about just calling it the "Global Trilympics", but I figured that teams from the colonies and Mars would probably be there as well. So, I just went ahead and called it the "Solar Trilympics", since it's not just Earth teams. It's also kind of a combination between "Triathlon" and "Olympics". There's logic behind calling it that.
But, yeah, I've been generally avoiding the use "crazy, space words" when describing things. I'm trying to keep things realistic and believable, not turn it into Star Trek [where things have to be explained twice before people understand what the heck they're talking about].
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Dark Jaguar - 19th December 2006
Well in Star Trek they actually do use physics references for a lot of stuff, though yes they do just make up random stuff that sounds jargony too. And, I won't begrudge you to use as many actual scientific terms as you see fit, like pinching off a garden hose! That analogy made no sense... Anyway, I'm just talking about the "futuring up" of things like, well, Tek Jenson Alpha Squad Seven does it best in it's parodies of the same.
"Meganight hit the dark side of the 3rd moon of the super sun in hypermegasuperspacetime6."
That's the sort of thing to be careful of. The explanation for that term makes sense though, carry on. As you are well aware you are basically getting opinions from big cell piles each with it's own distinct tastes.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 19th December 2006
Quote:"Meganight hit the dark side of the 3rd moon of the super sun in hypermegasuperspacetime6."
Yeah, that's the kind of thing that I want to avoid.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Dark Jaguar - 19th December 2006
It's like a lot of sci-fi writers like to focus way too much on super extreme conditions. It was perfectly understandable to illustrate in graphic detail in the early days that, yes, nature WANTS US DEAD and it's up to us to fight it if we want to live, but I'm pretty sure most people who read sci-fi already GET that.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 19th December 2006
In retrospect, the very fact that "Solar Trilympics" was the one thing you picked out of that entire paragraph to comment on tells me that I should just change it to "Olympics".
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Dark Jaguar - 19th December 2006
That may be the best way to go. The word survived several hundred years to today. No reason to think it couldn't survive until this era, right? Consider it this way. I doubt that in the future all the devices suddenly modified for space will ALWAYS be called "space this" or "space that". Likely that prefix will be dropped. We still call our space vehicles "space ships" but that'll likely drop if we actually start travelling far more often to just "ship". Consider that we used to say "air plane" (as in the wing is a plane) but now we just say "plane" and people know what we mean from the context. No one assumes we're talking about a ramp or a device for shaving wood. The same could be said of events. I mean the olympics is global and no one bothers saying that, it's likely that in any distant time with terraformed and colonized other worlds, any olympics that include them all is simply going to be called "the olympics". Solar olympics might come about when travel between the first Mars colony and Earth becomes commonplace enough that the "first ever olympics competition between two worlds" takes place, but once it's common place, as it would seem to be in your story, I doubt the prefix would stand for over a century.
So yeah, it may be a good idea to drop it.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Weltall - 20th December 2006
Or perhaps you can compromise. Just as everyone calls them planes, 'airplane' is still a proper term, and it's not an archaic one. As it is called the Space Olympics or what have you, it could be a proper term that is used mostly to differentiate that particular event from, say, the Olympics of our era.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 20th December 2006
I really liked "Solar Trilympics". :(
But, I guess it really would only work as term for some place that isn't future Earth. Anyway, it's "Tri-Planetary Olympics" now.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Dark Jaguar - 20th December 2006
That works, and as Weltall said you can use both, just that "Tri-Planetary" is only the official name, like Nintendo Gamecube vs everyone just calling it the Gamecube. So you can basically have that as stated by officials of the event and "everyone else" can just call it "the Olympics" How's that?
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 21st December 2006
I started a blog:
http://writingfuture.blogspot.com/
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Dark Jaguar - 21st December 2006
Call it WEB LOG or I'll rip yer lungs out!
Woah, okay that's a little harsh. Listen, I would NEVER rip your lungs out... when your mouth has been stabbed with skewers. I mean you'd think that would be enough.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Great Rumbler - 21st December 2006
I have been sucked into a world that is both strange and frightening. :(
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - Dark Jaguar - 21st December 2006
So long as you randomly insert bad poetry and how some song is just SO "you" all the time, you'll fit right in.
Alright, sea monkeys, it's time to help Great Rumbler. - A Black Falcon - 21st December 2006
blog's aren't THAT evil... pointless, though? Yeah, usually.