Ok... Somebody Rip this apart, Please

[Ts Jack]

Here is a modest effort of non-erotic Sci-Fi. Feel free to rip and tear as you please.



http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=100340

Thanks

 

[Jenny _S]

Story

This is not a story that is for everyone. It begins rather slowly, however, the description of the Pan, Tribe and the Home were powerful. This story needed that kind of beginning.

You do a couple things in this story that I really like. You have two separate threads going at the same time. But the way you switch back and forth between the two you keep the time frame correct and each thread seems to feed off the other.

The ending is interesting and surprising. It showed some imagination to put the story together to end up at that ending.

I found a few grammatic errors and,what I concider to be construction flaws, but they did not detract from either the powerful story or the readability.

I liked it. Well done.

 

[Chicklet]

One of the problems with writing Sci-fi and fantasy is that you have a whole new set of rules about the world that your character lives in. A certain amount of information must be told to the reader about that world, but in a short story too much detail can start to get frustrating for the reader. I was one of the frustrated ones.

The world was simple and unchanging. There was the Pan, that endless expanse of hardpan and brush that surrounded everything. There was the Tribe. There was the Home. That was all. That was how it had always been. That was how it would always be. The men of the Tribe would hunt the Rach and Drom and Kett out on the dry Pan during the day and watch the sky at night as they had always done. The women of the Tribe would scratch the ground for tubers and tend their small gardens of squash and maze. For the entire collective memory of the generations of the Tribe it had always been so. Each day was much the same as the last with the First Sun chasing the Second across the sky in an endless game of tag. The First Sun scorching the dry Pan, having driven what surface water there was underground long ago. The Second Sun was much better than the First. It allowed the ground and air to cool enough to make life bearable for the Tribe. Survival was tenuous at best. Food was scarce. And the Tribe was always forced to hoard what little they had especially water because, above all else, water was life.

See, this is a good description, but to me it was too much information. IMHO this was the wrong paragraph to start your story. Sure, you start to paint a picture about the world you're beginning to explore, but it's a harsh, stiff, black and white painting. If I had clicked on your story at random, I probably wouldn't have gotten past this paragraph. But there isn't anything wrong with it. It was just in the wrong place.

The first paragraph should be something extremely gripping, something that's going to make me, the reader, die to read the rest of the story. A bit of interesting dialogue, a teaser, maybe even a simple line "nothing changes." - something that's going to make me want to keep reading!

Even in living memory the Tribe had shrunk in numbers. Walking through the living area of Home there were now many empty Domiciles where once families lived. Cycle after Cycle it seemed fewer children were born. And the old ones always went off to the Final Place and never returned. But no one ever talked or even thought of these things for were not these things foretold in the Great Book?

Okay again nothing really *wrong* with this paragraph. It's necessary, but maybe you could have worded it differently to keep the readers attention. The sentences are very curt, very short, very cold. Maybe if you elaborated or used different wording it would sound better.

Shek sat in the darkness at the Watching Place just as he had been told and as he had been told and done countless times during the fifteen cycles following his Testing. Even at the Test he had proved more alert and tireless than the others of his age. So he was judged among the first of his age ready to join the Watchers. A smile often crossed his face when he remembered how proud he was that day. In all the cycles that followed the day of Testing he had never disobeyed the Elders even though there were others that had. This was always a great source of pride for him.

Same thing here. The paragraph is fine, but boring. Maybe if instead of periods you used some commas, blended some words together just to make it flow a little easier. I think you're trying to create your own foreign sounding voice, and there's nothing wrong with that, but the way it's coming together just isn't gripping me. An important part of your writing needs to be the interest it sparks in readers.

More specifics:

...and tend their small gardens of squash and maze.

Maze? I think you mean maize. Your word is the word for something complicated, twisty, and sometimes made of bushes. Mine is one for corn.

“I did so, High Priest. But not until after I carried out your instructions”, admitted Shek.

“Who can tell”, said Zarb the Builder.

The comma needs to be inside the quotation marks throughout the whole story.

"What can he know that we don’t”, said Narr the Librarian.

question mark.

I know that we have been right all these generations to keep watch on the skys”, said Kalb...

skies.

“Were did you find his document”, demanded Narr.

Where and Question Mark.

Okay, so overall your story needed more excitement towards the beginning and another once-over read. Sometimes it's hard to do that once-over yourself - that's where a friend comes in.

Non-Fiction in general has a hard time on Literotica, mainly because people come here for, well, Erotica. In my opinion you should really think hard about submitting nonerotic stories to lit at all, sometimes they only come here to die.

-Chicklet

 

[Ts Jack]

Chicklet and Jenny

Well... thanks to both of you for taking you time to look at the story. I see your point about this needing something in the beginning. As well as your other comments about punctuation and editing.

As far as writing another Sci-Fi for Literotica, Sci-Fi needs a different audiance with other expectations.

Thanks again

 

[hiddenself]

I absolutely love this kind of stories. The SciFi literature has a long history in this particular genre (settlers who lose touch with the mother city/planet and forget their origin) -- Asimov's series (Robots, Foundation) have this thread throughout. And it's very difficult to be an amateur where giants stepped before you.

I do think that your main idea was great. You started building an intriguing world and some of your development was indeed quite original. This could have even been worked into a much longer and deeper story. But I thought you rushed to put the product out. It seems half-baked to me.

Problem #1: sex scenes.

What are they doing here? I think that the sex scenes are totally gratuitous. The whole Kana parts were overdone and distracted from the flow. They are certainly not central. So, how do they fit with, what do they add to the story?

Problem #2: writing and flow.

The writing is very disjointed, jumping harshly from one scene to another. It reads more like a collection of notes for a script or something.

Problem #3: consistency (lack of).

The Tribe has regressed back into a primitive state and forgotten all their history but they have managed to save all that stuff in the library? And they know all about comets and such? How come?

Kalb is the voice of reason throughout the story. Yet, in that last paragraph, he undergoes a complete change of heart and goes to suppress the truth? And why's the librarian a "fool"?


My overall impression was that you did not spend enough time to really breathe in your story's background (it seems raw and superficial) and to figure out your characters' personalities and motivations (they come off shallow). You came up with a lot of names and terms (too much capitalization, by the way), yet by the end they were just a list, insufficiently tied-in together.