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Hi CC. This is my first time posting anything here. I don't say that as a "please be kind 2 me!!!" sort of thing, just to underline that I'm not fully acquainted with what's "proper" here. I've tried to follow the guidelines in the rules and from recently-posted examples however. This story was recently rejected by a British sci-fi mag, which makes me think it could do with some more workshopping. Since I'm admittedly a bit in the dark on sci-fi (it not being the sort of thing I usually write), I'd welcome any suggestions for places it might go, on top - of course - of any feedback whatsoever. I'm exhausted right now, but I'll try to leave some feedback on any active threads too shortly. Synopsis: English Midlands, near-future. A lonely young man clones himself because he has no friends. When he suddenly passes away, the clone is left only to the devices he has been taught by his unpleasant master. Not sure if this is necessary for SA, but strong language, violence, and a bit of sexual content are present. *** Steve Bradbrook was only twenty-one when he decided to get himself cloned. Following personal ads on the dark side of the Internet, he was directed to a large lock-up underneath the railway on the edge of town, behind the abandoned community hall. Inside, there were bright yellow lights hanging from the ceiling and dusty rolling stacks filled with papers. A cold and steely cloning tank sat like a broken womb alongside a grimy discarded dentist’s chair. As a back-door quack, the technician had no cloning license and offered no integration therapy. Steve was unconcerned, because he was lonely. After leaving school, Steve was a full-time invalid. His sheltered fostering was outwardly apparent: his dark brown hair was visibly greasy, the black mole clinging to his left cheek was surrounded with acne, and he smelt of old milk. Almost everyone he knew passed him by, his former playmates departing one by one for university or work. Steve was not as frustrated as they were with their small Midlands hometown, and eventually he came to despise them for wanting to move on in life. He did, however, miss his beloved Emily Arundel. Steve usually spent his evenings watching the world from his bedroom window. He knew the tatty little lawns of all the neighbouring houses, the cracks in each driveway, and the concrete street lamps which turned the night sky orange. His mother would soon return from work thereafter. A tireless worker approaching sixty, she had not aged well: her black curls were thinning and retreating to the top of her scalp, while her small-rimmed spectacles were forever jammed into her beady eyes. She still had a lot of affection left for her little boy, who was now also her closest friend. 'Hi Mum,' he’d mumble. 'How was work?' 'Same as usual, you know?' she’d say in her Brummie-tinged accent, taking off her jacket and unbuttoning her dark blue nurses’ uniform. After helping her put her slippers on at the bottom of the stairs, Steve would make dinner for them both. He enjoyed cooking for her, but she always went to bed soon afterwards. Then he was alone again. With only the flicker of late-night television flitting around him as he sat in his armchair, Steve felt that he really needed a new friend. Nicodemus – Nico for short, after one of Steve’s favourite video game characters – was not the most botched clone of all time. Worse cases were featured in the papers constantly, real rogues like human trafficking clones or job-stealing clones, but Steve knew that these were troublemakers by design. Criminals had embraced cloning because it created a steady supply of disposable cronies, while the big corporations were bringing them in all nice and legally to fill factories and offices. In contrast, Steve was just a simple Midlander who basked in the love of his mother, a lonely young man who still thought highly of his achievements in school. When Steve recovered from the anaesthetic in the lock-up, the doctor reported that the cloning and subsequent ageing procedures had gone okay. The only defect was a missing ear, which had somehow been replaced with a bulbous growth. Upon inspection, Steve also swore that Nico’s eyes were uneven. Like most half-baked illegal clones, Nico had no understanding of language. He was taught in the lock-up how to move his joints and touch things. From the very beginning, he walked with his elbows in, his forearms up, and his hands limp at the wrists like a standing rabbit. Even on the day of his birth, lingering wet and naked between the weary-eyed doctor and the malodorous Steve, he looked repulsively slender. He was almost identical to his master, yet he lacked all traces of identity. Steve and Nico, sitting side by side, were given disapproving looks on the bus ride home. The British public had a special sense for sniffing out illegal clones. One could mistake any uncanny pair for twins, but the stark differences in personality (one self-assured and one babyishly observing the world) as well as the occasional deformities (like Nico’s non-ear) were giveaways. Nico quickly learned to lower his gaze. He concentrated on the bright surfing t-shirt and the pair of tracksuit bottoms he had been given to wear. Nico slept in the dark of Steve’s empty brown wardrobe, crammed up against the insides before being let out each morning. Steve’s mother disliked having a retard in the house, but she tolerated it so long as he stayed in Steve’s bedroom when she was at home. She loved her little boy, but she was still wary of the strangeness of clones. To her, Nico was everything Steve was not: unnatural, dumb and susceptible. For his part, Steve tried to school Nico using an online clone indoctrination guide, focusing on basic speech and interaction. Steve proved to be a rather inept teacher, which he blamed on the low quality of the guide. Eventually he phased the lessons out. Steve was an undemanding master. All he asked for was the ability to press buttons and the capacity to shut up and listen. With Nico he shared his computer’s shrine to Emily Arundel, his lifelong crush. It was filled with copies of her social media pages, maps to her house, and photos dating back over ten years. It was very comprehensive. 'She’s so beautiful,' Steve told Nico one evening, their faces grotesque in the bedroom’s dying light. 'She used to do that with her hair a lot, that cute tie-back thing. Maybe I was a bit of a pervert. I liked to look at her legs, mostly when she was wearing tights….' He paused. 'But some people, like the arseholes she used to hang out with, said I wanted to rape her, and that was just wrong. They told me to get help. I thought that was quite rude. I just wanted to… walk through a forest with her,' he said, sighing wistfully. 'I don’t know, maybe she likes the outdoors.' Nico seemed to listen. He would stare at the pictures. He once moved to touch himself during one of these rituals, but Steve slapped his hand away. 'Don’t do that,' said Steve with authority. After another year, Steve’s old friends began to re-appear in town. Some were back for a while, others just for a pit stop. He contacted some of them, and many were cordial, but nobody wanted to meet him. Emily also returned: once again she was living nearby with her father. Steve acknowledged that she was an independent woman, as he looked over her new pictures online. She had the same seductive smile, and she was again wearing her brown hair long with occasional blonde highlights. Steve admitted to Nico that he used to stand outside her house in the dead of night. 'It felt nice to be so close to her, yet very wrong, obviously. I don’t know if she ever saw me. I only went a couple of times, but it was around then when people were telling me to leave her alone. Look at these new pictures: I swear she only gets sexier with age.' As usual, Nico responded silently. 'I love you, Nico. You’re me, only you’re an idiot.' Again, Nico responded silently. One nondescript afternoon, while crossing turbulent London Road, Steve was hit by a forty year-old boy racer. He died very quickly. His mother was alerted at the hospital, but no one could save him, and – unblinking – she returned home. Standing in the hallway with the front door closed, she began to make strange noises which reverberated around the shadowy semi-detached house. Nico, who was locked in Steve’s room, sat listening to the commotion with a confused look on his cross-eyed face. The funeral was a week later, at the crematorium nestled in an ancient wood just outside town. Nico was locked away the whole time, living off snacks Steve had left in his desk. He kept thinking of Emily Arundel and how much he wanted to touch her. Some of Steve’s old friends attended the funeral. They all shook his mother’s wrinkled hand and tried to smile. She knew they meant well, but she also had a feeling that they were all embarrassed for her. She drove home in her tiny Ford Fiesta with blood pumping in her ears. Nico could hear her pacing the downstairs hallway when she arrived. After five minutes, the stairs began to thump with her footsteps. Her keys tinkled in the bedroom door, and it opened. Standing there was Steve’s mother, heaving and red-eyed. Her cheeks were a deep crimson, and her dark curls slithered across the top of her sweaty forehead. 'Get out of my house, please,' she said. Nico tilted his head. His long, tangled hair brushed over his skinny shoulders. 'Get out of my house! Get out, get out!' she roared, pulling him up by his left arm and dragging him onto the landing. 'You’re not my boy, and I’m not being left with a brain-dead spastic!' she screeched, her eyes wet and bulging as if she were looking into another plane of existence. At the bottom of the stairs, she ditched him outside the front door. She locked it behind him. Nico stood on the doorstep and listened briefly to her wailing through the beige brick walls. He did not like the sound, so he left. Nico waddled around for a while, wondering where Steve had gone. He knew the neighbourhood, but it felt threatening without his master. The few people left on the streets in the late afternoon were eyeing him more suspiciously than ever. Steve’s teachings swirled around in a chorus of voices inside his head. For hours Nico walked in circles, until the evening sky was ablaze with artificial light. He shivered in his filthy default shirt, and approached the pub at the end of Ladbroke Close just as a hen party was filing out. He thought of Emily Arundel. He was very visibly aroused as the crowd of ladies sauntered past in their short skirts and leather jackets. 'Freak!' one hissed, amidst wolf-whistles and giggles. Nico was scared. Memorising Steve’s map – as he was accustomed to do - he began to run towards Emily’s house with his abnormal gait. Nico crept along the street towards Emily’s house, and stood awkwardly on the far edge of her front lawn with desire shining in his eyes. Emily and her father were in their front room. She was striding around in a red dress, her face light with make-up. Her father – a large, balding man – was sitting on a plush sofa, watching television. She said something and kissed him on the cheek. Then she smiled and looked out the window. Her whole body jumped. It was dark, but she recognised the ugly shape. She motioned to her father and said some quick words. He looked outside and scowled with his thick black eyebrows, before standing up and opening the upper window latch. 'Excuse me,' he yelled to Nico. 'Could you go away, please?' Nico flinched and hobbled slowly across the tiny lawn as a nearby street lamp fizzled. 'gently caress off,' yelled Emily’s father. 'Do we need to call the police?' Nico kept moving forward. He wanted to dart through the window and hug Emily’s legs. 'You have three seconds,' said Emily’s father, sternly. Nico plunged his fist through the glass. 'Jesus!' gasped Emily’s father, shutting the latch and pushing his daughter back into the room. 'poo poo!' hissed Emily. 'I told you he’d come back one day, he’s a loving psychopath!' she added, unaware that Steve had a clone. She preferred to remain as distant as possible from Steve Bradbrook. Nico cleared away more glass with his bare hands, squealing in pain like an animal. He climbed in, straining his legs and banging his head in the process. Emily grabbed a phone and called for the police. Nico moved towards them both with his shaky arms reaching out as they stood in the living room doorway, the father barricading his daughter. 'The police are coming,' Mr Arundel said, gesturing towards Emily, whose face was partially smudged. Nico was trying to look at her, but her father kept manoeuvring in front of his line of sight. 'Leave her alone!' Emily’s father cried in astonishment and anger. Nico couldn’t understand. A frenzied look came across his face. In a moment of extreme pain, he picked out a huge shard of glass from his right palm and frantically stabbed Mr Arundel in the stomach. With a whimper, the old man fell to his knees and then flopped onto the floor. Emily screamed and dropped the phone in shock. All Nico could hear was, she has lovely freckles, she has cute hair, she has a beautiful white neck; the things I would like to do to her. Stepping over the body of Emily’s father, he backed her up against the wall. In a flash her eyes widened, and she punched him hard in the chest. 'Memmy,' he drooled, his eyes crossing in recoil. 'You loving creep,’ she said through gritted teeth, as her eyes burned through him. Nico whined and raised his arm as if to slap her, but she caught him midway with a firm grip of his wrist. 'How dare you,' she snarled, as she began to pull his hair with her free hand. She was about to knee him between the legs, but then she uncovered the hairy, earless growth encrusted with mould, and retched. With her distracted, Nico held out his bony, bleeding hands and clasped her tightly around the waist. Together, they fell to the floor. She tried to kick him away, but he was wildly smothering and groping her all over, choking her with his rank stench. At some point in the middle of his excitement, he strangled her to death. He liked the shape of her body, and he liked exploring it. A minute later, all was quiet. Emily’s father was shaking and coughing up blood. Emily was still, pale but for the red finger marks smeared all over her. Nico, now on his knees, pulled curiously at the young lady’s freckled nose. Fascinated, all he could think of was her, his lifelong vocation.
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Jul 1, 2014 14:35
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| # ? May 14, 2024 21:22 |
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The central conceit of this is far too large to be explored in 2400 words. Expand it dramatically or give up. As it stands we have an unlikable protagonist and then some creepy sexual violence.
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Jul 1, 2014 19:02
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Eau de MacGowan posted:The central conceit of this is far too large to be explored in 2400 words. Expand it dramatically or give up. As it stands we have an unlikable protagonist and then some creepy sexual violence. Thanks for the feedback! Length has been a bit of an issue for this one, it once seemed passable when it was even shorter but I definitely know what you mean too. I don't know if there's much I can do to expand upon it, so I may have to simply put it aside for now. I'm glad that the protagonist is seen as unpleasant, but I certainly don't want that to leave a completely bitter taste. Strangely, some women who are far more experienced than I am told me to consider ramping up the sexual violence. I admit, I don't know what the typical boundaries of creepiness are in this respect. I'm glad that it's ugly, but I certainly don't want to be fetishistic either, just a blank experience. Maybe those are points on which I can expand.
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Jul 2, 2014 15:33
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You say you want the protagonist to be unpleasant, but I would suggest that is a terrible idea for any work of fiction. I've read it again, and the entire point of the piece is unclear. Is the act of cloning supposed to be an act of arrogance or a pitiful fit of isolation? The protagonist as presented has more of a relationship with his mother than he does with the girl his clone ends up murdering - yet the conclusion reached seems to be a commentary on the dangers of obsession.
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Jul 3, 2014 18:35
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Eau de MacGowan posted:You say you want the protagonist to be unpleasant, but I would suggest that is a terrible idea for any work of fiction. It's a tough one. I say unpleasant, but I certainly wouldn't want him to have no redeeming qualities (I would say that he loves his mother, that he has some sort of restraint, and that he's a bit pathetic - if that even counts). The way I see it is as an isolation thing (I remember the "because he was lonely" in the opening paragraph was originally a thing to be repeated, before talking it over with others and thinking it somewhat unnecessary). My ideas were that he's isolated (either through his own doing or not), but he still has his mother and he still has his education, some semblance of socialisation. The clone doesn't have that, I wanted to more and more put it out there that Emily Arundel is the only "thing" he was ever successfully taught. Thanks again for posting and for flagging more of this up. I feel like if I'm asked questions like this then I haven't done a good enough job of showing them in the writing proper. It also makes me think that there's an unanswered thing with time going on... i.e. all Nico experiences is Steve's retelling of his sheltered mindset, his perverted fantasies, the very small area around their home; if "another year" is to pass then it needs to be feasible to carry on that way during all that time.
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Jul 3, 2014 19:01
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Expand it. Set yourself a goal of around 20,000 words, but expect more. There's not an author in the world who could express the ideas you're talking about in so small a piece. 2400 words is a single scene. This is all the advice I can give you. Keep going. The fact that you are trying something original and unironic is fantastic and I respect you for it, you've just got to pursue and pursue and pursue.
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Jul 3, 2014 20:06
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Eau de MacGowan posted:Expand it. Set yourself a goal of around 20,000 words, but expect more. There's not an author in the world who could express the ideas you're talking about in so small a piece. 2400 words is a single scene. Thanks, I'll certainly consider it! I feel like there's a lot of stuff to work on already going by your suggestions alone, so it really could be a long-term thing. I'm not sure if it will be a focus for some time due to other things I've got going on, but it's reassuring to read that there are options for development.
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Jul 3, 2014 20:34
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What you have here is not a story but a synopsis of a story. The two choices here are: write the amount necessary to explore everything you want to explore (novella time!), or focus on one particular scene that explores one particular ramification of your conceit. To me, the second option is much more preferable since you get to have 90% of the impact with far fewer words, but it requires a lot to skill to get the necessary hints of worldbuilding covered in the margins. But it could lead to a single brilliantly tense scene - how about starting with the fifth anniversary of Steve's death, with Steve looking down into his own grave? Or Steve scattering his own ashes? Then using that scene to explore the ways in which he should have moved on, but hasn't? The point is, I would read something tight based on the setup you've described. Have another go.
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Jul 5, 2014 16:15
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Symptomless Coma posted:What you have here is not a story but a synopsis of a story. The two choices here are: write the amount necessary to explore everything you want to explore (novella time!), or focus on one particular scene that explores one particular ramification of your conceit. To me, the second option is much more preferable since you get to have 90% of the impact with far fewer words, but it requires a lot to skill to get the necessary hints of worldbuilding covered in the margins. But it could lead to a single brilliantly tense scene - how about starting with the fifth anniversary of Steve's death, with Steve looking down into his own grave? Or Steve scattering his own ashes? Then using that scene to explore the ways in which he should have moved on, but hasn't? The point is, I would read something tight based on the setup you've described. Thanks for the feedback! More fascinating ideas to go at here. As I said above, I'm not sure how much time I can really dedicate to expand upon this one currently (and honestly I'm not sure how much expansion I'd be comfortable with, but I won't know that without trying at least) but it's nice to know there are a few directions in which to take it through the feedback so far. It's also re-assuring to read that you like the setup; like I said, sci-fi isn't something I really read or write normally, so at the beginning I was mostly working off the unreliable dream or passing thought. It's still all a bit of a learning experience for me!
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Jul 6, 2014 13:02
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I'm not going to go line-by-line, but will comment on a few points. I do agree that this is more of a synopsis than a story. - I have no idea why you titled it "A Terrific Storm". I'm sure you can think of a title more related to the story. - It doesn't sound like Steve has much money - or indeed any money. How does he pay for the clone procedure? "After leaving school, Steve was a full-time invalid." - You mean that he's got some kind of chronic illness? Why not just say what it is instead of being completely vague and uninformative. quote:Nicodemus – Nico for short, after one of Steve’s favourite video game characters – was not the most botched clone of all time. Worse cases were featured in the papers constantly, real rogues like human trafficking clones or job-stealing clones, but Steve knew that these were troublemakers by design. Criminals had embraced cloning because it created a steady supply of disposable cronies, while the big corporations were bringing them in all nice and legally to fill factories and offices. In contrast, Steve was just a simple Midlander who basked in the love of his mother, a lonely young man who still thought highly of his achievements in school. Maybe it's just me being dumb, but the first time I read this, I went "Who the hell is Nicodemus? Some kind of famously newsworthy accident?" I think that might be because you go off cloning for a bit, and come back and drop a name out of nowhere. I think that second paragraph should go before the first one, it would flow better. - "... a lonely young man who still thought highly of his achievements in school." What achievements in school? I can't think someone like Steve has any achievements, never mind any to think highly of. - "One nondescript afternoon, while crossing turbulent London Road, Steve was hit by a forty year-old boy racer. He died very quickly." And then Steve died.  Your protagonist has just died, and it's treated with no emotion at all. It's just a thing that happens. Hedgehog Pie posted:I'm glad that it's ugly, but I certainly don't want to be fetishistic either, just a blank experience. Your whole story is rather a blank experience, and I don't think that's a good thing. The reader should feel something, but because there's so little detail and content, it's hard for them to connect to the story. Hedgehog Pie posted:It's a tough one. I say unpleasant, but I certainly wouldn't want him to have no redeeming qualities (I would say that he loves his mother, that he has some sort of restraint, and that he's a bit pathetic - if that even counts). I'm not really sure any of those count as redeeming qualities. They have to be more than just 'standard issue for normal people'. Being pathetic is definitely not a redeeming quality, in the eyes of a reader it makes the person more repulsive. No one likes a completely worthless sad sack, which is what Steve is. You said that Steve "has his education", but that's also not worth anything since he's sitting at home all day. His socialisation also is very weak. In my view, nothing in the text supports the idea that he has friends - even ones that would attend his funeral. Maybe that's because it's too underdeveloped. Stabbey_the_Clown fucked around with this message at 19:49 on Jul 7, 2014 |
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Jul 7, 2014 13:58
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You have a creep concept that could work well with the right execution. Right now, however, it doesn't jell together as a proper story at all. Reading this story I get the sense that you struck upon an idea that you really like but I don't really get the sense that you're taking much pleasure in the actual telling of the tale. The writing all feels very functional. Each sentence reveals a bit more information that gradually gets the reader from point A to point B. It doesn't feel like you invested in time in the way that you're telling the story. As a result there's no emotional connection to the characters, there's no tension when things go wrong, and there's no payoff when the story ends. You're also too quick to resort to telling rather than showing. There are a few nice descriptions scattered through your prose but all too often you're simply telling me character traits rather than showing them. For example, you write: quote:She still had a lot of affection left for her little boy, who was now also her closest friend. Instead why not write a scene where the mother and son interact? Let their actions and words demonstrate to the reader that they are both lonely and rely on each other for companionship. Little moments like that - interactions between characters, flashes of emotional realism, those little insights you get into the human condition - are important in science fiction, because they help anchor the otherworldly stuff in something concrete. Given the nature of this piece I feel like you really need some kind of human relationship here, either between him and his friends who are drifting away, or between him and his mom. Right now you mention that he has these relationships but you show no interest in describing them. That's a big mistake in my opinion: if we had a better insight into his relationships with the real humans around him then his decision to make a clone would be more meaningful. "Nerd shut in has no friends but his mom, decides to make clone who eventually enacts his creepy sexual fantasies" is a story that desperately needs a human touch. If you don't do a good job describing the human relationships why would anyone want to read something like that? The structure is also jarring. The two most important events - the protagonist deciding to clone himself, and then the protagonist dying - are dropped unceremoniously into the story without any warning and seemingly without any attempt to make have more of an impact. I'll be honest. I read the first few sentences of your story and then gave up on it. I scrolled to the bottom to check out how it ended and the last part was so grotesque and weird that I gave the story a second shot. The concept is creepy enough that it could carry this story if you put a bunch of time into improving the writing and structure.
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Jul 7, 2014 17:49
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Thanks so much for the feedback! More questions for me to look at as I re-draft (whenever that might be). Title is something I've struggled with here. First I had "You'll Be Seeing This Face Again", then I had "Scorning the Power of Man" which was disliked. I know the sorts of places I might look for a better one, so that's something to do. What's weird about your second question is that at some point I swore I had covered that. It must have been in an earlier draft, though I'm not sure why I would then edit it out. That's the sort of flagging up I would miss otherwise. "Invalid" is a strange one. I didn't intend for him to have an illness and it honestly never occurred to me otherwise. Need to do some word switching there then. There has definitely been some paragraph-switching around the naming part, so I can certainly return to that, even if it's just sentences that are changed around. "Achievements" was probably something meant sarcastically, and was probably a late addition. I think I need to elaborate that. The way I see it, he would take all the joy he could in middling B grades. I can't not say that I'm disappointed that his emotionless death - and the story in general - doesn't seem to work, but maybe that's largely grounded in what you suggest I do about the character. It's hard, I'm not entirely sure what I mean by redeeming qualities, just that you take what you get when you're like that (I certainly wouldn't want "being pathetic" to be everything, just that there could be a slight possibility for sympathy, I don't know). I suppose I mean "socialisation" in that theoretical sense, that he was brought up by a mother who seems to love him... I think the idea was to contrast this and the education (which wasn't great, but I guess I'm still taking the best of a bad situation?) with the clone who is meant to be more... raw. It's fair to say that I've lost a lot of confidence in this story (and myself), but I'm inspired to use the stuff I'm elaborating in these posts in the text proper for upcoming drafts.
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Jul 7, 2014 18:08
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| # ? May 14, 2024 21:22 |
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Sorry for the double-post, but I must've missed this post yesterday. Sorry about that, was in no way intentional! Thank you for the feedback. Again I'm glad that you like the concept. Improving the human element is something I've really tried to work on recently... possibly not really in this story, but in general, absolutely. That's a bit of a knock back too then, but I'll be looking to perhaps build something on top of the stairs and dinner interaction. Showing and telling, I really fear, is something I'm never really going to get the hang of. I suppose here I'll be trying to keep the voice a few people have previously said works well on top of all this. You made me think, maybe I don't enjoy telling this story. That's one of those things that feels a little strange to me, like it didn't seem that off-beat at all for someone to take comfort in the utter averageness of their life like this character does. I see that I'm not communicating it very well at all, it's like when I have young men call their parents mother and father because that feels most familiar to me, with the problem being that it doesn't come off at all.
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Jul 8, 2014 14:40
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