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This is an excerpt from my first novel, the Lightning Brigade Book 1, A Bitter Yesterday. EDIT: Revised and reworked version of Prologue and Chapter one can be found here: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3833927&pagenumber=1#post476403793 Keeping the original version here for reference for anyone curious about what it looked like. PROLOGUE It began with dark, choked skies, the sun hidden beneath ember filled clouds. The year was 1997. Hours before stood the city once known as Atlanta, Georgia, home to hundreds of thousands. Now it laid in waste as a graveyard to near as many. No flames rose from the rubble, no people stirred within the wreckage. Some would say the worst had passed. A heavy silence, suffocating the city turned tomb, weighed over that idea. Tearing through that silence came the cries of a young girl. At the center of the cataclysm an unnatural clearing stood, all debris swept away, torn to the far winds. A site of mourning, both of those whose lives were lost, and those forced to carry on. On her knees, physically untouched, tears flowing freely, the young girl wailed. A humanoid light wreathed in shifting cracked metal knelt before her. She could not look into its featureless face, electric flames rising up around its metal crown, and did not notice as it embraced her. They were the only two things still alive in the ruinous tomb. Her cries raised in pitch and fervor echoing across the rubble and shattered remains. After a time, they grew quiet, replaced by the words that had been repeated over and over, drowned out by her sobbing. Words that she only now heard, would only now believe. “It’s okay. It’s okay. I am here now. I will protect you.” “I will never abandon you.” Silence returned to the grave. CHAPTER 1 “In 1956, the United States and USSR came into conflict with extraterrestrial threats. This was a turning point for the world. When these threats returned in years to follow, the two superpowers lead a motion that would change the world. The United Nations was dismantled and rebuilt as a shared military superpower, the Supreme United Nations. Dedicated to defending the human race from,” the droning of the TV was ignored briefly by the man watching. Joseph Fernandez wondered why this program had abruptly interrupted the football game he had settled in for. He stared into the kitchen after the young woman busying herself. His granddaughter, Alex, was going to a concert tonight. He pursed his lips. Wasn’t safe. Things didn’t feel right. She didn’t listen and he didn’t have the heart to force the issue. “Papa Joseph, do you need anything from in town? What are they showing on TV anyway?” Joseph shook his head, not bothering to speak. Alex hummed, one hand on her hip. She knew he was upset, but Joy, a dear friend, had gotten her these tickets ages ago. She couldn’t just bail now because his hip was acting up. Grabbing a bottled water from the fridge, she turned her attention to the program he was watching. It was strange, an announcement over the TV that seemed to just be emphasizing the increasingly frequent alien attacks. She couldn’t figure out what the point of it was. Wasn’t there supposed to be a Caribbean Football Union game on? Images of the last 50 years played out on the TV. She watched Joseph with some interest when the 1984 incident came up. “Suddenly, without warning, the Megulon Swarm entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The Supreme United Nation’s Taskforce was pushed beyond its limits, and many would lose their lives in the attack. Many cities suffered heavy damage in the, at the time, largest attack on the planet yet.” “Only through perseverance and guile were they able to fight off the alien swarm.” There it was. Joseph’s eye twitched. Alex knew the tic well. He let the segment continue without comment, knowing that it would affect nothing but his blood pressure. “Sadly, this would prove to be a turning point, as the Megulon Swarm would resurface nine years after. From this point, alien attacks would grow in frequency and violence.” Alex turned her attention now to the TV. While she had lost her parents in the ’84 attack, she was barely old enough to remember anything of the horrid day. She was, however, old enough to remember the ’93 incident. Old enough to remember the screams, the smell of twisted metal and burning rubber. The sight of insectoid monsters burrowing up from under your very feet, upending everything you ever knew or loved. She remembered… “Threats that humanity had to fight alone, time and time again. Now, we know we are no longer alone.” The TV continued on, jarring Alex out of her own reflection. She saw her grandfather’s knuckles go white at the mention of humanity being alone. She couldn’t tell what upset him more. The assertion that the planet stood alone against the monstrous attacks, or- “In 2002, the Cabal of the One True Primarch came to besiege our world, for reasons still unclear to us. After five long years, the Cabal, colloquially referred to as the Looters, are still at large, perpetuating unwarranted and unjust attacks against the human race. However, we have not weathered these attacks alone.” The TV showed images of Looter soldiers, marching through streets. Heavily armored space suits with darkened, near opaque domes, unnaturally long limbs ending in ball like appendages. There wasn’t a person alive that didn’t know what the average Looter looked like. Just as there wasn’t a single person alive who wouldn’t recognize- “The Neo Damocles, a benevolent space-faring organization, who came to our aid. Headed by the Shadow Maiden, they have worked hand in hand with the Supreme United Nations to defend the human race…” Alex was opening the door. “Which brings us to the point of our program today!” Alex’s head jerked towards the TV, the announcer’s voice growing animated, breaking free of its dull droning of history. The door closed as the Shadow Maiden appeared on the screen, flanked by Debra Darling and Sophie the Stinger. Joseph sat up in his chair, eyebrow quirked up. Alex was always caught off guard by the Shadow Maiden, how hauntingly beautiful and elegant such an entity without true form could be. Only two eyes, hollow and white, graced her otherwise featureless form. She had the shape of a woman in a long flowing gown, the profile of short hair drawn into a matronly bun. Her substance, however, was like smoke, flickering and shifting without truly moving. Her two companions glowed brilliantly next to her, as all light seemed to be rejected by her presence. Idly Alex realized, it wasn’t that she made her followers brighter, that was an illusion. Instead, the light was drawn and submerged into the Voice of the Neo Damocles, making everything appear brighter around her. “Good evening, thank you for your precious time. I hope, with all my heart, that you are all doing well.” Her voice was arresting. Even distanced through recording, diluted by being played back electronically, her voice felt like it enveloped you, embraced you, echoed through your very spine. You did not hear her speak, you felt it. It was as much a comfort as any embrace from a dear loved one. “I have wonderful news, simply wonderful, my Dears.” She gestured one arm out, the dress she wore not moving with gravity, instead staying straight with her arm. That was a detail Joseph picked up on, narrowing his gaze. There was a breeze, Sophie’s wings were fluttering a bit, and Debra’s mane of black hair was similarly affected. Yet the Shadow Maiden remained unchanged. “We of the Neo Damocles, who have stood hand in hand with the Supreme United Nations and their specialized Taskforce against our common foe, the Cabal of the Primarch, have opened our arms to all of humanity.” Joseph shot forward in his seat, Alex taking a step back. The Neo Damocles operated as a wholly separate entity, unaffiliated from all nations and governments, to allow no favoritism. No tip of power, by favor or accident. “We, humble allies of the human race, have come to an arrangement with your own Supreme United Nations. If you are of exceptional physical prowess, you may petition to your government, and join our most sacred of crusades. The protection of sentient life from those that would abuse and exploit it.” The Shadow Maiden gestured towards her companions. “You will begin in an apprenticeship with the Neo Damocles. You will rise up through the rank and file, be outfitted with special training and augmentation, befitting of your personal skills and ability, and eventually, stand alongside our own Debra Darling and Sophie the Stinger.” At the mention of their names, Debra struck a pose, while Sophie splayed out her wings, summoning one of her fabled stingers forward from her wrist to show off. The two were polar opposites of one another. Where Sophie was a very bleached yellow, extremely alien, resembling a humanoid wasp, Debra could almost pass as a human. Sophie was covered head to toe in her exoskeletal armor, legs and arms ending in similar two clawed appendages. Fur lined her shoulders and neck, reaching midway down her back, while she wore a heavy necklace with a single glowing blue diamond. Debra Darling wore a modified black cocktail dress, split near to her hip to allow her legs maximum freedom. Her heavy black makeup mixed with her bone white skin, with the only thing that really showed how dangerous the woman was being the obvious artificial arm on her left side. Her right arm was covered in a heavy and long sleeve, but her left had the material purposely torn away to reveal a mechanical weapon of a limb, intricate black metal interlocking and shifting fluidly as she moved. She winked at the camera, while Sophie withdrew her two-foot stinger. “It will not be an easy life. The soldiers of the Neo Damocles have suffered as few others. We have lost much in our fight for peace and justice, but it is one worth pursuing. If you feel up to the challenge, if you are ready to be a hero,” The Shadow Maiden’s speech was cut short, jarring Alex out of her stupor. She looked at her grandfather’s chair, unable to see more than his arm as he put the controller down. “You going to keep Joy waiting, Dear?” Joseph’s voice brought clarity to Alex, who snatched open the door and started heading out. “You’re right, I’m sorry! I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Alex was exiting into the apartment building when a familiar face caught her eye. A tall, lanky fellow, around the age of her grandfather was making his way down the hall towards their door whistling. Catching her eye, he quickly removed his hat and a bright smile came to his gaunt features. “Uncle David!” Alex ran up to the man, a mirrored smile meeting his. His dull gray suit still seemed too big for the bone of a man, as he leaned down to meet Alex’s hug with his own, wrapping one arm around her waist. “Lovely to see you, my sweet Alex. Is your grandfather in?” Alex took a step back, rolling her eyes. “As if he’d be anywhere else. Go ahead and talk to the old man, just be careful. The media is on again about the Neo Damocles, and you know what that does to him.” Uncle David clicked his tongue, staring past Alex towards the door. “Yes, I very well do. Well sweetheart, you are clearly going somewhere. Leave ole Joseph to me, I’ll get him back right as rain.” Alex poked David in the chest, having to reach up to do so against the much taller man. “Now I’m going to be gone for a while, Uncle David. I don’t need to come back to him blitzed out of his mind.” David shrugged, giving a wry grin. “No telling what us kids will get up to while the adults are away, Alex. You know how we do.” Alex sighed, shaking her head. She gave David another smaller hug and kept going. David watched her for a time, head tilted, a slight smile on his lips. After she was out of sight, he turned towards the door. He opened and entered Alex Fernandez’s home, quietly closing it behind himself. Alex jogged down the stairs, not going too fast, taking a sip of her water. She spotted Joy at the landing below, looking away from the stairs. A neon green mohawk, pink and black punk aesthetic, and bright silver jewelry made Joy stick out like a sore thumb. Alex jumped the last few stairs down, grabbing Joy around the neck in a one-armed hug, Joy letting out a shout. “Christ me! Alex, you right bastard, you gonna give me a shock!” Her friend slugged Alex in the arm, not too hard. Alex feigned agony, leaning away in mock dismay. “How will I cope, without the great Joy in my life! How could any cope if you were gone!” Alex laughed at her friend’s face, Joy fuming for a moment. The disgruntled expression changed to one of raw mischief. “I suppose you won’t be wanting this ticket then? On account of me being in my grave, unloved and all.” She flashed Alex’s ticket in front of her, wafting it under her nose. Alex fell to one knee, one hand on her chest. “I humbly apologize to the great Jennifer Olive Yacavone and beseech her to reconsider the punishment of a sinner such as I.” Joy giggled, smacking the paper into Alex’s outstretched hand. “So long as you don’t use my full name again, we should be square. I suppose.” The two stared each other in the eye, before bursting out laughing. Alex nearly collapsed all of the way, Joy stopping her complete descent to the floor. “So you hear the news about the Neo Damocles?” Alex pried a few minutes later, the two walking aimlessly down the street. The beauty of San Juan was easily ignored by the two who had spent most of their lives in the town. Joy looked at Alex like she had asked her which brand of whiskey was the worst. “I think people on deserted islands heard about that announcement. Regular humans, getting to join them? What a gas.” Joy looked to the side a moment, contemplating something. “We’d almost be like, real superheroes. Free of political poo poo, just a couple of badass babes joining up with alien heroes to save the world.” She smiled a moment, softer than Alex was used to. “Do you think-“ Alex’s question died in her throat due to what she saw over Joy’s shoulder. The scene seemed innocent enough. What looked to be a family, walking down the street. A young and beautiful woman in a short skirt and tight shirt, the kind of outfit one wears to draw attention to yourself. One Alex didn’t think she could ever pull off. The older woman had a half-shaved head, the other half short, blonde hair. Next to her, in the middle, was a slight little girl with aqua marine hair and her own, though far more conservative, outfit consisting of a basic uniform. The man next to the little girl was what caught her attention. He wasn’t doing anything, Alex found. Nothing illegal, nothing noteworthy. If looks could kill though, Alex would have feared for her own safety. His face was drawn into full scowl, with several faded scars running across it. They were all the more pronounced against his darker skin, though Alex pegged him as Asian by his features. Possibly Korean? She couldn’t be sure. The scars were definitely not the kind you got from a surgery, instead being those you would only get from wounds. They weren’t what unnerved her, though they did help. It was his eyes. They were a harsh silver, bloodshot like they had no moisture or he rarely blinked, and set in an arresting glare at something opposite of the blonde woman. Alex looked over at what had his attention, only now taking in that the blonde was directing it to the very same thing. It was a holographic poster of several key Soldiers of the Neo Damocles. In the center was Debra Darling. To her immediate right was Riot Trigger, an extremely handsome blue skinned young man in heavy armor, holding up his signature Riot Pistol. To her left, the Heavy Weapons Damien, who made no effort to pose like Debra or Riot. He let his sheer mass and surgically attached weapon system do the speaking for him. Behind them, wings spread wide, was Sophie the Stinger. The four of them were the Elite Soldiers of the Neo Damocles, the most famous and popular of the numerous members. What had this man staring at the poster with such vitriol Alex could not begin to comprehend. She was jarred from her observation by Joy clapping her on the shoulder. She missed the man’s gaze turning on her as she looked away. “What, is your type tall, dark and fearsome?” Alex lightly punched Joy in the side, blushing. “Screw off. It’s just, doesn’t he kind of look, I don’t know, thuggish?” Alex motioned with her head, trying not to look back again. “What, like a Yakuza? Alex dear, I didn’t know you were so racist!” Joy laughed as she moved out of another friendly jab. The two friends continued along the sidewalk, the trio behind them forgotten. The man took the little girl’s hand, watching the two women ahead of them rough house. The Blonde leaned over to him. “What would you say if you were her type?” There was a smile on the woman’s face while she leaned into the larger man’s shoulder, above the head of the girl. The man brushed past her, the little girl quickening her pace to keep up. He did not reply to the accusation. His gaze settled into a glare as the two women ahead of them moved on. Burkion fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Sep 14, 2017 |
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Sep 12, 2017 05:07
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I know this is supposed to be campy, but. The TV infodump at the beginning wasn't super fun to read Also, the way Joy and Alex interacted was...I mean, as a human female im flattered you chose to study our species. But the way these characters interact is kinda over the top and forced in a way that made it hard to relate to them. I think we're supposed to like them by the end of the scene, but the constant punching and forced joviality didn't work, even when taking into account the campiness you're going for. IDK, if i were you I'd sit on this for a while and then come back to it. You wrote a novel in a month, which is cool and makes me horribly jealous. But I don't know that it's ready to shop around just yet, going by this excerpt.
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Sep 12, 2017 09:08
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Line crit time!  Burkion posted:This is an excerpt from my first novel, the Lightning Brigade Book 1, A Bitter Yesterday. Overall I think the three biggest things to focus on are dialogue, descriptions, and editing. Try to condense your dialogue and interactions--they felt uncomfortably overacted and elaborate, like you were trying to convince me that Alex and Joy were friends instead of just letting them be friends together. I said it in the line crit, but there's a lot of physical descriptions that get too technical, and would be better served by focusing on the feeling you want to convey rather than on pinning everything down. I don't need to know that one of the people in the 'family' had aquamarine hair. I do want to know that the scarred man stuck out, like there should have been some other man there, and he had stolen his place. If you're going to use physical descriptions, at least wrap them into mood like that or use them to set your character's voice or something. In terms of editing, I noticed that you tend to glom more clauses onto a sentence than it should have, which is something I do a lot in my rough drafts. You just have to keep an eye out for those in editing and snip them into individual thoughts. Same thing with paragraph breaks: make sure they come when the subject in focus changes, instead of a sentence or two after. Also more broadly, it's good to pick a POV and stick with it, unless you're trying to do some experimental shifting viewpoint narrative thing. In summary and in conclusion, 
Djeser fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Sep 12, 2017 |
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Sep 12, 2017 11:41
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She watched Joseph with some interest when the 1984 incident came up. “Suddenly, without warning, the Megulon Swarm lol entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The Supreme United Nation’s Taskforce they didn't bother with a name? was pushed beyond its limits, and many would lose their lives in the attack. split that sentence up Many cities suffered heavy damage in the, at the time, largest attack on the planet yet.” that aside is so awfully placed, please read it out loud and see if it seems natural to say "in the, at the time, largest attack on the planet"
if it's 2007 (2002+5) now and she was alive but too young to remember 1984, that makes her at least 23 years old, so mid-twenties I'm guessing. the Cabal, colloquially referred to as the Looters, are still at large, This sentence made me expect that they fought off the aliens so it was a weird whiplash to learn that no they're still here. "after" makes it sound like it's concluded so maybe "for five long years...have been at large" (tho at large sounds like criminals, less like an invading army) perpetuating unwarranted and unjust attacks against the human race. However, we have not weathered these attacks alone.” The TV showed images of Looter soldiers, marching through streets. Heavily armored space suits with darkened, near opaque domes, unnaturally long limbs ending in ball like appendages. Now I'm imagining that one flash game with the guy made out of balls where you could like tickle him and get points and stuff. only aughties kids remember this!!! There wasn’t a person alive that didn’t know what the average Looter looked like. 
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I'm going to try and stealth read this over the course of the workday - will share crits when I can! I apologize in advance if an Excel spreadsheet, passive-aggressive response to a meeting request, "Contact Us" meltdown, or any other dumb work poo poo ends up in there.
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Sep 12, 2017 15:07
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Djeser posted:Also more broadly, it's good to pick a POV and stick with it, unless you're trying to do some experimental shifting viewpoint narrative thing. Thank you for that break down, seriously. I'm tackling this in particular because, yeah, that's sort of exactly what I'm doing. It's a bit rougher in this first chapter, but what I try to be more consistent about is the POV character only changes with every new scene or after a major moment. There are a lot of characters and trying to restrain it to just Alex's perspective would strangle the narrative. She is the primary POV, especially for this book, but by no means the only one. There were one or two other things you brought up that I could go "Yeah that's on purpose" but that really isn't the point of this. Descriptions I admit I want to go into when it comes to the alien characters, because I don't want people thinking that they're at all...human. Physically anyways. I think I get better at it as the story goes on, with the Shadow Maiden having the most elaborate description just due to how unnatural she is and looks, but who knows really. Generally, I take time out to note things about an appearance if it's going to matter later on. I'll figure out how to do that better. And take your time, After! Best of luck with meetings today
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Sep 12, 2017 15:55
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I don't have time to go through and do a big line edit like Djeser did, but that post covered most of my thoughts anyway so it's not necessary. One thing I want to add is that both your TV info-dumps and your prologue really suck the mystery out of the opening of the story. When you explain EVERYTHING about how the world came to be, the reader doesn't have any questions left to ask themselves, so they aren't as interested in reading on. Think of your opening like you'd think of your pitch. You need to tell people the absolute bare minimum amount of information for them to get interested, and THEN you start the trickle of details. It doesn't matter that the aliens first came in 1997, or 1956, or whenever. They care about a granddad who is worried about his granddaughter going outside because it isnt safe. If you haven't dumped the entire history of the war on us beforehand, we wonder 'oh, why isn't it safe?' If we know all that, it's like, 'oh I guess the alien bullshit on the news is why it isn't safe, so this old guy isn't telling me anything interesting'. The more you tell early on, the less reasons people have to care about what comes next. It's like that old saying: why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free? Why read the rest of the book when the writer just barfed the whole history on page one? The history shouldn't be necessary to understand the story, but if it is, then you're telling the wrong story.
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Sep 12, 2017 21:30
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If you're going to shift POV on purpose, I suggest making it standard that it only shifts between chapters, or when you put in a little *** section break, or something. Physically break up the text on the page, so that your readers' brains will expect a shift in perspective. Not only will this make it clearer to the reader, but it'll help you evaluate just how much you need that POV shift. Another thing to consider that I didn't point out before is that there isn't a whole lot that happens in this chapter. There's a lot of plot threads introduced, but what's going on is "Alex leaves to go to a concert, and sees a guy on her way out". I can tell that the superhero team thing is going to get a lot of focus, but, I dunno, it's not really driving me to read more. I know a lot of backstory about the world, but not a lot about Alex's character, motivations, or any kind of conflict, beyond the vague alien threat. I'm not saying everything should be in medias res, but remember that the easiest thing a reader can do at any point is to stop reading. What you want to do as a writer is make it hard to stop reading. At the end of Chapter 1, I could be like "ah, what a weird dude, oh well" and then put it down and not come back. I'm not up to speed on novel writing but shouldn't the first chapter have some kinda inciting incident or something?
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Sep 12, 2017 21:35
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See that's interesting, because I would have thought the implicit mystery would be quite obvious. I guess not. To me, the real mystery here is what was that thing at the beginning and what happened to Atlanta? The news broadcast very overtly did not mention anything about it or the destruction of Atlanta. I'll have to reconsider that I guess. Though I am noticing I'm being a bit too subtle with a few things, going to have to reconsider that as well. EDIT- also I do have scene breaks in the actual text document, notably when switching POVs, but they wouldn't translate over here. Regardless, like I said, it isn't as consistent in this first chapter as what I try to do later.
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Sep 12, 2017 21:42
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I read through a bit of your novel and was gonna post but had formatting issues. Keep in mind I am a terrible writer so my opinions are worth crap and yes you can write better than me. I do read a few books here and there.Burkion posted:See that's interesting, because I would have thought the implicit mystery would be quite obvious. I guess not. Ill post some more once I get home and can format it better.
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Sep 12, 2017 22:00
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Burkion posted:See that's interesting, because I would have thought the implicit mystery would be quite obvious. I guess not. I figured the thing at the beginning was one of the good aliens or whatever, but I had no attachment to anyone or anything in the scene so I honestly forgot anything happened there besides scenery description. Full disclosure: Most of the time, I skim or skip prologues when I'm reading books for myself. They rarely have anythign to do with the main story until much later on, at which point I've forgotten everything in them even if I was paying attention. I just started a book the other day - Dr. Potter's Medicine Show, FWIW - and I saw the opening chapter was a bunch of pieces from fake textbooks, so I just shrugged and skipped right over it because it didn't do anything to start the story. Now I'm 30% of the way through and I neither know nor care what was in that prologue and I don't think I'm worse off for it. FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 22:36 on Sep 12, 2017 |
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Sep 12, 2017 22:32
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I'd like to say I'm a bit different with this story. Like to, anyways. What I can say is that I am trying to be a bit different. I'm of the belief that everything that is put into words should matter. Every moment, every character tic, every dialogue should build to something, connect to something. The prologue for Brigade is hugely important because it cuts to the heart of the conflict, and the true conflict of this first book. That's why I included it. I don't think I'm a particularly great, necessarily good, writer, but what I try to do is set up something that looks one way when you first read it, and then something happens that changes what you have read and how you will read it in the future. Which is, I admit, extremely difficult to get across in one chapter. To briefly defend myself, I will state that Alex's beginning goal IS stated here. She is interested in joining the Neo Damocles despite being, otherwise, an ordinary human. She is arrested by the idea of being A Hero and, at least I thought, it is made clear that Joseph does not want her to consider such things. He wants her to throw herself into her normal, average life. Maybe that's just more apparent to me because I'm the one who wrote it, or because I know what happens in the second or even third chapter. One thing I try to do with this story is have things build on itself. I don't know if I succeed, but we'll see in the long run. The newscast in the opening is inelegant, but it's meant to demonstrate how common place and almost historical aliens ARE. The prologue shows a crack in the information the media provides. There, a mysterious thing is involved in the destruction of a major city, but it doesn't seem to be antagonistic. And it's set in 1997, where the Neo Damocles only appear for the first time, as the first known benevolent aliens, in 2002. More over Who was the little girl? But if you skim through it and gloss over things, yeah, I can see that easily get lost. I'll see what I can do with it. I do think it flows a bit better in the context of further chapters, but who knows, I could just be wrong.
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Sep 12, 2017 22:49
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I never got the impression that Alex was a normal person. The prologue primed me to know that Alex is the child in the middle of the destruction-- that's why she lives with her grandfather, because her parents died in Atlanta. This means the entire (upcoming, assumed) drama of a "normal" human struggling with becoming a super soldier is gone. Of course she's gonna become ~An Hero~, she survived Atlanta (and possibly caused it). My rule of thumb for writing is "start where it gets interesting." If this were someone else's story, would you be interested in a history infodump right off the bat? And one thing that bugged me about that was Gramps clearly being annoyed but letting the TV ramble on. Why wouldn't he immediately turn it off or switch channels if he doesn't want to be watching that?
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Sep 12, 2017 23:59
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To engage you with that Alex's parents can't have died in Atlanta, and she doesn't live in North America. I honestly forget if I make it explicit in this chapter but I do hint at it quite a few times, but she lives in Puerto Rico, and her parents died in 1984. Joseph is only putting up with the program because it interrupted a football game he was watching. Both he and Alex note that it's strange that it interrupted the game.
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Sep 13, 2017 00:04
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You only mention San Juan, which as far as I know could be in California. It's not unheard of for people to relocate after a disaster, particularly one like that. I'm still not convinced that's a good enough reason for him to watch and not start channel-flipping to find the game again. Maybe that's the only channel it's on, I don't know. But why watch something if you know it's going to piss you off?
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Sep 13, 2017 00:10
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CantDecideOnAName posted:You only mention San Juan, which as far as I know could be in California. It's not unheard of for people to relocate after a disaster, particularly one like that. There are a few other things that point to it being Puerto Rico in the first chapter, beyond her last name, including the fact that Soccer is referred to as football and that it's a Caribbean Football Union game. Which to be fair, would be easy to gloss over if you didn't know what that was I suppose. Also, and this might just be totally different personal stuff- I watch stuff that pisses me off all the time. I have older relatives that will watch news-programs that they KNOW will piss them off just to complain about them. Old people are really stubborn about certain things. This is subjective, I admit, but that's my experience with things. Joseph also has something an interest in history but that's made clear later on.
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Sep 13, 2017 00:17
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Allright here we go. Just a point in note you are defending yourself a lot in the posts. Take criticism worth a grain of salt but pay attention if people are saying the same thing over and over.Burkion posted:This is an excerpt from my first novel, the Lightning Brigade Book 1, A Bitter Yesterday. Nice title Here is what i got from your prologue after reading it line by line prologue GEORGIA BLOWN UP BABY Weird alien poo poo I don't know, also there is some drama and a promise of I will always protect you Chapter 1 First part INFO DUMP OF THE WORLD Aliens showed up named Mega soemthing Humans fought them off, I think? Mega aliens showed up again The CABAL (moer aliens) showed up again, looters, they have balls on their hands The Super hero Aliens showed up (Are they teh teen titans of the universe?) and they are good SHOCKING TWIST, apparently humanity was never alone and the grandpa has ties to that? The MEDIA and the super hero aliens might be lying Chapter 1 second part Joy and Alex have an akward conversation and overact Alex pays attention to some guy with scars because hes scary and staring at a poster of the super hero aliens The man has 2 other companions , blonde women and a throw-away child that might not even exist SUBTLE ROMANCE PLOT?!!?!?!!? The end The prologue is interesting but cliched. It doesn't setup a mystery (even if you want it to). It starts to draw me in and then I get confused with the start of Chapter 1. The TV info dump is like reading a Wikipedia article on your world (Aliens show up, another aliens show up) and worse it reads like a history text book. I'm kind of interested in the grandpa since he acts the most. Alex is just there going to a concert that is unsafe for SOME reason (That never gets resolved... I don't know if the grandpa is super sensitive or what). Whatever interest I had is starting to wane. Then we get to the worst part which is Alex and Joy. By this time I'm hurting to have some kind of payoff or interest in any characters and having an overacted goofy scene is not what I wanted. Followed up by a MYSTERIOUS MAN FULL OF SCARS showing up and Alex noticing him because he is "special". You haven't convinced me that the man is worth noticing or that Alex didn't pay attention to him because the writer needed her to pay attention to him. It reads like a young adult novel which is okay. It sounds like we are surronded by special people because they are "Special" and we aren't told why. I would improve your dialogue and the Alex and Joy scene. I think you should cut the TV Info dump scene. Its purpose there is to inform the reader of the world but it is done so dry and without any insight into the characters that its pretty obvious what it is, the reader is told this is how the world works.
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Sep 13, 2017 01:05
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Burkion posted:I'd like to say I'm a bit different with this story. I didn't really get a sense of conflict from the prologue. I got a sense of loss and desolation, sure, but if I just saw the prologue and you asked me what the story would be about, I'd guess that it was about post-apocalyptic survival or something. Also, I never got the sense that Alex really wanted to join the inexplicably-named alien superheroes. She watches a special announcement on the news and then asks her friend if she heard the announcement and then looks at a poster. Joy is the only character that actually expresses an interest in joining up with the likes of Gun Dave. Likewise, all I got about Joseph was that he's grumpy about aliens for some nebulous reason, I didn't get the sense that he specifically is against the idea of being a superhero. I also assumed that the girl in the prologue was Alex and that Atlanta was destroyed by one of the Bad Guy Aliens. What you did was you said "look at this city, destroyed, everyone killed, look at this little girl crying there" and then whoosh forward to the future where a young woman whose parents were killed in an alien attack is watching a news show about alien attacks. Of course the reader is going to assume that they're the same person. No one's going to actually sit down and do the math like I did in my line crit, so the fact that you threw a bunch of numbers in there is meaningless. The structure of your story itself says that the scene with the girl and the scene with Alex are related. It's not that the newscast is inelegant, it's that it's boring. If you're going to crowbar in an explanation of your world, make it something I want to read. I don't have a problem with early chapters setting up things that get elaborated on in later chapters. I do have a problem with wading through boring exposition before anything good happens. You can have the greatest payoff in the world and it won't matter if I get bored and stop reading before I get to it. I'm not expecting a fight scene in the first chapter or something, but give me some stakes, or a fun voice to read, or a compelling character, or something. That's the big overarching problem with it: it doesn't give me a reason to care.
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Sep 13, 2017 02:31
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It turns out that Purposeful loving Around at Work is harder than I thought. I only got the first little bit read while I was there, and by the time I got back to it this evening, most of my comments were already posted. So I will add the following points, in no logical order:
I had more, but I'll try to assemble it into semi-coherent sentences tomorrow, Work From Home Day. A lot of it was about Star Wars, so be ready.
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Sep 13, 2017 05:20
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Im also gonna say the tv infodump is terrible and needs to go but more specifically: the dates. Thowing a bunch of dates and years out there is very confusing and off putting but most importantly they don't loving matter. Especially in a work of speculative fiction. When does this story take place? Someone said 2007? Why does that matter? Unless your story is specifically about 2007 and needs 2007 to work (think Franzen's The Corrections and the 90's) you're dating yourself unnecessarily. Atwood never mentions dates in The Handmaid's Tale and even though it was written in the 80s and takes place in the present/near future, its still hyper relevant today 30 years later. Why are kids reading your book 30 years from now gonna give a gently caress about 2007? If 2007s only purpose is to establish a number of years since a previous event I would focus more on that than the dates themselves. "25 years ago" has a lot more intrinsic meaning than "back in '84" I can't crit the rest of your story cuz honestly I gave up during the infodump
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Sep 13, 2017 06:59
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So I read your book last night. Your whole book. I almost gave up at the 7,000 word battle scene that shifted perspectives into probably ten different peoples' heads, but by that point I had come too far and I don't understand the sunk cost fallacy. There's a story in here, but it's not about Alex. Alex is a non-character. Her friend is kidnapped and her grandpa is hospitalized, and she doesn't give them any thought beyond the occasional declaractive sentence of 'I wanna see my papa/I wanna save Joy'. If your story had fewer than fifty perspective characters (this is not hyperbole, I am certain I have been in fifty heads at this point), these little statements might be enough to remind me that Joseph and Joy exist (by the way, naming three important characters Joseph/Joy/Jordan is insanely loving confusing), but you have more factions than an MMO and even basic characterizations are getting lost in the shuffle. During the few moments you do spend with Alex, she never thinks about anything or considers why she's doing anything - she just does poo poo. Occasionally she'll say something like 'I fight for my friends' or whatever, but it rings hollow since they don't mean anything to her outside of the dialogue. None of her interactions with them informed her decisions. They exist in her life as stock characters and she feels obligated to save them because the plot demands it. Their impact on her life is negligible. How do I know? I did a search on their names after I finished. Once Joy and Joseph disappear, they get two and no lines about them respectively until they reappear at the end of the book. Both of those lines are dialogue insisting upon their importance. At no point does Alex ever have a thought or a memory that shows why they might be important to them. Yes, they're her friends/family, but those bonds are never established in any meaningful way before they disappear, so asking us to take their value on faith is a real stretch. Alex does nothing for the story. Focusing the query/synopsis around her does a disservice to the book. In all honesty, you'd be better off scrapping her entirely, and the book would not suffer for her disappearence. This is because the story is not about her, as it's about Jordan. Jordan is interesting. He is a walking nuclear bomb who wants to defend his home but can't without causing six-figure casulaties. Meanwhile, he's sandwiched between a pushy galactic supergroup (basically the entire ensemble cast from the entire run of the Venture Bros), a bad guy group (they are bad because they want to hurt earth but also they do not like the galactic supergroup so there is, I suppose, nuance), and a woefully uninvolved Earth government (the supreme most high united nations ssj3). In the middle of all of this is Beita the robot girl who is extremely old but can't remember past her physical age of nine, which is a pretty interesting concept. Beita has ties to the Galactic Venture Bros, so Jordan has negative feelings about that, but she's also a good robo-kid and he cares about her to the point where he's willing to use his powers to defend her, even if a fuckload of people die because of it. That's interesting. Why? Because it's a conflict. Jordan, unlike Alex, has difficult choices to make. He wants to defeat the generic nuanced badguys, but doing so requires he either uses his powers and kills a lot of people, or he accepts help from the Galactic Venture Bros. Since killing lots of people is bad, he begrudgingly takes help, even though it means letting powerful aliens to run around earth unchecked. Part of him is willing to do this since they seem to care about the well-being of Beita almost as much as he does, so he's willing to throw up his hands and say 'enemy of my enemy is my friend' and all that that poo poo. However, his allegiance to not killing people is soon tested against his love of Beita, and he's got to decide if he wants to piss off the Galacitc Venture Bros, the generic bad guys, and the ineffective world government to protect her. Also, he's probably going to end up killing a lot of people. Again, that is really interesting. After reading the whole story, my recommendation would be to sit down and sincerely reconsider what elements of the story actually have any value to a reader. You head-hop into a cast that I suspect spans triple digits but will charitably call fifty. As a consequence, you end up with a vast ensemble of named characters with no defining characteristics beyond their alien appearences and their stock character traits (bitchy girl, hot-headed guy, stern government man, etc). The more time you spend on these people, the less time you have to develop the people who matter, and the entire book suffers as a consequence. If I were in your shoes - and I'm not, but I've been where you are - I'd rewrite the entire book from scratch. I'd toss Alex, maybe even toss the rest of the Lightning Brigade, and focus entirely on Jordon, the man who can't defend his planet and his tiny robot child without causing shitloads of collateral damage. Him and his conflicts are the only interesting part of the story. That seems like a huge knock, by the way, but it's actually impressive that you've got anything interesting in your first novel. Most people do not. I doubt I did. First novels are a chance for most of us to vomit out whatever grand ideas we've been kicking around forever, so that we can be done with them and move on to something that hasn't been overdeveloped to the point of becoming cancerous. You probably don't want to rewrite the book from the beginning. 'I like the story and I have my reasons for doing what I did'. Great. I'm sure you do. We've all got our reasons for doing what we do - that's the way life works. Unfortunately, your book is unpublishable as it stands. Story issues aside, it's littered with basic grammatical mistakes and poorly-indicated perspective changes that make it impossible to read without inducing massive confusion. No agent/publisher/editor will have the patience to power through any of that in the hopes of finding something good when they have literally thousands of publishable books showing up in their inboxes every year. This all sounds pretty dire, and I'm sure it's not what you want to hear. What it's not, however, is a bad thing. You wrote a book. That's fantastic! Now you get to either re-write it and make it better, or shelve it and write something else. Something you haven't been mentally dissecting for ten years (I don't remember if this is how long you've spent on this, but it's how long I spent on my first sweeping ensemble clusterfuck, and it was far worse than things I've plotted out in two months). In many ways, getting this book out of your system was the best thing that you could do for yourself as a writer. Now you can sit back and look at it with an objective eye and say 'Now where do I go from here?' The best part is, the answer is 'anywhere!' You can start over, you can start something new, you can give up and pout for weeks about how you're a failure and no one's ever written something as bad as you have (hint: they have). Realizing that what you have isn't working is a lovely part of the process, but it's the part of the process where you have the most control. You can choose to go forward, you can choose to go back, or you can clap your hands over your ears and 'well, actually...' every critique because you're certain it's perfect and I'm an idiot who can't see your genius. gently caress, maybe that's true. It's probably not, but stranger things have happened. Whatever you do, though, it's your choice and your career, so be smart about it. FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 15:54 on Sep 13, 2017 |
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Sep 13, 2017 15:50
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Well a lot of that isn't going to make much sense to people in this thread! But it does give me a lot to consider. A different angle to attack this from. If anyone wants to read the full draft of what I currently have, and have any clue what Nae is talking about, message me in private. Either here, or at lbjessealonso@gmail.com
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Sep 13, 2017 16:47
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The nitty gritty won't make sense to the thread, but the overall message is something important for anybody starting out to hear. The first book is always the most complicated, because it's the one you labor over for the longest without knowing whether you'll write it or not. Once you get it down on paper, it feels like such a loving miracle that you don't want to change anything, because changing anything makes you feel like holy poo poo you just wasted (x) days/months/years writing something that wasn't absolute perfection. But that's okay. Hell, that's how it's supposed to go. Not everybody sits down and writes The Pickwick Papers as a lark. In fact, the vast majority of published writers didn't sell their first book, yet somehow they kept going and got what they wanted eventually. Some of those writers threw their first books away and started over on new poo poo. Some of them overhauled their first book multiple times and made it work. There's no clear path to victory aside from 'keep going'. That's why I posted the whole critique in this thread: to show that just because everybody has to start somewhere doesn't mean the start has to be the end.
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Sep 13, 2017 17:20
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Your advice is seriously helpful. I think I really did need a second perspective on the actual story because the first chapter just does not convey what is going on at all. Which is part of the problem! So yeah I'm going to take this back to the drawing boards a bit more confident in what I'm actually proud of from the story. I just have to make sure it works better.
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Sep 13, 2017 17:45
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Burkion posted:I'd like to say I'm a bit different with this story. You needed a whack with the perspective bat, and are starting to take it well, which is commendable. The thing is, you haven't done anything different from any other first-time novel writer, and your first draft has all the obvious hallmarks of a first draft. You say everything you wrote is important—it is, but don't confuse that with being essential to the narrative. The first draft was you trying to figure out the story, so you felt you had to write down every character's description and thoughts and backstory. The exposition at the beginning was entirely for your benefit. But this isn't the draft your readers are going to get. Remember that. This one's for you alone, and of course it's going to be an uneven mess. As much as you've been playing this story over and over in your head, none of that was concrete until you wrote it down. Now that you've explored every character and set up your world, it's time to scrap your first draft. Stick it in a folder called "notes" and rewrite the story from scratch (give it time if you have to). This time focus on one or two characters and let the rest reveal themselves only through action and dialogue. We don't need to know what everyone's thinking—only you, the writer, needs to know that. Why? Because if you diffuse the story across 50+ POVs, there's no character for the reader to latch onto enough to give a poo poo. You used these POVs so you could write down everything that happened, but the reader doesn't need to see everything that happens. They really don't. You have to get over that notion before you write a second draft, because it's just going to bog you down. When you focus on one POV (at least per chapter), you give that character the power to tell the story in a relatable way—it's a one on one dialogue with the reader. It doesn't matter if they know everything that happened. The holes in their POV are blanks the reader wants to fill in, but this is how you weave a bit of mystery in that makes the reader curious enough to read on. Letting the reader know absolutely everything, as others have mentioned in this thread, actually makes your story less interesting. The thing about the event in your prologue being the vital key to everything is, you don't need to hand the reader the key at the beginning of the story. I'll use a successful novel as an example: I recently read We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves by Karen Joy Fowler. The entire story hinges on one crucial fact about the main character's long-lost sister. The reader probably knows what it is from reading the back of the book, but that doesn't matter. It's written in 1st person, and the main character doesn't reveal that crucial fact until about 1/3 into the story. She wants you to get to know her and her sister before she reveals that her sister is a chimpanzee. The timing of her reveal is an essential part of her character, because she's not comfortable telling the story. She's been hiding it for years, and only at the end does she reveal why she decided she finally had to tell it to the world. What you've written is a mess, which is ok. Never forget that first drafts are allowed to be an incoherent mess. You write the first draft to figure out where the story is. Once you figure that out, you have to pull it out of the mess and rewrite it. The job of writing a second draft is to focus what story you have, and that means ruthlessly cutting exposition and POVs. It's a hard slog ahead, but everyone who's finished a first novel has been there. Good luck!
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Sep 13, 2017 18:51
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Stuporstar posted:She wants you to get to know her and her sister before she reveals that her sister is a chimpanzee. That is definitely not the spoiler I was expecting.
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Sep 13, 2017 19:09
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I hope I don't come off as defensive here, because one thing that is remaining is the prologue. Nae has a better idea why now It's not going to be the same- I'm going to go more into it, a more personal look into what happened and a bit into why Because I realize I've been explaining it wrong. It's not the key to the story- the mystery of the prologue is answered within, I want to say, the first 40 or so pages. At least most of it. It's the way the prologue informs the characters, and more importantly, the ending. Which is hard to describe without going into it but that's the gist of it. I'm just really awful at explaining what I mean a lot of the time and I wish I was better at it. I'm going to focus on reworking things and bringing it back here soon, once I think it's in a solid enough state. I think you guys have given me the right angle to attack this from, and I think I can do what good parts of my story I have justice with that perspective.
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Sep 13, 2017 19:25
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So, here's my quick reworking on the Prologue and Chapter 1. I'm tackling this with the idea Nae gave me, that gave me some confidence to abandon the more...traditional style I was going for with the first version. Same basic plot, just a switch in perspective. I wrote this over the course of late yesterday and today, and haven't gotten to give it a good second pass yet. This is just to put my money where my mouth is about what you guys saying mattering to me. So the technicals don't matter as much as what is being said. PROLOUGE: It had been daylight when she arrived. She knew it still was, somewhere above the choked skies. Thunderous clouds filled with ember lit smoke hung oppressively overhead. Beita couldn’t understand it. When she had arrived, there was still a city. When she had arrived, Rebecca had still been alive. She stumbled through what little remained of the formerly busy downtown. What was this place? Atlanta, she believed. Rebecca told her that. Atlanta, Georgia. She looked for someone, some survivor, somebody to save. The child wanted to cry but the shock was still overwhelming. She had to find someone. She thought she heard something in the distance. She ran for it, finding twisted metal slag where a building had once stood. Rebecca had died, and then the fighting started. In a fit of anger and sorrow a city was swept away by a storm. Beita pried apart the metal, ignoring the pain that shot through her hands. She found an opening, a basement or a cellar. She shouted down into the hole, receiving only an echo for her trouble. Why did they have to fight? Where did they go? She stepped away from the opening, falling backwards. Trees that stood on the outskirts of the city were now either gone entirely, or blackened husks ready to collapse. She looked further, towards the suburbs, and found they had received no more mercy. She picked herself up and kept moving. Beita wandered for a time, eventually growing numb to the shock of collapsing buildings and the groaning of newly blackened roads. Soon, what was once a city was quiet. She was crushingly alone. Why did they have to fight? Did they leave her too? Like her father? Like Rebecca? Beita reached the center of Atlanta, collapsing from exhaustion. Thinking of her father, his promise to come and find her. That was so long ago. Tears began to fall, staining the ground beneath her. The air was filled now with the sounds of her wailing. She cried harder than she ever had before, more than she had ever allowed herself to. She blinded herself to a light approaching her, could not hear its footfalls and scraping metal against stripped away stone. A light in the shape of a man stood over the child, wreathed in scorched and worn metal. A crown, cracked and broken, enclosed its featureless head. It spoke words to the child that she could not hear. Kneeling before her, the Light embraced her, drawing her in close. She realized it, he, was there, and cried all the harder. Hugging her close, she could finally hear his words. Rain began to fall, adding to her tears. “It’s alright.” He held her as tight as he dared, gently patting her head. The rain that struck him burned to steam. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m still here.” Her crying quieted to sobs, and then whimpers. She wrapped her arms around his neck as he spoke again. “I will protect you.” “I will never abandon you.” CHAPTER 1 Most people would be in bed at 4 AM. Jordan found some amusement at the idea. He was in the rebuilt Memorial Park of Los Atlanta, going on one of his irregular jogs. He wasn’t going particularly fast, taking in the scenery around him. Most of the trees were artificial, though the general public didn’t know that. Real trees would be quietly moved in, but for the moment the image was what mattered. The image of a thriving park in the heart of a successfully reborn city. A city that rose from the ashes less than a decade after its total destruction. It gave people hope, he supposed. He couldn’t fault the logic for that, but quietly disapproved of the lie all the same. His shift at AAACooper Transportation would be starting soon, so he shifted his path towards the west side of the city. He was part time only, despite their insistence of accepting a full position. If they kept pushing, he’d have to walk away. That was fine, too. It’d open the spot for someone else. As it was, he was content with the work. It kept him busy when he had nothing else going on. What was today? He knew he had hours this week, but hadn’t been back to his apartment in a few days. It was easy to lose track of time when you traveled as much as he did. The sidewalks were nice enough, made of some material he didn’t have a name for. Some alloy or plastic or other that could gather sunlight to power generators beneath the city. Glancing to the roads, cars racing back and forth even at this Godforsaken hour, he noticed they were slightly glowing. Same material and in theory the glow was to help keep pedestrians safe at night, eliminate the need for street lights. Pretty fancy tech, certainly not of human origin. He didn’t figure human engineering would crack something this sophisticated for a long while yet, but he mostly kept that to himself. He didn’t even finish high school after all. Hell, maybe he was off base, maybe human scientists did rig this together. He didn’t believe that, but it would be nice. On a whim, he wrapped his knuckle against the window of a building he was passing. Instead of glass, he found the distinct feeling of metal. Some kind of clear alloy that, if he remembered right, operated much the same as the roads. Solar batteries to keep the city running in the worst of situations. Couldn’t fault the Neo Damocles on that. He had moved into Los Atlanta some seven years ago, before it was anything more than a few half-built structures and didn’t have the new name. Back then he worked construction, tried his best to help pull the city back together again. Even got his GED to be allowed to work the cranes, not that he had much interest in that part of the job. The funding just wasn’t there, the damage was too severe, to deep. He staid regardless, did his best where he could. Then the Neo Damocles came five years ago. Heroes from space, here to save the world! They meant well. They hadn’t arrived alone, of course. No hero comes without a villain to fight. He spied his coworkers up ahead and put on a bit more speed. The sun was starting to make itself known, peeking over the horizon. He must have taken longer than he thought. He didn’t have much to change, having taken his jog in jeans and a shirt. He just needed to grab his safety vest. Weller, his superior, waved him over. A younger man was beside him, yawning. New face. “Jordan, I’d like you to escort Mr. Benton around.” Jordan nodded. New hire, made sense. He tended to be the one to show the new people the ropes. Mr. Benton stared at him, a sudden case of nerves knocking out his weariness. “You got a first name there, Mr. Benton?” Jordan offered his hand to the younger man, who seemed startled at the action. “Yeah, name’s Ian.” He nodded a few too many times, taking Jordan’s hand with apprehension. “You don’t have to worry so much, Ian. We’re all friendly around here.” Normally the job of showing the new hires around fell to a senior officer, but Jordan had been working long enough to count, unofficially. Technically he was only allowed 30 hours a week, due to being part time, but if he had the free time he often helped out far more than that. He didn’t care about the fact that they couldn’t pay him for the extra hours. It didn’t really matter. Ian was a relatively fast learner, picking up the subtleties of the job with aplomb. Most importantly, one was not to try and move the larger crates from the trucks without support. Teamwork was important in unloading and loading freight, and if you tried to do it on your own you’d only hurt yourself. More importantly, you’d damage whatever you were trying to fix. It seemed Ian did not get used to working around Jordan too much, to Jordan’s disappointment. He wondered if it was the relatively fresh scars across his face, or his eyes. Jordan had been told in the past that he often had a very intense gaze, though he wouldn’t know anything about that. Wondering about the reasons left him unable to catch Ian’s mistake. Ian was supposed to secure the crate that they had loaded into a dolly, but had only connected one strap properly. Jordan only caught it too late, as Ian tried to move the dolly only for the crate to snap free. Shouts of panic and alarm rang out, honestly annoying Jordan more than the 500 pound weight that now had him pinned to the ground. It had smashed into his chest, driving him down the ramp and next to a wall. He could feel ribs cracking, maybe worse. A familiar voice shouted out to quiet the others. “Calm down already!” Had to be Lucy. “You still alive under there, Arnaz?” “I’m fine.” He checked the crate on top of him. Thankfully it seemed to be okay. “Alright folks, get back to work! Benton, get your rear end down here! Fall, go grab Weller where ever he got off to!” Lucy took charge quick, which Jordan appreciated. He had to figure out a way to move the crate without breaking whatever was inside of it. That wouldn’t look good for the company. “What in Christ’s name happened this time!” Weller had arrived, evidently. Jordan started to move the crate to the side, nudging it. He felt his left ribs crack more and bit back the blood that entered his mouth. “I wasn’t keeping an eye on Ian’s work.” It really was his fault, after all. His thoughts had wandered and mistakes were made. “You can just knock it off yourself, Jordan, Jesus.” Weller sounded equal parts annoyed and frustrated. Jordan couldn’t blame the man. “It’s okay.” Gently, he got the box to the side of his body. The weight of it made a muffled noise hitting the concrete. “See? No harm done.” Standing to stretch, Jordan suppressed a wince as his ribs bit into one another. Ian was looking at him in awe filled horror. “That thing had to weigh a ton! How are you okay?” Jordan waved him off. “It wasn’t that much. Must have caught me the right way.” “Lucy, you take over Ian for now.” Weller had stepped in. “I needed to speak with Jordan anyways.” “Come on, new kid. Let’s make sure you don’t try and murder anyone else today.” Lucy directed the increasingly baffled Ian away, who was still sputtering about the incident. Jordan considered the crate for a moment. It was medical equipment for the St. Mary Hospital downtown. That was another reason he wanted to be careful with it. He knew Weller was looking him over. The first time they had met, Jordan had been working part time past his 30 hours, and Weller had just transferred in. An incident with a truck’s breaks had occurred, and Jordan was pinned against a wall for a good ten minutes before it could be moved. Since, Jordan tried to take the brunt of the onsite accidents, if he could help it. Better for everyone involved. Weller sighed. “Not going to do me any good to ask how you’re doing, is it?” Jordan smiled at Weller, though he knew it didn’t reach his eyes. For most people, they didn’t really notice the difference. The appearance of a smile was all they really wanted, the assurance of happiness. What the person actually felt or thought didn’t matter. If he was counting, he knew he hadn’t rested in a few days. Even for him, that was pushing it. “I’m fine.” “There’s a woman outside waiting for you.” Weller thumbed back, to the entrance of the unloading and loading area. “Yumi?” She should be ending her shift about now, but she’d have no reason to swing by here from the hospital. “No, this one’s blonde, half shaved head.” Weller shook his head. “Looks like trouble. Want me to tell her to get lost?” Jordan grimaced. “No. It’s okay.” Breathing in, he calmed himself down. His ribs were aching, but a dull ache. He could feel a heat, deep in his chest. “You mind if I head out?” “Yeah, sure.” Weller turned to supervise the rest of the workers. Jordan stopped before leaving. “What is today, Weller?” “Christ how do you lose track all the loving time!” Jordan shrugged at the older man, ignoring the fresh pain that it brought. “November 21st, idiot. Need to remember the year too?” A dark feeling flashed over Jordan. He smiled at Weller, waving at him as he walked away. “No thanks. Talk to you later, Weller.” “It’s still 2007, Jordan! You know, in case you start forgetting basic poo poo like the year! Your lotto numbers are,” Jordan stopped listening to him at that point. Weller was an understanding guy, but some things stuck in his craw something fierce. A glare settled on Jordan’s features while he considered the date. Three more days, and it’d be ten years. Ten years since Atlanta was destroyed. Ten years since Rebecca died. Ten years since he and Anna…he spied the Blonde waiting for him at the gate. She was leaning against a fence, admiring her nails. He could see past her disguise easy enough. Rearranged her skin, changed her hair, hid her weapons, even fussed with her own facial structure and she still couldn’t hide from him. “What do you want, Debra?” His deep voice gained a bit more gravel than he meant to add. He didn’t like to show naked annoyance quite so easily. Debra smiled at him, a smile every bit as false as the face she currently wore. “Jordan, please. Can’t I visit a dear friend?” His glare was the only response she would get. Shrugging with her right arm only, she tilted her head to the side. “Thought you’d like to come along. I’m going to San Juan in a few. Heard there was a thing happening.” “A thing.” Jordan crossed his arms. “Some kind of Looter operation.” Looter. Jordan hated the term. Five years ago, the Neo Damocles had arrived on Earth, proclaiming themselves the champions of humanity. Just before they had arrived, a different group had come. Their full name was never made clear, some kind of language thing, but the gist of it was the Cabal of the Primarch. Looter was a derogatory nickname the Damocles came up with and spread around like a virus. Meant to dehumanize the Cabal and distance their actions from their motives. “I heard that some of their higher-level members may be floating around.” Debra continued, unabated. “Where did you hear this?” Debra smiled at Jordan. It made him want to punch her face in. “You know the Shadow Maiden. She has eyes everywhere.” Jordan’s hands drew into fists. “Why include me?” Debra laughed, the sound grating on his nerves. “You’d just barge in anyways, if it’s as big as the Shadow Maiden seems to think it’s going to be.” Debra leaned in, putting one hand on Jordan’s shoulder and whispering into his ear. “Supposedly, Ygis and maybe even Dokuver are going to be involved. Isn’t that exciting?” “Let go of me.” She leaned harder on his shoulder with her left arm. “Or what, you’ll take this arm like you did the right?” She waved her right hand at him, the skin flickering away briefly to reveal black metal. Her grin widened. “Come on, you can bring Beita. I’m sure she’d love to get out.” That made him waver. “Who else will be coming?” “Just us. You can think of it as our first unofficial, official, joint venture. If you’d like, anyways.” She settled into an easy smile, one hand on her hip. Jordan’s eyes narrowed. “So, it’s a scouting mission that you got stuck with.” Debra rolled her eyes, stepping away. “Yeah, so what? It’s my turn, but it’s so boring!” Jordan was never clear exactly how much of her childishness was put on, and how much of it was genuine. “I’m one of the Elite! I shouldn’t have to go on some lovely scrub tier scouting mission.” “You can blend into a crowd better than anyone.” Debra glared at him. “They could wear holographic disguises.” Now she had her arms crossed. Jordan was reaching into his pocket for his phone. “Could, but those aren’t as convincing as what you do.” There it was. Appearance wise, it was just a normal flip phone, a little beat up. Screen was cracked, but otherwise it was fine. “Well I am nothing if not convincing.” She was trying to lay on the charm again. Jordan didn’t bother to respond as he started to walk away, pressing one hidden button on the phone. It didn’t take a moment for the other side of the line to pick up. “Jordan?” The childlike voice was so curious and happy, though notably confused. He had just talked with her four hours ago. “Get something nice on, kiddo. We’re going to go sightseeing for a little while.” He ignored Debra behind him who was pestering him about something or other. “Really? Great! Are you up for it? Your back got pretty torn up last night and,” she was babbling. He smiled. “I’m fine, Beita. Come on. Debra’s treating us to a day at San Juan.” After a moment, he clarified. “Puerto Rico, San Juan, Puerto Rico.” When you could travel like they could, you had to be specific. “Should I go straight there, or head to Los Atlanta first?” She was talking over the intercom now, her voice distant. “Come to us. Debra will escort us.” Jordan looked back at the older woman. “Won’t you, Debra?” “Well I’m certainly not going your way.” Debra leaned in over Jordan’s shoulder to his annoyance. “Beita, dear, be sure to pick a nice dress!” “Will do!” Jordan closed the phone, moving away from Debra. Pocketing his phone, he started to walk down the street. Shops would be opening now, and the city would be coming to life. Staring up at the apartment buildings, he thought of how the city had been rebuilt from the ground up to hold as many as New York. It barely had more than the original Atlanta, only four hundred thousand or so. Even with the Neo Damocles aiding in its reconstruction as a sign of good will, many would rather avoid the place all together. Debra noticed him eyeing the scenery. “We do good work, don’t we Jordan? You have to admit that.” “If only people trusted you enough to live here.” Jordan looked towards his apartment building. He wondered if he should contact Yumi. “They’ll catch on, eventually. This place could survive an earthquake untouched. No other city on Earth can boast that, yet.” Jordan eyed Debra critically. Yet. “If you’re trying to get a rise out of me, stop it.” He wondered how long it’d take Beita to get ready. Hoped she remembered to grab the hologram ring. “So little faith, Jordan!” Debra laughed. It grated on his ears. “We’re not going to force anyone to adopt our technology. Between you and me, I think some of your science groups have been stealing designs from here anyways. The basis for the technology will be naturally seeded out and one day every human city will be built like this.” A dark look passed over her features. “At least every one that matters.” “They all matter.” He didn’t bother to look back at her. “Not to the government they don’t.” Debra was quiet a moment, before speaking up. “So, this city could survive a nuke now, I think. Some structural damage, but over all it’d weather it fairly well.” Jordan looked back at her. “Could it survive you?” Debra had her eyes closed, smiling. “Shut up. She’s coming.” Jordan looked ahead as a bright light suddenly appeared. From within it, a child emerged. A little girl, no older than nine, in a pretty little uniform. At least Jordan knew that’s how she appeared to anyone else. To him, he could see through the hologram, see her metal body and synthetic hair. “Hey, Beita.” She hugged his arm. “Thank you for bringing me!” She was still just a little girl otherwise. With some effort that he didn’t make obvious, he lifted her up to eye level. “Any time.” He smiled softly at her before glancing at Debra. “Just for warning, Beita, we may run into some trouble. Debra’s being wishy washy about it, but there are possibly Cabal Troops planning something.” “That’s fine! Nothing you can’t handle!” She really did believe in him. It was enough to make his chest ache. Debra elbowed him in his cracked ribs. “You’re right there, Beita! Jordan can fight back any monsters, can’t you?” Beita let go of his arm, landing gracefully on her feet. “Of course he could!” She gave him a thumbs up, Debra mirroring the young girl. Jordan sighed. “Of course I could Beita. That’s what I’m here for.” He ruffled her hair, letting his thumb pass over the golden star imbedded in her forehead, hidden from normal sight. She giggled at the sensation. Looking back at Debra, his smile faltered. “You have a time table of when things are supposed to go down?” She shrugged. “Who knows? It’s not like they have a schedule for extraterrestrial terrorist attacks.” “Let’s go then.” The three of them moved out of the streets, into an alley. They weren’t too worried about being seen, but drawing too much attention was not desirable. Debra touched what looked like a watch on her wrist, and then they were gone. The way Jordan understood Neo Damocles teleportation, they had a few different methods, none like what Beita could do. Beita’s was harmful to organic things and could be quite painful if you weren’t used to it. As a mechanical life form, she didn’t notice. The method Debra was using was actually an invisible wormhole that opened up in one area and moved you to another across space and time. Nice and safe, but it did take time to do. Not much that you’d notice, but it was not instant. They arrived at the outskirts of San Juan, Beita overjoyed. In her long years on the planet, she had never been here before. Not that she could recall, at any rate. “What can we do here, where can we go?” She was pulling on Debra’s sleeve, the cyborg laughing at the child’s energy. “We’ll stalk around a few places. I’ll get you a milkshake, would you like that Beita?” Jordan ignored the two for a moment, looking around. He could feel something was going on. There was a heat in the city that shouldn’t have been here, and the feeling of electricity in the air. He hadn’t been to San Juan since 1993. He was so young then. It had recovered nicely, he supposed. Certainly didn’t have the Damocles’ claws all over it, though signs of the Supreme United Nations were everywhere. He eyed cameras hidden across the streets and buildings critically. He was going to have a meeting with Christine soon, he realized. “Jordan, can we go?” Beita was grabbing his hand to get his attention. He nodded wordlessly. It didn’t matter where they went. Debra must have seen the look in his eyes. She approached him from the side, brushing up behind him. “So Dokuver is here, I take it?” “More.” He gestured towards a building, an apartment complex. “Someone like me is here. A potential host.” “We haven’t noticed anyone.” She looked at him incredulous. “You don’t look. They’re not aware of it anyways.” Beita was leading them to an ice cream shop Debra had told her about, the cyborg switching sides and saddling up next to the girl. Beita was walking lockstep with Jordan. He realized they must look like quite the family. One Japanese man, one white woman, and one Indian little girl. It almost made him smile. He felt the heat moving. He felt the electricity grow stronger as they neared the apartment building. It was without question now. The Cabal were active here, after something. One of his own was here as well, unaware of what they were capable of. Of course, worst of all, he was here. He was going to have to decide what to do about that before a lot more people died.
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Sep 14, 2017 21:59
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I liked this a lot more than the other version. It was easy reading, except for your dialogue tags.code:code:
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Sep 14, 2017 23:02
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It's prologue. Good work on the rewrite, I didn't read it closely but it's a lot less grating on a skim.
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Sep 15, 2017 00:09
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I saw you PM'd this to me and I read it and then forgot to say anything. This is a thousand times better!
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Sep 15, 2017 02:25
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CantDecideOnAName posted:I liked this a lot more than the other version. It was easy reading, except for your dialogue tags. Thank you for that, in particular. That's something I'm still working on getting right, especially on my first go. That's been the thing I think I've struggled with the most to make look right. And thank you three in general. Turns out I do better writing sincerely angry bitter people who are displeased with how things are and where they are in the world, rather than insincerely happy folks doing a bunch of nothing! I'm kidding of course. Talking with you guys really did help me put what I was doing wrong into perspective. Before, I was burying the lead so to speak. The story is and always has been about Jordan and Beita's sort of father/daughter relationship and all the poo poo they have to deal with. I think I was trying to be too clever about it with my first draft, present it as Alex's story that is a lot happier and more Young Adult-y, so that when the real story kicked in, it'd be a surprise. The problem is it resulted in an extremely weak main character whose best in a supporting role for now, while shoving the actually good things about the narrative to the back more than it should. I'm pretty confident with this version of the story and I'm going to go ahead with it. There are a few things from the original draft I'll be able to save, but mostly it's just going to be rewriting the same events from different perspectives and embracing the real nature of the story across the whole thing. I'll likely keep updates on how the rewrite goes in the fiction writing advice thread, just because I don't imagine this one is going to get all too much traffic over all. I have a strong feeling this version is going to clock in a bit longer than the original, as the first chapter is a good 2000 words longer than the first version.
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Sep 15, 2017 02:40
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Decided to share Chapter 2 for those that wanted to check it out. Of the new revision, of course. The latter half was just now finished so I'm sure I'm sure I've hosed something up, and I'm curious how the narration works. I'm trying to do A Thing with Beita's narration but we'll see how successful it is. This will likely be the last chapter I publicly share, and may have to take it down at some point if I can get this in a shape that I think is printable. I mostly just want to see if this is flowing well and to see what people think about the pacing of the story going into things past the first chapter. Hopefully it's enjoyable! CHAPTER 2 The heat was nearby. His gaze settling into a glare, Jordan broke away from the two before they arrived. Debra watched him silently, Beita stopping him briefly. “Where are you going?” Jordan was quiet a moment, looking back with a smile. “I’ll be back real soon. Just something I need to check on.” Beita nodded, satisfied. “What flavor would you like!” “Doesn’t matter. Anything would be fine.” Jordan stopped after a moment, looking Debra in the eye. “Keep an eye on her.” Debra nodded. “Well obviously. She’s precious to more than just you, Jordan.” Beita rolled her eyes. “You know, I’m right here. Stop talking about me like I’m not!” Jordan held his stare with Debra. “No butterscotch.” This brought genuine confusion to her face. “You just said you didn’t care? So, what’s it matter?” “I meant, no butterscotch for Beita. She doesn’t like it.” He turned and continued walking towards the heat that was an unfortunately short distance away. “Wouldn’t she know that!” Debra was shouting partly for the effect of it. She knew he could still hear her from this far away. Just as he knew she could still hear him. “No. She forgot.” He could hear Beita questioning Debra what he was talking about, and thankfully Debra knew to go with it. The walk was shorter than he would have liked. Then again, he would rather this meeting not be within walking distance of the city at all. He spied the man he was heading for easily enough. To most, he looked normal, just a skinny man in a shabby grey suit wearing a beat up old hat. Dark skinned to fit in and shaved, at least from what one could see due to the hat. Jordan was the one who saw through the illusion. Exceedingly similar to the holographic technology Beita used, this held back a much more dramatic change. The suit and hat were the same, which would make the image appear comical if not for their personal history. Instead of flesh and blood, he appeared to be what one would assume to be a metal statue of an alien, yet still humanoid, skeleton. Not a clean skeleton either, but one covered in tendons, viscera, and what remaining scraps of muscle scattered across it. A chromed cadaver sat calmly holding a newspaper. Within the eye sockets were two silver embers, floating in otherwise empty cavities, with a fanged jaw that was sealed shut. One of the embers moved up, glancing towards Jordan as he approached. “Hello there, Jordan. How are you doing?” With each word, a blue diamond imbedded at the base of his neck glowed, partly obscured by his shirt. Jordan nodded, taking a seat next to Dokuver. Dokuver crossed his left leg over his right, spreading the paper out with some flourish. “Could be worse, I suppose.” Jordan looked between Dokuver and the newspaper, noticing that his false eyes did not move as if they were reading. “I’m curious, is this just for appearances?” “Quite.” Dokuver nodded, turning the page. “I can’t read a thing on this. Vision isn’t like it was, you know, when I had eyes.” He shrugged. “Not all bad. I got to see you were in town.” “Why the pretense?” “Such a loaded question, coming from you.” Dokuver laughed. “It’s just one of those things that make us seem more human. You should know that well enough. Bothering to own an apartment, bothering to have a job. We do little things to try and convince ourselves that we’re more than we are.” He looked at Jordan out of the corner of his eye. Jordan wasn’t particularly bothered. “Not just an attempt to blend in?” “It can be that, too.” He turned the page. “Tell me something, Jordan. Are you at all nostalgic to be back here?” To say that memories came flooding back to Jordan, memories of when he was quite young and the city was much larger to him. Memories of insectoid monsters tearing apart everything they could reach, of fire and screaming and so much blood. To say that Dokuver’s words brought these memories back to the surface would be a mistake. These were images that never left Jordan. Feelings he could never let go. “I can’t say so.” Jordan shrugged, telling the truth. “You don’t seem to be very sentimental, Jordan.” Dokuver thumbed over another page. “Is that such a bad thing?” “I suppose not.” The two sat in silence on the bench, the sounds of birds in the air, of children playing. After a minute, Dokuver closed and folded his newspaper. “You must be curious about what I’m doing here.” A statement, Jordan recognized. “I can’t say I really care. I’d appreciate it if you didn’t start poo poo, though, Dokuver.” Dokuver laughed, the sound entirely coming from the blue diamond at his neck. For most, they wouldn’t notice because of how normal he looked. “Please, when we’re in a public space like this, call me David. Mr. Fernandez, if you must be formal.” “No, I don’t think we have any reason to be formal.” Jordan shook his head. Some kids were getting closer, he could hear them playing with a ball. “You didn’t ask why.” Dokuver sounded so much like a school teacher seeking a student to ask the obvious question. “I didn’t ask because I don’t care.” Jordan didn’t like to ask the obvious questions. He also didn’t care for Dokuver’s games. “My name is David because that is the identity I have carved out for myself here on Earth. I took a plane here, you know? Remarkably frustrating things, airports.” Dokuver shook his head. “I’m here to visit my niece. She doesn’t know I’m in town yet. I plan to surprise her tomorrow. For now, I’m sightseeing. It’s been a little while since I’ve been here myself. Not as long as you, but long enough.” “Sure.” Jordan knew it didn’t matter if Dokuver was lying or not. The undead had an odd habit of telling the truth, though often in ways that would be most amusing to himself. “So, which one brought you here?” Dokuver looked to the side, where Jordan had come from. “Beita is here, but she couldn’t have known I had arrived. So logically, that leaves the Damocles.” “Debra. She’s on scouting duty.” Jordan sat forward, ignoring the pain of his ribs coming together. “Wanted me here to alleviate her boredom.” “She got you to come with Beita, I’d wager.” Dokuver laughed, gently clapping Jordan on the back. Dokuver’s strength was immense, far greater than a human body could withstand. “It has been a bit since Beita got to leave the base for something other than some kind of mission.” Jordan eyed the children carefully. They were getting too close. “I’d imagine.” Dokuver arched his back. “At times, I worry about you Jordan. You might be too soft for your own good.” Jordan could see the flicker of the hologram, could see the grin on the human disguise grow on Dokuver’s face. “Which we both know is total bullshit. Yet you have such a soft spot around Beita. It’s almost endearing.” The ball went wayward, heading for the two men. Dokuver caught it in one hand, snatching it from the air faster than Jordan could react as he was. Jordan had just barely been able to see the movement. Holding the ball out to the kids, one, a younger red head, came forward. “Here you go champ.” Dokuver patted the kid on the shoulder while gently giving him the ball. The action itself didn’t worry Jordan too much. If Dokuver wanted the kids dead, they’d be dead. Nothing could be done about that. The simple fact that Dokuver was here at all was the problem. The kid ran, laughing, catching up with their friends. “I’m fairly good with children, if I may say so.” Dokuver looked back at Jordan, the illusion of a face grinning happily, eyes closed. The reality was his face was the same skeletal grin as always, expression forever unchanging. “So it would appear.” Jordan stood, Dokuver standing with him. As they were, Dokuver was over a head taller, yet so much thinner without his armor. “Tomorrow, the Cabal plan to attack this city, Jordan.” Dokuver nodded to the heart of San Juan. “I’ll make you a deal. If you don’t show up, I won’t involve myself either.” Jordan looked at Dokuver, silent. “Of course, you can be there. I certainly will be. You know what I mean. This façade you wear can be there. What I’m saying is, you, the real you, should not appear.” Dokuver poked Jordan in the chest, his talons tearing a small hole in Jordan’s shirt. “If you restrain yourself, I restrain myself. Deal?” He held a clawed hand out to Jordan. Jordan took it without hesitation. “We’ll see how it shakes out.” “We will indeed.” Dokuver dropped the handshake and tipped his hat to Jordan. “I’m not sure the exact time. My subordinate, Ygis, is the one coordinating this particular exchange.” Dokuver started to walk away, in the opposite direction, stopping shoulder to shoulder with Jordan. “Have a good time, Jordan.” “You as well, David.” Dokuver kept walking, whistling some song Jordan did not recognize. Jordan turned and went back to find Beita and Debra, thinking about what to do next. ***************************************** Beita was lost in thought. She was on her second milkshake, after throwing away the abomination that was butterscotch, and mostly she was worried about and for Jordan. The battle last night, or was that this morning, wasn’t the worst but he still had scars healing from it. She was hoping the Neo Damocles would have helped him more, but they and Jordan didn’t really see eye to eye on a lot of things. Notably, herself. She remembered vividly their first meeting. It had started cordial enough; the Damocles came down to help Jordan fight some Cabal made monster or other. She remembered that it may have been a mantis, though to be fair to her it was hard to keep track. She didn’t start naming the Cabal monsters until about five years ago, just to keep a better catalogue of them. Debra helped her keep a journal on them which Beita really appreciated. The Shadow Maiden had started to talk to Jordan about something. This was seven years ago, so Beita’s memories of the period were a bit fuzzy. Sipping on her straw, she enjoyed the swirls of chocolate and strawberry mixed within the tasty cold shake. She hated to be mistaken for a robot. No, she wasn’t organic, but she wasn’t a robot. She was a mechanical life form! She shook her head. It was hard to focus on one thing, some days. She was very old, in that she had existed for a very long time. Exact years were difficult for her to consider, time being relative, and with her being stuck in her child stage she wasn’t able to properly retain more than nine years of memory. That was her physical age, no matter how long she had been alive. She could progress into her adult stage, her body was primed for it, but something always held her back. Some promise she had made and forgotten, lost to the ages. Beita knew it was important but didn’t like to think about it too much. It hurt, sometimes, to think about what had happened. Beita realized she was losing the thread again, bopping her head against the back of her chair. “You okay, Beita?” Debra looked at her young charge with genuine concern, reaching for her with her right hand. Beita remembered clearly now. The Shadow Maiden had made a proposal to Jordan, something concerning Beita. Something concerning himself. Debra had been there, and some other Neo Damocles soldiers. Some who had died in the years since, some who had just gone away. Jordan’s reaction was violent, with the result being Debra losing her right arm and Jordan standing against the Neo Damocles. “Just thinking!” Beita smiled at Debra, her artificial brain moving much faster than an organic could keep up with. Debra didn’t look like she believed her, which would be fair. Beita was a pretty awful liar. For a time, they had clashed quite often. Then the Cabal got more aggressive with their attacks, and a kind of peaceful status quo emerged. Debra didn’t hold much of a grudge, Beita guessed. She started to admire Debra again, thinking of their history together, how Debra liked to include Beita in little outings and get togethers. Then she stopped, and Beita shook her head. She hated being so unfocused. Her head felt so full, some days. Just, too full, too crammed. Jordan was calming. He hadn’t changed much, since she could remember. He had made her a promise, but she couldn’t remember why. Beita wished she remembered how she met him, or why he was so unhappy a lot of the time. She didn’t forget his promise, the intent behind it. Jordan was calming because he was there for her. He was always there for her. He was something she could rally her thoughts around and find some kind of order in. She loved him for that. She loved him for a lot of reasons. He was never cross with her, even when she knew she had made a mistake or done something without thinking. He was always there when she needed him, like the times she went into her sleeping periods and the nightmares of the one-eyed man whose hands could reach across the sky came. Or when her memories would leak and she would start to lose herself and where she was. Beita didn’t like to think about those moments. What was she thinking about? “If you’re sure.” Debra shrugged, her reply finally catching up to Beita’s thought process. Beita smiled as she finished her milkshake. She looked towards the board, furrowing her brow in confusion. “I don’t like butterscotch, right?” “That’s right.” Jordan caught her off guard. He was just walking into the shop, some people getting out of his way. Beita never really understood why. He was large and she guessed the scars looked kind of scary, but she just thought they made him look cool. Brought out his silver eyes, though they were bloodshot. He stood next to her chair, not bothering to sit down. She couldn’t recall the last time she had seen him sit down. She knew he had to, he was human after all. Even her legs got tired, and they were mechanical! Jordan did not look very happy. Something was bothering him, more than usual. “So, who’d you meet?” Debra must have noticed herself, leaning back in her chair to look up at Jordan. “Dokuver.” “I need to call in backup?” Debra raised an eyebrow, Beita deciding that asking for seconds would have to wait. “Not today. The attack happens tomorrow.” Jordan eyed the menu, though Beita didn’t think he’d order himself anything. He didn’t when he did bring her to places like this. “I made a deal with him.” Debra picked up Beita’s cup, rising from her seat. “You’ve got my attention.” “Dokuver will not get involved, so long as I don’t.” Jordan crossed his arms. Beita knew he was conflicted. She didn’t understand why, if Dokuver wasn’t going to be doing anything then the Neo Damocles could easily handle whatever the Cabal wanted to throw. “Pretty sweet deal.” Debra pushed the trash into the bin, not looking back at the two. “Just make sure the Shadow Maiden knows so you can get proper back up.” Jordan looked around, families milling about, children left unattended. Teens with nowhere better to be and money burning in their pockets. “Maybe talk her into issuing an evacuation.” “The day I can talk her into anything, is, well, not very appropriate to discuss around Beita.” Debra smiled at the young girl, who rolled her eyes. At least, that’s what Beita tried to do. It was quite a hard thing to accomplish when you didn’t have pupils. “I’ve heard some pretty nasty things, you know. I do know Anna, after all.” Beita puffed her chest out, a strange sense of pride in that fact filling her. “Which is reason number one why Anna is not allowed to watch you unsupervised.” Jordan was not looking at either of his companions at the moment. Something was outside, distracting him. “How many other reasons are there?” Beita was genuinely curious, scratching her head. “As many as I want.” Beita crossed her arms. She liked hanging out with Anna. It wasn’t the same as Jordan, but Anna could be nice. When she wanted. She just got really shouty and angry at times and that was kind of funny itself. “Will you be here tomorrow anyways?” Debra was quick to help Beita from her seat, smoothing out her dress. The cyborg was looking at Jordan, eyeing him with an expression Beita found hard to read. “So long as I don’t interfere, Dokuver said I could be around.” Jordan stepped forward, offering Beita his hand. She took it, smiling. “I don’t know for sure yet.” “Can I come if you do?” Beita looked up at Jordan, hoping. “Obviously.” Jordan tried to let Beita get out when he could, when the situations he got into weren’t too dire. When the Neo Damocles were around and able to watch out for her, not that she needed it! Beita took pride in her inborn power, a natural result of her nature as a mechanical lifeform. There were times she didn’t like to come along. Some fights were too scary, or too dangerous and she preferred the safety of her home. Some fights got too big and hurt too many people. They made her try to remember things she’d rather forget. She didn’t like being alone either. Being alone left her to her own thoughts, let her mind wander. Let her thoughts get confused and jumbled and- “Beita.” Jordan’s voice cut through the noise and brought her clarity. Beita hugged his arm for a moment, murmuring her thanks. He didn’t mind and she knew it. There was a poster on the wall, a few weeks old. A concert was being held, coming to San Juan tomorrow. “Jordan, can we go to that concert tomorrow?” Beita pointed it out to the man. Blind Manifesto. She might have heard them on TV, but she couldn’t really be sure. Beita liked to leave multiple broadcasts on at once when at home, to keep the quiet away. “Maybe. We’ll see how things work out, okay?” He was looking down at her, bent slightly to be closer. Beita nodded. “I’ll hold you to it.” Debra slid her arm over Jordan’s shoulders with some difficulty. “I’ll gladly come along too.” Beita smiled. She wondered if she could ask the others to join them, but didn’t think Jordan would appreciate it too much. Caught up in her own pondering, she missed Jordan moving Debra’s arm away from him and his silent glare that followed. She looked up to see Debra smiling brilliantly at Jordan. Debra suddenly stopped, looking at her wrist, Beita recognizing that some kind of hidden tech was in her arm. “Mm. I have an interview in Los Angeles a few hours from now.” Sighing, Debra looked at the two of them apologetically. “I have to head out. I’ll make sure to let the Shadow Maiden know, Jordan. Watch out for the TV, we’re having a special broadcast tonight!” Beita smiled, waving at her. Jordan’s expression did not change much. “Is anyone else going to be on?” Beita couldn’t hide how excited she was about this. She loved Debra’s stories of being a celebrity, of the public fame and love. Deep down she wished Jordan was known to the public, that the average person knew what he did for them. She wished he could be loved and appreciated for all he tried to do, but Jordan wouldn’t put up with it, she didn’t think. He didn’t have the patience for interviews and, if she was being honest, didn’t have the temperament to deal with normal people. “Sophie is the one I know for a fact. Maybe Charles, but really who’d notice?” Debra laughed, Beita laughing with her. Jordan was not paying attention to them now. Beita caught him staring out the window again. Debra poked him in the chest with her right hand, which he barely looked her way for. “You could come too, you know. Make your big public debut. I’m sure everyone would love to hear about their secret hero.” Debra started to trace her finger up Jordan’s chest to his neck until his hand abruptly snatched hers away. “Don’t.” Jordan glared at Debra for a moment, holding her hand in an iron grip. Not that he could hurt it like he was, Beita knew for a fact that Debra could have broken free with ease. Eventually he let it go, Debra smiling. “If all you wanted was to hold hands…” “Debra.” Jordan’s tone gave even Beita pause, cutting Debra off entirely. Debra shrugged. “Can’t blame a girl for trying.” Jordan did not respond, leading Beita out of the shop. Debra waved from behind them, Beita waving back. At times, Beita wondered if Debra did like Jordan or not. She wasn’t sure. “Want to go on a walk before we head back? You need your rest, after all.” Jordan was looking out for her again. Beita would have complained, but she knew she needed to sleep soon. Nodding, she nestled into his arm. They didn’t go anywhere in particular, just wandering across the city and into the wooded areas. Puerto Rico could be quite a beautiful place, she decided. Especially San Juan. She hoped nothing happened tomorrow, that they could go to the concert and just have a nice time. She’d like to see Jordan smile again. Really smile. She couldn’t remember the last time he had. ************************************************** His name was Fred Stain, though the stage name he was better known as was Bloody Stain. He was the lead singer and primary writer for the band, Blind Manifesto. Tomorrow was the last day of their long tour and he was exhausted. He loved his fans, loved the work he got to do, but he hadn’t seen his family in over a month. Video calls just weren’t the same. He had been resting his vocal cords the last week, so that they wouldn’t fail him during the big show stopper or get damaged. He had that happen once and nearly lost his career for it. He and the entire band were worn out, but they loved this job. His band was simmering on a major breakthrough, though he didn’t really care about that. Going too mainstream would just bring pressure he did not want nor need. With the way things were now, he could write his politics the way he and the band wanted and make the kind of music that gave them passion in the first place. One of the support staff entered his room while he was working on his makeup for a last-minute rehearsal. Something to get used to the stage they would be on and the way the venue would be set up. Some of the staff could be rude like that, usually those that didn’t speak English and wouldn’t understand him telling them to take a hike. He didn’t care too much this time, he knew this one. They had played this venue before on their last tour, and this man had brought his family to see him and get his autograph. Things like that, that’s what made the whole thing worth doing. More than money, more than fame. Bringing people together. “How is your family doing?” Fred did not expect an immediate reply. He suspected the man would have believed that he forgot that meeting ever happened at all. He liked to surprise fans with little things like that, he knew it meant something to them. What he did expect was surprise at being talked to, acknowledged. Maybe happiness or excitement. Instead the staff member showed open confusion. “Family? Yes, I suppose he did have one didn’t he?” The staff member remarked, turning towards Fred, who still had his back to the man. The odd statement made Fred check the mirror to see behind himself. The staff member was the man he had met before. So why was he acting so weird? Fred then saw something that turned his blood cold. “I’ve heard you have one too. It is a shame, don’t you think?” The staff member’s face was cracking, blood beginning to seep from the cracks. It was like his skull was becoming too large for his skin. Fred quietly grabbed a pair of scissors off the table. “What’s a shame? Are you okay, man?” Fred tried to sound casual. He didn’t need the monster to realize he had seen it. He waited for a brief moment. Just long enough for the staff member to reach for him. He whirled out of his chair and stabbed the man in the neck, right in the jugular. He grimaced and pulled back, expecting a great gout of blood to spray. Nothing came. The skin around the wound bubbled blood a small amount as it cracked and started to break away. The eyes of the staff member dried up and began to shrivel, as his hand landed on Fred’s shoulder. Fred tried to break away, to throw the man off, but the thing’s grip became a vice. “The shame is that you’re never going to see your family again, friend. But don’t fret!” The thing wearing the staff member smiled, a grin that was far too wide with far too many teeth. “I’ll tell them you loved them very much.” In the end, Fred Stain wasn’t even able to scream for help. Burkion fucked around with this message at 07:49 on Sep 20, 2017 |
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Sep 20, 2017 07:37
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don't feel like you need to edit it now, but you do a lot of blocking, where each bit of dialogue has an associated action. while it's clearly how you're seeing the conversation going, it makes the reading kind of ploddy. for the next bit you write trust the reader more and cut your physical movement descriptions in dialogue by a half and see how it reads.
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Sep 20, 2017 08:39
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Just to be clear, you're referring to little filler things like 'Dokuver arched his back' right? Because I'd have to agree with you. It's something of a bad habit I've fallen into to compensate for not using 'character said' tags. Mostly because I really loving hate character said tags and they look straight awful to me. I'll definitely keep that in mind as I work on chapter 3. Thanks Seb!
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Sep 20, 2017 13:45
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line crit 2 electric boogalooBurkion posted:PROLOUGE: misspelling prologue is not an auspicious beginning All right so I called out a lot of specific things as I was reading, but here's my estimation of the thing as a whole: there's a lot of explaining going on, and a lot of it is focusing on things that I don't super care about (the cars glow!) as opposed to things I might be more interested in having explained to me (what's the deal with Jordan breaking his ribs). The two big things I felt were missing from this were a sense of stakes, and a sense of color. In terms of stakes, everything that happens is just kind of vague and seems almost casual next to the characters interacting with each other. The first half(?) of the chapter is Jordan getting into a random accident in the like fifteen minutes he's at work for the day, and then he talks with a robo arm lady for a bit, and then he brings a robo girl with him on a scouting mission that he was vaguely grumpy about going on. Then at the end of the chapter there's something about hosts, and 'one of his own' and it seems like something bad is happening (finally) but I don't know what. I don't need to know all the details here but the issue is that I don't know any of the details. I couldn't explain what's going on at the end beyond "the bad aliens want someone, who's like Jordan, who's maybe not human, but Jordan is also dangerous." As for the color, this is a story about a weird, pulpy sci-fi not-quite-future world and I couldn't tell you a thing about what either the infuriatingly weirdly named Los Atlanta or the very definitely in Puerto Rico San Juan look like. This could be set anywhere and it wouldn't change a thing. The only actual description I got out of these was the bit about the solar windows. It doesn't feel like these characters are in a real, living space; it feels like they're on a blank backdrop with occasionally a car or something. Spaces drift in and out of each other, too--I couldn't tell you where it was that Jordan was doing his five minutes of work for the day, or where he went to meet up with DEBRAAAA or where they eventually blandly teleported off to Definitely Puerto Rico San Juan, or even where they ended up in San Juan outside of it being the "outskirts" and there being roads and buildings. It's very different from the other first chapter, at least, but I still feel like it's lacking a hook and a drive. What is the interesting thing about this character that makes me want to read more about them? What is the interesting thing about this world that will make me want to spend more time inhabiting it? Why do I want to read more?
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Sep 23, 2017 10:48
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Burkion posted:Mostly because I really loving hate character said tags and they look straight awful to me. Only saw this after I did my line crit. More power to you if you can write the whole thing without dialogue tags, but then you've got to be extra super special careful that it's clear who's talking each time they're talking.
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Sep 23, 2017 11:50
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Oh that's something I'm working on. Can I ask you to look over chapter 2 as well while I still have it on here? You don't have to do a line by line read, I'd just like your general thoughts on it. I don't think a line by line read is going to be all that useful for me right now just because these are literally unedited first draft works at the moment. I also plan to remove Chapter 2 some time in the future, specifically.
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Sep 23, 2017 16:11
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General thoughts on Chapter 2: A lot of the stylistic things I pointed out last chapter are true this chapter too. I think even with attribution, there's dialogue that's hard to follow properly because it seems to jump around so much, or the sentences don't quite fit together right. The tone of it broadly was kind of a DBZish superhero thing what with the two people agreeing to, essentially, keep their power levels under 100 so that it'll be a fair fight. Or something. It's still unclear what's going to happen, because apparently robogirl could possibly go to a concert after this, and the concert won't be cancelled due to giant alien superhero fight or whatever. Like Jordan recommended evacuation, that sounds kind of dire, you know? Otherwise it's about as interesting as any two people sitting down and musing about how powerful they are would be. At least by the end of this there's some vague sort of stakes (San Juan possibly in peril) though it's in that detached sort of way--I don't actually have any reason to care about San Juan, aside from the fact that it's a city and I would rather it not be destroyed. But I already said my part about the lack of set dressing so I'll move on from there. After reading that chapter I kind of felt like there's just too many things going on here. I'm trying to get a grasp on this world, but it's a world with aliens and this guy who isn't an alien but who is a host and undead metal corpse people and people who aren't aliens but robot people and weird demons that might also be aliens. I can't figure out what this world "is", like what rules I can expect things to follow, because there's just so much stuff, and it's not unified under any coherent system or structure. I'm not saying it has to be an entirely stock world that's immediately recognizable, what I'm saying is I'm having a hard time trying to figure out the style here. Is this transhumanist sci-fi? Superpowered pulp? Speculative body horror? I appreciate the fact that the POV shift was in a specific section and called out, but it also raised the issue of Beita's voice. It's a weird combination between your regular narrative tone most of the time and then occasionally an attempt at sounding more childish. It was odd, and not in a way that came across to me as someone who's been stuck in a child's body/mind for years. (The thing that really felt jarring to me was the exclamation marks in the middle of prose--exclamation marks are an indication of how to speak a line, so unless the voice you're writing in is one that's speaking directly to the audience (like someone recounting something that happened) it's going to seem jarring. I think if the first chapter ended where this one does, and if it did a better job of selling me on the dynamics of the main characters (by the way, if the mains are Jordan and Beita, you spend way more time with Jordan and DEBRAAAA interacting over the course of these two chapters; also I don't have any grasp on the character of the relationship between Jordan and Beita other than it being basically dad/daughter, which, given that they've both got Weird poo poo, should probably be more interesting than that), and if it did a better job of selling me on the world, and if it was clearer about what sort of danger was looming, then it would be interesting enough to get me to keep reading.
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Sep 23, 2017 17:30
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So would you say I need to just make chapter 1 and 2 one long chapter, or find a way to combine the two in a shorter thing? I'm always a bit self conscious about how long I should make a chapter or how short so I try to hedge my page counts around the mid teens. I won't address anything else because I really don't want to come off as defensive. Just that apparently I need to make things a bit more obvious, which tends to be an issue with me.
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Sep 23, 2017 17:53
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Almost none of the action in chapter 1 was important to the conflict you're setting up in chapter 2, is what I'm saying. If you ended chapter 1 with San Juan possibly getting wrecked tomorrow, that would be a hook, at the very least. You'd have to do a lot more work to make the world and characters something I'd be interested in reading about, but it is the only thing that's come up in these two chapters so far that's some sort of stakes. If there's stuff I'm missing, take this into consideration: I'm reading this for critique, so I'm already reading it closer than I would if I was just reading for fun. Also, if there's things I'm not picking up on, it's entirely possible that there's actually too much information. These first two chapters are mostly exposition and dialogue. It's hard, even on a read for critique, to tell what out of all that information is important.
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Sep 23, 2017 18:15
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