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Maddox Bellacole and The Child of Two Worlds
How It Rates
Description
My story is presented as a teaser for a larger story, so it has no ending per se. It deals with a quest to create a utopia from a dystopian Mars (and Earth) and mentions terraforming, which is scientifically viable.
Though an incomplete narrative, I believe the reader will be drawn in to the characters and the landscape, and will be craving more when they have finished.
Comments
SPOILERS
Definitely needs an edit and some reformatting. I found the opening few pages to be confusing with little visual separation between events. Some of the language feels little staccato and stilted which makes for a less than smooth read. Again, this is something that can be fixed with more editing.
You might want to let this sit for a while before starting another editing run. The whole situation you setup feels contrived. It's no that that concept is bad, just that there's you're telling the reader what is going on and not enough showing. There should be a more subtle way of conveying things without Cyan just flat out telling it to Maddox.
Maddox's lack of visible grief also bugs me. Seeing his wife die like that would be a severly traumatic experience to say the least. I would have expected a greater show of emotion than that stoic burial sequence you describe. Numbness does work, but there should be something indicating that he is too emotionally overwrought to fully internalize what happened or something to that effect.
Trust is another issue I'm seeing here. Mylbick revealing himself should probably happen after something more subtle occurring to put Maddox at ease. If I were a father and realized that some alien intelligence had caused the death of my wife and was possessing my infant daughter trusting that intelligence would be very difficult. I can't see Maddox just falling in with Mylbick as if things were all hunky dory ... Maybe if Mylbick left him some clues that lead Maddox to the sword or something similar to show good will. I can still see that relationship as a huge source of conflict and deception. How does Maddox know that he isn't the one being manipulated to free Infestus Vita?
Still, I am interested in seeing how the story you're ends. When do you think you'll have the full thing finished?
I appreciate the input, even if your grammar is a bit hard to follow at times. The idea was to show Maddox in action right away, then backtrack to the incident that brought him there, and finish with an open-ended ending that showed our hero revived and ready for the next part of his mission.
With the death of his wife, I want Maddox to not really know HOW to deal with it. He is now widowed, the ultimate love of his life is dead, and he has an infant daughter to care for all on his own. Then, to compound all that, an alien being has placed a great mission upon him. This is too much for any man to bear all at once yet he must, for the sake of literally everything.
I tried to convey that he is a man who takes things as they occur and does his best to deal with it. He is very, VERY sad that Tina has died, but he is trying to think of Cyan and be a strong influence on her. I feel that a man like Maddox Bellacole will deal with the death of Tina over a period of time, rather than all at once. He feels he doesn't really have a choice, all things considered and yes, he is a very stoic man, in fact, one of the things that Tina always brought out in him is the sense that it's okay to rely on others and to wear your insides on the outside for all to see. Tina showed him that it was okay to be vulnerable in front of people and now that she is dead, he is lost, reverting to his old comfort zones.
All what your saying makes sense! I just had a hard time gleaning it from the story as it sits.
I don't think the opening is the issue, that scene worked and caught my attention as a reader very quickly. What bothered me is how accepting of everything he seemed in the latter parts of the story. i.e. The martian reveals itself, he has that one confrontational episode, and then seems to accept everything as normal. If you slow that sequence down a bit I think you'll have a better story.
PS: Really sorry about the grammar. What did I do that was confusing? On second thought, argh! Looks like I did some of the same things I was commenting on in my comment. Ah well.
Yeah, i would like to expand on that encounter, which would definitely add clarity, but I was vastly approaching the 4000 word limit. Maybe I should restructure the whole bit for the sake of this contest, and make it a bit more linear.
Hi Andy,
I enjoyed some of the ideas in this story. The main concepts were intriguing. But I agree with many of ArlaneEnalra's points, in particular his point about there being too much 'telling'. For example, the line "He had won the battle and Cyan was safe" - there's no need to say that because the previous action of Maddox pulling his blade from the dead creature shows that he's won the battle.
I also noticed there were overly complicated ways of saying things, such as 'which hurt in no trivial amount' and 'very much unharmed'. So again, I agree that the story needs editing. You could trim a lot of words and not lose anything from the story.
I get that Maddox wouldn't necessarily show his grief right away. Having been through a life or death situation, I know that when you're having to hold your shit together grief can take a long time to surface. Yet I felt more could have been said in the story to acknowledge his lack of response. For example, the scientists could have questioned why Maddox was in such a hurry to build the pyre, or they could have made more effort to take care of Cyan. But it all felt a little too easy for everyone.
Also, I think you should cut the 'in a flash/in a lightning quick flash' stuff.
One last thing, I didn't really get interested in the story until 'This creature doesn't have human sympathies.' The first paragraph felt too much like an information dump.
I'm sorry this has been mostly criticisms. I did like the main concept of the story, so I'd like to read it again after editing.
I did feel very much pressured by the word limit of the contest and can see where it would make much more sense and pack a lot more punch without those limitations. So maybe a simplification of the narrative is in order. As for your critique of "overly complicated" way of saying things, that's just adding flair to writing. It's a lot more interesting (to me) to read "...which hurt in no trivial amount" than "It really hurt." That's just prose.
I don't think the word limit is really the problem, it's how you use those words. I feel that you could pack more of a punch with LESS words than you've used here. As for flair, I think there's a time and place for that. When a writer is describing something like physical pain, the aim should ideally be to make the reader feel something of that pain. I've been with people who are experiencing incredible pain, and there's no way they would describe it as 'hurting in no trivial amount'. My experience of reading that phrase was that it in fact trivialised the pain and didn't make me feel anything at all. I wanted to know if any of his bones snapped, or did any of his flesh get torn. That would have enabled me as the reader to connect with his pain.
I'm afraid this one left me cold and uninterested really rather quickly. The telling word is about two-thirds down the first page, and makes up the second paragraph:
Focus!
I didn't get the sense that there was much. The long opening paragraph rather meanders, which ill-suits the dramatic and dangerous scene it tries to convey. By the top of page two I was in slush-reject-mode and you were fighting a losing battle for my attention. Sorry.
Hi Andy,
I have finally had a chance to read, sorry it has taken me so long.
First off, you write fairly well, with a high level of polish, and the fact that you almost maxed out the word limit is impressive. I personally have difficulty writing longer stories, so, we can see that you have stamina to pursue your ideas.
My biggest feedback echoes what JC and Rob said, there's a lot if meandering from action to exposition (and telling) that detracts from the action. I bet you could simplify and get amazing results. Namely, when a character is in action, stay in the action, and in his head. That way the reader will have a greater emotional connection to the character.
Please keep working on this. There's something in here worth digging out.
-g
Many thanks for reading and commenting. I was never too happy with this story as a submission for this challenge and it's because of the word limit. I have a much larger narrative in mind that will eventually be novel sized and make a lot more sense on a larger scale. That's why I wrote a second entry story on here (Beyond Pleasure, Lies Dreams), which seems to be better received.
Ok, good to know. I will check that one out hopefully by tonight or tomorrow.
I think the world you created was very interesting. Obviously part of a greater, longer tale, this is like the first episode in a TV series. Still, you told a complete story, and I did like the plot. Personally, I liked starting off in the action. Got my attention right away, and the end scene worked well to let us know that things turned out okay.
There room for much improvement here. Here's what I noticed:
You tend to telegraph some of the plot ahead of time. Though this can be used very infrequently to soften the blow of future events, or to make them dread reading further (Stephen King does this quite a bit. The one that is strongest in my mind is from Black House, where he and Peter Straub tell the reader that they might want to stop reading because, "...you're not going to like what happens next."), you should probably stick with simply telling us what happens next. Many of these sentences end up coming off as overly-dramatic, as if you're trying to force a reaction from the reader instead of coaxing it from them.
I could sense at times, you struggled with attempting to insert information from the more global story. This info, while cool, is distracting in a story this short. I'd read it again, and try to decide if removing these elements will help.
I'd increase the age of the kid. I really don't think it makes sense to bring a kid along on an exploration mission, but maybe that's just because I'm a parent. Though it's a little confusing to me as to whether the alien is in the kid, I'd at least increase the age to about a year, since 3-month-olds aren't really crawling/giggling/clapping. My daughter walked at like 9 months, and crawled for maybe a month or two before that. But then again, maybe kids develop faster in the future. If so, I'd suggest mentioning that.
I'll go ahead and agree with the comments above about prose. There's a balance in play between art and functionality. You have to decide how best to communicate your story. If the readers are getting bogged down because you said something in an overly complicated/obscure way, then you should consider revising. Sacrificing clarity for wordplay has its risks.
I think a couple of really good drafts down the road, this story will really start to shine. You have a good foundation here. I think it's time to start chipping away at the rougher spots.
Keep up the good work!
This is old school fantasy / sci-fi, with a pulp quality to it. It took me a little while to get it, but when I did I had a grin on my face the whole time reading it. I've read a lot of stories in this competition that are serious sci-fi (including my own), a few with decents attempts at humour, but not many that embrace that kind of Edgar Rice Burroughs vibe.
Those kind of stories didn't always follow logic closely, but they were damn good fun to read. This has a lot of promise - alien landscapes, aliens, battles with big beasties, a child with possibly supernatural powers. Admittedly it doesn't work as well in the restrictions of the competition. It looks what it is, the cut off start to a longer story.
Well done on writing something that doesn't take itself too seriously, and is such good fun to read!
Thanks, I think you're the first person to fully understand the action-adventure element I was going for.