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Separation Anxiety
How It Rates
Description
In the far future, as mankind's dependancy on technology reaches its ultimate climax. What happens when someone attempts to reclaim their humanity within a society they no longer understand.
Comments
The formatting of this piece makes your story impossible to read. I would suggest changing to Time New Roman size 12, double spacing, and indenting each new paragraph. The reason all magazines and book publishers ask for that format is becasue it's much, much easier to read. As it stands, the presentation is so distracting that I didn't bother reading past the first page.
Thanks for your feedback, i've resubmitted it now with adjusted font and better spacing. I haven't as yet had time to adjust the indentation because I'm conscious that the entry period is going to be ending quite soon.
If you could please give this story another try, I appreciate hearing your thoughts.
I didnt find the formatting overly offensive. It would benefit from better spacing though so you might want to look into that. I realize "standard formatting" is dull but its standard for a reason unfortunately.
Anyway...this story has a lot of issues. Its an interesting premise but I think the word constraints worked against you. There seems to be alot that is very rushed and therefore handled poorly. I understand whats going on but Dave's transition from a regular member of society to being unsetttled to being "freed" is too fast, it just doesnt seem believeable to me at all. I was left feeling unsatisfied.
I'd say keep at it, even though the contest is ending, you can keep editing and really turn this story into something interesting. You have a nice voice, and a decent writing style. It just needs some editing and polish. Keep writing!
Hi thank you for taking the time to read the story and sharing your thoughts. I've now resubmitted the story with better spacing and a change of font to Times New Roman, making it more standardised. Admittedly I did make a consious decision to pick an alternative font but in hindsight this was probably a bad idea.
I was sorry to hear that you didn't particularly think the story worked and came across as rushed. Like you said the limitations were working against me; that and also the lack of time to work on it. I was coming quite close to the max-limit and the story I was trying to tell was perhaps too ambitious in scope.
I appreciate your advice and will definitely develop it further outside of the competition, so that I can work on the issues highlighted and get it as good as it can be.
If anyone else could spare time to read through the story and share their thoughts, please do so.
Thanks.
Hi, just read your story. Clearly you've for the most part corrected whatever formatting issues that commenters previously addressed. I had no problem reading the story, and the end concept was really intriguing. I agree it needed much more elaboration, and the word-count was probably against you in this case. Trust me, I get it. I had the same issue with my own submission. Conceptually, I like the idea of rehabilitation through simulated redemption, I just don't quite see how being in a Mind Prison where you generally feel happy and content would be something that the law subjected you to as punishment. I suppose this society would be more of a benevolent utopia than it at first seemed. Anyway, I'll give you a thumbs up on this one as it is still far better than many of the entries I've been trying to sift through this evening!
Thanks for your comments Anthony and thanks for the thumbs up.
At the moment most criminals are sentenced to serve time in prison; and the duration of the sentence is intended to fit the crime. With this story being set in the far future, I've tried re-imagine the justice system, whereas criminals are removed from the real world so that their minds can be physchologically corrected (via Mind Prison) in a controlled way and they are only released back into the real world if/when they have been corrected.
So I guess rather than thinking of it as a punsihment for the criminal; it's actually more of a way to keep the real world populated with non-criminals (or at least non repeat offenders). Whilst the criminals within the Mind Prison reality are actually kept quite content and happy too, albeit in a very controlled way.
Darryl,
I came back and read your reformatted version and enjoyed it overall. I like the concept but I felt you did a fair bit of telling vs. showing. Rather than tell us all about Archie, simply show him asking and caring for the protagonist's needs--trust your reader--we'll get the rest of it. A little bit of showing goes much further than paragraphs of telling. Think of HAL in Space Odyssey 2001: we don't need anything but HAL's dialogue to figure him out completely. You can do the same here.
I'm not sure I understand why the protagonist withdraws from Archie, especially if he's spent 7-8 years living with him nonstop. You didn't quite sell me that our protagonist's interaction with the man in the street would trigger a wholesale mistrust of Archie. I need a bit more of his thought process and experience for that to feel true.
Why does the earpiece go missing at first and then show up in the video footage? Who is creating this world? Was the man who breaks into his apartment real or fake? If real, was his realization that the CAP is fake genuine? If the guy tearing up the apartment knows the truth, why does he come to the apartment in the first place? If he's being controlled externally, why doesn't he have his earpiece in (and why do they need to later cover that up by altering the video replay)?
The "everything you've just seen and experienced is fake" storyline is tough to pull off without the reader feeling cheated at the end. It's the classic "and it was all a dream..." storyline that used to annoy the piss out of me as a kid. The Matrix does it right: the "dream" is only about the first 10% of the story with the vast remainder being the encounter with the real world. I feel it would be far more interesting for the protagonist to start piecing things together himself and realizing that his life in MindPrison isn't really a life at all--flashbacks to his real life--cracks developing in his perspective of reality. You brush up against that with his distrust of Archie, but I'd really like to see more of that.
Overall the story is a fair amount better than much of what I've read on here. With less telling I think it would be that much stronger.
Kind Regards,
Nathan
Hi Nathan,
Firstly, thank you for going back and giving the story another go!
And thank you very much for your detailed feedback. It is very helpful and insightful, I do agree with many of the points that you raise and will definitely be taking your feedback onboard when I re-visit the story later.
Thanks,
Darryl
Darryl,
Happy to be of service. Interesting, the photo you chose for your avatar suits your story quite well in my opinion. I'd love to read a future draft of this piece should you ever create one. PM me when that day comes.
Also, I'd appreciate any return feedback on my own story: http://litreactor.com/events/teleport-us/corporate-person if you'd like to comment on it.
Many thanks,
Nathan
It's interesting you call your protagonist Dave. Having an AI call someone Dave in my head just takes me back to Hal in 2001. It's a lot to live up to, was that on purpose? There are a couple of little formatting issues here and there - an extra space between the odd paragraph, and some confusion over its/it's and lets/let's. I'm not sure as well why a chance collision with a runner spouting some conspiracy theory would cause Dave to experience doubt. Also, I don't quite understand why part of the way to exit the prison is to think you deserve more. If these are criminals, why would they have the humility to not believe that? Is that where Archie and the like come in? Having said that I did enjoy this. I like the concept behind this very much, and it's well written and engaging. A few more edits and this could be very good indeed.
Thanks for your comments. Firstly, the Dave name connection must've been accidental. I've not actually seen 2001 since a very young age and I was far too young to enjoy it at the time. I was just looking for an everyman name that comes with a common nickname (Dave/David, Pete/Peter, Jim/James) and ultimately I settled on Dave
Archie's role is initially presented as some futuristic helpful AI presence (like a far advanced version of iPhone's Siri feature perhaps) that is not actually his true purpose though- He's actually intended to keep Daves virtual life controlled and his mind content until a time when his mind outgrows Archie's need- this is what happens with the runner; a seed is planted where he starts to doubt Archie's true purpose for the first time in his life and ultimately the ball then starts rolling, Dave separates his dependancy on Archie and leads up to his test to earn his freedom.
All the other citizens in the Mind Prison reality are criminals (but none of them know this); so part of the rehabilitation is for the person to feel naturally that they do not belong in their current society anymore. The presence of the Cap and it's seemingly unattainble citizenship are present as a dangling carrot for them to aim for if/when they feel the desire to seek a better way of life.
It was very difficult to address some of these issues due to the word limit, however i'll take all this on board when I revisit the story and get some further edits done. Thanks again for your comments.
A very interesting idea! I've only seen one or two immersive environments out of the stories I've read so far. Its refreshing to read something different once in a while! As Adam mentioned, I couldn't help but hear Hal's voice every time Archie spoke. Definitely look up that movie and watch it. HAL 9000 is one of the iconic AI's. It wouldn't surprise me one bit to find out that, even though you haven't watched the movie, his voice and demeanor influenced your choice of naming simply by exposure through other media. Heck, I'd imagine you were hearing his voice in your head as you wrote Archie's dialog and didn't realize it. :)
One thing that bothered me right off the bat: it seems odd that a random person, potentially an addict, could shake Dave's core views about the world around him in a single chance encounter. Even in a longer conversation it would take more than a single incident to create doubt. What we need is something more to indicate that Dave is noticing cracks in his reality. That would make the incident a culmination to the reader rather than a beginning.
Good Work!