To read this story or to participate in this writing event, you only need a free account.
You can
To find out what this event is about click here
Hello, if this is your first time here, login with Facebook or create a free account to get started. Otherwise, Click here to log in
Comments
I like what you are saying, but the story suffers from technical and construction issues. I mean, it works, but there are a few simple things you could do to that would make the tale more powerful and moving.
How about putting some of the sentences together into paragraphs? The choppiness of the construction detracts from the impact by making the narrator's thoughts less cohesive. Think about music. In the same way that a drum solo fades into the background in a song that's loud and harsh, your staccato ending is drained of impact by the choppy language. In other words, if you make the story softer and more flowing, your staccato ending will pop more.
Also I had trouble settling in to the alien environment. I know you have only 4,000 words to work with, but less fantasy that is more fully described will help. I think that if you slowed down and gave me 200 words of description of that sky, or of that andriod, or the six-legged, feather-tailed beastie, the story would pull the reader into the world much more.
A few hundred words about how the narrator feels about your secondary characters wouldn't hurt either. Chiaroscuro baby. Show me the light before you hit me with the darkness!
Also varying the sentence structure so that there are fewer sentences that start with "I."
This story has the potential to be not just a nice story but an awesome story.
I agree with 12thkey (the commenter above), this story has potential but needs work. You start off with losts of description and back story that just slows down the narrative. And the names of the alien food sounded silly, not genuine so I'd skip them alltogether.
The concept of the silence is interesting though, as are the character's feelings towards it. Make something more concrete of the threat to the planet, instead of just mentioning all of them.
There is a story in there somewhere, but it needs work. 12thkey's comment is good, and he touches on some good points, and if you do as he suggests the story will improve by leaps and bounds. Give it a little time.
I'm not giving you a thumbs down, because I liked a lot of the story. However, it feels rushed and might have benefited from some revisions.
For one thing, you have some severe information overload. Crank it down a notch, and your story would benefit from it.
You could exchange temnas for tea, and anchor the narrative in something we know. Just as an example.
Overall, my first instinct was a thumbs up because of the setting of this story. To have silence be a central player in the story was inspired. But the story suffers from overload and feels very jumbled.
Keep at it and do some revisions, would be my advice!
Thank you all for your comments. This was my first try at sci-fi writing, so I was expecting to need more polishing. I am happy to see that the subject is somewhat intruiguing so I will re-write this piece, trying to implement some of the suggestions above.
I liked the idea of the story, but for me it was too choppy to keep me in the story. I spent less time feeling for the characters and more time thinking about the style and tone. I think you can rework this and change the tone through stronger and more focused sentences. Also, and I was having the same problem with this sci-fi contest, you spend a lot of time telling the audience about what happened in a "data dump" type manner as opposed to revealing the backstory as the story unfolded.
Don't lose heart. This has a lot of promise. It is just a bit too choppy and too diffuse to quite connect with me as it is right now.
I really liked the whole idea of the silence. When you describe it, it has real presence. The whole tension between presence and absence is really interesting and dynamic.
I think you can ground some of this by adding more description. (That word limit is rough, isn't it? Gave me fits.) You can carve out a little space by eliminating some of the repetition. The new vocabulary can work, but you can't rely solely on context for meaning. Just a little detail here and there and we can fill in the blanks. Or, you can, as another reviewer suggested, just go with the familiar. There is enough of the creative and the strange about your setting that you don't really need the other language, if you don't want it there.
Outside of the restrictions of the challenge, I think you could take off with this. It would give you room to spread out, get comfortable with the world, and....play. I'd like to see that.
Thanks for sharing this story with us. There is a lot of beauty in what you wrote. You may have a lot of work to do to make this story work, but do not get discouraged--just hammer away at until it all falls into place.
You obvously have a fantastical world in your mind, and you've tried to let us see a piece of it. There's a lot of imagery and poetry in what you presented. At times, I struggled to understand what you were trying to describe. I'm actually okay with that for the most part since your world is so fantastical. I personally don't have to fully comprehend it all. That said, it would be nice. When you go through this again, take a look and make sure what's in your mind is accurately presented in the prose.
If I had to sum up this story, I'd say it's all setting (and what a setting it is!). But you're missing a conflict--something to get us to care about what's going on. So, you have a beginning and an end, but no middle. That middle is really important, because it helps to justify your ending. As written, I get to the end, and it all feels empty. Give me some conflict--some obstacle your main character has to overcome to achieve their goal.
I hope this feedback is useful to you. I'd love to read more in this world. Keep up the good work.
Thank you very much. I think your feedback really made me see what it was missing. The middle is there, but I didn't quite put my finger on it. I know this is going to be hard, to write a better version of this story, I will try and do it, since I love the subject.
It is a bit choppy - I am not a SF reader, this was the first time I ever published a story like that, and it was only because I loved the subject.
All of the feedback I received was really helpful, and I will try and make Buzzing Silence a little bit better with your help.
Thank you (again) very much.
Orpheus 5 sounds like an amazing and beautiful world. The degree of segregation between the "people on the high" and the "people on the down" brings to mind what little I know of the Indian caste system. There are also some aspects of this story that remind me of the movie PI. I'd suggest watching it if you ever get the chance.
Please don't take offense, but I'm going to guess English is not your first language. At lest, a few things I ran into while reading lead me to think that:
You have a solid beginning here, keep at it and you can definitely polish it up nicely!
There are some great things in here - I love the idea of the buzz that few can hear. When you write about the headaches, and skin itching, it makes perfect sense. The world you create is enticing, you've clearly spent a fair bit of time imagining it, and that comes out in the story. The language could be a lot simpler. Writing sci-fi doesn't mean everything has to have outlandish names. Also the structure of your writing breaks the flow. These are all workable though, and this is certainly a tale worthy of further development.