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The rare pleasure of one part of my mind imagining the images as another part of my mind read the words is created and nurtured by Morelock's story. At one moment the clunkiness of mechanical things fills the page only to be replaced by the drama of living beings.
It should have been longer. I hope it will become longer.
Orson B.
Very much liked the subject matter and the world created by the author's descriptions. I found the ending a bit sudden and would love to see the story developed a bit further.
The writing was so descriptive that I forgot I was sitting at my computer and not looking over Stephen's shoulder. I was surprised by the complicatedness of the moral choices the characters faced. I'd like to read how they play out.
The next story to expand on for your novel critique group! Teresa M.
Yes. A major challenge to confine my writing in the short story format. But was a good challenge.
Good work, Ms Morelock. Well-written and intense. The ending, of course, demands more and makes the story seem like an excerpt from a novel, but it doesn't diminish the writing skill.
A reasonably smooth read. There were a few places that it felt awkard from a missing word or dialog that was slightly stilted. Nothing that some distance and a few read throughs couldn't fix. Otherwise, beautiful!
It would have been nice to get a little better look at Stephen. The whole bit about putting on and taking off his face is a little disconcerting. I get that he has a highly reconfigurable bone structure but I can't really build a picture of him in my head. Then again, there may not be enough space to really do anything about that.
Wonderful read!
This is one of those stories where the word count has not helped. It's clearly a much bigger story. I think your writing style is the best thing here - it builds slowly with a great descriptive quality. You build a background tension very well, hinting that something isn't quite right but not showing your hand before you can get a bigger impact. The only issue is that because it is a short story, we don't get that tension at the end. He's already rescued, and then it's just a case of explaining what is going on. The device of him watching the disc neatly sidesteps having to use Magda to explain everything. That the ending leaves me wanting more is good, but it also doesn't feel like an actual ending - it's a chapter break at best. The last couple of pages feel very condensed. I think this was too big a story to try and squeeze into 4,000 words, it needs a bigger canvas. You clearly have talent as a writer though, so do carry on and develop this into something bigger.
Definitely have a story too big for 4k words, but that's okay, so did I. Some innovative world building obviously went into the history here. It read smoothly, and I don't think I got hung up on anything. Well done. I don't have much else to say. Thanks for sharing your story.
Agreed with the above, feels like it needs more space. That is in no way a negative comment, you should totally expand it into a longer story, is what i am saying. :) nice work.
http://litreactor.com/events/teleport-us/scrap