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The Colonists
How It Rates
Description
"The Colonists" is a "flash novel" that tells a complete story with multiple settings and characters using brief (~150 word) scenes
The story is set in the near-future during the first civilian wave of the first colony on Mars. Disaster strikes and the colonists must find a new way to survive.
Comments
I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would when I started. The format was definitely interesting and different from the other entries here, and I at first thought it was just a lazy way of avoiding real story arcs and such. But you used it pretty effectively to cover large spaces of time, so I think it worked.
Be careful, though. In the non-dialogue areas, such as Doug's trip to Earth, the short sections tend to make it read a bit like a Wikipedia synopsis of the real story.
I am not too sure about switching characters mid-point. It is hard enough to do real character development in a story like this, since you're describing highlights rather than nuance, so just as I felt I was getting to know the first character, I'm moved to the second one. I'm not entirely sure that the first part of the story couldn't have been relayed from Doug's perspective with some creativity.
You obviously did your homework and added some clever details, such as needing to practice for Earth's gravity and the reason that Doug's landing zone was safe from the infection.
Overall, I enjoyed it. I definitely think it feels like an elaborate outline of a main novel (which I think could be a good medium for a story this large), and that that makes it feel a little looser than it deserved, but definitely well done.
Thanks for the critique. Once I got into the non-dialogue parts I realized Iwas stuck in "telling" rather than "showing". I'm not sure how I could have done that better. I thought about having it be from the PoV of the ground control, but then that would have meant even more changing of perspective, which may be done too much as it is, as you pointed out. Thanks again.
I really, really liked the premise of the story. I'm not entirely certain that the 150 world limit chunks work, because a lot of the beginning sections fit together immediately, and I'm used to seeing chunking like yours separating more diseparate pieces. Ultimately, I gave it a thumbs down because I didn't really think it fit the contest outline. The nonhuman wasn't involved in the story enough and I would have liked to have seen more of how the colonists dealt with the disappearance of Earth.
Thanks for the comments. The chunking worked more in later parts, and I wanted to keep it consistent for the sake of pacing, but it does seem less appropriate now that you mention it. The nonhuman character was an afterthought and doing more with that would have felt forced. I'm curious to see how the other submissions handled that.
This style is totally new to me and took a little while to adjust especially since the early paragraph breaks seemed to flow together (not certain why you made those breaks other than adhering to your own rule of 150 word scenes), but ultimately it felt like an outline of a large tale with only brief glimpses of the story to fill the gaps and as as such it felt incomplete.
I'm split on this one, but thumbed it up. I'll start with my "improves" and then touch on some "sustains" and end on a good note.
Improves: I'm not big on the idea of fitting a whole novel worth of story into a short or a flash novel. The style seems to have the tendency to strip out detail and character development. On top of that, you have all the characters, time and range of a novel to cover in a very few number of words. Maybe it's just me, but a flash novel, like a El Camino, breakfast burrito or sweater vest, seems to combine the worst of two worlds.
Sustains: With that said, I found the segmented episodic nature of your story easy to digest and fast paced. The formatting you could keep if you applied to a short story. Your prose were solid. Your characters were unique and surprisingly full for how few words they got. Your scenes were entertaining and the story itself wasn't bad and came full circle.
So not a bad job. You just set yourself up for quite a challenge to tell the story of two planets, a whole colony and an island's experiences over the course of two to three years in less than 4000 words.
All credit to you for trying something new. It worked well in condensing a very big story, and making for a very fast read. It's a clever way of turning an epic story into something more quickly devoured. Writing this way does miss out on some character development though. I can't help but think you missed a trick in not having multiple narrators instead of just two. You could have made the most of your non-human character in that way. I'm not sure I could cope with this style over a novel, but I felt it was close to working here. The only issue I had is that there were big leaps in time between some of them, and others just ran on. It made it a little too unpredictably disjointed. I gave it a thumbs up though simply because I enjoyed reading it.
I'm not sure what to think on this one. It has some interesting elements and ideas, but ultimately doesn't have the right kind of build up for me. I can tell that the colonists are worried about how they are going to survive and what had happened back on Earth. The emotion just doesn't seem to go anywhere, it stays about the same intensity all through the story. I can see the character emotions but don't really get sucked into the point where I'm feeling them as well.
It might be a side effect of the short scene style. I've seen something similar used once before in a novel legnth work. The author used chapters that were on the order of two to three pages at the most. That worked for them, but there were somehting on the order of 120 chapters. Here, I think used scenes that are so short it's and not quite enough of them to build up a good rapport with the characters.
Still, the idea is sound. A Martian colony, cut off from Earth, doing whatever they can to survive. You could do a great deal with this setting! Especially without the 4k limit to tie you down.
Definitely keep at it!