Somberbrero posted:

STONE OF MADNESS posted:

You never got a crit for this and I doubt you'd like your piece to slip forgotten into forums history, so here goes.

First up, we need to talk about our mutual friend, the humble


While we tend to think of commas as an 'anything goes' kind of luxury option, they are required and there are a few places you just aren't using them. This will always hurt your prose.

For pacing:

If you don't use commas, your clauses will blur together. Sometimes this is desirable, other times, not so much. The first sentence is just difficult to read. "... jumpsuit who sat..." vs "... jumpsuit, who sat...".
And then there's this:

Hang on a master criminal on a narrow walkway over HANG ON WHAT what is a 'criminal on a narrow' oh right WELL I WAS STILL READING THAT CLAUSE THANK YOU VERY MUCH

In dialogue:

This last is especially important because you always, always do this where you'd normally put a period. Question or exclamation marks are a different matter - you let them do their job. But it is NEVER acceptable to have
"Dialogue." he said
because it reads like
"Dialogue." He said.
which, if you'll cast your mind back to kindergarten, is how the retarded kids used to read out loud. Don't encourage them.

Just for completion's sake, this

is a sentence in which a comma could be used, but it's up to you. As it stands, the sentence passes briskly and if that's the tone you want, then perfect.

And just to spit on my own statements above, this

would work a whole lot better as


Enough about commas; let's talk about style.

The TV show works great. I was uncertain about the italics at first, but I think it was a good choice as it allows you to eliminate 'THEY LOOKED AT THE TV AND' when you so choose (and when you don't, you're quite gentle about it, which is ideal). One thing that's really noteworthy about this part of your story is that all of the action and dialogue is reported in summary, ie. 'told', and it works fantastically, because you're contrasting the TV show with the 'real life' of your story. Obviously, when it comes to the story proper, this is to be avoided.

'a' instead of 'the' and vice versa

I'd put 'the' low ceiling. You're allowed to treat your setting as a given; God knows your characters generally will, especially when it comes to ceilings. And it just reads better this way.

No comment

I'd put 'a keypad'. Unless I missed you drawing my attention to it earlier, this is the first we've heard of this keypad and keypads are rare enough to warrant specific mention. 'The' assumes, 'a', um, doesn't really. If you want us to know that this is a universe where there are keypads on every door BECAUSE, put 'the' and be prepared to make it worthwhile.

It's a bit too early to tell for sure, but I think you might have a tendency to get excessively wordy in parts. Remember, just because you happen to be endowed with a compendious vocabulary, you are not obliged to deploy its entirety at any given moment.

A clear example of when the temptation to use all the cool words just gets too exciting. You're actually wasting details when you pack them in so tightly. Tell us that it's dark, tell us that it's the darkness of the underground, tell us it's a street (unless it somehow deserves the distinction of being a promenade - this could be, but hasn't yet been established to my satisfaction), tell us it's been destroyed. Actually no wait show us these things instead tia

Your sci-fi secrets are presented a little too opaquely for my comfort - I'm being alienated by references to dried waste and mouth-gels that I'm not familiar with and don't understand. This is fine as long as you don't keep us hanging too long. By dumping the names of these things, 'gel from his mouth', 'mule is picking up the dried waste', you're actually making it more difficult to prolong an explanation than if you'd tried to allude to the nature of the things via an on-sight description (hope that makes sense). I have no loving idea what's going on with the gel-smearing but I definitely want to find out.

Finally, the POV is omniscient at this stage, and it doesn't really feel like we're getting any one character's perspective. Fine when we're looking at the TV show, not so great for holding a reader's attention. I suspect that Bryce is your man, now make me feel it.

I've got to admit - I'm intrigued by your story so far. Definitely post more once it's written.