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OK, so for my Toxx Clause in the appropriate thread I decided to write a bunch of, well, words. For whatever reason I assume everything I write is a complete atrocity. This may or may not be true but I have a long history of trying to write things and failing because of it. That or starting something, deciding that it's utter trash, scrapping it, and coming back to it later. So what I'm saying is that I want some honest opinions on this chunk of it while I get to work on the rest. I have some proof reading to do, working out the rest of the story, and going from there. The plan is a novel. It's science fiction and about intelligent creatures that are completely incapable of communicating with each other. The idea started from libertarian talking points of pure competition, total individualism, and free market whatever. It made me think about how different things would be if cooperation just plain didn't exist. The more I thought about it the more brutal and terrible their lives got; life sucks for these things and they can't work together to make it better. Anyway, here's an approximately 2,000 word chunk of it. This is basically the intro to the story and the beginning of one of the things' life. Right now the story is called "I, Other" ----------------------------------------- It woke up suddenly; its first moments of thought were of the slick, sticky mess that was covering its skin. It knew it existed and had a basic idea of what it was. It was alive; it was intelligent. It was also in serious danger. It realized it needed to find a hiding place and shelter fast. More of its kind would be coming, eager to pillage the battle site it existed in. It knew it was small, weak, and vulnerable; a prime target for others of its kind. It did not, for the moment, wonder how it knew such things. Inside of its abdomen its brain was rapidly developing. It was forming connections within its vast network of neurons and accessing knowledge that was built into it. Bit by bit it awoke as patterns built into it by something similar to genetics arranged its neural pathways. Suddenly it began to hear; the sound, it realized, was rushing water. It thought about cleaning itself but realized this would be a poor idea. It would indicate to those down river that it was further up the river currently. No doubt the smell of a finished battle and lack of sound was drawing others upon it already. It looked around and considered the situation. It was still squatting in the remains of the battle's loser; its secondary parent. Its primary parent had not fared better. It lay dead no far away, a grievous wound slashing across its back. Apparently the battle was not long. Its secondary parent had been caught completely off guard and only managed to injure its attacker before it was forced to bear children. It had apparently been the last to awake as little of the parent was recognizable and all of its gear had been stripped off and carried away. Closer observation of the primary parent indicated that it had been weakened severely by the fight but ultimately killed by its own offspring. It considered how strange that was before the keening whine of machinery cut across the river bank. Something was getting close. It was time to leave. It realized being armed was better than not and searched for a weapon. Fortunately its primary parent still had one. It did not understand how to operate it yet but knew it was a weapon. It was small and light; a sleek metal thing that it knew was dangerous. It grabbed it, took a bite of its parent, and ran away from the river. The keening followed it. It looked behind itself and realized it was leaving a spotty trail of ichor; partly from that which was stuck to its feet and partly from a small wound it had not noticed. Conscious thought of the wound caused pain to well through its thought process. This served to strengthen the flight response it had already been locked into. It panicked briefly as it considered where to hide. It rubbed dust over some of the closer spots only to realize how obvious it was being. It climbed a large rock only to realize it would be easiest to spot on such a high point. It slid down the other side of the rock and found a depression beneath it. It ducked inside to consider its situation as the mechanical keening came closer. It wound was fortunately no longer leaking but it was feeling weak. Between the injury and the heightened physical state it was succumbing to fatigue. Skills and knowledge related to sneaking had begun to flood into its consciousness. The obvious thing suddenly was to eliminate the trail it was leaving while camouflaging itself. It took dust, dirt, and debris from the depression and coated most of itself, sure to wipe off any ichor left into the dirt. There was no outrunning the machine, it realized. What exactly a machine was had not reached its mind yet. All it knew was that machines gave advantages; massive ones. Its trail had been obvious up to this point but was easier to shake off now. If it could find a better hiding place and stay quiet it would have a chance of surviving. It bolted out of its hiding place as quickly as it could and ran further away from the river. It realized at this point that it was at the top of a hill; a bad place to be if one does not want to be spotted. It sought a decline that would take it further away from the river. It saw that this would lead it to a valley with a great deal of dust and little life; hardly ideal and worse in that it would expend too much energy if it were forced to run across it. Fatigue seeped further into its limbs as it ran down the hill, avoiding the valley. It realized this would take it closer to the river again. In a way it was trapped between the valley and the river. It was tired and would become hungry before long. Survival increasingly relied on hiding. Dust and dirt exploded rhythmically beside it as it ran. It had been spotted by another of its kind. It dove and slid down the hill toward the valley, kicking up dust behind it. It risked a moment to pause and look behind it. The slope it had slid down was steep and got it out of site for a moment. A trail of dust approached where it had landed. It scattered the dust immediately beneath it and carefully padded toward the valley. It needed something to hide behind while it sorted out what to do next. Its trail could be easily picked up; burying itself shallowly would make it easy to find. It shuffled further down the slope and saw the featureless valley before turning back to the river. Then the knowledge of the weapon it was holding coalesced into a basic understanding in its mind. It was a gun; a dangerous one. Though it looked like a small, weak secondary weapon it was highly capable of causing massive damage itself. It spat super heated plasma but was only good for a few shots before it was spent. It was a weapon of last resort; highly destructive and likely to ruin whatever it hit beyond usefulness. It realized what it was but did not realize how to operate it. It did not understand the theory behind its working or how such a thing was made; all it knew was what it did. It slid toward the river and noticed more large rocks similar to the one it hid under. With luck it would find a depression it could hide in or a tunnel it could scuttle away through. It moved toward the rocks as the metallic keening failed to get closer. It was losing its pursuer. It knew this would not last forever. It had to get away or become hidden well enough that the other would lose interest. It approached the rocks as an explosion ended the keening. It must have been huge; the machine had not been particular close by then but it felt the heat. The concussion followed, bringing a storm of hot metal shrapnel with it. It felt searing pain in one of its limbs; not an essential one thankfully. A small shard had buried itself toward the end of the extremity. It wrenched it out and used the heat to cauterize the wound. It did not know why this had occurred to it. It found a damp depression under a rock by the river. It was dark and unpleasant but was a good enough place to hide for the time being. It realized it could not know if its pursuer was still there or if it was now chased by another. It was possible that two of its kind were fighting over it. More information flooded into its consciousness though it was foggy. Its primary parent had a structure somewhere not far away; well-hidden but obvious to those that would know where to look. It had machines and it had supplies. It also had food. It would be chased and followed if it sought it and would likely need to fight others born with it once it got there. Others would also want it. Whenever its kind reproduced there was always violence. It stood still and silent as it could when it heard slow, rhythmic padding in the area. This was not a machine or an attack; this was another coming for it. The dark hole was as good of a hiding spot as it could find that quickly but it wondered if it was too obvious. More bits of information about sneaking surfaced; the most obvious hiding spot was the worst even if there was total concealment. Did it ensure its own death? It was trapped if it had tried to run. The only other option was to fight but it did not know how many shots the weapon was good for. It turned the weapon over to search for a firing mechanism. It tried to focus and learn; it tried to dredge up more information from its awakening mind but could not. Much about the weapon was still a mystery. Meanwhile the padding wandered ever closer. It bolted out of its hiding place and brandished the weapon. Once it had a view of the other it pointed it at it and frantically pressed at every part it could. The other dove behind another rock, obviously aware of what the weapon was. It failed to fire but this bought it time. It bounded beside the river and began to run down stream. It would take it closer to the valley and cause it to tire further but it would also take it away from its birth place. Then the weapon fired. A white hot bolt of plasma streamed out of it. Much of it landed in the river and caused vapor, steam, and dead things to rise out of it. One thing in particular, a small, wretched thing with a dozen limbs, pulled itself in front of it before expiring. It picked it up and pinned it to its back with a secondary limb. It would not refuse food at this point; eating would be necessary very soon. It realized food would be hard to come by when it was small and weak. The sight of food caused a flood of new information. It would grow quickly but only if it could find enough to eat. It would be even more vulnerable when it was older but not fully mature. As it grew it would slow down greatly and have more difficulty climbing. In its current state it was fast and agile. This would be its greatest advantage. The ground exploded behind it and its rearmost limbs stung as they were pelted with rocks. It had been fired on. It spun around and tried to catch sight of the other but could not see it. It edged backwards then and pressed itself against another rock, attempting to find an angle that would let it fire when the other showed itself. Finally it did. The standoff seemed to last ages. It at least gave it a brief respite to rest its limbs. The other caught sight first and blasted off one of its secondary limbs. It responded by vaporizing the other with a plasma shot. It gave an experimental tug at the plasma weapon after that only to find that it contained two shots. The weapon was spent and smelled like burning silicon and metal. It flattened itself on the ground, laid still, and listened. Whatever had happened at the machine only one other had come after it. There was no suggestion of any others. It stopped to consider its wounds; one limb was damaged and would need to heal. Another was half removed, never to be used normally again. It was tired; its body ached. It was also hungry. It returned to the depression under the big rock to eat the thing from the river and rest.
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Mar 2, 2016 07:27
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Fast crits are good crits in the Thunderdome and I am taking that mentality here. This reads like a bland documentary, but instead of Lemurs its about an alien. The prose is dry, it is devoid of imagery, tactile experiences, and we are never shown the protagonist's emotions (you tell us that it briefly panics). I do not know what it looks like, I am no closer to knowing why its cohorts are so violent (especially when it almost seems docile, other than eating its dead mom), or closer to any insight into... Anything. The story is pointless. You clearly like the idea, and it might be an incredible idea, but you go out of the way to avoid hooking a reader. With no picture of this thing, with no insight into its emotional state, and with such dry prose I'm not sure what there is that is supposed to keep the reader engaged. Why should I care that a momma-eating alien is gonna be blasted by its big brother or sister? Give me something. Even in documentaries about Lemurs, or Prairie Dogs, or whatever, they try to build a narrative that invests the viewers into the lives of the animals, they try and show us some of their character quirks, their foibles, and they've got something that you completely lack: visual data. I don't think you use one simile or metaphor in the entire story. Maybe they aren't needed, but I want to read some visual information. I want to have a picture in my head. You don't have to give any information about the land as I am capable of providing that, unless that information imparts a tone, which would be A++. One last thing, the information you do provide us is done in a boring manner. You give one line that implies that much of the information the protagonist gains is hard coded into its DNA, which is fine (though I want to be a sperglord about this), but then every time thereafter we are told information has "coalesced" into his mind. You are writing a story, you could represent this information in any manner that you like, it could be displayed to us in a visual way and maybe that would help this story some... Or not, just some other way, and after the first time or two you no longer need to explain this. You need to make the first line about the DNA-stuff more clear, setting up the idea in a precise way, so you can spare us the repetition of his revelations. I lied, I've got more. I am thinking about Arthur C. Clarke, who was not the world's greatest writer but was a fantastic sci-fi author. But even in his trope defying work Rendezvous with Rama we are given details about the lives of the crew, Clarke tries to get us invested into his characters, and then he goes about setting up situations where he knows that we, avid sci-fi readers, will expect terrible things to happen (but they never do in Rama) and he toys with us. He paints pictures. He elicits emotions (even if those emotions are fairly two dimensional). I get the sense you are a Clarke kind of guy, that the ideas of your work are more important than the characters, which is cool, but it doesn't mean you can completely abandon them. Finding a way, within the tone you want to write in, to convey information which will give the reader insight into the lives and the world of your characters is a challenge we all face. You've set yourself into a harder positions by, apparently, deciding to forego most, if not all, of this information due to your choice of tone or voice in your work. In other words you are making this harder on yourself. I hope I haven't been a dick. I am judging Thunderdome this week and I kind of wanted to get my "Judge Mode" on so I don't rate every story there are "Pretty good, guy!"  As a result I might come off as harsher than I intended. I also do not want you to take this and think you shouldn't keep on truckin', cause you should.So thank you for giving me the chance to provide a crit! I hope it helps some 
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Mar 5, 2016 18:59
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Thank you for the crit, you actually hit on some points I was concerned about. This is just the barest intro; the real meat of the story happens later. That may or may not be a good idea but you hit on some things I was struggling with. The base idea is to mostly tell the story from the things point of view. What it's thinking about, what it notices, and so forth. In the intro it just awoke into being; it's brand new. I hinted at knowledge hard-coded into DNA but that isn't actually what's going on. The mechanics of how that works are actually revealed later in the story as are a ton of other things. I almost put a description of it in the intro for the reader and I think you're right; I should actually do that. Either way the thing has no idea where the information is coming from yet. I was thinking about things like how sentience would work without communication; information sharing is what makes humanity work. I was thinking how could technology possibly happen if nobody can share information? Part of it has to do with the physiology of these things and why biting its parent (mother is not actually the proper word but again that gets revealed later) was actually a huge deal. I knew this story was going to be a gigantic, tremendous pain to write when I started it but yeah, I really like the idea and want to make it happen. Titus82 posted:I don't think you use one simile or metaphor in the entire story. Maybe they aren't needed, but I want to read some visual information. I want to have a picture in my head. You don't have to give any information about the land as I am capable of providing that, unless that information imparts a tone, which would be A++. The tone is that this thing is a baby and barely capable of processing information, especially visual information. It's a confused baby that doesn't understand anything other than that it is in danger and needs to survive. The brief moment of panic is its emotions starting to switch on but the things don't feel much other than fear, hunger, and the need to reproduce. Their primary emotion is "I must survive at all costs." The hook I put in was to grab the reader's curiosity by leaving those details out and explaining them as the story goes (I have a bit over 10,000 words in at one point and intend to make a novel out of it) largely as the thing learns them. I wanted the reader to wonder at the mystery of it; their reproduction is violent but...why? How does it even work? In that case it highlights the awful violence of the creatures. When a adult grows it starts to develop little partial copies of themselves. It needs to get rid of them or they will slow it down, screw up its metabolic process, and leech nutrients. Its young are parasites. The way to get rid of them is to pin another of its kind down, inject them into its body, and force its own young to consume the other's young. The parasite babies also suck information from its parent and gets some from the secondary parent but not nearly as much. The primary parent's knowledge (well, most of it anyway) lives on while the secondary parent's does not. There isn't male and female; they're all one gender. This way reproduction always involves fighting. The secondary parent also doesn't need to be alive for it to happen. In any case the secondary parent is guaranteed to die as the maturing babies chew their way out and use its body to create their own. The primary parent might survive but might get injured in the process. Even so if it doesn't reproduce it will die of babies. As for how that evolved quite frankly I have no idea; didn't think about that part. And yes, I know that it's horrifying. The documentary tone was accidental. Even so, you were very helpful.
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Mar 5, 2016 21:55
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