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ChrisPine comments on Open Thread: December 2009 - Less Wrong
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I wrote a short story with something of a transhumanism theme. People can read it here. Actionable feedback welcome; it's still subject to revision.
Note: The protagonist's name is "Key". Key, and one other character, receive Spivak pronouns, which can make either Key's name or eir pronouns look like some kind of typo or formatting error if you don't know it's coming. If this annoys enough people, I may change Key's name or switch to a different genderless pronoun system. I'm curious if anyone finds that they think of Key and the other Spivak character as having a particular gender in the story; I tried to write them neither, but may have failed (I made errors in the pronouns in the first draft, and they all went in one direction).
I liked it. :)
Part of the problem that I had, though, was the believability of the kids: kids don't really talk like that: "which was kind of not helpful in the not confusing me department, so anyway"... or, in an emotionally painful situation:
Key looked suspiciously at the librarian. "You sound like you're trying not to say something."
Improbably astute, followed by not seeming to get the kind of obvious moral of the story. At times it felt like it was trying to be a story for older kids, and at other times like it was for adults.
The gender issue didn't seem to add anything to the story, but it only bothered me at the beginning of the story. Then I got used to it. (But if it doesn't add to the story, and takes getting used to... perhaps it shouldn't be there.)
Anyway, I enjoyed it, and thought it was a solid draft.
I actually have to disagree with this. I didn't think Key was "improbably astute". Key is pretty clearly an unusual child (at least, that's how I read em). Also, the librarian was pretty clearly being elliptical and a little patronizing, and in my experience kids are pretty sensitive to being patronized. So it didn't strike me as unbelievable that Key would call the librarian out like that.
You've hit on one of my writing weaknesses: I have a ton of trouble writing people who are just plain not very bright or not very mature. I have a number of characters through whom I work on this weakness in (unpublished portions of) Elcenia, but I decided to let Key be as smart I'm inclined to write normally for someone of eir age - my top priority here was finishing the darn thing, since this is only the third short story I can actually claim to have completed and I consider that a bigger problem.