= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
DataPacRat comments on June 2014 Media Thread - Less Wrong Discussion
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (95)
I finished my first draft of S.I.'s first book, "Re-", a couple of days ago. An attempt at a post-singularity self-insert RatFic, I'm taking a couple of days' break before I start in on the second part.
I'm looking for any and all feedback I can get - I'm going to be focusing mainly on extending the story until I finish it, but don't mind improving what's already in place.
I've started Book Two. So far, it's just a few hundred words to get my typing fingers back in the groove, mostly me being pointlessly verbose about fire in a way that's nearly totally unrelated to the plot... but hey, I'm having fun writing again, so a couple of days break every now and then seems an important key to ensure I /want/ to keep writing the thing. :)
WRITE MORE DAMMIT AAAAAAA I've just got to the not-an-AI offering tea. Please note when you finish :-)
I like it. The grabber was reasonably good, the sequence from the first book to the second amazing, and it touches on the potential for horror inherent to transhumanism without becoming a horror story. It's hard to get to that Roadside Picnic vibe, and you did a very good job.
That said, it seems a little rough. Compared to Myou've Got To Be Kidding Me, there's very little difference in character tone : even Convoy and Mrs. House and Joe seem to share similar linguistic habits to Bunny. ((Caveat: certain twists like a simulated environment might require such a thing.)) This is especially noticeable in the info-dumps -- perhaps why you're moving to a more detached reflective point of view in later info-dumps.
You've also got a very large number of balls in the air just by the end of In-Convenient. Some of them are pretty clearly Hemingway's Iceberg references, which discuss small details to give the impression of a larger world (or to reference other works: I assume the poor person transmuted into livestock organs is a reference to the current end of Myou've), so it's fine if they're dropped, hidden away, or otherwise left behind. I'd be careful to avoid doing so too heavily, though. If too many events occur without being linked to the central thematic arc, the work ends up feeling like a sequence of events rather than a story. That can work ok in some circumstances (see Alan Dean Foster's Quozl), but it's often disappointing and may be counterproductive if the work's intended for a general audience.
There are some more specific lexical or typographical matters -- would you prefer they be given by Google Doc comment, or is there another way that you find easier?
I can't possibly disagree.
I knew before I started writing that this is a writing skill I need improving. That's part of why I originally included a disclaimer paragraph about the fallibility of memory, and decided to stay with first-person perspective - if I ever need it, I have a built-in excuse in that the narrator is adding their own biases about the other characters' phrasing. (Yes, it's a cop-out. But it's at least one with a lampshade hung on it.)
I have certain themes and events that I'd like to hit, and some setting details to cover that haven't made it into the story proper yet; I'm /hoping/ that I can bring enough of the threads together by the end to be satisfying. (And unlike some of my previous writing attempts, I am planning on bringing this to a close.)
For simple things like that, GDocs' system of highlighting text to comment makes it much easier to find and fix them than sending them by some other route. (I do know that I'm highlighting italics with /slashes/ instead of inline code symbols, and that I've been writing out numerals and years rather than using digits; those are semi-deliberate choices.) If you do want a private discussion, you can always email me at my username at gmail dot com.
Well, I started reading and kept going right to the end. Nice one!