Post the first three sentences of your work-in-progress!

chiasaur11

@Oghulk It's got potential, I think, but "but in all honesty it was probably unimportant" can be cut without loss, and the last sentence might benefit from a "was" somewhere.

Oghulk

Thanks, and I was about to debate that cut but I see what you're saying

gavindel

I like the first sentence, Oghulk. Immediately sets up the idea of a relationship/maybe conflict with the father. Second sentence doesn't do anything for me. Seems like a lot of words to explain "and school was useless". Are we being told his schooling was useless because he's too smart for it? Or it is the narrator exercising cynicism? In the third sentence, I like the concept. Maybe do a more direct relation of the size?

"His towered over mine" or such? Emphasizing the smallness of the one and the hulking of the other.

gavindel

The sun crested a frozen expanse of cracked rock and bubbling, acidic pits. Wispy clouds diffused the morning light into a haze and a glimmer atop the orange-red water. Cold enough to freeze gasoline and wind howling after every last trace of warmth to steal, another perfect morning on the colony world of Glacier.

Oghulk

This is the other long-form piece I'm working on, the actual first draft of which is complete.

The smoke in the distance billows up into the sky and lingers over the landscape like a cloud without wind to push it along, silently watching. It travels up the hillside to the tree line where it covers the forest in a widow’s veil. It is disparate to the smoke the boy saw in years past; the scent of burning flesh wafts over the farmland with the smoke.

Oghulk

Gavindel: the double adjective for pits in the first sentence seems unnecessary. I'd go with one or the other -- the comma messes with the flow for such a short line. The second sentence is good, but the third needs some revision; it needs something to connect the description and the clarifier

CptHamilton

gavindel wrote: »

The sun crested a frozen expanse of cracked rock and bubbling, acidic pits. Wispy clouds diffused the morning light into a haze and a glimmer atop the orange-red water. Cold enough to freeze gasoline and wind howling after every last trace of warmth to steal, another perfect morning on the colony world of Glacier.

Personally I'd like to see someone or something going on in the scenery here. It's dangerously close to starting with the weather, which is generally warned against. Of course, the very next sentence may be about someone doing something so take that with a grain of salt.

Other than that it's interesting setting and imagery. The contrast of bubbling acid and a frozen expanse doesn't work for me; if I'm going to picture a cracked, wind-swept wasteland cold enough to freeze gasoline I'm going to picture it fairly steady-state. Bubbling seems too active for the scene. But then gasoline's freezing point isn't really that low, so maybe it's fine.

The "...howling after every last trace of warmth to steal" is awkward; I'd recommend dropping 'to steal'. It's stronger without it.

gavindel

Very next sentence introduces our main character. The problem I had with earlier drafts was that she ended up kind of floating in a void. The planet is so cold that life is barely tenable on much of it, and that really informs the gear and tech they're using. The first page is supposed to give us: Cold ass planet, bio-super soldier protagonist, one or two mentions of tech, and then she gets called back to base to remove a flesh-eating bug from a soldier's ass.

Context in scifi always seems like such a mouthful. Lots of stuff that has to get addressed, and your reader doesn't want to read a book about how it all works (unless you're Stephenson, apparently).

The smoke in the distance billows up into the sky and lingers over the landscape like a cloud without wind to push it along, silently watching. It travels up the hillside to the tree line where it covers the forest in a widow’s veil. It is disparate to the smoke the boy saw in years past; the scent of burning flesh wafts over the farmland with the smoke.

I think I'm a bit confused by the order of action. The smoke billows. Then it lingers. Then it travels again. So I'm not sure how its moving overall. I'm also not sure what "disparate" implies in this case.

CptHamilton

gavindel wrote: »

I think I'm a bit confused by the order of action. The smoke billows. Then it lingers. Then it travels again. So I'm not sure how its moving overall. I'm also not sure what "disparate" implies in this case.

I'm fairly certain he means different. Technically it's a correct usage of the word but it's not the typical usage. I don't think I've ever seen someone refer to one thing as being disparate from another, rather than a collection of things being disparate. I mean, technically 'disparate' means not having parity, so a one-to-one comparison seems more apt. I've just never seen it done.

I'm also a bit confused on how the smoke is different from other smoke. Nothing described here distinguishes it, other than possibly the smell. Visually the smoke from a burning body (or bodies, or village or whatever it is burning) isn't different from any other large fire.

Oghulk

Good points, thanks for that.

Oghulk

Would it make more sense for it to billow, travel, then linger? As if the smoke itself is slowing before parting off with the wind?

gavindel

Billow and linger are both good clean verbs. I think "travel" is what's giving me issues. Smoke is so diaphonous and swirly that travel kind of implies too much cohesion.

bigrickcook

To me it seemed the action of the clouds traveling had happened before it begins to linger.

The smoke in the distance billows upwards, traveling along the hillside to the treeline. It lingers here, like a cloud without wind to push it along, silently watching, covering the forest in a widow’s veil. It is dissimilar to the smoke the boy saw in years past, and it brings with it the scent of burning flesh.