Long Tale Press

Use this thread to discuss the excerpt Dark Exodus by Yoshi97.

Others may not have read this excerpt yet, so please use [spoiler][/spoiler] tags where appropriate.

You're the first writer I've seen here to really make a serious stab at revising a submission. I know that others have also revised thiers, but this is the first revision I've gone back to read. Hm. I wonder if that's because I liked the story concept so much? Anyway:

This revision is much better. It flows much more smoothly. It stays in a consistent point of view. It doesn't infodump all over the place anymore. Nice job.

There are still things I'd criticise, but I get the feeling that you want to know, so I won't be shy about telling you. The good news is that they're much simpler things to fix. These critiques get a little long, so I'll put them in spoiler blocks.

Watch out for "the Curse of Knowledge." Broadly speaking, in life generally and outside of writing, the curse of knowledge is when we fail to explain things well or properly to others because we have ourselves forgotten what it's like NOT to know the thing we're trying to explain. So we omit critical supporting context, or assume that the listener (reader) already understand something else which is key to making sense of what we're saying.

In writing, the curse of knowledge can happen because as authors we spend so much time thinking about our worlds, characters, et cetera, that we can sometimes literally forget to include in the story some critical piece of information that the reader needs. We don't catch it in revision or in self-editing, because we already know that information even though it's not in the story. So when we get to the place where that missing information is really necessary for the reader, we gloss right over it. Consider this imaginary scene set within the test kitchens of the Culinary Institute of America, one of our nation's finest cooking schools. Art has just run into his friend Barry, who has just gotten out of his Dessert 210 final:

[scene:] "Hey, so how did it go?" asked Art.

"Oh, I think I did fine," said Barry. "I kind of overworked my puff pastry, but whatever. Get this, though--you know Carl Anderson's in my class, right?"

Art rolled his eyes. "Four-star Carl?" Carl Anderson was the laughing-stock of the campus. A man with cooking talent inversely proportional to his own estimation of that talent. A man who was counting his Michelin Stars before, as it were, they were cooked. "Yeah, what about him?"

"Ok, get this. So we're on the sauces part of the final, doing the chocolate sauce. And Carl's up at the counter in front of me, so I can totally see what he's doing. Anyway, he's stirring his sauce, and I can see his candy thermometer's reading about 190," Barry said.

"Oh, don't tell me. He didn't!"

"Swear to god. So I'm doing my own sauce, but I'm glancing up at him every so often. He's totally not paying attention. Just whisking away in the pot. His thermometer hits 200, and he's still going. I'm on my raspberry sauce by then."

Art started chuckling. "Ok, so then what?"

"It was unreal, man. Carl just keeps stirring that sauce. The thermometer finally got up to about 230 before Chef stopped him."

"Oh, I can just picture it!" Art said, bursting out with a hearty laugh.

[end of scene]

Now, Art and Barry are totally laughing at Carl's attempt to make a chocolate sauce. To them, it's funny. To the writer, it's funny. But unless you know much about cooking with chocolate, it might not seem funny to you. You may be asking yourself "so what the heck are they laughing about?" Why? Because you don't know that chocolate burns at a pretty low temperature, around 200 degrees F. It's a key fact necessary for the reader to understand the joke, but it hasn't been presented in the scene. The writer has fallen victim to the curse of knowledge, and has forgotten that not all readers will know about the fine points of stovetop chocolate care.

The author has two choices here: infodump the relevant fact in the middle of the scene (a bad solution) or add a scene earlier in the story where Art learns the lesson about burning chocolate for himself (a much better solution, since it makes imparting the information about temperature perfectly natural).

In many ways, the falling prey to the Curse of Knowledge is the opposite of an infodump. The reality is that there's a continuum of how much exposition a writer can employ, from super infodumpy on one end, to super curse-of-knowledgey on the other end. The effective zone is somewhere in the middle, where you tell readers the minimum they need to understand a scene, and you find natural ways to do it.

I bring this up, because early in your revision there's the paragraph which starts "In the front was an enlarged hydrogen scoop" and goes on to describe the probes. But there isn't quite enough context for that paragraph, and when I first hit it my immediate reaction was to ask "In the front of WHAT?" I figured out it was "probes," but I think that the beginning needs to be a bit stronger and more explicit about the fact that these people gave up their bodies in order to survive in these probes. Show spoiler

Watch out for "middle voice" writing. Here and there you use the so-called "middle voice" (which isn't quite active and isn't quite passive), but does allow you to ignore the instigator of the action. Since your instigator is your main character, relegating him to invisible status does him no favors and hampers the reader's ability to connect with him. Here's one quick example:

"Two were of particular interest, as they threatened to collide with one another"

This would be "two were of particular interest to him, as they threatened to collide", but you've left out the "to him." You've made Marcus invisible. I wouldn't say that simply putting "to him" really fixes the problem either. Better to put Marcus in the fore:

"Marcus was particularly interested in two of them; a pair that threatened to collide with one another."Show spoiler

Watch out for weak verbs. Weak verbs are kind of hard to define, there's no particularly hard-and-fast rule to identify one. But typically they are verbs that are more generic or broad in their meaning than verbs that are more specific. For example, "John used the hammer to pound in a nail" is weak ("use" is an incredibly generic verb), whereas "John pounded the nails in with a hammer" is much stronger ("pound" is a very specific verb). Sure, it's a dumb example, but you get the point. Here's one example from your revision:

"The collision caused a small wobble, changing the trajectory of the larger object and causing it to stray directly into Erica's path."

"Cause" is very weak. "Change" is slightly stronger, but not particularly great either. Try something like:

"The collision nudged the larger object, just a little, pushing it directly into Erica's path."

Now, "nudge" and "push" are considerably stronger than "cause" and "change" and, giving a sentence that is livelier and more evocative.Show spoiler

Anyway, your revisions have improved this submission enormously. I would encourage you to keep going. Weed out those weak verbs, replace "middle voice" sentences with true active voice that emphasizes your characters where possible, and watch out for the Curse of Knowledge.

Sign up for National Novel Writing Month at www.nanowrimo.org; novel writing starts November 1st!

I did some editing, but I consider it a minor revision, as I still need to comb through it thoroughly again and alas, the day is coming to a close for me. :(

The spoken lasts but a moment; the written lasts forever.

I spend quite a bit of time and energy telling people the faults I find in their stories, to help them improve.

It felt good to find a story I felt was just right, as it helped reaffirm I'm not just some shrewdish prune demanding perfection. :)

The spoken lasts but a moment; the written lasts forever.

Cool, it's good that you're planning to expand him more. He has potential to be a pretty interesting character, especially if we get a better look inside his circuitry. I think the inner workings of villians heads are fascinating, especially when they're insane.Show spoiler I'll definitely try to find some time to check out the completed version.

Thanks Ruby!

I've been traveling through the chapters, making clarifications, fixing mistakes, and mending plot holes. Having been away from the story for awhile, it does make it easier to find the things that need repair.

Glad you enjoyed the story, and I do promise to do everything I can to make this the best story I can. :)

The spoken lasts but a moment; the written lasts forever.