Aphelion

J.I.Charles wrote:An interesting tale. Sea monsters, young love and pent up frustration. It's easy to connect with the protagonist ( even if my political resume is a tad... small. ) in a sense that every person out there, at one point in there life, has felt that there is just something bigger to be explored than your everyday life.

I found myself more drawn to the action aspect of the story, though. I wanted to see more magic, monsters and a little bit of revenge.

All in all, not bad. I didn't scroll down to the bottom of the story to find out how much more I had left!

As noted, the author is working on a novel-length expansion of the story... Personally, I thought of it as an allegory or satire in which political correctness gone wild (in trying to offend nobody, they end up ignoring danger) leads to a demonstration of Darwinian law: only the rebellious fellow who actually knows how to fight (in a society where arguing is considered to be unthinkable) is of any use when the sea creatures attack.

J.I.Charles wrote:

Robert_Moriyama wrote: only the rebellious fellow who actually knows how to fight (in a society where arguing is considered to be unthinkable) is of any use when the sea creatures attack.

Correction, the fourteen year old princess was pretty handy with a blade... but the fools banished her. It's as if they WANT to be overrun!

Sure -- but she was enough of a rebel that she had spent time away from Ayva Island. The avoid-conflict-at-any-cost crowd found out that the cost could go as high as, oh, being eaten.

I didn't care much for this story. It's got an awful lot of plot holes in it. The combination of water-wheels and navigable canals is one; the firearms was another (how did they come into being? where does the ammunition come from? why is a SENATOR walking around armed in an otherwise rigidly-placid society?). Unexplained -- and unexplainable -- feats of navigation. How the messenger-bird found him. And the people themselves seemed to sometimes have personality traits that challenged belief.

This passage --

Miss Ariel was learned in fire magic, she put a spell on my revolvers endowing them with the power of flame.

-- was so silly as to be almost cringe-worthy -- ALL firearms run on fire. I know, picky, picky -- just reword the thing. A hint, BTW -- if you're going to write about weapons, study their function, even if they are subject to magical spells. Get the real part real, first. Which reminds me; that sword-fighting aboard the gondola -- think about what might happen when two people plus some monsters are in a rather small boat, with one of the people swinging a sword around. It's a miracle the Senator didn't get cut and that no one fell overboard.

That said, I do encourage the author to try to make a novel out of this, provided that he's receptive to learning and constructive criticism. The process will certainly make a better writer out of him, maybe even a good one, if he's a good learner. I'll be charitable and presume that he's on the steep part of the learning curve at this point.

Taken from his bio:

I try to focus on creating original concepts and ideas while remaining less concerned with the textbook mechanics of a story." (Words to make a copy-editor's blood run cold...)

Actually, those are words to make a copy-editor's hand release a manuscript over the round file.
Learn the mechanics, Mr. Szabo. Your basic stuff (punctuation, spelling, grammar) isn't too bad; the larger mechanics (of plot, mostly) need serious work.

Helpful resources are to be found in our Writers Workshop forum, or by Googling 'how to write science fiction,' but I'll give you a freebee:

http://www.caroclarke.com/writing.html

and this one, which is really superb:

http://www.writesf.com/

Keep at it, and good luck!

I want to respond to this, but I need to think about it. I'll be back.

Wesson, I tried to think of something that might be a convincing argument to your last post, but I sense you're just not in the mood for such, so I won't.

What I will say is, even if you only want to write for your own satisfaction, I think you'd get more satisfaction out of it if you knew you could make the writing better. You can.

Toni Morrison said she writes the novels she wishes someone else would write.

I have the same philosophy, worded only slightly differently: I write stories that I would like to read. That ain't easy, 'cause I'm a harsh critic.