I've completed more of the story I was writing on the original Maker's Monday thread. I skipped the previous Tuesday thread despite reaching my original 500-word goal because I wanted people to be able to consume the newest section of the story as a unit. Thank you to everyone who read, especially to @jake in particular for the helpful suggestions - I've taken most of the comments on board and I think the flow is improved after having incorporated the critique.
Here is the newest version of the story. Note the prose is still subject to change in places here and there since a significant amount was added in a short period of time. For users who read my previous draft, the new stuff starts at page 10-11, and now commenter access has been enabled so anyone can give feedback while they read.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1vqE5UICjRdNvbwaZGDYKGigV5sl6tKRAVr_ts7NVplg/edit
Also, going off advice by @self_made_human, here's the notes and references for the story up to this point, if anyone's interested.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kSpEc7VWSJDkurQSDfFZ29dgoii025-ZbaYfs5jhQqc/edit
the-protean
2mo ago
This is great, thanks, very comprehensive. I've looked through all of your comments and have taken virtually all of the proposed amendments on board, and do feel it improves the flow of the writing.
I'm also glad you're enjoying the story. I was worried people would tire of constant updates in the project thread, but it's encouraging to see that at least somebody would be willing to follow it. Depending on whether I meet my targets an update may or may not be forthcoming next Monday, but I will try to see this through to the end and post in the Maker's Monday thread in semi-regular intervals.
More Peter Watts than Watts himself, combining deep sea and deep space exploration. This is a compliment, I love his writing though I abhorr his congenital pessimism and misanthropy.
Thank you, that's high praise, and from another writer too. If it wasn't already crystal clear, I'm a gigantic fan of Watts' writing myself, so I'm certainly pleased with the comparison and I'm glad it hits some of these notes (not sure if you'll find less pessimism with where this is going, though). I even have a notes and references section written for it with many articles cited, though that probably won't be included in the story itself.
Thanks for reading, and for the feedback. I've changed the document to a commentable state now if you would like to leave some suggestions.
Reading through it again, I think you and @Amadan are probably correct about the excess of adjectives, especially in the introductory sections of the current draft. Not sure why I didn't notice this earlier myself, I suppose it's surprisingly easy to get lost in obsessing about large-scale sentence construction and excluding other considerations like these. I will be taking these critiques on board, and have made an attempt to cut some of the filler adjectives out (though I've left the google doc untouched for now so I can get more feedback on the submitted draft).
Just for context, I'm a somewhat regular poster here with some AAQCs, who's made an account solely for the purposes of posting on this thread for the purposes of trying to distance my projects from my political/culture war statements. FWIW, I think this is a great idea for a thread, and will be participating here almost exclusively under this pen-name. Hopefully the mods are okay with this, and hopefully my writing style doesn't give me away.
So, I've recently been trying to write a story. I'm over 4,900 words into it and would like some feedback. The focus of a lot of my effort has been trying to make sure that the events in the story align as much as possible with current understanding of science and principles of logical consistency. However, I've also tried to make sure the writing is up to snuff - I've thrown away a few previous stories due to thinking they weren't delivered in a satisfying way, and the only reason why this has been posted here is because it meets my personal criteria for readability. I would appreciate pointers on where the plot deviates from believable scientific speculation or generally just strains credulity, as well as feedback on aspects such as how the prose feels and flows, on how understandable the writing is, and whether the dialogue feels authentic enough.
Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tt8iofyGmERpwBNRmBQh7YjIfxkMPi2en4ZxJBT0PBw/edit?usp=sharing
I plan to get at least another 500 words done this week. I've intentionally set the weekly count low because work and personal obligations have made it quite inconvenient to get into the swing of writing, but I figure that as long as I get some progress in every week I should be done reasonably soon - this is meant to be novella-length at most, so it won't be too difficult to finish.
I have continued to write the story I'm working on, albeit slowly. I'm currently over 12,300 words, which is nearly the length of Ted Chiang's Story Of Your Life, and I'm probably about a quarter of the way through so far.
Wondering what TheMotte's opinion on lengthy scientific exposition in sci-fi is. I currently have a big block of speculative biochemistry in the latter half of the current draft of the story, and some of my beta-readers... don't like it. I've tried to simplify it so it's understandable while still maintaining the necessary verisimilitude, but in general I get the feeling it might be too much. Personally, I've always liked large infodumps of speculative science in my fiction, the chapter Orphanogenesis in Diaspora with its detailed and lengthy descriptions of how the conceptory creates an orphan is probably one of my favourite openings to a story ever, but in general this kind of thing seems to make people's eyes glaze over.
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