site banner
cjet79  3mo ago (text post)   2841 thread views

Maker's Monday

Trying out a new weekly thread idea.

This would be a thread for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers. We can coordinate weekly standup type meetings if their is interest.

@ArjinFerman, @Turniper, and myself all had some initial interest.

Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.

24
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

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.

Generally, well written. But you make the common new writer's mistake of overusing adverbs and adjectives. Go through every sentence and remove all adverbs and adjectives and see if it loses anything. (I don't mean you should remove every one from your story - but you could remove a lot and you'd be surprised how many really don't add much.)

If you want, make a copy and DM me an anonymized/open commenter link and I'll suggest edits on the entire story.

Your writing is quite good, there are disruptions in flow from you doubling and sometimes tripling up on adjectives. Most instances you could omit one or all, two examples:

In the station, an ever-present soundscape practically smothers us, heavy and ominous and oppressive

Soundscape implies atmosphere and ubiquity, I think there's probably a better word choice. Heavy/Ominous/Oppressive aren't exact synonyms but here they're redundant because of "smothers."

"The ocean smothers us with sound" conveys it in fewer words.

I hear Whitlock faintly stirring* in the bunk underneath me. The bed creaks as he slowly, gingerly* sits up and begins to vomit into a bucket, choking and heaving and gasping* as the contents of his stomach unceremoniously escape his body. Once* the retching is over, there’s laboured breathing and a soft, low thud;* the low sound of a head being rested against a bunk pole.

"Stirring" implies a quietness, you could go with "I hear Whitlock's weak stirs."

"Slowly, gingerly" gingerly implies slowness.

"Choking and heaving and gasping" like the above, your omission of commas is meant to emphasize the unpleasantness but just "choking" captures it, and we already know he's having a bad time from the context, before and after.

"Once" is a word for temporal specificity, "when" is a word for temporal generality. When also reads better, "When the retching is finished there's laboured breathing"

"soft, low" redundant

I might omit to "there's laboured breathing and the low sound of a head being rested against a bunk pole"

Last notes: the rules for italicizing apply to titles of works, words not in English (though this would be often, not strictly always), and scientific terms. In prose you can style how you want so you can use italics for names like "Proteus" and "Mazu" but there are times it hurts the flow, especially back-to-back with "Caelus, Qianliyan."

Spirulina is proper when referring to the organism, for a food product it's just "spirulina cakes."

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).

I've finished with suggested edits in the doc. It kept signing me out, that may be why it looks like several people were making suggestions.

I've done a lot of anon editing in /lit/ /wg/ threads, most of what I've read there is the kind of bad writing that editing can't fix. Yours is good, and you can see that in my edits being almost all words and parts of sentences you could omit. Using a few too many words is an easy fix. I liked it, I'll be reading more as long you keep us updated.

I meant to put these in my previous comment -- "That" can often be omitted, and there are some rules on writing numbers. The article says and I'll summarize, it's just narrative consistency, always writing them as numerals or always writing them as words. That is narrative, so in narration you'd write them all as numerals, and as dialogue you'd write them as the full words (though there are specific exceptions to this, the one I can name is street addresses, which are always written as eg "123 Main").

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.

Nice.

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.

I do have a larger tolerance for jargon than most, so I except that much of the feedback you'll receive will be to minimize it, but I feel like it adds to the verisimilitude, something an actual researcher would write to an informed audience.

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.

I'm touched to be called a fellow writer, I just dabble.

In the context of Watts, I follow his blog, and the pessimism is deep seated and personal. Man's just sitting around waiting for the world to explode, and even worse, for the wrong reasons. I'm fine with pessimistic works, hell, I'm sure it's possible to write good scifi that's upbeat, but that eludes me too haha.

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.

I'd say throw them in, it doesn't hurt, and it does help to flaunt that you've done your research. If you want to be really fancy and make use of electronic media, you could pass them off as diegetic footnotes though that'll be a lot of bother.

Approved.

But please ask first.

Using alternate accounts to post things that might otherwise violate personal OPSEC rules requires moderator approval?

Not complaining, just asking for clarification.

Using alternate accounts to post things that might otherwise violate personal OPSEC rules requires moderator approval?

Correct. See the rules page:

We strongly discourage people from making alt accounts without good reason, and in the absence of a good reason, we consider alt accounts to be bannable on sight. Alt accounts are almost exclusively used for mod evasion purposes and very rarely used for any purpose that helps the community; it makes moderation more difficult and it makes conversation more difficult.

If you do feel you need an alt account (most commonly, if you're a well-established user who wants to post something that can't be linked to their public persona), please ask the mods.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats