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Author Topic: A Hit on Hitler... flash.... first 13
honu
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hoping for crits on first 13 and now readers for 1500 word flash draft....thanks guys ver 1....
quote:
“What are the parameters of this time stream, Socrates?” asked Jannis as he got up from his chair to move closer to Socrates' holo.
“It's 1943” “In this stream, England lost the Battle of Britain and was successfully invaded.” “Hitler listened to his generals, and didn't invade Russia.” “All of Europe is Germany.”
“Pearl Harbor never occurred, and the Japanese created their South East Asia coprosperity empire.”
“Can you place me in Austria, in the 30's while he's still a painter?” I can do the hit then.” “No good, Jannis.” “I ran the probability indexes.” “There's a 97% probability that another general will build the Third Reich, even without


ver...2
quote:
“What are the parameters of this time stream, Socrates?” asked Jannis as he got up from his chair to move closer to Socrates' holo.
Socrates adjusted his toga before answering. “What you are seeing is 1943. In this stream, Hitler won the Battle of Britain and conquered England. He accepted his general's counsel, and allied with Russia. All of Europe is Germany.”
“I hate to ask this, but what happened to the Jews?”
“They have been annihilated in Europe.” Jannis sat back down into his chair, stunned. His ancestors barely escaped the Holocaust. He probably wouldn't be born in this time stream.



ver 3....
quote:

“What's the parameters of this time stream, Socrates?” Janis said.
Socrates adjusted his toga before answering. “What you're seeing is Germany in 1943. In this stream, Hitler honored the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union. The Soviets helped him gobble up Eastern Europe.”
“Germany and Europe are now the same state.”
“What about the Jews?”
“They've been annihilated in Europe.”
Janis sat down into his chair, stunned. His ancestors barely escaped the Holocaust in his time stream. His alt wouldn't be born in this one.
“That bastard's going down.”


ver 4....
quote:
“What're the parameters of this time stream, Socrates?”
Socrates adjusted his toga before answering. “What you're seeing, Janis, is 1943 Germany. Every country in Europe west of Poland.”
“In this stream, Hitler honored the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union."
“The Jews?”
“They've been annihilated in Western Europe.”
Janis sat down hard in his chair. His ancestors barely escaped the Holocaust in his time stream. His alt wouldn't be born in this one.
That bastard's going down. “Insert me in Vienna, in 1909 while he's still painting postcards. I'll hit him then.”





[This message has been edited by honu (edited December 09, 2008).]


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tempest
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Hi honu,
This isn't real hooky for me.
I like the idea of alternate time streams, but you lost me with all the quotation marks.

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snapper
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I know whats going on here, you crammed all your sentences together instead making them separate paragraphs as they should be, didn't you? Yes, posting 13 lines to establish a hook is difficult when you don't get the benefit of a decent word count.

All the quotation marks makes this very odd to read but the idea is sound. The characters are too mysterious to get into them at the moment. Try a revision with how this looks as an actual 13 line submit.


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InarticulateBabbler
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I too think you're try too hard to cram enough into the first 13 lines. If the first sentence were smoothed out, it would be enough of a hook--IMHO.

You had every sentence cordoned off into quotation marks, which made it much more confusing. I Think I did an adequate job of cleaning the punctuation up:

quote:
“What are the parameters of this time stream, Socrates?” asked Jannis as he got up from his chair to move closer to Socrates' holo.

“It's 1943[.] In this stream, England lost the Battle of Britain and was successfully invaded. Hitler listened to his generals, and didn't invade Russia. All of Europe is Germany. Pearl Harbor never occurred, and the Japanese created their South East Asia coprosperity empire.”

“Can you place me in Austria, in the 30's while he's still a painter? I can do the hit then.”

“No good, Jannis. I ran the probability indexes. There's a 97% probability that another general will build the Third Reich, even without



My take:

quote:

"What are the parameters of this time stream," Jannis said to the hologram he'd named Socrates.

"What you see is [Where?] in 1943. England suffered a devastating loss at the Battle of Britain succumbing to Hitler's forces. Taking the advice of his advisors, he declined battle with Russia and conquered the entirety of Europe.

"The Japanese never bombed Pearl Harbor, instead created the Southeast Asia Coprosperity Empire."

The hologram had been programmed to pace, but today it was driving Jannis crazy. "I could get to Hitler easier in the 30s, while he's still an Austrian painter--"

"No good," Socrates said, coming to a stop and facing his user. "The probability indexes show a 97 percent chance that the Third Reich will simply rise under another general"


No matter how you phrase it, this is very close to Quantum Leap and Dean R. Koontz's Lightning.

But, that's just my take, what do I know?

[This message has been edited by InarticulateBabbler (edited December 06, 2008).]


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honu
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thanks tempest, snapper, and IB (can I call you that?)
you all brought forth excellent points..... I saw the crowding occurring and (almost) broke up the quotes...the info was too much though....even quoteless I think from your comments..also once again.. it's nice to see I B do a quality writing take on the cave walls I splattered as a neanderthal (Watches IB working with ocre) ...I will try something in between for version 2...thanks again guys there are some similarities to quantum leap...the mc goes back to clean up time streams...but he doesn't play a role character like scott (bekula?)...instead he assassinates key bad guys...I never read Lightning sorry

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InarticulateBabbler
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I'm by no means a master; and yes you can call me IB, everyone else does.

If you wait a week and re-read this, you may find something missing (or a way to tighten it further up). I just thought you can work some of this in over time--or add enough emotion to it to make it not just an alternate history report. The idea is good, you just have to watch out for treading to a cliche path.


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honu
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I went and googled and wiki'd enough historical info to try to make this story as accurate as possible and version 3 reflects that. It is first draft ready for any interested readers at 2000 words. thanks

[This message has been edited by honu (edited December 08, 2008).]


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tempest
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Hi honu,
I like the way that you have given Jannis more emotion in ver. 3.

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snapper
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quote]I'm by no means a master; and yes you can call me IB[/quote]

I heard you’re not even a writer. Just kidding, buddy

Enough of the ribbing and onto our palm tree hugging friend.

.

quote:
“What's the parameters of this time stream, Socrates?” Janis inquired.

Drop the redundant speech tag.

quote:
Socrates adjusted his toga before answering. “What you're seeing is Germany in 1943. In this stream, Hitler honored the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact with the Soviet Union. The Soviets helped him gobble up Eastern Europe.”
“Germany and Europe are now the same state.”

The isolated sentence is a problem. It isn’t clear who is talking. I suggest you either move it up to the previous paragraph, or drop the adjacent quotation marks if you preferred to keep that sentence isolated.

quote:
“I hate to ask, but what about the Jews?”

Why would he ‘hate’ to ask. ‘What about the Jews?’ works just fine.

quote:
“They've been annihilated in Europe.”

By 1943? What about the ones under Soviet rule?

quote:
Janis sat down into his chair, stunned.

I prefer you show him being stunned. Janis sat down hard in his chair. or something similar…

quote:
“That bastard's going down.” “Insert me in Vienna, in 1909 while he's still painting postcards?

Why the extra quotation marks? Is the first sentence internal thoughts? You may want to italicize it. If not, you may want to separate if a tag or description or action or something.. And do you want that question mark at the end of the second sentence?

I am a big fan of alternate history. I buy a lot of it. A few questions pop in mind on this. How does the timeline get disrupted? According to what you have down, these aren’t different alternate universe’s. This appears to be more of a ‘cause and effect’ timestream alteration. A universe where only one future is possible. Is your MC responsible for the changes in the past? IF not then how are they happening? The answers to these question is essential to a potential reader such as I and you may want to answer them in your opening,
Alternate Hitler stories have been done an awful lot, so you’ll need to do something original to make it different. Any editor may turn it down just because it’s been done so much, then again they do sell…


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honu
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thanks tempest and snapper....great comments...I was trying for the alt thing but didn't make it obvious enough....
quote:
Janis sat down into his chair, stunned. His ancestors barely escaped the Holocaust in his time stream. His alt wouldn't be born in this one.
“That bastard's going down.”

as always thanks for your comments

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