posted
These are the first 13 lines of a science fiction short story that explores identity and grief. Thanks in advance for your critiques.
----------------------------- 1:30 am. She’s not answering her phone. There’s no use leaving another message. I drop the phone on the kitchen table, fighting the desire to shatter it against the floor. I’m grasping for a catharsis. I know this, but the recognition doesn’t help assuage the anxiety. I keep replaying tonight's argument in my head, revising what I said, guessing at her responses, following threads of conversation that never happened. It doesn’t change what occurred. If she came home now, I’d apologize, if I thought it would change our future.
It’s been twelve weeks since the reinstall, and, until tonight, I thought my life could be different with a Second. I believed that she wouldn’t make the same choices. Before she left tonight, she told me I hadn't changed. She yelled at me that I never would.
posted
This is intriguing. I don't know how the world works yet, but I'm not so confused that I'd put the story down in frustration. If the questions about say, what a Second is, weren't resolved quickly, however, I'd probably loose patience with it and stop reading.
Posts: 189 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Two suggestions. First, open with some with action or drama. This is the advertisement for your story. Like a movie preview it has to grab attention and hint at what exciting/interesting things lay in store for the reader.
Second, It's always best to introduce characters with names. We have no way to hang our emotions and thoughts on the "I" and "She" in the story. Actually, we have no way to distinguish between the two.
I'm also hoping there is some dialogue coming after this. You've showed us a number of things that could be told if this scene were later in the story.
posted
Someone's playing with fire. I hope you're making the present tense work in your story. I'm confused at this point because I think this is about a husband who loses his wife in an argument, but it is the future so he is assigned a new wife. The only way he can back his old wife is to have her agree to come back. If I am completely wrong, I wouldn't be surprised, but that is the impression I got.
Posts: 162 | Registered: Jun 2005
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posted
I'd be interested in reading some of it; if I knew a little more I could give suggestions. This opening raises a lot of questions, as Miriel pointed out. I'm waiting to see which is the first to be answered. (Isn't it wonderfully tricky to figure out what you can get away with leaving out of your 13 lines?)
By the way, I fail to see the connection between "I believed that she wouldn't make the same choices" and "She told me I hadn't changed." There's probably a question somewhere in there that should be answered sooner - i.e. before those sentences.
posted
It looks interesting. I'll buy the present tense device for now since you don't make it impossible that the narrator has decided to sit down and write out his troubles. I'm guessing that the remainder will be intro/retrospective, so it should work out okay.
I liked the use of "reinstall" and "Second". They may be confusing to some readers, so you do need to elaborate later on. Since I suspect that the narrator is going to go over some of the highlights from the last twelve weeks and their prequel, that shouldn't be a problem.
Depending on how long this is, I'd be willing to read and critique more.
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