quote:

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Merk looked with distaste at the faintly luminescent, greenish clump on the cave floor. It looked a bit like frosting squirted from a pastry tube in a vaguely flower-like arrangement, but it didn’t smell anything like either flowers or frosting. It smelled like crap. This place sucks, he thought.

“You’re telling me that’s a starburst,” he said to his companion, Davchek. Davchek stooped over and, careful not to break the delicate starburst, scooped it into his hand, then transferred it to a small transport cube. He and Merk were both carrying sacks of empty cubes, and they were to spend the day filling them with starbursts to send topside. This was only the first day of Merk's life sentence to the caves, and he was not impressed with his new home.

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"It smelled horrid--like a sandwich left under a bath mat for three weeks."

I think you can cut the phrase “in a vaguely flower-like arrangement.” It feels as if you’re describing the starburst twice.

I’d cut the line “This place sucks.” I like the crap gag (it’s entertainingly succinct after the more prosaic description) and think that it’s stronger than the subsequent sentence, so ending on the profanity would make the first paragraph stronger.

Minor point, but “You’re telling me that’s a starburst” is a question, so should end on a question mark.

The last two sentences feel a bit clunky. There’s a lot of information crammed into them and the last sentence carries quite a major point. Maybe there’s a way of tying the two ideas together a little more organically?

With the above in mind, here is my take on this opening.

"Merk looked... It looked... a bit like... in a vaguely... it didn’t smell anything like... It smelled like..."

All these verbs and descriptions are exceedingly weak. They beg the questions: "Looked how?" - "Like what?" As a reader, I am not interested in what they are not like, I want to know in specific detail, if at all possible from a unique and novel perspective, exactly what it is the character is experiencing. If the narrator and/or character does not care enough to be specific, how am I to become involved in their point of view, let alone their success - or obligatory failure - with the challenge?

In the second paragraph, I prefer to hear Davchek say the words, as opposed to the person listening to them tell me what he said. It's a very remote POV, resulting in my feeling remote. I want to feel as if I am part of the action, as it is happening. I want to "be" the character.

Further, "Davchek" is repeated twice, one immediately after the other, and "starburst" is repeated thrice. Repetition generally slows the movement of information from the page to the reader's mind, thus again providing an opportunity for the reader's attention to be distracted by something external of the story. While there are rare uses of repetition to create dramatic effect, I prefer rich, unique, non-repetitive descriptions and prose.

Spending the day filling sacks as part of a life sentence in a boring cave is not my idea of a challenge. I would find that boring, and thus I begin thinking of the character and their activity as boring, not the sort of challenge I want to read more of.

In closing, neither the challenge nor the language used to describe the characters and setting are strong enough to compell me to pull this off the shelf. Perhaps there is a more interesting scene further along which would better serve as the hook to get the ball rolling. Even then, the prose appears to need both tightening and more descriptive language.

Best of luck,

It's a bit too awkward and lengthy. The opening itself is actually interesting, and it has me wondering what's happening. Could you send me more of it?

I'll be pondering what you said for awhile.

Survivor, it is okay if you want to post comments about my story, I won't get mad at you! (I'm still sorry about my reaction awhile back, I'm over it now).

Someone has to die. Someone has to pay the price. Jone.

Why not leave the “Jone” out. It would put a little bit of suspense into it and let the reader use their imagination a bit more.

I have two other small questions/ comments. On page 18, I didn’t understand this line exactly.

Or perhaps the reason that I don’t want to look at them is because they do.
And on page 24, the “me” hit me strangely. It seemed out of place since you used he and him throughout most of the story.

Jone has gotten to me at last. Those eyes. I can’t bear to see myself that way. That’s the same way Korla looked at me, and I already can’t live with myself. I’ll never recover from the expression on Jone’s face at this moment. As of this moment, I am a dead man.

These are mostly just small nitpicky points. I think that the story itself has some great potential. If you are looking to add a new scene in I think that either a story that someone is telling about how the bursters came out at night once before, or another scene between Merk and Jone would fit in well.

Just because it hasn't been done before in Fragments and Feedback doesn't mean it can't be done.