posted
I feel a bit bad asking for crits when I haven't done all that many lately, but I've been trying to get this finished for a deadline. It's sci-fi and as usual I'm looking for crits on the 13 or the whole thing which is a shade over 6.5k. Thanks
I couldn’t take any more. I snapped the viewer shut and settled back into the seat of the hover car, looking out onto the streets of a town I had once known so well. The driver drove slowly, as though reluctant to get to our destination and I could see that Relar’s Town hadn’t changed at all in the thirteen standard years since I left. The same streets covered in the same fine red dust, the same jumble of towering spires and rickety shacks, the same impossibly high red mountains looming over the whole sorry town. I leaned forward and touched the driver on the shoulder. “We’re still being followed?” The driver didn’t turn even though the airlanes were deserted; most of the traffic in Relar’s Town scuttled along the ground,
posted
I like it. This is personal preference only, but I would take out the reference to "hover car" and "standard year" and use "car" and "year" alone. I'd let sneak in parts about the car hovering above the ground, or being eye-level with the top of a mountain, or sky-scraper or whatever. The same for year. I'd leave it as just "year" and gradually introduce the reader to the fact that there is more than one kind of year.
All that being said (and like I mentioned, it's merely personal preference), I liked the first 13 and I would definitely read on. Good job.
posted
I'm pretty well hooked. Very clean and relatively simple hook. Send it along, and let me know when you need it back by.
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posted
I don't have time for a full read, but here are some thoughts on the first 13:
"The driver drove slowly. . . ." sentence is two unrelated sentences tied together with a conjunction. One sentence says the driver is going slowly, the other says the town is run-down. It might read better to break it into 2 sentences.
The sentence "The same streets. . . ." seems long and awkward. I'm not sure it is a sentence. What is the verb? Perhaps if it read "the same streets were covered."
I'm not sure about "sorry" as a description of the town. I think I might prefer run-down, seedy, bleak, or something like that.
posted
Thanks everyone for the comments and the offers to read--I'll have it out to you all tomorrow night, just doing some last minute edits on the backstory.
The deadline is the 30th January but no rush on the crits, I know I'm pushing this one pretty close so they'll all be gratefully received whenever I get them back
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