Hatrack River Writers Workshop: Work For Your Dream

This is topic Work For Your Dream in forum Fragments and Feedback for Short Works at Hatrack River Writers Workshop.

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Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :

This is a new story, and there's no real hurry if anyone wants to read it.

1949 words long.

--Allrid hurried across the relic’s bridge. When he sat at the starship’s controls, dust bounced up. And he didn’t weigh that much with his short build. As he wiped off the dust that covered the control screen Allrid studied the controls and nodded, he could operate them.
Dust swrirled into his mouth when he breathed, enough to taste. He sneezed. A double sneeze came from behind him. He nodded so Brittany now sat at her station: sensors, navigation and comm. It made sense that her station would be covered by the dust also.
With a raised voice she said, “This ship must have sat here without life support for years to have this much dust.”
“Yeah, that could be the reason no one has found it before. It just sat in this ship yard... it took me three years of ---

Louis

Posted by Daniel_W (Member # 9725) on :

Hey there [Smile]

.

My only major problem with this is the repetition of 'dust'. In 11 sentences, you mention dust 5 times - almost once every other sentence, and it started to annoy me by the end. I'm not sure that dust can 'bounce', either - it's too light. It swirls, billows, drifts, etc.

Also, you have 'swrirled' instead of 'swirled'.

Aside from that, I actually quite like 'old derelict spaceship' setups - remove some of the dust, and I'd certainly read on.

Hope this helps,
Daniel.

Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :

Thanks Daniel. Yeah, there could be too much dust. I will see about using a dust cloth... on some of it.

Posted by stutson (Member # 8884) on :

I'd agree with the too much dust. It all amounts to scene setting. Your last sentence looked like it might finally get interesting, but hard to tell. Eliminating some dust might bring more of it in to create the hook for why the derelict is special.

Now that I think about it, why would there be dust? Somebody leave the window open? I'd expect, at most, a thin layer of dust if it were sealed and even less if it were vacuum. But I expect you'll address that later... unless that's a subtle part of the mystery.

Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :

I'm late in sending this over, but that might be good in this case. I realized I hadn't described the ship or the two characters. Well, sort of described the MC.

So I'm adding a little but as I go I ended up changing a few other things. But so far I haven't lessened the dust but I will work on that.

Posted by LDWriter2 (Member # 9148) on :

Okay, got it all ready. Extra stuff, spell checked, looked for certain words I sometimes misspell and now it's 2,300 plus words long.

Didn't touch too much of the dust however, I'll see about getting rid of or changing another line before I send it tomorrow night.

Need another word besides dust maybe.