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The first word that any human heard spoken by an alien was “goodbye”. John Cartwright had been assigned, by lot, the first shift on the Very Large Array, but nobody expected success the moment the array came on-line. Still, he felt a certain amount of tension, as the clock on his screen neared 3:21 A. M., the scheduled time for Houston to begin to receive. Lois and the children were asleep upstairs, but John, like most astronomers, was accustomed to sleeping odd hours, and was not at all tired. John was a reader, and preferred text to voice. He could read much faster than he could listen, and skim much faster still.
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Well, still uncommented, so I'll take a stab before I get down to writing for the afternoon.
quote:The first word that any human heard spoken by an alien was “goodbye”. (1)
John Cartwright had been assigned, by lot (2), the first shift on the Very Large Array, but nobody expected success the moment the array came on-line (3). Still, he felt a certain amount of tension, as the clock on his screen neared 3:21 A. M. (4), the scheduled time for Houston to begin to receive. Lois and the children were asleep upstairs, but John, like most astronomers, was accustomed to sleeping odd hours, and was not at all tired.
John was a reader, and preferred text to voice (5). He could read much faster than he could listen, and skim much faster still.
1. This ruins all suspense, and is a thought disconnected from the rest of your first 13. It's kind of extraneous.
2. The impression I get by your choice of "by lot" is a negative connotation to being selected. Is it a negative that John takes the first shift ever on the VLA? I'd be more excited, and more like to refer to it as "I won the very first shift".
3. This phrase is kind of disconnected from the earlier part of the sentence. Why does Jo getting drawn to take the first shift have anything to do with the chances of success of the VLA?
4. While AM is an acronym for Ante Meridian, the letters aren't separated by periods or anything else.
5. I didn't realize that you could read a book in vocally, as opposed to visually.
There are others I could list, but the problem I see is larger than individual points. Your thought process in this story is disorganized. Between one sentence and another, and even indeed in the same sentence (see point 3) you leap from idea to idea without a proper explaination to the reader. First, aliens are speaking to us. Then, your MC (I assume) has been selected for the first shift at the VLA. Then we discuss the chances of success for the VLA. Then we're in your MC's house while his wife & kids sleep. Then we discuss his reading ability. That's too much to be effective. You're also telling rather than showing, in order to cram a bunch of information into the story as soon as you can.
Slow down, and paint a scene for me in your first 13. A single scene, and show me the information you want to present in there. A compelling scene - is a man reading a book at 2AM while his wife and kids sleep really compelling? Or would it be more compelling to start just moments before his first shift, as he reflects on the importance of the task he's about to undertake?
If I was an editor, I'd be sending back a letter after reading this first page. Probably of the form type.
posted
I feel like you start strong, but move into mundane too quickly. Or vice-versa, I guess it depends on your aim. I like the idea of the hook being about what the aliens say, but because of that I expect the next few lines to directly relate. Instead they seem tangentially related. Perhaps you can connect them more - I suspect you do a few more lines down in the story. Might be just an ordering issue.
I also suggest you break the John had been assigned sentence into two. Nobody expected success the moment the array came online. That would work as its own sentence, reducing some of the commas.
I also was confused by the idea that he's at the Very Large Array but the kids and wife are asleep upstairs? Seemed odd. Maybe he's at a remote observation station at home...but I guess I would expect that to be explained.
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