The dim lighting in the officer's lounge allowed Captain Hall to see his own image reflected off the beryllium plexwall. His chin was cupped in one hand as his elbow rested on the other. Green eyes to either side of a short pointed nose, and set into a high brow beneath light brown hair stared back at him. The four small platinum triangles pinned into the fabric of the epaulettes on his khaki shirt glittered. Beyond his transparent form were stars.
"Back pedal two parsecs."
The onboard systems text relay intra-command hail, or _ostrich_ as it was commonly known, retrieved his instruction and delivered it to the command deck. He snickered when he imagined a large bird running around the ship taking messages to and fro. _The poor thing must be exhausted_.
I'm trying out a new lead in. Any improvement, ya'll? Wrong direction?
Something in the Far 3kpc Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy was causing stars to go supernova. Already scans had revealed over one hundred separate stellar explosions within thirteen minutes of arc. This sector of the galactic arm, affectionately termed the hotspot by the crew of the URR Experiment, was supposed to be nearly absent of stellar formation, yet stars were coming in and winking out. If it were a stellar nursery forming it was rapidly becoming a graveyard with a high infant mortality rate.
Captain Allen Hall should have been on the command deck observing events from the MEP screen, but there he would only see a liquidigital translation of the space-time beyond the confines of the Experiment's shields. In moments like these when all he did was play the waiting game he preferred to stand
Would you read on?
[This message has been edited by Edward Douglas (edited January 16, 2010).]
quote: Something in the Far 3kpc Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy was causing stars to go supernova. Already scans had revealed over one hundred separate stellar explosions within thirteen minutes of arc. This sector of the galactic arm, affectionately termed the hotspot by the crew of the URR Experiment, was supposed to be nearly absent of stellar formation, yet stars were coming in and winking out. If it were a stellar nursery forming it was rapidly becoming a graveyard with a high infant mortality rate.
Captain Allen Hall should have been on the command deck observing events from the MEP screen, but there he would only see a liquidigital translation of the space-time beyond the confines of the Experiment's shields. In moments like these when all he did was play the waiting game he preferred to stand
Because of that sentence, i'd read on. Unfortunately, i don't understand what MEP means, but i hope it's a main screen a ala Star Trek? The liquidwhateva i can grasp it. I'm curious what the Experiment is. Would read on, but for how much, i don't know, i'd need something to keep my interest, because dying stars don't strike me as WTF! enough, until i read the nursery sentence, and was OHH!.
[This message has been edited by Lionhunter (edited December 13, 2009).]
posted
Thanx for the input Lionhunter. MEP stands for Main Extreme Plasma. Should I just come out and say that instead of MEP? I think it would be corny to write "Main Extreme Plasma" then follow that immediately with MEP, or vice versa. Any suggestion would help.
About the Experiment. There is a history behind that name that I bring into the story shortly after the opening. The ship is named after an iron-framed boat that Lewis & Clark had made for their Corps of Discovery. Lewis called it The Experiment, because no metal-framed boats had yet been tried on water, it sank of course, and was buried in a cache along the Missouri and never retrieved.
NOTE FROM KATHLEEN: Is this the beginning of the next chapter? The rule is first 13 lines (and only 13 lines) per chapter in novels, please.
[This message has been edited by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury (edited December 14, 2009).]
[This message has been edited by Edward Douglas (edited December 18, 2009).]
posted
Well, in my opinion, cut it and put it in a dialogue. Something like: "I see you're still staring at the MEP screen?", the captain says to the XO. "I am doing your job, so better not annoy me. Sir." "Main Extreme Plasma reactions are one of the reasons i became a captain. So i wouldn't have to look at them all damn day." "The Experiment is an science ship, what did you expect?" The captain pauses, and without facing the XO, mutters to himself "Not a MEP screen."
Damn these college projects, i want to write x.x On the other hand, you could keep it, Sci Fi fans might expect an explanation later, and not ponder over it when they first read it.
[This message has been edited by Lionhunter (edited December 13, 2009).]
posted
The first paragrph is too brief an exposition for a novel - it might work as the opening to the blurb on the back cover, but it should not be the actual start of the novel. You have tens if not hundreds of thousands of words at your disposal so don't be in such a hurry to move on.
I'd start with the observations and fill the background in as you go - ideally not through any "as you know, Bob" dialogue but it should be prefectly practical to give us this information in a smoother, more digestible, and ideally character-oriented way.
Oops! I didn't intentionally break any rules. I was just answering Lionhunter's earlier query "I'm curious what the Experiment is." I suppose I should have just come out and told him what the ship was named after instead of pasting in a clip from the book.
posted
You don't need to tell us what MEP stands for but if you write it M.E.P then we absolutely know it stands for something longer. I thought its full name sounded weird but I depend on you to explain what it is without breaking stride in the story. Which you did just that you give a brief description of what it looks like. If you wanted to you could describe it again a little later and that would be the end of it. Just call it the MEP and everyone will have a picture in their mind of exactly what you want us to see.
I would read on, because I have a lot of question I want the story to answer. What is causing stars to be created and then explode and in such numbers. Exploding stars are exciting. But this is a long term question. I would like to know why the captain isn't doing what you said he is supposed to be doing.
[This message has been edited by RSJ (edited December 23, 2009).]
posted
Does the MEP screen overcome speed of light problems? Seems to me that things taking place out on an arm of the galaxy at stellar distances take a while to reach any kind of observer -- like years, in which case the captain wouldn't be "standing" anywhere. Or is some form of FTL data transmission taking place? Or is the captain watching a sped-up replay of what has happened over some longer period of time/distance? Some kind of technology ought to be mentioned in order for me to take it seriously. Or am I being too technical?
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thanx for the comments. You're right I do need to find a way to make the MEP understood because I want the reader to understand what it does and maintain the use of MEP, kind o'like how everyone knows what iPod is by it's name.
stutson,
thanx for the comments. I need to think about this. You see, the idea that the captain is in the lounge looking out of a "window" so to speak is because they are studying the phenomenon at close range, so I would think they could see it without the MEP screen. It's like looking at the Colorado Rockies on an HDTV or seeing them up close through the dome of an observation car on Amtrak as you ride through them. Do I make sense?
quote: If it were a stellar nursery forming it was rapidly becoming a graveyard with a high infant mortality rate.
--- Nice hook, this made we want to read more.
Extracts: 3kpc, URR and MEP
--- Three acronyms right out of the gate gave things a military feel, but I'd want quick explanations for at least one or two or I'd be soon FSTD (frustrated).
You made me laugh, thanx. The URR and MEP do get explained within the first pages of the book, but as for 3kpc, well, that is the actual name of that particular arm of our galaxy. The Far 3kpc Arm is three kilo-parsecs from the galactic center opposite the side our sun is on. For some reason that arm did not get names like Centaurus, Sagittarius, Local (where our sun is), or Outer (gee, which one might that be?).
posted
"A graveyard with a high infant mortality rate" is catchy, but wouldn't it be a stellar nursery with a high infant mortality rate? Graveyards have about 100% mortality rate, don't they?
Still, I'd read on. I'm still curious about the timelines here, so maybe that's good.
thanx for the comment. My use of graveyard was to make the point that young stars are dying. It's like walking through an old cemetary where most of the markers are from folks who lived long lives then you stumble upon a section full of markers where a lot of children died. Say the town once had an orphanage burn down, or a pox epidemic killed off a bunch of kids, that sort of "infant mortality rate" indicator.
[This message has been edited by Edward Douglas (edited January 06, 2010).]
posted
Would I read on? Ahhh, no. It's not bad, but it is a little bit techno-babbley for my tastes, and I'm a science geek so that should tell you something. IMHO you don't want your readers going "what?" over word choice in the first page. What you have is good, don't get me wrong, but I would, at the very least, not use abbreviations in the first few lines, have those abbreviations be established through character dialogue.
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posted
You're right bandgeek, I do need to figure out how best to balance explaining my "techno-babble" and maintaining the "military feel" DaveBowen saw. Also, tchern's right, it does read too much like the blurb on the back. At best I seem to have come up with a decent hook, so I want to work that into a rewrite.
posted
It's an improvement in readability. I'm not stumbling over a bunch of unknown acronyms or alpha-numeric strings. Plus, I do like the imagery for _ostrich_ (which I think should be in all caps, not italicized) that you put in the captain's head.
However, I think it's not improved in terms of content. Your first effort gave us some plot. This one basically tells us what the captain looks like, he's in space, and that in this world they like to give their SMS creative names.
I do think this is a step in the right direction, however, as the writing really is better, thus I'm more inclined to keep reading.
posted
I think the new opening is the wrong direction. All I find out is that there's a captain in a spaceship. That's not enough of a hook to make me want to read more.
On the other hand, I like your stellar nursery/graveyard concept. That opening was much more interesting, but it was a bit awkward. Instead of using the first paragraph as a strict exposition, you could take us into the captain's head. For example, something like "Another supernova! What the hell was going on here? This sector wasn't supposed to have stellar activity...."
We don't really need to know the sector name at this point, and it's probably good not to throw in too many special terms right away (e.g., liquidigital, MEP screen).
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