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The hunt for an answer to the descending ages on the Sumerian kings list kept intern paleobotanist Alara Crawford from a drab existence on the Utah plains breaking rocks. She couldn’t even call herself an intern really ever since her hippy, pot smoking, no one wanted to work for, travel and see the world by burning up his grant money, Professor, decided to give her full reign on this ludicrous project that had no hope for success. How was this tie-dye wearing, pathologist of the finest ancient herb, able to get her funding for this mythical improbity? By gathering a room full of suits from various pharmaceutical groups together and mentioning the phrase “The key to immortality.”
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The fragment certainly is emotionally charged hyperbole. That looms large as a stand-out strength for me. The fragment is fraught with grammar errors, though, that spoil ethos's appeals and, consequently, pathos' appeals. The Sumerian King List, for example, is a proper noun phrase.
"mythical improbity" ?? Typographic artifact or invention, substitution, and amplification scheme? Prefix im- means within. Root word "probity" means of the noblest (most responsibly selfless) social values and mores. For me, too inventive a term without context development, too much of a speed bump for ready interpretation in the immediate now moment by most readers, too confused with the extant context of archaeological exploration and "key to immortality."
Not that hyphenation is indicated, rather that that signals a recast is indicated.
That hyperbolic emphasis implies that social politics contentions are the import of the story -- declares a preeminent supremacy-based moral law assertion. No thanks. I won't be lectured at, by, for, or about hypocrisy.
On the other hand, if the real essence of the story is a moral truth discovery on Crawford's personal part, that, in the end, personally, responsibly, satisfactorily negotiates disparate social politics contentions, practical irony, in other words, maybe I'd read further.
That means an opening entails a strong and clear implication that that truth discovery, or other truth, is the main complication of the whole. Even if that truth discovers, in the end, that the professor, individually, and such, are ignoble (irresponsibly selfish) and, therefore, are harmful to the common good.
Crawford is already set up for such a dramatic movement and personal maturation growth, only the implication she will be put to an onerous moral contention task is under-realized in the fragment, and, I believe, is wanted for maximum audience appeal purposes. That term "improbity" is the dramatic pivot and implication of such a truth discovery. Why alienate right at the start half or more of potential readers with a preaching-to-the-choir drama?
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The first line here also killed my motivation to read further.
It's interesting, because you have a perfect setup for a really engaging milieu: war. Your character, Alara, passing the ravages of a decade plus conflict. She doesn't need to tell us indirectly through a direct question to her driver why she's there. Let us see what she sees, as well as her reaction, and you wouldn't need dialog at all here.
I would take a guess that you've never been to Iraq, but who knows, there's a lot of vets now. However, a guy in my MFA was in Iraq, and he described a dying teen with a hole through his chest in class one day. Fairly visceral images he wove.
Your story, beginning abstractly in a war torn country, simply feels off-key and a missed opportunity.
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