The Official Lazamataz Sometimes-Funny, Sometimes-Disturbing Ping List
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Original graphic by TheOatmeal
This will be the first four chapters of a sci-fi novel, written by yours truly with significant and important help from a freeper named piytar.
Ping
Read after work.
Thanks for posting! Any feedback from fellow Freepers would be greatly appreciated!
BFL
The most important question about this book, coming from Laz: How are the sex scenes?
Asking for as detailed a feedback as you can afford the time for.
Mark = Laz?
Asking for as detailed a feedback as you can afford the time for, or do so privately if you wish.
Juze usually aren’t that good at fist-fights - so I’m surprised you’d start Jason and Mark in one.
lmao
I did not get past the first line. Recourse to vulgarity (even via ellipsis) may get attention, but so does passing gas, and adds about the same quality, and aligns you with demonic Hollywood, in which alluding to the bedroom or a bathroom is obligatory, and only degrades.
Will read it later.
L
The Official Lazamataz Sometimes-Funny, Sometimes-Disturbing Ping List
450 Satisfied Customers!™
Original graphic by TheOatmeal
Bookmark for later when I’m back home.
Well, it caught my attention. It’s an easy read, nothing too “in depth”. Feels a bit like it’s geared towards teenagers.
I’m no expert on writing, especially sci-if, but so far it seems good to me. 👍
About to start the day in earnest but I’ll read after work :-)
Ping.
Laz, Let’s begin with this. It takes a lot of courage to put yourself out there like you did and ask for commentary. I admire you for that.
Although not a sci-fi reader, I like the fantastical, so you have my attention with the suggestions about first contacts, aliens, and the rest. I get the impression that you are a guy who can recognize the potential of a good story. I’d imagine that over at the pub on a Friday night, you’re at the center of the group and the best storyteller there.
Now you’re going to take a stab at writing sci-fi. I think you’re going to be good at it.
But first you’re going to have to clean up your style and execution because fiction writing demands a heck of a lot more than the boys at the pub. Let’s talk about some of those general elements that need work:
1. I read one of the early comments about the foul language. I agree, even if the poster walked it back in a subsequent post. It’s not a good look in the first sentence because it will turn off 50% of your readership immediately. I’m no prude, having spent 20 years in the Army. And I do permit foul language and some of my own writing, but I recommend you use it strategically — highly strategically. For starters, take out every instance of foul language and try to create the same intensity of emotions without it. In a later revision, you can place some obscene words where they will have the greatest effect.
2. Lose the adverbs, the – LY words. Beginning fiction writers rely on adverbs because they want to really hit an emotional point, and they want to hit it hard. Sorry to say, adverbs will not do it for you. You simply have to use powerful verbs and nouns to carry the freight of your sentences. Powerful active verbs. Specific concrete nouns. I suggest you revisit your manuscript and use the highlighting function of your word processor to pick out all these words then step back and look at how many opportunities you have to power up the writing. Not to say you shouldn’t use adverbs, but once again — strategically. Update: I reread your writing sample and found it more powerful just by deleting the adverbs and not making any other revisions.
3. Get rid of every exclamation point! This is another tell that the writing is trying too hard. “Look here! Look here, dear reader! This is really important!”
4. One of my own worst faults is to over-explain to the point of redundancy. A couple quick examples from chapter 1: physical fight, flat emotionless, descending down.
5. Clean up the attribution for segments of dialogue. When you say, “she exclaimed in concern,” that’s the author talking. If she were to instead say, “My God, what in the world happened to your face?” We have both the exclamation and the sense of concern — and most important, we’re getting it from the character, not the author.
I do go on, don’t I? Sorry if you feel like I’m hosing you. I assure you this brief critique is an honest one, not in the least savage. I hope it helps. If it doesn’t kill your writing hopes, I hope it makes you a stronger writer.
I have some other commentary that might be helpful. It’s about structure and the opener to your story. I’d be happy to share, but I don’t want to either impose or overwhelm.
I suggest you apply some or all of my critique to your chapters and see how you feel about the revision. After that, if you want to talk about the important structural elements of a Chapter 1, we can discuss it in a fresh post.
Meanwhile, to fulfill your part of the deal, please refer your ping list to: JVSmith.substack.com so they may, if they choose to, read and comment on my novel, “Curse of The Kavorka.”
Nice to meet you at last, Laz. Hope to meet up in later post.
I didn’t read any part of the story where a characteer says “I’d hit that...”
You have physicists, mathematicians and a linguist but no gender studies or sociologists. Unless they turn out to be the aliens.
The writing is very good.
The space discs over big cities, however, seems overused to the point of almost cliché - Independence Day & others?
Good luck with this!
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