Got a PM about this, porting over feedback to keep other reviewers in the loop.
I hope to give the whale a sense of connection to the reader and give the readers gradually increasing feelings for the skip to give a sense of worry near the end that it might lose its voice, and perhaps a feeling of sympathy for the whale for the potential melancholy it might feel for not being able to interact with its newfround "friends".
This might be a lot for the audience to take in. I also personally feel like straight-up melancholy isn't the best angle to go with and there should be a bit of a hope spot at the end as opposed to just sadness.
I only really hope to get tips and suggestions on how i may effectively give some sort of attachment to the skip as i do feel like it's missing some of that right now.
Here are my suggestions:
Quality of life/story:
- Remove the first interview and make it into a paragraph in addendum or the description that briefly overviews the initial communication. That will shift some attention to the second interview, which in my opinion is way more entertaining. The first interview seems a bit too spoonfed-exposition-y and drags on a bit.
- Explain how the interviews work. I have a hard time believing that the whale can hear human voices over the sounds of water. Maybe a loudspeaker? A large tarp with words written on it? If the whale communicates via bottle and what it learned from pirates, you'd think it'd respond better to written word than spoken. That connection would also explain why the whale doesn't write English very well—if memory serves, a lot of pirates weren't exactly college scholars. (though I'm also fairly certain that the whole "yarr" way of talking like a pirate isn't historically accurate either)
- Have Dr. Deland talk with fewer words and simpler language. Ideally the interviewer shouldn't be talking more than the interviewee.
Emotional:
- Have the whale live in an area full of shipwrecks so its tie to pirates is clearer. Maybe pirates robbed and sank a whaling ship that was harassing this whale, and the whale was curious and grateful and so would watch the pirates whenever they returned to the wrecks for salvage. I personally would not keep the whale in a tank because even if it doesn't grow, the Foundation doesn't know for sure that will always be the case. Keeping saltwater tanks is also crazy hard enough for small fish, so a more natural containment area makes more sense.
- I would have the whale be told upfront that the Foundation thinks that its talking ability is hurting it. And then have it ask if it can say one more thing, the Foundation says says, and it replies with something like "please keep playing with me". Then the Foundation designs a set of hoops with words on them for the whale to swim though when it wants to talk. Simple things like "yes", "no", "play", "tired", "food", "hello", and "goodbye". And then you can end on a note that on one day, the whale swam through the "hello" hoop [some double digit number] times in succession, and was discovered to be recovering quite well.
All that said… I think this has really good potential. If you're up for it, I would be happy to co-author this!
Massive thanks for your feedbacks and suggestions, Zyn! The idea of co-authoring this with you, and the mere fact that you do consider co-authoring this little skip is truly is delightful! That said, if you are fine with it, I really am up and happy for it!
