"Nothing Happens" - Article Draft

Summary:

2.5k words

"Nothing Happens" - Article Draft

Tiamat Elsen 22 Jan 2023 04:02

Link to Sandbox: Here

Looking for advice on formatting, flow of dialogue, general narrative cohesion. All feedback welcome.

Spoilers:

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So, the story is that nothing really happens. Four people go into the deep sea, each of them believing that there's something to find down there. And nothing happens; they drive themselves insane once they realise (or fail to notice) that it's all just empty water.

The reader undergoes a similar experience. They read through the article, expecting to find out what was down there, and walk away with no greater understanding of what the signal is, but having now acquired an emotional understanding of what the abyss does to people.

The story's kind of about our relationship with the dark, and how sometimes, it's scarier to think that there's nothing interesting or awesome there at all; sometimes the world is just how it appears. Excuse how pretentious that sounds :P

Last edited on 22 Jan 2023 06:26 by Tiamat Elsen Show more

Re: "Nothing Happens" - Article Draft

Roufhous 22 Jan 2023 08:09

G'day

Opendoot

patrol in proximity to SCP-XXXX

I don't know much about radios, but this does seem to imply location to a nonphysical energy.

Agent Iris enters the comms room. Dr. Skye is in the process of tuning the radio.

There should be something distinguishing room/event/general description vs dialogue, especially later when:

The monsters, the mystery, the dreams.

Vidicer talks in two paragraphs, the second not being nametagged. I'd suggest using brackets or italics.

The DSV’s primary radio

Earlier it was regarded as DSV-XXXX.

Forty eight years old and she’s barely made junior researcher.

Vidicer is later regarded as a Senior Researcher. - Interlocutors: S.R. Vidicer, Agt. Iris

Footage cuts out at this point.

Why? Did Iris manually deactivate it? If so, then why did they turn it on in the first place?

Addaway was recovered unconscious from the waters above SCP-XXXX

The anomaly (Which in itself doesn't feel very anomalous.) hasn't really been given a fixed position, especially since the description regards it as a radio frequency but hasn't given its source a real position of where we're supposed to be traveling to or centered around. This trip has lasted days and nobody has done anything related to the anomaly they're supposed to be researching.

So, with specifics out of the way, down to the generals.

I don't think this does the desired "Descent into madness" concept very well. Four people are stationed on a submarine, and one immediately dies before I can really get to know any of them. I didn't feel very much of anything when I read about the wall exploding (I was mostly questioning throughout the dialogue bit why it was necessary to include in a formal document, and just as it ends, the wall explodes without much build-up or logical explanation as to why it would suddenly just give.), and I didn't quite care when the doctor died because they're just a name and some dialogue, which leads me to my next thing.

These four people aren't very… engaging. Two of them are talking and all is well and then one leaves and the other dies. We're then rushed into the rest of the characters' dynamics (For the first and basically last time.) as they are grouped around the corpse of a colleague and it's very hard to distinguish the characters' names as they all are very similar spouts for viewpoints. For example, Addaway seems destroyed after she seemingly failed in her duty to save someone's life, and now that her colleague's blood is on her hands and then immediately goes back to a normal state, in fact, she takes charge later on with:

Failing on our first try will only reinforce their impression of who we are.

She's reassuring others not 5 minutes after she was accusing herself of being responsible for Skye's death.

Another bit about the descent into madness, the very next addendum is extremely "what the fuck?" but not in a good way. On the very same day as they departed, Vidicer is now talking nonsense with some Lovecraftian non-entity with zero context as to what is happening, why it's important, or why this is happening/what caused this to happen. I genuinely don't get how this fits into the story or what it's supposed to mean or symbolize as it shows Vidicer not really talking to the other entity but more to herself than anything (Which, while I concede looking back may have something to do with Iris' "you can't hear it like I do", it was recorded and transcripted, so that doesn't make much sense). Idk what this other entity is or how it relates to a radio signal.

I believe the crux of my issue with this piece is this: Everyone goes somewhat insane in less than 3 days from literally nothing. One of them dies and, after the body is dealt with, is dropped for more concerning matters, those being… nothing? The motivations are sort of shallowly mentioned and then hamfisted later on in the journal, but none of them seem logically capable of causing these people to go crazy in 3 days' time from how little they seem to affect these people.

I'm afraid I'd have to leave this one at a down, leaning on a no-vote.

Also, I'm a bit annoyed at how little is actually revealed about the signal relative to the amount of importance given to it.

Good day.

Re: "Nothing Happens" - Article Draft

Tiamat Elsen 22 Jan 2023 13:45

Thanks for the feedback Rouf :)