MURDER MYSTERY!?
Title is from a David Bowie song called Five Years.
Image credits: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Artist%27s_concept_of_PSR_B1257%2B12_system.jpg and the image of the FSF Delivery (and the theme of the page) is by Von Pincier.
Five years / Discussion
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(account deleted)I know I almost always just upvote, but I want to strive to be more honest about my feedback. I'm no-voting for now — I'll explain why below.
There's a couple of things keeping me from upvoting, here, but the biggest one is composition. I'll provide a few examples:
The FSF Delivery weaved through the planetary debris field in Marjorie's practiced hands.
This phrasing implies that it's the planetary debris in Marjorie's hands — not the FSF Delivery. Also, 'Planetary debris field' sounds like some sort of technology — 'activate the planetary debris field!' — 'field of planetary debris' is clearer (and since some readers will mistake this for debris left over from a destroyed planet, something like 'debris orbiting the planet' might be even better).
(Also, for reference, I did a google search for "Planetary debris field" just to be sure this wasn't me being obtuse — I only got 381 hits)
The ship burned hard to the right and a body, spinning end over end, passed harmlessly.
It's hard for me to explain what's wrong with this sentence. Grammatically, it's fine — but the clause "spinning end over end" interrupts the flow so suddenly that it left me confused. This is much less confusing if we break it up into something like…
"The ship burned hard to the right. A body, spinning end over end, passed by."
(I feel the sentence should end with 'by', too — as that signals to us what the body is passing without saying it)
Marjorie muttered and eased back the throttle, bringing the ship to a stop among the ruins of the dead world.
'among the ruins of a dead world' implies that we've landed on the planet amidst its ruins. I had to read this a couple of times to realize you didn't mean that — I think describing the debris as dead satellites or something could help (and the idea of a planet surrounded by broken, ancient satellites is pretty compelling).
At this point, I'd also like to point out a general pacing problem: In the span of a single short paragraph, we've gone from navigating a ship through a field of debris, to seeing a body floating among the debris, to stopping in the field, and to finally standing up and removing our helmet.
That's a lot of information in a very short span — all happening in a tight, cramped space. You don't necessarily need more sentences, but I think you do need to pace this information out more slowly — probably by splitting this up into two or more paragraphs.
While she was typing she leaned out a bit further and tried to see if she could look back and see the body.
'further' should be 'farther'.
Also, 'leaned out a bit farther and tried to see if she could look back and see the body' is a mouthful of redundancy; it ought to just be 'leaned out a bit farther to try and see the body'.
A long silence followed before a man's voice broke it. "Uh. Yeah, one second."
Marjorie rolled her eyes. "Alex can come too. Might be more bodies for her to examine."
The pause after that was shorter before a woman's voice said, "Love you too, Marj."
Marjorie smirked. "Y'all get dressed and get up here. We've got work to do."
This follows a pattern that lulls me into skimming:
'Silence. Dialogue.'
'Majorie does a thing. Dialogue.'
'Silence. Dialogue.'
'Majorie does a thing. Dialogue.'
Taking out at least one of those openers (one 'Silence' or 'Majorie does a thing') would break the pattern.
It took them 10 minutes to get to the center of the object, passing by several desiccated corpses along the way. Alex stopped twice to take samples and pictures. Eventually, the three of them came to the center of the object, with Marjorie entering the room first.
Emphasis mine. Etc.
I'm not going to go through the whole thing like this — I think you get the idea? But I'll mention one other problem I had: I have no idea what the stakes are or what's really going on — particularly by the end.
This might be irrelevant; it looks like this is part of a canon, and so it should possibly be taken as part of that canon. In which case, that's fine! But the compositional problems are still problems regardless of its context.
Anyway, I hope some of this helps illustrate why I am no-voting. Good luck with the story!
As the author has been disqualified for grossly poor sportsmanship, this entry has been retroactively removed from the Jam Contest.
Then we are going to have to contact his rivals or friends to rewrite this wierd mash of murder and hatred towards literally the universe.
/forum/t-5290958/five-years#post-
page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
