Hi Polo
Sorry it has taken me so long to give you the review of Three Bullets you asked for. It was not due to the story at all, but entirely to my turbulent life-style. How I find time to write anything, I’ll never know; but now to your story... I know you are not looking to improve this particular story, so I will try to make my comments general, although I might use examples from this story to illustrate my points. (Presuming that I have point to make) I hope that is okay. Please remember that I’m only giving my own opinion, so feel free to disagree with it. I would ;o)
Is the plot interesting enough to keep reading?
Yes, it is and you have a pleasant writing style so it is in no way a chore to read it. In fact, I would go so far as to say it was a pleasure. The story has a good pace, although the tension slacks a bit too far before the end (what was the point of the Island and Maldocks sudden speech about ownership?). Some bits are extremely funny, but I wouldn’t describe the overall work as comical. At its core I think you have a serious message, which is a bit lost amidst the hilarity.
I recommend that you make a clearer decision as to whether a piece is meant to be comical or not. It is not that there can‘t be humour in a serious piece or serious moments in a comedy, but things like giving a character a funny name isn’t enough. Unless, that funny name turns out to be the reason the villain is villainous e.g. he’s been bullied about his name and will now seek revenge for that.
As a writer I want people to laugh at a joke I make in my writing, I don’t want them to think I’d unwittingly put something ridiculous in. This is why, for me, comedy is so tricky. I think you have a gift for comedy. You see the humour in situations and can exploit it.
Does this story entertain and have strong characters?
See above, yes, the story definitely entertains... as for the characters... I’m a character reader/writer; for me plot and character need to be interwoven. How a character reacts to a situation must be a direct result of their personality. Again, this is only my opinion, because there are many books where that is not the case. Millions of beach-reads are adventure yarns with standard heroes and villains that could be anyone. This is not a criticism; I only want to give some background to my opinion. To me, the characters were a bit one dimensional and I couldn’t always follow their decisions. Worst for me, I couldn’t get a handle on Edgar’s character. What made him so special? How was his mentality changed by his experiences?
The way the opening paragraph was written gave me an entirely incorrect interpretation of the relationship between Maldocks and Edgar. The sentence “Doctor Alvin Maldocks, science professor at the University was admired by seventy-three of his seventy-four students” gave me the impression that Edgar didn’t admire him, didn’t respect him or rate him as a teacher or scientist. At the start I found Edgar’s behaviour intriguing and slightly confusing; he complained about his lack of relationship with Heather, yet it seemed to be him who pulled away. It seemed that Edgar and Heather’s relationship was put under strain because of Edgar’s disheartened mind set and this was confirmed in their dialogue. However a completely different picture was painted by the subsequent dialogue between Maldocks and Edgar. As it turns out, Edgar has great respect for Maldocks and visa versa and it is his relationship with Heather that is disrupting his studies. Yet, whenever she sees him Heather is very loving towards Edgar. I’m still not sure what was going on there, or why at the end Edgar was with her once again; what had changed his mind?
Dr Maldocks was the most interesting character for me and had the best dialogue. I particularly liked how he tried to convince Edgar to come on the trip. He may have been a little stereotypical, but true to his nature and his actions seemed to flow from his character and therefore it worked. I don’t know what his friendship with the captain was based on as they seemed to have nothing in common. That was a bit vague.
Is the evil captain hateful enough?
You said you were going for a “banal, boring kind of evil” to the captain and I’m not entirely sure what you mean by this. Perhaps you meant that you didn’t want to explain the reason for his evilness. He was certainly dislikeable enough, though he didn’t seem overly threatening. After all, he was only one man against seventy-odd “good guys”. He would need to be a lot more powerful to be a real threat. He behaves irrationally and as such not so much evil as foolish. Why load your ship with seventy disgruntled passengers, when you don’t need to. To be a real threat an antagonist need to be powerful enough to defeat the protagonist, otherwise they seem pathetic rather than scary.
Was anything confusing to me / could I find any plot holes?
I thought there were an awful lot of students in the class. I have no idea whether you have classes, especially ones that are taken on a field trip, of that size. With one teacher, I mean, that is one hell of a ratio.
Maldocks seems to know exactly what the structures are based only on a photograph. This seemed strange to me. I wondered how he could be so certain of his hypothesis and I wondered how he knew so certainly that any of the suggestions his students made were wrong. How would one recognise a city built by beings without arms, legs, the need for doors or streets? I would have found it much more believable if they merely went to see what they were, rather than proving a tenuous theory. Besides, it takes the mystery out of it if you give too much away too soon.
It seemed very odd that there was no crew on such a large ship. There were a lot of passengers, who had not been given any instruction on what to do or how to behave on board, so they’re no use to the captain. Even if they shared four to a cabin, the ship needed to have about 20 cabins and that is just for the passengers. The ship carries a small sub and research equipment... This is a massive undertaking; impossible for just one man to control.
I don’t think civilians can be court-marshalled.
How could the captain kill Heather with a stun-gun?
They seemed to get to the target site really quickly (within a day, because the students didn’t even have one meal) even though it should be in uncharted waters and it takes them weeks to get back, enough time for everyone (except for Maldocks) to find a life-partner
Language
As you may know from my writing I’m a fan of the show-don’t-tell style of writing, but since you said that you wanted to tell a story in the “old-fashioned sense”, which might mean that you favour a more telling style of prose. Nevertheless, I found the language is a bit “clunky” on occasion, particularly in the beginning. You seemed to get into the flow after that. Particularly the description of the working of the first bullet I thought was very good. By clunky I mean that you could strip out words without losing the meaning of the text, because the reader can infer it and some words appear to be descriptive, but don’t actually tell me anything. I know you don’t intend to do this on this piece, so it’s just for future reference. Here is an example of what I mean (and again feel free to disagree with me).
In the sentence “Doctor Alvin Maldocks, science professor at the University was admired by seventy-three of his seventy-four students”; why not call him Professor Alvin Maldocks? Instantly we would know that this Maldocks-person is a teacher of the highest academic rank in a college or university. Why mention ‘the University’, but not which one? Why mention science, but not which branch? For me, not so much the devil, but the reality of the story is in the detail.
Dialogue
I couldn’t get my head around the dialogue. In some places it was wooden, but in other places it worked really well. It was a real mixed bag.
Good: "[...] I complained about the incident and his lack of involvement with my students. I told him I needed him to introduce himself, explain the voyage, ship, safety...oh safety!... I raised my complaint again about getting sprayed with the chemical from the hydraulic system and he blamed us! He said one of the students must have shut a valve on the system! Well, I doubt that, but even so, he should have given an orientation and training what to do and not do. That was our understanding."
Not so good: "[...] I think this captain is crazy. I don't trust him. He doesn't even let us know anything about this trip." (In itself not bad, but given that the character has just been sprayed with a clothes-dissolving chemical her points of trust and lack of orientation seem trivial.)
Grammar
My only problem with this piece, and it might have been a formatting issue in your word-processing software and the website, was that the dialogue and related description were not always on the same line. For example:
Instead of:
"Class, we have a chance this summer to go see this. The captain is willing to take us all on a voyage upon his ship exploring the ocean and this location will be the high point of the trip. Do you all want to go?" The students erupted into loud cheers. Heather stood up and shouted;
"Yes! We want to go with you!" Then all the others shouted "Yes! Yes! We want to go", all that is, except Edgar.
Consider:-
"Class, we have a chance this summer to go see this. The captain is willing to take us all on a voyage upon his ship exploring the ocean and this location will be the high point of the trip. Do you all want to go?"
The students erupted into loud cheers.
Heather stood up and shouted: "Yes! We want to go with you!"
Then all the others shouted: "Yes! Yes! We want to go", all that is, except Edgar.
I would reconsider the use of capitals for emphasis, as well as putting down the particular exclamations people make like ‘Oooh’ or ‘Ahhh’ (unless you are writing for very small children).
What I liked
I thought the scene between Sep and Edgar was hilarious. I grinned every time I read it. Like I say, you have a gift for comedy.
I don’t know if any of this makes any sense whatsoever or whether it will help you in any future story, but I hope it does. If you are interested in “old fashion” storytelling, let me tell you that this tradition is still very much alive and kicking on the BBC, in particular BBC Radio 7, where they also have a good selection of sf and fantasy plays and stories. I recommend you access this via i-player or something, because I think you would enjoy it.
Best of luck with your future endeavours and keep writing.
Yhon
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