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Friday, August 26, 2011

Orek

Here is our last - scifi - submission for the week. My comments are in purple. Please add yours :)


Chapter 2
      “Spaceship Fryola class, state your name and destination.” The harsh voice echoed across the bridge. I'm not sure if I like this dialogue tag. Part of me would like to see it cut, but then again...
      Talia’s eyes grew wide as she stared at Landry, her lips a straight line.
      “What are we going to do?” She breathed. You might be able to get rid of this one, too. I can tell she's worried from her body language. Good show, btw.
      “Well, they recognize the ship. Let’s pretend we’re returning from one of the more distant planets in Jaron’s journals.” Landry pulled up information on the planet ____ .
      “Spaceship Fryola class, you are not authorized to land on Orek. State your name and destination, or prepare to be boarded.”
      Landry hit the intercom button. “This is the spaceship Sendek, requesting permission to land on the northern continent, coordinates thirty-four degrees thirteen arc by eighty degrees fifty arc.”
      “Hold.” A minute passed before the speaker continued. “Why do you wish this location?”
      “It’s my home. Can you tell me why communications went down? I’ve been trying to contact my parents for months.”
      Landry spoke into Talia’s mind. We’ll act as if we’ve never heard of the Draguman.
      “How long have you been away?” The voice questioned.
      Talia quickly worked out the math and the numbers showed up on the screen in front of Landry.
      “I left for _____ a year ago. Why, what’s going on?” Are these spaces going to be filled in? Or are they purposely blank. Just curious.
      “Sir, reroute to the capital city of _____. Bargoron Kalto will wish to speak with you personally.”
      “Who?”
      “Proceed to coordinates thirty-two degrees forty arc by eighty degrees fifty arc. If you deviate from those coordinates you will be shot down. Out.” Well, that was a nice place to leave us!

Aside from my purple comments, I really liked this.I haven't read chapter one but I get a sense that Landry's the calm one, more sure of himself. Not that Talia's a panic button, but she worries more. I also like how this small bit sets up all kinds of questions in my mind, like who are these people and where have they been and who are the trigger happy guys? Nice.



7 comments:

blankenship.louise said...

Sorry, but... Fryola class? Their ship is now shaped like a french fry, in my head.

(hey, it could work...I thought it was pretty good, aside from that.)

Crystal Pistol said...

You're good at this purple commenting stuff. I agreed with all you suggested.

Tara Tyler said...

is it pronounced Free-ola? You could use Friola, but thats like fritolay, or Freiola.
anyway, cool snapshot! sounds adventurous!

Unknown said...

I wondered about the blank spaces, too. It looks like you're hiding information from the reader, and would annoy me to continue to see blanks throughout the novel.

But other than that, it's a good piece. Has a very Star Trek feel going for it.

Brooke R. Busse said...

I think the blanks are left where the author has to go back and fill in names that she hasn't thought of yet. She doesn't want to stop her writing while she thinks so she just leaves it blank.

Am I right?

Unknown said...

Looked like the author was going for some artistic thing, like Tarantino did in Kill Bill (we don't learn the Bride's true name till the very end).

Otherwise, why not just fill in whatever name comes to mind? You can always go back and edit, tho I find the names I spit out, I like better than the names I takes ages to think of.

Charity Bradford said...

Thanks for all the comments! Sorry the blanks tripped you up. This is my rough draft from Nano last year and I didn't want to stop and think of another name for the planet so I just left a blank to come back to. I never went back. :) I need to pull this out and work on it again, but haven't had the time.