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Sarah Narnathron replied to the topic Alpha-Readers for a Cowritten Sci-Fi Novel in the forum Critiques 8 years, 6 months ago
I agree with a lot of what the others have said, particularly about the newscasters’ treatment of the plane’s disappearance and the soundbite. The only reason they wouldn’t have a field day over it is if the government moved fast to hush up what happened— in which case no one would report the disappearance at all; they’d say that the plane crashed or something like that.
Regarding the prologue: as others have said, it’s pretty short and doesn’t really grab my attention. Show-don’t-tell will help, but you might also consider extending it a little further. Give us a few more hints as to why we care about this plane and what might be coming.
Another thing I noticed is the way that you show John’s thoughts. This is a piece of advice someone else gave me that I found super helpful: people very rarely think in complete sentences. They think in concepts and ideas. Granted, that’s not very easy to write, so I tend to start off with a complete thought-sentence and then shift into non-italicized description of the character’s train of thought. I also recommend not using “dialogue tags” for thought, such as “wondered John” or “John thought.” Just like with normal dialogue tags, they have the potential to interrupt the flow, and they don’t really tell us much. So, for example, you have:
How’s this even possible? wondered John. I’m in America! I don’t even know where this … this Muskee-jam place even is!!
And you might edit that as:
How’s that even possible? John groaned and rubbed his forehead. Why was he mixed up in this? He was in America! He didn’t even know where this . . . this Muskee-jam plance even was!
To me, the second version reads better. That’s just my opinion, though; take it or leave it.
You definitely have some interesting elements— the plane’s disappearance, the oddities of the message (an impossible date, its effect on John, the fact that he received it at all), the possibility of aliens— and those things do catch my attention. However, they don’t












