Max Prime - In The Beginning...

[Tim Kinder]

Hi everyone. It's been far, far, far too long since I've been around. I have a million excuses (some of them quite good actually! ) but I know there's no good excuse for giving up, so I'm back.

I am once again looking for a good start to my book. It seems to be the part that is tripping me up. I've had no less than a dozen readers, all of whom have told me they love the story and can't wait for more, but if I can't get readers who don't know me and literary agents past the first few pages, I know they'll never give the rest of the story a chance.

The last time I tried this I got beat up a lot. I wasn't quite ready for that. (Part of the reason I've been away for so long, but that's my problem, not the critiquers fault.) Maybe I'm still not ready for it, but I'm at least ready to try again.

Without further ado, I present, for your bloodthirsty eyes, Max Prime - In The Beginning... Chapter 1 (1330 Words).

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The main innovations lab at Spectrum Engineering is usually bustling with activity but that all came to a screeching halt about two months ago. That’s when their highly touted joint venture with the Department of Defense failed miserably to perform up to projections and expectations.



Since that night, the Senior Lead Engineer on the project, Max Blackson, has been working with his core team to try and determine what went wrong.



“Ahhhhhh…you’ve got to be kidding me!” Max exclaims as he slams his fist into his desk sending his wireless mouse inadvertently flying across it.



His chief assistant, Todd Raskin, looks up from his monitor just in time to watch the mouse drop to the floor where it promptly spills its batteries.



“Did it bite you?” He sarcastically inquires.



“Not funny.” Max flatly answers. “I just got the results back from our second proof of concept diagnostic and the simulation servers have again agreed with the demonstration data. This just doesn’t make sense. Our calculations were double and triple checked by our auditors before we even began prototyping this radar system. How can the results we’re getting now be so different from the projected results we received eight months ago?”



Todd walks over to Max’s desk, stopping briefly to collect the unlucky mouse. He wants to see the numbers for himself.



“I don’t get it either.” He finally concedes as he takes a seat next to Max’s desk. “I’ve seen simulation data vary from test to test, occasionally by as much 3-5%, but these numbers are off by more than 50%. In some case nearly 60%. These discrepancies just aren’t explainable through simple component tolerance variances.”



“Agreed which means the problems had to have occurred somewhere within the sim-server calculations, but the IT audit reports show no errors or changes being made within the server farm beyond their usual and customary system updates. They contend it has to be our fault. Garbage in, garbage out.” Max pauses a moment to rub his forehead which is once again starting to ache, signs that the fury of yet another migraine may be taking root. “Our biggest problem is that they can back their claims, and rightly so I suppose, with the fact that there were three other projects under sim-testing at that same time as our project and none of those projects have experienced these kinds of calculation discrepancies. It puts the burden of proof entirely on our shoulders but I just can’t explain how the other projects’ test results were accurate while ours, repeatedly, were not.”



“You can, you just refuse to see it or accept it.” Todd offers.



Max says nothing but flashes Todd a quizzical look.



“Sabotage, collusion, or some other form of intentional, numbers manipulation.”



Not happy with what Todd is insinuating Max snaps back, “You know, you’re starting to sound an awful lot like those DOJ attorneys at the moment. No one here did this. It’s just not possible.”



“Max, I’m not blaming anyone on our team. Don’t forget I helped write the internal auditing procedures. I’m well aware of the fact that none of our people could have done this, but the Sherlock Holmes principle of deduction still seems to be aptly applied here.”



“Alright,” Max relents, “let’s just say your theory is right. Who, then, had the opportunity, motive, and the ability to do what you’re suggesting without getting caught? Other than you or me?”



“There’s only one other viable possibility…we were hacked.”



“Hacked?! Don’t you think IT would have caught that? Nearly all of our business is done with the DOD and other various government agencies. We have the most sophisticated network, firewalls, and anti-hacking technologies available on the planet. I can’t even fathom how difficult it would be to just to get past our firewalls, let alone infiltrate our internal systems, defeat our encryption algorithms, monitor our sim-servers, intercept the data, modify it, format it, export it, re-encrypt it, and then exit our systems all without causing a single blip with Information Security.”



“Look, the theory simply says ‘however improbable’. I didn’t say I could explain how it was done, only that it’s the last possible explanation left that we haven’t positively accounted for or ruled out.” Todd reasons. “All of our investigative work is beginning to point inexorably toward one explanation, data manipulation, and since I’m positive I can eliminate you and myself from the equation, then that leaves only one other possibility…however improbable…hackers.”



“You still believe in the tooth fairy, don’t you?” Max sarcastically intones, as he rolls his eyes and turns his head away from his lifelong friend and colleague.



Ever since the test system failure, the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense have been investigating Max and Spectrum Engineering under suspicion of fraud and federal funds misappropriations. They contend that someone knowingly and maliciously altered the test data so as to convince the DOD to invest tens of millions of tax dollars to research an albatross.



The radar system Max’s team was working to develop was supposed to be a leap forward in advanced jet fighter technologies. It would purportedly provide pilots with, not just a wider view of the skies around them but, a new high resolution tactical display that would be three to four times more accurate and precise than current tactical radar systems. There was even talk of developing the technology further in the future to give pilots the option of switching to a full, 360 degree, three dimensional heads-up display so that they would be able to better see and understand what was happening in the skies around them.



While Max still believes these objectives to be obtainable, the DOD does not and the Department of Justice has been doing its level best to find evidence of malfeasance. Every note taken, every data file created, every slip of paper generated is being or has already been examined by the DOJ. Max has even joked that he thinks they may have examined some of his used Kleenex just to make sure they didn’t miss anything. The process has been long and exhausting and, at times, infuriating. Truth is Max knows the government needs a scape goat, and right now, he’s the prime candidate.



Sensing Max’s meaning Todd attempts to reassure him, “Max, I know you. Mr. Grimes knows you. This whole team knows you. And what we know is that you didn’t and you wouldn’t do anything like the DOJ is trying to imply.”



Max turns to his friend, “I know that, and I appreciate the support, but I don’t think it’s going to matter much. Not if the news reports are accurate.”



“There’s no way they can blame you for this!” an atypically angry Todd responds.



“This was my project. I developed the base concepts. I lead the research team. I supplied the DOD and the congressional appropriations committees with the research data. I gave my word and my testimony to the benefits of this new technology and the new technology didn’t just fail, it epically failed. It was my idea from the get go and that makes the failure of this project my responsibility. When the DOJ comes knocking on those doors, it’s me they’ll be hauling out of here in handcuffs.”



Sensing the almost resigned tone in Max’s voice, Todd worriedly asks, “Max, you’re not thinking about giving up are? You can’t give up. There has to be an explanation for all of this and I’m not giving up until we find it. We’ll find the answers.”



Max again turns his head away from his friend.



“Ok, fine…but I’m still not giving up. I’ll find the answers by myself if I have to.” As Todd stands to go, his belly grumbles. Though it’s barely past 9am, he and Max have been in the office for more than four hours already this morning. “I’m going to the cafeteria. When you get your head back on straight, you know where to find me.”

 

[tinkerdan]

This is pretty well done. But for me there are a few minor issues and then some major ones.

To start with some of the major::

The story doesn't start until about here.

“Ahhhhhh…you’ve got to be kidding me!” Max exclaims as he slams his fist into his desk sending his wireless mouse inadvertently flying across it.

And the first seventy words are just summary of the exposition in the middle of the piece and those are two of the major problems with all of this.

Somehow it feels like this is partially stuck to another difficulty I had reading this which is POV. This seems mostly Omniscient with occasional subjective elements. It may be that that POV lends itself easily to a whole lot of dialogue which is what you have here.
Dialogue is well over 700 words while narrative is over 500 and of that all except 223 of the narrative are lumped into omniscient objective narrative.

This doesn't yet cover that there seems to be a floating POV back and forth from the characters and I can't help but think that if you moved to a close third POV it might help you solve --my perceived problems.

I think that it could effectively be from Max's POV with some few tweaks; but I think to get past the wall of info dump in the middle you would have to start at the top and begin to salt the narrative with pieces and parts of this inner story from Max's point of view while he ponders the situation throughout pauses in the conversation between he and Todd.

I think the elements of a good start are there, but some of the style choices seem to hinder the progress. I'm not one for demanding a lot of hook at the beginning, but I think that there is a good hook hidden in the info-dump that might come out if you can squeeze it out of Max with some emotion and his five senses involved in showing us his predicament.

 

[Loren]

Tim, here is my take. I like the story, but I personally feel it would be better told from Max's point of view. He seems to be the point man.

There are still some issues with punctuation with dialog. Mostly between the transitions from the quoted dialog to the tag (i.e., He said should be he said)

As a software engineer that worked for an avionics company I can tell you that any supporting software written for the hardware team would be written and supported by the software engineers (which typically get paid more ). IT only manages the computer hardware, email, and company enterprise software. I can tell you IT knows little about the computers used in the labs since IT mostly supports the PCs and servers for what we affectionately call 'carpet land', which are all the clerical desk jockeys. Most of the time the hardware and software departments manage their own machines due to the specialty nature of their tools.

So, if you want your story to have more clout I would change the author of the software to a software team lead by a senior engineer, just like Max. For that matter, that lead engineer would probably be right there at Max's side helping him debug the system.

Now, I can tell you from long experience that there usually is some rivalry between the hardware and software departments. Each usually accuses the other as being the source of the problem, but it mostly is in good fun. However, it can get a little testy when the pressure is on.

Lastly, the lead engineers are typically systems engineers. That means they are intimate with the high-level architecture requirements, but usually not as informed about the low level details, particularly on a large project like this. So, lead engineers will pull in specific engineers that are assigned to the various sub-assemblies to help work out the bugs in the sections where the trouble appears.

This is how the design cycle typically works. Once the bugs are sorted out, the system goes to the validation and verification test phases, which is performed by a separate group of engineers. Then it is formally released after validation/verification testing has passed.

In your scenario Max is probably in what we call the integration phase of the project. All the independently designed components are assembled together and tested as a system. This is where most of the heartache and jubilation takes place and there can be some long nights sorting out ill behaviors and on rare occasions sometimes a redesign of portions of the system.

Max might even be a principle engineer if he is leading a large team. Senior engineers may get lead positions, but they are also assigned the lower level work and would be one notch up from the designers, which are less experienced engineers.

If you should want deeper insight into those design processes I would be glad to help where and when I can.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I have to admit I'm struggling with this, because there's little focus on POV of character, and no real development of tension or conflict.

Instead it comes across to me as mainly just two people in conversation for most of the piece, except in the middle where the narrator stops this to explain what actually happened. It doesn't feel to me like this is the story you want to tell, as much as something more incidental to something that happens later.

Try having a read of Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer, for some good pointers on the technicalities of scene construction, and how to get the most from the words that you use - it's a really comprehensive book on writing, by a successful genre author.

Simply 2c.

 

[pambaddeley]

I found this a bit heavy to get into, with the quite intense beginning having numbers and technicalities being banded about, and quite a lot of one character telling another what they would already know. Agree with above commenters that it would work better being from one character's POV, then some of the information could be got across in his own internal ruminations. But it lacks drama/conflict for me at present.

As you say the DOJ are crawling over everything, maybe they could literally be there, going through stuff, which might give an opportunity to show some of the frustrations in action rather than straight narration/info dump? For example, you say "Max has even joked that he thinks they may have examined some of his used Kleenex just to make sure they didn’t miss anything." which could be instead developed in the scene, where he interacts with one of these people and makes this snipe at him/her. Just my 2c.

 

[J Riff]

There ya go, further up-beatage as expected. ) I have trouble with tense. I don't like 'is' in the first sentence. It's harder to write, I think, than standard past form, whatever it's called. Has/had exclaims/exclaimed... it would work better, perhaps, if you redrafted it into the usual thing... I know that sounds vague, but there should be no issues with the tense, it throws some people off bigtime. Simply not used to reading it is all. Otherwise it's not bad at all. *

 

[tinkerdan]

Present tense is a bit difficult to write when starting and requires a specific amount of attention. Not to mention dropping in and out of present perfect. It is particularly difficult to sustain through an entire piece.

Apparently there are also some difficulties for the reader that I'd not given consideration to.

If a person truly doesn't like present tense then they'd best stay away from my novels as I've made the mistake of writing them entirely in present tense.

It takes a lot of work and time to get it right and I think when people recognize it so vividly that means there is a need to work on it. It should be almost transparent to the reader so that when they finish the piece they never realize it was entirely in present tense. The key would be that if you intend to use present tense then you should work hard for that transparency.

I'm not sure I could recommend some present tense writers that would be good ones to study but it seems this has come up in the past and someone made a suggestion then, I just don't remember who they suggested.

 

[AnyaKimlin]

The main innovations lab at Spectrum Engineering is usually bustling with activity but that all came to a screeching halt about two months ago. That’s when their highly touted joint venture with the Department of Defense failed miserably to perform up to projections and expectations.

Since that night, the Senior Lead Engineer on the project, Max Blackson, has been working with his core team to try and determine what went wrong.

I'd consider losing these two paragraphs and show the problem below. Let us discover what happened.

“Ahhhhhh…you’ve got to be kidding me!” Max exclaims as he slams his fist into his desk sending his wireless mouse inadvertently flying across it.

I think: Max slams his fist into his desk, sending his wireless mouse flying. It had been two weeks since the lab had come to halt and he couldn't work out why. Is a much more exciting hook. Weigh up if you need all the words in an action sentence. Descriptive sentences can take more words especially in present tense as it gives the illusion of a faster pace.

His chief assistant, Todd Raskin, looks up from his monitor just in time to watch the mouse drop to the floor where it promptly spills its batteries.

What point of view are using - whose head are we in? Is it Todd's? If it isn't we wouldn't know he was just in time. Do you need the word promptly?

“Did it bite you?” He sarcastically inquires.

You don't need speech tags (said, asked, inquires, answers etc) very often. This one can be avoided by combining the action above
eg
"Did it bite you?" Todd looks up from his monitor as the mouse drops off the desk, spilling its batteries on the floor.

Dialogue can be made to feel more natural by cutting down words so consider the impact of "Did it bite you?" vs "Did it bite?"

“Not funny.” Max flatly answers. “I just got the results back from our second proof of concept diagnostic and the simulation servers have again agreed with the demonstration data. This just doesn’t make sense. Our calculations were double and triple checked by our auditors before we even began prototyping this radar system. How can the results we’re getting now be so different from the projected results we received eight months ago?”

Try to put an action in instead of Max flatly answers - something like he tugs at his hair, bites his lip etc How is he feeling - sick to the stomach or is he trying not to beat Todd to a pulp or....

He wants to see the numbers for himself.

Is this Todd's POV if it is I think it needs to be a lot clearer from the start. Maybe start with him watching the mouse.

“I don’t get it either.” He finally concedes as he takes a seat next to Max’s desk. “I’ve seen simulation data vary from test to test, occasionally by as much 3-5%, but these numbers are off by more than 50%. In some case nearly 60%. These discrepancies just aren’t explainable through simple component tolerance variances.”

Consider making this still technical but less bamboozling for us technoidiots - "Wow - these numbers are off. Way off some by nearly 60%. I can't see how."

Not happy with what Todd is insinuating Max snaps back, “You know, you’re starting to sound an awful lot like those DOJ attorneys at the moment. No one here did this. It’s just not possible.”

This is in Max's head - because Todd wouldn't know Max wasn't happy. Decide which of them is going to take the lead in this chapter.

“Alright,” Max relents, “let’s just say your theory is right. Who, then, had the opportunity, motive, and the ability to do what you’re suggesting without getting caught? Other than you or me?”

I'd keep this back and forth more snappy - the dialogue shorter. Eg "Alright." Max relents. "Let's say you theory is right. There's only you and me who could."

Ever since the test system failure, the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense have been investigating Max and Spectrum Engineering under suspicion of fraud and federal funds misappropriations. They contend that someone knowingly and maliciously altered the test data so as to convince the DOD to invest tens of millions of tax dollars to research an albatross.

This is a dump find a scene later to explain it or include it in the dialogue. Same goes for a lot of the next few paragraphs if you're telling us or giving information it can get boring. Find other ways to work it into the stoory.

As a software engineer that worked for an avionics company I can tell you that any supporting software written for the hardware team would be written and supported by the software engineers (which typically get paid more ). IT only manages the computer hardware, email, and company enterprise software. I can tell you IT knows little about the computers used in the labs since IT mostly supports the PCs and servers for what we affectionately call 'carpet land', which are all the clerical desk jockeys. Most of the time the hardware and software departments manage their own machines due to the specialty nature of their tools.

.

Unless they work for a smaller/medium sized company with a smallish computer department spread across the country. I think my husband is a software developer at present but he's used as a general computer guy and has pretty much been every department over the past nine years. When he was working in hardware he was often drafted into the software or to maintain a database or to develop a website or to design the systems or..... I don't really know the full story but it's pretty much a case of when the software has an impending deadline all the computer guys work software and when the hardware is being overhauled all the computer guys do hardware.

 

[Loren]

Unless they work for a smaller/medium sized company with a smallish computer department spread across the country. I think my husband is a software developer at present but he's used as a general computer guy and has pretty much been every department over the past nine years. When he was working in hardware he was often drafted into the software or to maintain a database or to develop a website or to design the systems or..... I don't really know the full story but it's pretty much a case of when the software has an impending deadline all the computer guys work software and when the hardware is being overhauled all the computer guys do hardware.

Yes, a small company pretty much dictates that people wear many hats.