WIP - Argo's Fall - Chapter 1

[EJDeBrun]

Time to bite the bullet! Here is the start of my work in progress.

Notes:

1) Planning on putting the entire chapter up for review in pieces over the next month or so. If any of you are interested in reading the whole thing (and no in-depth critique required. A simple, yes, I like it! or no, I don't! is fine) then PM me and I will send it to you.

2) Having said, there is some blood and gore at the end of the chapter. Please be aware. (This note will be in every post)

3) There is some cursing. I have ****-ed it out and will do so for the next parts.

3) The story is told in 2 POVs (this would be obvious if reading the entire chapter as a chunk, which is the only reason I am including this note). The second POV starts immediately after this section.

Enjoy!

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“The natives of Kepler 48.3 call their planet Vesi. The fourth planet the International Interstellar Exploration Federation tagged for human exploration, what we discovered there far exceeded anything we could have imagined.”

- Alexander Parks, Personal Report on the Kepler 48.3 mission


A ring of harsh light burned into Alec’s cornea and he woke up cold and naked to a low buzz that hummed through the dense planet-made air. Head pounding, he tried to bring one hand up to block the light only to find he could not move his wrists. Nor his legs. Alec forced himself to take a deep shuddering breath as panic set in and he felt the same thick straps flattening his shoulders and hips.

No. There had to be a way to break free. Flexing his muscles, Alec threw himself against his bonds, bending and twisting his joints until he was left dripping with sweat. Weak and exhausted, Alec slowly lowered his head back down and closed his eyes. What the hell was going on? How long had he been out? It should have only been six days since the Argo had breached Kepler 48.3’s atmosphere but he was pretty damned sure he was long past that. Taking a deep breath he concentrated on his latest memories. Hiroshi, the pilot, had set the shuttle hovering just over the ocean planet’s cloud layer, using the thick haze to help hide its presence over one of the larger metropolitan areas. Initial observations had suggested that the platform, built on thick stilts and stretching over one-hundred and twenty square kilometers, housed a potential eight-hundred thousand sentient natives throughout its multiple tiers. Alec recalled the brief debate among the Argo’s exploratory crew about extending their stay. A large fleet of ocean vessels sailing towards the sprawling structure was what ultimately decided them. Confident in the Argo’s aerial abilities would be able to counter the native marine technologies, Mission Control had agreed with their request to witness the encounter between native groups. A reward after the three year’s of training it took to become a member of this mission.

As the mission’s biologist he remembered talking excitedly with Sam, the geologist, about the prospect of seeing how members from different societies interacted with each other. She had shared his enthusiasm and they had both been deep in a discussion about potential observations when the shuttle's alarms sounded. What happened next came back to him in a raucous mix of sound and lights blaring out a series of electrical malfunctions before the navigational instruments shut down completely. Alec swallowed hard against the memory of the Argo’s plummet, the swirling, screaming chaos that still sent his stomach churning.

“F***,” he groaned. “We must have crashed.”

A burst of unfamiliar voices appeared to answer him and Alec yelped, his eyes snapping open to find two glittering gold circles staring down at him from inside a pair of jet black eyes. His breath caught in his throat he could only stare at the bizarre flat face hanging over him, the dark slit of its mouth chattering in completely unfamiliar patterns. Moments later a second alien face appeared, followed by a branched shadow that reached out and seized him by the chin. Its touch was cold and clammy against his burning skin as it forced Alec to turn his head to one side while another long finger-like shape pressed hard against his eyes, cheeks and nose before shoving something hard into his mouth.

“Get off me!” he roared, his tongue pushing against a slap of cold metal.

More chatter and a puff of air whooshed by his ears as the two slabs by his head were lifted away. Surprised, he glanced sideways in time to see another figure walking towards him and panic turned his sweat sour as his instincts filled him with the interminable thought that he was going to die.

The lights above him suddenly clapped dark and Alec blinked rapidly to clear the dancing ultraviolet spots from his eyes as his restraints slid away from him. Limbs finally freed, he flung his legs sideways, trying to roll upright but not before several hands managed to shove him off the flat surface. He landed on a rough cloth a few feet below and immediately the corners of the beige material flew up around him before he felt himself hoisted into the air. Confused and exhausted, Alec wrestled inside the thick tarp until his muscles refused to respond.

His captors jostled him down along one grey wall and the further they traveled the more Alec dared to study their features through the opening of his makeshift carrier. They appeared to be bipedal with tentacles bouncing around their heads, their bluish-green colors bright against the flat yellow of their clothes. The reflective gloss of their skin also suggested some kind of moisture layer and Alec shuddered at the memory of their firm grip around his arm. The flanges had been hard and strong and all too eerie in their resemblance to human fingers. And the similarities did not stop there. Forward-facing eyes set over a pair of thin slits and a wider mouth, it was like he was being held prisoner by a species that could have existed on Earth if evolution had twisted differently through time and allowed the octopus to develop humanoid features.

The thought was not comforting.

A clank broke Alec out of his reverie and his knee collided painful into a corner. Throwing his arms out, he uselessly tried to stop his swinging momentum but was still knocked hard against a second wall. His suddenly legs dropped out from under him and his heart pounded as the rest of his body followed through several more dips before he was thrown high into the air.

“Ahhhhhh!” the yell escaped him as his shoulder collided hard onto a cold floor. Rolling quickly onto his stomach he lifted his head in time to see a solid metal panel slide across a doorway. A quick glance at the other three blank walls confirmed that this was the room’s only exit and Alec sighed as metal jangled from the other side, locking him inside. Sore and exhausted, Alec could only throw out one arm and grab the only other object in the room. With a sharp tug, he pulled the stiff tarp up over his neck and heaved a deep breath as he let his mind sink into unconsciousness.

 

[The Judge]

I have to confess that I found this somewhat difficult to read. It was all very dense with lots of information, backstory and description, and also rather frenzied, not to say exhausting. Too frenzied for my taste, I'm afraid.

My first thought was that you'd be better off turning down the volume a good bit, and making it less dense eg by removing the flashback info-dump which is usually the last thing you want on the opening page, and by making him less violently panic-stricken so we get some cooler assessment of his predicament and perhaps an attempt to communicate with his captors (though, clearly, this may be wholly at odds with how you see his character). But thinking about it further, although you've tried to make the scene dramatic, with lots of movement, if you pare it back, what's actually happened? He wakes up in one room and is taken to another one, where he apparently -- and, to be frank, in my view wholly implausibly -- falls asleep. This kind of thing might work well as the opening scenes of a film since it's all very visceral and physical and we'd see the aliens in all their ugly glory, but I'm not convinced it's enough to form the beginning of a novel, which is a wholly different animal.

Obviously, I don't know where you're going with this, and how much of this scene actually moves the plot forward, but as things stand I'd suggest you think carefully whether you might be better off starting either earlier as the Argo starts to crash, or later when something is actually happening to Alec which furthers the story.

In the meantime, I'll do a bit of a nit-pick in case it's of help, as I think some of your prose choices aren't helping your story sing. As usual when I nit-pick, I go overboard, so don't panic at the sight of all the purple comments -- they're mainly trying to explain why I don't think some things work, or what I'd suggest as alternatives.

“The natives of Kepler 48.3 call their planet Vesi. The fourth planet the International Interstellar Exploration Federation tagged for human exploration, what we discovered there far exceeded anything we could have imagined.” [a problem with this kind of quote is that it's too vague to really whet the appetite (specifics are always better in these circumstances eg "the grandiose constructions/the beauty of the peoples/the foulness of the inhabitants") but also too revealing, since it suggests there isn't an out-and-out war with the aliens, since that would have led to a much more pointed comment]

- Alexander Parks, Personal Report on the Kepler 48.3 mission


A ring of harsh light burned into Alec’s cornea [how does he know it's a ring since he hasn't woken up yet? And would he really think "cornea" (singular) and not eg "eyes"?] and he woke up cold and naked [how does he realise he's naked when he's not yet cottoned on he's restrained?] to a low buzz that hummed through the dense planet-made air. ["planet-made" sounds a bit odd! And again how does he know that? This whole sentence rather reads as you the author describing his predicament, rather than him gradually becoming aware of it. It's also quite long and info-heavy as an opening sentence, so if you want to keep it I'd suggest breaking it in two] Head pounding, [why? Just from a bright light and buzzing noise? And why isn't his headache mentioned again if he has one?] he tried to bring one hand up to block the light only to find he could not [unless he's a pedant and never uses contractions, I'd suggest making that "couldn't"] move his wrists. Nor his legs. He [Alec] [don't overuse his name when he's the only one there] forced himself to take a deep shuddering breath as panic set in and he felt the same thick straps flattening his shoulders and hips. [to me, this reads in the wrong order -- you have him taking the breath before the panic, and he panics before he feels the other straps. You're also, to my mind, overloading your sentences badly]

No. There had to be a way to break free. [I'm not convinced that he'd consciously think this before he tests the bonds, and before he actually wonders what's happened to him. I don't like the cliched "Where am I?" so I'm glad you don't have him say it, but surely he ought to be wondering something of the kind, and looking around at the room, trying to get his bearings] Flexing his muscles, Alec threw himself against his bonds, bending and twisting his joints until he was left dripping with sweat. [presumably he's intelligent and has been highly trained, so shouldn't he be trying to keep a lid on his panic, and not doing something so obviously useless, weakening himself in the process?] Weak and exhausted, [you use the "[adjective] and exhausted" 3 times in this extract, which is a bit OTT] Alec slowly lowered his head back down and closed his eyes. What the hell was going on? How long had he been out? It should have only been six days since the Argo had breached Kepler 48.3’s atmosphere but he was pretty damned sure he was long past that. [I wasn't sure what that sentence was trying to say but in any event, unless he can make an estimate from eg the state of his chin-stubble or length of his fingernails, how on earth can he tell how long he's been unconscious?]

[suggest a new para here -- para breaks will help to give a breathing space and avoid the wall-of-prose effect] Taking a deep breath he concentrated on his latest memories. [what follows is info-dump which is always dangerous so early, but you're making it worse by flagging it up with that introductory sentence -- why concentrate? why latest? If you want to keep the flashback, to my mind you're better off using something like "He tried to remember the last thing that happened on the Argo"] Hiroshi, the pilot, had set the shuttle [is the shuttle the Argo? Or is this the Argo's shuttle?] hovering just over the ocean planet’s cloud layer, using the thick haze to help hide its presence over one of the larger metropolitan areas. Initial observations had suggested that the platform, ["the platform" is potentially confusing when there's been no mention of it before, so something like "the city's platform" would make it easier to grasp] built on thick stilts and stretching over one-hundred and twenty square kilometers, housed a potential eight- [no hyphen here] hundred thousand sentient natives throughout its multiple tiers. Alec recalled the brief debate among the [Argo’s] no need to repeat the name] exploratory crew about extending their stay. [that sentence disrupts the flashback by imposing Alec's recollection -- it's like using a veil word eg "He felt the knife cut him" instead of simply "the knife cut him" -- so here just something like "There had been a debate among the crew about..." would work better] A large fleet of ocean vessels sailing towards the sprawling structure was what ultimately decided them. Confident in the Argo’s aerial abilities [would be able] [if you want the "would be able" (though you're better without it, as it's so wordy) you need to delete the "in" and instead start the sentence with "Confident that the"] to counter the native marine technologies, Mission Control had agreed with their request to witness the encounter between native groups. [how do they know these are different native groups, and not the city's own fleet returning from somewhere?] A reward after the three year’s of training it took to become a member of this mission. [I'd strongly suggest deleting that line as it adds nothing to this scene]

As the mission’s biologist [he wouldn't think this about himself, surely] he remembered talking excitedly with Sam, the geologist, about the prospect of seeing how members from different societies interacted with each other. [why would a biologist and geologist be so worked up about it? But again, you're interposing Alec-now in the flashback of Alec-then, and anyway I really don't think this sentence and the next add enough to justify their place here on the first pages] She had shared his enthusiasm and they had both been deep in a discussion about potential observations when the shuttle's alarms sounded. What happened next came back to him in a raucous mix of sound and lights blaring [lights can't blare] out a series of electrical malfunctions before the navigational instruments shut down completely. Alec swallowed hard against the memory of the Argo’s plummet, the swirling, screaming chaos that still sent his stomach churning. [again you're interposing Alec between us and the flashback, which serves to distance it. Better something like "Then came the Argo's plummet..." and remove the "still", and the "came back to him" in the previous line]

“F***,” he groaned. “We must have crashed.” [is he prone to talking to himself? If this were a film, he'd have to, but in a novel you can have him think it, which is perhaps more realistic. I'm not sure if you want him to talk because the aliens actually are answering him, but that's a bit odd in itself, perhaps. But why isn't he wondering how, if it crashed, he has survived?]

A burst of unfamiliar [adjective really needed? And are they voices as we would recognise them?] voices appeared to answer him [suggest full stop (period) and new sentence here, with deletion of "and" to avoid the lengthy sentence] and Alec yelped, [why?] his eyes snapping open to find two glittering gold circles staring down at him from inside a pair of jet black eyes. His breath caught in his throat [punctuation needed here -- I'd suggest a semi-colon] he could only stare at the bizarre flat face hanging over him, the dark slit of its mouth chattering [I actually read this as "chittering" which I liked, then saw my mistake -- I think "chattering" is too homely and pleasant in the circumstances] in completely unfamiliar [close repetition of "unfamiliar"] patterns. Moments later a second alien face appeared, followed by a branched shadow that reached out and seized him by the chin. [how can a shadow seize him?] Its touch was cold and clammy against his burning skin [I know he sweated, but presumably the room is cold, as he woke cold, so would he still be burning now?] as it forced Alec's [to turn his] head to one side while another long finger-like shape pressed hard against his eyes, cheeks and nose before shoving something hard into his mouth. [again an overloaded sentence -- too much information and action in the one line. I'd suggest a full stop after "skin" and deletion of "as" at the least]

“Get off me!” he roared, [this felt very Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes and not the reaction of a professional -- and if there's something in his mouth, how is he able to roar without choking on it?] his tongue pushing against a slap [is this meant to be "slab"? If so, that's a sizeable piece of metal which would make talking impossible. You also repeat the word in the next sentence, so I'd suggest you find another. Or is it a typo for "slip"?] of cold metal.

More chatter and a puff of air whooshed by his ears as the two slabs by his head [what slabs by his head? You've not mentioned them before have you?] were lifted away. Surprised, he glanced sideways in time to see another figure walking towards him [another long sentence that would be better cut in two here] and panic turned his sweat sour [he was panicking already at the end of the first para] as his instincts filled him [since he patently isn't killed by this new figure, I'm not sure that the sentence adds anything] with the interminable [um... "interminable" means endless, or seemingly so, so I really don't think it's the word you want here, since the thought is ended pretty quickly] thought that he was going to die.

I'll end there, as you've probably had enough of me already. I've been hard on your prose, because the opening really needs to be tip-top, and I think it needs a bit of work to get it there, and I hope my suggestions help in this respect. And while this particular scene didn't entirely work for me, it's clear you've got the talent to get the prose razor-sharp and make a success of it.

Good luck!

 

[Jo Zebedee]

Fwiw - I'm with TJ on this one. It feels distant but, worse, it feels like it is there to impart information and is bogged down in it. I wouldn't read on. Sorry

 

[EJDeBrun]

Hmmmm. And thus the debate rears again. Thanks for your input, both of you. Ultimately I don't think words are my medium.

Thinking about it: If we started with the actual crash that would solve a lot of problems.

 

[Brian G Turner]

The opening quote doesn't seem necessary, as all it seems to say is "something's going to start soon!".

I get that you're trying for a strong, visceral opening in the first paragraph - which is definitely a good thing to aim for. The trouble is it's overflowing with verbs - I count at least 15 in just 3 sentences - that it's difficult to be clear on what to focus on.

The second paragraph is just an infodump - you can cut most of this out and refer to it later, so as to focus on the immediacy.

What I get most of a sense of is that you're trying too hard here - that rather than just write your story, you're being writerly. Try and just write in a natural way and don't worry about inserting all those extra verbs and adjectives you think the reader needs, because honestly you don't need to.

Some of the word choices are distant, as well. Have you ever walked into a bright room and thought it burned your corneas? It's a technical term for a clear film over the lens, so it's not necessarily correct either - unless you're suggesting corneal implants that are damaged by the light. Also, mentioning "planet-made air" is just another way of trying to sneak in unnecessary detail that reduces the clarity of your sentences.

Overall - try to relax more and watch out against piling on the verbs.

 

[EJDeBrun]

The opening quote doesn't seem necessary, as all it seems to say is "something's going to start soon!".

I get that you're trying for a strong, visceral opening in the first paragraph - which is definitely a good thing to aim for. The trouble is it's overflowing with verbs - I count at least 15 in just 3 sentences - that it's difficult to be clear on what to focus on.

The second paragraph is just an infodump - you can cut most of this out and refer to it later, so as to focus on the immediacy.

What I get most of a sense of is that you're trying too hard here - that rather than just write your story, you're being writerly. Try and just write in a natural way and don't worry about inserting all those extra verbs and adjectives you think the reader needs, because honestly you don't need to.

Some of the word choices are distant, as well. Have you ever walked into a bright room and thought it burned your corneas? It's a technical term for a clear film over the lens, so it's not necessarily correct either - unless you're suggesting corneal implants that are damaged by the light. Also, mentioning "planet-made air" is just another way of trying to sneak in unnecessary detail that reduces the clarity of your sentences.

Overall - try to relax more and watch out against piling on the verbs.

Thanks for the advice Brian! The verb thing in particular is a good point out and I'll be sure to look out for that in the future.

Like I said before, I think the whole scene needs to be tossed out and I'll pick up TJ's suggestion of just writing the actual event.

A small explanation and not an excuse: Test readers complained that starting with the other POV was too confusing, so I switched things around. Without some of the previous context, I can completely see how this is much ado about nothing. That being said, and I feel a bit stupid, I should have seen this for myself and just thrown the whole scene out. Alas, that is how we learn.

Also this is belated, but thank you again TJ and Jo for the advice. I had an event last night and had to bolt away from the computer. Did not mean to come out short!

 

[EJDeBrun]

Update: While I am definitely addressing the issues presented here, it might be a while (we're talking months) before I will post the updated section. This is mainly because I am at the tear-end of this draft and I think it would be smarter to finish that before addressing issues in the first chapter. So everyone who has been kind enough to offer feedback, I say to you, I appreciate all your effort and it is being taken very seriously! I am just a procedural person and rather than offer you something slap dash, I will take the time necessary to fine tune the stories in order to produce a better offering.

So again! I am not ignoring anyone's advice or going off into a huff. I'm just taking the necessary time.

 

[cyprus7]

The first three paragraphs read like an author's info dump to me. How about working some / all of this info into the story later as necessary?

Starting with “F***,” he groaned. “We must have crashed.” had me reading on to find out more.