GFF Literary Workshop: Week 4

Week 4: Closed

Welcome to the rotating literary workshop here at GFF. Each week will feature a new piece of member-written literature for you to critique and constructively criticize. Download and read the work at the bottom of this post, and offer your comments! The event will continue as long as there are submissions in the queue, so be sure to nominate and participate!

Comment Rules
There are no rules per se, but all comments are expected to be mature and within the bounds of common decency. The key is to be as helpful as possible to allow the author to improve their work.

Each work will be open for comments for one week, starting on Monday and ending on Sunday.

Submission Rules
The workshop is open to any and all GFF members; simply post in the thread and ask to be added to the queue. New participants are automatically placed at the top of the queue to allow them a week to prepare a submission.

Please send all submissions to orion_mk2@yahoo.com. Be sure to include your GFF username, preferably in the subject line. Submissions can be sent at any time, and will be held until your next turn in the queue.

Length
Submissions are limited to prose (stories) for the time being. They should be no less than 500 and no more than 5000 words long.

This is just a guideline; submissions slightly over the limit may be allowed. Sections of longer works are also permitted.

Format
Submit work in .doc, .txt, .rtf, or .pdf format.

Queue:
Helloween
Dark Nation
Lycanthrope
Pyromaniac
Matt
RainMan
orion_mk3
Acro-nym
Ozma
Phone
The Wise Vivi
Ayos

People in bold have submitted work for their week. If you have not submitted anything by the time your week begins, you will be moved to the bottom of the queue and the next participant who has submitted will go.

This Week's Submission
Atlantis: Black by Ayos
Prose, 1600 words

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Originally Posted by neus

You know, fuck all, I didn't (and I still don't) like this onion_mk3 guy, but this literary workshop idea is a good one.
Let's keep this shit going. We need more people reading and typing.

Glad to have you aboard.

Now that I finally have a moment to myself after the holiday weekend, here's how Atlantis Black struck me. Good comments all around, by the way!

The crisp, staccato delivery of the opening lines was nicely handled; it gave the characters an air of realism in an unrealistic situation. Stories that set up an alternate or future world sometimes make the mistake of cramming a ton of expository text at the beginning, which can be off-putting to say the least. I also enjoyed the protagonist's internal monologue in the second and third sections, as it served to keep things somewhat grounded amid a lot of narration.

To echo what others said, the storyline seems a bit ambitious for the tale's short length. There's nothing wrong with putting huge events in an alternate world in a short story (Asimov was quite good at it; the Foundation series started out as a series of short stories) but it's difficult. Much easier is mirroring a larger struggle in miniature, and a good way to do that is through characterization.

I wanted to see more development in the characters. They're defined somewhat by the dialogue and their actions, but I think that some of the burden of explaining who's who in the story's world could be shifted to them. What is it about Daniel and Lilia that defines their alliegences--why did the choose the factions they are allied with, and what do those choices reflect about them? What's more, was that what drove them apart?

Whether the author chooses to develop the idea into a longer work or leaves it as a shorter tale, I think there's a lot of potential. I'd like to see more dialogue, more character, and less explanation--let the characters and their actions do as much of the explaining as they can.

There's nowhere I can't reach.