GFF Literary Workshop: Week 6

Week 6: 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.

Submissions don't have to be written especially for the workshop; feel free to submit anything you've got lying around already.

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


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
Estrelas Part 1 by Dark Nation
Prose, 1300 words

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Uh, okay. Thanks for your input.

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Here's my two cents on Estrelas Part 1:

The first thing that jumped out at me is really a nitpick more than anything else: "take control of your father's reigns." If you're referring to the thing that steers a horse, it should be "reins;" if you're referring to a monarch's rule, it should just be "reign," singular. Now that that's out of the way...

It seems clear (at least to me) that you're aiming for a futuristic setting, and trying to avoid the portentous exposition that often accompanies such stories ("it was the fifth year of the third era or the reign of the Star Kings" and such). This is very commendable, even if there are a few things I was curious about (the protagonist's age, how they wandered the cosmos before they ever "drove" a ship, etc).

There's not a whole lot of motion in the story; it seems very much like the first part of a longer tale, which is fine. I think that a little more of the protagonist in the tale couldn't hurt; after all, it's in the first person and that's one of the form's great strengths. As an (apparently) young person, they're bound to have strong feelings on a variety of subjects, which can help paint a more complete picture of the world without ponderous exposition--I'd like to see some more of that.

As a fragment, it's kind of hard to suggest a future direction, aside from the things that I always like to see such as further character development. I'd like to see an expanded version of this.

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.