Trying out a new weekly thread idea.
This would be a thread for anyone working on personal projects to share their progress, and hold themselves somewhat accountable to a group of peers. We can coordinate weekly standup type meetings if their is interest.
@ArjinFerman, @Turniper, and myself all had some initial interest.
Post your project, your progress from last week, and what you hope to accomplish this week.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Just for context, I'm a somewhat regular poster here with some AAQCs, who's made an account solely for the purposes of posting on this thread for the purposes of trying to distance my projects from my political/culture war statements. FWIW, I think this is a great idea for a thread, and will be participating here almost exclusively under this pen-name. Hopefully the mods are okay with this, and hopefully my writing style doesn't give me away.
So, I've recently been trying to write a story. I'm over 4,900 words into it and would like some feedback. The focus of a lot of my effort has been trying to make sure that the events in the story align as much as possible with current understanding of science and principles of logical consistency. However, I've also tried to make sure the writing is up to snuff - I've thrown away a few previous stories due to thinking they weren't delivered in a satisfying way, and the only reason why this has been posted here is because it meets my personal criteria for readability. I would appreciate pointers on where the plot deviates from believable scientific speculation or generally just strains credulity, as well as feedback on aspects such as how the prose feels and flows, on how understandable the writing is, and whether the dialogue feels authentic enough.
Link: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Tt8iofyGmERpwBNRmBQh7YjIfxkMPi2en4ZxJBT0PBw/edit?usp=sharing
I plan to get at least another 500 words done this week. I've intentionally set the weekly count low because work and personal obligations have made it quite inconvenient to get into the swing of writing, but I figure that as long as I get some progress in every week I should be done reasonably soon - this is meant to be novella-length at most, so it won't be too difficult to finish.
Nice.
More Peter Watts than Watts himself, combining deep sea and deep space exploration. This is a compliment, I love his writing though I abhorr his congenital pessimism and misanthropy.
I do have a larger tolerance for jargon than most, so I except that much of the feedback you'll receive will be to minimize it, but I feel like it adds to the verisimilitude, something an actual researcher would write to an informed audience.
Thank you, that's high praise, and from another writer too. If it wasn't already crystal clear, I'm a gigantic fan of Watts' writing myself, so I'm certainly pleased with the comparison and I'm glad it hits some of these notes (not sure if you'll find less pessimism with where this is going, though). I even have a notes and references section written for it with many articles cited, though that probably won't be included in the story itself.
I'm touched to be called a fellow writer, I just dabble.
In the context of Watts, I follow his blog, and the pessimism is deep seated and personal. Man's just sitting around waiting for the world to explode, and even worse, for the wrong reasons. I'm fine with pessimistic works, hell, I'm sure it's possible to write good scifi that's upbeat, but that eludes me too haha.
I'd say throw them in, it doesn't hurt, and it does help to flaunt that you've done your research. If you want to be really fancy and make use of electronic media, you could pass them off as diegetic footnotes though that'll be a lot of bother.
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