BEFORE WE START: For any future such invites, please, please, I beg you, send me attached word docs, not embedded text or — heaven help me — PDF. I AM GOING TO HAVE TO COPY-PASTE YOUR TEXT WITH MY CRITIQUE. So don’t make it hard on me. Email format is weird copied to wordpress. Also, I prefer– by far — to read in word, where I can change the size of the font and read at page width.

Okay, I’ll do two today, then two tomorrow night, and so on, till we run out.

Remember these novels aren’t mine. Some don’t have a name on them, so they will have no author name because I don’t know if people are pseudonymous. Some don’t have titles. I’m not sure why. But they’re not mine, and they are copyrighted by virtue of being original work.

So, if the ladies in the back can stop passing around the cinnamon chocolate candy and pay attention to the blackboard, let’s begin.

Remember everything in these critiques is MY OPINION and not chiselled in stone. I see at least two genres I don’t read and one I’m not that familiar with, and one I read but not by preference. What this means is that I might very well miss your cueing, etc. Don’t take critiquer ignorance personally. Don’t take it as the voice from on high, either.

Start from the assumption these samples are publishable, all of them, even under the old trad pub. My critiques aim to optimize them.

SAMPLE ONE

Again, understand this isn’t bad. This is solid midlist. I’ve read a ton that’s worse and paid for it too. I’m giving you the tools to stand out, is all.

What did you do?

Sensors Technician Scout-ships Second Class Marsha Klem pondered the vagaries of life as she sipped her Latte at the coffee stand just inside the “front gate” of Phobos Naval Shipyard.  On the one hand, as “day after duty” and after being up for the last twenty-four hours straight, she should be back in the barracks in a rack.  On the other hand, The Chief of the Boat had called a field day, so no one was in the rack, and this sure beat the hell out of climbing around in the outboard chasing the dust, dirt, and metal shavings that were a ubiquitous part of an SRA. At least they retrofitted the yard with the grav system after we bought the technology off the Chckpop, so a girl could sip her coffee like an adult, instead of sucking it out of a bulb.

She did understand why this had to be done.  PNS was a bastard to find your way around in, even if you were a salty dog, so a wet behind the ears, ex-skimmer Junior Officer would probably find himself wandering into the Max Security Naval Brig or something, instead of finding his way to the Trigger, where he was supposed to report. The “gate” was really a very large airlock between the commercial half of the station that took up all of Mars’ larger moon and the military half.  It still had all the military trappings though, including the Sailor in blues with an M-27 needler instead of the standard M-15 that everyone out of boot carried, on his hip, and a second Sailor a ways back, covering the first one with his M-35 Shotgun.   There hadn’t been any attempts against bases in the home district, but Fleet Command wasn’t taking any chances.  All the smart money was on the Sarkari reacting to what we had been doing with some sort of Guerilla tactic sooner or later.

 As she looked up again, she saw a fairly tall young Lieutenant JG showing his ID to the gate guard.  He was pulling a ships-locker behind him on a gravplate, so this could very well be her guy, she thought.

I do realize this is mil sf, and that the author believes he is giving us a needed scene set or something, but honestly, all of this is unnecessary. The “vagaries of life” cues the brain that nothing important s happening. Unless the second paragraph is “Bam! Something exploded” you’re losing readers.

You do give us an awful lot of …. scene setting and “what’s going on” but because it’s just stuff thrown at us without actions anchoring it it doesn’t remain. Okay, in other words, we don’t know why we should care. Chick is there, drinking coffee, waiting, having thoughts, but I don’t know why I should memorize the little details.

Don’t make the reader work too hard. If it’s needed information, break it up and distribute it through the rest of the first chapter. If it’s not information we need to understand the next section, it shouldn’t be here.

*****************************************************************************

Start here:

Lt. JG Richard Bradford-Smith put his CAC card back in the pouch hanging around his neck, returned the Gate Guard’s salute, and pulled his locker on past the “Blue line” demarking the separation between Phobos Interstellar Space Port, and Phobos Naval Shipyard with a “come along R2″. 

One exception to ‘absolutely needed information’ is sensory input and detail. That’s needed but not narratively. it’s needed to anchor the reader to the character. To make the scene and the character come alive. We could use some of that here. Not a ton. But when you tell us what the place smells like say, you can tell us if it smells like those of its kind. Also, I realize some abbreviations are normal in mil sf, but…. You’re going to lose non military readers if you throw them around without an immediate explanation.

You explain CAC in the next section, but I suggest you explain each acronym as we hit it. Like this: CAC — Common Access card — then go on with it. It’s slightly unnatural, but it avoids reader being confused and wondering if it’s some present day thing they missed, or whatever.

Also I find the paucity of actual description disturbing. It’s not that I can’t smell or hear this place, I can’t even really see it. Yes, you gave us some of it in the previous section. But telling us the gate is an airlock, doesn’t tell us what it looks like. He steps past the blue line…. in middair? The Gate Guard is guarding? No, you didn’t even describe it in the first section. I don’t want the name or abbreviation of what he’s guarding. I want to see where he’s standing, and what his surroundings look like. My mind has filled in “generic space station” (Yes, moon. Whatevs. But the setting is generic SF) but I could be completely wrong about how things look. Am I? And what does his locker look like? I see the little green footlocker we bought at surplus for my kid to keep his toys in when he was a toddler. It’s completely out of place in a space station. So, tell us. What does any of this look like, smell, taste? It’s the most important part of selling your story as reality. Don’t give me volumes on any of it, just…. enough for me to have an idea. Walls? Color? Material? Smooth? Shiny? Does the floor echo when you step on it? Is the blue line baked in or painted? Does the footlocker run under its own power, just being pulled? Or is there effort involved? Get in the lieutenant’s body and tell us what he sees, hears, feels, does. Doesn’t need a ton: the steel framed transparent blah blah airlock. It’s enough.

There had recently been a resurgence in old movies, stuff from back in the twentieth century, and with it had come a return of some catch-phrases.  He smiled as he remembered one sailor on the Blyskawica that had actually painted his locker to look like the fictitious ‘Droid that was the hero of the fifteen Star Wars movies.  

I’m not going to say this preceding paragraph is not amusing or character building. It can be both. And it sets us in time, of sorts with the 15 movies. What it is is seriously out of place. Yes, I know, he has to justify calling his locker R2. But the thing is, he shouldn’t. He shouldn’t call it that. What the nickname and the digression do, this early in the book is call attention to the LOCKER. So unless the locker is either sentient or wired to explode in ten minutes, this bit is out of place. Heck, we don’t know what his problem is yet. Yes, we know the woman in the first section thought his arrival was strange but that’s not his problem, in his mind. So. Lose the relationship with the locker, and concentrate on the redhead.

When he looked up there was a redheaded second-class Sensor Tech with a Scout ship Qualification pin on her chest sipping a coffee and smirking at him… Dick figured she had to be his escort to the Trigger.  Sure enough, as soon as the gate guard finished verifying his Common Access card and the orders that were stored in it with the base data net, she slammed the last of her coffee down and walked over.

She popped a salute, and gave him a “Good Morning Sir, Lieutenant Bradford-Smith?”

“Yes, are you my escort to the Trigger, P.O.?”

“That I am. Sensors Tech, Scouts, Marsha Klem sir.”

“P.O. Klem, is an escort really necessary? I did manage to find my way to the bathroom this morning all by myself…Figured out how to seal my suit too.”

Give us something to anchor this dialogue. Stage business or something every three interactions at least. Yes, it can be “she said.” Or “She fell in stride beside him” or whatever. Something. People never stand absolutely still trading lines. Not even cute lines. And that last one is, yes, cute, and deserves some anchoring.

“LT, I’ve been on the Trigger for two years, I got my comets before we pulled in for SRA.  I still get turned around in this warren every once in a while.  To add insult to injury, our implants don’t have full data for the layout.  Well, that’s not quite right, you could find your way following the carrot from your implant, but you’ll get there tomorrow sometime.  

“The implants don’t have the interior of any shops, they don’t have the layout of the secure areas either, until you become Ships Company and get the download.  Even then, they don’t have some places on their access, because we don’t have the need to know.  Oh, and they vector you way wide of some of the places, like Data Reduction, the Marine barracks, the Refueling section, the High-Security Brig, and the Special Weapons Armories. Trust me, sir, you want a guide.”

Not only do you need anchoring, but the preceding speech is too long. Imagine a person just standing in place, saying all that.
I want you to reimagine their encounter/conversation as comic frames. No, seriously. Even if you can only do stick figures. Don’t make me do it. But if you draw them saying all that, they’re just standing there. You’re flipping their position. That’s like the world’s most boring comic. No one talks like that. And that last one would be several panels of text. Imagine these broken up by expressions, as they react to the others. Was she amused by his cute line, or did she not betray any reaction, because she’s a tough cookie? One panel would have her arching an eyebrow, because comics are cartoonish. But it’s written, you can give us his being discomfited by her lack of reaction. And that last speech, break in the middle with something. Even if he just scratches his elbow or something.

With that comment made she started leading the lieutenant down the main thoroughfare of the yard, a tunnel big enough to hall the main engines of a Parche class down, with room to spare.  About fifty meters down, she ducked into a machine shop on the left, went down the middle of it for a hundred meters or so, and then up a stairway and out headed back in the direction they came in on.  Dick was trying to follow and track the path on his implant’s HUD, but soon admitted to himself that either he was hopelessly confused, the P.O. was doing some sort of four-dimension navigation shit without benefit of a nav system, his implant had intentional blanks in it, or maybe all of the above.

What does any of this look like. You tell me it’s big enough for the engines of a Parche class, but i don’t know what a Parche class is. I’m not asking for poetry but “Parche class, the largest destroyer in the fleet” is at least a something more, even if I don’t know their tech or how big that is. It is allowed though as “something really big.” Machine shop? Does it look like ours? is it empty? does it have people in it? is it robotic? what colors, materials, etc. The reader is not fully IN this yet. You have to pull us in.

About an hour later they got to the dock that Trigger was berthed in.  As Dick looked at his new home, he thought that she wasn’t much to look at:

According to the implant she was 110.3 meters long, with a 15-meter beam not counting the propulsor pods sticking out to port and starboard, and the dimensional rotation gear sticking down forward looking like an ancient Greek ram.  All the turrets were out, the two main guns fore and aft, and the anti-torpedo turrets above and below. They had the micro meteor dome, (really nothing more than a thick dome of ten-layer chobum armor over the sanitary tanks at the front of the boat) removed, and parts of the sensor net were being worked on. The torpedo tubes were open, and there were yard birds crawling all over her doing various things that he couldn’t identify at this range.  

Almost perfect. Throw in some color, smell and sound, please. Sheen or lack thereof, too would be nice.

Before they got to the brow, Klem looked back at him and asked, “Hey, LT, did you ever do anything really bad? You know, like have sex with the admiral’s teenage daughter, run over the captain’s cat? Piss in a senator’s coffee?”

“No… Why would you ask me a question like that?”

“Just trying to figure out why you got sent HERE.”

“Well, PO, that’s a story that maybe I’ll tell you over beer one day in a foreign port. For now, let’s just say I’m here to learn. And like everyone else, I’m a volunteer.”

So, again emotional reactions in dialogue. We know it’s banter, but people react to banter, even if it’s “just” “cute, real cute.”

 At the brow to the boat, Dick walked up and saluted the Petty Officer of the Deck: “Lt. JG Richard Bradford-Smith reporting aboard. My orders are imprinted.”  With that, he handed the young Machinists Mate on watch his CAC and waited while the man on watch took his card, placed it against his own, and read the result, then returned his salute.

What does the man look like. Not a romance descripton, but two words, like “Short, squat” give the reader an anchor.

“XO’s on-board sir, Captain’s ashore at a briefing.”

As Dick walked onto the brow, Marsha followed him, with a quick salute to the POOD and a muttered “permissiontocomeaboard?”   The POOD saluted back, already turning back to look at the entrance to the graving dock.

Give me a description of the graving lock. Like, you know “the tight lock” or “the murky depths” or whatever the heck a grav lock looks like.

“LT, if you’ll hold on a second, I’ve been told which stateroom is yours, so you can drop off your gear before seeing the XO.”

After transiting the airlock into the boat, Dick followed her to one of the staterooms in officer country, as he expected, he had the second smallest stateroom and was sharing it with an Ensign who apparently already had moved to the top rack.   While Dick was locking his ships locker into the receiver on the deck, and doing a quick once-over of his uniform, Marsha headed off to check in with her division.

Well, best get this over with, Dick thought to himself after giving his kaki’s a last look in the tiny mirror of his new home. It was only a fifteen step walk to the Executive Officer’s stateroom and office.

Knocking on the open-door frame, Dick announced himself: “Lt. JG Richard Bradford-Smith reporting aboard sir.”

The XO, Lieutenant Commander William Safford according to the plaque on the door, looked up from the screen he was working on. “You’ve been on board for fifteen minutes Lieutenant.  I assume your gear is stowed then?”

“Locked down and pinned in place sir.  Petty Officer Klem directed me to my Stateroom.”

“What do you think of her?”

“She seems competent, Sir.”

“Glad you think so, she’s yours.”

“Excuse me sir?”

“You’re the new Sensors officer.”

Oh boy, Dick thought to himself, he hasn’t seen the report yet… This is going to suck.

PLEASE, please, please give me a problem in the first page. If he can think about star wars, he can think about not wanting to be here or dreading something, or– It doesn’t have to be the ultimate problem of the book, but it does have to be something immediate, important to the character, and that he wants to solve/avoid. I know it’s protocol to report to all these people, but here’s the thing? We don’t have the remotest clue why we’re along for the ride. We’re there because we’re there. It’s not unpleasant to read, but by page three I’d be going “Is anything important going to happen?” No. His being made the new sensors officer isn’t scary enough. Because I have no idea why that would be scary. Also, I don’t know what he expected to happen, so you haven’t foreshadowed.

You can write, but I think the scene is so clear in your head, you’re not pulling the reader in. Instead, the reader is a tethered balloon being pulled along, but has no reason or want to be there or find out what happens next. Give the Lt. a reason he’s there. Is it punishment? A reason he does or doesn’t like it. A reason so that “this is going to suck” makes sense. What pushed him there? What problem is he trying to solve by being there? Go read the very beginning of Prince Roger. The main character has no clue what’s at stake. Neither does anyone else. But each character has a problem and is trying to solve it (or grit his/her teeth at it.) It’s not the ultimate problem, but it is interesting, and enough to pull us in.

SAMPLE TWO

Prelude

The inferno raged around the island. The sea of dark orange bubbled and steamed where the surface of molten stone contacted the less-torrid pocket of heated gasses that served as the atmosphere in the vast chamber.

One massive bubble burst, sending lava soaring upwards and arcing towards the island. A pair of tiny eyes peered out from the black sand of the shoreline and caught the display of destructive forces approaching.

An instant before it would have fallen on the edge of the beach, the glob of lava flattened and spattered away in a shower of orange particles that dripped back down towards the sea.

A silvery glow raced from the spot where the glob had impacted over the creature’s head, shot like lightning along an upwards arc until it reached a point far above the exact center of the island.

The silver lightning struck the top of a thick spire that soared upwards from the distant ground. The spark of energy vanished, and somewhere below a gauge recorded the power input.

Back at the beach, the lizard scanned its surroundings and, detecting no larger predators in the immediate vicinity, crawled out from the sandy burrow and set about finding its own meal.

Okay, I’m not absolutely sure why the author (henceforth you, because I’ve found that works best in the first critique) is hiding so hard the fact that this creature is a lizard. The big reveal in the end doesn’t do anything. Sure, you can have the pair of eyes in the first, one, but I was momentarily trying to SEE eyes on a lava bubble. I know you’re doing panoramic, but anchor us on the lizard, so we follow it. And let us know …. at least give it a tail or something. before you say it’s lizard.

Chapter One: Italy

Matt Ross felt the warming sand between his toes as he jogged along the Italian beach, the mid-morning sun already reddening his pale, freckled skin. The breeze from offshore tousled his red-brown hair, despite his best efforts to keep it from dangling in front of the sunglasses shielding his green eyes.

This description cues romance. Is it? If he’s supposed to be an operative, give us a bit more of what’s in his noggin?

He wanted to enjoy the scenery.

To his right rose the foothills and the eroded mountains beyond the town, legacy of ancient volcanic activity (at least according to his current employer, Dottore Ignasio). To his left the Mediterranean Sea showed gentle swells as they rode into the land. But those weren’t the kind of swells foremost in his mind.

“Target acquired,” he subvocalized as he spotted a shapely form sunning herself on the sand ahead. She had all the right equipment, which was on prominent display. Matt really appreciated the fact that most Italian women didn’t wear tops on the beach.

He sped up his pace slightly and made sure to keep his head turned away as he neared the woman. When he figured he was just a couple feet past her position, Matt carefully angled his left foot and jammed his toes into the sand as he jogged.

Making only a feeble show of trying to avoid it, arms waving slightly, Matt went down, landing mostly on his left side. This conveniently positioned his face and muscular chest towards his target.

He watched as she sat up and looked in his direction. Interesting parts wiggled.

“Oh! Are you all right?” she called in accented English.

Matt pushed himself to a sitting position and and removed his sunglasses. He made a show of brushing sand from himself as he turned towards her and put on his best smile.

“I think so, Signorina,” he said in his tourist Italian. “My mind must have been on something else.”

Matt saw the olive-skinned beauty tilt her own sunglasses onto the dark hair above her eyes. Her head panned up and down, as if she was taking a good look at him. She smiled, and what a smile it was!

“You look all right from here, but perhaps you could come closer so I can make sure?” she asked.

Matt crawled over and crouched tailor-fashion on the end of her beach blanket. This let him gaze the full length of her, from petite toes to brown hair, and all points in between.

“So,” her plump lips moved, “you are English?”

if it’s not romance, you’re seriously miscuing. “Plump lips” has a vintage romance feel. Also, are we supposed to like him? he comes across as a bit of an ass. If he’s supposed to be a spy or an operative of some sort, you should give us some clues: things he tries to see or sees. How he’s using himself as a puppet, playing an act to get information.

“An American, actually.”

“What brings you here, outside the usual tourist season? As you can see,” she waved a slim arm about, “we are almost alone on the beach today.”

Matt stretched out his own arm and pointed inland, making sure to flex the muscles a bit more than was strictly necessary. “I’m working for the scientists studying the volcano. I fly their helicopter.”

“Hmmm,” her lips narrowed, “so you will not be here very long then?”

“A few weeks more. Time enough to become comfortable for a bit.”

She patted the blanket with one hand. “Perhaps you would like to rest here after your fall? Become comfortable?”

“I don’t want to impose-” Matt started while his mind raced. She fell for it!

Her head tilted up and she batted an eye. “I like that you are patient, but this is not my first time on the beach. I thought an American might be more direct.”

Matt was momentarily confused. She saw through me? And still wants me to stay?

Matt crawled up and stretched out beside her. The scent of her mixed with her sunscreen made for a pleasant combination. He put up a hand, tousled her hair with a finger.

“Have I told you I think I love you?” he murmured.

“Not until now,” she purred, “but I bet you say that to all the girls.”

Matt put on his best look of innocence. “It’s not my fault I say what girls want to hear. Besides, they were only girls. You are a woman fit for a man.”

She twisted around to face him. “But how do I know you are a man fit for a woman? You are funny, and good-looking, but maybe that is not enough?”

Taken aback by the sudden serious look in her eyes, Matt was still gathering his thoughts when a loud chiming came from the pouch dangling from his hip.

Thankful for the interruption, he opened it and yanked out his cell phone.

“Matt Ross here,” a long pause. “Yes, sir, I’ll be there inside half an hour.”

He clicked off the phone and turned back to her. She looked a little worried.

“That was Dr. Ignasio, the head geologist. Basically my boss. He needs me to fly an emergency helicopter trip up the mountain.”

Matt turned to look behind him, towards the dormant volcano.

“Look,” the woman said, twisting her own head to follow his motion, “is that smoke coming from the mountain?”

She was right. Black fumes wafted upwards from at least two areas on the rocky flanks.

“The scientists told me it was dormant,” Matt said. “Maybe they were wrong.”

He reluctantly got to his feet and waved a hand.

“Have to go, but I’ll keep in touch, okay?”

Then he was jogging back to the changing tents to get his clothes.

Okay, you introduced a problem, but his concentration on…. woman gives me the impression this is a romantic comedy one of those “Playboy felled by love” things. Which is at odds with the prelude.

You’re light on description, but you’re leaning into all sorts of movies, vintage early James Bond. But if your principal object isn’t the pursuit of female company, you need to give us a clue about why he’s there, and what his main job/object there is and some sense of the difficulty.

What you gave us…. he’s an amusing ass, and if your next scene is his facing a super-serious challenge, it works. But I’d still give us a clue there’s more to him up front, and that the diversion is to get his mind off the serious stuff.

UNLESS it’s a light romantic comedy.

Or unless the amusing ass act is an act, and he’s a spy or an operative, but in that case I need way more clues of what’s breathing down his neck, etc.

Look, it’s good, easy-reading. And I do realize in a book I’d have the cover and a blurb. But without them I don’t know if you’re close to your target.

Anyway. That’s it for these. I’m sorry the later is super light, but I quite literally don’t know what it’s aiming to be.

I’ll try to do two more late tomorrow, which means it will be here when you wake up. I did NOT count on ten.
Kicks pebble: Lots of brave people.