Hatrack River Writers Workshop: sci fi, 2000 words

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Posted by Sara Genge (Member # 3468) on :

Sci fi, 2000 words. Thank you for commenting on the first thirteen. I know the hook is not blatant, but is it still there? Would you read on? Is there anything confusing about this?

I met Master Yung on the first day of my internship at White-Horse Creek General Hospital. I struggled through decon’, desperate not to botch up but not wanting to admit that I’d never before scrubbed for surgery without supervision. Pre-spliced foetuses are notoriously sensitive to germs, prions and pollution so it took almost two hours to shower, shave every hair off my body, including my testicles, shower again with a betadine scrub, towel off with sterile paper wipes, dip into a nanobot infusion and wait for it to cool around my skin. Bald and eyebrowless, I slipped into hospital pyjamas, took a deep breath and entered the surgical room. I knew that if I didn't do anything stupid I would assist the greatest nanotech surgeon in History.

Posted by starsin (Member # 4081) on :

I'm a huge sci-fi fan, but this doesn't really have much of a sci-fi "ring" to it.
And about confusion: for me, there's a lot. Too much description of the decontamination (and spell that out too - "decon" can cause confusion). I think that it'd be less confusing if you merely said "Pre-spliced foetuses are notoriously sensitive to outside contaminants, so to make sure that I didn't accidentally carry any in, it took me almost two hours to decontaminate" or something like that. That was a bad try on my part, but I think that it was a little less confusing.
Would I want to read on? No. There wasn't anything that sparked my interest, nothing that aroused my curiousity. Just a lot of technical stuff about getting cleaned up. Which confused me.
Why is the MC nervous? Who is Master Yung? Why is MC doing this? What is going on? I'm confused!

Sorry if this came off as a bit rude - I'm still slightly new to the whole criticism thing.

starsin

[This message has been edited by starsin (edited October 30, 2006).]

Posted by oliverhouse (Member # 3432) on :

Hi Sara,

Looks like you're going to get contradictory advice.

I think this is a good example of telling the reader almost nothing about the story, but still setting a hook. I'm interested in foetus-splicing; I want to know why this inexperienced person gets to assist a nanotech surgeon; I want to know something more about the setting, which has a blend of old-fashioned ("White-Horse Creek General Hospital") and near-futuristic. At this point, I'm expecting a character story in which the science is important as setting more than as a driving force.

Nits:

* You could probably cut some of the decon description, especially if you're only at 2000 words overall. It feels a little long, and the mechanics seem a little off: it feels like a run-on.

* The use of testicles was a nice, clinical way to reveal the sex of the narrator, but I didn't find it particularly believable. Clean rooms in nanofabrication facilities for microchips don't require shaving areas that aren't exposed to the air, and shaving is probably a particularly inappropriate hair removal mechanism for testicles. [I have to admit, that's not a sentence I would have ever predicted that I would write. ] Consider leaving that part out, and showing gender through a beard or other masculine hair instead. At most, use a dip.

* from "desperate" to "supervision" feels just a little clunky, a little run-on-ish, to me.

Hope this helps. Are you looking for readers?

Regards,
Oliver

Posted by Grijalva (Member # 3295) on :

Same as Oliver, I liked it. I enjoyed all the descriptive aspects, but I also feel there should be something better than shaving.

I never felt you needed to get across so much in the first 13 lines. I feel the only main importance in the first 13 lines is to hook your reader, and I've been hooked, could be hooked better, but it's a hook none the less.

If your looking for readers I would gladly read on.

Posted by Elan (Member # 2442) on :

I also felt the detailed hair removal, and such was a little over the top. I know someone who works at Intel, in the high security microchip area... they have to wear what she calls the "bunny suit"... they get INTO a suit within a clean room, and the suit does the job of seeing that loose hairs and skin cells don't get shed inappropriately.

It doesn't make any sense to me that your character wouldn't follow a similar procedure. My suggestion is to give a compelling reason WHY this particular method of decontamination would be advisable to follow? And I agreed, the word "decon" threw me. Sounds like rat poison.

Posted by Sara Genge (Member # 3468) on :

Thanks!

You guys are right about the decontamination: I don't quite have a clear idea of where I'm going with it.
Thing is, when you're in a surgical room you can't just slip into a suit because the outside of the suit isn't sterile. Nowadays you just change into a non-sterile pijama, then you wash your hands, put on a sterile thing over the pijama, put on gloves and operate. But in high-risk areas like you have when you're dealing with people who are getting a bone-marrow transplant, you need even better sterilization. Then you have to shower with betadine and put on the pijama, then put on a cap and gloves and go see the patient (it's a resume, if there's a doctor out there, please don't chew me out for being imprecise)
Thing is, I wanted to make it even more extreme. Shaving is a good idea for sterilization; specially if the fetus is sensitive to exogenous proteins. Other methods of removing hair aren't quite that fast. At any rate, this is what is currently used in Hospitals on patients before surgery. There might be something better out there, but this sounds like cheap and cost-effective.

Ok, this is a mess. Ideas? How do I make this clearer?

I agree with changing the order of the second phrase so that fetuses are thrown in before the decontamination process (that way you know _why_ he's going through this)

Thanks everyone. Sorry for boring you. How can I convey this better?

Posted by oliverhouse (Member # 3432) on :

quote:
Sorry for boring you.

Don't be silly. This is much less boring than the press release I'm supposed to be writing.

Is shaving really a good idea? The first thing I thought when reading your first draft is that the MC is scraping skin cells all over the place. I would think that containment of pathogens etc. would be better. But I'm not in the field, so if you have better information, go with it.

Maybe -- I haven't thought this out -- you look into the requirements for leaving MOPP 4 in biochemical warfare. Similar problem (can't have nassty cruel proteins that are on the suit enter into the clean area) but in reverse (taking things off instead of putting them on). How do they clean the people and their suits off? Also look into clean rooms for semiconductors, which is almost the exact same problem you're describing.

Sterilization of instruments happens through UV radiation. That can cause burns on human skin, but maybe there's a technique in which they don a suit, and then the suit is irradiated. Or that, combined with a betadyne spray to actually wash particles off, too.

Just thinking out loud. I have to stop that now...

Posted by Verloren (Member # 3916) on :

The decontamination question brought to mind a book I had read a LONG time away (no, it wasn't in a galaxy far away) - The Andromeda Strain by Michael Crichton. I don't remember the specifics anymore, but he had 5 levels of decontamination, which all took several hours (like half a day or a day). Maybe you could look at his and then expand on it? I just had trouble getting the idea that shaving would be a "clean" thing- especially in a sensitive area. Maybe if the "shaving" was different from my current paradigm of using a metal razor, I would get it easier. Liek the hair is burned off or something. I just realized that maybe part of my problem is that "shaving" seems so un-futuristic to me. I have to shave, so I hope something easier/better comes in the future

I read the original from the flash you did, so it is difficult for me to comment on the hook since I "know" the rest of the story (at least the original). I was already hooked back then

Can you repost something so we can see where you're at with this? (or are you stuck on NaNo stuff?)

-V

Posted by wbriggs (Member # 2267) on :

I had a plausibility issue with a 2-hour decontamination process in which MC is doing it all w/o supervision. Something that long, you'd need *assistance*. Right?

On the hairiness issue, my impression is that when you go in for heart surgery, they shave everything from knees to scalp. True?

Although I do like to know what's happening, I trust I'll know what a pre-spliced foetus is pretty soon. What I don't know is why be interested. I'd be interested if I or someone close to me had a root canal, or got to meet Oprah, but I wouldn't want to read about these experiences if it happened to just anybody. What's the special thing that makes collaborating with Master Yung worth writing a story about? Start there, maybe.

[This message has been edited by wbriggs (edited November 04, 2006).]

Posted by Survivor (Member # 213) on :

Shaving is to eliminate the risk of actual hairs falling into the patient. It doesn't really do squat about microbes, prions, or pollution. If you're concerned about things at that level, then you need to use some kind of containment suit. Consider that your body continues to produce small quantities of every virus you've ever contracted for the rest of your life. Humans are walking, wheezing, shedding, germ factories. Taking a shower doesn't change that. The only way to completely sterilize a human is to expose every cell to high levels of denaturing agents such as gamma radiation, intense heat, corrosive chemicals, or the like.

Which, needless to say, would kill the human in question pretty throughly.

Posted by oliverhouse (Member # 3432) on :

quote:
On the hairiness issue, my impression is that when you go in for heart surgery, they shave everything from knees to scalp. True?

That's on the patient, though, not the doctor. Different issue, I think.