quote:
“Chance of success?”
“97% all’s sunshine, but that’s with no accidents”
“And the other 3%?”
“The human race is enslaved by giant clams”
“Very funny”
“You know what I mean. The computer’s pretty good at modelling cause and effect, but it’s far from perfect.”Marcus considered the odds. 97% wasn’t bad odds, missions had been launched with positivity probabilities as low as 93%, but he still wasn’t entirely comfortable. Glen was right, a little bit of bad luck and who know's what could happen. Knowing that it would be another Marcus who would be cleaning up, wasn't much comfort.
I'm not quite ready for readers, but I'd love critiques on the first 13. Specifically I'm wondering whether using dialogue before introducing the characters is confusing, and whether it's sufficiently clear that they are discussing the positive negative effects of making a change sometime in the past.
[This message has been edited by smncameron (edited February 15, 2008).]
"Very funny, Glen."
If this is about time travel I think you need to change those percentage numbers. A three percent failure rate is way too much to risk if it means altering reality in unforseen ways. Better make that margin a lot smaller.
I'm a bit more reluctant to use speech headings, because it just doesn't sound natural to me. If it's causing confusion I'll figure out a way to change it.
I agree with snapper on the tags.
spelling error- modeling
I think the repetition in the "percents" below isn't nescessary. That prime real estate could be used for something to bring more details into the story.
Otherwise I like the intro. It got my interest. I am no editor but if you need a reader to test your time travel usage or plot strength, I could use the crit practice.
[This message has been edited by Bent Tree (edited February 15, 2008).]
quote:
whether it's sufficiently clear that they are discussing the positive negative effects of making a change sometime in the past.
There's nothing in the first 13 that mentions time travel or changing the past. The reference to "another Marcus" is vaguely puzzling, but one would only associate it with changing the past (and by implication, the present) if one knew this was a time travel story. (The only specific mentions of time travel are in your comments on the story.) From the dialogue, they could just as easily be discussing a mission in a space-ship, or a submarine.
Every idea, including time travel, has been done before, and there's no reason not to do it again. (I did see advice somewhere that editors were not buying time travel stories, then I saw one published in a major magazine just a short while later. I think they'll buy anything if it's a good story.) The trick, as you surmise, is to do it with a unique angle. I like time travel stories, when they're done well.
“97% all’s sunshine, but that’s with no accidents” -- if the 97% assumes no accidents, then the chance of success is not 97%, it's less. Shouldn't they should be estimating the probability of accidents as well? Otherwise the 97% statistic is surely meaningless. The seeming inaccuracy blew me out of the story because I would expect them to be more careful with their mathematics. Indeed, if it's time travel, I'd expect them to be estimating liklihood of success in the 99.lots-of-nines-% range, because just one mistake will eliminate their present. (99.7% means three trips in one thousand will fail--even 20th century airliners do a lot, lot better than that.)
Some people don't like stories that leap straight into dialogue. I'm not one of them, I'll happily listen to the characters, watch them do things, and figure it out along the way.
Hope this helps,
Pat
[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited February 16, 2008).]
[This message has been edited by TaleSpinner (edited February 16, 2008).]
quote:
There's nothing in the first 13 that mentions time travel or changing the past.
My bad. The next line was going to be something along the lines of "alright send him back", but it turned out to be the fourteenth line.