Looking for feedback

[John]

At one stage I wanted to be a professional writer. Now I kindof just laugh at myself on that point. However, that doesn't mean I lost all interest in writing, although I haven't really spent that much time at it.

Here's a story short I wrote, and this is the first story I've completed outside of high school English.

While I haven't really had much experience writing, I have read a fair amount of literature. Reading helps with writing I think.

If anyone thinks I'm good enough to be published... ummm like anywhere... then I'll be quite happy and will be very willing to get stories published. However, I am realistic.

Anyway, this is a short story about the dream of space. I would appreciate any feedback good or bad, as both will help me.

http://alphadimensions.net/~john/On the Shore of Endless Worlds.doc

John

---------------------------- Added information -----------------------------

After reading all the helpful comments I adjusted the story. No major changes though, just made it clearer.

http://alphadimensions.net/~john/On the Shore of Endless Worlds2.doc

Note it's suggest to read the story before the posts below, as the posts below explain much of what's going on in the story.

John

 

[John]

How embarrassing

Not even one comment, good or bad.

I must be putting people to sleep before they read the end of the 5 page story.

Never realised I was that bad. Even Robert Jorden took at least a chapter to put people to sleep with his latest book.

Although maybe I can market a book of short stories to people suffering insomnia.

 

[IaNo]

John: I liked your story quite a bit. I thought the general idea was excellent and the way you repeated things in the story gave it a nice sense of infinite purpose that paralleled well with the idea of the infinite oceon of worlds. There was just a little bit much that you left unsaid for the reader to figure out for me, although I agree that you shouldn't explain everything. It was especially confusing with the scene change and the man David becomes a boy again. I liked the idea though, it just didn't seem to fit together as smoothly as it should. Also, what exactly was the "mission?" Was it to talk to one lonely kid on the beach somewhere and hope that it would reignite the dream of space into him and he would grow up to be a scientist and save humanity by continuing the space program into the future so they would have enough knowlege gained over the years to escape the exploding sun? That was the best they could think of? No warning of what would happen if they didn't do it, what unforseable event was going to happen in the future that only they could prevent? It seems like telling them the truth would have been much more effective. At least go to someone powerful, etc. Certainly, you could explain reasons, such as the fact that they aren't allowed to disturb events in the past or tell people about the future, etc. But at least explain that they know the boy on the beach is going to be the leader in the future or someone important, etc. This is all making me think of Terminator 2. Also, a lot of the writing needs to be edited and rewritten to sound more one of a kind and some of the dialogue is a bit unnatural. I really like your style of story telling though. Hope this helps. Keep up the good writing.

 

[John]

Thanks for your feedback IaNo.

I'm currently thinking about making the story more transparent, and trying to make the flashback flow from the story and back into the story more seamlessly.

You wrote, "Also, a lot of the writing needs to be edited and rewritten to sound more one of a kind and some of the dialogue is a bit unnatural."

I'm still fairly amateur at present, but I don't want to stay that way. If you could elaborate that comment, that could help me improve my writing.

As for the whole time changing issue. I originally considered this very carefully. I figured I would leave it out as the original explaination I came up with was rather involved. Thus distracting the reading from the main story. However, from your feedback I think I need to put a condensed version in.

Just telling people, doom is coming, wouldn't really work I think. For example.

"Excuse me Mr president, but in one or two billion years the earth is going to get destoried by the sun."

Even after proving that you're from the future and not an escaped loony, it's difficult to believe that people will care enough to spend several generations trying to develop space flight. People just don't care about future doom in the billion of year time scale.

They could go back only a couple of centuries. However, they've been unsuccessful reaching other stars for more than two generations. They have no idea how long it will take.

Instead think about what started our current space program. It was all because a large number of people wanted to see mankind explore space. It captured people's imagination.

Now how could you spread a idea like that, and hopefully make it last a few generations perhaps longer? The answer is writers. Especially book writers as books tend to stay around far longer than movies, newspapers etc.

Think carefully about Orwell, and a few other stories and movies that tell about the power of media used to control the population. We are greatly affected by the ideas that are put towards us, and this can be a good thing or a bad thing.

So far in all literature I've seen, emphasis has been mainly placed on the evil of media. It warps minds, misleads the population, and changes how we think for the worse. The good aspects are subtler and generally don't lead to obvious changes that can be easily linked back to the media, so that is mainly ignored in many stories. I was hoping I could incorporate one of the good aspects into my story.

This was one of the themes I was hoping people would pick up in my story was how a writer can inspire others with his ideas and dreams. I did my best to hide it, but I think I hid it too well. I didn't want to make it obvious because the half suggested ideas tend to have greater impact in the long run. You're left to think about it, look at the possiblities. When people have to figure out the idea themselves they more fully realise what it means than if you just tell it to them.

In the story I mention that the experts decided that David could do what nobody else could, because he "used" to believe in the dream of space. He's the best qualified out of the whole of the future world, because nobody else had recaptured the dream even for the short time David had. Also this is used to highlight the despair that is rather prevalent in David's time.

They were going to use their one chance to get David to try and plant the dream of space in the past. Obviously, since they were only getting one chance to change history they had thought this through very carefully.

So they picked a great writer that could eventually spread this dream, and sent their best chance (David) back to try and inspire the writer.

Well thanks for your feedback, it a pity I didn't communicate the above ideas effectively.

John

 

[Singleton]

I liked that story quite a bit, but I have a lot of suggestions. I think it has increcible promise, but is currently lacking. But before I get into a details, I have my own little story.

I started a short story about a month ago. It was initially based on a premise, and I got to about page two and had no idea where I was going. So I continued down the road of randomness, until I got a brainflash about an ending. I typed it up, brought in my story at around 5 pages. Afterwards, I wrote up an explanation, much like yours in your post. I realized how little of it was in the story. It is now 8 pages long.

No to your story - I followed a lot of the under plot, but some of the interesting details you informed me of below absolutely escaped me. You raised some interesting questions, which I had not even thought of. It is obvious that you ahve put a lot of thought into the concept behind this story. In a large way, however, that is not reflected in the story. Go through and start adding things in bits and peices. I find that with a short story, printing it out and spreading the pages across the desk is a good way to look at it all and decide where to add some hints. Then read back through and see if the bits fit. Eventually you'll get to the place where adding anymore would be giving away too much. You want to make it seem complex, which your description made clear, without making it ambiguous.

I felt the writing itself was quite good. I caught no spelling errors, but I think you may have made some grammar mistakes as far as dialogue is concerned. You had new paragraphs starting for the same speaker - there were times when I read a paragraph and thought it was being spoken by someone other than who it actually was.

So, there are my two sense, and I enjoy reading you subsequent editions.

BTW, don't beat yourself up that only two have commented - It's only been one day.

 

[John]

Originally posted by Singleton
I liked that story quite a bit, but I have a lot of suggestions. I think it has increcible promise, but is currently lacking. But before I get into a details, I have my own little story.

I started a short story about a month ago. It was initially based on a premise, and I got to about page two and had no idea where I was going. So I continued down the road of randomness, until I got a brainflash about an ending. I typed it up, brought in my story at around 5 pages. Afterwards, I wrote up an explanation, much like yours in your post. I realized how little of it was in the story. It is now 8 pages long.

No to your story - I followed a lot of the under plot, but some of the interesting details you informed me of below absolutely escaped me. You raised some interesting questions, which I had not even thought of. It is obvious that you ahve put a lot of thought into the concept behind this story. In a large way, however, that is not reflected in the story.

I don't intend to make all the themes clear in the story. First and foremost because the reader would get side tracked from the main story line. Some things I intended to leave as hints, that most who simply want to the skim the story will ignore.

Go through and start adding things in bits and peices. I find that with a short story, printing it out and spreading the pages across the desk is a good way to look at it all and decide where to add some hints. Then read back through and see if the bits fit. Eventually you'll get to the place where adding anymore would be giving away too much. You want to make it seem complex, which your description made clear, without making it ambiguous.

One thing a short story can do, which a novel can't, is to generate a crystal focus on a single idea. A novel needs to branch out to maintain reader interest. I hope to maintain that focus while adding some side themes so the storyline isn't completely two dimensional like some short stories that focus too much on a particular issue. So what I'm aiming for is fractal like complexity. People that skim the story will pick up the basic outline enjoy that and then go do something else without being frustrated. Others that like to ponder after they've read a story can start picking up some of the related but hidden themes.

I felt the writing itself was quite good. I caught no spelling errors, but I think you may have made some grammar mistakes as far as dialogue is concerned.

I will admit that my grammar mistakes were more from carelessness than design. I was worried about polishing the dialogue too much that it would sound fake, because I didn't think I have the skill to polish and still have natural sounding dialogue. I wrote dialogue by imagining the person speaking in the setting and just writing down the words that came out. If it made sense to me I kept it. Not a very good method I admit.

You had new paragraphs starting for the same speaker - there were times when I read a paragraph and thought it was being spoken by someone other than who it actually was.

I was trying to use new paragraphs to slow the reader down and hence put pauses in a character's dialogue. I guess wasn’t very successful. Some writers do this by putting a descriptive passage in between. However, I was worried that descriptive passages would take attention away from the ideas in the dialogue.

From the novels and short stories I’ve read. I’ve liked the short stories that ONLY use descriptive language to describe important things. The descriptions you do put in have far more effect when you decide to use them and the reader won’t feel the story is going slowly. In full-length novels it seems good to have extended descriptions of feelings, items, weather and places that aren’t always important. When this is used in short stories, the descriptions seem somewhat overdone. This is just my opinion. I would like to hear what other people think about the differences between short stories and novels.

Also going back a bit, does anyone have any ideas on how to have the sense of a pause in one character’s dialogue without bulking it up with superficial language? Putting a new paragraph in seems to annoy the readers from the feedback I’ve gotten, and I don’t know any other way to do it.

So, there are my two sense, and I enjoy reading you subsequent editions.

BTW, don't beat yourself up that only two have commented - It's only been one day.

Thanks for the feedback Singleton. I appreciated the compliments and the criticism. It's helped me to think about what I've been doing and what I'm trying to do.

John

 

[Singleton]

"I will admit that my grammar mistakes were more from carelessness than design. I was worried about polishing the dialogue too much that it would sound fake, because I didn't think I have the skill to polish and still have natural sounding dialogue. I wrote dialogue by imagining the person speaking in the setting and just writing down the words that came out. If it made sense to me I kept it. Not a very good method I admit."

No, I believe it's a pretty good method. If you can hear someone (or yourself) saying it, then it's probably natural.

"Also going back a bit, does anyone have any ideas on how to have the sense of a pause in one character’s dialogue without bulking it up with superficial language? Putting a new paragraph in seems to annoy the readers from the feedback I’ve gotten, and I don’t know any other way to do it."

You could always insert a generic "he paused" or "she paused." My problem, however, was that there was very little indication that the paragraphs following were by the same speaker. I recently finished Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray," which was heavy on dialogue. When a new section of dialogue between two characters began, Wilde would make it quite clear who was speaking each line, by indicating it with "he said/she said" or other variants thereof. If the conversation lasted a while, he would leave those things out, so that it was just one speaker right after another.

Also, when one character was speaking for a while, using mulitple paragraphs, he would follow a similar method. For the first two or three paragraphs, "he said" or "he continued" was used. For the following paragraphs, it was sort of understood that it was the same person who was still speaking.

Another thing is that it was in more formal paragraph form - no blank lines between paragraphs, first line of new paragraph indented.

I hope this helps a little, as far as making the dialogue more clear.

Now, as far as pace is concerned. You can add ellispes or describe, briefly, such actions as looking down at hands, crossing legs, taking a drag from a cigarette, etc. It shows that the speaker isn't worried about speed, and helps the reader to slow down.

 

[John]

Originally posted by Singleton
"Also going back a bit, does anyone have any ideas on how to have the sense of a pause in one character’s dialogue without bulking it up with superficial language? Putting a new paragraph in seems to annoy the readers from the feedback I’ve gotten, and I don’t know any other way to do it."

You could always insert a generic "he paused" or "she paused." My problem, however, was that there was very little indication that the paragraphs following were by the same speaker.

Actually I was very careful about that restating the speaker's name when they continued talking in the next paragraph. However, you're right in that some of the dialogue needs more indication who's speaking. You can figure it easily enough, but it difficult enough for one or two lines that it distracts the reader from the story.

I recently finished Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray," which was heavy on dialogue. When a new section of dialogue between two characters began, Wilde would make it quite clear who was speaking each line, by indicating it with "he said/she said" or other variants thereof. If the conversation lasted a while, he would leave those things out, so that it was just one speaker right after another.

Also, when one character was speaking for a while, using mulitple paragraphs, he would follow a similar method. For the first two or three paragraphs, "he said" or "he continued" was used. For the following paragraphs, it was sort of understood that it was the same person who was still speaking.

Another thing is that it was in more formal paragraph form - no blank lines between paragraphs, first line of new paragraph indented.

Okay thanks. The rule of thumb I was using was.

Always put in a character label (David said etc) whenever the character spoke over multiple paragraphs. If the other character is replying you can leave out the character label. Basically if some dialogue wasn't followed by an indication of the character's name then it was the other character replying.

I've seen it used before, but I have to admit it's not that common to see it used as much as I have done. Also you mentioned that in the book you've read the writer had the back and forth dialogue for a few rounds before letting the reader make the assumption that the each paragraph is the other character. I didn't wait for the dialogue to make a few rounds before using it.

I also realised, when I was rewriting the story, that the dialogue can be difficult to follow at the start because I was making the boy seem like a shadow to the reader as much as he was to David. Near the end of the first scene I stopped labeling the boy's dialogue, as David is becoming more and more lost in his own thoughts. You're meant to get the impression David didn't do a very good job talking with the kid since he didn't focus too much on the boy near the end. David was instead trying to convince himself, because he didn't quite believe in the dream.

Thanks for that help, I'll make sure that I pay more attention to this problem.

Now if only I could figure out what IaNo meant by "and rewritten to sound more one of a kind".

John

 

[Singleton]

In the paragraph beginning "David did not know what to say" (near the beginning) you may want to switch things around a bit. It is not obvious that "the man" who has been speaking is actually David. If you said "He did not know what to say" and then had the next sentence begin with "David", it would be more clear that "he" is David. I had thought at first that David was the boy. Other than this, the whole first section of dialogue flows very smoothly and naturally.

-"'I would like to see the sun rise,' David pleaded."-

This phrase seemed a little broken off from David's statement from the paragraph before. A "but" or a "just" would work to fix this.

I made a lot more connections on my second reading. I had at first taken issue with your whole concept of time travel being possible, but I caught the statement "we're just ghosts" the second time. Obviously, Dave and Sam aren't really in the boy's time - only their spirits are. It would be impossible for them to physically inhabit it.

The idea of "why explore when we can make dreams here" also made more sense. It is a very subtle commentary on our current fascination with video games, hyper-realistic movies, and virtual reality machines. You should see the stuff they have at arcades these days.

"'But we were always meant to explore space, and Earth was meant to be our nursery. Our time wasn’t meant to end with the dying of this world.'"

I may be reading a lot into your story, but it seems to me, depending on your worldview, that this may be a clue to the ending. If you believe in fate, destiny, or the divine purpose of God, that is. Your character said, essentially, that humans were fated to travel into space. If you believe in fate, then it would be quite obvious that man did make it there.

I see two possible discrepancies, as far as believability is concerned. If Dave and Samantha had travelled back in time hundreds of millions of years, then their dialect would be far different than the boy's. I have no idea how you would indicate this, however.

I understand that it had to be hundreds of millions of years in order for the sun to turn into a red giant, but it seems highly unlikely that we wouldn't have made it out of our galaxy by that time. Even if there were no focus on space travel, the advancement of technology would make it so that far less time would be needed to get to other planets. Perhaps you could have the earth dying from pollution, nuclear war, etc. This way a lapse of a few centuries only would be needed.

However, it is your story. I hope I have helped you think through it under a new light. It is quite good. You could easily expand it into a novel, though you stated that you wanted to focus on one theme.

 

[John]

Well I think I've finished ironing out the problems with the dialogue. I added extra lines so the story flows more smoothly into and out of the flashback, and added a little more explanation about what's going on.

I think I'm happy with it and will probably only make grammar spelling adjustments if I notice anything.

http://alphadimensions.net/~john/On the Shore of Endless Worlds2.doc

To Singleton:

You came up with a different theory of time travel to what I came up with for this story, but sci-fiction is like that. You figure everything out to the best of your ability, then you write it nice and general. Even if you do have expert knowledge if it doesn't immediately impact on the plot you keep it general. That way readers don't have issues with their own logic or understanding. If you look carefully at older sci-fiction stories which have been hailed as predicting the future. They subtlety keep things open to interpretation. It’s not a matter of being right. It’s a matter of allowing readers to believe what you have told them is in some way possible, and leaving enough open that your story won’t contradict new findings.

Here’s what I had incorporated into my story. They have a single chance to change the past, after they change the past it changes the future and they cease to exist. So they travel backwards in time David steps out of the temporal shield, which is like a bubble outside of this reality. Once David steps starts affecting the past he’s got a limited amount of time before the changes make their way into the future and basically makes it so he doesn’t exist any more. He has the chat, then rushes back and gets back into the temporal shield. Shortly after time runs out and they can’t leave the temporal shield any more because they will cease to exist as soon as they step out.

Then there’s a bit of bending in the truth, because logically the changes in the past should have been erased when they were erased, but if the changes were erased then they still travel through time to make the changes. This generates a temporal paradox (all sci-fiction fans should understand that). The way I get around this temporal paradox is to say the once a change is made to the time stream, the time stream strangles out the possible feedback and keeps the change in the past, while changing everything in the future. In other words reality warps a little so the universe doesn’t crash like a computer program with several bad memory leaks.

You’re right in the other 2nd observation.

The final observation you made was more to do with people’s faith in some larger power at work. Many people feel that there has to be something guiding events. I have no idea in this matter and am currently fence sitting. However, I would expect that many people believe this consciously or subconsciously, and this would come through when people are talking about an event as great as the ending of the world.

Your first discrepancy is entirely true, but a reader doesn’t want to learn a new made up dialect while reading the story.

You second discrepancy, might be true, but you’ve only to look at some of the older sci-fiction movies to see how many of people’s expectations in the progression of technology vastly outstrip what actually happens. 2001 a space odyssey, has a neural net advanced enough to hold conversations, and manned space ships going all the way out to Jupiter. At present these are way beyond what we are capable of doing and it’s 2003.

Anyway we don’t need a nuclear war or plague to slow us down. A likely cause will be stagnation. Which is what I mainly hinted on with the comment about “why explore when we can make dreams here”. Humanity might no longer striving in the real world, because it’s easier to satisfy ourselves in the imaginary.

There’s probably more hidden ideas somewhere in there. If you need to get them clarified, just ask.

John

 

[Singleton]

John:

I skimmed back through your revised story, and it looks great. The dialogue is a lot more clear now.

 

[IaNo]

Ok. I'm back. I'd have to say I understood the premise of your story and after reading your response to my comments I can see that you thought a lot about them. Orwell is one of my favorite authors and I like your idea that it is good to show the positive sides of the media that get overpowered by the bad. The problem I have is that the story expresses these ideas but it seems so so so unlikely that it doesn't work for me.

"Even after proving that you're from the future and not an escaped loony, it's difficult to believe that people will care enough to spend several generations trying to develop space flight. People just don't care about future doom in the billion of year time scale."

ARE YOU JOKING! If someone could prove that they were from the future I think the President would be more than eager enough to learn the secrets of time travel, knowlege of the future, etc. from them to put some interest in the spave program and be seen, through the media, as the savior of the world.

I don't know. I guess I just used by brain too much and thought of your story as a story when it is more of an "idea piece" not to be taken too literally. Also, it somehow wasn't clear to me that the kid WAS going to be a good writer. It seemed more to me that the dream of space had already died and that he had childish dreams of being a science fiction writer that were never going to come true. The whole writers block thing, along with all the other information in the story, gave me that impression, that it was hopeless. Maybe if you had made him a well known popular writer who was putting the final touches on his award winning novel "On the Shores of Endless Worlds" or something that makes it clear that David was successful.

oh, one other thing. Why would changing the past automatically make it so that David wouldn't exist? Only if what he did affected that aspect of life, ie killing a distant great great great (etc) grandparent, would it make a difference. I can see that you mean that even a minor change of the past can evolve to drastic changes over billions of years and that that is the only way you can tell he was successful, but it seems a rather unsuccessful success.

 

[John]

Originally posted by IaNo
Ok. I'm back. I'd have to say I understood the premise of your story and after reading your response to my comments I can see that you thought a lot about them. Orwell is one of my favorite authors and I like your idea that it is good to show the positive sides of the media that get overpowered by the bad. The problem I have is that the story expresses these ideas but it seems so so so unlikely that it doesn't work for me.

"Even after proving that you're from the future and not an escaped loony, it's difficult to believe that people will care enough to spend several generations trying to develop space flight. People just don't care about future doom in the billion of year time scale."

ARE YOU JOKING! If someone could prove that they were from the future I think the President would be more than eager enough to learn the secrets of time travel, knowlege of the future, etc. from them to put some interest in the spave program and be seen, through the media, as the savior of the world.

That’s exactly, why they wouldn’t go after a president. The president would need to keep proof, but David is doomed to just vanish. Also teaching people knowledge takes more than a few minutes to do. They only had a few minutes to work with.

If you read back to my explanation of time travel, you'll see the guy won't be around afterwards. David had to hurry away back to the temporal shield after just a short conversation with the kid. Objects from the future just won't last, what they could leave is only the memory of speaking to someone from the future. It's a short memory at that.

I came up with the story's physics straight after the initial concept, then wrote the story so it wouldn't violate the physics system I came up with.

Also having a single man (the president) driving the space program wouldn’t work. When the man dies most likely things will return to the way there were, that’s assuming the president can keep trying to get the space program running with little results. Why should the president expect results in one lifetime when an united future world more technologically advanced couldn’t get close in a few generations.

Another thing I’m suggesting which wasn’t picked up yet by anyone is that a dream is more persistent than any single man could ever be. That’s what they really needed if they were to have any hope. The persistence of people’s dreams that cross generations. They weren’t even sure space travel was possible, so they needed people to try at it as long as possible. The only other way I could possibly see them doing it, is to start a religion based on obtaining space travel. However, I prefer not to throw religion into my work. Distracts the reader from what I’m actually saying.

I don't know. I guess I just used by brain too much and thought of your story as a story when it is more of an "idea piece" not to be taken too literally. Also, it somehow wasn't clear to me that the kid WAS going to be a good writer. It seemed more to me that the dream of space had already died and that he had childish dreams of being a science fiction writer that were never going to come true. The whole writers block thing, along with all the other information in the story, gave me that impression, that it was hopeless. Maybe if you had made him a well known popular writer who was putting the final touches on his award winning novel "On the Shores of Endless Worlds" or something that makes it clear that David was successful.

Yes indeed it's an idea piece more than anything else. When there's no action in a story it's definitely a story meant to tell about ideas.

I don't like giving absolutes. It's one of the hidden themes of the story. There are no certainties with life, just possibilities. I also wanted to end the story with hope, which is all about possibilities, not with conclusion, which is all about certainties.

Also the writers block thing was more to suggest that the boy was starting to think of new things. I've noticed writers block sometimes comes about when you've exhausted the ideas you've already come up with. It was like the boy saying, “hrmm I need a new idea”. Then the boy thinks of the conversation he had with a stranger earlier. I was trying to highlight the fact the boy decided to do something different from what he would normally write.

Also it was a subtle hint that writers block happens to everyone.

[/QUOTE]
oh, one other thing. Why would changing the past automatically make it so that David wouldn't exist? Only if what he did affected that aspect of life, ie killing a distant great great great (etc) grandparent, would it make a difference. I can see that you mean that even a minor change of the past can evolve to drastic changes over billions of years and that that is the only way you can tell he was successful, but it seems a rather unsuccessful success. [/QUOTE]

The time span other time traveller stories talk about is a lot smaller 200 years. Two billion years and I bet one person could probably be the great great great ..... great grand father of just about everyone else in the world. It's like an avalanche effect. Just a little change and it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. The further you are from the change the bigger it gets. I'm certain that the moisture breathed out in David's short stay would probably mean the difference between a storm killing someone and there not even being a storm maybe 1million years down the track. That someone probably has a 100% chance of being a forbearer, due to interbreeding over 2 billion years.

The time scale is what makes the little changes so drastic.

As for the unsuccessful success, you've touched on another hidden theme. You probably noticed I said that the people in David's time were jaded with dreams and hopes. But if you think about it that's not entirely true. The people in the story don't see it as a dream, but really they have the dream of being able to avert the extinction of the human race. Is that not something worth dying for? They all know they're doomed, but they're willing to give up even having existed in the hope of saving the human race.

I always liked the idea of a noble deed that nobody finds out about. There's something pure about it, as they know they will get no self-gratification, not even post humorously. It removes all doubt whether the person has ulterior motives.

Have you ever done a good deed, and wondered whether you did it because you were kind or because you wanted the person to like you more. Or maybe because you wanted your friends to think better of you. Or maybe even to feel better about yourself. When I first came up with that idea it drove me crazy for weeks (if you want to know the answer I came up with to that question ask me). Anyway If you cease to exist afterwards, because you did the good deed, well you certainly aren’t getting anything out of it.

I really spent a long time thinking about this story before I even wrote the first word. There is one flaw that makes this story impossible in my mind anyway, and that's to do with temporal theory.

Just to save you time IaNo, I'll say what the problems I see are so you don't have to post again.
1. My story makes the assumption time travel is easier than space travel.
2. What my characters do will cause a temporal paradox and I would hedge bets on the universe breaking down.

I'm guessing you don't like my story IaNo, but that's okay. You just think differently from me and that's what makes writing so diverse.

I'm a member of the PWOLCEAU (Posts With Overly Long Complicated Explanations Are Us) club.

John

 

[John]

Oh yeah in addition to the above.

You're thinking too grand IaNo. Talking to a world leader. Or the kid getting his story as a best seller.

For surely, who is more inspiring? The stable boy who gave his life to save a kingdom. Or the king that saved his kingdom and died a heroic death.

Think about that. I think the stable boy is more inspiring, so I portrayed my all characters as small and human to the end.

PS: If I thought a world leader would be what would make the most sense in my story, like you suggested, I would try and have a frail world leader. However, I don't think it would have worked as well.

John

 

[John]

I didn't pick up on this at first because it seemed silly to me.

"to be saviour of the world"

Lets see scientists already know for certain the sun will destory the earth in a few billion years. We don't need time travel to tell us that.

So why aren't governments telling us that we need to develop space travel now? Because it's so far into the future that people don't think it will matter.

This is what I see happening. The president tells the people about future doom which they already know about. The people yawn a bit. Then president tells them the human race is at stake way way in the future. That gets some people moving, but it's unlikely to make people spend more than one generation on it. People will reason that the problem will be eventually solved now that they know about it. After all there's still a few billion years of time. Most likely it'll get put in the too hard do later when there's better technology basket. Then society forgets all about it after a million years or so.

You can't tell me you see fault in that reasoning? Most students leave assignments to the later, because there seems to be plenty of time. If the assignment is too hard and takes longer than expected then it never gets finished.

Take someone that enjoys writing stories for example. They enjoy it and write a 100 story in their spare time. The teacher asks the class to write story that's at least 50 page and all the writer has to do is hand in what they've completed. Where everyone who hasn't had experience writing leaves it until a month or so before it's due. They underestimate the time and end up not finishing it.

Doom isn't the best way of getting a really hard task that can be underestimated done. It's much more likely to work if the person/society wants to do the really hard task.

My viewpoint on human nature leads me to believe approaching a world leader would be almost pointless.

John

 

[IaNo]

John:

I, in fact, like your story a lot and I believe that was the first response I gave you. I find you are taking my criticism very critically. If you don't want to change your story, don't ask for criticism. I still strongly disagree with your view of what would invoke change. I understand what you are going for though. You really think that if people came from the future and showed that time travel was possible that the time span would be important? Essentially, it would be bringing the distant future to the present making all problems exist in one time. I guess the main problem is that you are writing an idea piece that relies heavily on scientific principles that you seem to have studied in great details. You don't include this information you rely on in your story, leaving the uninformed reader finding it improbable. I really like the style and themes of the story but that one aspect of it is not really working for me. And just because you can form a good rebuttal to any criticism to your work doesn't prove that you are right (in the sense that once you expose your work to the public it is in their hands to think what they will.) I've found similar problems in my own writing and thinking. I'll tend to ask for criticism and then spend a lot of time debating what the people said was wrong with my story. Eventually, I found that it wasn't helpful at all unless I was going to include some of it in my story. Now I just say thanks and try to look at my work from other points of view in the hopes that I can improve.
You have a great writing style.
IaNo

 

[John]

IaNo

I wrote another really long post in reply to you which aplogoised about being critical, but then went into more detailed explanation in an attempt to make you understand my viewpoint on that detail I went on and on about. Then I thought about it, and deleted all that.

Anyway sorry about being critical, I didn't meant to be. I was just really focused on trying to make you understand my reasoning.

The argument we're having isn't really about time travel, but human nature. We actually have different viewpoints on how humans react, but this point is really moot.

There are no real scientific principles behind time travel really. It's all sci-fiction. I just cobbled together something to that made as much sense as I possibly could from all the literature I've read plus my own ideas.

I've thought about the changes required if I did it your way, and it would change the mood of the story completely. So I decided to keep it the way it is.

The ideas all work for me. I'm disappointed that one point didn't work for you and that's really why I tried so hard to explain it. Simply, because I wanted you to enjoy the story more.

Oh yeah saying "ARE YOU JOKING!" in big capital letters usually gets an over reaction from most people. *chuckle*

Finally, it's great to know you enjoyed my story. That's one of the main reasons why I decided to write it.

John

 

[Singleton]

This is what I see happening. The president tells the people about future doom which they already know about. The people yawn a bit. Then president tells them the human race is at stake way way in the future. That gets some people moving, but it's unlikely to make people spend more than one generation on it. People will reason that the problem will be eventually solved now that they know about it. After all there's still a few billion years of time. Most likely it'll get put in the too hard do later when there's better technology basket. Then society forgets all about it after a million years or so.

You're forgetting one thing - there have only been around 10,000 years of human history so far. Seeing how far we've come, I don't think it will take too long to develop space travel. Man started bashing rocks together to make sparks. Now he's bashing atoms together to fuel cities occupied by millions.

 

[John]

Originally posted by Singleton


You're forgetting one thing - there have only been around 10,000 years of human history so far. Seeing how far we've come, I don't think it will take too long to develop space travel. Man started bashing rocks together to make sparks. Now he's bashing atoms together to fuel cities occupied by millions.

I've already explained that point although I didn't really make it very clear. Stagnation is a good reason for lack of development.

Originally posted by John

You second discrepancy, might be true, but you’ve only to look at some of the older sci-fiction movies to see how many of people’s expectations in the progression of technology vastly outstrip what actually happens. 2001 a space odyssey, has a neural net advanced enough to hold conversations, and manned space ships going all the way out to Jupiter. At present these are way beyond what we are capable of doing and it’s 2003.

Anyway we don’t need a nuclear war or plague to slow us down. A likely cause will be stagnation. Which is what I mainly hinted on with the comment about “why explore when we can make dreams here”. Humanity might no longer striving in the real world, because it’s easier to satisfy ourselves in the imaginary.

I hope this explains why I thought humanity might get itself into such a situation.

John

 

[John]

The reason why my story seems to have so many gaps is because I wrote it so a child could read it and get the main theme without getting confused by concepts too complex for him. An adult will notice the gaps and start thinking.

There are many questions I've tried to subtly raise and I've done my best to hide the answers I came up with between the lines. While there's enough information for me to come along (if I hadn't written it) and realise all these things, there may not be enough for other people who have different beliefs or a different knowledge base.

That's okay, because if you're imaginative you can come up with your own conclusions. In fact I would feel very proud knowing that people have read my story and because of it have come up with their own ideas. The idea of the story is to make you think and then see how your thoughts relate to the world you live in. If you're not into deep pondering then you can just read the main theme enjoy the story and walk away.

If you are into deep thinking then the story can lead you to new ideas or reinforce old ones. I'm not after people to come up with the exact same ideas as me. However, it would be cruel to ask questions I have no answers for, then to expect people to come up with answers.

That's part of the reason I spent so long explaining my ideas here. Just to say hey I'm not a bastard that posed questions I don't have answers for. However, it would be great if you thought through the information I have given you and came up with your own meanings. I think Simpleton came up with a different theory of time travel to me. I liked his idea and I think it actually fit very well into the story, but I wrote out what I thought so he could compare notes.

I might go for a nice shallow story next time (comparatively). I've written more on this board than I wrote in my story.

John