Legacy by I. Verse

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Robert_Moriyama
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Re: Legacy by I. Verse

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

davidsonhero wrote:Verse, are you sure you're really a dog. I mean this was an awfully good story for a Jack Russell Terrier.

Anyway, this was very well crafted and was therefore a great read.

I thought it was interesting that Meera and Khalid share a lot of qualities with vampires as they are treated in some works: the immortality and the inevitable boredom the ensues as the centuries tick by, the untold wealth, the growing thrill of violence as other sensations loose meaning and their devaluation of human life as they become less and less human themselves. Are they gods or monsters? An interesting setup and an interesting resolution. I started to feel for Meera by the end of the story and even though she probably deserved her fate, I still felt sorry for her in the end.

Here are a few notes, some thoughts that occurred to me while reading your story. You might find some valuable or maybe someone else here on the forums might respond to some of these with their own interpretations of your story.

Classically, we often see a protagonist grow or change in some way due to the conflict of a story. Is Meera the protagonist of this story or not? If not who is? The Avatar? Does Meera change in some way over the course of the story? Perhaps she is really a false protagonist.

At the beginning of your story the old rule of showing vs. telling did come to mind. Especially in the case of the affair Meera had with the first mate of the cruise ship. I thought this was a missed opportunity to show us her cruelty and coldness instead of just telling us about it. You described this relationship in about the same number of words you used to describe her trip to her villa. Perhaps though the abbreviated description of this relationship illustrates how little Meera valued it, so this might be just fine the way it is.

And I noticed these possible typos:
"As she and others liked her advanced beyond their mortal frames other had reverted." Should be "like" instead of "liked?"
"I let them camp nearby the villa grounds." I'm wondering whether this should just be "near" rather than "nearby." When I read it, I flagged it, but that may be a flaw in my own programming. ;) Maybe it works either way. Perhaps one of the resident Aphelion grammarians can take a crack at it.

Finally, I've read a couple of articles recently that propose we should eliminate adverbs as often as possible from our writing since they weaken verbs blah, blah, blah..., and I've been trying to watch my own creative writing for this problem. If you do a word search for "ly" the adverbs will pop out. It's just something worth looking into.

Again an excellent read: polished, entertaining, and thought provoking.

John
This can be viewed as a companion piece to Verse's "Less of Her". In both cases, a female character seeks to change what has become an uninteresting life by changing herself. In "Less of Her", the woman wants to transform herself into a cyborg work of art; in "Legacy", the woman is a cyborg but wants to regain her humanity (if only so she can become mortal).
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London (1876-1916)
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