Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-24841494-20140317225654/@comment-24077689-20140318180839



I want you to read this and not take it personally. I say that because I'm about to get very picky. I'm not insulting you, I encourage you to revisit this idea with a bit more vigor. Here is my advice:

Tread carefully. First of all, Eons was an interesting story but it lacked a pretty major component: plot. From your outline here I’m seeing so much content it’s giving me a headache. Science Fiction isn’t an easy thing to write, and I’m seeing the makings of a pretty mediocre story. You’re not off to a good start, is what I mean. First of all, this ultra-future dystopian society is a bit confusing. They’re humans but they haven’t evolved? I mean, just the stress of the new space environment and subsequent totally artificial planet would cause humans to adapt. Our bodies would literally have to evolve so that we could survive such an environment. It’s unrealistic to say that we didn’t change over trillions of years.

I’d suggest doing some research on current wearable technologies. By that time in the future I’m sure body armor would have gone beyond ceramics and Kevlar. Plus you’re in a totally different environment with different resources. Plus, let’s talk about works by authors like Gibson, or Serial Experiments: Lain, or Ghost in the Shell. You’re basically attempting to craft a cyberpunk story. Which, a cyberpunk story with a horror twist I can totally dig. But the outline is rudimentary at best.

First of all, genetic engineers? You’re gonna have to be really fucking careful and do your homework on how genetics work or else this won’t be believable. At all.

And I really don’t think you should go the no government control way. I think this would be far easier and more believable if you forced your protagonists to have to work and fight under and against a totalitarian or fascist government. Like the food thing makes no sense, if it’s easy and cheap to make and produce then no government control wouldn’t be a problem. I think you need to research anarchism. People don’t suddenly rush to chaos and start killing each other without a government. Now, if you did the opposite: heavy government sanctions and the hoarding of food by certain entities makes a power pull leaving the proles down below have to fight and starve. That is WAY more believable.

And the red dwarf is so close it takes up most of the sky? But at night it’s completely black? WHAT!? How fucking big is this planet? Do you have any idea how hot that would be? A red dwarf doesn’t suddenly stop producing heat and light! Dude, do more research, once again. You can’t just decide this is how shit works, man. If your story isn’t believable it’s gonna be a fucking train wreck.

And what’s with this whole body armor thing? So the common average joe is decked out in full regalia?

You’re undertaking a fucking MASSIVE project. This story isn’t going to be short. And you’re once again going in half-cocked. You clearly have dick for knowledge on some of these extremely complex systems you’re using as goddamn plot devices. You’re creating plot devices out of things that shouldn’t be used as plot devices. You clearly have no idea how anarchy works, which as an anarchist I find personally offensive. Don’t make a fucking caricature out of it. There’s a reason that there aren’t any dystopian novels or cyberpunk works based around anarchism, every single one is based off of totalitarianism or some other form of fascism. You definitely need to figure out genetics, astrophysics, and nuclear physics as they’re apparently major parts of this story. You can’t just say OH HEY GENETICS THIS IS HOW IT WORKS WERE SPLICED WITH COWS OR WHATEVER. That’s not how it works in real life.

It’s pretty clear that the tech makes life easy as all fuck. Like, I fail to see how this story would be interesting, your sources of contention are shaky at best. And your idea that no central government suddenly everything goes to fuck is laughable at best. “So there’s lots of food but nobody can share because the government has to tell them that they need to”. Holy hell, man. Remember Soylent Green? That movie works because they have food but the government is basically hoarding it and saying there’s a shortage. BUT WAIT PLOT TWIST SOYLENT GREEN IS PEOPLE.

Remember 1984? That book works because rampant government controlling every aspect of everyone’s life. Remember Brave New World? That book works because of accurate portrayals of genetics, people are kept complacent because of rampant government keeping people happy through hedonistic means. Ergo Proxy? The government keeps people complacent through a series of complex lies and propaganda and secret genetic and cybernetic experiments. Serial Experiments Lain? A mysterious deity on The Wired is causing people to kill themselves as technology slowly takes over reality and consciousness. Dead Space? Fascist and psychotic mega-religion brainwashes people to do its bidding while experimenting and artificially creating horrifying monsters under the guise of ascension to a new plane of existence.

You’re taking the fucking shell from all these works and not applying any of the reality, any of the things that make these individual pieces work. You have a naïve view of how government functions, you have rudimentary ideas on how science works, this outline shows zero effort to make this any more than a joke. And even then it wouldn’t be a very good one.



Figuring out names is the least of your worries here.

You need to really figure out where you want this story going and you need to buckle down a cohesive plot and figure out exactly how and where you want this to be taken.