I found this out when I started playing with the AMAZINGLY wonderful font management tool in OSX and it found several of the PC font files had errors. Which might explain why I sometimes had rather entertaining text issues on the PC.

Really, most of it is One True Wayism, plain and simple. I don’t like it in religion; I don’t like it in politics; I don’t like it in pen-and-paper rpgs; and I sure as fuck don’t like it in a game I’m playing in a large part for the pretty pictures.

Anyway… personally I find the heavy emphasis on the language thing at the beginning a bit kitschy, particularly because it seems to all but disappear a bit later on. I think you should put somewhat less emphasis on it, kind of along the same lines as your “you wouldn’t explain the internet” logic. It’s important, but I don’t think it’s something that should dominate the first two pages.

I also think you’ve actually written two chapters here, and not just one. There’s a very clear “recruitment” scene, and a very clear “interview” scene, that both could stand a little more fleshing out, which I’ll get to in a bit. I think the should be split because they seem to have vastly different settings, and rather different pacings as well as different, but specific, purposes.

Your first scene’s entire purpose should be to establish Sal and who she is. It’s problematic that I don’t realize she’s 10 until Evelyn says so. You might want to revisit the opening “letter,” and make it less “pardon my English,” and more “my name is Sal, I’m ten years old, my mommy does X and my daddy does Y,” kind of like what you’d expect from a fifth grader introducing herself. It gives you more leeway to bluntly explain certain things without interrupting flow, and could also work towards endearing the reader to your character from the very start. Isn’t she cute?

In the recruitment scene, I’d like to see more emotions. Again, keep in mind this is a ten year old girl. Although this all may be moot if there’s some specific goal you’re looking to achieve with specie characteristics, this is a ten year old making a decision that she knows will change her life and make her a single priviledged individual among her colony. I wanna see some bouncing pigtails or something, y’know?

In the second scene, I think it should be clearer that Evelyn is a ditz. You hint at it subtly, and in retrospect I think anyone from Sal’s world would understand that the lady’s a ditz, but I’m rather confident that most of your readers will not be from Sal’s world. I normally wouldn’t advise this, but throw in a cliche or two. You need to establish a temporary character very quickly. Have her chew gum, or look at neither mother nor daughter while talking, or wave a clipboard around, or something. Devote a bit more time to her appearance and manner in general, because I think you want to make it clear that Evelyn is a “bad” human and that Sal is a “good” whatever-the-heck-she-is, and those lines get crossed when the reader initially wants to sympathize with the fellow human.

That’s my take, anyway. Good luck and keep writing

Some of it I fully intend to flesh out in the course of the further chapters, or in some minor adjustments to chapter 1 that I plan to tackle once I’m through with 2.

The footnotes suggestion will be passed along. The character who the footnotes are written by isn’t mine — those are both fictionally and in reality written by someone else.

Also, the footnotes are not from her, correct? At the risk of flooding the bottom of the page, I could have used a few more.

I’m not saying I didn’t like it, because it was fun! I’m just not sure if I should have been feeling as lost as I felt after reading it.

P.S. Its BBwood from WoW =]

Ellen

I know — like that’s supposed to be the best one or something. Frankly, that honour was held first by RotJ and then shared by it and Ep1, and both were supplanted by Clone Wars.

Are you kidding?! Thank YOU for writing it. It’s a fun read. And thank Skippy from Skippy’s List. s’where I found the thing, he’s gots ads for it on his blog.

Blasphemy!

Thanks for reading our webstrip, btw