Young Writers Society

Hi everyone,
this rough draft for a dystopian future novel is now READY!! WHOHOOO!
It's 3/4 ready. Well, 2/3 anyway


CONTENT WARNING - VERY VERY ADULT, DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE NOT AN ADULT, IT WILL MESS YOU UP

That being said, I hope I manage to spin a tale which is not drowned out by some of the episodes. Now, please no grammar feedback, this is a rough draft, just give me please your general opinion. Are the characters done well. Is the setting done well. Is there suspence, is there disgust, is there hope of resolution, are the concepts credible?
Thanks

Okay, i have many wonderful things to say about this novel but I have to go with my initial reaction, the freshest thing on my mind, and that is the ending. It was completely and utterly unsatisfying.
I want this Joshua character to be somewhere close to being caught towards the end; i also feel that your novel should end on a philosophical note instead of this, "well catch him some how" open-ending, perhaps a mournful reflection of how the killer was simply a product of his times, or whatever statement you plan to make for him.
The bulk of your novel was absolutely fantastic; you took several things I love (philosophy, government, history and violence) and mixed them with a handful of things i hate (detectives, graphic sex, attractive women, a koontz-style thriller) and made it work perfectly.
I want to list the writers you remind me of but I'm stuck between Kurt Vonnegut, Ray Bradbury and the author of American Psycho.
For things that you did extremely well; the use of third person and character switching. It usually annoys me when the chapters switch spasmodically from one character to another; in one chapter jon was hit by a car and in the next susie wakes up halfway around the world to find a dead body in her kitchen...
But the fact that your main characters were quickly established as acquaintances and their story lines were tightly interwoven with each other was, in my mind, the perfect way to proceed with that.
Your remarks on our civilization currently were also masterful, as was the ever-prominent shit-eating fetish; it was slightly out-there but at the same time extremely believable, as with your statements on fashion trends and pop music artlessly mimicking america's fixation on sex. In my personal opinion all of these fetishes were weighted in your story as playing a much larger role than violence, though you did talk of suicides going on, that seems more under the category of humanity and its inability for any reflection or self-contemplation in this dystopia of yours. It didn't seem to add up, filter down into the smaller places the way these sex fixations did.
I also liked how all of your main characters were, in one way or another, reflections of the conditions in the book, the oral fixations and lack of introspection, the social norm of being on the verge of a mental breakdown, the urge to turn to pills, nicotine or alcohol,Natalie's eating disorder...
All in all, i thought your book was brilliant. One thing that didnt impress me was your dialogue. Besides using your characters as vessels to store plot lines and insightful views of their world, or to be statements of their age, your characters did have personality, that was apparent. But you seemed to almost contradict that by their dialogue, it seemed so generic. It got better towards the end, between Dave and Anton specifically, but still at times it seemed that they all just spit out lines like "would you like a cup of coffee?" "can you come to my house tonight?" "And why is that, Anton?"
"How's the business?"
Some of it could be pruned, some could be tuned, and its not a grave measure. I just thought I'd offer it to you.
I would guess that you are a fan of open endings, because I feel that almost everything is left unsolved. We get an inkling of a good feeling because Natalie has finally broken down, which is something of a resolution, but what of the election and the upcoming party, where is there place on the world stage? What of Joshua, I want to find out what his motivations are, at the very least. He doesnt have to be caught.
Another thing that strikes me as off: Anton's team of six people to record was seems to be every infinitesimal piece of information about the city and find out how it relates to every other piece of trivia and figure out how any of it translates into something that can be purposefully altered and controlled. In this world, working people to exhaustion is very in, which I understand, but it seems to me that the inefficient bureaucracies would dump too much money and too many people, pinning all of their hopes unto this, as it seems to be reaping a large amount of information that is essential to governing effectively in this society; but I dont know much about government so I cant really claim to know what I'm talking about.
Its not really a big deal; as you can see I am really fighting to find negatively constructive things to say about this piece; I absolutely loved it. It had this philosophical savagery that I could only dream of mimicking. I found myself bursting into bouts of laughter at every pop parody and then cutting off when i realized the society you constructed has a stain of clairvoyance to it, as though I might see posters of smiling children with chocolate cake smeared over their jubilant faces at every bus station tomorrow morning.

The long and short of it is; your book was utterly fantastic. With one or two typos fixed and a few fixin's here and there, and possibly some addition to the ending this could very easily be a bestseller.
Its rather brief, but its short and swift like a brass-knuckled punch to the face. Brutally refreshing. I would definitely pay to read this.
Also, I like the cut-up, episodic fashion in which it is written. It feels seamless, even the parts where you summarize in these choppy arrangement of short, passive sentences.

And lastly, feel completely free to pm me with any questions or concerns about this book of yours, even if its to argue away something you disagree with. I'm sure I'll think of more to say when its not 1:25 a.m.
I'm not eighteen, by the way, so maybe none of this really means anything from me. But I read American Psycho and this feels along the same lines; dealing with violence sex and racism, but were in a dystopian futuristic town instead of New York in the eighties. I'm not saying yours is an artless remake of the same thing, I simply see a parallel between these two works, and I liked them both immensely.

I was going to add this to my original post, but seeing as its so long already...
I really liked the ending; it was very neat and left no room for the question of any of our characters ending up badly. Natalie had her epiphany, the bad guys were put away and our National Patriot Party went from being a political underdog to the largest and most influential party around. I thought it was absolutely fabulous. It was, in short, everything I like in an ending. It also seemed to leave some hope for this new era of politician, and maybe the hope that America would clean up its act with such demonstratively good people working in prime positions in the new party, maybe incidents like this bipartisan cult wont appear in this hypothetical dystopian society...
But I'm rambling. The point is, it was a very tight, ver neat ending and I'm completely satisfied. It might be a little, whats the word, standard. It's definitely not a beautiful tragedy but its powerful and positive at once, and there's nothing wrong with following the standard storyline.
All in all, I enjoyed this immensely. Thanks for the great read

Yo,
dear Empress, thank you for following through with this project and reading both the unfinished and the finished draft. I really needed a boost to finish it, and you gave that boost - thank you, thank you, thank you.

In your first review, you mention Vonnegut and Bradbury, and this is like telling me that I won a million bucks. Bradbury and especially early Vonnegut are gods:) Although I must confess I've never read American Psycho or watched the movie. You also mentioned an element of 'koontzian thriller', and although that was not quite the intention, on second thought perhaps you are right. Anyway, to balance that, when comes the time for the big editing, I'll try to pump up Deus Machini, to make him look more like the 1930's Saint character.

Haha, you noticed of course, that the dialogues sometimes are utterly lacking in style and are just scaffolding for the plot. True, very true. So are the descriptions of places. That'll have to be dealt with as well.
All in all the rhythm of the style in the four parts is rather uneven. Starts like a sci fi satire, then suddenly the human sciences (and dramas) take the stage, and by part four its all a blunt thriller. I'll have to see how it looks to me again after some time, when I can see it with a more fresh viewpoint. Right now I'm super-biased, naturally.

You say yourself that you are not an adult...um... I used to have an argument in the past, when people told me not to use innuendo in front of minors, which went like this - "if they don't know what this is about, there's no harm done. If they do know what this is about, then it's rather too late anyway." These days I don't quite agree with that anymore. On the other hand I have no illusions concerning what even a web-savvy eight year old finds in the virtual spaces, so...um...(to quote myself hehe)...um... In the end, I hope that whatever thoughts and insights that are far too early for your age may have been triggered, have by now already sank back below the threshold of consciousness, and when the time comes for them to rise again, hopefully they will be useful as in helping evade some basic mistakes of adult life and adult perception.
Again, thank you very much for the reviews Empress

P.S. I myself am not entirely sure where the action takes place, but I don't think it's America. Then again it could be Detroit haha, having left this metropolis so vague and undefined has its pluses and minuses

Yo your yo,
You're right, of course. I dont think America could ever stray from the two-party structure or have a parliament.

And as for my perception of your book, well, to be perfectly frank, I wish more of it would have sunken to my subconscious. Not that it wasn't a great novel but it.... it seemed to be one thing, when I read it at night in one sitting in these strange morning-hours, and then when it was light outside it turned into quite another. I've never felt shame for reading a book before but... this cut pretty close. I've always prided myself on being very liberal, very open-minded, and you did put a warning quite plainly beneath the title, and I am very happy I read it, but I wasn't counting on this.... this terrible processing of the human mind, where all of the good parts slip through your memory but the graphic things stick themselves to the concaves of your brain.

But thats really not your concern. You told your story; it was my job to take it and digest it how I could. I agree with you, by the way, on Ray Bradbury being a god, but Kurt Vonnegut, especially his earlier work is an acquired taste that I had to be eased into.
Is Deus Machini supposed to be a twist on the term Deus ex Machina, because that's kind of what he was at the end ( not in a bad way, but as the supplier of weapons for the stint that essentially saved everybody's hide) or am I just stretching? Because that seems terribly clever and well-placed, but at the same time I always overthink things like that.

I'll stop bugging you with my ramblings now, Napal. And thanks for taking the time and reading them.
Post Script: I hope that you decide to send this in to a literary agent or a publishing house; though the time isn't really ripe for such a novel, not with this vampire-werewolf fixation going on, I hope to see this in the...... wherever they put books like this in the Borders or Barnes and Nobles.

Yo, Empress
Deus Machini is indeed Deus ex Machina. I salute thee, so to say, I didn't know what when I was back in school. Although I had back then already eat up all the avaliable Vonnegut. His style clicked with me immediately. It's only when I got older, that for some reason his later stuff started looking weaker for me, and only his early sci-fi (which he denies is sci-fi hihi) still has a place in my heart.
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Yeah, sorry I haven't gotten around to reading this whole thing yet. I'll start today and see that I can get it to you asap. I've been a lot busier than usual lately.

Ahem, thanks, but! If you haven't started the faeces yet, I'd rather you do the Sound of.. first It's smaller anyway

Currently I am reading your story. I haven't gone through much, because I have a very busy schedule. But I fit in as much as I can.