Young Writers Society

11/16/07

001 – Beginnings

“Lidlum, the break room is supposed to be for breaks.”

Charles Lidlum looked up from the stack of folders before him. He smiled a little, pushing his glasses back onto his nose. Peter Scotts fell into a couch with a sigh. His long, spidery frame was bent awkwardly across the cushions. Lidlum was a little jealous. One of the youngest men ever to advance to his position and he still had to deal with short jokes. But Scotts was one of the good ones. The tall man waved his hand at the folders.

“Whatcha got all that in here for?”

“Looking for mistakes.” Lidlum squinted at the carbon copy he was holding. Whoever had written the original had atrocious handwriting and the smudged lines of the copy had made it even more illegible. Scotts laughed. He sounded tired.

“Don’t do it, Lidlum” He had pulled off his lab coat and bundled it under his head like a pillow. His sandy hair drifted over his face. Jealousy nipped at Lidlum again. Handsome was another thing he would never be. Not even if this all worked out the way it should.

“You’ll find one and there’ll be twenty more waiting to jump out and bite you in the ass,” Scotts concluded sagely, his arm draped over his face. Lidlum smiled, but it was a small smile. He had already noticed. For every successful outcome of an experiment, it seemed as though there had been a thousand failures.

He wasn’t interested in the successes: they had what they had. He wanted to make sure that they didn’t make the same mistakes again. Or anything similar. A repeat of the mouse incident would be the downfall of the company. They had warded off the media that time. Lidlum doubted they could do it again.

They had been trying to make mice smarter, so they had been manipulating together mouse and monkey brain DNA matter. It was working fine, except that there were some strange symptoms from the mice. Their toes were becoming prehensile and things like that. Then some idiot that wasn’t paying attention allowed an unauthorized breeding and the resulting embryo was a revolting mouse-monkey hybrid that would have killed its tiny mother had it not been aborted. The DNA mixing technique was declared unsatisfactory and it had been back to square one.

It was an example of carelessness and lack of foresight. Lidlum did not intend for it to happen again. Not with what he had in mind. Now, if only he could get someone to listen…

Okay, to be honest, I read the first few lines of this and thought I wouldn't like it at all, it didn't really jump at me. But, continuing, I found I became interested.

Your character development is surprisingly good, considering how short the piece is, and I'm already interested to know more about Lidlum - which is an amazingly odd and wonderful sounding name, by the way. ^^

I do, hover, have some small qualms on the explanation of the experiment. One, I don't think it's technical enough. You're writing about a serious experiment in the Science-fiction genre, you're looking at some hard facts. Do some research on that kind of experimentation, on companies that do it, and how the media can react.

Also, I think you come to the explanation too quickly - odd aye, but yes. I think you want smore more suspense... it would be interesting to have it shady and mysterious and then it appear in surprise, this morphing part monkey-mouse thing. Though I do understand that he has plans, and this is merely showing what the original is, I think you could expand it, have a little more suspense for your reader.

All in all I like this, no glaring grammatical, or punctuation errors, so I can't help you there. but I look forward to reading more.

PM me when you get round to posting the next bit.

*Hearts* Le Penguin.

Thanks for the tip. I know that it does go a little fast, but the monkey-mouse deal is not the one that is shady and mysterious...

These fics are all related in one big happening... None of them tell the full story, but hopefully, when they are all together, the story will become clear. It is pretty much an experiement in writing. Hope it will work out as planned. *crosses fingers*

i thought that for such a short piece, you did really well. no grammar to edit...your character development (i agree) is great, and already i'm starting to know the characters. i like your wording and the style of writing you used--i wouldn't have done that well on an explanation of my 10th draft.... i liked the ending as well. i can't wait to read more.

The Woz

(by now there are five of these out, so i'll head over and look at the rest soon)

one thing i must ask, though, is...why is it called Mutts? perhaps that has to do with the real mystery subject?????

I enjoyed this piece, GryphonFledgling. I generally agree with what PenguinAttack had to say; your characterization is effective, but the technical aspect detracts from everything. The dense explanatory paragraph sounds like a excerpt from an expository piece and detracts from the narrative flow. Perhaps the reader can come to understand the particulars of the experiment through dialouge. Moreover, what you explain insofar of the technical aspects of the experiment is a little wanting. I'm not a fan of the "science" in "science fiction"--I find the characters and the story much more important and am repulsed by long and meaningless tangents about technology--but the experiment you mention here requires greater explanation for the sake of fictional plausibility.

But beside this, I think this bit is a good start to a promising piece, and will read the next installment time providing.

This was really quite good! Although there were a few things I saw that you could change a little:

In the beginning when you say:

Charles Lidlum looked up from the stack of folders before him. He smiled a little, pushing his glasses back onto his nose. Peter Scotts fell into a couch with a sigh.

It confuses me a bit, because for a second I don't understand who Peter Scotts is, and how he came into the picture, then I realize that he is the one talking to Lidlum. You may want to introduce him a little more so that I know exactly who he is without stopping to think. It also helps to flow more if you explain who he is - and the reader can fully understand who everyone is.

Then when you wrote:

His long, spidery frame was bent awkwardly across the cushions. Lidlum was a little jealous.

That also confuses me, when I read it, I thought "why would Lidlum be jealous of Peter being awkard when he sits?" So, instead of just writing, "Lidlum was a little jealous." you should expand on what he is jealous of. For example, you could say "Lidlum was a little jealous of his height" or something of the sort.


Also:

They had been trying to make mice smarter, so they had been manipulating together mouse and monkey brain DNA matter. It was working fine, except that there were some strange symptoms from the mice. Their toes were becoming prehensile and things like that. Then some idiot that wasn't paying attention allowed an unauthorized breeding and the resulting embryo was a revolting mouse-monkey hybrid that would have killed its tiny mother had it not been aborted. The DNA mixing technique was declared unsatisfactory and it had been back to square one.

This seemed - as many people have pointed out- very juvenile sounding for such a technological part of the story and it took away from the writing. It seems as if the narrator is some average Joe, when really the narrator should sound like they have a degree in science.

My suggestion is that you should explain that incident as it happens in the form of a prologue or something (but only if it is important to the story). That way it gets the reader more in depth to the story and causes more suspense.


Overall, this was a great piece! As many have said before, you have wonderful characterization skills, and I love how well you showed the emotions and movements of the characters. You did a great job on this piece!

-Onceuponatim3xo

This is an interesting palate you're working from. Your language and dialogue is so accessible, it feels organic and simplistic, yet the ideas and relationship between them is complex. So that's pretty well genius. I, like Penguin, was initially repelled somewhere in your opening, I think maybe because you brought in the full names of your characters so soon, it kind of distanced you from them, something little like that. But it does hook you, this tale. And I like that subtle metafiction thing with the "You’ll find one and there’ll be twenty more waiting to jump out and bite you in the ass". Too true, but what I like is your adverb there, I mean, I'm not usually an adverb fan but 'sagely' is such an elegant word, against 'ass' it's just so deliciously witty.
I think we should have Speculative Fiction section, you know, this is by no means a run of the mill genre piece.
Eager to read more, which I'm just about to do,
Kit

This was a cool storty to read. i don't have a lot to say bout it because it was good. There is nothing really wrong with this.

TTYL SimonCowellLuver

Hello, hon. If you have any questions about the critique or my handwriting is illegible, please tell me. This was one of my favorite Mutt pieces.



Ta,
Cal.

Wow, nice beginning. I'm really curious with what's going on in Mutts.
The thing that really got me hooked was that part about the mice. Something about humans messing with DNA makes me curious.

I guess the only thing I can say was that it was interesting. I wasn't all that enthralled, but it was well-written.

I can talk about this!

My aunt's actually done stuff like this, and I took a basic genetics class to keep up with her. She actually helped out with creating this. I can help you out with the media, even give you the story behind it all, if you want to apply it to yours. The thing with this mouse, though, is the cells were applied after the mouse came into creation. It wasn't a mingling of two separate species so much as giving the cells from one to the other. The ear on its back, to my knowledge, does not work. It is an ear, but it's not wired to the brain. Useless. Also, again to my knowledge, intelligence isn't an inherited trait. Chimps are actually apes, but we can use them as an example. They can think the way they do because of how their brain is structured. I don't know if you've ever watched/read A Wrinkle in Time, but there's this one scene where a bug is walking on a string.

As the string is, it would take the bug a while to get from one end to the other. But if you bring your two hands holding the two ends together -- where the two ends touch, the bug only needs to walk a few steps to get to the other side. Now apply that to the brain. The string is folded, wrinkled. So is the brain. The more folds your brain has, the quicker you can process information, and the more potential you have to be brilliant. Instead of a bug, put information. It can jump from one section of the brain to the next with ease, and much quicker than if the brain was smoothed out. There's the biological perspective, but intelligence isn't a trait that can be passed from parents very well as far as the scientific community is concerned. Remember, we had a holocaust that tried to do just that -- breed the brilliant minds and the healthiest together to produse a better generation. The environment matters a lot, too.

If you just skipped my entire babble, I wouldn't blame you. But in short, all that would be passed from a monkey would be its physical characteristics, and even then, only if they were applied after conception and were select traits. You can, however, alter the environment the mice are born into -- make it very visually engaging, bright colors, lots of toys, bedding to nest in, constant food in fun shapes and colors, etc. Not only does this spike their brain development up, but it extends their lifespans quite a bit. If these scientists are working to apply it to humans, they could use that bit of information.

Genetics aside, it looks like a *very* neat idea. I'll see if I can sift through them all. I like how you put them into small bits and scattered a piece of the overall story here, another, there, and so on. Very cool idea. Also, You've got good taste in movies if you like Labrynth.

I'm no genetics expert, but I think mixing two distinct species will work. The most common technique is to breed two types of the same species. Take a look at Maximum Ride. The bird/human DNA starts to break apart.