Young Writers Society

"Ten..."
I wanted to be a starpilot when I was a little kid. I'd also wanted to be a firefighter, a policeman, and an "asthrofizziseth".

**Whir**
The engines' roar is muffled by the maze of metal.

**Squelch**
The seat has been re-covered with new vinyl that hasn't been broken in yet.

**Click * Thud**
The steering column extends and drops into place.

**Bing**
The vast panels of buttons run through their system checks.


"Nine..."
My first piloting job was a crappy-ass freighter, with a starter you had to punch six times (the third time had to be a split-second faster than the others) and so little leg room I usually flew with my feet up on the dash and my knees in my face.

**Blue**
The output from the burners glows like a neon light, refusing to coordinate with anything but the black of space.

**Gray**
The last cover had been worn to a splotched shadow, spiderwebbed with white cracks and strains.

**Red**
The yellowed-plastic cover at the base is just waiting to be flipped over, revealing the big button underneath.

**Green * Yellow**
The keyboards twinkle like their own little star systems, broken up by constallations of orange warning notices.


"Eight..."
My first space flight, I got sick all over the dash on entry. My stomach hadn't learned to ride the bumps yet and so I got to re-examine my lunch with new perspective upon landing. A mushroom calzone, I remember. Still have a hard time eating those.

**Exhaust**
The fumes manage to overpower entire cityscapes of smell and permeate through everything that touches anything, but it's constant, comforting.

**Sweat**
The new fabric can't cover up the musk of perspiration from a thousand stressful dockings.

**Plastic**
The handgrips ooze a thick smell of plastic and hand-lotion.

**Dust * Alcohol**
The sharp, almost-cold scents hide down in the crevices between seldem-used symbols, emerging during complicated sequences, evoking challege.


"Seven..."
I failed my re-entry test three times, but impressed my boss with the fact that I could swing a Polly Oliver like no-one's business.

**Tremor**
The machinery sends a vibration through the whole ship that travels through the armrests and sends an arm into numb fuzziness.

**Poke**
The bottom right corner of the seat back has a spring that bent out of shape two weeks into service and protrudes just enough to be felt.

**Comfort**
The grips are covered with memory foam, molding down to the fingerprint.

**Soft * Sticky**
The buttons are beginning to hesitate, catch a little, when pressed, making codes a sequence of gentle taps and heavy thumps.


"Six...."
I fell in love at twenty-seven with a ride named "The Ami Lee". Had a huge ass and the engines weren't worth shit, but it was the Yagari 524 maneuvering system that sold me. You can build a whole ship from bubblegum and prayers and a Yagari will make it fly straight as a laser.

**Ozone**
The vapors are tasted as much as they are smelled, metallic and bitter and tending to stick between teeth.

**Bitter**
The vinyl has a tang to it that clings to everything, unnoticable until it touches tongue.

**Grease**
The lubricant gets everywhere, leaving black streaks that taste of hard flying.

**Spit * Gravy**
The panels take up most of the cockpit, making falling asleep and drooling on them merely a matter of time rather than a possibility.


"Five..."
The first thing I do when I sit down is unlock the controls. Three switches, all to my right and over my shoulder. Three flicks and then everything lights up in the most wonderful way.

**Churn**
The throbbing becomes a pattern, almost a chant of machinery.

**Slide**
The chair rests on a track that allows for a 180 degree turn and slides two feet to each side when unlocked.

**Tilt**
The wheel's angle is a constant challenge to perfect.

**Tick * Punch**
The sequences tap out erratically and at strange times, like the staccato of a lone machine gun.


"Four..."
I ran away, I guess. I ran away and ended up in the stars.


"Three..."


"Two..."


"One..."

.

.

**Sigh**

"Magic time."

______________________
*whoot* Contest entry for Rosey Unicorn's contest Beginnings of Magic.

Gryph, this is…um…different. Not bad different, just hard to really review different.

I definitely like the take on the contest idea with this. It shows a very innocent reflection of a man looking at and examining his life.
But the words surrounded by the **’s are almost more powerful than the rest of the story because you picked them so well, especially in Six. Those ** words are powerful but you do a great job of re-enforcing the power of those words with the rest of the story.

The most impressive part of this story is the way you’ve made it so compact. Your narrator is working in this confined space, and the writing feels tight enough to mimic that cockpit.

I can’t really find anything wrong here. This is me telling you how awesome you are!

~lilymoore

Hi there. Just thought that I would drop in and give this a quick review.

So, I really like this. The main reason for that is you nailed at least two character voices down without having any real dialogue, which to me is always a feat.

I do have to ask just how many characters there are in this. One minute there's a new ship, the next there's one that's been around the block a few times. I kind of got lost and couldn't tell if it was the same person flying multiple ships, or multiple people flying different ships. If you could elucidate that, I feel this story would become a bit clearer.

You have a very good beginning here. There's just some tinkering that needs to be done. PM me if you have any questions or comments.

Good job, and good luck.

-Conrad Rice

I must say that upon reading this I was confused. I'm not sure what everything you said meant together, but each individual piece gave some really good imagery. I'm not sure if you were going for the poem effect, but if you were it worked well. All together a rather good piece. Even though I didn't know anything about the character besides his/her aspirations in life, I felt like the way the spoke told me all I needed to know. Good job.

I thought this was very interesting. I'm not entirely sure what to make of it, so apologies in advance if my review isn't too helpful!

First of all, I really like the juxtaposition of the first person memory dialogue and the narrator-style description. It's a really nice contrast/comparison. Also I love "asthrofizziseth" - took me a while to figure it out, but it's very cute, to be sure

If I were to change anything, it might be the structure. The countdown is perfect; the only thing I have issue with are the words in the asterisks. When they're sounds, like in the first sequence, or motions, as in the sixth, they contribute well to the flow of the piece and create a sort of rhythm, but - for me at least - when they're nouns it feels more awkward and choppy, and it's a little confusing. Also, I wonder if it might be better to use something other than stars to mark these words, like italics? I don't know if that's an option for you but definitely something to consider.

Also, one spelling error I noticed:
"The sharp, almost-cold scents hide down in the crevices between seldem-used symbols"
"seldem" should be "seldom".

Other than that, though, it makes a really nice "snapshot" story, with a very economical use of words - you provide so much emotion and backstory without really telling much at all. Keep up the good work, and good luck with the contest!

This thing is both confusing and interesting at the same time. I mean I sort of get the whole idead; it's about a man examining his life, but it's just a wierd way of doing it. I have to say I agree with Conroa Rice about his question on how many characters there are in the story. Other than the confusing way it was written i felt this was a good story and hope to read more of your stories later.

Grammatically, I can't find anything wrong with it, but I don't really like it. The fractured set up makes it just hard to read. I couldn't really get into the story.

I don't want to give a bad review, because it was certainly well written, I just don't like it, sorry.

I would say that it might be ok, if it were part of a larger story, but just on its own, I don't really think that it works.

Cheers,
Pros

Hey Gryphon!

There is something magical about space exploration indeed!

Anyway, I think, in this case, this was much too gimmicky for me to like it. I didn't like how the sensory objects were introduced in double asterisks as it made them seem a little too... pronounced? I'm not sure how you would describe it, but it was too obvious and not subtle enough for me to like it. I like picking things out of reading, not having it slam me in the face... and it felt more like the latter. It might have worked if you were pickier as to what you chose, but you didn't pick and choose and, as a result, it felt more like you were interrupting the narrative than adding anything to it.

So yeah. I suck. But this story didn't really work for me.

So I didn't love this, which is a pity because it has lots of my favourite sci-fi flavours, and some really pretty writing to boot. The starred text drove me a little insane, because I don't think it blends at all with the rest of the narrative. You have some beautiful, melancholy prose and then you have these awkward chunks of words (**Squelch**) that read like internet-speak / a roleplay log.

Some of it is simply the format: I think it would look a lot less sloppy and achieve a similar effect if you wrote them in sentence-format. ("Click. Thud." as opposed to "**Click * Thud**) But I also question their role within the overall piece. Especially because you already have the ten-nine-eight countdown to structure your narrative -- you don't need another structural device to guide the narrative. It feels shoehorned into the piece and achieves a rather lazy storytelling effect.

When they're verbs (as in the "Ten" and "Five" section, I can cope with it, but when you're just throwing out adjectives or nouns, as in the other sections, I can only see that it is subtracting from your otherwise-strong writing. My least favourites were probably "**Dust * Alcohol **" and "**Soft * Sticky**". I would suggest you remove most (if not all) of these segments, or at least seriously consider why you've chosen to place them in this work.

Other notes: The "Eight" section kind of throws me; you start by noting that 'the fumes manage to overpower everything' and then immediately begin to describe all of the odours in intense detail. Because of the immediacy of the piece, this feels off. It's an effect, it's another one that I can't really see being useful. At the very least, perhaps specify that these are all the smells that the character can't smell / misses. Or perhaps once the fuel stink wears off, he can smell all of the things underneath it? Otherwise, though, this is kind of an awkward segment.

I'm not a huge fan of your last line, especially because I feel like "I ran away, I guess. I ran away and ended up in the stars" is a much much MUCH stronger ending. I can see why you may feel the necessity to keep 'Magic time' for the sake of the contest, but I think it sort of distorts the piece being about him and his connection to the sky. I also think that readers who are coming in from that contest will catch that connection just fine (and I sort of think it's subtler and more beautiful without "Magic time", which feels a bit too corny).

I got a little lost in the purple prose, since there's just so much of it. I love the brief glimpses we get into this person's space-past, and the briefer the glimpses, the more infuriating that so much time is devoted to the prosaic descriptions. I'd much rather the italicized bits were about the smell/sight/memories of the person's spaceship, while the non-italicized bits were about his past. That sort of undermines what you're doing with the piece right now, though, so I will say that (as the piece currently stands, I feel like I needed a little more grounding within the description-y bits. More personal details that tie the character to the object so I don't feel like I'm reading an extended descriptive paragraph.

I'll stop here. Again, your writing is quite lovely and the idea behind the piece is as well. I love fragmented structure-based pieces, especially ones with a science-fiction slant. Good luck in the contest! If you have any questions about the critique, feel free to drop me a PM.

This is a most unique and different approach to writing. It has been written very beautifully and I can really see your mastery of words in this poetic story.

Plot: 5/10
I am ... conflicted on how to review the plot of this story. At times I see where the story is going, but I can't really understand what actually is happening.
Character: 10/10
I love the characterization of the speaker. You've used metaphors, similes and other literary devices to great effect and I really enjoyed what the speaker had to tell me.
Grammar, punctuation: 9/10
There were absolutely no problems with the grammar, although the ** throughout the entire story was just slightly distracting. Is there another possible way to represent those ** words?
Theme: 8/10
I like how the speaker tells us his story through this unique story presentation. I did feel that it was just slightly uninteresting, story-wise.

Total: 32/10
Average: 8/10

Good experiment, but not quite right.

As smaur pointed out, part of the problem is the text in between the stars. The problem is that they're mostly adjectives with no real context, and thus ends up sounding very gimmicky. If you changed it all to verbs, though, the problem still wouldn't go away.

What I'd suggest instead is just getting rid of all the starred text. It's not necessary, distracts the reader, and adds nothing more to the work. By concentrating on the individual voices of the pilot and the ship, the work will improve by a lot I think.

Its my first time to encounter this kind of sc-fi. Great! I like it. Its undeniably unique...
GREAT write.

GryphonFledgling wrote:"Ten..."
I wanted to be a starpilot when I was a little kid. I'd also wanted to be a firefighter, a policeman, and an "asthrofizziseth".

**Whir**
The engines' roar is muffled by the maze of metal.

**Squelch**
The seat has been re-covered with new vinyl that hasn't been broken in yet.

**Click * Thud**
The steering column extends and drops into place.

**Bing**
The vast panels of buttons run through their system checks.


"Nine..."
My first piloting job was a crappy-ass freighter, with a starter you had to punch six times (the third time had to be a split-second faster than the others) and so little leg room I usually flew with my feet up on the dash and my knees in my face.

**Blue**
The output from the burners glows like a neon light, refusing to coordinate with anything but the black of space.

**Gray**
The last cover had been worn to a splotched shadow, spiderwebbed with white cracks and strains.

**Red**
The yellowed-plastic cover at the base is just waiting to be flipped over, revealing the big button underneath.

**Green * Yellow**
The keyboards twinkle like their own little star systems, broken up by constallations of orange warning notices.


"Eight..."
My first space flight, I got sick all over the dash on entry. My stomach hadn't learned to ride the bumps yet and so I got to re-examine my lunch with new perspective upon landing. A mushroom calzone, I remember. Still have a hard time eating those.

**Exhaust**
The fumes manage to overpower entire cityscapes of smell and permeate through everything that touches anything, but it's constant, comforting.

**Sweat**
The new fabric can't cover up the musk of perspiration from a thousand stressful dockings.

**Plastic**
The handgrips ooze a thick smell of plastic and hand-lotion.

**Dust * Alcohol**
The sharp, almost-cold scents hide down in the crevices between seldem-used symbols, emerging during complicated sequences, evoking challege.


"Seven..."
I failed my re-entry test three times, but impressed my boss with the fact that I could swing a Polly Oliver like no-one's business.

**Tremor**
The machinery sends a vibration through the whole ship that travels through the armrests and sends an arm into numb fuzziness.

**Poke**
The bottom right corner of the seat back has a spring that bent out of shape two weeks into service and protrudes just enough to be felt.

**Comfort**
The grips are covered with memory foam, molding down to the fingerprint.

**Soft * Sticky**
The buttons are beginning to hesitate, catch a little, when pressed, making codes a sequence of gentle taps and heavy thumps.


"Six...."
I fell in love at twenty-seven with a ride named "The Ami Lee". Had a huge ass and the engines weren't worth shit, but it was the Yagari 524 maneuvering system that sold me. You can build a whole ship from bubblegum and prayers and a Yagari will make it fly straight as a laser.

**Ozone**
The vapors are tasted as much as they are smelled, metallic and bitter and tending to stick between teeth.

**Bitter**
The vinyl has a tang to it that clings to everything, unnoticable until it touches tongue.

**Grease**
The lubricant gets everywhere, leaving black streaks that taste of hard flying.

**Spit * Gravy**
The panels take up most of the cockpit, making falling asleep and drooling on them merely a matter of time rather than a possibility.


"Five..."
The first thing I do when I sit down is unlock the controls. Three switches, all to my right and over my shoulder. Three flicks and then everything lights up in the most wonderful way.

**Churn**
The throbbing becomes a pattern, almost a chant of machinery.

**Slide**
The chair rests on a track that allows for a 180 degree turn and slides two feet to each side when unlocked.

**Tilt**
The wheel's angle is a constant challenge to perfect.

**Tick * Punch**
The sequences tap out erratically and at strange times, like the staccato of a lone machine gun.


"Four..."
I ran away, I guess. I ran away and ended up in the stars.


"Three..."


"Two..."


"One..."

.

.

**Sigh**

"Magic time."

______________________
*whoot* Contest entry for Rosey Unicorn's contest Beginnings of Magic.

I can't say nothing at all... BRAVO!

I liked how the story took place with in the whole span of a T-10 countdown and the descriptiveness and imagery was very good. As for the plot, it was small and kind of minute. That is not such a bad thing because the characterization of the protagonist and even his past ships kept me reading untill the end. It has a very good tone and the mechanics of it kept me focused.

Best thing I have read in long time. Simply amazing and very well put together. Fantastic to say the least.

I just finished QUIT YOUR JOB. BECOME A TRAPIZE ARTIST and so I duly had to check out more of your stories, and become a follower. The wide spaces between the 'enter' places on the story make it take a while, but all together very enjoyable. I liked the beginning comments from the pilot, those were funny also