To Boldly Return - Chapter 1

Hey there!

I will start out by saying that this feels like the start of a book... as in, a book I could pick up at the library, or on amazon, or Barnes and noble. In other words, it's good. I'm already hooked on the story, getting to know the characters, and very interested in this post apocalyptic world you've created. Please tag me in the next chapter if you write one!

I did have a few nit picks however,

{The loch was suffocating the fog}

This needs to be, The loch was suffocated with fog. Lochs don't suffocate fog, fog suffocates lochs.

Also,

{He cursed as he realised he'd left his own camera on the capsule.}

Realized is miss spelled.

{ He'd wanted to get out and search for the Loch Ness Monster as soon as he could. His boss, Rhona Levise, hadn't thought to tell him that they were visiting Loch Lomond, not Loch Ness.}

Right here, it sounds like he still wants to find Nessy and that he still thinks he's at loch ness, even though it clearly states in the first paragraph that he knows they're at Loch Lamond. Now, I know he is speaking of how he felt before he knew it was Loch Lamond, but it would be better if you made the distinction between the here and there a little clearer.

{"Course not!," Collette exclaimed. "Look, Rhona's a very smart woman and very resourceful, but she's not a scientist. And she doesn't pretend to be."}

There doesn't need to be a comma after the exclamation point.

{She'd just looked in pain, as if she were grimacing.}

This can be shortened to,

She'd looked pained, as if she were grimacing.

Alrighty then, that's all for the time being.

Keep Writing!!!

Hey Biscuits,

i liked this as a first chapter. would like to read more.

The sense I get are that these people are part of a semi-professional group of surveyors, or something similar, but their job is quite improvised. There doesn't seem to be much in the way of expertise to go about, and whilst everyone seems aware of the gist of the problem, they seem to be busking it. I think this is a really interesting set up for a sci-fi story. It gives a greater opportunity for the story to feel intimate and domestic because we can get at what the characters are worrying about, but we don't have to go through tonnes of set up before their genius master-stroke solution is available, the way you do if the characters know far more about the world than the readers.

I'd probs want to make two suggestions.
The first is that a little more can be done to make clear the relationships between people. The story about the crash and the spilled purple juice is a nice bit of flavour, but it comes in a somewhat disjointed way which makes it a little hard to follow. I don't know, by the end of it, quite what I'm supposed to have learned about Mikey and Collette's relationship (he's blaming her for his mistake, it feels, unreasonably. Is this a habit. Elsewhere they seem quite fond of each other). It's an opportunity to let us know a little about their relationship with Rhona as well. Mikey's cautious as he made her spill her drink, but it would be easier to tell his feelings about this if we knew whether he was afraid of punishment, or just doesn't' want to unnecessarily annoy Rhona. None of these are absolutely crucial, but a little more information in each case would make it easier to follow what the character's thought seems to be.

The other thing I'd mention is that on a couple of occasions you use a style of exposition that I'd encourage people to avoid. It's possible this is entirely a taste issue, but for me anything that has the structure:
"[reference to something or someone the reader doesn't yet know about] ... [response from other character] ... {Internal monologue (or similar) referring to that person or object by description}" kinda rings false to my ears. When you introduce Etrick Stoltz it is the perfect amount of mystery. Information about this person's intentions is enough to alter their mission parameters, and everyone seems to know who he is. That is intriguing. If Stoltz is to play an interesting role, it might be a bit better to refer to the strangeness of making an offer on the derelict earth, but not tell us more about the man himself until later. If this ends the chapter, a nice way i've seen it done is to start the next chapter with a bit of the history of the person ("In 1974 Eric Stalls bought such and such a company, made x-amount of money in y-years, before getting caught up in this legal cases, making headlines for a, b, and c" or something similar, whatever gives us the sense you want us to have of the guy. The action can start up again with them talking about him if you like? It just seems a bit more natural sounding than us hearing Mikey's thoughts and their being articulated in a way that fills in blanks for us.

I know this is ancient and perhaps not likely to get revived, but its a good set up. I'd read a next chapter

I have landed on an alien planet. I see balumps gamorphing, amirs rubbing themselves during their monthly musth, and pheeners pervojerating gaily, when all of a sudden the gailek arrives and tells everyone that they need to leave, because this is the way of the mornkon. It's like I am witnessing some drama unfold, but it is so alien to me that I can't form a meaningful bond with it. Further, even though I understand most of the words in the sentence and can roughly piece together what's happening based on that context, the full image remains unclear to me.

At my first reading, I thought that they were underwater, because one of the first things Mikey mentions is hunting for the Loch Ness Monster. At this point, I'm 3 paragraphs in, so I know nothing about what the story is really about, and I use every point of description I see to form my first glimpse of the world. Loch Ness Monster likes to hide underwater, and there is some talk of a "capsule" which reminded me of a submarine's body, so 90% of the way through my first read I was convinced that the action is taking place underwater. Some pH tests showed up, and now the picture in my mind lay thus: they are emerging for the first time on the banks of a lake after hiding in a subterranean vault for the last thousand years (whose only entrance to the outside is through the lake), waiting for the biosphere to restore itself after some enormous fart-up by humanity. After all, "Nobody knew what the Earth's atmosphere would be like now, after all these years". But wait -- why is a businessman purchasing property on land they just saw for the first time in, ostensibly, many years?

So I re-read the story, and the picture was different now. It appears that they are actually inspecting the shoreline of a lake from the ground level. The capsule (which I at first assumed was damaged by a rocky outcrop on the seafloor) was actually clipped by a rock on land (is it a flying vessel?), which explains why the characters are around to talk about it, and are not shredded victims of a violent submarine implosion. At this point I stop making assumptions, so I am generally in the dark as to what they're doing on that shoreline and why it matters.

While I get that this is science fiction and that it is about a different world than ours, I do not feel that this is a good excuse to bombard the reader with several new terms on one page. I do not know what a timeshare is in this context, and why it's important that they get it; I do not know what driftball is, and I do not know what a HEATS suit is. While it's great that there's a wiki, I don't want to interrupt my reading every 3 sentences to look up a new term. In trying to be a case use for an encyclopedia, this story appears to forget it is in fact a story.

Why is Collette getting catty at a seemingly innocent remark? Why, indeed, does an experienced businessman want to buy an abandoned, corroded mark of land? The fact that this is essentially a blaring red sign saying "PLOT INCOMING" aside, why does anything before the part with the businessman actually matter? It didn't hook me with plot, and it didn't show me the world clearly enough for me to even see it on the first try, much less for me to become genuinely interested in it. And that's a shame, because I'm a sucker for depressing gray swamps aggressively hostile to life.

I'm a little fuzzy on the science in this piece. If they really have no idea what the atmosphere on Earth is like, why on earth does Mickey's suit have ... "breathing holes" on it? A pH of 14, Google tells me, is what liquid drain cleaner is. Pretty sure that stuff melts flesh in a good concentration. If I were a future chemist, I'd hope that even the most rank amateurs had better safety standards than to breathe acidic fumes. Further, I know that the kids are crazy these days, but I have trouble imagining that even in the future a self-respecting chemist would refer to his or her profession as the "science-y bit".

The requisite Show, Don't Tell. The very first part of the piece, as well as the very last, bemoan the state Earth is in now. Well, you're talking about lakes of drain cleaner, I'd say that "the Earth is kind of feeling under the weather this century" is a safe assumption. Yet it is still stated twice, in two extremely important places in the story (the beginning & the end) -- words that could've instead been describing bleached animal bones fading slowly into the beach as the alkaline lake eats away at them; rays of a sickly orange sun through the gnarled bark of a petrified tree; the cracks in the ground formed by trickles of poison from acid rain. You know how it goes, I'm sure.

I would read this, because I am interested in the post-apocalypse going on here. However, before committing to this novel, I would like to see many improvements in clarity of writing, development of characters, and pacing of plot. Revise, edit, review, repeat. Alternatively, finish the novel before posting it here, so reviews like this don't cause you to edit before finishing and thus lose all your steam.

Your carbo-juice,
cC

Hi there, LittleFox here to review your chapter.

I'm actually really happy I came across this chapter, it's pretty good and I would love to read more of it. I like the setting a lot as well as your characters. The pace is also very good. I think this is a great beginning to a book. It leaves the reader wondering what's going to happen and makes them want to read more. I defiantly will look forward to the next chapter, so be sure to let me know when it's out.

As for criticism, I only have one little nitpick;
"And there was nothing spectacular here to need to photograph either."
I think it would flow a little better if you said "to be photographed" so that it sounds less choppy. Other than that, your writing flows very well.

I really did enjoy this chapter so keep up the wonderful work and you will probably hear from me again soon.

-LittleFox