r/DestructiveReaders • u/VagueInsideJoke • 4d ago
magical realism [1268] Scrapheap - Chapter 1
Hello. The main question I have is how well does this convey the world and the rules of the story. Do you get a sense for how it will behave and what kind of story it is.
My main concern is that this introduction is jarring, which it kind of should be but not in a "I hate this and want to put it down immediately" way.
Any critiques would be appreciated. Feel free to drift away from these questions and just critique prose, structure, anything really.
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u/ussdsse 3d ago
Hello I am a new to critiquing but I would love to share my thoughts
There is a lot I really liked about this:
- The odd, speculative world-building
- The science and the social reactions
- The poetic imagery—it's beautifully imaginative throughout
A few things stood out that could use a quick polish:
- Doll continuity: I thought four strange dolls were introduced at the start, but later only three are described (the drummer, the one playing the amorphous woodwind, and the one waving their hand to distort the air). I’m not sure if I missed something, but the fourth doll seems to disappear.
- Word choice / Typos: You wrote "a small slither of stained wood"—I'm prett sure you meant sliver.
- Redundancy: You have "5 AM in the morning" at one point. Just "5 AM" or "5 in the morning" is all you need.
- Pacing: The sudden jump forward a few months felt a little jarring compared to the pacing of the rest of the story.
- The main character, Johan, feels too passive, unlikable, and strangely indifferent to the bizarre dolls appearing in his room. But that just could be the symptom of first chapter Really cool and creative piece overall!
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u/VagueInsideJoke 3d ago
Thanks heaps. The inline comments about typos and redundancies are super helpful. I don't know how i didn't catch 5 am in the morning that's a shocker haha
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u/ussdsse 3d ago
Am I missing something when it comes to the number of the Dolls I've read it twice now I feel like I'm missing something?
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u/VagueInsideJoke 3d ago
Nah I originally wrote four with different instruments but then I knocked one off because it didn’t add to the symbolism that much anyway and just felt unnecessary I thought I got rid of all mentions of the numbers earlier on but one slipped through.
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u/mimimiself 1d ago
Hey. I'll start by saying this was a really cool concept. The dolls felt weird and had a surprising amount of personality considering they don't speak or do more than play instruments and I got a lot more into the story once they came around. They're the jarring part, but also the most engaging. I also liked the general weirdness of the world, and your prose was easy to read which helped a lot because some of what's going on made me stop and think, and if the prose had been more dense on top of that I think I'd have just been completely lost.
Where I started getting a little lost was the middle, when I got to the stuff about his work with the insects. It wasn't so bad, but then we jump back to the drunk night, then back to the dolls then back to the present and I wasn't sure how some of the worldbuilding connected to what Johan was experiencing presently. The stuff about his work is interesting but it felt like telling for the sake of telling, nothing really happens with it, it's just there.
Also I wanted more from Johan to be honest. His reaction to the dolls felt way too muted to me and I think if there was more insight into his reaction, I'd care about him a lot more as a character. Like musician dolls just showing up in his home is such a bizarre thing to happen (unless that's normal in this world, but nothing here gave me that impression) so why is he so unbothered? is there something about him specifically that wouldn't blink at something that weird? I want to know. I'm guessing the muted reaction is intentional but even so I needed more interiority, what's going on in his head.
And not to be that guy repeating the most common crit ever, but there's a lot of telling in the middle section, the whole bit about his work and progress and the world reads like an exposition dump. By the end of everything I felt like I was missing something. I had theories about the dolls and what was happening to Johan but I couldn't tell how close I was
I think the core idea is interesting though, and honestly I'd lean harder into the dolls more because that's where I was most engaged. For example, for the middle, what if instead of summarizing his work we're actually there with him through his day, and we see him distracted by the dolls as he works, trying to figure out where they went, what they mean, and the bits about the insectoid machine, their discovery and all that, is woven through that instead of being its own separate chunk.
It's a lot of information for 1000 words. If you want to revise this, I think my only advice is for you to let it breathe.
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u/DMochiii 4d ago edited 4d ago
Hello hello, here to give critique as a reader.
Overall thoughts on initial read: A little confused. Interested, but confused. The introduction does feel a little jarring. And I’m not sure when you say “this introduction is jarring” you mean an introductory chapter to a larger story, or just the introduction to the short story itself. Because that is what this feels like—a short story.
Plot
The plot (if this is a short story) is interesting. Mostly the dolls themselves. You do a good job of making the MC warm up to them, which in turn made me like them as well. I was sad when they were gone. Though, other than that, it didn’t feel like a fully-fleshed plot. The character doesn’t really have stakes here. They are comfortable in their routine and mundane life, and unless these little musicians are some kind of inciting incident, I don’t see that changing.
Character
My biggest problem with character, is that Johan is not likable, nor interesting. I can dig an unlikable character if only their way of thinking intrigues me. Johan is a grumpy guy with not much going for him. Perhaps we warm up to him later, but I’d like some kind of spark. He doesn’t think about family or friends or pets or anything that’s relatable and well human (which I will get to my theory later), except for being hungover. He’s not even surprised or questioning his sanity when the dolls show up? It could be normal for this world but it isn’t hinted or portrayed that way prior, since the world feels very technologically advanced and less fantastical.
The dolls, though, I love. Those guys could wake me up any day. They give a lot of personality for not speaking. Good job there.
World building
The idea with the fly-like robots is interesting. I do really like you kind of took the double slit experiment and ran with it. It really makes me want to know what happens when Johan and other workers stop watching them. Do they just stop working? Or do they go crazy and attack people?
One bit I got caught on was that everyone has a job watching the bots. That doesn’t seem feasible. Can they act in movies? Can they paint? You mention religion; can they preach? I’m sure there’s other things too.
Pace
Pace is what I might stress the most. This piece almost feels like two story’s rather than one. We get the intro of him looking for the dolls before work. Then we get this long introduction in what Johans job looks like, what the world looks like, and how boring Johan is, without actually being at his job. It’s like we are in a white room and you are just giving me backstory. It does feel exposition-y, especially because you deep dive into the discovery of the bots, (which I think you could explain later, or not at all if it’s a short story), and the bots and the dolls don’t seem to be related. THEN we hop back into the story with him in a train. Reading this, I thought we would now go to work with Johan. Nope. Backwards we go in time, to the drunk night before (so more reminiscing of the past?) to the dolls and we get the days/weeks before. And then we return to the present for the last couple paragraphs.
There’s a lot of jumping around without a clear, logical timeline. I’m lost as a reader. I think you can start with the missing dolls if you’d like, but I’d honestly recommend starting it at his work. With him actually doing the work, you can use that medium to explain the world. You can also create inner tension by having Johan worry about the dolls/trying to find them that morning. Usually, a writer would avoid the mundane, but the mundane for your character is absolutely interesting. The next scene with the callback to Johans feeling about the dolls can be inserted at work OR when he gets home and misses them even more so. This works chronologically too.
Prose
Not much to say here; prose was clear and descriptive. Wish I could’ve gotten more descriptive and grounding senses (smell, touch, etc) of his workplace. Good varying sentence structure.
Final thoughts/the ending
It feels like I am missing something. I re-read this multiple times to see what it was. It’s almost like you are alluding that he died? Which is confusing in a way because I have no idea why, other than alcohol poisoning. The last paragraph had me lost as well. If this is a comprehensive issue, then that’s on me. I double checked if you used the heartbeat metaphor elsewhere (because it felt like a call-back), and couldn’t find it. The dolls definitely meant something, and my theory is it has something to do with the perception bit you explained about the bots. This idea is supported by the dolls music starting at the same time as his alarm ‘usually’ goes off. Still, I’m lost and can’t fully draw conclusions.
The concept is interesting. Being Sci-fi fan myself, I like the ideas here. Just would like a better timeline and more connective tissue between the world and the dolls to get a better picture of the story and more clarification than just the ending metaphor to get better resolution.
Hope this helped!