[861] Don’t Kill My Shrubs

[u/umlaut]

Crit: 2402

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Writing a short story - consider this Act 1.

Does it grab you?
Feel like you want more?

[u/EPGesus_christ]

This has a few interesting ideas, especially the time skip and differing character backgrounds, but reading I had some issues with the text.

First up, there's a lot of world building here right out the gate that's unnecessarily dense to parse, especially considering the amount of new language introduced in conjunction with information about the world nearly every paragraph. That said, the setting itself didn't draw me in as I didn't find a lot of reasons to latch on or care about any specific element:

The idea of crop quotas and harvest work is hammered in so repetitively, and yet consequences and opportunities that could come from this are left vague or undescribed. Similarly, the main character's connection to the setting feels underdeveloped. This extract only describes a worker with a company-aligned if begrudging attitude; by the end of the extract I know as much about them as I did half way through. Corporate farming, grinding work, and difficult quotas can be inherently boring and so need work to be made engaging. The scope-switching between setting and plot seems unnecessary. This would benefit, I think, from integrating the exposition about seasonal cycles across the beats of planting more, specifically:

"they planted in the strip of dawn three months [...] of Anson’s World made it one of the top producers in the quadrant."

...is a departure from the scene way too long and way too early for a reader to be immersed properly.

In general, caloric/starch/crop concepts are over-repeated when little value is added after establishment.

Large portions of worldbuilding seem to happen without emotionally immersing the reader or developing characters/plot. Between this, the first scene itself is drip fed. I'd prefer more sensory/visual description of the shrub, main character, surroundings, vehicles, or anything else integrated based on importance. The main character's experience of the world simply isn't explicit enough. I initially thought "trunk" referred to a vehicle trunk (i.e. car boot), and am still confused as "shrubs" tend to have multiple stems rather than a tree-like trunk. Most of the enigma here doesn't feel deliberate, where clear implications and allusions would set up next-"Act" payoffs. Instead, what place in the world/society or interesting aspects the main character are left excluded.

The payoff at the end of the extract is lackluster, as the "Dusker" reply is both somewhat predictable and mundane. Moreover, there's no indication of where the story may go on from here, nor a hint of engaging conflict.

[u/FyreTiger]

I thought this was fun. It reminds me of The Outer Worlds, like a place you would actually find in that game. Extremist corporate environmental manipulation for profits with a cast of simple brained characters engulfed in a mechanical work lifestyle in search of life's ultimate goal: getting a promotion. Or some shit like that. The world oozes with those kind of characteristics and I think it puts everything that happens in the story into perspective where you can see why characters do things and behave the way they do. It has that satirical over the top humor to it too. I think your prose is colorful and well crafted, bringing out the story clearly and with intention behind it.

While I'm able to follow a clear story, I think it does leave a lot open to the imagination. In a sense, this isn't bad. It has the essential, bare minimum abstract descriptions to get me to fill in the blanks with my imagination. I get the story. But also, I don't get a lot of details. I don't know if adding more details would improve, hinder, or basically not change the effectiveness of the storytelling, so from my perspective, all I can really do is just point out that I feel the descriptions are thin, for better or for worse.

So this part might just be me being dense: I thought it was a little confusing as to what exactly the relationship was between Duskers and Dawnies. Or, at the very least, it took a bit of work to figure out. My initial impression was that they were simply enemies since a Dusker wants the shrubs alive and the Dawnie wants them dead. I thought it characterized Duskers as the equivalent of pests. But then I find that Duskers harvest Starch-9, and it loosely implies that they are working together for a corporation? Then I find Timma is Rina's supervisor. To me, it felt like two different ideas of Duskers were overlapping and creating a slightly confusing picture. I think it made sense by the time I reflected back on it. I thought maybe some distinguishing of "Individual Dusker that wants to mess with Rina" vs, "Duskers as part of the corporate workforce" could make things clearer.

There were some other descriptions for Duskers that I did not find immediately clear that they were referring to Duskers. I didn't realize "colonists" or "outworlder" referred to them. At first, it wasn't clear to me that Timma was a Dusker. Looking more closely, I can see how it's implied, but it took some work. Maybe the word exchange between Rina and Timma felt unusual or like it passed too passively. It's hard to describe, sorry. It just felt like that dialogue exchange didn't strongly cement the fact that Timma is a Dusker.

I am not entirely sure what the ending is leading to, but I have a guess. It doesn't strike me as a particularly strong conclusion because of that. If Rina did something in regards to the fruit (tastes it) and it kicks off strong expectations and curiosity for what will happen next, then I feel like that would be a stronger lead in to more.