The Art of Deciphering

[little_grey_owl]

Title: The Art of Deciphering
Genre: science-fiction
Warnings: none
Words: 1591
Challenge: brigits_flame , November 2009, week 2, topic: key
AN: I believe I might expand this story eventually…

Comments

Part Two

[toxic_apiaceae]

[“We Leets declare war against all Nooms.
Failure to agree on water + mineral prices cause.
No longer consider us connected to Nooms in any way.
All network devices under our control.”]

HAHAHAHA!!!! I have no idea why this amuses me so much, but it does.

I was going to make a general comment at the end of this, but I’ll do it here instead due to special circumstances with this section. For the entire story except here, there should be an EXTRA space between all lines. Meaning, the enter key has to be hit twice.

There ARE times where this rule doesn’t apply, but between paragraphs always include that extra space. This not only makes it easier to read but it also gives the reader a cue as to when a new concept/action is about to occur. Without them, the story reads a bit like a giant block of text.

[They had always seemed like a strange, detached but harmless minority, working on everything related to technical appliances, programs and the Internet.]

There’s a lot of descriptive information, but it’s a bit too much for one sentence and therefore reads a little garbled. I think the part that kinda throws it off is the “but harmless". It could possibly work if it was bracketed with hyphens, but it might be better to get rid of the “detached” and leave it as “strange but harmless” instead. What do you think?

[They may have been considered unpleasant, always living behind their screens and keyboards but they had always been useful.]

I’m glad you understand that you do NOT need a comma every time “and” and “but” appear in a sentence. Oxford commas are the bane of my existence because it seems like those stupid things have EVERYONE confused on comma use. Anyway, here a comma is needed after “keyboards” because the “always … keyboards” section is inserted into the main portion of the sentence. When reading, if it makes a complete sentence without the middle portion, then the middle needs bracketing commas.

[Of course, there had been rumours that the Leets were beginning to see themselves as having absolutely nothing in common with Nooms, some even considered themselves to have evolved into an entirely different species, a theory which was even supported by some Noom scientists.]

Last time mentioning this, but just be on the lookout for it future pieces: There is an overwhelming amount of information in this sentence. *grins* I do this same thing all the time, so it’s easy for me to spot it in other people’s work.

[The self-cleaning pavements were violently sweeping away pedestrians, attempting to deposit them in the waste-bins between the streets and the pavements. ]

***DIES*** This here nearly made me fall out of my chair laughing. I LOVE it! That is just sheer awesomeness!

[Now, the area Nooms used contained only information deemed harmless by the Leets.]

Oooo… this has such an “Animal Farm” feel to it. The only difference is that Jonston KNOWS it’s happening, whereas in the aforementioned book it was a gradual, subtle change. Nice work!

[“Most qualified? I am afraid you are very much mistaken. My institute is concerned with early cyber language, which is quite different from the problem we are looking at here. We study phenomenons such as asc-art and the language use of lol-cats. While it is certainly fascinating, I am afraid you should look into entirely different areas to find help.”]

Ah, just a small spelling thing here, and it’s something everyone does. “Phenomenon” is actually one of those odd words that encompasses both singular AND plural. Meaning, the “s” at the end isn’t needed.

Part Three

[toxic_apiaceae]

Overall Impressions:

This was a FANTASTIC use of the prompt! I’m sitting out this month, and when I saw the prompt was “key” I was really, REALLY hoping someone would do something with language - whether decoding or translating, I wasn’t picky. I’m actually going back to school right now for a degree in languages and translation, so the idea of trying to decipher what the Leets were saying was right up my alley of interest.

You asked for a moderate content edit, and I MIGHT have gone a little further than you wanted. However, there really wasn’t all that much TO edit for the content. The story was solid, it progressed nicely and at a good pace. You had good transitions between concepts in both the sentences and the paragraphs.

The only real critiquing I have involves structure and punctuation, but even then those are extremely mild. Watch the comma use, don’t overcomplicate the sentences or weigh them down with too much information, and put those extra spaces in.

Now, having said all that, I’d REALLY like to encourage you to bump up your editing preference in the future. Based off of this piece, you’re a very solid writer and I’m confident your work could stand up to a more thorough edit just fine. Don’t be afraid to put it out there!

Great work, and it was an absolute pleasure reading this!

Re: Part Three

[little_grey_owl]

Thank you very much for the edit! Don't worry, the edit didn't go further than I wanted; I'm a newbie so I'm still getting used to the different levels of editing anyway.
I'll work through my story again and correct the things you mentioned.
I've got a slight obsession with languages (and am taking several courses on language this semester even though I actually study biology), so I couldn't resist using this aproach to the topic. ;-)
Once again, thank you!