A story: "The Survivors of the Black Cloud"

Hodgson · Post by **Hodgson** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 2:32 pm

I'm hoping to get some feedback on this. Thanks in advance. I probably won't be on the computer again until Tuesday or Wednesday.

http://geocities.com/ineldorado/survivors.rtf

JJ Burke · Post by **JJ Burke** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 10:01 am

i liked it. made notes on the rtf file, which you can get here. i hope it's helpful.

my favorite parts were the traffic jam and the discovery of the body hanging from the window. the story is strong overall, but i found those scenes particularly effective.

read it, everybody!

Hodgson · Post by **Hodgson** » Mon Aug 28, 2006 2:57 pm

JJ Burke wrote:i liked it. made notes on the rtf file, which you can get here. i hope it's helpful.

my favorite parts were the traffic jam and the discovery of the body hanging from the window. the story is strong overall, but i found those scenes particularly effective.

read it, everybody!

Thanks! I've downloaded your notes and will be looking at them tonight.

Hodgson · Post by **Hodgson** » Tue Aug 29, 2006 2:25 pm

JJ Burke wrote:read it, everybody!

Yeah, dammit!

nortonew · Post by **nortonew** » Wed Aug 30, 2006 7:34 pm

I liked it. It kept my attention all the way through.
I was a little confused about the dimensions of the cloud however. It sort of seemed like it covered a huge area, but I wasn't sure. You only gave the position of one edge of it. Was it supposed to have reached eastward all the way to the coast? Or was it something more limited to the region of southern Indiana? Perhaps you were vague on purpose, but it was a detail that I was left wondering about.

Hodgson · Post by **Hodgson** » Fri Sep 01, 2006 9:41 am

nortonew wrote:I liked it. It kept my attention all the way through.
I was a little confused about the dimensions of the cloud however. It sort of seemed like it covered a huge area, but I wasn't sure. You only gave the position of one edge of it. Was it supposed to have reached eastward all the way to the coast? Or was it something more limited to the region of southern Indiana? Perhaps you were vague on purpose, but it was a detail that I was left wondering about.

Thanks for reading, and I'm glad you liked it.

You may be right about the vagueness. I'd thought about the story well ahead of writing it and may have been myself overly familiar with the details, that I neglected pass on enough to the reader. I'll think of that when I do the revision. But originally, I actually sat and calculated speed and diameter, the rate of the cloud's spread, the change of that rate (here's when it's useful to know calculus), etc. Somewhere between a wealth of details and giving as little information as I gave might do the trick.