Jan 15, 2025
Some more notes for this chapter.
When you describe something, you should aim to do so in a way that follows some sort of technique, a way to emulate the eye glossing over the landscape or the impression the view leaves on the viewer. Some of those techniques include panning (left to right, forward to back, etc.), generic to detail and vice-versa, impression to expression, and so on. In your case, you tend to list out the features of the scene in a very monotonous fashion, almost like compiling a grocery list.
Furthermore, you should also aim to entertain more senses. A lot of the time you focus on visuals only and whilst those are good and all, narration is only complete when all the senses are tickled. I don't think I'm too aware of how anything *sounds*, or how hot, cold, draughty, wet or dry this spaceship is, how anything feels to the touch, how this colony smells. It all feels very muted and silent, which makes it easy to blend together.
Furthermore, your characters' personalities are very easy to confuse. They all seem like the same clone of rag-tag individuals who perpetually try to one up each other with their wit and banter. Whilst that's entertaining for a while, it also loses its lustre fairly quickly when there's no 'straight man', no baseline.
Lastly, the amount of bloat in this chapter makes it very easy to forego and forget the little obvious plot breadcrumbs. Because of how abundant the descriptions and assorted 'nothings' (banter that goes nowhere, exposition that doesn't achieve much), the whole chapter reads like a lot of fodder interspersed with two plot moments - the radio conversation and the merchant's appearance - which are all that stick in the mind. It helps if you structure your chapters with a bit of cause and effect in mind. The plot beats of any chapter should be linked with 'therefore' and 'but's more so than 'and then's, which yours seem to be: They reach 039, and then the robots call, and then they dock and a merchant approaches them, etc.
That's all I have to say. Best of luck in the competition.
Bubbles~
