Author: Lewis Richards
The Creature moved its great head forwards, releasing a long mellow call into the night. It waited for a moment, listening for a response, but when one didn’t drift back on the wind, it ambled slowly back through the tough, knee-high grasses surrounding its nest.
Moving out of the grass and into the dug out hollow, The Creature snorted and flopped to the ground resting its head on its four forelimbs, letting out a sullen whistle. A single calf rested in the hollow, watching the adult expectantly as pulses of light flashed over mottled pattern of its skin. A Query.
The adult snorted. The Juvenile animal raised itself onto its haunches, pressing the question.
Egg Mother? Sisters? Herd?
The Bull raised its head, curling its long tail around the calf.
No Call. Lost. Just Us. The answered played over his skin, sadness colouring his luminescence a deep purple.
The Calf sat motionless, its skin fading. It huddled closer to its father. sharing their pain as they stared across the empty grasslands.
Light passed over Its skin again. Less insistent, a statement.
Sky Change.
The Male looked up, he had known this for a while, since his mate had vanished with the rest of the herd. None of the stars matched those they followed on their migratory routes.
He nuzzled the calf, comforting her.
Sleep now.
As she curled against his side, he considered what to do once the sun came up. Conditions here were good for growing calves and he had seen no predators, it made sense to stay put until the young one had grown stronger. he lowered his head and closed his opalescent eyes, dreaming of his lost family.
_
From behind the adaptive sim glass of Paddock 9, The game warden watched the big animal settle down for the night. Good, he thought. They hadn’t anticipated how disruptive this one’s calls would be to the rest of the creatures on the ship.
One of the Biologists studying the animals walked over to the viewing platform.
“Calling for her mate again? ” she said.
The warden nodded, he had been part of the team to lift the animals from their origin planet, these ones had close family groups, but the Institute had only wanted an adult Female and younger male to start a breeding program with.
“It’s funny, we expected her to lay a few eggs aboard the ship for us to start incubating. We caught them in the middle of their breeding season, a female of that size should be producing multiple clutches” The biologist flipped through her notes, drinking in readings of hormone levels and Feed patterns.
“You’re certain she’s definitely a she..?”
The warden shrugged, he was just there to manage the Water And food dispensers, and oversee containment protocols. he had no interest in science, just the money of the exotic animal trade.
“Hadrodons are Difficult to sex from orbit, but this one was guarding the nest. we’re fairly sure that’s the female role. If not, I can trade you one of the specimens we captured for our own venture, for a price, same herd, adult and sub-adults”
The Biologist swore. Stomping off to prepare a sweep of tests to figure out just what it is they were taking home.
Want a breeding pair and not even sure of the genders – typical! I’d assume there was no science involved, apart from the biologist mentioned, merely financial considerations. Nice little tale, well put together, but needing another editing pass (mainly to hammer some capitals down to lower-case).
I have to admit I seldom even notice the ‘mistakes’ in writing.
I read these stories for the pleasure of the read.
This was a fantastic story.
Given that the expectation is that ‘animals’ have no moral considerations and that any male and female would breed I expect a problem with the entire program the ‘humans’ hope for. I took from the communication between the FATHER and DAUGHTER that there is intellect, morals and culture with these creatures.
Interesting story. I really like how the alien animals are portrayed. I would think a young female and older male would have been the ideal choice since females tend to be the limiting factor in reproduction, but if the opposite is true for this species you might explain that briefly. Still, nice work.
Enjoyed this. Good perspective and a subtle dig at scientific methodologies.
Well this was just awful. Is there no editor on this website who checks and fixes these stories before they go live?
I thought it was a good story and an easy read. If you found it that difficult to read maybe you could donate to the site to pay for an editor, or if you’re feeling brave submit your own original content.
Nah, it’s ok to just point out failings someone’s. This story’s construction is WAY below the usual standard for this website.
The polite way to say that is “needed another editing pass.” You can even say “desperately needed” if you’re that adamant about it. That doesn’t make anything awful. I rather liked the perspective, the details the creatures noticed, and the overall idea. This is not the place for trolling. If that is your aim, you will find yourself at home elsewhere.
You can make up rules for how YOU behave, but don’t expect others to follow your rules.
I agree with BeckD, and would like you to regard the post as an etiquette guideline for this site.
This is a community. There are no rules, but there is an expected standard of behaviour. We are expected to be polite, and you weren’t.
Those aren’t my rules. Those are the rules people generally follow when they are actually trying to solve a problem and help the person they are talking to. They also happen to be the guidelines people follow when talking face-to-face, which you have used the Internet to avoid so that you can act like a child. But I don’t suppose I can stop you. Have fun doing… whatever this is. Though I don’t think you will have as much fun on this website: as you can see from Lewis’s comment, the authors here can generally stand up for themselves.
Any chance you can either point out what it is you specifically dont like about it or just stop commenting?
On the subject of Rules, why should i follow what you think are the rules of creative writing? Like Stephen said, there was a grand total of Four grammar mistakes in there, which have been ammended, so what’s the issue?
OK here you go. Keep in mind this is AFTER someone said they went through and made corrections already.
“The Creature moved its great head forwards” Should be ‘forward’, not ‘forwards’.
“dug out hollow, The Creature” The word ‘the’ should not be capitalized. Arguably, ‘Creature’ should not be either.
“The Creature snorted and flopped to the ground resting its head on its four forelimbs” There should be a comma after ‘ground’.
“as pulses of light flashed over mottled pattern” It should say ‘the mottled pattern”.
“A Query.” The word ‘query’ should not be capitalized. Also, this isn’t a sentence, but it does work as a style choice.
“The Juvenile animal raised itself” The word ‘juvenile’ should not be capitalized.
“It huddled closer to its father. sharing their pain” The word ‘sharing’ should be capitalized, or the period after ‘father’ should be a comma.
“Light passed over Its skin again.” The word ‘its’ should not be capitalized.
“he had seen no predators, it made sense to stay put” There should be a semi-colon instead of a comma here, or just start a new sentence.
“had grown stronger. he lowered his head” The word ‘he’ should be capitalized.
“of Paddock 9, The game warden” The word ‘the’ should not be capitalized.
“Good, he thought.” Technically should be a quotation, but in this story’s style, maybe thoughts aren’t quotes?
“One of the Biologists studying” The word ‘biologists’ should not be capitalized. Job descriptions of this type are not titles.
““Calling for her mate again? ” she said.” Missing comma after the quote.
“The warden nodded, he had been part” Change comma to semi-colon.
“from their origin planet, these ones had close family groups” Again, semi-colon, not comma. Better yet, new sentence.
“the Institute had only wanted an adult Female” Do not capitalize ‘female’. The same sentence has the word ‘male’ with no capital letter. Very inconsistent.
“the middle of their breeding season, a female of that size should be producing multiple clutches” The biologist flipped” OK, again change comma to semi-colon, and use punctuation at the end of the quote itself and outside the quote. Note that here, ‘biologist’ is not capitalized.
“manage the Water And food dispensers” Why are ‘water’ and ‘and’ capitalized?
“protocols. he had no” Capitalize the first word of every sentence.
““Hadrodons are Difficult to sex from orbit” Don’t capitalize random words in the middle of sentences.
“guarding the nest. we’re fairly sure that’s the female role” Capitalize the first word of every sentence. This time ‘female’ is not capitalized, which is good, but it shows that this wasn’t some style the author was going for.
“adult and sub-adults”” All sentences must end with punctuation.
“The Biologist swore.” Don’t capitalize job descriptions. It’s not a title.
“Stomping off to prepare a sweep of tests to figure out just what it is they were taking home.” This is not a sentence.
“Keep in mind this is AFTER someone said they went through and made corrections already”
Someone? I happen to be the Editor, and keeper of the keys for 365tomorrows, so when you say ‘someone’ it shows a deliberate and pronounced lack of respect.
I’m not sure if you read my lengthy comment below offering some gentle guidance as to how to handle communications here, or if you are just choosing to ignore it, but your tone here is more than a little off-putting.
Going to have to disagree with you on this. While the story could have benefited from another editing pass, it was nowhere near awful. While I agree that editing is can be a subjective topic, aside the rules of grammar and format-in-character – thus multiple proofreaders and editors are preferred – your comment is impolite.
“is can”? – Yup, I needed another editing pass. 🙂
Editing is absolutely NOT subjective. There are very well set language rules for how periods and capital letters and the like are to be used. This story failed miserably. And there are far worse things in life than what you might consider to be an impolite
Honestly, while I appreciate the fact you took it upon yourself to point out how miserably i failed, i’m just happy my story got put up.
As for an Editor, I don’t know if you have read the terms for uploading anything here, but the Editing is down to us. Did I miss a few capital letters? Probably, is it going to stop me from writing more? Not a chance.
The more pressing issue though is that instead of trying to encourage and help a young writer, you decided to try and knock them down a peg. Didn’t exactly work though did it, I look forward to you reading my future stories.
Thanks for the feedback from everyone else! Obviously my editing could use some improvements, but i look forward to sharing my stuff again!
And we look forward to your next submission!
Lewis, as noted above, I’ve just reviewed the story and found only four specific typos that you or we should have caught, two misplaced apostrophes and two periods in place of commas. I’ve made those edits now, but if there was anything in the story that we felt needed to be addressed before publication, we would have turned it back for edits, and clearly we didn’t.
Some things I find useful when editing is to change text editors, I write in one, and edit in two different ones, as I find the visual difference makes me see things I may have otherwise missed. I also write once, then edit multiple times, and often leave the piece alone for a few hours or until the next day and then re-read it. Taking a break helps you catch things you missed while writing, as once you have momentum reading something it’s easy to skip through rough bits without noticing, stopping and starting again later makes you see these things more clearly.
You can also read stories out-loud, even to yourself, and you’ll find places where the language trips you up speaking that it doesn’t while just reading – your mouth doesn’t make the same allowances your brain makes, so I find that useful, especially when dealing with dialogue.
I rather enjoyed the story, and I admire your conviction to double-down and write harder, and we look forward to seeing more of your work in the future.
Thank you for noting that you consider this tale to fall short of our usual standards. The implied compliment is appreciated.
However, you are somewhat incorrect. While there are indeed strict rules regarding language and grammar, usage of any the within the constraints of a story can be subjective to the needs of the story.
But, I accept this is a point over which we will continue to disagree.
Being a writer is a difficult thing, you spend long hours alone with your thoughts carefully crafting something you think works as a story, and then you abandon it to the world and hope first that it gets any response at all, and second that it gets a positive one.
Writers thrive on constructive criticism, and often that means a reader wishing to share an opinion will point out everything they didn’t like, didn’t think worked, or could have used some form of improvement. It’s this kind of feedback that enables a writer to improve, as quite often we have blind spots, in which things repeat that we don’t see.
That said, ‘this was just awful’ doesn’t really help anyone, it gets you negative feedback from other readers, and it provides absolutely nothing for the author to focus on improving.
Second, we read hundreds of submissions each month, many of which don’t ever see the light of day. We have our own stories to write, and edit, and we have other time commitments that preclude us from making any but the most minor and necessary of edits to a story before it’s published. That’s why on the submission form we ask that stories be carefully reviewed before submitting. So yes, there is an editor who reviews the stories and makes edits before they go live, and in this particular case there were four edits that should have been, and now have been made, two misplaced apostrophes, two periods instead of commas, nothing that I would consider life-threatening.
There are no hard and fast rules to govern behaviour here, we would like everyone who reads the stories to enjoy them, and if you don’t like one, wait a day and there will be another that hopefully will be more your taste. If you do like one, by all means let the author know, and if you think one can be improved, then I would encourage you to provide constructive feedback as to what didn’t work for you and why. If you point out a typo that the author or we missed, we’ll fix it, but without any useful details, negative comments don’t give anyone anything tangible to act upon.
We hope you continue to read the stories, and we hope you continue to comment, both positive and negative as you deem fit, and all I would ask is that perhaps you’ll think a bit about how you can help writers improve by providing more actionable feedback, and be aware that you are part of a community of readers and writers here, so abrasive comments are going to get abrasive responses, and we would appreciate keeping conflict confined to differing ideas not differing standards of conduct.