New to writing, please give honest comments

[Redwolf]

not bad keep going

[Exodus]

In the distant realm of Technatopia, the world was in a futuristic age, and most of the population had come to rely on machines a great deal.  
At this point, robots had already been invented to cater to humans' general needs and assist in developing the world with them but they were unreliable, and sometimes dangerous, they malfunctioned all too often and most of the time, humans were ill-equipped to deal with them when this happened.  
Over several years, scientists built on robot projects, until finally, they created something better.  
Robots that thought for themselves, yet, knew of authority, feelings of others and had a sense of law and duty:  Machines with free will and a conscience.  
At first there were protests, some people felt that creating life went against all religious and moral values, but the production went ahead regardless.  
Androids looked virtually like humans and had most of the abilities of humans too, the ability to think, and act on their own decisions, they could see, smell, listen, touch and taste like humans, but with heightened senses or extra additions.  
Their sight could reach further than others and zoom in on a specific target, their smell was heightened so they could detect different scents better than people could, they could hear sounds from farther away and determine what they were easily, they had twice the strength of humans but could control that strength and be gentle wherever needed, and their design allowed them to go for much longer without food and liquid.  
Each ability was created throughout the years and added to those that wished to be more like the humans, eventually, androids were even able to interact with one another, because love was a huge part of human life androids were given the same opportunities, and could produce children with other androids.  
At the time, it was unknown if human-android relationships could produce the same results, but people were banned from getting involved with androids in that way and vice versa.  
Because androids were stronger and sometimes smarter than humans, they were used often for manual labour, law enforcement or roles which required fast and/or calculating minds, this put several humans out of work because the androids could perform most jobs and duties better than them.  
This led to arguments and disputes that androids were getting out of hand, and most humans ended up despising having the androids around, so much that they hurt the androids with their actions and words a great deal, and treated them as lesser beings compared to them.  
This was a big mistake, the androids soon got tired of this; they stood up for themselves, resulting in war.  
But before it could grow too far out of control, higher up humans came to a quick decision in order to end it; to give the androids equal opportunities, if they weren't being treated as such, then even the humans would get involved alongside androids to rectify the problem.  
Even the ban to prevent human-android relationships was lifted eventually, in order to bring humans and androids closer together since by this point, tests had been performed to make sure that conception between humans and androids turned out to be safe, for the parents, and the child.  

Things were bound to go fine people thought, but problems still arose, a small portion of the androids still weren't satisfied, and the equal opportunities only made them greedy, they wanted more, they believed that they were better than humans, and as such, should be treated better.  
They continued to act as terrorists, hurting the humans to get what they wanted.  
But even the other androids wouldn't stand for this, and an agency formed by humans and androids counteracted the terrorist threats.  
It took five years to round up, imprison, and in some cases, destroy the terrorists, but the agency finally defeated them and locked the remaining survivors away.  

For several years after that, all was peaceful, until now.  

For the rest of the story, go to www.geocities.com/dream_archive and to the Pixel Virus Hunter area of the site.

[Kenneth]

Hello Exodus,

Nice going!! ... You can find a good deal of stories dealing with this theme on www.storiesonline.net , search for the category Sci-fi.

Cheers from Denmark!

Kenneth

[Ghost]

Hi Exodus
Not bad, but needs polish. Just my opinion, but you asked.

Here is something taken from an author's website. (Link included below)


How to Create an Instant Bestselling Novel
by Cliff Pickover

Please consider the following helpful tips. These will make it easier to get your stories or novels published. These tips will help you write good fiction in general.
Mechanics

  1. Show Not Tell
     It's better to show through a character's actions than "tell" by having the narrator describe. Please do not "tell."
           
           Example 1: "Garth became nervous" is "telling." It is better to "show" with: "Garth's hands trembled."
           Example 2: "Garth did not want to go down the hall with the Major" is "telling." It is better to "show" with: "What?" Garth said, "There's no way in hell I'm going with you!"

2.   Body Movement
     Occasional reference to body movement and scene interaction is important so that characters are not disembodied talking heads. It's also important to occasionally use body movement before a person talks, in order to establish who is talking.
           

           Example:
           "When are you going to leave for France?" John asked.
           could be cast as:
           John took a slow breath. "When are you going to leave for France?"
           (Many times beginning authors make it hard to figure out who is talking, but a quick reference to body movement before the speaker speaks makes it all clear.)

  3.   Short Better Than Long
     In real life, people often talk in short sentences and phrases, rather than in long drawn-out sentences with big words. Another dialog tip: use contractions often. For example, a character may be more apt to say "I'll" than "I will."

  4.   Break the Dialog
     Always insert a "he said" or "she said" as early as possible into a line of dialog (if a "he said" is even needed at all).
           
           Example:
           Never do: "Yes, I will kill him, but not until you buy the peaches for dinner," he said.
           Instead do:
           "Yes," he said, "I will kill him, but not until you buy the peaches for dinner."

  5.   Use Active Voice
     Don't say: "The paper was placed on the wall by the doctor." Use active voice: "The doctor placed the paper on the wall."

  6.   Avoid Omniscient Narrator
     Books have more immediacy if you stay within one character's head and therefore the narrator does not have knowledge of what other people are thinking. For example, if you are in Jake's head, we are in Jake's head for most of the book. We can't suddenly know how Melinda is feeling. Jake doesn't read her mind. We can suggest how she feels through Jake's opinions and what he sees and hears, and what she says and does. (Some people use an omniscient narrator, but the best books avoid it.)

  7.   Don't Rush The Scene
     If a scene sounds rushed, with too little attention to detail and texture, then more words are needed to draw out the action and suspense.

  8.   Natural Dialog
     If you are unsure if the dialog sounds natural, read it out loud to yourself. This is a great way to make sure the dialog is natural.

  9.   Involve All Senses
     To really get the reader involved, try to stimulate more of the reader's senses. For example, if you've gone ten pages without stimulating the reader (and character in the book) with an odor, or tactile feeling, sound, or taste, the book will have less immediacy.

 10.   Use "Said"
     I notice some beginning writers seem to dislike using "said" and try to replace the word "said" with words like commanded, remarked, uttered, began, etc. Perhaps they feel that too many "saids" stick out. However, you don't have to be afraid of using too many "saids." In fact, it is much worse to try substitutions. The best writers use "said" almost all the time and let the dialog convey the meaning. For example,
           

           "Get out of here now!" he commanded.
           is much worse than
           "Get out of here now!" he said.
           The word "commanded" is an unnecessary distraction. In any case, it's obvious the sentence is a command. When readers read "said", their eyes barely pause. The "said" goes almost unnoticed. This is what you want. Replacement words, such as "remarked", stick out obtrusively, which is what you don't want. For these reasons, some authors don't even use "he asked" for questions; rather they do: "Where is it?" he said.


 11. Don't Begin To
     Don't have your characters "begin to do something," "try to do something," and so forth. Just have them do it. Example: "Mary began to skip down the block." Change to "Mary skipped down the block."

 12. Avoid "as he"
     Avoid "as he" constructs. Example: "Mary turned on the TV as she thought all the time about Joe." Change to: "Mary turned on the TV, thinking all the time about Joe."

 13. Provide Character Reactions
     Example: When something is said or done to a character that is out of the ordinary, have the character respond. New writers often forget to show the responses of characters before moving on with the plot.

 14. Which or That?
     Use "which" with a comma when the phrase seems as if it could easily be set off with parentheses and make sense. Examples with "that" and "which": 1) I like dogs that bark. 2) I like the German Shepherd species, which has pointed ears, a tan coat, and teeth that rip.

http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/pickover/bestseller.html

*********************

These are of course, merely suggestions. Pickover has published several books, so perhaps there is some value to what he says. Up to you.
In any event, keep on writing Exodus!
Best of luck to you.

Ghost

[jilola]

The excerpt hints at an interesting world but is entirely exposition.

You need to work the details you gave in the post into the flow of the story.
Have something happen and use the events to demostrate what you doled out in the bit you posted.

As it is, there's way too much info without any reason for the reader to give a hoot.  I'd bet, once you've mixed the exposition into at least 50  times as much people and action you'll have a balanced and interesting story.

Good start. However it smells a bit like I, Robot?

2cents & L&L
jouni

[Meg]

Exodus,

As an English teacher (hohoho), I feel that what you're story really needs is to "show rather than tell".

What I mean by this is....

Imagine if you were going to write: "She was happy."

That is "telling".

Instead, what you could do is "show" us. so you'd say something like:
"She had a huge smile on her face."

A pretty poxy example, but do you see what I mean?

That way you give your readers some work to do.

But your plot is GREAT.

Meg

[Astral-Jas]

Machines taking over the humans huh? That sounds pretty good, and I see you put a little twist on it. Thats good or else I would have just said that's old. I started to write this year, poems and such. Good luck with the story!

[SylvrFlwr]

What Ghost and Meg said.