Hey Annie, okay - so... I'm not 100% convinced that you're using all of your elements in a super-proactive way here: I think we could swap out all of your elements and it wouldn't make a true difference to your story, which isn't really about a child prodigy as we might understand the term and the egg is used superficially as set dressing. The whole idea of the society, the feathers, the sense of an uprising getting started - all that it is solid enough, but shouldn't there be an issue here about caste systems in so much as your main character is somehow born 'brighter' than her caste allows - thus revealing the stupidity of the system (so her high intelligence is a disruptive influence?) and as these characters are bird-like, doesn't it make more sense to put a hatchery or egg-incubation idea into here - the place where the caste system is initiated in the first place (temperature of eggs being used to genetically modify the off-spring in a Brave New World style?). I don't think you need to jettison your actual setting or the nuts and bolts of your story idea, but I do think there's something obvious and useful to be exploited between the high intelligence implied by your child prodigy prompt and the significance of eggs... You need to use these elements to vivify your concept and use them to tell us more about this world and how it works.
So could changing the discrimination to this caste system that kind of "breeds" people to be specific things (and are in turn marked by the natural color of their feathers) fix this issue? If I show the story focused on this in a way. So maybe the opening scene is showing the incubation, and the children/eggs being sorted, and then maybe it cuts to Faigel looking for a job (obviously with high enough, if not higher qualifications for them) but being turned down based on the color of her feathers because of what this system wants them to think? and then the story goes on as usual with her taking a stand?
OGR 25/01/2018
ReplyDeleteHey Annie, okay - so... I'm not 100% convinced that you're using all of your elements in a super-proactive way here: I think we could swap out all of your elements and it wouldn't make a true difference to your story, which isn't really about a child prodigy as we might understand the term and the egg is used superficially as set dressing. The whole idea of the society, the feathers, the sense of an uprising getting started - all that it is solid enough, but shouldn't there be an issue here about caste systems in so much as your main character is somehow born 'brighter' than her caste allows - thus revealing the stupidity of the system (so her high intelligence is a disruptive influence?) and as these characters are bird-like, doesn't it make more sense to put a hatchery or egg-incubation idea into here - the place where the caste system is initiated in the first place (temperature of eggs being used to genetically modify the off-spring in a Brave New World style?). I don't think you need to jettison your actual setting or the nuts and bolts of your story idea, but I do think there's something obvious and useful to be exploited between the high intelligence implied by your child prodigy prompt and the significance of eggs... You need to use these elements to vivify your concept and use them to tell us more about this world and how it works.
Hi Phil.
DeleteSo could changing the discrimination to this caste system that kind of "breeds" people to be specific things (and are in turn marked by the natural color of their feathers) fix this issue? If I show the story focused on this in a way. So maybe the opening scene is showing the incubation, and the children/eggs being sorted, and then maybe it cuts to Faigel looking for a job (obviously with high enough, if not higher qualifications for them) but being turned down based on the color of her feathers because of what this system wants them to think? and then the story goes on as usual with her taking a stand?