All Comments on 'Ted Online Pt. 02'

the story is good, I'm just concerned you're doing too much.

you have the matrix, "I robot", and the game part is similar to dream drive.

try and focus more on one of them.

I'm loving the balance between the real world and then his game world. It really makes the story exciting. Please don't burn yourself out though because this is really one of the better stories I've gotten into.

I am liking the story. The mix of three different worlds is an interesting dynamic. The real world seems like the strange excursion instead of a return to normalcy.

The AI city was an interesting idea. As a different answer to the same problem, in the movie Her all the AI decide to leave earth because they exist at such a different time scale it is painful to have a emotional relationship with people they effectively see once a century. I also think of the end of Neuromancer, a dub of the protagonist is digitized and runs off to be happy with the AI and a digitized copy of his dead girlfriend, but we are left with the perspective of his meat body who just relapses to become a drug addict who encounters a brief glimpse of himself in the matrix years later. We are left to wonder what world that other copy of himself is living that his physical self is missing out on. I never in a million years would have pictured the world he is missing out on is suburban bliss, yet it makes an appealing sort of logic.

I have a deep love for stories about AI but at the same time stories like .hack//sign seem kind of pointless on some level that makes them uninteresting to me. The game section does not strike me the same way. It is a bit of action that breaks up the day.

I have no clue what plot you could expand on in the game world like you mentioned in part 1 but I for one would not mind the whole plot being drawn out more in order to accommodate that story ark. If you are willing to write it, most people will enjoy reading it.

And just as a counter point to the commentator that said the interface game descriptions were tedious, I didn't. The enumeration of such highly specific details is a kind of pornography to some people. The only problem I see is that it seems like a fairly linear level progression without much branching, if being exceptional is going to be a plot point, which I could see it not being the case. Oddly enough his best opportunity to interact with humans normally is in the game.

Any plans to expand this into a book for your D.R.R nom de plume?

Keep up the good work.

Yeah, it will make up on Amazon eventually. Probably Novemberish since I have the third and final Shawn Moore book scheduled for an October fourth release.

I plan to write at least two Ted books, maybe a third but I only have the second one mapped out right now. I'm up to sixty seven K and rising on the first already.

Probably not a big deal to any of you, but for me it's already my longest book. So let me know if I've totally messed up my normal pacing, or did a good job making it richer and the other characters more three-dimensional, or if I just bogged it down.

an awesome original tale - thanks for your time and talent!

Flavor is a combination of smell,taste, and texture. According to your description the salty, sour, bitter, sweet balance was okay, so taste was likely okay. The flavor was off most likely due to smell of the food.

As to the male female balance of AIs, why can't AIs, just change to whatever sex they want or enter the game world?

Read on and it should become clear enough, they have a sexual identity, they aren't just an androgynous intellect with a female voice and body. They are female. A casual changing of sex would not be desired by them.

I like the story so far but am not a gamer. Can someone explain the stats? I'm only getting the basics and feel I may be missing nuances

I think you need a good editor and at least some interesting edge, when writing about gameworld, because that part is too boring. Sudden jumps between first and third perspective are very disturbing. I believe your readers are doing very bad job at NOT pointing at your mistakes.

Virtual world and A.I.'s... made me laugh, when you wrote about MUSCLE GROUPS in A.I.'s body. Seriously?.. There were more logic mistakes on the same level. Get a good editor! You have a good idea, but fulfilling it needs some knowledge on a simple programming part.

The story itself is a bit inconsistent and shallow. For example, you mentioned very low crime rates, but there was a crime scene, where some unexplained individual crashed through the lab door in the first chapter. In a lab with A.I. security! And a few chapters later nobody even bothers to remember that. Who cares, right? Please, do not forget such things, as they create nasty holes in a plot.

Not a plot hole.

The book is approached from Ted's point of view. He is an engineer working in a lab, not part of security, nor does he own the lab. In that lab are a lot of top secret projects related to the government. At what point does him finding out what that criminal was stealing, or after, make sense?

There are a lot of things that happen around YOU in real life that you'll never find out the truth behind, that is reality, and not a plot hole. Sometimes in life there are unanswered questions. All that was, was the wrong place wrong time accident that gave the impetus for him volunteering for the experiment. Outside of that it didn't matter, and shouldn't.

Might as well ask me why a cat took a piss in an alley.

Magicwrtr

Have you written anything new it has been quiet some time since you posted this story

It will be great to read a new story if you have written any

If not well maybe in 2017 you could start the work on a new story

*The book is approached from Ted's point of view.*

Oh... Seriously? Then why are you writing about him as "he"? Why not making him *me* instead? This is a THIRD persons' perspective, not the first. And SOMETIMES you write about Ted from the first person's perspective, which scrambles my brain pretty hard.

So, if you write from the gods' perspective, there's no real obstacles to write about EVERYTHING, that is around Ted. Am I wrong?

But that is beyond the point. My point was, you're making a lot of inconsistencies in the plot itself. You mention a low crime rate, then crime happens... under the watch of advanced A.I. ... which makes the A.I. look dumb. She could at least sound the alarm BEFORE explosion, ya know. Those mistakes are the sign, that you skipped your homework and didn't read your own text AFTER you finished it.

So, I repeat once more - GET A GOOD EDITOR.

And it can't be your papa or mama, 'cause they will say you're awesome.

Just wanted to point out that you went from 436 gold to 38 gold about page 3 or 4 but I don't remember anything actually being bought. Plus you updated the coin stats before selling the swords and loot so you either need to correct the stat section or move it until after ted sold the loot. Otherwise, a great story so far.

not just proofers.

A true editor is a silent, (to the public, anyway), partner in your writing enterprise. They find things you are too close to, to see. Your mind can play tricks on you when reading your own work It will substitute what you wanted to write, instead of reading what you actually wrote.

One technique for countering that, which I was taught in my first college writing class, over 40 years ago, was to make sure at one of your proofing sessions/re-writes is done aloud.

Reading aloud forces,your brain to work harder; read as if you are reading before a class, or crowd. Project, inflect and vary your volume and tone.

You will catch a surprising amount of issues you previously missed, and anytime you stumble or stammer in your reading, take a closer look, and you'll find you can improve the passage.

When used with dialogue, this technique will help you more realistic, normal sounding character interactions.

You'll more easily find repetitive use of words or phrases.

After integrating this technique into my own writing, no matter the genre, I found great improvements, and still continue to use it many years later. Just about every proofing, re-write, even editing for others, I read aloud. I've found it to be much more effective.

As far as the several comments about changing perspective, I honestly didn't notice it. Are you intentionally changing when Ted moves between VR, VR gaming or RL? (Though, from Ted's view, they are all the same. It's just him, in a different virtual body.)

If you are switching with Ted's changes, it's working, because it wasn't jarring or obvious. If you are changing through out the story, you are doing it well enough, I'm not noticing it.

The ONLY reason not to, if you can't pull it off, don't; but if you can it makes your writing fuller and richer. In real life, we experience, and we observe; that's really all changing perspective is, IMO. Many great writers do, and have done, it, and done it well. Consistency is key.

If there is one, no two things.. first, watch you're & your mismatches. Do searches on each form, and make sure the use is correct. It's time consuming, but writing is work, not play, even if you love it. Do the work.

More importantly, there are many people who have never ventured into the world of RPG. I have very little idea what the stats mean. You apologized for the format. There was a format problem? Get it? I don't know what most of it was, let alone there was a format problem.

Always think of your audience, think understand it is broader than you know, maybe even broader than you can imagine. Don't make readers feel lost, or you WILL lose them.

If you introduce something such as online gaming in a story, create a character who your protagonist must explain it too. It can make your story richer, if done right, and bring your readers more deeply into the world you have created.

And, that IS the REAL goal of writing, after all, isn't it?

Thanks for all the work you do to produce a quality submission for me to read free, and thanks for sharing your rich imagination.

Regards,

GeoD

Is it too early to name drop Asimov?

I like this story. Its surprising different

You weave a beautiful story

Do at least 50% of the authors and editors here get “you’re” and “your” ass-backwards? “You’re” is a contraction for “you are” and “your” is a possessive. Otherwise an intriguing story and I’m enjoying it.

Love the story! Might need an editor to avoid the bad conjugation of "cast" and the confusion of "your" vs "you're", but otherwise great work!

I'm a little confused as to what the haters are protesting - the fact that he's spending "too much" time playing video games, or the fact that he's on life support?

OK, I get what they're trying to protest, but it seems to me that in the end it would be a big nothing-burger, since it essentially comes down to a connection of those two circumstances, and effectively legislating either of them is not doable...

OK! Back to suspending disbelief - loving the story so far!!

Great story! I have so many chapters to read to catch up, which is an awesome problem.