Before the Pattern Breaks

Tying in fractal theory to the COVID-19 pandemic and making an edutainment game out of it is a really creative concept. It's a snack-sized story, but there's plenty to bite into and it doesn't overstay its welcome by any means.

The pacing of the story is frantic, urgent, stressed - it matches Ava's plight perfectly. She is sucked into her work, propelled by a terrifying dream (a prophecy, perhaps?) she gradually finds real-world parallels with the more she develops her research. The choppiness does contribute to the themes and tension of the story, but to the point of some other reviewers, I would have liked to glean a bit more information about the concepts being discovered and utilized. This would make getting to the conclusion feel more satisfying in my opinion.

I really did like Ava as a protagonist. Without having too many hints towards her life by way of in-depth interaction with others or direct exposition, we can gather a lot of traits about her and her commitments in life. Her relating the varying levels of human socialization to her own fractal work was a great touch to show how ingrained her research is with her own understanding of the entire world outside of the lab.

Quinn is a solid supporting character and a great friend for sticking by Ava's side. One may think that they are doomed to ask Quinn for help down the line if they refuse to assist her early on in the story, but Quinn coming back for Ava no matter what feels like a sweet relief in the midst of a story that otherwise has a lump in your throat. I think that Quinn's character supports the theme of inevitability that is laced throughout the story too.

I think the length works perfectly fine, but there is certainly fertile soil for further development if given the room for it. Perhaps either by giving Ava more decisions to make along the way (leading to some more endings) or just by extending the story a bit further between the breakthrough and the conclusion, there are some strong paths for further writing within the constraints of story's logic.

In terms of spelling and grammar, there weren't any major issues that I saw. The most jarring thing to nitpick was maybe the casual use of "y'all" at one point which contradicted the existing narration tone. At one point there may have been a "you" where "your" was the better choice. All in all though, nothing distracting.

The in-text citation numbers are fine since you've actually cited sources for your work, but I feel like it may help the writing visually flow better if you just left the Works Cited page at the end and continued without the bracket citation numbers. Those brackets work in a real research paper, but in a fictional story (even an educationally-inclined one) you have a bit more liberty otherwise.

This is overall a very solid short story and a great first contribution from a new author. I'll give this a 6/8 as the skeleton of this story is quite good, but there is always room to run with more on this concept. Nice job!

Before the Pattern Breaks is a short and interesting read about a researcher who discovers a pattern in history and uses her knowledge to attempt to prevent a calamity from occurring. It's quite a decent premise backed by some good writing. A good first story game by the author.

<<SPOILERS AHEAD>>

WRITING:

The writing in this one has a sort of breakneck pacing that constantly keeps the story moving forward. Dialogues and introspection are kept mostly to a minimum with narration mostly focusing on detailing the events that happen in a broad manner. This style kind of fit the frantic premise of attempting to get your research done before its too late so I thought that it was a very smart stylistic choice. I do wish we got more information on the research itself outside of vague references to fractals and patterns though.

In terms of SPAG, there were a few rare errors (Typo with you being used instead of your and I'm also sure there was a place where the author used "y'all" within the narration). Despite that, it was mostly a smooth and pleasant read.

CHARACTERS:

What little development the main character received was done very well. I loved the recurring dream being used as a tool to remind the reader what the stakes were for the protagonist. Her interactions with Quinn also humanize her. I liked how she used the concepts from her research to explain how close Quinn was to her. This had the double effect of establishing their relationship while also showing how present the research was in the protagonist's mind.

Quinn herself is an interesting character too. Characters in story games tend to be pretty moody with the whole "make a choice against them and they won't help you later" idea to promote branching but in this regard Quinn surprised me. I tried to pick all the choices that would dissuade her from helping the protagonist but she still seeks Ava out and helps her anyway. While this meant that the amount of effective branches that the story game had reduced, it did make Quinn instantly more likeable. It's an interesting way to characterize a character across branches.

I did think the other researchers, Alyssa and Liam felt a bit more vestigial. They didn't seem to have much of an impact on the story.

STRUCTURE:

There's a lot of choices, but not a lot of branching. You basically either succeed or fail in putting together a team for your research which in turn leads to a good or bad ending. While I do appreciate that some of the potential for branching was cut in favor of maintaining consistency in characterization, I still think this game feels a bit too linear. It gets away with being a decent read because it is short but were it longer, I might have found the multiple false choices frustrating.

In conclusion, I congratulate the author on making a respectable debut to the site. This is easily a 5/8 in my opinion. Welcome aboard!

This was actually pretty good! It was engaging and gave an interesting perspective to the pandemic.

On my first attempt I got the "bad ending", but the way it was worded about it being inevitable made me think it was the ONLY ending at the time, which I think actually works in its favor! The "good ending" was good too, although the choices I had to make to get there felt somewhat random. I would have liked more than 2 endings.

One last thing: I don't understand the random numbers in brackets? Do they mean anything?

5/8, interesting storygame.

For me this was a somewhat weird experience. It is good to see fractals and epidemiology come up in an edutainment game. On the other hand the way in which this sort of research is portrayed as pattern matching, makes it less cool than it is in reality.

Anyway, the factual basis aside the writing was really good and engaging. Though it was a very short story. So overall this was a nice experience although some aspects (dying mother and all) seemed to poke at the seems of the story a little bit.

Some good stories appearing on the site lately :D The beginning of this one is very well-written and the main character is obviously very absorbed in her fractals (whatever they may be). Solely focusing on my dream seems to push me into a loop but the rest of the story develops well. It’s intriguing to think that Covid could have been predicted based on analysis of historical pandemic patterns (actually, the last big one Spanish Flu – which actually started in the USA but you know how some people are – was in 1918 and I read these things come around every century or so).

The short sentences add to the tension and it’s nice to see Quinn come back into the story. The ending is just painful, so well-written and well-linked to the beginning (was the dream a self-fulfilling prophecy or a premonition? We’ll never know…). One thing you could have done – but I’m glad you didn’t – is have more memories of the main character with her mother to make the ending more heart-wrenching but I think it was tragic enough. Your use of the sources appears to be good and thorough and the true information blended nicely with the story.

Good job on this one. It was well-planned and written and made a nice closed loop. It could have been expanded more: the main character could have tried to warn government officials of the impending pandemic and the scale it would grow to, but within its limits it was very well-done. I would rate it a 6/8 because of its fairly short length but within that length you did everything well - like Mizal said, this would have been a great entry for the recently-finished Edutainment contest!

this is a great story that the author has obviously put serious work into. i like the premise but would have loved it to go on longer. i played for two different endings which both made sense given my choices. there were a few spelling mistakes but nothing major. overall, i'd love to see more from this author in the future.

Damn, too bad you missed the contest, this would've been a decent entry. Interesting subject, could be longer but honestly I'm impressed enough at someone showing up knowing how dialogue punctuation works.