Noob by James Barron (MarkItZero) - Short, Comedy - A highly evolved, alien-made artificial intelligence system tries to teach a cantankerous 80-year-old human how to work an iPhone. - pdf, format 8)

James, this is fantastic! So, so funny. Storywise, I've got nothing for you. I enjoyed this start to finish. Really great job.

I think everyone here is quickly learning you have a true knack for comedy writing.

That said, I think you can clean it up a bit. Such a great story, but I find myself getting distracted by your style of writing and I wish I wouldn't.

First up, it's minor, but when you have the POV, Henry accidentally pushes 2 while we are in his POV, but his vision in blurry, how can we see this through his eyes? I think that info should stand alone out of the POV.

After reading a few of your shorts now, I think it's safe to say the over capitalisation and capitalised dialogue is a style choice. It's one I am really not a fan of. I think it is completely unnecessary and you are making a great story hard to read.

You also have a lot of written numbers, as in, not spelt out. It has it's place but here it is over done. You say binary code, then go and write a line of code. Looks sloppy and I'm sure most people know what it looks like.

Lastly, this is clearly big budget type stuff. As a short I'm not sure it would be picked up and if it was maybe not by people who could really do it justice. It's a damn shame because it's great.

Congrats and good luck with it

Hey Warren, glad you liked the story. Over capitalization as a style choice may be giving me too much credit, more like just another bad habit I need to break. Already went back and edited a bit of that out. There's still probably way too much but oh well.

And yeah, this may be too expensive to actually make. But I had to get the story out of my brain and onto the page or I wouldn't be able to move on something else.

Thanks for the read.

Smartly written and funny. I had one hic-cup:

Quoted Text Pauleen turns on a tiny black-and-white TV and starts watching the news.

Not even sure you could get one of these today - not sure you needed the black and white TV - I know -a minor nit.

Agree with the previous posters. This was a pleasure to read; clever concept, clever dialogue, and very well executed. Only thing I'm not sure about is the title.

Thanks for the read guys.

Dave -- Good call on the TV. Don't know why I put that in even. Think because I was writing something else with a scene in the past with a black-and-white TV and unconsciously added one in here too.

Other Dave -- You think the title is too obscure or too nerdy? I'm open to suggestions on a new title.

James,

Some notes.

First, congrats  This one reads well and works for me.  The story reinforces the old adage, 'nothing is foolproof for a sufficiently talented fool.'  

I'll echo the nit about the TV.  It's not necessary to have such an old set.  Other than that, good work.

Best
Richard

Quoted from MarkItZero Other Dave -- You think the title is too obscure or too nerdy? I'm open to suggestions on a new title.

It's just when I think of the term 'Noob', I think of an experienced gamer dissing a novice gamer. That's just me though. I guess the term has caught on to mean someone who is inexperienced in more than just gaming or internet activities these days, so maybe it's not a problem.

I play a lot of poker. Noob is a pejorative we use to describe novice players. This thread made me look it up in the dictionary.

" a person who is inexperienced in a particular sphere or activity, especially computing or the use of the Internet."

So, it that sense it perfectly describes the story. That being said, if you think it too obscure for some a few off the top suggestions:

* Cell Mate
* SmARRP Phone
* A Hard Cell

But like I said - Noob fits

As DavidV said, I usually think of it in reference to gaming. But more and more it seems to be used to describe anyone inexperienced at anything, like poker as eldave mentioned. Probably stick with the title I have. The real problem is the cost of making it. I gotta stop writing shorts that involve spaceships and demons and other things that no one will be able to film on a tight budget.