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 Hi. My name is Max. Thanks for asking me to read your story. I enjoyed reading it and wanted to share some thoughts with you.
Item Reviewed: "The Plan! (Full Short Story)" 
Author Jon Kotchinsky  
Reviewer: Max Griffin 🏳️🌈 
As always, these are just one person's opinions. Always remember Only you know what is best for your story. I've read and commented on your work as I would try to read my own. I hope you find something here useful , and that you will discard the rest with good cheer. 
From your bio-block, I see that you have a successful career in a scientific field related to your story. It's great that you've decided to branch out and try your hand at fiction. In some ways, this parallels my own path. I'm a research mathematician with extensive scholarly publications under my real name, and write using a pseudonym. Like you, I wanted to try writing fiction. Like all serious authors, you have a world view we wish to share with our readers. Stories are a powerful way to convey ideas, so I applaud and encourage your move into fiction.
Since you're well-educated and obviously literate, you've got all the basics of writing down. I found no grammar errors, for example, which is uncommon. But one thing I've learned is that writing fiction is different from other kinds of writing. Sure, good grammar, clear sentences, and well-constructed paragraphs are important. Just as you need a good foundation in algebra before you can do, say, functional analysis or topology, the skills for the latter are more subtle and varied than the basics.
In many ways, your story resembles my first attempts at fiction. I had the good fortune that several experienced authors took me under their wings and mentored me. I learned much from them, and became a better author as a consequence. In the review below, you are going to find lots of suggestions and mention of "craft." Learning to write fiction is like learning any other skill, whether it's being an engineer, a physicist, sculptor or rock star. You need to practice the craft and have mentors who can guide that practice and nurture your muse.
Fiction has been part of humanity's toolbox for at least millenia. There is an enormous body of knowledge about what makes some stories effective and others fail. "Craft" is the catch-all for that body of knowledge. It's not like physics or math, but there is a theoretical basis for literature. It's worth studying, at least for an author like me. I'm not a natural story-teller. Hemingway never read a book about how to write fiction, but most of us aren't natural geniuses either. It's worth studying craft because it will make your stories more effective and more memorable.
This is all preface to the critique that follows. My remarks are full of suggestions. That doesn't mean I disliked your work or want to discourage you. On the contrary. I liked your story and want to encourage you, just as those authors encouraged me when I first joined WDC. So please take this review in the way it's intended: keep writing, persevere, and follow your heart.
 What I liked best
At its core, this story is an affirmation of human ingenuity. How could a scientist not like that?
Opening
Openings are critical in any work of fiction. Some editors and agents will decide whether or not to read your submission based only on your first sentence.
Your opening is your best opportunity to draw readers into your fictional world, to induce a dream-like state in which your words guide their imaginations. The readers become the author's active partners in imagining the fictional world, in a state of suspended disbelief. In crafting the opening of any story, it's the author's primary task to launch this fictional dream. The concept of the fictional dream is fundamental to the prevailing theory of literature, and you'll find it's a theme that repeats in this review.
Let's consider your opening sentence:With only ten minutes until noon on this bright 20th July morning, Nathan Marcus was out of time.
As far as things go, this isn't bad. You name your protagonist, you orient the reader in space and time, and you begin with him doing something. There's even an element of tension since we learn he's out of time.
But notice that this is the author, standing outside the story, stating facts. Your second sentence He tried to block out the eight and a half billion lives his presentation would affect as he closed his hololap
is better because it puts the readers in Nathan's head: we know what he's thinking, and it establishes the stakes: why his goals matter. We even learn, later in the same sentence, that he's making a presentation, so we can infer that his goal is a successful presentation. Goals and stakes are fundamental attributes for a protagonist. Later, when we meet St. Jude, we see his antagonist. Tension arises from the conflict between the goals and the antagonist, and the reader cares because of the stakes.
These positive things--orienting the reader, naming the protagonist, establishing the goals, stakes, and antagonists, help engage the reader. Raising the stakes and increasing the obstacles raises tension and keeps the pages turning.
Your opening should focus like laser on bringing the reader inside the fictional world, and the best way to do that is to put the reader inside Nathan's head. After that, the goals, stakes, and obstacles establish the parameters of what is to follow.
Style and Voice
This chapter uses an omniscient narrator, in which the author stands outside the fictional events, looking in. The author knows the internal thoughts of all the characters; in fact, the author knows everything.
This narrative style dominated 19th century literature and continued well into the 20th. However, it has all but disappeared from commercial fiction today. About 30% of all contemporary fiction uses a first person narrator, while the overwhelming majority of the remainder uses third person limited.
Omniscient narration has many advantages, since it lets the author convey lots of information with minimal words. However, no one reads fiction to learn background information. People read fiction for the human connection with the characters: their sorrows and joys, triumphs and tragedies, loves and losses. Narration chills that connection, which is why it's so much stronger to reveal things through the words and deeds of your characters rather than by telling the readers stuff.
In third person limited, for each scene the author chooses one character to provide the point of view. The reader can know what that character sees, hears, smells, and otherwise senses. The reader can know what that character thinks, as well. But the reader has to infer these things about all the other characters through their words and deeds. The idea is that the author places the readers deep inside the head of one character, and then the readers encounter the fictional world through that character in a holistic manner, the same way we encounter the real world. That human connection, done well, will draw the reader into the story and thus into the fictional world.
A novel can--and usually does--have many point-of-view characters, but there should be only one for each scene. Usually a short story will have only one point of view. Your story is sufficiently complex that it merits expansion to a novel, so you can certainly explore St. Jude as well as Nathan. Both have goals, obstacles, and stakes. Understanding those and showing those to the readers will be important to the success of the novel.
In my line-by-line remarks below, I've highlighted several places where you hop from one character's head to another. This is to help you recognize these hops. Each one breaks the fictional dream. Even in a novel, a change in point-of-view (POV) breaks the dream, which means the author has to re-establish it, using the techniques of the opening paragraph over and over.
Referencing
Set in a future where 100,000 colonists live on the moon, so it's clearly decades away. But the technology seems pretty tame. I paid for my groceries with my watch yesterday, for example. Of course, this isn't a story about technology, so that's kind of moot. Still, maybe Scar could be a cyber-assistant running the video show, as an example of technology that's not quite with us today.
We also learn halfway through the story that it's happening on the moon. Since that's more or less critical to the plot, you should stick in much earlier.
Scene/Setting
This is pretty sparse. For example, when you say a "bright 20th July morning," I naturally picture July 20th here in Oklahoma, not in a dome on the moon. (I did catch the significance of 20 July, although I don't quite see the significance to the story.)
Characters
Hitchcock famously said that the audience cares about the characters. The plot, he continued, is there to give the characters something to care about. He was speaking of cinema, of course, but the same applies to the written word.
You've given Nathan the basics: goals, stakes and obstacles. But it would be good to humanize him in some way--screenwriters call this a "pet the dog" or "save the cat" monent. See http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PetTheD... This goes double for St. Jude.
Grammar
No complaints. UK spelling noted, along with use of proper--i.e., UK--grammar.
Just my personal opinion
One way to think of telling a story is that it is a guided dream in which the author leads the readers through the events. In doing this, the author needs to engage the readers as active participants in the story, so that they become the author's partner in imagining the story. Elements of craft that engage the readers and immerse them in the story enhance this fictive dream. On the other hand, authors should avoid things that interrupt the dream and pull readers out of the story.
I really did like your story, but it's first draft material right now. In some ways, it's a great outline for the full story.
The most important comment I have is that must purge all the places where the story stops while you tell the readers things. Kurt Vonnegut wrote that every sentence should advance plot or character. He was writing mostly about short stories, so for a novel I wouldn't follow that rule, lemming-like, off a cliff. But it's a good one to remember. Show your novel, don't tell it.
Thank you sharing your story with me. It was a bright spot with all the depressing political news at the moment, and I really did enjoy reading it. Keep writing and keep practicing the craft until it becomes second nature.
Line-by-line remarks
 Your text is in BLUE.
My comments are in GREEN.
If I suggest a re-wording, it's in GRAPE.
 Albert St. Jude was a seasoned and conservative politician with over thirty years of experience in power and influence.
He knew that no matter what, four of the other eight Elders would vote the way he wanted them too after years of gathering dirt and allowing them favours to help them to hold their seats as long as they had. My Comment: You've been in Nathan's head up to this point. Then the omniscient narrator intrudes to state a fact about St. Jude, following which we hop into St. Jude's head and learn what he knows.
Albert grew up in a wealthy, influential family that dated back to the very first settlers.My Comment: This paragraph is another author intrusion where the story stops while the author tells the reader stuff. Editors and agents hate this kind of thing and have a name for it: the info dump. This is important for the readers to know, but you should reveal it through the words and deeds of your characters--you should show it rather than tell it.
Having travelled extensively to the worst of the affected areas in the recent past, he considered himself somewhat of an expert.My Comment: Hops to Hassan's head.
Nathan felt the weight heavily on his shoulders, but he knew he had to remain calm and resist the temptation to scream out "Stop the bulls***, already" and allowed the process to follow its natural course.My Comment: hops back to Nathan's head.
Just one year ago, Professor Nathan Marcus was living a rather comfortable life as Dean of Mechanical Engineering at the Neil A. Armstrong University.My Comment: Another info-dump. A time reversal in a story this short is difficult to pull off and likely to be a red flag to editors and agents. While flashbacks can be an author's friend, they run the risk of disrupting the natural flow of events and pull the readers out of the here-and-now. Starting with narrative explanations exacerbates this problem. If this is where the story starts, why not start here?
While very immersed in society and its progress as a whole,My Comment: Mark Twain once remarked that whenever he was tempted to use the word "Very," he would use a cussword instead. That way, he continued, he could be sure his editor would delete the profanity and his prose would look the way it should have in the first place. His point was that words like "very" add nothing and only serve as little speed-bumps to the flow of your story.
Although he didn't know it at the time, this would change his life forever.My Comment: Foreknowledge is the hallmark of the omniscient narrator.
Although our time here on the moonMy Comment: We're halfway through the story and we learn for the first time it is set on the Moon.
They quickly shed themselves of any Earth nationality and declared themselves Lunar Citizens.My Comment: This begins a long info-dump where nothing happens.
Nathan had the complete attention of the Senate.My Comment: At last we return to the here-and-now.
I only review things I like, and I really liked this story. I'm a professor by day, and find awarding grades the least satisfying part of my job.  Since I'm reviewing in part for my own edification, I decided long ago to give a rating of "4" to everything I review, thus avoiding the necessity of "grading" things on WDC. So please don't assign any weight to my "grade" -- but know that I selected this story for review because I liked it and thought I could learn from studying it.
Again, these are just one person's opinions. Only you know what is best for your story! The surest path to success is to keep writing and to be true to your muse!
Thanks again for sharing this item. Keep on writing!
Max Griffin 🏳️🌈
http://MaxGriffin.net/
http://MaxGriffin.net/blog/
Check out my essay on short stories.
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My review has been submitted for consideration in "
I've marked one or more places in the line-by-line comments below where I think you might consider a more precise verb or a touch more description rather than an adverb.
