The bigger you are...

[Atrocities]

I agree, your off to a good start. It was a nice read. I cannot critique you as my grammer and spelling are atrocious.

[Will]

Read it earlier in the day. I like it.

One suggestion: try not starting so many lines/paragraphs with quotes. It gets a bit repetitive as far as style goes. And -- as far as my reading style goes -- it's a bit jarring to read a bit of quoted dialog, then realize it's from a different character than was initally expected. Perhaps showing a bit more of the internal thoughts of the characters would help, to preface more of the spoken words. For example, the line:

"Do it." Roeding didn't even hesitate.

... could flow much better by simply swapping the sentences:

Roeding did not even hesitate. "Do it."

At least that's what I think. I just read things, I'm not much of a writer. There are people here much more qualified to give advice on the subject.

As for the story itself... more background, please! All I get is that it's a fleet battle. Nothing of what the sides are, nothing about why there's a conflict/war going on, little of what's going on with the characters. Great on action, and has it's own variety of BLAM!, but overall, needs more substance if it's gonna keep me.

[Ron_Lugge]

Will said:
One suggestion: try not starting so many lines/paragraphs with quotes. It gets a bit repetitive as far as style goes.

Thanks for the tip -- real helpful stuff

I often fall into a rut, and need to be kicked out of it.

As for the story itself... more background, please! All I get is that it's a fleet battle. Nothing of what the sides are, nothing about why there's a conflict/war going on, little of what's going on with the characters. Great on action, and has it's own variety of BLAM!, but overall, needs more substance if it's gonna keep me.

Don't worry, thats going to come up soon. I just needed to set the stage in the first part; the second part should (*should*) start gettting into more details about the military (at the strategic level, not tactical) and socio-political situation.


And if my grammar starts falling apart, feel free to critique me on it. Unless its an obvious "stylistic" error (I. E. I'm doing it deliberatly to form an effect) or in the dialog where its part of characterization. (I don't do that often, but it happens... "I'm fine, commander" to a lieutenant, right after the rating has been struck in the head for example...).

[El_Phil]

The ensign seemed way too relaxed about the entire situation. And the tactical officer a bit too dopey, but then non-engineers never seem to grasp the details of engineering. On the other hand Roeding seemed to go into too much detail. Individual systems and specs on escape pods... That's a Scotty 'I know this ship like the back of my hand' type moment

Also check the italics in the UBB code I'm seeing a few
supposed
you want to uses non capitals there instead to get
supposed

One entirely personal thing, pilots on escape pods just seem wrong to me. Makes perfect sense, but I try to fit together a 'pod' with two pilots, engineering ratings and it doesn't fit for me.

However a nice load of BLAM! and a good situation to add some details too. Very interesting to see how it develops.

[Ron_Lugge]

"Escape pod" isn't accurate.

Its an escape *shuttle*. I. E. a shuttle craft (great big thing to ferry people around) retrofitted to work in combat enviroments and reserved for the admiral's exclusive use.

And the only points where Roeding is a technical know-it-all are the places where "everybody knows!" things go. Like everybody knows that those engines are very dangerous because of overheating, except the computers have it under control.

And as far as figuring out that you need to cut computers when they act unreliably, well, thats just common sense and brains -- and even then, he doesn't really understand, either, that you can't cut computers.

And as far as the ensign being to calm, I think I need to go back through there. I think I forgot to mention the sweat causing condensation on the suit -- and he's not sweating 'cause he's hot, the suit is AC'd.



Hm... specifics are always nice. OK, going back through this thing on the bus home... (PDAs are nice!)

[dogscoff]

Yeah, I enjoyed it. One (very) small thing that caught my eye:

Roeding still knew he heard the bitter taste of defeat.

Maybe this was a deliberate gag, or an example of the "esoteric jargon" mentioned in the previous line, but surely you can't hear a taste. Not without some kind of wierd surgery, anyway.

If (understandably) you were avoiding repetition of the word taste with the phrase "Roeding still knew he tasted the bitter taste of defeat" then use a synonym: The bitter tang of defeat, bitter spice of defeat, experience the bitter taste of defeat... Hmmm, there aren't actually that many synonyms for "taste" are there? Anyone know any decent online thesauruseseses?

[Ron_Lugge]

Um... "bitter taste of defeat" is a common phrase; as such hearing it isn't too unreasonable. I mean, you can't really taste defeat so much as it is a bitter thing to deal with, and bitter is a taste... am I making any sense?

[Fyron]

Ok, you asked for grammatical critiquing, so here it is.

Quotes and the stating of who said them should be separated by commas, not periods. This set:

"Order the Potemkin to fall back. Ravager and Osired are to escort her." Admiral Roeding ordered, clutching at the railing before him.

Should instead be:

"Order the Potemkin to fall back. Ravager and Osired are to escort her," Admiral Roeding ordered, clutching at the railing before him.

You've repeated this everywhere. Only when there is a question or exclamation do you use that instead of a comma.

Also, it is generally better to say who said it in the first sentence, rather than the second. This point isn't quite necessary if I remember correctly, so don't worry too much about it. As long as it is fairly close to the beginning of the paragraph it should be fine.

[Ron_Lugge]

Imperator Fyron said:
Ok, you asked for grammatical critiquing, so here it is.

Quotes and the stating of who said them should be separated by commas, not periods. This set:

"Order the Potemkin to fall back. Ravager and Osired are to escort her." Admiral Roeding ordered, clutching at the railing before him.

Should instead be:

"Order the Potemkin to fall back. Ravager and Osired are to escort her," Admiral Roeding ordered, clutching at the railing before him.

You've repeated this everywhere. Only when there is a question or exclamation do you use that instead of a comma.

I knew that rule. I use that rule. WTF is going on?!

<pauses for a second.> I hate MS Word.

[TurinTurambar]

It's freakin great. A great opener to a bigger story. Yeah, there are grammatical things, but it's freakin great!

[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Dagger.gif[/img]Turin[img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon42.gif[/img]