Young Writers Society

In the 31st Century they're are no wars that are fought with men. Only machines. These machines are called BattleMechs or 'Mechs for short. The people that pilot them are MechWarriors.


Prelude

"Firefox 'Mech patrol! 9:00!" Jack's computer A.I. yelled at him. Jack swivled the control stick and the head of his Timber Wolf Mech turned to face the oncoming threat. Sweat dripped down his forehead. His usually straight, short black hair ws messy and unkept. He had been up since two in the morning for this test. This was his first combat test since training. He strained on his sights trying to see the Firefox. There it was.
It's small body weaving in and out of the rubble of buildings. Jack hit the zoom button on his front panel. He could see the cockpit. The Mech itself was extremely small compared to the Heavy Mech Jack was piloting. The Firefox opened fire with laser cannons. The shots were buzzing past Jack. One of them impacted onto the front hull.He flipped the switch to turn his machine guns on. He grabbed the trigger and he too fired upon his target.
He could see the shells flying out of the guns as the bullets raced ahead and ripped into the small Mech. Rounds peppered the chasis of the Mech. The Firefox exploded into a shower of flames and metal. A leg flew past him.
"I think I got him," Jack said to his A.I. companion who came into view on the panel next to him.
"You know, I think you're ready for a real test now. Head back to base and dock there. You're good." the A.I. said as she looked at the burning wreckage.



*I hope this is better than it was. I'm still a little shaky as to what to put though.*

Hey, MidnightWolf!

Hurrah! Very action-packed story- that's always fun to read. ^_^ There's a usergroup for action writers here; I haven't sifted through it yet but I'm pretty sure it's a good one. Kylan and the gang are nice guys.

Anyway, a critique? A first critique, looks like! I'm Sam, by the way- if you've got any questions, feel free to PM me. YWS is a little intimidating at first, but the people are all so cool.

Basically, what I do is highlight a few areas in your work that I thought need a little attention, and then I ramble for awhile on how to fix it. Sound good? It's hard to work with criticism at first, because it feels terribly insulting...it makes you a lot better writer, though, so bear with me.

ACCESSIBILITY: When I read your intro, I told my friend, "I bet you fifty bucks this is a guy."

So, you've got a pretty strong sense of gender identity. XD This is good. This is essential to high school survival- however, it's not so great for the literary aspect of things.

Audience is a thing that a lot of genre writers ignore, and then they end up losing a lot of potential readers to, "Ech, this is boring" or "Ew, this is so girly". This isn't a good thing, because genre writing- like sci fi- has a lot of cool things to offer for all kinds to enjoy.

[I'm struggling with this at the moment, too. I'm an alternate history person, and though my writing style- I've been told- is very 'manly', I have this thing about strange romances.]

One way you can make your writing more accessible is through...

CHARACTERS AND EMOTION:

Read this, by Firestarter. Pretty good article, no?

Ever seen the movie "Master and Commander"? It's my absolute favorite movie of all time, actually...basically what I love about it is that the fact that it mixes both realistic, gory battles with the French and the personal lives of the soldiers involved. It makes you so much more attached to the characters- who doesn't cringe when the Naturalist sticks that scalpel into his stomach?- which adds for a lot more drama and excitement.

How does this apply to your work? I can't really connect with Jack at the moment. He's fighting, yeah, but he doesn't seem to have any adrenaline response and I don't know how he personally feels about the situation. Just because you're writing in third person doesn't mean you don't have to pay attention to emotion.

An aside: Don't call these things 'Mechs. Just Mechs will do. The apostrophe adds a bit of a pause to it, which throws off the rhythm of reading. ^_~

Anyway, thanks for the good read! Please tell me if you have any more to read and review- I'd be happy to do so. ^_^ See you around!

Hey,

I have to agree with Sam about gender issues. This is without a doubt, a guy story. And to be honest, I don't really care about his actions, I don't care where he's moving or what he's doing. This is video game fare. I don't play video games.

To be a great writer, you need 1), character development, 2), readable descriptions, or, pretty words strung together, and 3), the ability to successfully narrate a scene which allows your audience to connect to what's going on, not just with the characters actions, but with their feelings. Jack, in this story, is jut a mannequin for the actions he's being made to do--you're a ventriloquist, but not a philosopher.

Work on that.

EDIT:

It's small body weaving in and out of the rubble of buildings.

This is a lovely description. It also happens to be a fragment. Still, the imagery it evokes is nice. Just make it a complete sentence K dear?

I also see that out of 226 posts, you've got 10 reviews. Tsk tsk.

This belongs in Fan-fiction.

*Moved*

He could feel the shells flying out of the guns as the bullets ripped into the small 'Mech.

Usually Mech's are designed to have a minimum amount of recoil; if he is able to feel recoil that should be an indication that something is broken.

Pretty soon the Firefox exploded into a shower of flames and metal.
"I think I got him," Jack said to his A.I. companion who came into view on the panel next to him.
"It's more like overkill if you ask me. You know those were High Velocity Armor Piercing rounds," the A.I. said as she looked at the burning wreckage.

Two things about this passage. "Pretty soon" indicates that it took a fair amount of time to destroy, say five minutes. This is the opposite of overkill, which indicates that the amount of damage the mech would have taken would have killed him several times over.

Personally, I would have liked the description to focus less on what Jack felt while firing and more on the effect of that fire on the hostile mech. Perhaps the rounds impact against the mech's legs, causing it to stagger and fall before exploding. Something to indicate the speed and ferocity of the withering fire being put down on that small mech.

The second part of this passage annoyed me though:

" You know those were High Velocity Armor Piercing rounds," the A.I. said"

If the character already knows this, then why would an AI need to tell him this?

The story itself is highly lacking in something else: a plot.

This guy is in a battle. Why? Where? When? Who?

There are good questions that should be answered. They will do a lot to give depth to your story.

Okay well thanks for reading. I fixed it up a little and hope it's better than it was. I'm actually going to use this in English class so any more problems that can be found and corrected would be great.

Hey midnightwolf92!

I'll just start off with a small critique. I agree that this seems somewhat like a video game or anime(which I like both, so that isn't bad), but I think it needs more focus on the character rather than just the Mech. Of course, I can see this is simply an intro and will have more detail later, but I'm just mentioning it for future reference. In a way, this seems like a script, which you might want to consider turning it into.

Other than that, I think this piece has great potential. I enjoyed the read, and want to see more.