Stand at Carpo (Revised)

[Ace009]

So, I had a bit of time so started to take a look at the story. From an initial skim of the first sections, various points stood out for me:

a) You're still doing too much 'tell' and not enough 'show'. Most of the story seems to consist of conversations or events that have virtually zero description of the surroundings in which they are taking place. Is it in a luxurious office? A cramped cubby? Over a comm-link? What do the characters look like? Do any of them have pictures of family on their desk? Etc.

Similarly, you tell us what the components of at least one of the spacecraft are, but don't really say much of anything about what the ship actually looks like.

In a nutshell, you need to include some description of the surrounding environment and important hardware.

b) You use lots and lots of acronyms and jargon without explanation (at least I didn't see any in my admittedly quick skim of the first part of the story). By the time I had read through the first section and a half of the story, I had been put in the position of wondering what (the hell) all of the following mean:

BKK
SOV
SDeV

Task Group, Constellation and Delta

Gaian

MMU

Etc.

Regarding the extensive use of initials - a good rule of thumb is to spell out the first instance of a given set of of these (possibly with the initials in parentheses immediately after it, but this isn't as common in fiction) and then use the initials from that point forward.

Regarding the jargon (and also the descriptions of things to some degree) - to create an interesting and engaging story you need to 'set the scene'. That can range from providing some backstory about just who and what the two groups in this story are, why they are fighting, and how they came to that fight in the first place to something as basic as a simple statement or two that instantly helps the reader create a mental picture about what is going on. To provide an example:

Here is what you wrote:

The BKK Drakon Smerti, and 5 other spacecraft: the BKK Ognennyy Shar, the BKK Zhnets, the BKK Adskyi Ogoni, the BKK Sila Yupitera, and the BKK Ruka Svaroga, had already been en route to Carpo for over 4 days when the planning of the actual battle was being reviewed onboard the BKK Drakon Smerti.

Here is a rough draft of something that is a bit more descriptive:

[b]Task Force 12 moved through the black of space like a school of sharks on a moonless night. The combination of stealth hulls and sheer distance from Sol made each blend almost seamlessly into the starlit void that surrounded them. With nothing nearby to lend perspective, the ships seemed to hang motionless in space, although in fact the entire Task Force was rushing toward its destination at a velocity measured in tens of kilometers per second.

With four days of flight already completed, and five more yet to go, the latest in a series of battle planning meetings convened aboard the flagship Drakon Smerti.[/b]

Or something like that - you would still need to work in what BKK stands for, perhaps in the earlier section that gets this all started, and you could name the other craft in the Task Force in passing as the story progresses. Perhaps even as part of the discussion that takes place in the planning meeting. For example, you might have a character pull up a graphic showing the ships, and name them then. (e.g., 'Ok, we have a total of six vessels to work with. Besides the Drakon Smerti (or maybe just 'Smerti' if they are feeling familiar about their ship in conversation), we have the XXX, XXX, XXX, etc. How do we make the best use of these resources?'). Or something like.

As mentioned above, the main point is to 'set the scene' to help your reader (who doesn't know anything about what is going on) get a mental picture of how things look and what is going on.

Ok, out of time. Will post more as can.

Hope this helps,

Todd

Well, thank you! Hope this can help me and my friend.......... :/