War Torn- Epi. I- This World

[Orange]

Never present 'stats' at the begining of a writing peice. If you cant present that information while writing, it's a weak peice.

[Deadborder]

Orange does have a good point; you don’t need to vomit out character profiles at the start of the story. It’s far better for overall structure and development to present them “in text” as such, it helps the reader get a better idea of the characters and who they are then just having their vital statistics shouted at you.

Okay, onto the fic.

First up, we’re confronted with a pair of glaring faults that can potentially kill a fic deader then a dead thing that died. The first is the whole idea of replacing the Empire with a new faction that is “Very powerful” and run by “very evil people.” It smacks of grandstanding and the desire to do something that is “kewler” or better then the actual canon, a sort of one-upmanship of “my stuff’s better then yours” if you will.

The problem is that such concepts inevitably become grandstanding hyperboles of things that have to be bigger, better and badder then anything that’s come before. The effort to awe or impress wears off very quickly, leaving the reader with a feeling of ‘yay it’s another ultimate doom organisation of doom, yay’. As it stands, there’s not a single thing about “The Elite” that’s remotely interesting or original. Even their name fails to impress.

The second is in your lead character – in that he’s got the same name as your handle. This is a bad thing. Never, eeeever do this. This is what is called self-insertion, and it is bad. Unless done for satirical reasons (and even then, it must be well done), it’s a major turn-off to a fic and a good enough reason to stop reading right now. That you introduce him at the very top of the character list – thus making him the fist thing the reader sees – is a bad, bad sign.

The plot thus far sadly follows one of the wost clichés of Zoid fic. Bad men show up, village gets attacked, hero activates Zoid, bad men get ker-thwaped. Lather, rinse, repeat. No offence but, well, its been done ad infinitum. There’s very little left to get out of it, really. Even satire is reaching its limit on this one. Using the Cylcops – a direfully underappreciated Zoid if ever there was one – is original, yes, but that’s still not enough.

The writing itself leaves a lot to be desired. There’s almost no description, no characterisation, no direction… half the time you can’t even tell who’s speaking. Given the weak characterisation, it’s a severe drawback. It’s a style of writing I call “Standing in the booth and shouting” and it’s a Bad Thing.

In short… it needs a lot of work.

Rick R.

[milicron]

Well it's ok for a first attempt but it needs some work.

I only put the dramatis persona (list of people) at the beginning when I do somthing with alot of characters and then I only list the names and what they do. Trick is to flesh them out when writing. That's somthing I'm working on with my Reflections re-write.

Keep at it, your next attempt will be that much better.