THe overall story has to do with the imprisonment of the main char, and the war is only present in the beginning.

Here it is:
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Rex stuck his head out of the trench, steadied his pulse rifle, and fired a few short bursts across No Man's Land towards the Jin's trenches. This battle on Phobos, much like the entire war, was not going well, and Rex had the sinking feeling that the Council would have to soon sue for peace.

A mortar exploded behind him, forcing his mind back to the battle. He looked over the lip of the trench again, and saw that the Jin were storming across No Man's Land en masse. "Here they come boys! Lets give 'em hell!" Sarge screamed over the intercom.

Rex glanced left and right and saw that everybody in the platoon was up on the firing step, attempting to stop the oncoming Jin army. He quickly returned to his firing position, but when he

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Kathleen, I'm still not 100% on how to make sure that this is the proper 13 lines, so if I am wrong, please just chop it up as needed, and accept my most humble of apologies please!

Edit to add: The tabs didn't seem to work, so I spaced out the paragraphs, although in the manuscript the paragraphs are indented, not spaced out.

Ronnie

A question springs to mind though? Would trench warfare still be happening in the future. Maybe I'm jumping the gun (no pun intended)and maybe there's good reason for both sides having to dig in like the 1st World War, but what with advent of modern weapons like fighter jets and bunker busters its surely only the rag tag rebel armies like the Taliban that would have to employ that strategy.
Its seems a redundant tactic for a high-tech army, which I presume you have here if they're fighting on Phobos with pulse rifles.

As I said just a thought. Other than that I thought this was a good enough hook to keep me reading on.

[This message has been edited by Zoot (edited February 09, 2006).]

[This message has been edited by Zoot (edited February 09, 2006).]

Problems:
* A mortar startled him out of his daydreaming about politics. He's in a war zone. He'll be paying attention. And when he thinks with regret that the war may be over soon--! Sure, he can be 100% behind the war's objectives, but there's got to be sneaking relief that he'll be out of the line of fire soon. Or else terror, because the Jin are going to do terrible things to his people.

* This doesn't feel like it's on Phobos. Give us a little of the near-weightlessness; the terrain (craters? trenches? is dust a factor? Why aren't they fighting *inside* the moon -- or the habitat? In WWII, we fought for terrain in order to get beyond it. In space, they can hop over it.) The mortar got his attention: how? It wouldn't be sound; Phobos is airless.

It's also possible the Jin are using trenches offensively, much like the Vietnamese did in the sieges of Dien Bien Phu and Khe Sanh. IF the Jin are sieging a prepared base, having trenches on both sides makes sense. This would need to be spelled out in the narrative at some point.

The main reason that they are in a trench is because I wanted to createa WWI feeling with the story, but I wanted it to be sci-fi, so I used trenches to create the feeling.

If it doesn't work, I'll change it for sure.

The main plot of the story occurs in the POW camp, so I don't really ever go into detail about why the war started. Perhaps I'll put a little more background in throughout the story.

thanks!

quote:

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Keep in mind that trench warfare is only practicable in times and places where air warfare is not.

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That's not entirely accurate. It was really the "combined arms" concept of integrated infantry, armor and air assets that made large-scale fixed defenses (which are not necessarily trenches - think of the Maginot and Siegfried Lines) impractical. Highly mobile tanks and fire teams with good communications and local commmand and control are extremely capable of overcoming extensive static fortifications - even without air support.

I finally took Eric James Stone's suggestion to heart and asked the webmaster to change the size of the message box in the Fragments and Feedback area.

When you start a topic in Fragments and Feedback, and put your 13 lines in the message box, you know you're at exactly 13 lines if you can see all of them without scrolling. (If you have blank lines between paragraphs, of course, you'll have to scroll that many more lines to see everything, but only in that case.)

I need to get the word out about this (and hope that I am clear enough that people don't misunderstand).

Actually, I really do like the structure of this opening. You're bringing me into the battle without throwing me right into it with the first word. You set me up very economically, and THEN pulled me into the battle -- so just like the MC, I find myself doing a quick mental catch up and then get in pace with events around me. Nice!

The only part I'm personally uncomfortable with is the reference to the MC's attention being pulled back to the battle. He's just shot at the enemy -- I don't feel like his mind's OFF the battle. Maybe it's my own periodic concentration problems, but a brief aside on the sad state of the war's progress doesn't feel like getting off track at this point.