The Patrol

'This patrol is getting very boring. Two days out along the perimeter without a single blip in radar. It seemed like nothing interesting was ever going to happen these days. Minor skirmishes are all that happens these days. No new missions, nothing to go and take out, and certainly no new innovations were taking place. Repairing weapons, manufacturing fuel, food, and ammunition. All this gets very boring after a short period of time.
'I wonder if I will ever get to do anything interesting. Nobody ever thinks of me when they want to have something done. They always get Banshee, Xen, Faust, or somebody else to do something, while I'm stuck out here doing and three-day patrol. I hate doing patrol. I'd really like to be out scouting a new planet, but noooooo, I don't get picked for that. Wait a minute, what was that? Looked like a blip on the very edge of the radar. Well, now is the time to actually do something worth anything.'
The pilot kicks his Orion up to maximum speed and heads towards the blip on the radar. Ten minutes later, a small ship screams past him shaking his instruments up somewhat.
'Holy shit! Well, let's see what this baby can really do.'

 

I don't recommend first person stream of consciousness for...a couple thousand reasons at least. Also, you seem to deliberately avoid giving the POV character's name. That's a no-no. The POV chracter should have a unique identifier tag by the end of the first paragraph, and given how easy it is to make that tag the first word that appears, there is never a really good excuse (I know that Card struggled with the fact that Bean didn't have a name prior to meeting Poke in Ender's Shadow, but I personally thought that was a bit forced).

If you would like me to offer a critique, send the story to this address or use the address in my profile (either the little speedy mail icon or the =? looking icon).
 

Oh, wait, you said '1st person stream of consciousness,' do you mean by this a different style than regular 1st person?
"I can't believe what I'm seeing. A long column stretches over the crest of the hill. Battle weary soldiers..." over
" 'I can't believe what I'm seeing,' I said. A long column of soldiers stretched over the crest of the hill. Battle weary, the soldiers..."

I get sidetracked, and this probably isn't helping Fruguy

Were I you, I would drop the entire story and start over. Not the premise, keep that if you want, but get rid of the rest - there's usually no point in trying to save a corpse.

I don't mean that to sound harsh, but there are, as Survivor elaborated on, a goodly number of problems.

I'll take a crack at it as well, if you want to continue with the edition that you posted.
mrpopodopalus@attbi.com
 

The pilot character exudes a "flaw", not in the sense of a humanly flaw, but a character-development flaw. We hardly know anything about the pilot except that he likes to complain (he's whiny)--that detracts from us liking him. And he wants to go and "take out" (destroy, kill) things just because he's bored?

I assume the pilot is the main character; in a short story, secondary characters are not usually worth introspecting into. Make us like the character. If he intends to destroy, give us a valid and "honorable" reason why (unless the character is demented or villainous, which I'm assuming the pilot is neither).

One more thing: don't switch tenses without reason. The character's thoughts are in the present. Keep it in the present. "It seems like nothing is ever going to happen..."

[This message has been edited by Shadow-x (edited December 02, 2002).]
 

survivor, ever thought of using something called tact. and whatever POV i choose to use, i have a reason to use it, questioning that will detract from what the author is trying to do. so that will not change.

popdopalus has a point. naming a character is not always necessary in the beginning of a story.

as i said, revisions are underway, and a new version will be presentable in a week or so.
 

Could you perhaps explain what purpose your POV choice is serving? I found it highly offputting, which I'm sure is not the reason that you chose to use it. Usually stream of consciousness first person is used in a limited role (single lines, sometimes a nested paragraph) to supplement Third Person Limited Omniscient [sic, meaning that's the official term for it] in portraying the thoughts of the POV character.

Objective is rare in successful fiction writing (it is useful for accident reports, screenplays, and other depiction of physical action where the internal motives of the actors are unknown or unimportant). If you're presenting a screenplay, then I have to suggest that you shelve it until you have an interested buyer. Publishers don't publish screenplays, you have to find a producer willing to lay out the several orders of magnitude greater investment capital to make a film. And aside from the specialized technical requirements of such a work (which I am no expert on) the writing per se is unimportant (the actual dialogue is the only part that we [as a group] could really help you with).

Anyway, I always use tact (so I don't have to actually think about whether I'm using it ). Okay, so maybe there is a more tactful way of telling someone that they need to completely recast the POV structure, and I just don't know what it is.

Anyway, If you want me to examine the story, you'll have to resend it. I couldn't open the version you sent in a word processor, and reading it in a hex editor is a pain.
 

Also, any future drafts you send, I'd appreciate that they be in rtf format, rather than the word document. I opened it, but, for some reason it changed my prefs around and freaked me out for a bit (that it might've been a virus)

Anywho, I'll fire off an eMail response to the work in addition.