Premise:

It is the future and the earth has been for all intents and purposes devasted by an unknown war thousands of years ago, however in the current age a new race of lizard-like beings have evolved and are now competing with the currently degenerated humans for resources.

Zilik, a digger from a humble village uncaring about the past except for whatever baubles it left behind for them has big dreams and big aspirations but it seems like he will never get a chance to live them out until digging upon a crashed warship from the past and a chance meeting with a lone surviving esper cryogenetically frozen on a war-turned refugee ship thrusts him into an adventure he could never have imagined with the fate of humanity and his adolescent race held within his scaled hands.

13 Lines:

quote:

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I climbed out of the hole and grabbed a fresh torch and the flint that Zora had left behind, geez, is that girl air headed or what? I would have to scold her later for careless leaving important things like torches in the wheel box.

I hopped back down and lit the torch, illuminating the ground and I could see the light reflecting off of something just underneath the dirt.

I resumed digging, carefully removing the dirt and rocks away from it clearing out several feet of it.

I uncovered what I hoped was most of it but it seemed like no matter how much I dug, there was always more to dig out...

Eventually I think I managed to uncover some symbols...

JMSDF KIYONAMI

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So basically some feedback, I'ld be interested if anyone is willing to give the whole thing a read and get back to me, maybe if the story is alright I'll try submitting it to IGMS.

[This message has been edited by B. Elison Bradley (edited January 07, 2011).]

2. There are a lot of run-on sentences here. You could safely insert four or five periods.

3. "Eventually I think I managed to..." Well, did he or didn't he? This doesn't seem like the kind of thing you think you did. Since we read the symbols in the next line, it appears he did manage to... So why the ambiguity?

4. I feel like I need more sense of setting. Not too much, mind, but put in more clues as to the place, perhaps, without interrupting the action. What is the narrator doing here? Was he looking for the thing in the dirt or just happen upon it? Little confused.

I was more intrigued by your extraordinarily long sentence describing the story than the actual 13 lines. I do like the characterization you get down to at the start. The narrator comes across as responsible but dry - in a tough, nonsense kind of way.

2. Yeah as it turns out I thought that adding comma's made it better. But I checked on wikipedia and turns out this is incorrect practice, as I write how I talk. I'm in the last few pages I started writing starting to add more in but I suspect I'll need an editor to really fix it, this is years of bad habits I don't think I can easily shake off.

3. This a quirk of how I speak upon self reflection, I'm a very ambiguous person. "Did you eat the food on the counter?"

"I dunno, maybe?"

But I'ld justify it as saying he doesn't actually know if he uncovered symbols he only thinks he did, the text on the next line is only meant to inform the audience of what he found and has no meaning to the character,

4. With only 13 lines understandably I can only confer a little bit of many lines that any randomly selected group of 13 would seem horribly out of context, if you want I can email it to you though beware I haven't fixed the run on sentences and won't for quite a while as I want to get more the story done before getting bogged down in the debugging.

Other than nits, your story begins in an interesting place and sounds like a tasty tale.

Editing to add:
I agree with jnk's comments. If the mc is unsure he uncovered symbols, he may say something such as.

My fingers brushed up against something hard. I wiped the dust away and saw what appeared to be some type of symbols on the stony mass.

The above sentence is a hack job, but it communicates that the mc thinks he found symbols without definitively saying so.

By the way the beginning few pages will seem read in comparison to the 13 lines posted here, you'll find out quickly why that is.

Yeah I see what you mean Wordcaster.

There were quite a lot of typos and words missing/misused. Made it very challenging to read.

Interesting idea, I like post-apocalyptic stories.

Strong suggestion, proof very well. It is hard to crit when there are mistakes that a solid read-through would have caught (and I'd rather focus my critting attention on things like giving you suggestions for how to avoid the repetitive sentence structure, each sentence starting with "I" - which is a problem I have in my own work and am very familiar with.)

One way to proof, particularly for such a short fragment as a 13 line posting, is just to read the piece aloud. Usually things like careless (should be carelessly), shock (should be shook), no (should be no one or nobody), etc. would jump right out in an oral read-through.

Good luck with this piece!

quote:

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I dove to my knees and began frantically digging the dirt away with my bear hands but to no avail I just couldn't see it...

Climbing out of the hole and grabbed a fresh torch and the flint that Zora had left behind, geez, is that girl air headed or what? I would have to scold her later for careless leaving important things like torches in the wheel box.

Hopping back down and lit the torch, illuminating the ground and I could see the light reflecting off of something just underneath the dirt.

I resumed digging, carefully removing the dirt and rocks away from it clearing out several feet of it.

Uncovering what I hoped was most of it but it seemed like no matter how much I dug, there was always more to dig out...

---

I suspect I may be well within the 13 line limit, I'll email the text in a moment.

Please read this topic in particular, B. Elison Bradley.

And just Elison is fine.