Some of you may recognize the title from the 'Cinders of the Great War' trigger contest. I have 3000 words completed and would be interested in getting some feedback on what I've done so far. The actual hook comes midway down on page 2. It takes only a few minutes to read what I have completed. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Doug

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Great comments... here is what happened;

The battle ended abruptly. Staccato pops of small arms fire drummed in the distance, punctuated by the dull, heavy thud of massive chunks of catapulted building flotsam. Yet what was a constant barrage only moments ago was now a quickly dwindling pattering of the parting shots of retreat.
In a cramped tent a rough hundred paces from the kill-zone, a second battle was being waged, this one for the lives of the wounded. Captain Elias Stonecypher leaned the bulk of his weight against the heels of his hands, holding his commander’s flesh together.
Doc shouted, “Hold him still,” without really shouting.
Capt. Stony shouted at the door, a full voice roar that made the canvas walls shudder, “SPARKS, GET IN HERE!”

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you come to find out that the 'city' is in ruins and they are flingin chunks o'the buildings around with catapults. That is the Flotsam reference. Knowing that, please comment if a better word comes to mind. Doug

I like that you are juxtaposing a battle outside with the Captain's battle in the tent. There are a few things I feel that keep this fragment from working well.
In general, more words are being used than is necessary to convey information. For example:

"Captain Elias Stonecypher lifted his full body-weight to his toes..."

Could be more efficiently written as:

"Captain Elias Stonecypher leaned forward on his toes..."

The point here is that when someone leans, it is assumed that the body weight is shifting, therefore you don't need to say it explicitly. There are several other places in this piece where you could create efficiencies, I'll leave it to you to find them

The fragment states that inside the tent, the battle another battle was being waged, suggesting that the outer battle was also ongoing. Yet the first line states that the battle ended abruptly. So it seems somewhat incongruous.

Also, there are wounded characters here, but I find myself not really caring about it because you haven't made them sympathetic.

Hope that helps!

Inside the tent another battle was being waged.[Don't like "another battle was being waged." It's passive voice, while making it active would move you right into the next sentence.] Captain Elias Stonecypher lifted his full body-weight to his toes and leaned heavily on the heels of his hands. It helped only a little. The wound was too big, the torn flesh too widespread; Death too close to be defeated. Lt Col. John Sebastian howled deep and angry from the explosive rise of agony burning his chest and shoulder, spittle and blood flying, drooling down his face.

'The battle ended abruptly, though not as sudden as it began.'

I suggest omitting the 'though' clause. It reads better without it, being more staccato-like, which I think is your point. Besides that, 'abrupt' is, well, quite abrupt . It's hard to get more sudden than that. But if you leave it in, it should say 'suddenly'.

'...flesh too widespread; Death too close to be defeated.'

Since you've used a semicolon here, the last clause should include a verb and 'Death' should be lower case: ...widespread; death was too close....

I'm waffling on the dash in 'full body-weight', but the problem is solved if you say 'full weight' instead, which means the same thing.

Technically, I think these should be adverbs, but it seems in character to express it this way: 'howled deep and angry'.
So...never mind.

[This message has been edited by chalkdustfairy (edited July 28, 2010).]