The sounds of battle pervaded the training ground of the academy. as Shift, a master of disguise and, well, shapeshifting, blew it out with Golem, the rock-hard class bully.
"Beware... you cannot hope to defeat my brute strength." Golem's gravely voice filled Shift with amusement. these where the moments shift lived for- tormenting Golem.

Shift flipped over Golem and blasted Him out of the arena in a cannon form, ending the battle. "Golem, you know that I have defeated you every other time We have battled, so, I just wanted to say, thanks for the watch."

Golem's fury was boundless as He saw the empty place on His wrist where His watch was normaly.

short, yes, funny, probably not, but I am working on it.
HELP ME WITH THE TITLE!
[This message has been edited by dreadlord (edited December 14, 2005).]

A.) You're going to want to capitalize the first letter of each sentence; that's just a grammatical rule (some poetry is excused)

B.) Not sure if the stuff in parenthesis is meant as part of the actual story, or a note to critiquers. If the first is true...the words within the parenthesis don't fit the rest of the text. If the latter is the case...don't do it. We don't need you to explain specific portions of your work in such detail, since looking at them will be explanation enough. All the inserted footnotes do is kick us out of the flow of reading.

C.) I (and this one is just personal preference, so take it with a grain of salt) tend to start a new paragraph when using dialogue (unless the dialogue is being said by the same person who is thinking/acting at the time; ignore that for now as it deals with point-of-view). Since the UBB code, or whatever they use here, doesn't allow indentations, I just put an extra space in-between paragraphs.

D.) Okay, I'll recap the above three points by illustrating how I would organize the intro. Note that I'm not trying to write your story for you, just show proper grammatical structure within this context:

quote:

---

The sounds of battle pervaded over the training ground of the academy. As Shift, a master of disguise and, well, shapeshifting, blew it out with Golem.

"Beware, Shift, you cannot hope to defeat my brute strength."

"Golem, you know that I have defeated you every other time we have battled, so, I just wanted to say, thanks for the watch."

---

Now I'll go through and give my take on the thing as a whole, or line-by-line. Not sure if 'pervaded' is the right word in your first sentence. At least, not with 'over' after it. In the second sentence, starting with 'as' makes it sound like an erroneous continuation of the first sentence. In the same sentence, 'well' doesn't really help you at all, aside from making the narrative voice sound a bit more conversational.

I didn't get what you meant by 'blew it out,' either. I think you're going to need to be more specific. In the "beware, Shift" line, you might want to put some kind of pause between 'Shift' and 'you'...an elipsis or em-dash, or something. A comma simply doesn't allow the line to flow.

Also, you might want to throw in some simple 'Golem said' or 'Shift said' clarifiers after the dialogue. Example, with corrections:

"Beware, Shift...you cannot hope to defeat my brute strength," Golem said.

This will help the reader know who's speaking, and is of the same variety as the he said/she said type, only more specific. Furthermore, this would allow you to remove the naming of Shift in the sentence, which only makes the line a bit awkward or clunky sounding.

To be honest, I didn't know who was your main character here. The POV, which usually points to this, is so vague that I couldn't really tell. Is it Shift or Golem? Also, I'm not sure if there's enough information for the reader to get the mention of the watch as comedy, unless there was more exposition before this bit of text. In that case, this wouldn't be your first thirteen lines. It just doesn't function well as an intro in its current form.

The basis for your tale (the characters, setting, circumstances) could be very, very interesting. But the way it is portrayed is too confusing for the reader to really invest himself/herself in the story.

Inkwell
------------------
"The difference between a writer and someone who says they want to write is merely the width of a postage stamp."
-Anonymous

Pervading happens through things, not over them. And you can't say "pervaded through" because that would be redundant.

Capitalize Sentences.

Every shift in action from one character to another should have a new paragraph. This includes dialogue.

Spoken sentences, though part of a larger sentence, still start with their own capital.

Parenthesis should not be used in narrative fiction.

As always, there are exceptions to every rule, but this piece of work, does not invoke exception.

There is no PoV, we don't know who we are supposed to be seeing the action from. Pick one character and follow their perceptions.

Introduce the characters more slowly through action.

No, there is no humor because there is no setup, surprise or twist. All we see is long-winded bravado. We don't even see them fighting, which by the 'sounds of battle' reference, we should.

The paranthetical notes didn't appeal to me. They seemed to interrupt the story too much. I don't think it would be wrong to say, "Shift the shapeshifter" and "The immensely strong Golem" or whatever else seems good.

Also, you seem to have two characters speaking within the same paragraph, which tends to confuse (me, at least).

Sounds interesting, but Im just too lazy of a reader to want to jump the hurdles you have put in the way, to continue reading as it is.

Shift is a mischeif maker, much like Loki or the Mask. many of the same abilitys, too. transformation, giant guns from nowhere, the usual. He also has the same personality as Loki. fun-loving, funny, and devious. Shift got his powers from this wristband that he found while visiting relatives in australia.

Using a full Omniscient will hinder your ability to create a bond with the reader. Generally it should be avoided.

EDIT: In today's day and age, it is a display of respect for your readers or reviewers to run anything you submit for review through a basic spell check and editing process. If your story looks thrown together, say using only the submit window as an editor, we will treat it with the same level of respect that our subconsious tells us that you treated us with. Always take the time to clean up the obvious mistakes. Asking us to do first grade editing is, well, degrading.

I will also add to what patros and Elan have said that these tokens of respect should extend to regular posts as well. At very least, capitalize sentences and the personal pronoun "I" when you post. Otherwise it appears lazy and careless. If you show a lack of respect for yourself and what you have to say, other members will have that same lack of respect for you.

Bottom line, didn't work for me. I felt it was "trying too hard" in tone and didn't feel I had any one MC with whom to engage. Had no sense of setting really, no texture.