dreamwalker
Starship Manufacturer
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2005
- Messages
- 349
Hello.
I've been attempting to write for years. However I'm often unable to spot even the most glaring of errors in my own stuff. This frequently discourages me, and/or I find myself often having to re-write things over and over.
I often find myself being inspired to write something because the characters or ideas I've just read in something else. But I often get tangled up policing sentences, tense, passive voice and really basic grammatical rules. It's quite a self destructive process, but, after time I keep going back. Maybe because of self delusions. I mean, I think I have a great outline, cohesive ideas and logic, maybe even passible characters. I don't know. Maybe no one will, until I write something I'm happy with.
Until that time, here's the best I think I've done so far...
***
“They’re punching us in the face Dicanna, we need your help” squelched a message from the melees leading edge. Against the unnamed hues of the Hypercolour, a horse-flys dance of dance of death bled light from the void.
“Hold o..” she began as a star-bright lance of particles bisected the recipient of her reply. For what seemed like an age within the runtime, Dicanna froze.
“I need help”
“...ck kissing c...”
“Get them off me”
“Guns! Guns!”
“Enfugco’s been vaped!”
Staccato comms chatter echoed the strobe of high energy radiation. As her vessel exited warp, it emerged within thick with signal scatting fog and a space time disturbed and distended. Dicanna saw the 11 remaining members of her patrol caught within the warp jammers sphere of influence. It was desperate combat against what should have been inferior forces. Her Warmind streamed at her to destroy the interdictor, but her Command mind saw deeper, it had known what to expect as the first warnings of her patrols interdiction trickled through their T-link. It had known that this was only the first escalation, and that light hostile units lay outside the jammers influence to reinforce the trap.
Dicannas cruiser made a series of 40G pirouettes, overloading propulsion and randomly alternating her angle of attack. With her conscious-mind floated to the ships runtime, and her body frozen, she instead felt what the ship felt; the gentle tension and compression of something dense as millions of tons of mass hurtled through interstellar space on a torch of plasma. As predicted, active sensors caught the trajectories of C-fractional projectiles in her wake within a spread that would have destroyed her vessel several times over. She fired her own beam of particles, stripping the shields from one of the enemy's smaller vessels before deploying signal countermeasures into the soup of violence. Dodging, counterstrike, instinctive reaction followed by counter action. Within the runtime, Dicanna’s Warmind analysed the rhythm of her actions, refined them, recycled them, reset them, applying further analytical heuristics upon the rhythms of her rhythms. And whilst Dicanna’s Warmind kept her alive, her Command-mind showed her how to kill. Fifteen seconds after joining the battle, the maneuver patterns of the enemy crystallized like water turning into ice.
“Shanty Star, I have fire control, stand by for time on target solutions.”
“That’s a big fat copy that commander! You have fire control, standing by for time on target solutions.”
Like a wave, vessel after vessel from Dicanna’s group pointed off-vector to fire heavy spinal weapons. Positron beams, C-fractional projectiles, phased particles and other forms of exotic radiation. These intersected two separate points of space, turning gigatons masses into entropy and light.
Snapping out of the attack to dodge the inevitable counter strike, she amended the future series of attacks to account for her now inevitable demise. She presented maneuver patterns that appeared as four dimensional images into the minds of her squad. Dicanna’s particle beams blazed once more, 41G overloaded burn followed by counter measure burst, as inch by inch, hostile, exotic weapons dismantled the quantum alchemy of her hull. She expended mass energy and propellent by the ton, as rocket math extracted greater agility from her vessel. Seconds remained. Squad chatter fell. Through the hypercolor she instead saw the squads grim acceptance of her orders. Her plan called for maximum aggression. Her plan called for them all to die. As sensors melted away, her omni-directional vision began to degrade. Desperately, she jinked and evaded, overloading every system to buy the final milliseconds needed to take part in the next time on target attack. With her command-mind now free from thinking on the tactical aspects of this battle, it thought about the the implications behind her doomed patrol in a way Dicanna’s meta-consciousness thought was comically objective. Dicanna’s ship lurched to the right before snapping her angle of attack far beyond her direction of travel, lines of light fell like rain around her as she fired her spinal particle beam for the final time. As her runtime slowed, as her cruiser disintegrated around her, as her meta-consciousness screamed in the searing fires of annihilation, she began to choke.
Her chest convulsed, lungs vomiting with the reflex of a drowning man. Gone was the control of runtime, the hypersenses from the heat of battle. Here was the thrashing, the weakness of biological limbs, lactic acid, a meat-brain awash with panic and adrenaline. She was drowning and she was passing out. And yet, Dicanna was also inexplicably alive.
As consciousness returned, instead of choking on the fluid, she consciously attempted to breathe in. She swallowed it at first, a dense gulp causing her to choke once more. Then a she deliberately inhaled. Small and halting at first, followed by a single, slower, chest-expanding breath. This was followed by another - darkness and greyness at the edges of her vision she did not previously notice, lightened. Thoughts cleared enough for her to asses her bodys… weakness, and her memories, vivid and let unreal and intangible, discordant with this gaussian filter that was reality. The drowning sensation morphed into something familiar, this told her something. She had control over breathing and with it came and a packet of instincts as deep as her reflex to choke. Within the breathing fluid she curled into the fetal position. Tight skin stretched over new bone, she could hear a heartbeat which was something her previous body did not have. Cartage squeaked against new finger joints. Beyond she heard the muffled sound of liquid pumps. Her mouth felt numb, her tongue felt implausibly big as someone else's teeth sat uncomfortably upon gums covered in loose membranous film. Eyes, glued shut at first, opened to a haze of amber light and webs of umbilical flesh. Endorphins flooded her body. Dicanna knew what this all was, and yet.... She felt a new wave of drowsiness. She was hesitant to call upon the full resources of her mind fearing what she may find, or not find at all. Instead of fighting this new battle, she embraced the warm haze wondering dreamingly why. Why had they brought her back from death against her will?
***
Please be as harsh and pedantic as you can. I need to learn what I get wrong often, what about my writing style is irritating, and any less technical criticisms (e.g. character, plot) could be worked on.
I don't often give critiques because I don't feel qualified to give advice on anything useful to a writer, but if you want, I'd be happy to trade critiques on a thread here or else where if you need any.
Thanks again.
I've been attempting to write for years. However I'm often unable to spot even the most glaring of errors in my own stuff. This frequently discourages me, and/or I find myself often having to re-write things over and over.
I often find myself being inspired to write something because the characters or ideas I've just read in something else. But I often get tangled up policing sentences, tense, passive voice and really basic grammatical rules. It's quite a self destructive process, but, after time I keep going back. Maybe because of self delusions. I mean, I think I have a great outline, cohesive ideas and logic, maybe even passible characters. I don't know. Maybe no one will, until I write something I'm happy with.
Until that time, here's the best I think I've done so far...
***
“They’re punching us in the face Dicanna, we need your help” squelched a message from the melees leading edge. Against the unnamed hues of the Hypercolour, a horse-flys dance of dance of death bled light from the void.
“Hold o..” she began as a star-bright lance of particles bisected the recipient of her reply. For what seemed like an age within the runtime, Dicanna froze.
“I need help”
“...ck kissing c...”
“Get them off me”
“Guns! Guns!”
“Enfugco’s been vaped!”
Staccato comms chatter echoed the strobe of high energy radiation. As her vessel exited warp, it emerged within thick with signal scatting fog and a space time disturbed and distended. Dicanna saw the 11 remaining members of her patrol caught within the warp jammers sphere of influence. It was desperate combat against what should have been inferior forces. Her Warmind streamed at her to destroy the interdictor, but her Command mind saw deeper, it had known what to expect as the first warnings of her patrols interdiction trickled through their T-link. It had known that this was only the first escalation, and that light hostile units lay outside the jammers influence to reinforce the trap.
Dicannas cruiser made a series of 40G pirouettes, overloading propulsion and randomly alternating her angle of attack. With her conscious-mind floated to the ships runtime, and her body frozen, she instead felt what the ship felt; the gentle tension and compression of something dense as millions of tons of mass hurtled through interstellar space on a torch of plasma. As predicted, active sensors caught the trajectories of C-fractional projectiles in her wake within a spread that would have destroyed her vessel several times over. She fired her own beam of particles, stripping the shields from one of the enemy's smaller vessels before deploying signal countermeasures into the soup of violence. Dodging, counterstrike, instinctive reaction followed by counter action. Within the runtime, Dicanna’s Warmind analysed the rhythm of her actions, refined them, recycled them, reset them, applying further analytical heuristics upon the rhythms of her rhythms. And whilst Dicanna’s Warmind kept her alive, her Command-mind showed her how to kill. Fifteen seconds after joining the battle, the maneuver patterns of the enemy crystallized like water turning into ice.
“Shanty Star, I have fire control, stand by for time on target solutions.”
“That’s a big fat copy that commander! You have fire control, standing by for time on target solutions.”
Like a wave, vessel after vessel from Dicanna’s group pointed off-vector to fire heavy spinal weapons. Positron beams, C-fractional projectiles, phased particles and other forms of exotic radiation. These intersected two separate points of space, turning gigatons masses into entropy and light.
Snapping out of the attack to dodge the inevitable counter strike, she amended the future series of attacks to account for her now inevitable demise. She presented maneuver patterns that appeared as four dimensional images into the minds of her squad. Dicanna’s particle beams blazed once more, 41G overloaded burn followed by counter measure burst, as inch by inch, hostile, exotic weapons dismantled the quantum alchemy of her hull. She expended mass energy and propellent by the ton, as rocket math extracted greater agility from her vessel. Seconds remained. Squad chatter fell. Through the hypercolor she instead saw the squads grim acceptance of her orders. Her plan called for maximum aggression. Her plan called for them all to die. As sensors melted away, her omni-directional vision began to degrade. Desperately, she jinked and evaded, overloading every system to buy the final milliseconds needed to take part in the next time on target attack. With her command-mind now free from thinking on the tactical aspects of this battle, it thought about the the implications behind her doomed patrol in a way Dicanna’s meta-consciousness thought was comically objective. Dicanna’s ship lurched to the right before snapping her angle of attack far beyond her direction of travel, lines of light fell like rain around her as she fired her spinal particle beam for the final time. As her runtime slowed, as her cruiser disintegrated around her, as her meta-consciousness screamed in the searing fires of annihilation, she began to choke.
Her chest convulsed, lungs vomiting with the reflex of a drowning man. Gone was the control of runtime, the hypersenses from the heat of battle. Here was the thrashing, the weakness of biological limbs, lactic acid, a meat-brain awash with panic and adrenaline. She was drowning and she was passing out. And yet, Dicanna was also inexplicably alive.
As consciousness returned, instead of choking on the fluid, she consciously attempted to breathe in. She swallowed it at first, a dense gulp causing her to choke once more. Then a she deliberately inhaled. Small and halting at first, followed by a single, slower, chest-expanding breath. This was followed by another - darkness and greyness at the edges of her vision she did not previously notice, lightened. Thoughts cleared enough for her to asses her bodys… weakness, and her memories, vivid and let unreal and intangible, discordant with this gaussian filter that was reality. The drowning sensation morphed into something familiar, this told her something. She had control over breathing and with it came and a packet of instincts as deep as her reflex to choke. Within the breathing fluid she curled into the fetal position. Tight skin stretched over new bone, she could hear a heartbeat which was something her previous body did not have. Cartage squeaked against new finger joints. Beyond she heard the muffled sound of liquid pumps. Her mouth felt numb, her tongue felt implausibly big as someone else's teeth sat uncomfortably upon gums covered in loose membranous film. Eyes, glued shut at first, opened to a haze of amber light and webs of umbilical flesh. Endorphins flooded her body. Dicanna knew what this all was, and yet.... She felt a new wave of drowsiness. She was hesitant to call upon the full resources of her mind fearing what she may find, or not find at all. Instead of fighting this new battle, she embraced the warm haze wondering dreamingly why. Why had they brought her back from death against her will?
***
Please be as harsh and pedantic as you can. I need to learn what I get wrong often, what about my writing style is irritating, and any less technical criticisms (e.g. character, plot) could be worked on.
I don't often give critiques because I don't feel qualified to give advice on anything useful to a writer, but if you want, I'd be happy to trade critiques on a thread here or else where if you need any.
Thanks again.
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