yet ANOTHER story needs criticism!!

P

Pollux V

Ra Bless America
Registered Senior Member
Here's a quote, I'll post a few every couple o' days. Please give me criticism, bad criticism is great and very helpful as long as you can help me fix what is bad and tell me why you think it is.

The plot is an alternate universe with the Star Wars basic plot only Luke Skywalker was killed at the death star yadda yadda yadda so here's the first quote:


“I’ll have a Gallin Ale and some water for the Wookie,” said Solo to the lanky and ragged bartender. Chewbacca immediately howled in disapproval. Han backed away and smiled casually to the man. “Make it two Gallin Ale’s, and forget about the water.”
The bartender nodded, barely, and caught the credit that Solo tossed into the air.

The young smuggler turned away from the bright lights in the bar and leaned on the bedraggled table. He glanced back and forth amongst the crowd; could see nothing more than a mob of aliens that he had never heard of nor seen before with his own eyes. He hated smuggling so far away from real civilization, he had only done it once previously for Jabba the Hutt, and with his incredible luck had managed to come under attack by an Imperial Customs patrol, which were much less common in the Core Worlds. He had to dump his spice shipment and befriend two farmers and their ‘droids from Tatooine, take them to the nonexistent planet Alderaan and then fall in love with a leader of the rebel alliance. Solo then took them to the command base on Yavin four, got paid and watched, then, as he left the world as the Death Star obliterated it, taking his friends with it and any hope of overthrowing the Empire.

So, he didn’t enjoy doing jobs for the Outer Rim that much.

The bartender handed him his frothy ale, which Solo gulped greedily, waiting for the hints of the relaxing drug zubododrine to calm him and his friend down. He turned back to the bright table and gazed blankly at it. They had happened to run into the Secondary Imperial Armada, which just happened to be on the other side of Yavin, and had been pursued for two days straight by a trio of Star Destroyers. They probably thought he was a rebel, and haven’t likely made the connection between the ship they captured outside of the Alderaan asteroid field and the one they chased away from the obliterated rebel base. He saw his first good luck in two weeks as a Bothan resistance group happened to stumble upon their little chase and duke it out with the imperials, as he slipped away unnoticed. Naturally both he and Chewbacca were on edge.

He heard Chewbacca’s throat rumble, a clear sign of immanent danger. He turned back around, his hand instinctively lightly gripping the handle of his blaster pistol. A fully armored troop or bounty hunter of some sort was standing mere feet from him. The armor he wore was scarred and hinted with a shade of dark green; whoever this was had seen plenty of combat.

“So, Solo, I believe I’ve heard that Jabba has put a death mark on your head recently. The reward for your capture-dead or alive I might add-is over five-hundred thousand credits,” his voice was high-pitched and annoying, arrogant and stupid. He had probably stolen the armor from someone who had actually been a real bounty hunter. The thing lifted his blaster rifle to Solo’s chest while one of his fingers flicked off the safety, causing the generators inside to hum and glow a slight red. “Give me double the amount and I’ll let you go.

“Look, friend, I don’t have that kind of money, maybe we can talk about this over a mug of some ale,” Solo gestured to the bartender as his other hand tightened on his blaster, “maybe we can come to some kind of long-term agreement.”

The hunter pressed the nozzle into his white shirt. “No agreements, I want my money now.”

Solo lifted his eyebrows and was about to try to reason with him-again, when a blast of laser fire tore through the cantina and ripped through the bounty hunters armor, causing him to fall to the floor in a pool of blood. The repetitive jizz music was turned off as Chewbacca howled, his bowcaster already at hand. Han peered into the darkness of the restaurant, trying to find whoever fired the last shot. His eyes hadn’t adapted to from the light of the bar, he could barely see the flurry of scattering bandits.

Then he finally saw them. A trio of stormtroopers, they were rapidly moving towards his position from the only exit in the bar. He quickly jumped over the bar table and landed on the hard, tiled floor as a volley of blaster bolts exploded onto the wall just above his head. Chewie was right behind him. The wookie lifted his weapon to the table and fired several random shots, trying to scatter the formation of imperials.

The green energy cast bright shadows on the inside of the bar. As Chewie ceased firing Han listened intently, trying to hear the familiar clatter of their boots and armor as they ran towards him. There was none. He slowly lifted his head above the table while holding Chewbacca’s down. As he glanced back and forth he saw the crumpled, smoldering bodies of the troops on the floor of the cantina.

“Nice shooting, Chewie,” he remarked as he jumped over the bar.

Chewie grumbled in approval and chuckled as he made his way out of the Cantina.


Thanks for reading!
 
Last edited:
Another Starwars fan

Huzzah! I am a huge fan of StarWars as well, and your story was pretty good. But it ended during the Climax!Not bad shrike.
 
Thanks!

Darth Vader actually gets killed later, I'll post the scene some other time. Have to let the suspense build.
 
Well, you did ask...

Don't tell the story yourself, let the characters tell the story.

Be like the ventriliquist: be satisfied with making your character's lips move with your hand up their....backs.
 
You have a lot of past tense comingled with the current third person.

Dialogue could be crisper, and broken out of the mega paragraph for easier reading and smoother flow.


Before:

“I’ll have a Gallin Ale and some water for the Wookie,” said Solo to the lanky and ragged bartender. Chewbacca immediately howled in disapproval. Han backed away and smiled casually to the man. “Make it two Gallin Ale’s, and forget about the water.”

After:

"Gallin Ale, and water for the Wookie," Han Solo muttered to the ragged bartender. Han jumped slightly as Chewbacca loosed a gutteral howl of disapproval.

"Make that two ales," Han corrected himelf to the startled barkeep.

The bartender barely nodded as he caught Solo's tossed credit mid-air. Turning away from the bright lights of the bar, the young smuggler leaned against a bedraggled table. Glancing around the interior of the bar he surveyed a motely assemblage of unfamiliar looking aliens.

Having grown to dislike smuggling so far from civilization, thanks to bad experiences working for Jabba the Hutt, Han....

:)
 
Last edited:
It isn't a mega-paragraph originally, sciforums just didn't register the breaks. I'll edit it now. Thanks for the feedback.
 
World weary StarWars? Paradoxical? Nooo :)

It was great. I misread at first and actually thought you were quoting a "real" starwars novel. After reading through I wondered why you posted it. Then I caught the drift :)

Nice.
 
Thanks Muliboy!

Your opinion chagur?
By the way I'll be heading down to West Nyack over thanksgiving, I noticed your location said 'WNY.'
I'll look for the yin yang.
 
I decided to post this instead:
Enjoy!

Garreth’s eyes widened as he peered into the telescope. The gigantic, white scalene triangles had reformed into an echelon formation. All around them a swarm of dots rocketed in different directions towards the planet. The small circle they had been chasing had shot right above him and disappeared before he could focus on it.

Some of the fighters, or whatever they were, had only gotten larger. They were heading right towards the town. His stomach had knotted when he realized this.

Procella was right beside him, the wind lifting her gorgeous hair in the moonlight. A look of concern was on her face. Garreth felt very, very afraid. The terror was coursing through his veins. He knew that they were the very essence of evil. His mind told him that; as did his heart.

“We have to get out of here,” he whispered to his friend, afraid that the spacemen would hear him.

“Shouldn’t we go back to tell the others?” She asked.

“There’s no time. They just appeared seconds ago and I can already see their shapes. We have at most five minutes.”

Procella sighed. “No, I’m not going-they’re probably peaceful, that other ship’s a criminal or something. Where would we go anyway? The nearest town is two hundred miles from here.”

Garreth paused as he gazed through the scope. As he continued to watch a larger craft emerged from the center spaceship. He knew at once that it was the focus of all the evil. He began to sweat uncontrollably. Suddenly an idea came to him. He snatched his friend’s hand and dashed down the mossy Cliffside, stumbling and sliding more than running but within seconds making it to his cabin.

He immediately grabbed his uncle’s map while taking all of the food in the house and shoving it inside a backpack. Shihla began to get the idea. She shook her head.

“I-I can’t do this,” she mumbled.

Garreth turned, his piercing eyes glowering as he stared through hers. “Look, we can wait on the other side of the mountain and see what happens. If they’re peaceful then we’ll come down. That way you’ll know you’ve had your life saved when they destroy everything here.”

She continued to shake her head. Garreth sighed and snatched her hand from her side and pulled her across the creaking wooden floor as he dashed outside and back up the short cliff. As he stumbled and climbed with his only available hand he gazed up into the sky, trying to see the small specks that were the gigantic spaceships. He couldn’t see them amongst the cornucopia of stars that dotted the night sky.

As he neared the top his ears caught a shriek, a horrible howl unlike anything he had ever heard before. He turned around to watch as an echelon of three H-shaped craft plummeted from the sky and launched a barrage of fiery green missiles towards the town. Explosions twenty stories high reached into the heavens as the village was torched and burnt to the ground. The inhabitants were quick to escape from their homes, their charred faces crying with sparkling tears that soaked the ground beneath them. It was black and ashen, not unlike the sky above them.

Garreth quickly covered Procella’s mouth as he dragged her above the cliffside and over the top into the shadows. As the heavy vibrations ceased through his hand (that was covering her mouth) he peered above the dirt at the fires below. His own cabin had escaped the blaze; he was lucky for it to be on the outskirts of town.

The shrieks came again, their nose deafening. The craft rampaged across the sky, the sounds causing the ground to shake and many small rocks to fly through the air. In the distance that larger ship could be seen. Garreth could pick out three stark white wings, one of them folded vertically into the air while the two others were diagonally pointed towards the ground. Blue flames licked the surface of the back of the craft as the two bottom wings folded and the ship sat on the ground.

The bottom of the craft separated at one point and lowered itself to the ash. Immediately a quad of armor-clad humanoid figures emerged with some kind of rifle in their arms. The townspeople had only managed crude gunpowder weapons that could only fire a single shot before requiring another load of ammunition. Somehow Garreth doubted that their weapons were the same as his.

Rocks pelted the hull of the ship, and immediately the troopers turned from their originating areas and fired red bolts of heat towards the shadows. A gunpowder blast echoed throughout the wilderness, and one of the troops dropped to the ground, his armor reflecting the bright white lights from the inside of the craft. More of the soldiers scuttled down the ramp to help the others.

The shots finally ceased as a group of hunters littered the ash streets they had occupied.

A shadow emerged on the ramp, and a pit formed in Garreth’s stomach. As he strained to listen somehow he heard the breathing of the creature inside. It sounded much the same as a sickly human with a stuffed nose. The first black, shiny boot stepped forward, followed by the next. Garreth felt warm dew accumulating in his armpits. The figure emerged, a tall, muscular pitch suit with a long, dark cape that swayed in the wind. He could see the distant helmet, how it was shaped like a skull. It was the very essence of evil.

Procella apparently felt it as well. She was tugging on his long, white sleeve, urging him to leave. Garreth quickly opened the paper map and ensured that he was heading in the right direction. It would be weeks before he reached the desert side of the world, and his uncle Jaivid could be dead for all he knew. As he slid down the shadowed side of the cliff he glanced back towards the sky, which was now tinted to the color of fire. They were torching the town.

He sighed, and continued.
 
Last edited:
shrike ...

The chances are you won't see the Yin/Yang ... Where you're headed is about six hundred miles East of where I'm located. I'm in the Westernmost part of the state.

But regardless, have a decent Thanksgiving and, hopefully, good driving weather.
 
Hey shrike, nice going.

I'll offer a general but important tip. One of the first things I learned about writing: "Beware the weedy word."

I plucked a sentence from your last post: "Procella was right beside him."

There's nothing wrong with that sentence. Sometimes it sounds goods, (or reads good), to use a word like "right" in the way you have. On the other hand, a story will often read better, smoother, faster without such words.

"Procella was beside him."

It all depends on how important it is to the scene or story to convey Procella's proximity. If it is important for the reader to know how close Procella was, then there are other ways to show this. The sentence above establishes that Procella was near enough.

"Show don't tell," is a standard rule of writing. And then... "show it well."

Nice work and nice attitude about the criticism you've received so far.

Keep it up!

~~~

Counterbalance
 
Chagur,

<<...Interesting use of the word 'bedraggled'...>>

Yes, it is not the adjective I would have used. Still, you errantly surmize that the table never was used by aliens lacking an operational sense of Terran hygenics.

:D
 
Thanks, counter, I'll keep that in mind.
Now onto pronunciations:
Procella: Prah sell ah
Gallin: Gay-lin
Plus, I've just realized that some of it's been unedited. Shihla was originally Procella's name, so if you get confused that's the problem. I'm going to insert paragraph breaks now.
 
I've got that new britney spears song stuck in my head...

So does anyone else have any more criticism? I'd like to have at least a few posts before I post the quick death of darth vader!

By the way, Mr. G, what's up with the way you quote people? The chevrons (<>) etc. Did you learn that from another forum?

By the way are you [Mr. G] a scifi fanatic or what? I don't believe you've proclaimed your thoughts on any particular series, I'm just interested I guess. It always gets me going when we have another avid member join the forums. I believe you and benji are the latest.
 
I'll be posting the scene today after I finish it-believe me it's incredible. It's not short anymore, but very involving and just cool. I hope I'm not making an overstatement.

Please-more criticism!
 
It's incomplete, and I've noticed we've had a few more views, so without further adue, I present to you the battle scene:
VIII

The old republic escort fighter rocketed straight toward the Executor, activating its cloaking device seconds after exiting hyperspace. Its shape warped and bent before dimming to a dark blotch against the stars of the universe. The occupant inside made herself known to Vader, maximizing her influence to reach the every single deck of the ship itself. No doubt every being inside that craft felt very uneasy, even the ‘droids. Vader would not know what was causing this, only that it was more powerful than anything he or his mentors, or their mentors, had ever encountered before.
She homed in on his private meditation concourse at the very top of the bridge section. As the sleek disturbance latched itself onto the metal the pilot inside focused her energies to the hull, causing it to flame and melt into a pool of plasma that dripped onto the shiny floor. As the athletic, shapely human fell from the hole in the ceiling Vader himself walked through the entrance in the distance, acting as if something like this occurrence was trivial. He wasted no time removing his silver lightsaber from his belt and activating it.
He stabbed the control panel to the door and began walking the catwalk that connected the entrance to the main chamber and observation deck. The woman removed her helmet, and instantly the most indescribably gorgeous human Vader had ever lain eyes on became visible. Her hair was long and black with a single white streak flying through a small cowlick, her skin white as the plains of Hoth. She had a straight, medium-sized nose and a pair of green eyes that cast shadows around the area she stood. Her lips looked naturally ruby-red, and she wore no visible makeup of any type.
On each of her wrists was a golden band with several indentations on the top and bottom. As Vader came closer she joined her wrists together, and instantly a pair of short, purple daggers of light emerged from the tops and bottoms on each wrist, forming four blades of intense energy. Vader paused. He had never seen a weapon of that sort before, nor heard of one. The wristdaggers hummed with intense energy and crackled with lightening. They were relatively as long as a blaster rifle and as thin as a wire, but the bright light that emanated from the blades caused them to appear thicker than any lightsaber and just as long.
Vader’s blade was brought down swiftly towards Phoena, and she immediately let her incredible force energies guide her every muscle as she blocked the swing and thrust her free wrist towards him. He backed away and grunted (which sounded more like the screech of something metallic), swinging his cape around and backing away towards a stairway. She sensed slight fear in the sith as he brought up his red blade, ready to resume the fight. His metallic breathing quickened as she drew nearer, and he began to focus upon her neck. She felt a slight pressure, which began to quickly build until she found herself lifted several feet off the ground with the firm grasp of an invisible, leather hand gripping her collar. She immediately brought up one of her hands and felt a blackness unfurl from it in an incredible whirlwind that hurled the cyborg into a distant wall. She drifted to the ground and sprinted towards him.
Vader was finished playing games. He swung his crimson blade into a blur that struck her wristdaggers, immediately pulling it back to deflect her thrust, pushing her hand into the air and kicking her stomach. She fell onto the ground and gasped, he had struck her right in the gut and she had lost all the air in her lungs. Now was his chance. He brought his blade down over her back, but she quickly rolled to the side and leapt into the air, landing behind him and shoving the daggers into his cape. He got lucky, she had barely missed his armor as he back flipped over her and shoved the blade forth towards her body.
She back flipped, realizing that this was not going to be an easy fight. Phoena turned around and pumped her leg muscles as she dashed towards an elevator. She would need to move the fight to somewhere with much more room. She quickly stretched out with her power, whirring through the entire vast complex of the ship, feeling every atom of every metal plate onboard, and seeing it with her minds eye. She finally found it. Next to the megalithic engines a power plant ten stories high and a league wide greeted her senses. She reached the elevator door and slashed at the metal with her purple blades, watching the surface brighten to a pulp of inferno that dropped down the hole that was created. After being thoroughly satisfied she jumped and swan-dived down the duct towards the far-distant bottom.
Vader watched her from his same position, he had not moved as he gazed intently at the creature evade his wrath. She would not escape so easily. He walked towards the panel and ordered the elevator towards his position. He watched as the female below him glided to a halt as her legs met the ceiling of the lift, her luscious green eyes piercing his soul. As the lift neared he typed a command into the panel by his side and jumped towards the nearing platform.
His cape billowed as he streaked towards her, squeezing himself into a coil as his boots met the cold steel. His lightsaber activated, he leapt towards the woman, arcing it down towards her but meeting the walls of the shaft and causing a shower of sparks to hail down from the cut in the ship’s skin. He found himself floating in midair, he could not descend as he was moving at the same speed as the elevator. He pivoted and brought the saber out of the wall and slashed towards the other warrior, meeting it with her wristdaggers. His cape continued to billow upwards as he fell.
He kicked with one of his legs, striking her dead on in the jaw. She fell backwards but caught herself as the back of her suit struck the metal, slicing the a sliver of the thin material off. She jumped into the air to join him, and soon a massive fight of spark and electric screams echoed throughout the shaft as blurred strokes of bright light smashed into each other.
Abruptly the elevator stopped and they slammed into the ceiling.
Phoena lifted herself immediately and pushed the mechanical sith to the metal floor as she cut a hole in it. After briefly melting the surface she fell through and rolled into the massive room.
Her mouth opened wide as she gazed at the room. Thick coils of bright blue lightening whirled through the immense square and around a small catwalk with only several officers in protective suits manning a single console. of the distant walls had a gigantic hole gaping into the void of space. It was no wonder a powerful wind was roaring through the bay. Phoena focused her energies onto the one of the officers and flung his body like a rag doll out into the open, where the coils of electricity snapped and cackled like starving animals as they all abruptly ceased any motion whatsoever and bounded towards the flailing armored body. In less than a second he was enveloped with intense fluorescent light, his body disappearing completely as it was baked to extreme temperatures. The lightening appeared to have had enough with him, for after the moment was complete the plethora of electricity returned to its mindless spinning, ignoring the pitch hunk of scarred metal that slowly drifted out of the hole into space.
This will do nicely, she thought as Vader walked out of the elevator, stripping off his tattered cape and hurling it into the blue abyss.
He brought up his crimson blade as Phoena steadied herself. His mechanical breathing was quickening as he paced next to her. Phoena could feel the guards at the other end of the catwalk confused but desperately wanting to get out of the area. Their only exit was cut off. Phoena backed away, slowly, edging towards the console, after fifteen minutes of backing away and feinting fear she had come very close to the terrified engineers. The android appeared to be tired of playing games; she could almost see his menacing scowl under the frightening black mask.
She brought up the daggers and charged, pumping her legs frantically. When she reached him she jumped several feet above his towering figure, using the force to quickly shoot back down to the precarious catwalk as a band of electricity slammed into the metal grating mere inches from where Vader stood. She had developed her strategy.
With the grace of a ballet dancer the Sith Lord watched as she almost instantly swung herself under the catwalk and under him, attracting another bolt of incredible power that shattered the floor that he stood on. Vader was hurled backwards onto the slightly wider platform, clanking his armor onto the hard metal. The pair of engineers backed away, pressing their bodies against their console as the female Sith fell forwards from the other side of the breached grating, catching the platform with her hands and using the leverage to swing her legs under the metal. The android stood from his position and walked near the struggling woman who couldn’t seem to get one of her legs over the side.
She was desperate. She looked for an object to hurl at him. There was none.
Then another idea occurred to her.
One of the engineers was thrown violently into Vader, shattering the armor he wore over his white skin and tossing him over the edge along with the body of the engineer. Phoena heard an eruption of intense electricity and new that she had finally killed the warrior and accomplished her goal. She swung one of her legs over the edge and climbed up to meet the surviving engineer face to face. Her stare at him was icy as she realized the predicament she had gotten herself into.
She turned to face the entrance to the massive bay. The platform was wobbling. It had lost its balance when it was separated from the catwalk, and was starting to lean into the fluorescent abyss. The situation looked hopeless. She couldn’t jump or the electricity would fry her, she couldn’t try to grasp both metal ledges at once because they both weren’t stable, and there was no way to reconnect the cables. She had to come up with an idea, and quickly.
She turned back to the engineer. “Fix this,” she barked over the deafening noise.
He shook his head. “It’s impossible!”
Both sets of humming daggers rose to almost touch his covered face. Her eyes never left his black sockets. “Make it possible.”
He just stared at her for what seemed like hours as the wobbling continued to increase. Phoena had to grasp the console to keep her balance. She had to make a decision, and quickly, there was no telling how long the girders below the platform could support the increasing pressure. The electricity would kill her instantly if she jumped. Maybe there was some way to distract it, some way to keep it away from her for only a few seconds as she jumped onto the catwalk.
She paced next to the gaping canyon of air between the two walkways. Her gaze drifted to the girder that held the bending platform onto the distant floor. What her eyes saw amazed her. The android was alive, and he was climbing up towards her, his lightsaber in his mouth as his arms and legs pumped up the repair ladder. He would reach her within seconds. Somehow he had survived the lightening. There must be a way…
He finally reached the top of the girder and slid the saber out of his mouth, pressing the activation button and slicing through the underside of the hull. He moved away as a large hunk of metal cracked and fell from the structure and pulled himself up to face the beautiful woman. This woman was most impressive; it had been a long time since he had fought a worthy opponent, and even longer since he had confronted death in such a fashion. He was not afraid, though. He was a warrior. A Sith. He was the dark lord of the explored galaxy. No one questioned his actions. No one got in his way, except this girl. She was beginning to become troublesome. He had to deal with her.
He suddenly felt the grip of something over his entire body; he was being lifted several feet into the air. That was her cowardly strategy. This was not impressive. Vader hurled his saber at her from the air, causing her to instinctively block the sword, hurling her onto her back. Vader felt the grip loosen and dropped to the floor. He lifted his arm and his saber bounded back to him, and the instant it struck his gloved hand it was re-activated and ready to kill. She was now vulnerable. The battle had come to an end.
He arced his saber down onto her, feeling her last tinge of resistance press against the blade. But then it erupted into a cataclysmic fury, and in a blinding red flash the hilt burst into blinding fire that instantly tore of both of his hands. He screamed with pain. She stood and looked down upon the cowering figure. Vader was now scared. He was terrified. He couldn’t die, not now, not ever.
He felt her power grip him again, and he was hurled off of the balcony and into the bay, and as he stared at her she leapt over the canyon and onto the other rail, barely an instant before the lightening coiled around him and encased his metallic body, melting it and then hardening it to a crisp. He had no time to scream.
Whoever he was, his reign had come to an end. Phoena watched as a brief burst of energy poured out of the area the lightening had focused upon. She suddenly felt the feeling of dread and horror melt away, for his energy had disappeared. He was no more.



as Phoena was quicker than his blade. She sidestepped, whirled around, and sliced the daggers through his armor and into his pale skin. He gasped as she brought her other wrist about, causing them to cut his body in half.
The top of his corpse clanked onto the metal, and his vision began to fade. His last image was of the gorgeous woman gazing into his armored eye sockets, smiling as blood slowly dripped out of her mouth. Her face took on the appearance of his own armored one as she melted into a perfect replica of him. The grip on his lightsaber was released and the crimson blade slowly crawled back into the hilt.

It's missing the middle because before the scene was much shorter. I'll edit this later but I have little time.
 
Last edited:
I've finished the scene, if any of you sciforumers have time please read it, I'm sure you'll enjoy it.
 
Well it's sunk to the bottom, I've got to put it back at the top of the forums somehow, somebody please say SOMETHING. Even if you didn't read it!!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top