Critique Wanted

[Ragnos]

I was a bit skeptical on sharing this with everyone, but I really wanted to get some feedback on the writing of the story so far.
It's being written currently in a sort of book format, and I've been meaning to get around to going back over it and rewriting it in more of a VN order.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1_cUwt ... PbOatoSGY0

I've gotten to the third chapter in writing so far, but I decided it would be best to get some critique before heading further.

[Limabaen]

BEWARE HUGE POST AHEAD

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not a writer. The critique below is representative of my impressions as a reader, so take it with a grain of salt.
Without further ado, here are some things I noticed could do with some improvement.

Tense
Your writing suffers from some tense issues. You've written it in past tense, but there are some slips into present tense. Here are some examples:
Jessica is our spacecraft’s technician and data analyst.
The exterior design isn’t too bad, but it could do with a bit more space.
I walk to the bridge to see why Oscar called for me; he answered as I walked in.
This is an easy fix: go back and proofread your work.

"Telling"
You rely too heavily on "telling" the audience about characters and events. As a reader, it makes me feel disconnected from events. I want to be able to picture the scene in my mental cinema, and to do that you need to incorporate more "show" into your writing. I'd like to use this line as an example:
Edward got up and headed straight for the bridge.
How did Edward get up? Did he get up slowly or quickly? Is he in pain from crashing onto the floor or not? Did he "jump up" or "struggle to his feet"? A minor detail, but so, so important in creating a richer image.
Your reliance on "telling" the audience about stuff also links to the next thing, and that is:

Characterisation
What I mean is that I don't think the reader can get a clear impression of each character's personality from your writing. They seem a little flat, and their voices aren't distinct, and apart from dialogue, I think this problem stems from the fact you "tell" too much.
When you introduce Oscar, you write this:
“I guess it's a good thing we installed those new engine core drivers huh? Besides my flying skills won’t allow a neutron star to get the better of me, even if it has an insanely abnormal magnetic field.” Oscar proclaimed. He was quite the optimist, and he certainly didn't lack for confidence.
Sure, you've told me that he's optimistic and confident, but I want to see it! At this moment he sounds just like Edward, with this sort of semi-formal tone.You should demonstrate his personality in his words and actions. I hope you don't mind, but I've tried to rewrite the scene/dialogue where he's introduced to demonstrate what I'm talking about.
“Hey, Edward! I guess it's a good thing we installed those new engine core drivers, huh?”
Edward slammed his fist onto the panelboard. “You have no idea how bad things could have been. Don’t you dare bring us that close to a Magnetar ever again.” He growled.
“No neutron star’s gonna get the better of me; I’m a pro, remember?” Oscar grinned and thumped his chest once for emphasis.
“That thing had an abnormally large magnetic field. We could have been pulled right into it! I hope we never encounter a black hole with you at the helm.”
"Why not? My flying skills can get us out of anything. Relax a bit, buddy!"

I'm obviously not a great writer, but I hope I've at least demonstrated how you might go about showing off Oscar's optimism and confidence.

My second point is about character voice. Check out these following lines from the exchange between Jessica and Edward:
“Sweet, I’ll send the Nav data to Oscar."
“Speaking of which have you talked to him yet?”
“No, not yet. I’ll do that now.”
These few lines confused me because I seriously had no idea who was talking. Even though visual novels have name boxes and sprites and what-not to help with this, from a writing point of view it simply isn't good for your characters to be vocal twins. The way a character speaks is an insight into their personality and even their background, and by making them sound the same you're doing yourself a disservice in terms of characterisation.

Pacing
Your story is super fast paced, but there are some moments which seem unnecessarily long. Once again, it's because you "tell" a lot more than you show.
In only one line Edward manages to completely fix the fluctuating reactor core. Obviously in real life doing anything of the sort would take far more time, but because you opted to just say what he was doing and not how he was doing it, you made the task seem quite trivial- and as a side effect the scene lost any feeling of danger and suspense.
On the other hand, in the line where Edward falls to the floor the event seems very drawn out. If you're aiming to write about something sudden, then make it sudden with your writing! Make your sentences shorter and use stronger adjectives. Think about how your actual sentences can imitate the passage of time, and your pacing will improve.

Also regarding time, there are some sentences which don't make temporal sense, such as this one:
I heard a knock at my door; the voice on the other side was Jessica.
When in time between Edward opening the door and the knocking did Jessica speak? The first half of the sentence and the second half don't link. There are other instances of this, like when Edward is running up to the cockpit and ranting (which gives the impression he's ranting to himself as he runs down the hall). Maybe try avoid some "-ing" verbs?

Exposition
When I was reading it, I was caught quite off guard by the sudden chunk of exposition about the nature of their journey. There's also a rather stilted section of dialogue where Oscar and Edward talk about their motives for going on their mission, and it comes out of the blue. Don't deliver huge chunks of information. World building and character backstories are the seasoning on your story, not the main meal. They should be sprinkled in organically with everything else, not just dumped into the reader's lap.

And that's about it. Please don't think your story is bad, I'm just being harsh. You've avoided a lot of pitfalls like too many characters, or boring beginning that I see a lot of other stories fall into. In fact, I'd say this is a good foundation and all you need is to expand, edit and flesh out. Good luck with your vn

[Lesleigh63]

Hi Ragnos

Okay. Once you have your initial draft down start going back over it paragraph by paragraph (word by word) seeing how you think you can improve what you've written. Writing is multiple passes and multiple drafts.

["Edward ran to the reactor core; it was fluctuating and needed a manual restart quick or else the ship was going to be torn to shreds. He reached it within seconds due to the ship's’ small size."]

Here's I'd recommend you replace 'ran' with a more descriptive verb - something that suggests the urgency of the situation - 'sprinted' maybe.
Think about what else would be happening in a situation like this (what can you hear, see, smell) - there'd probably be audible alarms going off, maybe flashing lights, maybe a voice doing a countdown. Describe to your audience what is going on - i.e. 'show' it but don't 'tell' your audience what the situation is.
"...it was fluctuating and needed a manual restart quick or else the ship was going to be torn to shreds" is 'telling' your audience what the situation is. Something like...

Edward sprinted for the reactor core accompanied by strobing lights and a claxton blare intermittently interrupted by a calm mechanical voice.

"Proximity alarm," intoned the voice. "Catastrophic disintergration in t-minus 5 seconds."
{In this example it's the bit of dialogue that lets the audience realise that the ship is in danger without you the author having to intrude and state that the ship is in danger}



[“I guess it's a good thing we installed those new engine core drivers huh? Besides my flying skills won’t allow a neutron star to get the better of me, even if it has an insanely abnormal magnetic field.” Oscar proclaimed. He was quite the optimist, and he certainly didn't lack for confidence.]

Here too, "He was quite the optimist, and he certainly didn't lack for confidence." is the author intruding and making a comment about the character rather than relying on the character's dialogue and the character's actions to 'show' that he is optimistic and confident. You've actually already got a sense of the character's confidence in the dialogue [Perhaps change it to "I guess it's a good thing I suggested we intall those new engine core drivers...] to push that sense of confidence even further and if you want to keep going to show his confidence perhaps describe him performing an action that reinforces his optimism and confidence (i.e. like leaning back and sticking his boots up on the console or something like that). So you never actually state that he's confident or optimistic but you let his actions, dialogue etc show that he is.

Hope this helps.

[Mammon]

I have to agree with Limabaen, your story isn't bad but it's a bit too fast and furious. (Jup, I just made that lame pun.) It's going incredibly fast in a way that suggests that you haven't gotten a good sense yet between the difference between being a writer and being a reader. This isn't an easy thing to do, but that's why rewriting it a second time might be important to do. And a second rewrite is this: Leave the chapter be for at least a day and then rewrite it again, you should have lost the sense of your writer-pace by then and be able to properly judge the pacing as a reader.

This solution should resolve this problem: Writing, especially writing a story, goes much slower than we might think it does. What takes someone 3 minutes to read can easily take at least an hour to write, not counting rewrites and assuming the writer already knows what they want to write. So the one sentence that you feel already explains things enough at a good pace can be too fast for the reader to follow, especially before you get used to the writer=>reader gap. As a result, many stories can go incredibly fast-paced without taking the reader with them, and instead leave the reader uninterested as a result. Some people (like Limabaen and me) are compensating for this by making our posts longer than they should be and instead dragging on a bit rather than going too fast, while others like you make them just too short and fast to be appreciated. No one could bring a story to life within the length that you used here, regardless of skill. So one of the best tips to give is to write more. Not write more plot, write what you had here in more words. Without adding any new plot points in the story, stretch the 1,5 page prologue into at least 3-5 pages.

The fast pacing combines with the next issue I had into a double-power nightmare: You introduced (what I assume is) the entire main cast and the ship in a single chapter of 1.5 page. If a 2-page chapter revolves solely around introducing a single character, it'll come down to the writer's skill whether I'll enjoy that character. But even if Shakespear or Dickinson tried to stuff as many character introductions into this short span of text I wouldn't have liked any of them. So unfortunately, you introduced a lot of characters but I didn't remember any of them by the time I finished reading the paragraph that came after theirs.

And one last pointer: The beginning. The first paragraph. I can see what you wanted to do here, throwing the reader into an action-packed situation right away to get the story starting strong. Many movies and games have done it, but you need to remember the many nuances that it has. The confusion of 'What's happening? I want to know what's going on!' can easily turn to 'I don't know what's going on, and honestly I don't really care.' You need to remember that this is the first paragraph, the part which gives the reader their first impression. It's impossible to nail this one with a perfect opening line like many writers want to do, but you should always aim to not give a bad impression. That bad impression will linger throughout the entire story and shape it's events for the worse.

The problem with your beginning here was that it felt like the events we were missing should've been a previous chapter, or at least a few paragraphs before this one. The ideal situation of this strong-start trick is that either the main character is just as woefully unprepared and confused as the audience, or that the confusing event begins at the moment that the reader starts reading.

Edward ran to the reactor core; it was fluctuating and needed a manual restart quick or else the ship was going to be torn to shreds. He reached it within seconds due to the ship's’ small size.

Also, there were three things in this paragraph that were too much of concrete information to work as the confusing start: 'Needed a manual restart', 'reached it within seconds' and 'The ship's small size'. If you're making a confusing scene, you don't want to explain things within the very paragraph that causes that situation. The audience doesn't need to know yet what's going on with the reactor core (or that it can be prevented), it makes little sense to start seconds before Edward reaches the core because why not start the story a few seconds later then?, and the small ship size is just exposition. Do not give exposition in the first paragraph, none of these things would've been as big of an issue if they happened in the second paragraph, you're still in the buffer zone where you can tell a story without really telling the audience anything solid. Let their imagination paint the scene of a lone man standing in front of an almost exploding core that looks like a miniature sun with only seconds before he dies in a massive explosion, and add the more grounded details later.

Hope this helps. I don't mean to sound harsh in my review, I'm certain you can make a great story when you improve upon your work with experience!

P.S. Good idea to work with ren'py code for your choices right away in the first draft! But maybe try the system out first to get those last few kinks out. I saw that you used "$ if TalktoJoanna = True", which should be (and I'm going to shorten it too, because why not) "if ttJ == True:"

[NialGrenville]

I cannot say more than what has been said here today, and yesterday. I would have plastered the same thing Lesleigh did within my response. So I have no new information, but I do have a quote from the great Ernest Hemingway.

The first draft of anything is shit. ~ Ernest Hemingway

also, for future reference, Marky boi (Samuel Clemons) has yo back son.

Substitute “damn” every time you’re inclined to write “very”; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be. ~ Mark Twain

Other than that. I hope you take your time to proofread and enjoy the writing process.

[Ragnos]

I'm going to preface this by saying that I'm not a writer. The critique below is representative of my impressions as a reader, so take it with a grain of salt.

First, I'd like to say thank you for your feedback, that was great. Primarily I believe it's more because of the fact that I've written a lot of stories in the past and that kinda followed me into this. I'll definitely go back over it all before I continue further. Thanks again.

[Ragnos]

Thank you all for your input, out of all the times I have asked for feedback on my writing skill I would get less than adequate responses when I knew that there was something wrong with what I'm doing.

Thanks for tearing it apart; now I'll go back and fix it.

[Ragnos]

Is this better perhaps? I've really worked on the pacing and adding in more details.

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1JgQyl ... Cz0upTmKhU