Critique my writing, please.

[shuten]

Well, I'm still a newbie around here, but I've had some experience in writing.
This is one of my old scripts, which I find to be a good example of my skill. Can you please take a look and
give me an opinion on it?

Here's the characters.

Name: Ismail Bin Yusuf
Age: Unknown (looks 17)
Occupation: Angel of Death “The Black Plague”
Description:
“I saved you so your life is mine. Once you cease to interest me, I will kill you myself.”
“Come, realize your hatred. Show me your desire. What kind of death do you wish to bestow upon them?”
“There is no worth in life if there is nothing interesting. It is the same as dying slowly from a slow poison.”
“A glass to ease your pain, a bottle to forget your regret, and a spirit to lift your spirit.”

A lone stranger who walks through the valley of death. The left half of his face is nothing but exposed skeleton. His eye socket stares into empty dark space, only occupied with a single light that dims and brighten according to his mood. He has short dark hair that jutted out through his sorban. His skin is light brown.
He is very apathetic and cynical. He wears a veil around his neck to hide his disfigured visage.
But he is not ashamed of his deformed face instead he took pride in it.
He is a true hedonist (someone who would go to any length for self gratification) and well versed in all manners of trickery and criminal minds. A true scholar of human nature.
He always carried a huge transparent scythe that looked as if it is made out of black iron. Attached to it is a bell that only rings when danger nears. It is made out of his wife’s blood and bone.
Despite those things, he likes arts. His idol is Hannibal Lecter.
Clothes: White sorban, grey coat, and white bandages around all limbs.

Name: Kuuya Yukikaze
Age: 18
Occupation: Treasure Hunter
“I cannot believe I owe my life to someone like you.”
“I have nothing more I can lose, so there is nothing more I can take.”

A member of the lost Tengu Tribe. She had black wings on her back and can fly up to 2 hours. Her hair was orange due to mixed breeding. She is as beautiful as she is hardheaded and strong willed.
She was heading to Sabakunomori to meet her tribesmen, but was captured by Desert Prowlers.

Name: Xiao Feng
Age: 15
Occupation: thief
“Most men think with their meat sticks. Once they lost them, they are helpless”
“My greatest desire is to make Ismail-gege happy.”

A beautiful young boy that looks like a girl. He lives day to day by robbing passing travelers using his looks to trap people. He likes to attack bandits or outlaws. Not because of chivalry but merely because they have more things to steal.
A curse made him change into a woman at night and only changes back into a man in the morning.
He has a deep respect and loyalty (love?) for Ismail, who saved him back when he nearly lost his head by a guillotine. So much that he would sacrifice his life for his entertainment.
He really hates rapists and cheap women.
He always carries around a Guzheng that he used as both a weapon an entertainment. And he was only spared from death because Ismail likes his Guzheng playing. And because he can turn into a woman.

Clothes: Sleek black cotton clothes fitted with metal strings.

Name: Sheik Muktamar Abdul
Age: 49
Occupation: A sheik in control of Al Massad and surrounding desert
Description:
“Sleeping with women is a game. The more you play, the better you get.”

A fat, evil man with incredible lust for women. She likes to sleep with beautiful women only to have them beheaded in the morning. Until now she had beheaded 477 women. No one dares to revolt against him because he owns the eastern artifact of immortality, “Shi Huang Di”

Name: Chari Jameela
Age: 24
Occupation: Exotic Dancer
Description:
A red haired woman who travels from place to place with a troupe as a dancer. She is as sexy as she is alluring.
She is very friendly and knows much about world affairs, sometimes too much. She is interested in Ismail because of his aura.

Name: Seong Park (Jamal Abdullah)
Age: 29
Occupation: Angel of Death
Description:

“No one is as foolish as a man who cannot accept his own foolishness.”
“Pain is only something you receptor

He is the leader of Sheik Abdul’s elite force of soldiers. He control six thousand men in Al Massad, including two thousand spread around the desert.
In reality, he is Seong Park, a mysterious man who had the ability to copy people’s faces down to his memories. He took Jamal’s face after killing him to get close to “Shi Huang Di”
If Ismail is a hedonist, Seong is a sadist. He enjoys the cry of people in pain.
He seems to know Ismail.

So, the story...just a taste of it.

[shuten]

It was a cold night in the desert.
The freezing breeze was like needles piercing bones through skin.
The gibbous moon gazed coldly down to the barren field of sand below, where only the strong survived.
The Kulu Desert. It is beautiful, exotic, charming, but like all deserts, danger hides under its sandy bed.
Ksk,ksk,ksk…
A small fox peeked out from its burrow and jumped onto a lizard that it had watched for a time.
Its ears twitched when a rustle reached them and he quickly brought his prize inside.
A woman in ragged clothes was walking unsteadily over a dune with a stick. It was a fool’s errant. Challenging the desert at night without any equipment was something not even the nomadic Shica tribe would do.
As sure as anything she stopped after a while. She collapsed forward.
Two men in grey rags popped out of nowhere and smiled.
The woman was beautiful, green hair that was cut short, with full lips that borders on criminal. And her skin! The harsh climate did nothing to its silk like smoothness.
“Whoa, what a nice catch.”
“Yeah, look at her. Her lips, they’re like cherries, and her figure, even with the rags on she got really fine curves.”
“…have you been reading them magazines again?”
“S-shut up. I read what I want to. Let’s grab her!”
…
The men were so excited with their find that they didn’t notice the shadow watching them from the distance.
The eyes followed them to a cave where they vanished inside.
“…”
When it shifted its head up in disgust, its left eye shone eerily.

“Hey, wake up.”
“…ugh…”
“Are you awake? Come on.”
The girl shifted over, but she was hindered by something heavy.
“hmm?” she opened her eyes.
There she saw, the very depth of human darkness. Their lust, their greed, their urge for dominance.
Three, no…five women were trapped in a cage. All of them fair in beauty and yet dirt had tainted their faces. Their eyes were looking at the demeaning things the men were doing to their friends.
Their eyes, now no longer anything remotely human, were filled with foreign ecstasy and resignation as pleasure of the flesh gradually corrupts them down to their core.
But in the back of the cage, refusing to fall into despair was a girl. Her skin was fair and ample was her bust. Slender and yet alluring, and her orange hair was a delicacy to the eyes.
She was looking at her. It seemed that she was the one who talked to her.
“Are you okay?”
“Ah…er, yes.”
“Good. Though I can’t say the same for everyone else.” she gritted her teeth so hard they bled. “Filthy Desert Prowlers…!”
“Uh, you have-“
She nodded to her back where a pair of small black wings protruded through her ragged shirt.
“I am a Tengu from the East Empire…My name is Kuuya. what’s your name?”
“Xiao Feng,” she said timidly.
“HEY!”
One of the men hit Kuuya on the face. She refused to back down and glared at him. Blood trickled down her chin.
“Hah, what a girl. It’s going to be fun breaking you in.”
“L-let her go!” Xiao Feng grabbed his leg.
“You maggot!”
SLAP!
“You! Stop hitting the merchandise! They are gonna sell for lower if they are damaged!”
“Fine, but I’m going to make her pay another way.”
He quickly forced the helpless Xiao Feng down. She tried to wrestle her way out, but he was too strong for her.
“I’m going to have fun with you.”
He licked his lips as he began to unbuckle.
Suddenly a foreboding stopped him from doing so.
“Good evening gents!”
A voice called out from the cave exterior. A man was standing there, but not below, he was hanging on the ceiling.
His lips widened into a demonic grin.
“And Good NIGHT!”
He threw something into the fire, it exploded with a bang. It released a brilliant blinding light that blinded everyone.
Xiao Feng had closed his eyes when he heard the shout and he easily dispatched five men.
One of them, who was guarding the cage was unaffected because the light didn’t reach the depths.
“AAAH!” He slashed blindly at the girl who just attacked his friends with his kukuri.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
Slowly, his face split apart like a gruesome mask and revealed the interior of his skull.
Up above, the mysterious man commented.
“Nice face lift.”
Xiao Feng smiled at the man’s dark humor. She then kowtowed at him. “Just as you planned, Ismail-dage.”
There was no trace of the weak girl before. Her expression was indescribable.
“Of course, it’s more fun than entering this place guns blazing. Anyway, let’s ask them nicely about what we were talking about.”
“The pincer or the…” he rummaged around his stolen bag, “the soda bottle?”
“Soda bottle. And shake it up real good.” Ismail said with a grin. “Let’s see how they like it up their royal derriere.”
A few minutes and some long, heartfelt screams later, their business was concluded.
“Hmm, so I guess that’s all of them?”
“Who are you!?”
The women looked at them in fear and confusion. The suspicious man and the weak girl that was almost raped looked at them with unconcerned faces.
Now that he was still they could see his face.
His face was handsome with prominent eyebrows that seemed to delineate everything around him. His eyes were intelligent and brimming with arrogance. A curious smile that hints of childlike quality was directed at them.
His strong jaw means that he is one of the local tribes, yet not one of them can see his left face clearly.
“Girls, look at me,” Xiao Feng said sweetly.
Xiao Feng took some fine dusts from a pouch in her bag and cast them in the air.
“You! Were you faking…y-your…zzz.”
Within seconds, the women were asleep.
The man called Ismail sniffed the air.
“What did you do?”
“Sleeping powder. One spoonful can knock and elephant out in five seconds,” she commented half heartedly. “So, shall we send these guys to the client? If they’re alive, then we get more-”
Ismail raised his arm in objection.
Her eyes were fixed on the women. Their eyes…so full of anger, confusion, and fear. So many things he can experiment on them. Then an inspiration hit him.
“Hehe…heheheheh…now then.”
“Ismail-dage? If you want to kill them…” she offered her help but was refused with a smile.
“Heheh. Not yet, not yet, foolish little boy. I have something in mind for them. An experiment, if you will.”
But first, he must do something about the girl with wings. She was quite smart and level headed. She will ruin it if left alone.
“My friend, I want you to do something for me.”

The women woke up from their sleep.
The first thing they felt after their awakening was a mixed feeling of relief. But then quickly it became grief and disgust. So much that some of them wailed while clawing at their bodies. One was about to commit suicide by hitting her head on the cave’s wall, but she was stopped in time by another.
“Calm down. It’s safe now.”

The Tengu girl was woken up by the sun shining on her eyes. When she opened her eyes, it blinded her momentarily.
“Afternoon, girlie. Nice weather we are having.”
She narrowed her eyes to see the speaker. Then she spotted two figures sitting under a makeshift canopy.
“Come and have something to eat. I’m sure you are hungry.”
The voice was so honeyed and polite that she felt instantaneous wariness coming from deep in her Tengu blood.
“Who are you?”
Another voice, this time young and vibrant said. “Are you going to eat or not?”
It was the same voice that she heard last night. Xiao Feng, that lying girl, but there was an edge to it today.
Despite her wariness, she hadn’t eaten for days. She quickly devoured the bread and camel milk along with some jerky.
“Good, good. One should eat if one wishes to live a good life,” the man in veil said. He radiated the feeling of a great man. “Let me reintroduce ourselves. My name is Ismail and this is my assistant, Xiao Feng.”
“Mmh…MMH!”
“Do finish eating. It is proper manners.”
After she finished eating, she glared at the man with the veil. “Where are the Desert Prowlers?”
“Oh ho,” he closed the book he was reading. Its title was “Silence of The Lamb”.
“They are now my guinea pigs.”

please give me your opinion

[Verity]

I think you could work on trying to show things about characters through dialogue and their actions, you know? Like, in the second section, you tell us that the desert prowlers are lustful and greedy; rather than tell us that, show us what they're doing that makes the viewpoint character read them that way. (You sort of do already, but the telling just kind of feels redundant, then, I guess.) You might also frame some of that as the viewpoint character's thoughts about their situation, which would also give you an opportunity to show us a bit of the viewpoint character's personality.

You're also not using contractions which, while good practice in technical or formal writing, makes prose sound a bit odd. The viewpoint also seems to bounce around a lot, which to me is a little bit jarring, particularly when one's just being introduced to all these characters and hasn't really gotten a feel for them yet.

[shuten]

I see. Hmm, I was intending for Ismail to be the sort of evil man who is formal most of the time, much like intelligent villains.
So, do you think I should give them a longer introduction or some sort?

[Kael]

A few quick notes;

1.- Some lines need re-phrasing, for example:

"He threw something into the fire, it exploded with a bang. It released a brilliant blinding light that blinded everyone."

It sounds a bit awkward, specially with the "blinding light that blinded everyone."
You either go the simple way: "It released a brilliant light that blinded everyone."
Or, a re-shape; "He threw something into the fire. It exploded with a bang, while a brilliant light blinded everyone."

2.- I feel there are a lot of words out of place. While deep descriptions are good, you also need to consider what are the "most" relevant devices in your story. If your idea is to create atmosphere you need to take it easy, don't rush it, slowly merge the reader with your world.

All in all, I think you are placing a lot of characters in a very little "screen" time. This can easily confuse the reader(I wasn't sure what was happening in the fight scene), just go a bit slowly, give your characters more time; a recognizable introduction. Remember what they say: "Every word is placed for a reason" you need to truly live with this in mind.

I'm sorry it was only a simple glance at your script. Hope this helps you in some way.

Thank you.

[shuten]

yes, yes I see. This is something I need to work on. Thank you

[jane101]

I think you could work on trying to show things about characters through dialogue and their actions, you know? Like, in the second section, you tell us that the desert prowlers are lustful and greedy; rather than tell us that, show us what they're doing that makes the viewpoint character read them that way. (You sort of do already, but the telling just kind of feels redundant, then, I guess.) You might also frame some of that as the viewpoint character's thoughts about their situation, which would also give you an opportunity to show us a bit of the viewpoint character's personality.

You're also not using contractions which, while good practice in technical or formal writing, makes prose sound a bit odd. The viewpoint also seems to bounce around a lot, which to me is a little bit jarring, particularly when one's just being introduced to all these characters and hasn't really gotten a feel for them yet.

I could agree with your details on giving good critic on his work.