Unfortunately, I could have easily been an English major.
Before I continue, I want to emphasize the point that I actually did enjoy this story.
Granted, I was very distracted by the use of "handle lingo" within the story (eg, @ symbols or 0's for o's and such), as nicknames in real life are pronounced with letters, not symbols. I realize you were probably trying to associate it all with your clan or something, but it still took away from the story's feel.
Also, most people won't be picky like this, but you have some notable grammar problems, like changes in tense. For example:
one of the terrorists slips out of the office and runs into the stadium
That's present tense, where as the rest has been in past tense. Again with
Superman says with a smile
you jump into present tense, but then you (mostly) stay in it for a while. Don't ask me why, but stuff like that just rips me out of the flow of a story, as I'm tripping over the grammar trying to read it. Make the whole thing past tense, and keep it consistent.
Another here...
and nudged Amanda's body
Who's Amanda? It should be referring to Helga Fyro here.
timer hit the 1 second mark
1 second is cliche... leave a few (more than 3) if you want it to seem real. Also, with the whole hostage/bomb part, the "hearing the bomb" reference seemed to refer to it exploding. Clarify that.
From the moment you specify that D@rk, Angle, and Superman were splitting from the rest of the team, I knew instantly the remainder would die. Name someone in specific (like Trixie) to be leading the other group, and they won't seem so much like nameless faces marching off to their death.
Also... ugh, kill the epilogue, it ruined the feel of the whole story. Even if you did want a lead-in to a sequel, that was not at all a decent way to go into it. My opinion, anyway.
There's various sentence structure problems, missing words, etc that kind of detract from it, but commenting on those individually would take up far too much space.
Aside from the frequent errors in writing, the content and ideas were all pretty good, I felt, so the corrections to bring it up to par would be pretty easy to make.
Sorry to let the editor part of me run loose for a moment... I can get carried away, heh. Ah well, this way everyone can flame me about how I'm a freak and should just get over the fact that this story wasn't perfect, lol.
Good work Simon, thanks for the story. :)
Before I continue, I want to emphasize the point that I actually did enjoy this story.
Granted, I was very distracted by the use of "handle lingo" within the story (eg, @ symbols or 0's for o's and such), as nicknames in real life are pronounced with letters, not symbols. I realize you were probably trying to associate it all with your clan or something, but it still took away from the story's feel.
Also, most people won't be picky like this, but you have some notable grammar problems, like changes in tense. For example:
one of the terrorists slips out of the office and runs into the stadium
That's present tense, where as the rest has been in past tense. Again with
Superman says with a smile
you jump into present tense, but then you (mostly) stay in it for a while. Don't ask me why, but stuff like that just rips me out of the flow of a story, as I'm tripping over the grammar trying to read it. Make the whole thing past tense, and keep it consistent.
Another here...
and nudged Amanda's body
Who's Amanda? It should be referring to Helga Fyro here.
timer hit the 1 second mark
1 second is cliche... leave a few (more than 3) if you want it to seem real. Also, with the whole hostage/bomb part, the "hearing the bomb" reference seemed to refer to it exploding. Clarify that.
From the moment you specify that D@rk, Angle, and Superman were splitting from the rest of the team, I knew instantly the remainder would die. Name someone in specific (like Trixie) to be leading the other group, and they won't seem so much like nameless faces marching off to their death.
Also... ugh, kill the epilogue, it ruined the feel of the whole story. Even if you did want a lead-in to a sequel, that was not at all a decent way to go into it. My opinion, anyway.
There's various sentence structure problems, missing words, etc that kind of detract from it, but commenting on those individually would take up far too much space.
Aside from the frequent errors in writing, the content and ideas were all pretty good, I felt, so the corrections to bring it up to par would be pretty easy to make.
Sorry to let the editor part of me run loose for a moment... I can get carried away, heh. Ah well, this way everyone can flame me about how I'm a freak and should just get over the fact that this story wasn't perfect, lol.
Good work Simon, thanks for the story. :)
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