My First Post (A fragment of a scene)

Hi there... for a long time I've offered critique, but not opened myself to it, at least, not here. The following is a... scene so to speak, that I wrote at night from an ongoing story/world I seem to keep going back to in my head. For the first time it's coming together in a meanginful way as a story, not just characters and concepts... but this is still very raw.

The following contains descriptions of violent events, but nothing unusual or awful. It is short, but any feedback would be greatly appreciated, including feedback as to how I should post this kind of thing more... correctly.

http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dngg925_1czvhqtf2

Thanks very much,

Nappan

Hey, not bad at all. I like the pace of this story quite a lot.

There were some errors in need of cleaning up, but other than that you maintained good language and word choice, and I enjoyed the action scene. There are some things to be desired, but I can't get into them now. Overall, this series shows some good potential, this scene just needs a bit of polishing.

Quite good, especially in contrast with you talking as if it's the worst piece of literature. I'll just run thru a few of the mistakes:

Shahar hunched in the center of the audience chamber

nappan

Shahar gathered his will and pulled HARD on the well he'd established.

nappan

and before Keysan could think to give a new order or run,

nappan

As flash said earlier you could use some polish and most importantly change the font and make it bigger. It's hard to follow the passage

Like the rest, I actually think that it's pretty good. However, it seems on this union that I'm one of the pedantic few who seem to dwell on punctuation. I'm going to give my opinion on some of these:

although the archers, having witnessed Shahar slaughter their brethren and were still visibly shaken.Nappan

I'd add a comma after "brethren" and delete "and". 

He gasped, as the energies permeated every part of him, strengthening his mind and body alike.Nappan

I'd get rid of the comma, because if you put it there it implies that you're going to have a very long sentence. However, your sentence isn't that long at all. If you try to read it out loud, a pause after "gasped" just doesn't sound right, because you follow it with "as". 

his eyes now contained from lid to lid, a black deeper than pitch...Nappan

Get rid of the comma. I had a hard time understanding the whole sentence because of the comma, as with it you imply that the line "his eyes contained from lid to lid" already explains what his eyes contain. However, it doesn't; this is explained in the next fragment, and so they should be joined. 

The sound of the few remaining guards dropping their arms and fleeing, surrounded Shahar, but he didn't care or notice.Nappan

Again, the first comma is, to me, unnecessary. Here you imply that you have already described what the sound has done in the first fragment of the sentence before the first comma, but in fact that only happens after you put the first comma. If you read it out loud, you'll also find that it doesn't flow like how we would speak. 

There are a few others, but I think those were the only few glaring ones. As I've said, I'm a bit of a pedant, so don't take it too seriously if you don't want to! What I usually do, though, is to read it out loud to myself, and if it doesn't sound right, then most of the time there's something wrong. Just take care of your commas, and you'll be fine! :) 

I look forward to seeing this work flourish!

" Shahar gathered his will and pulled HARD on the well he'd established"

Don't use caps to emphasize like that. An additional phrase works better, like saying "he pulled on the wall he'd established, hard enough to....XX"

"He was aware of the smallest detail"

Add "even".

Anyway, confidence is good when it comes down to doing anything, and that involves writing. When you've done writing your piece, then you can worry about how it would be received. When you are still writing it, all that matters is that you do it at your best.

Well, as has been mentioned by several (including yourself), there are a slew of grammatical errors. One advice that I would give that could correct many of those: two independent thoughts in one sentence should be separated by a semicolon and then a comma. Not comma, comma, comma, comma. It interrupts the flow of the scene. This is important because it's an action scene, where flow is of primary importance. (Foolz already even mentioned flow.)

That being said... let's talk a little about the scene. Granted, we as readers are thrown into the middle of a scene that has no backdrop. If this is freeform writing, that's a great attempt. However, if you are looking for critique, you may want to a better summation of the events occurring at the time; in other words, set up the scene as though it were a play script. You told us why you wrote it, but not what's happening. It offers for better criticism (read that word as "advice," by the way) when the reader doesn't have to first sort out WTH is going on.

Anyway, my primary concern for this set as a literary piece is logic. Logic is generally overlooked but most critical to a story. Example: We presume and finally learn near the end that Shahar's sister is dead, and he yearns for revenge. Unfortunately, it throws a wrench into the idea that he would be merciful at all (which he is). Though an event could presumably occur in this fashion, it would seem unlikely to the "average reader," that it would. Instead of enjoying a scene, one would finish reading it, thinking "Wait...if he's lusting for revenge why is he sparing the bad guy's archers?" And quickly, a good book (or scene) becomes just ordinary stuff you may read in high school.

Otherwise, read read read! Learn better adjectives, descriptors, verbage, etc. Increase your vernacular, and you'll have something you're not only satisfied with, but proud of. :)

Hope this helps.