I have a question that I figure you guys will be best at answering. How well are you able to visualize my story? If I describe something, can you imagine it clearly? I still feel like imagery and description is my weak point.
Any comments you guys can provide would be great.
Read all of my fanfics!I can visualize it pretty well. Keeping up with all the different names can be tricky, but you manage to keep them in pretty consistent groups, so I won't always be stuck thinking of one guy when I meant to think of another.
You manage to convey scenery well, but I feel as though it could have some more personality. I can visualize a jungle, but I can't get the grizzled, sweltering bug infested hellhole vision. It's a little basic, so my mind makes up the rest.
Do not be so quick to make foolish offers, Daemon. Araghast too once thought I would be an asset to his cause. Look what has become of him.
Ahh, names. Unfortunately, I have a hard on for Loads And Loads Of Characters, so that can't be helped. I'll try and infuse more energy into the scenery descriptions though.
How easy is it for you to connect a name with a personality or job? I'm trying to flesh out every character. If I name them, the reader should at least care about them a little bit. Specifically, what is your opinion of Ariston? He's been out of the limelight a bit, but that's going to change since Cyrus is wounded.
edited 5th Apr '12 5:02:53 PM by Augustine
Read all of my fanfics!Dammit. I have writer's block. It may be awhile before the new chapter comes out. I know what I want to do, but not how to do it.
EDIT: I'll ask my editor and see what he thinks. He's broken the writer's block before.
edited 6th Apr '12 5:17:26 PM by Augustine
Read all of my fanfics!I've been thinking about writing a one shot, with a rather ambitious idea in place. Post 40K end times. After the galaxy dies its final death, and everything has been exterminated.
An alien explorer vessel sets out across the unmapped galaxy, and it encounters the ruins of the civilization that came before it. The Tyranids have moved on, the Necrons are obliterated, the Eldar finally die out, and the implosion of humanity led to their extinction, taking chaos with it. The entire galaxy is dead, devoid of life, and the Warp gone with it.
The explorers travel to different planets, uncovering the remains of everything we know about the 40K universe.
Do not be so quick to make foolish offers, Daemon. Araghast too once thought I would be an asset to his cause. Look what has become of him.
I dunno, they all manage to find stronger ways to kill each other, and eventually develop some insane superweapon that can disintegrate their spores on a molecular level or something. It's not important how they went, just that they're gone.
40K is about everything pushed past its logical extreme and into the depths of depravity. I want to explore how you bounce back from that, and get the universe back on track.
Do not be so quick to make foolish offers, Daemon. Araghast too once thought I would be an asset to his cause. Look what has become of him.
That would throw the pro-Hybrid-Overkill Avoidance fans into a hissy fit.
I've finally started making headway on my new chapter. I'll probably have it out next week since I'm pretty busy.
10 points for guessing who dies.
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Its understandable. I've been using another project to destroy my writer's block, and the new chapter is slowly beginning to form.
Read all of my fanfics!So I found a couple of my old 40K fanfics. They're not very good, having been written by 15-16 year old me, but nevertheless I'd be interested in what people think.
Number 1, also incidentally my first ever attempt at writing from a first person perspective (completely unedited, natch):
Devlan, my gunner, grinned at me. “Enjoying the lovely temperature typical of this heavenly paradise?”
“Oh, can’t get enough,” I replied drily. I accepted the hip-flask he offered me. “Good for keeping you nice ‘n warm.”
I raised an eyebrow. No-one had ever offered me water before with that promise. I knocked back a slug and gasped as the fiery spirit clawed its way down my throat.
“I ought to report you to the Commissariat,” I choked. I regarded the flask with a healthy measure of respect.
He chuckled. “Nothing wrong with a nice bit of “caffeine”.
Something violently slammed the tank around. My head banged off the turret ring and Devlan slammed against the side of the hull. The enormous Vanquisher slid on the slick surface as the treads fought desperately to find purchase.
The vox-link burst into life, confused cries mingling with a long scream that chilled me to the bone. I desperately snatched the handset and shouted for quiet.
“5th Company, shut the frig up and report!”
“Oh Holy Throne!”
“Aaaaaaaaa-”
“This is Four. Left sponson’s gone-”
I cursed. Clearly we’d been ambushed. I hated the risk, but I needed to be able to see what was happening. I opened the turret hatch and blanched at what I saw.
Another Vanquisher, Marl’s, I think, had lost control and slammed into us, skidded, and ploughed off the relatively clear track way we’d been using. There was a huge tear in the side, where it looked like the armour toward the rear of the tank had sloughed off.
The crew-
I averted my eyes. A battlecannon boomed, and an explosion lit off somewhere in the snow dunes. There was a flare of green light, and something close behind detonated with a huge roar, probably a tank’s munitions and fuel cooking off.
There, among the dunes…
Figures. Metallic, skeletal. Certainly not the orks we’d come to fight. They were terrifying in the way they moved. Implacable, like death itself animate. They clutched some sort of energistic rifle.
I saw some infantry jump down from the ramp of one of the Chimeras attached to my armour. The Valhallan 31st Mechanised, I think. Lasfire crackled, and I saw one of the metal figures go down. In retaliation, the strange warriors lifted their weapons and green energy leaped toward the Guardsmen.
The effect was horrifying. Greatcoat, flak armour, skin, muscle, bone…flayed off in sequential layers. I will live with the shrieks of those men for the rest of my days.
Hate fanned in my heart, hot and bright, and I began traversing the turret to face these abominations. “Devlan, one round, HE,” I snarled before snatching the yokes for the co-axial storm bolter next to the long barrel of the main gun. I played the explosive shells over the metal figures, grinning in savage satisfaction as the rounds tore the figures to pieces.
I stared in disbelief as a few of the smashed machine-things reknitted themselves, hauling themselves upright once more.
“Loaded!” screeched the loader to Devlan from below and the enormous Vanquisher cannon planted a shell right amongst a squad of the metal figures. Those, I noted, would not be returning to unlife.
The column was in chaos. Most of my armour had regrouped and started fighting back, but the Chimeras had suffered badly. I snatched the vox and changed to the command frequency.
“This is Major Hunt. The column has been ambushed by an unknown foe, repeat, unknown foe. Requesting air support. We shall try to fight our way clear and head for Tetraville. I say again, we have been ambushed and require assistance, over!”
The vox buzzed with static.
“Dammit!” I switched to the inter-unit frequency. It was buzzing with plaintive cries for help and cursing. Before I could say anything, my driver cried out in horror.
“Cowan!”
“Oh My God Emperor…look…”
I once again swung open the turret hatch and peered out.
The ...thing…was enormous. It dwarfed any Leman Russ, and was a huge floating edifice of silver metal. A massive sickly green crystal pulsed with energy at its top, and triple-barrelled guns of the sort I had seen in the hands of the metal warriors jutted out of its corners. Some sort of portal glimmered like a doorway into hell.
As I watched, a bolt of energy leapt from the crystal and hit a Leman Russ at the juncture between turret and hull. A furious detonation flung its turret high in the air as the ammo cooked off.
A Vanquisher fired its cannon at the monolith. The shell detonated on the silvery hull and left not even a scorch mark. I stared in disbelief. A Vanquisher was quite capable of holing even a mighty Land Raider.
My gaze was drawn to the pulsing crystal. I suddenly seized on a desperate hope. Once more snatching at the vox, I patched through to the remains of the company, remembering that two more veteran Vanquishers were located close behind my lead element.
“Odel, Minsk! What is your status?”
“Operational, sir. Taken a little damage, left sponson offline.”
“Odel here. Orders, sir?”
“Aim for the crystal on that big bastard! On my mark, fire!” Turning to my loader, Sarkasy, I added, “Load AT.”
Aware of the horrible risk, I kept the hatch open. The thing was still hovering there. Its smaller turret weapons were dealing with the infantry from the few remaining Chimeras who had regrouped, and, in a spate of insane bravery, were assaulting it full on.
Odel and Minsk’s Vanquishers roared forward, kicking up snow, cannons elevated to point at the glowing crystal.
The cry “Loaded!” again issued from the loader. “Devlan!” I shouted. “Aim for the crystal, and fire on my mark!”
The cannon’s mechanism whirred as it rose to aim at the edifice.
“Mark!” I shouted into the vox.
The three long barrels erupted spontaneously, the thunderclap drowning out the sounds of battle. The three shells howled through the air to impact on the pulsing crystal.
There was an ear-splitting screech. The crystal fractured and became discoloured and ugly, as if it had contracted a disease. Then it shattered, a million pieces of whickering green shrapnel. The monolithic structure slammed into the ground.
The warriors still loping out of the dunes started to fade. Literally, fading away. Opacity became transparency, and transparency became…nothing. As I watched, the remains of the great war-machine did likewise.
Soon there was nothing.
Number 2, when I was obsessed with the Iron Warriors:
Without turning, he spoke in a cold,clipped tone to an Iron Warrior from his bodyguard.
"Bring her forth."
The Terminator nodded and beckoned forth two warriors with a girl held fast between them. She was in her teens, wide-eyed and terrified, and would have been attractive but for the faintly repulsive aura that emanated from her.
Before the raging Carnifex there lay a simple iron table, with an ornate runestaff that once belonged to an eldar farseer lying across it. The Iron Warriors shoved the human girl toward it.
"Pick it up," the warsmith said in tones of steel.
The girl, confused and scared, did as she was told. The runestaff started to glow. The girl yelped and attempted to drop it.
"Do not drop it!" roared the Warsmith. "Focus on the alien!"
In his head, he wondered if this was going to work. He had heard that a fellow warsmith had subverted and controlled an entire hive ship using a cocktail of the Obliterator techno-virus and untouchable force focused through sorcery. The warsmith had no sorcerors of his own, due to his hatred of that brand of dabbling with the warp.
The girl was an untouchable, a psionic blank. She projected an aura that blanked out synapses of the brain, rendering non-psykers confused and uncomfortable around them, and psykers even more so. They were the most potent anti-psyker weapons around, nullifying even the most powerful psychic witchery.
The runestaff crackled and spat, and the collossal tyranid lapsed into a stupor. The girl's untouchable nature focused down the runestaff and into the creature's tiny mind, severing the one tiny link that led to the Hive Mind. The girl and Carnifex suddenly shrieked as one, and both fell unconscious.
"Take her away", ordered the Warsmith, and the two warriors bowed and dragged the girl out of the room. Now for the final, and most dangerous, phase. There were twin pings as the heavy weapon Iron Warriors locked on their weapons and snapped off the safeties.
Two of the warsmith's chirumek-surgeons approached on either side of the now placated carnifex. One extended a huge, thick syringe embedded in its arm and rammed it into the carnifexes' head, straight to the center of the xeno's tiny brain.
The skin of the gigantic creature rippled and bubbled, bio-organic growths erupting throughout it as the Obliterator virus worked its way around. The creatures' eyes snapped open in agony, and the chirumeks backed away hurriedly. One was not quick enough, and a sything talon decapitated it and split the body in three with the return swing.
Its body twitched and flexed, weapons whose schematics had been written into the virus melting and forming around its limbs.Its twisted gaze locked on to the Warsmith's blunt helm and the head mutated into a much larger version of it. It was learning knowledge at a ferocious rate, cables plugged into its head pulsing with data from the fortress' main database. A huge, twisted version of the Iron Warriors insignia crept across its chest.
Then, finally, it roared. It was ready. The warsmith's twisted experiment had succeeded. The Warsmith effortlessly vaulted the barrier and walked towards his creation. The beast's eyes burned white now, within a helmet-shaped head . Its left limbs had melted and twisted into high-calibre cannons and lascannons, while the right arms retained a resemblance of its sything talons, but now decorated with yellow and black chevrons and vicious chain-teeth. Some organic components remained, as in the Obliterators, but the former carapace-harderned armour had become steel and iron, and even the organic components were the colour of dark iron. The Warsmith gazed into his new creature's eyes, which gazed back, like son recognising father.
The Iron Warrior smiled beneath his helm.
edited 21st Apr '12 3:37:18 PM by pagad
With cannon shot and gun blast smash the alien. With laser beam and searing plasma scatter the alien to the stars.http://www.fanfiction.net/s/7293543/35/Nothing_But_a_List_of_Names_to_Mark_His_Ascension
Freaking finally.
Also, sorry we haven't gotten back to you. We've had a bit of a dry spell. With this, we'll be active for a little while I'm sure. I'll be sure to read your story either tonight or tomorrow and give you feedback.
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You have the same problem that I have of occasionally using too much repetition, like in the second story where you use every concievable synonyme with "psychic" you can. When you say "anti-psyker", just assume that people get it.
I've the same problem of treating readers as goldfish. If you've said something once, that should be enough.
edited 29th Apr '12 11:25:29 PM by math792d
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.There's a fine line.
You have to determine the goldfish level of your audience, and adjust accordingly.
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I'd like to applaud you for getting it right. You've managed to attract the kind of audience that's familiar enough with 40k that all of the exposition and tech-explanation dumping you did in the beginning of the story is now paying off, and the story flows much more naturally.
To be fair, it does make sense that Latin would have undergone some degree of bastardisation during its transition to High Gothic.
Thank you for the criticism! I'd like to think the repetition can mostly be attributed to my 15/16 year old self's immature writing skills, but that would be a falsehood

"WE'Z ALL GHAZGHULL!"
Still not embarrassing enough to stan billionaires or tech companies.