War in Hypercolour Prologue (1038 words)

[dreamwalker]

Hello.
I've been attempting to write for years. However I'm often unable to spot even the most glaring of errors in my own stuff. This frequently discourages me, and/or I find myself often having to re-write things over and over.

I often find myself being inspired to write something because the characters or ideas I've just read in something else. But I often get tangled up policing sentences, tense, passive voice and really basic grammatical rules. It's quite a self destructive process, but, after time I keep going back. Maybe because of self delusions. I mean, I think I have a great outline, cohesive ideas and logic, maybe even passible characters. I don't know. Maybe no one will, until I write something I'm happy with.

Until that time, here's the best I think I've done so far...

***

“They’re punching us in the face Dicanna, we need your help” squelched a message from the melees leading edge. Against the unnamed hues of the Hypercolour, a horse-flys dance of dance of death bled light from the void.

“Hold o..” she began as a star-bright lance of particles bisected the recipient of her reply. For what seemed like an age within the runtime, Dicanna froze.

“I need help”

“...ck kissing c...”

“Get them off me”

“Guns! Guns!”

“Enfugco’s been vaped!”

Staccato comms chatter echoed the strobe of high energy radiation. As her vessel exited warp, it emerged within thick with signal scatting fog and a space time disturbed and distended. Dicanna saw the 11 remaining members of her patrol caught within the warp jammers sphere of influence. It was desperate combat against what should have been inferior forces. Her Warmind streamed at her to destroy the interdictor, but her Command mind saw deeper, it had known what to expect as the first warnings of her patrols interdiction trickled through their T-link. It had known that this was only the first escalation, and that light hostile units lay outside the jammers influence to reinforce the trap.

Dicannas cruiser made a series of 40G pirouettes, overloading propulsion and randomly alternating her angle of attack. With her conscious-mind floated to the ships runtime, and her body frozen, she instead felt what the ship felt; the gentle tension and compression of something dense as millions of tons of mass hurtled through interstellar space on a torch of plasma. As predicted, active sensors caught the trajectories of C-fractional projectiles in her wake within a spread that would have destroyed her vessel several times over. She fired her own beam of particles, stripping the shields from one of the enemy's smaller vessels before deploying signal countermeasures into the soup of violence. Dodging, counterstrike, instinctive reaction followed by counter action. Within the runtime, Dicanna’s Warmind analysed the rhythm of her actions, refined them, recycled them, reset them, applying further analytical heuristics upon the rhythms of her rhythms. And whilst Dicanna’s Warmind kept her alive, her Command-mind showed her how to kill. Fifteen seconds after joining the battle, the maneuver patterns of the enemy crystallized like water turning into ice.

“Shanty Star, I have fire control, stand by for time on target solutions.”

“That’s a big fat copy that commander! You have fire control, standing by for time on target solutions.”

Like a wave, vessel after vessel from Dicanna’s group pointed off-vector to fire heavy spinal weapons. Positron beams, C-fractional projectiles, phased particles and other forms of exotic radiation. These intersected two separate points of space, turning gigatons masses into entropy and light.

Snapping out of the attack to dodge the inevitable counter strike, she amended the future series of attacks to account for her now inevitable demise. She presented maneuver patterns that appeared as four dimensional images into the minds of her squad. Dicanna’s particle beams blazed once more, 41G overloaded burn followed by counter measure burst, as inch by inch, hostile, exotic weapons dismantled the quantum alchemy of her hull. She expended mass energy and propellent by the ton, as rocket math extracted greater agility from her vessel. Seconds remained. Squad chatter fell. Through the hypercolor she instead saw the squads grim acceptance of her orders. Her plan called for maximum aggression. Her plan called for them all to die. As sensors melted away, her omni-directional vision began to degrade. Desperately, she jinked and evaded, overloading every system to buy the final milliseconds needed to take part in the next time on target attack. With her command-mind now free from thinking on the tactical aspects of this battle, it thought about the the implications behind her doomed patrol in a way Dicanna’s meta-consciousness thought was comically objective. Dicanna’s ship lurched to the right before snapping her angle of attack far beyond her direction of travel, lines of light fell like rain around her as she fired her spinal particle beam for the final time. As her runtime slowed, as her cruiser disintegrated around her, as her meta-consciousness screamed in the searing fires of annihilation, she began to choke.

Her chest convulsed, lungs vomiting with the reflex of a drowning man. Gone was the control of runtime, the hypersenses from the heat of battle. Here was the thrashing, the weakness of biological limbs, lactic acid, a meat-brain awash with panic and adrenaline. She was drowning and she was passing out. And yet, Dicanna was also inexplicably alive.

As consciousness returned, instead of choking on the fluid, she consciously attempted to breathe in. She swallowed it at first, a dense gulp causing her to choke once more. Then a she deliberately inhaled. Small and halting at first, followed by a single, slower, chest-expanding breath. This was followed by another - darkness and greyness at the edges of her vision she did not previously notice, lightened. Thoughts cleared enough for her to asses her bodys… weakness, and her memories, vivid and let unreal and intangible, discordant with this gaussian filter that was reality. The drowning sensation morphed into something familiar, this told her something. She had control over breathing and with it came and a packet of instincts as deep as her reflex to choke. Within the breathing fluid she curled into the fetal position. Tight skin stretched over new bone, she could hear a heartbeat which was something her previous body did not have. Cartage squeaked against new finger joints. Beyond she heard the muffled sound of liquid pumps. Her mouth felt numb, her tongue felt implausibly big as someone else's teeth sat uncomfortably upon gums covered in loose membranous film. Eyes, glued shut at first, opened to a haze of amber light and webs of umbilical flesh. Endorphins flooded her body. Dicanna knew what this all was, and yet.... She felt a new wave of drowsiness. She was hesitant to call upon the full resources of her mind fearing what she may find, or not find at all. Instead of fighting this new battle, she embraced the warm haze wondering dreamingly why. Why had they brought her back from death against her will?

***

Please be as harsh and pedantic as you can. I need to learn what I get wrong often, what about my writing style is irritating, and any less technical criticisms (e.g. character, plot) could be worked on.

I don't often give critiques because I don't feel qualified to give advice on anything useful to a writer, but if you want, I'd be happy to trade critiques on a thread here or else where if you need any.

Thanks again.

 

[The Judge]

I don't have time to do a critique now, but I'll try and come back in the next few days. In the meantime, I've taken the liberty of removing the QUOTE thingummies so the extract is there in the post, not quoted, as that will make it easier for others to quote it in their turn when critiquing, and I've also removed the extra spaces between paragraphs so as to reduce the space it takes up a bit.

As I was doing all that I noticed some missing punctuation and possessive apostrophes, from the opening paragraph onwards I'm afraid, which I'll point out if no one beats me to it, and an oddity -- you spell "colour" the British English way, not "color" but "manoeuvre" you've spelled US fashion. You ought to be consistent in that respect, otherwise you'll end up upsetting both Brits and Yanks!

Good luck with it.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I often get tangled up policing sentences, tense, passive voice and really basic grammatical rules

These sound like editing concerns, which is something you can look to deal with after you've done the writing itself.

IMO the secret to writing is to forget that you're writing, and just say your words the same way as you would speak a conversation. Then tidy for effect after.

The reason being is that writers, when first starting, become all writerly - that is, they over-write and over-complicate their sentences because they think that's what writing is supposed to be.

So from your example, would you normally use the phrase "bisected the recipient of her reply"? I suspect you wouldn't and that's your difficulty right there - starting writer being overly-writerly.

If you really want to look into the writing process itself, my best recommendation would be to read Wonderbook by Jeff Vandermeer - he lays out all the big technical aspects of writing in concise and easy-to-read chapters.

Of course, the next problem is it's really hard to spot your own mistakes, which is where third-party input comes in. But it can be hard to understand what that feedback actually means without understanding something of the technical issues that underlie it.

For example, someone might say that a character needs to come to the fore a little more. That doesn't mean just have them chatting at the start of every second scene, but probably means they are lacking motivation, conflict, or their own emotional development arc - terms you would need to have understood already - and in doing so, already have a good idea on how to fix it.

However, I'll give you this big warning - writing is something that can be fun to dabble in. But if you're really serious about writing professionally, expect to dedicate yourself in the same way as you would a university degree - one that you may need to extend to post-graduate level.

2c.

EDIT: Ah - I thought you'd only posted up two paragraphs - now TheJudge has removed the QUOTE marks a lot more text shows up!!

 

[dreamwalker]

I don't have time to do a critique now, but I'll try and come back in the next few days. In the meantime, I've taken the liberty of removing the QUOTE thingummies so the extract is there in the post, not quoted, as that will make it easier for others to quote it in their turn when critiquing, and I've also removed the extra spaces between paragraphs so as to reduce the space it takes up a bit.

As I was doing all that I noticed some missing punctuation and possessive apostrophes, from the opening paragraph onwards I'm afraid, which I'll point out if no one beats me to it, and an oddity -- you spell "colour" the British English way, not "color" but "manoeuvre" you've spelled US fashion. You ought to be consistent in that respect, otherwise you'll end up upsetting both Brits and Yanks!

Good luck with it.

Thank you!

And I honestly didn't know better with manoeuvre, I just saw the suggestion and went with it (attempts to set google doc dictionary to british)..

These sound like editing concerns, which is something you can look to deal with after you've done the writing itself.

IMO the secret to writing is to forget that you're writing, and just say your words the same way as you would speak a conversation. Then tidy for effect after.

The reason being is that writers, when first starting, become all writerly - that is, they over-write and over-complicate their sentences because they think that's what writing is supposed to be.

So from your example, would you normally use the phrase "bisected the recipient of her reply"? I suspect you wouldn't and that's your difficulty right there - starting writer being overly-writerly.

That's very true from my experience, although sometimes I have an image in my mind I'm trying to describe. I used to think really cinematically, I think that's changed but I do tend to vividly imagine things or concepts that I later struggle to capture adequately in words.

I'll check out Wonderbook, I intend to improve my writing - the first step was reading more. Now, maybe it's time to learn how to god damn write.

 

[Nick B]

Have you ever played Eve Online by any chance?

 

[VinceK]

When I read my work, I'm always amazed at the number of errors, not just in the first draft, but also the third, fifth, tenth. It doesn't stop me writing.
My advice would be to wait until you've finished your final draft before editing. If you edit too soon and then a rewrite introduces new errors you will spend all your time editing.

1. Polish the story until you've removed any plot holes that might require a chunky rewrite.
2. Read your story out loud, which will pick up obvious typos.
3. Let others read it and give feedback, the more the better.
4. Rewrite as necessary.
5. Repeat steps 2, 3 & 4 as required.
6. Hand the manuscript to a professional editor.

I thought the story had intrigue, and I felt the tension, but I do believe the writing could be a little tighter and judicious use of paragraphs could heighten the tension.

Staccato comms chatter echoed the strobe of high energy radiation.

Read this out loud, it's a bit of a tongue twister

She presented maneuver patterns that appeared as four dimensional images into the minds of her squad.

I think the word projected could be used here to shorten the sentence and convey the message.

It had known that this was only the first escalation, and that light hostile units lay outside the jammers influence to reinforce the trap.

Check for the usage of the word, "that".

She had control over breathing and with it came and a packet of instincts as deep as her reflex to choke.

Read it out loud, and then correct it.

Cartage squeaked against new finger joints.

Read it out loud, and then correct it.

Her plan called for maximum aggression. Her plan called for them all to die.

Use paragraphs to heighten the tension.

Her plan called for maximum aggression.
Her plan called for them all to die.

 

[Brian W. Foster]

“They’re punching us in the face Dicanna, we need your help” squelched a message from the melees leading edge. Against the unnamed hues of the Hypercolour, a horse-flys dance of dance of death bled light from the void.

The very first step in engaging a reader is clearly communicating what is happening. I can live without "why" for a little while, but as soon as I don't understand the "what," I'm out of there. From the quoted paragraph, I have little idea as to what is happening. I get some kind of fight, maybe in space? But since you haven't set the scene, I don't know that for sure. Contextually, I have no idea what Hypercolour is. A ship, maybe? What in the world does this mean: a horse-fly's dance of death bled light from the void?

I agree with what others have said. Instead of trying to write pretty, start by clearly showing me what is happening.

For what seemed like an age within the runtime, Dicanna froze.

I have no idea what "an age within the runtime" means.

“I need help”

“...ck kissing c...”

“Get them off me”

“Guns! Guns!”

“Enfugco’s been vaped!”

I have no context for any of this. Who's saying it? I'm assuming some kind of messages through whatever undefined communication system your characters are using?

Staccato comms chatter echoed the strobe of high energy radiation. As her vessel exited warp, it emerged within thick with signal scatting fog and a space time disturbed and distended. Dicanna saw the 11 remaining members of her patrol caught within the warp jammers sphere of influence. It was desperate combat against what should have been inferior forces. Her Warmind streamed at her to destroy the interdictor, but her Command mind saw deeper, it had known what to expect as the first warnings of her patrols interdiction trickled through their T-link. It had known that this was only the first escalation, and that light hostile units lay outside the jammers influence to reinforce the trap.

You'd probably be better off starting with her exiting warp. This paragraph sets the scene and clears up a lot of confusion. If you can blend the telling here with the showing above, you'd have a decent start. Note that you're setting up good conflict here and questions here: the protagonist has a clear goal to save her patrol, and you've got me wondering why they are in desperate combat against what should have been inferior forces.

With her conscious-mind floated to the ships runtime, and her body frozen, she instead felt what the ship felt

Trust your reader enough not to need this explanation. Instead, show her experiencing what the ship feels.

Snapping out of the attack to dodge the inevitable counter strike, she amended the future series of attacks to account for her now inevitable demise.

You kind of buried the lead here. At what point did her demise become inevitable? And this sentence, though not clear, seems to imply that the situation now resolved by using the word "account."

Certain death is good conflict when it is explored and countered at great cost. Certain death that is quickly brought up and then easily resolved is generally not very interesting.

She presented maneuver patterns that appeared as four dimensional images into the minds of her squad. Dicanna’s particle beams blazed once more, 41G overloaded burn followed by counter measure burst, as inch by inch, hostile, exotic weapons dismantled the quantum alchemy of her hull. She expended mass energy and propellent by the ton, as rocket math extracted greater agility from her vessel. Seconds remained. Squad chatter fell. Through the hypercolor she instead saw the squads grim acceptance of her orders. Her plan called for maximum aggression. Her plan called for them all to die. As sensors melted away, her omni-directional vision began to degrade. Desperately, she jinked and evaded, overloading every system to buy the final milliseconds needed to take part in the next time on target attack. With her command-mind now free from thinking on the tactical aspects of this battle, it thought about the the implications behind her doomed patrol in a way Dicanna’s meta-consciousness thought was comically objective. Dicanna’s ship lurched to the right before snapping her angle of attack far beyond her direction of travel, lines of light fell like rain around her as she fired her spinal particle beam for the final time. As her runtime slowed, as her cruiser disintegrated around her, as her meta-consciousness screamed in the searing fires of annihilation, she began to choke.

Stylistically, probably best to avoid big chunks of text like this paragraph as it slows pace. In an action scene, you want fast pace, not slow.

Okay, so I think now that she hasn't resolved her certain death. Instead, everyone in her command knows that they're all going to die. If I'm right, you probably need to show her coming to the conclusion that her only choice is to implement a plan that will lead to certain death. Make her wrangle over it. Perhaps have someone in her command object. Be clear. Add emotion and struggle.

Her chest convulsed, lungs vomiting with the reflex of a drowning man. Gone was the control of runtime, the hypersenses from the heat of battle. Here was the thrashing, the weakness of biological limbs, lactic acid, a meat-brain awash with panic and adrenaline. She was drowning and she was passing out. And yet, Dicanna was also inexplicably alive.

I think you probably should think about deleting obvious tells such as that last sentence. Show her dying. Then, show her waking up with a WTF moment.

Overall, the biggest problems I saw were:

1. Clarity - A lot of the time, I had no idea what was happening.
2. Tension - You gave your protagonist a goal, and you gave her opposition. You did not, however, allow her to ruminate over the stakes or show the battle in enough detail to draw out the tension.
3. Dropping a Thread - You brought up the question of an supposed inferior force beating your patrol but never mentioned it again. You probably should have your character at least wondering about it. "How had this happened? This was supposed to be a simple mission to the XXX system. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?!"

Hope this helps.

Brian

 

[dreamwalker]

Have you ever played Eve Online by any chance?

Yes! From 2005 to 2009 I played it a LOT, then I became too busy. This story takes a lot of influences from there, BCI interfaces, frozen bodies, mostly, though, it showed how fleets could organise themselves if, instead of typical navel traditions with hundreds of crew members per ship, hierarchically flat organisations made up of freelancers and independent units combined.

 

[Nick B]

It shows, heavily. Anyone who has played it will see it immediately. I ran a serious PvP corp for 7 years.

 

[dreamwalker]

When I read my work, I'm always amazed at the number of errors, not just in the first draft, but also the third, fifth, tenth. It doesn't stop me writing.
My advice would be to wait until you've finished your final draft before editing. If you edit too soon and then a rewrite introduces new errors you will spend all your time editing.

1. Polish the story until you've removed any plot holes that might require a chunky rewrite.
2. Read your story out loud, which will pick up obvious typos.
3. Let others read it and give feedback, the more the better.
4. Rewrite as necessary.
5. Repeat steps 2, 3 & 4 as required.
6. Hand the manuscript to a professional editor.

I thought the story had intrigue, and I felt the tension, but I do believe the writing could be a little tighter and judicious use of paragraphs could heighten the tension.


Read this out loud, it's a bit of a tongue twister


I think the word projected could be used here to shorten the sentence and convey the message.


Check for the usage of the word, "that".


Read it out loud, and then correct it.


Read it out loud, and then correct it.


Use paragraphs to heighten the tension.

Her plan called for maximum aggression.
Her plan called for them all to die.

Thank you for your comments! When separated, errors in these sentences are really easy to spot. I'll clean up my language, i'll try to make it less floury, maybe it'll make it easier for me to read also.

As for paragraphing, how do they work? Even the basics I don't understand. (new line or double space?)

 

[dreamwalker]

The very first step in engaging a reader is clearly communicating what is happening. I can live without "why" for a little while, but as soon as I don't understand the "what," I'm out of there. From the quoted paragraph, I have little idea as to what is happening. I get some kind of fight, maybe in space? But since you haven't set the scene, I don't know that for sure. Contextually, I have no idea what Hypercolour is. A ship, maybe? What in the world does this mean: a horse-fly's dance of death bled light from the void?

I agree with what others have said. Instead of trying to write pretty, start by clearly showing me what is happening.



I have no idea what "an age within the runtime" means.



I have no context for any of this. Who's saying it? I'm assuming some kind of messages through whatever undefined communication system your characters are using?



You'd probably be better off starting with her exiting warp. This paragraph sets the scene and clears up a lot of confusion. If you can blend the telling here with the showing above, you'd have a decent start. Note that you're setting up good conflict here and questions here: the protagonist has a clear goal to save her patrol, and you've got me wondering why they are in desperate combat against what should have been inferior forces.



Trust your reader enough not to need this explanation. Instead, show her experiencing what the ship feels.



You kind of buried the lead here. At what point did her demise become inevitable? And this sentence, though not clear, seems to imply that the situation now resolved by using the word "account."

Certain death is good conflict when it is explored and countered at great cost. Certain death that is quickly brought up and then easily resolved is generally not very interesting.



Stylistically, probably best to avoid big chunks of text like this paragraph as it slows pace. In an action scene, you want fast pace, not slow.

Okay, so I think now that she hasn't resolved her certain death. Instead, everyone in her command knows that they're all going to die. If I'm right, you probably need to show her coming to the conclusion that her only choice is to implement a plan that will lead to certain death. Make her wrangle over it. Perhaps have someone in her command object. Be clear. Add emotion and struggle.



I think you probably should think about deleting obvious tells such as that last sentence. Show her dying. Then, show her waking up with a WTF moment.

Overall, the biggest problems I saw were:

1. Clarity - A lot of the time, I had no idea what was happening.
2. Tension - You gave your protagonist a goal, and you gave her opposition. You did not, however, allow her to ruminate over the stakes or show the battle in enough detail to draw out the tension.
3. Dropping a Thread - You brought up the question of an supposed inferior force beating your patrol but never mentioned it again. You probably should have your character at least wondering about it. "How had this happened? This was supposed to be a simple mission to the XXX system. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot!?!"

Hope this helps.

Brian

This was really interest feedback. It seems it was a blow by blow account of your reactions as you where reading?

On your main points
1. Clarity - I could have taken more time to explain things, or hidden more concepts and words that I didn't want to explain right away - but I guess I was just borrowing from some of techniques from some of the stories I've read and loved. EG, the quantum thief, or more recently, the fifth season and nine fox gambit. They trade clarity - at least initially, for flavour, and pace. Theres something about the very way they use their words to set the context, even if their precise meaning isn't clear.

Me being the remedial writer that I am, decided to not explain things that would be come obvious as time went on, in addition, I tried not to use completely made up words, instead opting for compound words that ultimately mean what they are (hypercolour, warmind, runtime)

Additionally, maybe it's a way of forcing myself to avoid writing in *cinematic mode* or writing what I see, instead of writing what is being experienced.

2. Tension - I think your right, I have to go back and change stuff around. The problem is that what's going on at the highest levels it's a bit complicated to fit into this scene without bogging everything down - AND it gets completely explained in the next 2000 words or so after her debriefing... (Basically, her command mind is basically like a chess grandmaster, strategic genius, and incomprehensibly paranoid. Her command mind had predicted this outcome, that another command mind, perhaps multiple personalities, as devious and paranoid as her own, would do this to her. In fact, this is a fundamental flaw of command minds, it is why they where discontinued, and, why 5000 years later, were few exist, and more are needed, Dicanna has been brought back) - Basically, wouldn't stealing time to telegraph this ruin the pace of the first chapter, whilst watering down a plot revelation? I guess it's on how it's crafted.

3. Dropping a thread - This does get picked up in the next few thousand words, eg should I have just posted a more complete passage?

 

[Brian W. Foster]

It seems it was a blow by blow account of your reactions as you where reading?

Yeah, that's my preferred method of giving feedback. It just seems like a natural way of doing it ...

Regarding clarity, that technique (like any technique really) is wonderful ... if you can pull it off. Your choices are a) revise and keep trying until you get it right or b) go for the easier route.

Regarding tension, No! You do not want to slow down the action for a 2000 word infodump. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger! The trick is to figure out the exact minimum amount of information that the reader needs in order to understand the situation without going into the specifics. The best bet is to show that information instead of telling it.

Again, though, the trick to creating tension is:

1. Give your protagonist a goal.
2. Create opposition to that goal.
3. Highlight the stakes should the goal not be met.

If tension is low, it's because one or more of these elements is out of whack. Is the goal present and easily understood? Is the opposition challenging enough? Does the reader understand how important it is for the goal to be met?

I think your issue is the last of those. The protagonist doesn't struggle all that much over her fate. If she doesn't care if she's going to die, why should the reader?

Regarding the thread, I think that one more small reference to it in the form of the POV character questioning/pondering the situation would be all you need. That would give the reader the promise that you're going to deal with it later. Or maybe you're fine as is as long as it's addressed later ... Probably a style thing. What works for you might not be what I'd choose to do.

 

[VinceK]

As for paragraphing, how do they work? Even the basics I don't understand. (new line or double space?)

I'm not sure I'm exactly an expert
I think of paragraphs as containers for a message, I try to keep them as short as possible to convey the message. Pick up any novel and you'll see how the author varies the length of paragraphs, in part out of necessity but also to alter the pace. Longer paragraphs for detailed explanations, shorter paragraphs for action.
The single sentence paragraph can be used to convey a sense of drama or add tension, especially at the end of a scene.
It's all about variation.

Dicannas cruiser made a series of 40G pirouettes, overloading propulsion and randomly alternating her angle of attack. With her conscious-mind floated to the ships runtime, and her body frozen, she instead felt what the ship felt; the gentle tension and compression of something dense as millions of tons of mass hurtled through interstellar space on a torch of plasma. As predicted, active sensors caught the trajectories of C-fractional projectiles in her wake within a spread that would have destroyed her vessel several times over. She fired her own beam of particles, stripping the shields from one of the enemy's smaller vessels before deploying signal countermeasures into the soup of violence. Dodging, counterstrike, instinctive reaction followed by counter action. Within the runtime, Dicanna’s Warmind analysed the rhythm of her actions, refined them, recycled them, reset them, applying further analytical heuristics upon the rhythms of her rhythms. And whilst Dicanna’s Warmind kept her alive, her Command-mind showed her how to kill. Fifteen seconds after joining the battle, the maneuver patterns of the enemy crystallized like water turning into ice.

Dicannas cruiser made a series of 40G pirouettes, overloading propulsion and randomly alternating her angle of attack.
With her conscious-mind floated to the ships runtime, and her body frozen, she instead felt what the ship felt; the gentle tension and compression of something dense as millions of tons of mass hurtled through interstellar space on a torch of plasma. As predicted, active sensors caught the trajectories of C-fractional projectiles in her wake within a spread that would have destroyed her vessel several times over.
She fired her own beam of particles, stripping the shields from one of the enemy's smaller vessels before deploying signal countermeasures into the soup of violence. Dodging, counterstrike, instinctive reaction followed by counter action.
Within the runtime, Dicanna’s Warmind analysed the rhythm of her actions, refined them, recycled them, reset them, applying further analytical heuristics upon the rhythms of her rhythms. And whilst Dicanna’s Warmind kept her alive, her Command-mind showed her how to kill.
Fifteen seconds after joining the battle, the maneuver patterns of the enemy crystallized like water turning into ice.

I'm not suggesting this is how you format your writing, it's merely an indication of how long paragraphs can be broken up. Obviously, this would look different in a paperback.

 

[The Judge]

I've never played Eve, or any other game, and I don't read hard/military SF, so I'm afraid I was utterly confused by everything here. I'm not your target readership, so that might not matter. On the other hand, it never hurts to make everything a little more comprehensible, so you're not shedding readers on the first page.

Anyhow, the others have given a lot of very good advice about structural issues, so I'll look at nit-picky points, which are my forte. I note you say you get bogged down in editing, and while I wouldn't want to discourage you from writing in a white-hot passion with no concern for punctuation, you will need to get to grips with these at some point, so if you can learn the rules until they become automatic, it will help speed up the editing process.

“They’re punching us in the face, Dicanna, we need your help,” squelched the [a] ["a" is technically correct, but for me it's a bit meh. Using "the" perhaps highlights the importance of the message] message from the melee's leading edge. Against the unnamed hues of the Hypercolour, a horse-fly's dance of dance of death bled light from the void.[I have absolutely no idea what that means, but it certainly sounds wonderful!]

It's usually best to have a comma before a name when someone is being addressed, and punctuation is invariably needed at the end of direct speech -- here before the dialogue tag, it's a comma; if nothing follows, or there's an action, then a full stop. (Or in either case question marks/exclamation marks, of course, depending on what's said.) And you need possessive apostrophes when something "owns" something else, and the "s" takes the place of an "of" eg you could have said "the leading edge of the melee".

“Hold o..” she began as a star-bright lance of particles bisected the recipient of her reply. For what seemed like an age within the runtime, Dicanna froze.

Breaking off direct speech can be done with ellipses, but it's usual to use three dots. Purists say conventional punctuation should then follow, so here "Hold o...," she began ie the necessary comma coming before the dialogue tag. I personally never bother, though. However, for me, ellipses are best used when someone's voice trails off eg "I was thinking..." and I use a long dash to indicate a broken off sentence, eg " Hold on a –"

"The recipient of her reply" is a bit long-winded, especially in the middle of a fight when you should be aiming for pace. I take it this recipient is the person/entity who/which called her asking for help, who/which has been killed. If the entity is known, then use his name when he speaks and then have something like "... began, but a star-bright lance of particles bisected Damon" otherwise "the unknown [whatever he is -- ship, mind]". I've no idea if the bisection actually kills him or not, so I'd suggest you make that clear, or better yet replace it with something like "destroyed" or "ripped him apart" -- "bisected" is a bit cold, which might fit her persona, but doesn't add energy or drama.

NB I liked "runtime" even though I had no idea what it meant. And I understood "felt like an age within the runtime" means it was only a micro-second, but it seemed to last an eternity.

“I need help.”

“...ck kissing c...”

“Get them off me.”

“Guns! Guns!”

“Enfugco’s been vaped!”

"Vaped" is a bit unfortunate, perhaps, as to me it brings to mind those not-cigarette things rather than someone being vaporised!

Staccato comms chatter echoed the strobe of high energy radiation. As her vessel [a long-winded word, and rather vague -- can't it be named in some way?] exited warp, it emerged within thick-with-signal-scattering fog [I think this is what you mean, but it's very clunky, so best turned around into "emerged within fog thick with signal scattering" NB scat and scatt are words but I can't make them make sense here] and a space time disturbed and distended. [Dicanna saw the 11] The eleven [words like "saw" are distancing, and as we're in her POV, not needed, and for low numbers, usually write them out, not use numerals] remaining members of her patrol were caught within the warp jammer's sphere of influence.

I've added the "were" there as it's usual to have a main verb in a sentence -- I often experiment with sentences without one, but I wouldn't recommend it here. To avoid it, you could instead have a comma after distended, which would continue the sentence from before and make this a subordinate clause which doesn't need one.

It was desperate combat against what should have been inferior forces. Her Warmind streamed ["streamed at her" to me doesn't make sense. Do you mean "screamed"? Otherwise drop the "at her"] at her to destroy the interdictor, but her Command mind [either "Commandmind" ie all one word, or make the earlier "Warmind" into two -- it's important to be consistent] saw deeper; [or instead of the semi-colon, delete "it had known" and make it "having known"] it had known what to expect as the first warnings of the [her patrol's] interdiction ["the patrol's interdiction" is ambiguous, as it could mean the interdiction the patrol is undertaking, not the one it is suffering] trickled through their T-link. It had known [that] this was only the first escalation, and that light hostile units lay outside the jammer's influence to reinforce the trap.

I'm not sure what this last sentence is saying. First, are you sure mean "escalation"? That can only happen after something has already started. Actually, are you sure you mean "interdiction"? I understood it in military parlance to mean preventing communications, not out-and-out warfare as this appears to be. Anyway, if that sentence means the other side has only light units with which to reinforce the trap, then it's "that only light hostile units"; if it's just it knows there are other units present then I'd delete "that light" and just leave it as "and hostile units".

Dicanna's cruiser made a series of 40G pirouettes, overloading propulsion but [and] [presumably the overloading is a bad thing, but the different lines of attack is good, so you need the "but" to show contrast] randomly alternating her angle of attack. With her conscious-mind [if this is like Warmind and Command mind, again be consistent with capitals, and whether to hyphenate or make one word] floated to [I've no idea what "floated to" means. If it's "to" in the sense of eg dancing to a tune, OK, otherwise perhaps reconsider if it should be eg "floating in"] the ship's runtime, and her body frozen, she [instead] felt what the ship felt; the gentle tension and compression of something [bit of a nothing word this, you need something (ha!) more evocative] dense as millions of tons [if this is SF, would it still be imperial units?] of mass hurtled through interstellar space on a torch of plasma. As predicted, [by whom? when?] active sensors caught the trajectories of C-fractional projectiles in her wake within a spread that would have destroyed her vessel several times over. [confused -- has the pirouetting avoided these projectiles? If so, then why isn't this the reason given earlier?] She fired her own beam of particles, stripping the shields from one of the enemy's smaller vessels before deploying signal countermeasures into the soup of violence. Dodging, counterstrike, instinctive reaction followed by counteraction. [all one word] Within the runtime, Dicanna’s [yes!] Warmind analysed the rhythm of her actions, refined them, recycled them, reset them, applying further analytical heuristics upon the rhythms of her rhythms. [do we need the last 6 words?] And whilst Dicanna’s Warmind kept her alive, her Command-mind showed her how to kill. Fifteen seconds after joining the battle, the manoeuvre patterns of the enemy crystallized like water turning to [into] [snappier rhythm] ice.

I'll end there as you've doubtless had enough of the red and purple-penning, but just to say on my original skim read I caught "cartage" -- do you mean "cartilage"?

Re the paragraphs, I'd echo the comments about short paras being the way to go in a fight scene, though I'd try to avoid a lot of single sentence paras, and I'd rarely if ever allow them to follow consecutively, as they then make the prose very jumpy. Simply cut a para at a good point, and leave a clear line's space here.

I hope that's of some help. Good luck with it!

 

[dreamwalker]

Added a few more words and most of everyones suggestions.

I'm going to keep all of this in mind, I probably won't revise this until I've finished the whole thing, need to continue the story after all.

Let me know if this is or isn't an improvement.

****

“They’re punching us in the face Dicanna, we need your help” squelched the message from the melee's leading edge. Against the hues of the Hypercolour, a horse-fly’s dance of dance of death bled light from interstellar space.

Dicanna had just crashed out of warp. Ahead lay dense signal-scattering fog and a space-time disturbed and distended with the warp jamming effects of an interdiction field.

“Hold o—” she began as a star-bright lance of particles sliced apart the recipient of her reply. For what seemed like an age within the runtime, Dicanna was paralysed with shock.

“I need help”

“—ck kissing c—”

“Get them off me”

“Guns! Guns!”

“—Enfugco is ash! The Q-ships!—”

Staccato screaming echoed the strobing of high-energy radiation. The eleven remaining members of her patrol were caught within the warp jammers sphere of influence. It was desperate combat against what should have been inferior forces. Her Warmind screamed at her to destroy the interdictor, but her command-mind went deeper. It had known what to expect before the first warnings of her patrols interdiction trickled through. It had known this was only the first escalation, that killing the heavily protected interdictor would weaken her patrol too much for too little gain, and that hostile interceptors lay outside the interdictors influence to reinforce the trap. She had not listened to herself. She had not prepared.

Training and reflex overrode paralysis.

Dicanna made a series of 40G pirouettes, overloading propulsion and randomly alternating her angle of attack. She was dodging and diving straight into the crossfire. With her conscious-mind floated to the ships runtime, and her body frozen, Dicanna instead felt what the ship felt; the gentle tension and compression of a hundred thousand tonnes of exotic steel, hurtling through interstellar space on a torch of plasma. Dicanna also felt the anger just on the horizon, she wanted to embrace it, to burn with it. Not yet.

Active sensors showed the spread of C-fractional projectiles she had just dodged, in her wake. Any one of the ninety-five trajectories impacting would have turned her cruiser inside out.

She fired her own beam of particles, stripping the shields from one of the enemy's smaller vessels before deploying signal countermeasures into the soup of violence. Dodging, counterstrike, instinctive reaction followed by counter action. Within the runtime, Dicanna’s Warmind analysed the rhythm of her actions, refined them, recycled them, reset them, applying further analytical meta-heuristics upon the rhythms of her rhythms. And whilst Dicanna’s Warmind kept her alive, her Command-mind showed her how to kill.

Fifteen seconds after joining the battle, the manoeuvre patterns of the enemy crystallised like water turning into ice.

“Shanty Star, I have fire control, stand by for primaries and time on target solutions.”

“That’s a big fat copy that commander! You have fire control, standing by for time on target solutions.”

Like a wave, vessel after vessel from Dicanna’s group pointed off-vector to fire heavy spinal weapons. Positron beams, C-fractional projectiles, phased particles and other forms of exotic radiation. These intersected two separate points of space, turning gigatons masses into entropy and light.

Snapping out of the attack to dodge the inevitable counter strike, she amended the future series of attacks to account for her now inevitable demise. The hostiles piloted raiding hulls with military grade armour and shields, fired with pirate weapons deployed with the precision and discipline of an elite team. Already they had noticed Dicanna’s impact and began taking pot shots as she continued driving towards the center of the melee. There was no conflict, no hesitation, just a black hole of emotion with rage’s event horizon on the fringe.

She projected four dimensional manoeuvre patterns into the minds of her squad along with the words ‘Good luck Death Stalkers.’

Dicanna’s particle beams blazed once more, 41G overloaded burn followed by counter measure burst, as inch by inch, hostile weapons dismantled the quantum alchemy of her hull. She expended mass energy and propellent by the tonne, as rocket math extracted greater agility from her cruiser.

Seconds remained. Squad chatter fell.

Her plan called for maximum aggression. Her plan called for them all to die.

She almost tasted the squads appalled acceptance of her manoeuvre plan.

“As good a match as any to ****ing meet the reaper eh?” Shanty star messaged back. His reply was sweetened by the growing realisation of who they were probably fighting, how much damage they were all give in return and how Dianna was going to pay for it. It was enough for Dicanna to know they would all follow through, and it was at that moment, knowing ultimately that she had let them down, the full extent of her wrath shone like the naked sun.

Missiles and smatter pods erupted from her vessel, ingots of reprogrammed matter, hundreds of tonnes each, ejected, blazing their own tangents to come into play several seconds after her final moment.

As sensors melted away, her omni-directional vision began to degrade. Aggressively, she jinked and evaded, overloading every system to buy the final milliseconds needed to take part in the next time on target attack. With her command-mind now free from thinking on the tactical aspects of this battle, it thought about the the implications behind her doomed patrol in a way Dicanna’s meta-consciousness thought was maddening in its objectivity.

Dicanna’s ship lurched to the right before snapping her angle of attack far beyond her direction of travel, lines of light fell like rain around her as she fired her spinal particle beam for the final time. As her runtime slowed, as her cruiser disintegrated around her, as her meta-consciousness screamed in the searing fires of annihilation, she began to choke.

Her chest convulsed, lungs vomiting with the reflexes of drowning. Gone was the control of runtime, the hypersenses from the heat of battle. Here was the thrashing, the weakness of biological limbs, lactic acid, a meat-brain awash with panic and adrenaline. She was drowning and she was passing out.

As consciousness returned, instead of choking on the fluid, she consciously attempted to breathe-in. She swallowed it at first, a large, solid gulp causing her to choke once more. Then a she deliberately inhaled. Small and halting at first, followed by a single, slower, chest-expanding breath. This was followed by another - darknesses at the edges of her vision, lightened. Thoughts cleared enough for her to asses her body’s… weakness, and her memories, vivid and let unreal and intangible, discordant with this gaussian-filter reality. And there was an anger no longer on the horizon, an anger her new body did not have the capacity to contain, and yet she burned with it.

Why had she not listened to her self? Why had she not prepared? Why was she ****ing alive? She wanted to scream, but their was no air to scream with, she wanted to break something, but her muscles were to weak to move. And as her anger slid into sadness, she cried, bring with it a packet of vestigial instincts as deep as her reflex to choke. Within the breathing fluid she curled into the fetal position. Tight skin stretched over new bone, she could hear a heartbeat; something her previous body did not have.

Cartilage squeaked against new finger joints. Beyond she heard the muffled sound of liquid pumps. Her mouth felt numb, her tongue felt implausibly big as someone else's teeth sat uncomfortably upon gums covered in loose membranous film. Eyes, glued shut at first, opened to a haze of amber light and webs of umbilical flesh. Endorphins flooded her body. Dicanna knew what this all was, and yet.... She felt a new wave of drowsiness. She was hesitant to call upon the full resources of her mind fearing what she may find, or not find at all. Instead of fighting this new battle, she embraced the fuzzy warmth wondering dreamingly why. Why had they brought her back from death against her will?

 

[VinceK]

I'm going to keep all of this in mind, I probably won't revise this until I've finished the whole thing, need to continue the story after all.

Excellent idea.

a horse-fly’s dance of dance of death bled light from interstellar space

Did you mean, "dance of dance of death"?

“Hold o—” she began as a star-bright lance of particles sliced apart the recipient of her reply.

“Hold o—” a star-bright lance of particles sliced apart the recipient of her reply.

“I need help”

Who said that?

It was desperate combat against what should have been inferior forces.

Desperate combat against what should have been inferior forces.
Try to use the active voice as much as possible in fast paced action scenes.

Dicanna made a series of 40G pirouettes, overloading propulsion and randomly alternating her angle of attack. She was dodging and diving straight into the crossfire. With her conscious-mind floated to the ships runtime, and her body frozen, Dicanna instead felt what the ship felt; the gentle tension and compression of a hundred thousand tonnes of exotic steel, hurtling through interstellar space on a torch of plasma. Dicanna also felt the anger just on the horizon, she wanted to embrace it, to burn with it. Not yet.

Good. Remember the active voice in combat. "She was dodging and diving straight into the crossfire." -> "Dodging and diving straight into the crossfire."

I read it all and enjoyed it. I'm not going to add any further comments because all the above can be applied to the remainder. I think you are making the right decision in continuing to write and not getting bogged down in editing.

 

[ThomasG]

Ok, a lot has been said, and I agree with it all. You need a comma before 'Dicanna' in the first sentence.
I felt too lost too early. IMO the radio interference was too much of a challenge for the reader too early.

 

[The Judge]

Vince is absolutely right about retaining the active voice in writing combat situations -- and indeed in most non-combat scenes, too. But I just wanted to raise this, in case it's a little confusing

Remember the active voice in combat. "She was dodging and diving straight into the crossfire." -> "Dodging and diving straight into the crossfire."

The "She was..." doesn't make this sentence passive, though I believe there are sites that will tell you the verb "to be" is passive. It isn't. Here "She was dodging" is simply the continuous past tense which has been used in place of the simple past "She dodged and dived" -- suggesting, of course, that it is a continuing action, not a one-off dodge and dive.

However, although it isn't passive, the continuous past can be seen as a weak form of the verb, and it's definitely longer-winded, and in an action scene when every word counts and you want strong verbs, it's adding words and word length without bringing any advantage. So I'd also suggest changing it, but by making it the simple past -- ie "She dodged" -- not by removing the "She was" since that creates a sentence without the subject, which can cause confusion. Alternatively you could have a long phrase like "Dodging and diving, all guns blazing, she swooped for the kill" which brings the subject and main verb at the end.

I did a longish post about the verb "to be" once, which I've now copied over in edited form to The Toolbox in case anyone wants to read a bit more of my waffling on the subject. The Toolbox