User blog comment:CrookedShades/Fan fiction!/@comment-1932315-20140114075114/@comment-1932315-20140116055856

The ending summary of my critique and my feelings on Chapter 1: A pretty neat little story that works well as a slice of life piece. This falls in with what I would imagine Front Line life to actually be like. Really dig all the little references all over the place, and you actually got the tone and mood of the Metro Games and Glukhovsky's work. I don't usually read Fan Fiction and haven't read any of the other chapters, but I would be interested in seeing if these characters went anywhere else in your writings.

As is however, the story really just is a “slice of life” piece. There isn't a whole lot of broadcasting and telegraphing, which works well in the rules of “show, don't tell,” but I'm not getting a picture of ongoing development within a story. Things tend to happen and be told without much reason, other than to establish the world. (I might add here that the world obviously wasn't set up to begin with, but as as a saving grace of Fan Fiction this is rarely ever required, so that's cool.) As an Act 1 battle scene (as in, the opening of Gladiator) then this is alright, but currently I'm not getting a terribly strong picture of who each characters is (mostly, personality wise) in relation to one another. While you want to avoid making characters - “characters” (or more, caricatures) - you would also want to give them more dimension. I noticed that Yasha held not just a sniper rifle, but and also sympathy for the enemies he fought against. As the Forth Reich is known for their brutality, this stood out a lot (almost to a jarring extent) and gives him his first real dimension (as opposed to the default-1-dimensional-background-noise-character). With some work, this would work well as a starting point for more dimensions and complexity. While this works nicely for a four page slice of life story where the focus is simply: “this is what I do ever day”, it wouldn’t be the greatest of introductions to a lengthy series with these characters. Expansion would be needed, as I currently do not “care” about these people. If you do expand, or if the story does continue with them I think you'll find that this is inevitably a very hard thing to make happen and can take a lot of effort to make work right. I know I certainly have made it work well, yet.

Otherwise, the story lacks structural flaw. I never found myself bored by the style or action and, again, found the references pretty enjoyable to pick up on. Looking forward to working through the next ones.

I have a doc, with the more nitty-gritty syntax things I came up with, if you'd like. Don't hesitate to shoot me your Skype stuff.