On Fri, 11 Sep 1998, Captain Destructo wrote:

The Starfire Project. 

An original story written Captain Destructo. Characters and situations
are the sole property of the author.
	Inspired by many a sci-fi anime series, including Voltron,
Macross, Tenchi Muyo, Venus wars, Big wars, Dirty Pair, ect. ect. You get
the idea.

Yep.  But it's etc., etc., not ect.  Comes from the word et cetera, so you
know. ^_^

	It was also heavily inspired by the video game �Blasto�. But that
doesn�t come into play just yet...
	

Cool beans.

	The Starfire Project.	

	Chapter 1: Stratus space station in Earth orbit 3098.

You might want a comma between orbit and 3098 if 3098 is a date and not a
model/serial number.

	A large half moon shaped frigate starship slowly approaches the
cone shaped station. 

This is present tense, though the following paragraph is in past tense.  I
suggest choosing one and sticking with it, or putting a statement like
this in brackets [] as a "scene description" if you meant it as such.  Be
warned though, that the scene descriptions are used mostly in drama rather
than prose.

	"Space port Stratus this is Lady luck. We are making our final

If Lady luck is the name of the ship, both words should probably be
capitalized (Lady Luck in stead of Lady luck).

approach." said a static broken voice over the communications unit. A
young lieutenant sat wearing a head set and reads a large computer screen

                 ^^^^^                      ^^^^^^^
Tense problems.  Again, you should choose one (I'd choose past, because
it's easier for me to read), and stick with it.

in a crowded and darkened room with many other personnel moving and
working at various terminals. He wore a pair of thick glasses and had on
a neatly pressed gray uniform with a small 'GP' logo on the right breast.
The tight collar sat undone around his neck and he frowned as he adjusted
the volume of the transmission. 

You might want a comma after neck and before and in that last sentence.
That can help you control the pace of the prose.

	"Yes, Lady luck we read you, You are go for docking at shuttle
bay forty, over." he said into the small microphone that protruded from
his head set. 

After read you, you should replace the comma with a period.  You seem to
have two different sentences going.

	An attractive red headed woman sitting near him smirked as he
smacked the receiver sitting on the console in frustration. "Dammit, two
thousand years of technology and we can't even get a clear transmission

>from a few hundred yards away in open space." he muttered as he played

with the switch that activated the console. 

When you have a period in a quoted sentence ("...away in open space.")
It's best to start the next sentence capitalized.  Or, at least, that's
how I learned how to do it.  Any differing opinions?

	"Poor boy, you must have such a hard time with our basic and
crude technology." she said sweetly to him.
	"Shut up Vicky. I don't need this now." muttered the man as he
ignored her.

But he's talking to her, not ignoring her. ^_^

	"Humph. and here I was ready to give myself to you after all this
time..." she sighed playfully.

Sentence capitalization (And instead of and).

	"Damn Venusian bitch." muttered the man under his breath as the
screen showed the ship 'Lady Luck' docking.

Tradtionally, people from Venus were called Venitians (like the blinds).
Venusias is a little awkward to say, but if that's your intention...

	The woman's screen lit up with an emergency frequency message.
She jumped in surprise as her head phones burst into noise suddenly as
the message came on. The two of them stared at the screen in surprise.
	"Sir, I think you'd better come over here." said the boy

Now, if you like, you can end the sentence quoted with a comma and keep
the lowercase said.  However, that's used mostly in short statements and
when you break a sentence up (i.e., "Sir," said the boy.  "I think you'd
better come over here.").  Anyways...

motioning to the broad shouldered man standing in the center of the room.
He had a tight dark blue uniform on with five stars on his right breast.
His right leg clanked on the ground as he walked, due to the fact that it
was a metal bionic replacement. He clenched his left arm, which was also

Try varying your descriptive structure.  Weave it into the story.  One of
the best ways to do that is to have the characters interact with their
costumes (pulled at his beard, or tugged at the bottom of his dark blue
uniform jacket.  Five stars gleamed on his right breast, etc.,).  It gives
the reader a feeling that something's always happening, rather than having
the action stop while we get a description.

And I'd try rewording the bionic replacement sentence -- it seems a little
reduntant and blunt.

a cybernetic replacement from some war fought long ago.
	"What is it son?" said the man as he approached in a gruff voice.

Weird wording there.  in a gruff voice reads like it's connected with
approached (as if gruff voice was a type of car rather than the sound of
his voice).  Try rewording like "said in a gruff voice as he approached."
or "said gruffly as he approached."  Also, you seem to be overusing the
word "said."  Break out the ole thesaurus and vary the words up! ^_^

	"General sir, we are picking up an emergency priority signal from
deep space." said the woman as she adjusted the various dials on the
screen quickly.

You also seem to be using the word "as" quite a bit.  I have this problem
as well in my fics.  What I do is try to either break up the sentence into
two, or use while, before, after, during, etc.  Another try at the
sentence could be: "...space."  The woman spoke rapidly after adjusting
the screen's various knobs.

Also, quickly should be as close to the verb as comfortable, because
otherwise, it gets associated with another word or phrase further down the
line.  Like, "said the woman as she quickly adjusted the various..."

	A man clad in a white lab coat stood in front of a large console
chair in the middle of what appeared to be a bridge.
	"This is Captain Morris of the United planetary government
starship 'Starlight-3'. In what will probably be our final transmission."
said the man calmly. His face however was an ashen white and he looked
terribly disheveled. He had a sullen and tired look on his face that said
he had given up hope.

You have a lot of "men" and "women" in the story.  Some have been given
names already, but you keep refering to them as "the man" or "the woman."
Once the reader knows the name, the writer should confirm the reader's
assumption of the name by refering to him by his name from then on out,
unless there's another very specific detail you wish to refer to him with
every once in a while ("The scarred man" or somesuch detail).

	"Starlight? The Starlight program? This message is over a hundred
years old." muttered the young lieutenant as he watched in awe.
	"The project codenamed 'jump-start' has failed.  We cannot escape
the gravitational pull of this star in time to escape, we hope that this

after escape, you might want to put a but or however.  Otherwise, it
should be two different sentences.  Again, I can't stress enough how good
sentence variation is.  It can help most any story a hundred-fold.

message can still. The sun has grown several times it's normal size in a
matter of hours and it's mass has tripled. Our fate is sealed and we hope
that this experiment will prevent a grave mistake on our home world in
the future, we have discovered that the immense Ion field created by the
experimental probe will cause a star to go nova in a matter of day's. The
project is a failure, we cannot hope to revive a dying star with this
method."

Might wanna check your physics, just in case.  Ion probably doesn't need
to be capitalized.  And day's should just be days.  's means to show
possesion ("The day's light") or to contract the word is/has/was ("The
day's long.").

	A strange orange glow began to form from the right side of the
screen and the bridge crew began to move by the captain pushing and
screaming so that his voice could almost not be heard. The man turned
towards the glow and gazed at it with a distinguished and sad face.
	"This is the captain of the starship 'Starlight-3', signing
of---" the message ended suddenly. 

Movig byu the captain pushing and screaming:  Try putting a comma before
pushing and after screaming.  Again, this will help you control the pace
of the prose and keep the reader from getting lost in the sentence.  And
lost reader are bad.  Unless you're Samuel Beckett or Kafka.  Then it's
okay.

If you're interrupting a word, do it before the last consenent sound (in
this case, before the first f in off).  Because of the way we read words,
we can misconstrue the interruption as another word (in this case, of).
Just a little quibble.

	
	The whole communications room of the space station stood glaring
at the screen in almost complete disbelief. "Delete that message son."
said the General with an unreadable look on his face. His jaw was
clenched and his right fist hung tightly at his side.
	"Sir?" said the Lieutenant as he snapped out of his daze.

Asked, questioned, inquired.  Anything but "said!"  ^_^

Also, be more active with the verbs.  Verbs do.  You're not letting your
verbs do anything, the verbs just are in the sentences.  They were, was,
is, are rather than clentching, buckling, running, sliding, etc.  Let the
verbs act as their own "was/is/are" and the story will become more alive
almost instantly.

I'm going to stop here.  I suggest you go back and rethink your approach
to writing the story.  The story itself, while somewhat cliche, has a lot
of potential.  Heck, even Star Wars was almost completely derivative, but
it is one of the coolest movies because the story is *active*.  Active
active.  You must learn active!

So, go back, think about how you can make the story more active by
changing verbs and varying your vocabulary (after a while, the same words
strung together in similar sentences begins to get boring), and you'll do
fine.  And send the revision to us.  I for one enjoyed reading it and will
look forward to a revision.

Huzzah to new writers!

--Matt

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"..."  --James LaBrie, "Hell's Kitchen"
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