I really, really wanted to enjoy this.  I really did.  I've been
looking forward to this fic ever since Mark Latus told me it was
being written, some years back while I was negotiating with him 
to set a "Drunkard's Walk" step in the SME universe.

But I found it almost unreadable.

Craig, my number one recommendation to you:  you have too many
sentences that are much, much longer than they need to be.  (I
know whereof I speak -- I'm often guilty of the same thing.)
You frequently have sentences that could be broken up into two
or even three smaller sentences without adversely affecting the
flow of the narrative; in fact, breaking them up will *improve*
the flow.  

Rule of thumb:  anywhere you're about to write ", and", stop and
think a moment.  Does what you're about to write really belong
in the same sentence as what you just wrote?  Or are you writing
the way you're thinking?  Sometimes you have to filter things
and make sure each sentence focuses on a single topic.  (There
are times to break this rule, but as always, you should be 
following the rule far more often then you are breaking it.)

You may also be overwriting -- you don't need to say a lot to
have a big impact.  Somewhere I read a bit of advice along the
lines of "write ten details, and take out nine, to leave the one
that serves for them all."  You might want to consider that.

Secondly, and this may be less of a problem after you handle the
monstrous sentence situation, is that your opening lacks focus.  
While the story-telling framework is a classic device, you take
too long to get to it.  Once we're in the story, we're catapulted
all over the place, but we never get enough information at the
onset to tell us why to care about these people.  I got more than 
halfway through the entire post -- something like 110K! -- and 
realized I really didn't *know* anyone in the story well enough 
to want to read any more.  This is a *fatal* flaw.

The beginning of a good story should set a hook into the reader -- 
you have to tell them *who* the story is about and *why* they 
should care.  We get a lot of *who* and almost no *why* -- I 
found myself skimming through paragraph after paragraph of text 
because the central character(s) at that point hadn't interested 
me enough to want to read through it all.

A good concrete example would be your band of crossover visitors.
We learn a little about them during the prologue -- they're clearly
important to the post-"Thy Kingdom Come" reboot of human society
in Beta -- but when we actually see them, there's no time for us
to find out why we should care about them for reasons above and
beyond "they're from our favorite animes" before you plunge them
into a crisis that immediately steals them again from our sight,
for who knows how long.  Similarly, the prologue spends far too 
much time on the social-political situation of post-TKC Beta Earth 
before we actually get to the "beginning" of the story; you can 
save that material for an explanation to a stranger later, done in 
character by a native.  Having the narrative voice spout it all in 
the first 2000 words is just too much and it bogs down the story 
immensely.

Jump right to the refugee family; use them to establish simply
that the world is bad.  Mention briefly *in character* the 
prejudice against the Norwegian member of the family to establish
some of the side effects of the youma occupation without having
to lecture to the reader.  ("Daddy, why couldn't we stay at the 
inn in the last town?"  "They might've thought your aunt was a
Youma because she doesn't speak English like everyone else.")
Then put in meeting up with the "royals", with a hard cut to 
storytime as the dinner scraps and cooking gear are taken care
of by some of the adults.  You cover some of the children's fears
and concerns nicely in character; you can use *that* to convey a
lot of what you try to say in earlier lectures.  With proper
restructuring and efficient use of character and dialog, you can
reduce the size of the prologue while at the same time making it
much more powerful and more effective as a lead-in to the rest of
the story.

Similarly with the main text -- ruthlessly expunge *any* long-
winded exposition done in the narrative voice.  If it's important,
save it, streamline it, and give it to a character to say -- even
if you have to manufacture the situation in which it can be said.
If it's not important, don't bog down the story with it.  One of
the best techniques for keeping a reader interested is to *not tell
everything at once*.  Keep them asking "why?" and "how?"  (As a
convenient example I'll point to my own "Drunkard's Walk II" -- I
took five or six chapters to fully explain Doug Sangnoir's background
and the nature of his extraordinary abilities -- and the fact that
I was leisurely about it, that I didn't just dump it all in the
readers' laps, kept the readers intrigued and wanting to read.  Do
the same thing -- let the visitors and the flashbacks with the
military folk be the key to learning about the nature of the world.

To this end, btw, I found the one character's knowledge of the SME 
universe annoying.  I'd much rather see a character learn what's
going on through dint of investigation and even dangerous mistakes
than to start the story with everything handed to them on a platter.
This latter is one of the chief failings of the standard issue self
insert character -- there's no dramatic tension in a know-it-all,
even if that knowledge is for the most part useless.  The reader
needs to find things out, and a character who has to find them out
too is an important reader proxy and a useful device.

Um.  I seem to have gone a little overboard on the comments.  Look,
parts of this are excellent.  The scene on the plane as and after
Calcite makes his announcement was very well done -- precise, crisp
and well-paced, and also the first point where I actually got 
interested in your main American military character despite the 
obligatory "dead meat wife and child" scene at the onset.  If you 
can bring the rest of story up to that standard, make it all that
crisp and efficient and absorbing, then you'll have a hell of a fic
on your hands.

-- Bob

===============================================================================
Robert M. Schroeck          rms@eclipse.net         http://www.eclipse.net/~rms
===============================================================================
Please to remember
Eleven September --
Hijack, destruction and plot.
Our outraged reaction
To terrorist action
Should never be forgot.
===============================================================================

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