OK, after a long bout with writer's block, I finally started writing again and I'd like an opinion as to whether my latest piece is crap or not.

So, if you have a moment, it's not too long...

Trust

I welcome any review, positive or negative.

Thanks!

SR13

Scenario: Interesting. I liked the emergency stiching, particularly badass.

Writting: Clean, crisp style. Two things that I noticed: 1) How does "Havik" have anything to do with stirring hornets nests? Since english isn't my primairy langugae, it may just be me, but I don't think that's a word, and dictionary.com agrees with me. Did you mean Havoc? Is it a word play I don't get?

Second, when you're setting the age for Katherine and Havik, it's odd that you describe him as "mid to late twenties", since you're narrating in his perspective. People know their age. They don't refer to themselves as "mid to late twenties".

Style: I found there was no soul in the story. It's all dialog. There's no atmosphere descriptions. Admitedly, I like atmosphere descriptions more than the usual reader, but still, this story felt too surgical, there was no mood. But mileage may vary for readers, like I said it's a personnal preference.

Havik also felt a little bland in personality. "Big rugged runner". The quick description of how he got his 'ware at the end was cool though.

Also, adding a 2060 flavour would be nice. There was hardly any tech items, or behaviours of 2060 society that relies on technology like crazy. A description of the warehoure could have included interesting old and broken down techs in contrast with maybe little descriptions of techs from the car like vidmaps and a nice female autopilot voice, etc.

So in general I personally found the idea and scenario good, but it's missing atmosphere and "cyberpunkness".

if you want to email me the .doc I can proof read it and provide comments in specific places.

Pretty good, overall. I enjoyed it. The nanites linked to the image link in the cybereyes was nifty. As I was reading I thought that the emotional involvement of the characters was all wrong, that Katherine wasn't acting like a person truly in peril, but the end explains that. And like Backgammon mentioned, I was also a little confused by the name "Havik" and how it related to hornet's nests and problems, but then I realized you meant the word "havoc". I can see now why you didn't use the exact word as his name, I would have automatically started thinking about the Marvel character and that image would have been hard to get out of my head. Another thing Backgammon mentioned that I agree with was that it could have used more description, but overall I liked it. Good job. I'm gonna try to read your other stories on that site.

Well, there is one train of thought that says place descriptors are important, but I didn't see the need.

I found your story quite well written and fun, without grammatical and spelling errors. And I could follow who was saying what. A pet peeve of mine is not knowing who is saying what to whom in a dialogue driven story.

The only thing I'll mention (again, see the Shadowrun Writer's Forum) is that devil rats carry VITAS, so I don't think Havik would eat one.

I thought it a little strange that a man who talks about not trusting anyone gives out his life story to someone he's only just met, and all she has to do is ask him, he seems a little free with the information to me.

Other than that, it's pretty good

I thought it was good, it had the right mood, very interesting, the only thing i would say was that it was all in the first person, would be good to see what they were thinking!

torz x

Backgammon: Yeah, Havik was a creative spelling on Havoc. No other significant meaning, other than that.

The age thing, valid point. I'll make that change in my next draft.

As for Havik, when I normally write, I develop the characters before I put a pen to paper, so to speak. This time I didn't. I wrote up a plot, with characters to fill holes. Now, I'm developing Havik to make him more than two dimensional.

Atmosphere is important, but on this particular story, I was working on my dialogue and was hoping it would convey most of it. Any suggestions on where or how I should inject a little more atmosphere? Same with the cyberpunk side of things. This was a story about two people... the world around them, for the greater part, was secondary.

Shadow_Scholar: I hope you enjoy the other stuff, although I think I've posted them in other threads once upon a time.

Jrayjoker: Yikes...forgot about the VITAS bit. Guess I'd better downgrade that critter to your standard, healthy rat.

BovrilMonkey: To be honest, I didn't even consider that... perhaps, before he knew the real Dr. MacKenzie, he figured that to tell her would be harmless enough.

torzzzzz: Glad you enjoyed it. I've struggled with first person in the past, which is why I opted for the current method.