Well I’m not so sure. There’s lots of good points have been made and many need to be tried out and practiced in short writing exercises rather than in big re-writes of the story.

Ok, here’s my eight minutes of thought:

I don’t know why you need to split the story the way you suggested, with a longer air combat section. That’s not the biggest problem.

What I felt (and I suspect by bailing out after ten pages Kev suffered the same) is that the “real” air combat section clashed with the fantasy section (Pride Rock onwards). There was just too big a contrast between them. Instead those first seven or so pages need to lead the reader into the Pride Rock section. But that only matters if page nine onwards is the core of the story.

So, what I’d like is for you to write one sentence only, which tells us what it is about. There is a war, fighter pilots are in action over Africa and the story is about: . . .

Then from there we can all throw about ideas of how you get to that core story that you want and offer ideas of structures – if you want them.

And also suggest a few short exercises in writing emotion led descriptions – but I’ve used up my eight minutes so we’ll come back to that one.

Allan

She lives in the UK but has been out to NZ – looking at old flying boats and smiling: http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showthread.php?p=1492537#post1492537 (and occasionally swearing at her camera)

“I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead”.

I like that quote, so true. And yes, studying how others do it is very good advice. Just read several different styles or you will end up writing a pastiche of your favourite author.

You first of all need to remove all the data that you want to keep from it.

Then set up a new partition covering the whole drive. You can do it in MS-DOS but you might find it easier to use a drive utility such as Maxblast (BUT it says it only works with Maxtor drives) See: http://www.seagate.com/ww/v/index.jsp?locale=en-US&name=MaxBlast_5&vgnextoid=7add8b9c4a8ff010VgnVCM100000dd04090aRCRD

Or, wait a little while and no doubt an IT technician will drop by with better advice. 🙂

I hope you don’t mind me joining this discussion late but I thought I might be able to add a few things. I can see potential in your writing, especially your imagination. Being creative you will find the detail of writing tough. And that is why you need to spend time dedicated to sorting out those details. Like Kev my interest drifted around page 9/10 (The shift from all that flight action to the sudden fantasy section was too much) and I skimmed through a few bits after that but can I pick up on three areas?:

1. Grammar – there they’re their
Buy a copy of Bill Bryson’s Troublesome Words, look up the use of apostrophes first off and work out how to use there/they’re your/you’re etc. Then every time you have a moments doubt about grammar, stop and look it up. You will learn it this way and will soon get better. (Bryson is a superb writer who can explain clearly in a minimum of words)
I recall Terry Pratchett speaking about a young wannabe writer who told him that, surely publishers had people who sorted out spelling and grammar issues. “Yes,” Pratchett replied. “They’re call authors.”

2. Technical aspects
Your story has to be credible, even a fantasy has to be credible, not real but credible. So you must get the tech bits rights.
“Rain spattered on the canopy and ran quickly down the sides” A good opening which sets the scene nicely for a pilot on the ground waiting to be sent aloft, but on what mission. Oh no, wait, he is already flying. In a Cessna (the limit of my experience) the rain hammers the windscreen and streaks away out of the edge of my vision, whipped away by the 100kt airflow, leaving a tiny streak on the perspex. You might need to ask a pilot what it is like at 400+ kts. It distracted me from what is going on.
Also on page one: “two bandits, four o’ clock, bearing three-seven-zero, sixty one miles,” – what does this mean? :confused:
Four O’clock is a bearing of about 120 degrees isn’t it? Or if the controller is giving him a heading to fly where is 370 degrees? Even sailors would be left puzzled by that. I was still thinking about it while reading page two – but surely you wanted my mind to be occupied with other aspects of your story.

3. Story telling
You drop a few clues about the central pilot character. He walks into the mess on a (presumably) American aircraft carrier, a room smelling of coffee but he has a mug of tea. Another pilot greets him with a “Hey” and he replies “ey, up”. So my interest is piqued. He’s not a typical American, they all drink coffee and say “Hi”. Where’s he from, who is he, what’s his relationship with his wife, what are his flaws, does he have issues from being shot down, flashbacks, pain. He’s a Yorkshireman on detachment who doesn’t really fit in isn’t he? Or did you forget that a US pilot wouldn’t drink tea?

Look you’ve got to sort out how to detail you stories but not hinder your imagination. You need to set aside time for “Grammar and tech” when you do the hard work on your stories – and it is hard and I suspect harder for you than somebody with less imagination.
And only then do you have time for yourself to spend indulging your imagination.

Two tips:
1. Show don’t tell. Don’t tell me the pilot spools up full power and then cuts it on landing, show me how he does that while the hook stops his aircraft from landing speed to zero in a few feet. Shoving the throttle one way might be easy but, forced hard against the straps what does it feel like to pull them back again?

2. Indulge your imagination by writing a one page backstory/biog for the central character. Never to be published but to guide his actions and responses. We know he’s got a daughter – how does he respond to situations later differently from somebody who is not a father, for instance.

And have fun

AllanK

I’ve just switched from Opera (9) and put Safari on my old PC. Nice programme.