HBO Fan Fiction

[hboff]

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ONI Sword Base
Posted by Firerwolf (triss2008@yahoo.com)
11 September 2011, 3:56 am

http://halosn.bungie.org/fanfic/?story=Firerwolf0911110356231.html

[MasterPIE]

Great work, as usual, at fleshing out characters and the storyline without deviating much from both i.e. you cant just describe the story, nor can you focus on characterising the people, where you would just be neglecting the story.
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Yes, i haz da recon.
FYI: I am the 'Lee Hung Ping' you see in fanfict posts. I am sorry to keep confusing you all who dont know me. It just gets irritating after a while of starting my posts with 'HungPing here,'.

[kr1]

I've been meaning to get to your stuff. Sorry it took me so long to comment. You've got some good work here. The writing and characterization is solid, and you did Jorge justice when it comes to Halsey. I also liked the expansion on Kat's 'Let's knock some heads' comment. It added some depth and expanded on the story, which was nice.

My problem with this is that there's not enough of that. What you've got is a straight-up play-by-play of a Reach level, and honestly, it drags on. A lot. The writing is good, but it's something almost everyone here already knows because they've played it, and it really drags the story down. The combat is well-written, but several pages of it, without much in the way of dialogue or internal thoughts, gets a bit boring.

There are a few things you can do that'd fix this, and add another layer of depth to the story. Switching perspective is one. Showing Emile or Jorge's perspective while Six fights her way to Sword Base would have mixed things up, as well as raising the stakes since we actually know how he's faring. It'd allow you to skip past the less important aspects of combat, too. We as the reader don't need to know every detail of the fight. We need to know that it happened, and enough details to know what it was like. After a while, the extra details get extraneous.

The other thing I'd recommend is to pull a Dietz like in The Flood, and add your own original characters or expand on minor characters that aren't present for the action. It has the same purpose in breaking up the potential monotony, as well as adding some more background to the story.

Other than that, though, my complaints are very minor. You got a bit heavy-handed with the exposition in the beginning, and words like Elite and Grunt are supposed to be capitalized, but otherwise you've got some solid writing. I'll definitely be keeping an eye on this fic.
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[firerwolf]

Thank you for commenting. I'm glad that you don't hate it.

I appreciate the suggestions, but neither of them stay true to the purpose of this. I am writing the game through Shar's perspective. I can't switch to another character because that goes against the point of the idea. I would expand on the smaller characters, but by Shar's personality, she can't put in the effort. She knows they won't be around for long so getting attached doesn't help her. Admittedly you'd know that and understand that if I posted any of my stuff about Shar's other stories, but I haven't decided if I want to do that or not.

In later chapters I Have tended to be a bit more vague and quick with combat, more focused on the important things. I would cut it out completely but no one wants to read a story that every time there's a fight it just says "She quickly took care of more enemies." I do hope that you'll like the future chapters better.

Oh, and I've had a long discussion with my beta reader about what part of the Covenant names should and shouldn't be capitalized, but even Halo Wiki can't seem to decide.

[kr1]

Well, a simple solution instead of just glossing over combat could be to just use a line break to jump forward.

As far as Covenant names, in everything official (the novels, game manuals, etc) the race names have been capitalized.

And I understand your reasoning. I'd still recommend leaving out some of the combat, if only for pacing reasons. Still, not saying I disliked it, just offering advice.
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[firerwolf]

I do appreciate the suggestions, and let me tell you combat was hard to do for Nightfall. It was hard to make a sniping mission not drag on, not to mention Long Night of Solace's space combat. I do get better with it in time. Really even the combat that i say in this, it's not all of what I actually did. I missed a lot more then Shar does.

[kr1]

For what it's worth, you do the combat well. The fault isn't in the writing, it's just the whole description of battle gets repetitive after a while. While it's interesting used sparingly, it doesn't do anything to further the plot and just drags the pacing to a crawl.
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[firerwolf]

Oh I agree, but it's hard to stay true to the game and make it interesting. I do get much more creative and...well violent with the action in exodus though. I see so many stories of people taking the gameplay and doing things that you can't do in the games. I wanted to stay true to it.

Oh and since you seem to like this series I was wondering if you, as a reader would be interested in reading more stories about Shar, before the events of Reach. I'm on the fence about posting them cause I'm not sure if there's any interest.

[kr1]

Go ahead and post what you've got! You've probably noticed that HBOFF is in a bit of a slump compared to our usual activity, so the more the better.
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[firerwolf]

Well I've got a large old catalog of things that I've done. I'll have to look through and search and decide which to add.