An Acme Review
This rate and review is offered in the spirit of assistance. Please feel free to ignore any, or all suggestions. This is your work, and I'm just happy to have had the chance to review it!
This is a review on behalf of "Invalid Item"
What are my overall impressions?
This story is full of vital action scenes and you do a great job of weaving just the right amount of facts into the story-telling. It could use a little attention to structural and punctuation issues to polish it.
What are my favourite parts?
I think that has to be the dialogue. It helped move the story on and add to the characters' development.
What are my suggestions?
It is April 1918 and the war has finally turned against Germany. The end may finally be in sight. After four years of seemingly endless bloodshed there is a guarded sense of hope that is permeating the Royal Flying Corps aerodrome.
While this takes us straight into the action, you shift tense immediately after. This meant a whole new narrative voice was created, and I lost the perspective of the not knowing the outcome from the narrative point of view (The end may finally be in sight.) As this is a short story, jumps in tense and POV can be distracting so I suggest you stick to one tense.
To outsiders, the word aerodrome conjured some very romantic images but in reality it was a small arrangement of ready made squat, steel structures that looked very much like tin cans that had been bisected vertically and then laid on their side with the cut surface down.
Keeping sentences short will help you keep the descriptive narrative punchy, and help cut extraneous words:
To outsiders, the word aerodrome conjured romantic images. In reality it was a small arrangement of ready made squat, steel structures that looked very much like tin cans, bisected vertically, before laid on their side with the cut surface down.
Patrolling the Somme [had become became] increasingly more perilous
instead of modifying a word by placing another in front of it.
“Well[,] now you know why I did not join the darts game this evening.”
“Yes[,] Stuart...
...I am no good to anyone if I can’t fly[,] Stuart.
“That makes two,” he whispered to himself[.] “[tT]here should be three left.”
I suggest you edit for punctuation throughout.
We encountered 5 Germans
five
“Nein English.” The young man replied.
“Well that’s alright. I don’t speak any German so I guess that makes us even.” Lothar laughed again. Harrod took another drink and offered his companion a second helping.
If you put the other person's immediately after dialogue it can get confusing as to the speaker's identity.
Thank you for sharing your work! Write on and take care
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