6 replies to this topic

[Major Morgan Kell]

English isnt my foreign language, so i would like to know how many mistakes i made. And maybe which vocabulary is used on the wrong place, Thank you. And enjoy.



Because it´s getting quite cold on Blackstone early autumn, most of the civilian are inside their houses quite all the time. Not even the garbage disposal worke. Streets looke terrificly empty, the wind blews and the pumpkins positioned outside are icicled. Allthough it was not Halloween and there were nothing outside to keep away, but the weather.

No one wanted to be outside, but few had to.

Patrick was one of the "unlucky" ones. Beeing mercenary allways had been his dream, since he was a child.
He liked the idea of beeing independent and loved technic and warfare all over, allthough he had never been in any fight outside of the sim. He was 24 but still looked like a teen, and often behaved like one. He became part of this unit solely because of his father Morgan, the commander. Patrick was supposed to be the next commander, but for now he only was a Mechwarrior, with all their privilegies and duties.


It was 9 P.M, they mentioned something in the orbit. The storm had affected the sattelite signal nearly the whole day, but now it blew less and the sky was as lighted as it can be on Blackstone. A quite a number of signals reached them. And the weird one was the transmission.

Morgan, who had rushed to the station, as fast as it was possible for him, a seventy-year old men, breathed hard as he reached it. "Sarah. What did... you ..say?They wanna.... Conquer...this planet?",he asked. He leaned on his legs.

"So they said, Sire. But its not all." That was Sarah, specialist on her realm. "They have asked, how many of us are going to defend them." "Going to defend them?", he smiled a little. "And who are they?" "I think they mentioned something about Ghostbears, Sire" "Ghostbears??, I dont know any unit referred to GhostBears." "I do neither,Sire. And they haved said that, if there will be no response in the next 2 hours, they attack us with full strength at midnight" "At midnight?, as far as i See they are in the orbit right now" While he said that he touched one of the monitors. "No dropship can fly that fast. They are kidding us. Certainly its only a young merchant, bored or having gambling debts to one of his companions. I´ll have a rest right now" "But he sounded very serious". "Then keep an eye on them, but do not answer, i don´t want to be called a fool, neither do you, don´t you?" "But?." "No. There is no but. Sleep well,Sarah." He slammed the door and was gone. Sarah still watched on her monitors. She felt queasy, but trusted on Morgans experience, alltough he was , you may have reckognized it, very explosive. She opened the door, took something like a dying breath and moved to her room.

Therefore there was no response and not more than those few "unlucky ones", ready for what was going to happen at midnight.

-shortly before midnight-

"The wind is getting stronger", Patrick thought, "maybe i should do the trip faster". He accelerated his Locust and reached the suburbs. "This annoying snow, you can hardly see anything". He swapped to thermalvision, and saw nothing, but a blue screen. While swapping back he slowed his mech back on normal speed and overwhatched the suburb. He felt like a guardian and all those scary pumpkins had to be defeated. He often daydreamed about such. He took the scariest one in crosshairs. "Phew. I´ve got one. i´ve got one." he monologized. Suprisingly the pumpkin seemed to move a little bit and about this he laughed out loud. But then the pumpkin started to bounce a little bit, but then more and more as it would do a dance. And not only this special Pumpkin, but all his fellows, like in a strange procession. Patrick thought it very funny, till he realized that this was not one of his dreams, but reality. Was it an earthquake? He watched the seismograph. As far as he understood the epicenter laied in the nearby forrest. The "Locust" turned around but he merely saw 900 meters. He decided do call anybody.
But the weather harmed the connection and all he heard was a random noise.

Then several things happened simultaneously.

The IFF detected an unknown unit in about one klick distance and at the very same moment a strike detected the Locust.
"What the.. hell" Patrick, who was knocked out just for a wink, pushed his mech to maximum. He was out for revenge. He ran on Adrenalin, somehow he had his fathers temper. He was running about thirteen seconds, but he did not see any enemy. "Where is this fathead." Still nothing. Just a strong wind and snow monotonically decreasing. An obscure white wall.
He whatched out to the left, then to the right, still listening to the troubled signal. And then he noticed a shape quite in the size of a mech. It had been invinsible to him, because of it beeing all white, except its emblem, a ghastly polarbear. On the opposite his Mech was painted in the typically red and green paint, which made him an running target. "Damn. But he´s quite far away i guess, i´m out of range."

And again a strike hitted his Mech, he lost control of it and rushed into the white snow. The warning signals coloured his cockpit in a shocking red light. Ringing in his ears. He gasped, blood runs out of his mouth. He squints his eyes and realises that the pumpkin, he had spotted few minutes ago, now lay in front of him. Its deformed face, turned in his direction. Its eyes getting witness of his shame. "So you have defeated me". Then the earth begans shaking once more and his real enemy came in his sight. It still was hard to detect, from time to time totally hidden behind a white wall. It came closer and Patrick got frightened, cause it seemed to him ,that he was going to be tread down. He closed his eyes and because he heard nothing but a ringing in his ears, he closed it for a very long time. As he opened them, he saw the pumpkin beeing tread down and splitted. And Patrick who was´nt able to do anything else, laughed.

[Mahws]

Some corrections and suggestions:

Spoiler

Major Morgan Kell, on 31 October 2013 - 10:46 PM, said:

English isn't my foreign native language, so I would like to know how many mistakes I made. And maybe which vocabulary is used on in the wrong place, Thank you. And enjoy.

"On" and "in" can be tricky. Generally things are "in" something, for example "New York is in the U.S.A.", "The information is in the book". "On" generally means on top of something, but it's also sometimes used in relations to words, for example "The mistake is on page 9 of the book", because words are printed on paper, but only if you're referring to one specific word/place, otherwise it's still 'in' ("There are mistakes in the book"). In = inside, on = on top of.

Because it´s getting it gets quite cold on Blackstone in early autumn, most of the civilians are inside their houses quite all all of the time. Not even the garbage disposal workers were out. The streets looked terrificly eerily empty, the wind blews blew and the pumpkins positioned outside are were icicled. Although it was not Halloween and there were was nothing outside to keep away, but the weather.

Terrific is usually used in a positive sense, it doesn't mean scary, it means 'very impressive/good". "Quite all" doesn't mean anything. Generally when telling a story you write in the past tense (the story is something that has happened which you are being told about, so 'were' instead of 'are'), sometimes a story will be told in present tense, but that's usually only if there is no narrator (so everything in the story is either the character thinking about something or saying something).

No one wanted to be outside, but few had to be.

Patrick was one of the "unlucky" unlucky ones. Being a mercenary allways had always been his dream, since he was a child.
He liked the idea of being independent and loved technic technology and warfare all over, although he had never been in any fight outside of the a sim. He was 24 but still looked like a teen, and often behaved like one. He became a part of this the unit solely because of his father Morgan, the commander. Patrick was supposed to be the next commander, but for now he only was only a Mechwarrior, with all their the privileges and duties that entailed.

It's "a sim" not "the sim" because you're not referring to a simulator in particular. When you're talking about general things it's "a", if it's something specific it's "the". For example "A plane has wings" (all planes have wings) or "The plane is blue" (not all planes are blue). The quotation marks on "unlucky" don't make sense, quotation marks are either used to signify that it's something someone said, or to imply sarcasm (that they weren't infact unlucky to be outside at night in bad winter weather).

It was 9 P.M, they (Who is they?) mentioned something in the orbit. The storm had affected the satellite signal nearly the whole day, but now it blew less and the night sky was as lighted bright as it can could be on Blackstone. A Quite a number of radio signals reached them. And the weird one was the transmission.

Who is mentioning something in orbit to who? The last sentence doesn't work, all of the radio signals being received are transmissions, so there's no "the".

Morgan, who had rushed to the station, as fast as it was possible for him, a seventy-year old men man, leaving him breathing hard as he reached it. "Sarah. What did... you ..say? They wanna.... conquer... this the planet?" he asked. He leaned on his legs.

You can't lean on your legs. You lean on something that's not your legs, for example a chair, or a tree. Or you can lean on one leg in particular, for example a soldier with a wounded leg might 'lean on his good leg'.

"So they said, Sire. But its that's not all." That was Sarah, specialist on her realm (What is her realm?). "They have asked, how many of us are going to defend against them." "Going to defend against them?", he smiled a little. "And who are they?". "I think they mentioned something about Ghostbears, Sire". "Ghostbears?, I don't know any unit referred to as GhostBears". "I don't neither, Sire. And they haved said that, if there will be is no response in the next 2 hours, they will attack us with full strength at midnight". "At midnight? As far as I can see they are in the orbit right now". While he said that he touched one of the monitors. "No dropship can fly that fast. They're kidding us. Certainly its only a young merchant, bored or having gambling debts to one of his companions. I´ll have a rest right now". "But he sounded very serious". "Then keep an eye on them, but do not answer, i don´t want to be called a fool, neither do you, don´t do you?". "But?..." "No. There is no but. Sleep well,Sarah." He slammed the door and was gone. Sarah still watched on her monitors. She felt queasy, but trusted on Morgans experience, although he was, as you may have recognized it, very explosive. She opened the door, took something like a dying breath and moved to her room.

Did you mean Sire or Sir? Sire is similair to sir, but it's a word you'd use to address a man who was part of the nobility that you worked for. As such it's not a common word in English anymore. To "Defend them" would be to protect the Ghostbears from something, to "defend against them" would be to defend something from the Ghostbears.

Therefore there was no response and not more than those few "unlucky ones" ready for what was going to happen at midnight.

Okay, now I'm definitely sure you didn't mean to imply that the people on patrol were'nt unlucky. Not much luck worse than being in a blizzard with Ghostbears shooting at you!

-Shortly before midnight-

"The wind is getting stronger", Patrick thought, "maybe i should do the trip faster". He accelerated his Locust and reached the suburbs. "This annoying snow, you can hardly see anything". He swapped to thermal vision, and saw nothing, but a blue screen. While swapping back he slowed his mech back on normal speed and overwhatched watched over the suburb. He felt like a guardian and all those scary pumpkins had to be defeated. He often daydreamed about such. He took the scariest one in his crosshairs. "Phew. I´ve got one. i´ve got one." he monologized said to himself. Surprisingly the pumpkin seemed to move a little bit and about this he laughed out loud aloud. But then the pumpkin started to bounce a little bit, but then more and more as if it would do a dance was dancing. And not only this special Pumpkin, but all his fellows, like in a strange procession. Patrick thought it very funny, till he realized that this was not one of his dreams, but reality. Was it an earthquake? He watched the seismograph. As far as he understood the epicenter laied laid in the nearby forest. The "Locust" turned around but he merely saw 900 meters (900 meters of what?). He decided do to call anybody.
But the weather harmed hampered the connection and all he heard was a random noise.

Same deal with the quotation marks here on the locust, they're not really necessary. The weather hampers the connection instead of harming it. Harming something implies permanent or severe damage that has to be repaired, hampering just means 'impedes/gets in the way of/prevents'.

Then several things happened simultaneously.

The IFF detected an unknown unit in about one klick distance and at the very same moment a strike detected impacted the Locust.
"What the.. hell" Patrick, who was knocked out just for a wink, pushed his mech to maximum. He was out for revenge. He ran on adrenalin, somehow he had his fathers temper. He was running ran for about thirteen seconds, but he did not see any enemy. "Where is this fathead?" Still nothing. Just a strong wind and snow monotonically decreasing. An obscure white wall.
He watched out to the left, then to the right, still listening to the troubled signal. And then he noticed a shape quite in about the size of a mech. It had been invisible to him, because of it being all white, except for its emblem, a ghastly polarbear. On the opposite his Mech was painted in the typically (typically of what? Typical of his unit?) red and green paint, which made him an a running target. "Damn. But he´s quite far away i guess, i´m out of range."

And again a strike hitted hit his Mech, he lost control of it and rushed into the white snow. The warning signals coloured his cockpit in a shocking red light. Ringing in his ears. He gasped, blood runs out of his mouth. He squints squinted his eyes and realises realized that the pumpkin he had spotted few minutes ago now lay in front of him. Its deformed face turned in his direction. Its eyes getting bearing witness of to his shame. "So you have defeated me". Then the earth begans began shaking once more and his real enemy came in into his sight. It still was hard to detect, from time to time totally hidden behind a white wall. It came closer and Patrick got frightened, cause because it seemed to him that he was going to be tread down stepped on/trodden on/crushed. He closed his eyes and because he heard nothing but a ringing in his ears, he kept them closed it for a very long time. As he opened them, he saw the pumpkin being tread down trodden on and splitted split/burst. And Patrick who was´nt able to do anything else, laughed.

A really fun story! And definitely not a bad job for a non-native speaker. Apart from the issues with tense you didn't really have many problems at all. Good luck with the halloween contest, I think you did very well!

Edited by Mahws, 01 November 2013 - 05:56 AM.

[Major Morgan Kell]

Thanks for the advice, especially the t DEFEND or Defend from one

2 questions:

is hit the past form of hit? and why not say monologize instead of said to himself

Edited by Major Morgan Kell, 01 November 2013 - 08:04 AM.

[Mahws]

Hit is past and future, hitting is present.

Monogolize is a real word, but it's a very obscure one that no one ever uses. 'Said to himself' is a common phrase that means the same thing.

[Thom Frankfurt]

This is from 'Niko Snow' one of the 'light moderators,' whatever that means. Now I'm not positive about what he/she meant by 'posting the work of another author,' but I think you may want to give a shout out to whomever came up with Pat and Morgan... just to cover your own butt.

"Fan Fiction is to share and discuss written prose and poetry created by the community and inspired by BattleTech and MechWarrior. Please keep your critiques constructive. If you are posting the work of another author, please make sure they are clearly credited/attributed to the text within your post."

Edited by Thom Frankfurt, 01 November 2013 - 10:23 PM.

[Major Morgan Kell]

I do not understand. Its my story. I have written it all alone.

Maybe u wanted to say that Morgan and Patrick are names out of the battletech universe,
If you meant that, i would like to excuse, but i did not intended it, not even realised it until u came up.

Greetings Major MOrgan Kell (is this forbidden too?)

[Thom Frankfurt]

Major Morgan Kell, on 02 November 2013 - 12:07 AM, said:

I do not understand. Its my story. I have written it all alone.

Maybe u wanted to say that Morgan and Patrick are names out of the battletech universe,
If you meant that, i would like to excuse, but i did not intended it, not even realised it until u came up.

Greetings Major MOrgan Kell (is this forbidden too?)

I'm not positively sure... I had a post where I mentioned (Mad) Max Liao, and (Bloody) Romano Liao and suddenly that mod showed up stating that we should give credit where due. That being said, we were dropping a lot of critisim on one another so he/she may have been mentioning that too.