FTL: Pirates of the Universe Part 0: Pilot

[SushaBrancaleone]

you clearly care about having a back story for your character, however;
getting there is more than than having got there. or more down to earth fucking is much better then having fucked.

having your character start out as an already accomplished pirate counters against your intention of providing a back story, as the first question the reader asks himself is, how did he become a pirate captain?

also little is provided about his intentions and desires. we know about his past but we dont know about him. If you want to leave it wrapped in a mysterious aura then you should work on encouraging the readers curiosity about the character providing them with more questions to ask about his past, you can only do this by providing more input but without providing solutions/answers. eg "he was the only survivor of the battle of gilgamesh VII" begs you to ask, well how did he survive.


hope this was helpful, narration is a continuous work in progress, keep at it

[SushaBrancaleone]

doing some research always helps when narrating.

are you familiar with captain harlock? japanese cartoon from the 80s about a space pirate captain
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Pira ... in_Harlock

check out his bio and how its written. Its also good to choose a style (maybe one that fits your story) first person, in the past, in the present? what kind of language? what i find helps with this is reading a couple pages of a style you like and then start writing immediately after

to get into the mentality of a pirate you could do some reading about pirates. choose one you like and work on it. dont be afraid to break stereotypes, after all captain hook (from peter pan) was a caricature of a Eaton school, and while in reality no pirate had that kind of background, Captain Hook is by definition the pirates stereotype.

Be bold

[SushaBrancaleone]

some more advice if i may.

when it comes to fantasy and sci fi, many think "old english" and lengthy descriptions will do the trick. the reason this is, is because Lord of the rings has been the mecca of fantasy writing for more than half a century. The problem is Tolkein started creating a world into which to set his story since he was 15, and when he pubblished every family in his three books had detailed family trees and back story. Dont try and compete with tolkein on his ground my advice is. Also tolkein was a professor of litterature and his mastery of the language was admirable. If you want to beat him on his turf you need to dedicate a life to creating a background world and write like a .. demigod.

the alternative is using different approaches. try writing some fantasy in a js hinton style that could be fresh

[UglyMug]

Your sentence structure is too repetitive. It's an easy trap to fall into when writing first-person.

Check this out:

I was a pirate on duty. I had slaved many humans and Rockmen, most likely out of greed. I also destroyed many ships who would try and do the same. I was infamous throughout the galaxy. However, I was also friendly.

I was... ; I had slaved ... ; I destroyed...; I was...; I was...

That's your subject and verb for those five sentences. It's too repetitive. Also, the word is "enslaved" not "slaved".