>>16531
>>16537
I've just had the busiest week of all this year. Lot of things came rolling in at once. On a positive note, I may have a new gig to attend to. If this comes through I'll be comfortably ensconced in genera trash and beer for the foreseeable future. Anyway …
>>16544
As per this poster, I am in agreement. There are issues. Lemmie see if I can be usefully specific.
>The night sky loomed oppressively over the city, blanketing it in darkness. Each star an eye watching all beneath it.
Mixed metaphor between a blanket of dark and lighted stars. You are trying to paint the idea of oppressive gloom, but are not quite communicating the image. A modern city, even a poorly lit one, typically has such a profusion of light pollution that stars are made almost completely invisible to one standing in such.
>The air was not but dust and iron filling the lungs of the weak and sickly. The man wore a grey nylon poncho with a heavy air filter.
I would drop "not". Such attempts at faux poetic effects will only confuse a general reader.
In effect you are treating the city as a character, and here you introduce a new character with a change of focus. Start "The man wore" as a new paragraph. Also,
>His presence was left for brief fleeting moments throughout each street he crossed.
The nature of all that dust suggests what you mean here is he leaves foot prints on the streets. Unless you are hinting at something supernatural this should be plainly stated, not suggested.
>He took soft even steps walking through the city. His presence was left for brief fleeting moments throughout each street he crossed. He moved from building to building and street to street. Each street flowing to the next endlessly and each dark grey building no different from the last.
The idea I get here is he is furtively scurrying spot to spot ("building to building"). Flowing is an interesting adverb choice and may be attempting to suggest his movement is continuous, not scurrying. Also, modern cities are angular and grid-like at the street level. A flowing path implies something vastly strange about the city's construction, if that is the case here, and requires better description. What you might be trying to capture is the fuzzy and indistinct nature the poor lighting at street level lends to the city's appearance.
>Orphan's all of them grew up
Grown up or growing up.
>they couldn’t do math
I would suggest "do arithmetic" instead, but it's debatable. The POV here does not appear to be that of an omniscient narrator. Written the way it is implies we are hearing what the man sees and how he is interpreting the kids as a stream of consciousness. If so, the man's choice of "math" and the technical phrase "zero sum game" are highly suggestive of his own nature and may be perfectly correct as such.
>You either take what you want and kill your enemies or you get taken from and die.
If the above is true, you are demonstrating an unwillingness to commit to proper characterization by hedging your bets. With this sentence you insert yourself here as an omniscient narrator to clarify the meaning of "zero sum game" for the reader.
Pay closer attention to what POV you are writing in and stick to it. Following this rule will force such errors in bad form to mostly resolve themselves.
If you still need to clarify something for the reader, you throw it in a little later among some dialog, or with more subtle description, or characterization, etc. Not outright, not right after.
>waist a hunk of cold iron and hot lead.
Mixed metaphor again. I would write this as "waist: a hunk of cold iron to throw hot lead." Also note the colon.
Criticism bottom line. Your descriptions are a little weak and way too mixed. This appears to be your biggest issue.
Positive feedback. It was otherwise readable and I could certainly read more. Keep up with it. Keep at it.
