DISCLAIMER: Yeah, basically: I still have a lot to learn. While I am going to leave the post here, I have decided to put the entire idea I've had on hold, so there's no point anymore for you to read it. Anyway, thanks for caring and even opening the link :-)

All right, I want to try something, but for that certain something I need to be able to narrate in english. So, basically, I'm going to post a relly short story and I want you to tell me what do you think of it's narration, if it's easy enough to read, if there are't any crazy stylistic or grammatical errors, you name it. And the last thing, while I know we are all friends here and all, I want no false praise. Just tell me what you think. And don't judge the story, it's just a snippet and I didn't even think too much about this one. Here it is:

Warm light coming from a bright lamp above us drove away shadows of these empty, metallic halls, and finally gave us some peace. We were sitting within the illuminated area, resting our painful muscles. I've been told that it hasn't always been like this. Halls used to be completely lit, populated by crew rushing towards whatever needed doing. That was sometime before my generation, no one really knows when. All that remains are silent reminders, like rusty doors and dead flour tubes on the ceiling. A few are still maintained, however, as beacons for travelers like we are. My name is not really important, all you need to know is that I worked as a mercenary, providing my services to whoever pays the best. While I wasn't one of those bastards who'd do anything for the right ammount of money, I found it difficult to differentiate between right and wrong. It all seemed the same back then. I did say I wasn't alone thou, so I should also tell you something about my friends and brothers in arms. We called the skinny nerd that sat next to me El. He used to be one of the Techs, maintaining the ship in more or less life-sustaining order. He found their way of life too sterile and decided to leave. Can't blame him, the fanatics didn't even have names, El used to be called '31.' Thanks to him, our little group had the best electronics specialist far and wide. When he failed to open a door, it meant they cannot be opened. He was slowly falling asleep, leaning on his heavily modified plasma rifle. Then there was Jock. Multiple magazines strapped to his belt, assault rifle on his back, he was your typical mercenary, just like me. He was renowned for his incredibly good aim, unstoppable when weilding a scoped rifle. Also, he was a pain in the ass, constantly joking about me or El. And then there was our rescuee, goal of our mission. When we have gotten to the encampment of bandits who were supposed to abduct him, he has been already spraying them with bullets from a minigun he got his hands on somehow. Hasn't really looked like he needed much rescuing. He was incredibly big, his body looked like it was made of pure musculature and fat. I have never seen a man handle heavy weapon without supports before. He was sitting a bit farther from our group, his huge weapon lying next to him. Never said a word. I didn't know who came up with it, but we got used to calling him Stranger. We were sitting there for hours, when suddenly Jock interrupted the silence: "We should really decide how do we get to Metropolis," he said dozily.
"No, not really," I replied after a bit of silence, "we're going back the same way we came here. Trade route."
"Yeah I know it's the safest way and all, but we took far longer getting here than we should have. If we go back by trading route, we're gonna get half the promised money for bringing mister Behemoth back."
"Jock, that's just plain stupid. The only way that's shorter doesn't have security sentry turrets. If we meet bandits, raiders, or crazies, we're on our own."
"We're mercenaries. We're not exactly defenceless you know. Hey, what do you think, El," Jock asked and kicked El in the foot, waking him up. He looked around for a bit and seemed slightly confused, but then finally said: "What is it now?"
"Boss here says we take the trading route and throw half the money for this contract out of the window. I say we take the shortcut."
El took his time as usual, but then he said: "I will try to get some cameras in the northern corridor working to see if the path is clear. We should be able to cross in less than a day, as opposed to three days trough trading route. Now leave me alone, I want to get some sleep." I thought that sounded quite reasonable, certainly better than going there with no recon whatsoever. Everyone was silent since then, and it didn't take long for me to fall asleep.

The next day, El managed to connect to one of the seemingly defunct security terminals along the way, and said that the way is clear. I still wasn't entirely certain about this particular path, but both Jock and El were clearly of a different opinion, and Stranger didn't seem to care about anything. We were halfway trough, when my fears came true. Our headlights revealed four figures coming out of one of the neighboring passages. They were all armed, three with machine guns, and one was holding a weird, slightly glowing weapon. They weren't really surprised to see us, and they certainly didn't want to talk.

Hello :)

Quite nice text You got there. Only things I would change - more dialogue, to set apart the introductions of the characters. Reading through the big blocks of text is a bit too hard.
Other than that :) gimme more - I like reading stories in progress. Feels like being there when the new literary worlds are created :)

Keep up the good work.
Rees, out.

It has several grammar issues and some expressions sound strange in english, minor stuff, you should be ok if you want to publish or something.

"I did say I wasn't alone thou"
You probably meant "though" or the shorter version "tho". :p

"When we have gotten to the encampment of bandits who were supposed to abduct him, he has been already spraying them with bullets from a minigun he got his hands on somehow."
This sentence feels off. Either I'm lacking some English knowledge, or it's shady. Perhaps something like "By the time we got to the encampment of bandits who were supposed to be holding him captive, he was already spraying them with bullets from a minigun he had got his hands on somehow."

Other than that and some small typos, nothing poked my eye with a stick. It felt like there's a backstory, and the progression felt quite natural. All in all, I would keep reading it.

Warm light coming from a bright lamp above us drove away shadows of these empty, metallic halls, and finally gave us some peace. We were sitting within the illuminated area, resting our painful muscles.

This one is good as it is. But to me it looks like it needs a "the" at the very beginning (though I know it doesn't need it), and "painful" should be replaced by "pained".

And then there was our rescuee, goal of our mission. You need a "the" before goal.

When he failed to open a door, it meant they cannot be opened.

you are talking about "a" door, but then use the plural "them". It also sounds a bit off in the time clause, just like this next one:

When we have gotten to the encampment of bandits who were supposed to abduct him, he has been already spraying them with bullets from a minigun he got his hands on somehow.

It should be something like: "When we got to the encampment of bandits who were supposed to abduct him, he had already been spraying them..." or "he was already spraying them..." if you mean he was in the middle of spraying bullets when the others arrived, or "he had already sprayed..." if the killing was finished by he time the other guys arrived.

Hasn't really looked like he needed much rescuing. => "Didn't really look like..."

I have never seen a man handle heavy weapon without supports before. once you have straightened the time clause of the preceeding sentences thin could be "I had never" or indeed "I have never". Also heavy weaponS.

"We were sitting there for hours, when suddenly Jock interrupted the silence: "We should really decide how do we get to Metropolis," he said dozily." This one looks like it should be "We had been sittin...".

There are a few more other things like these, but overall its good, you need to get better with your time clauses. I suggest googling to see if there are online resources or exercises.

General advice I can give is:

1) reread everything you write several times BUT save some of those rereadings for a future time. Meanwhile, keep working on other parts of the story, you are more likely to find errors if you give each text section a rest for a few days.
2) Get and read books in English, and in their original language (so, no translations into English, rather books originally written in English.)
3) Run the text though a corrector, and remember: Through= "I got through the city", though "I still don't like it, though"

Yeah, but "thou" is such a distinctive Fenixpism :) In Czech, "dveře" ("door") is a plurale tantum, meaning it does not have a singular (like English "scissors"). It's a common mistake Czechs make in English, along with "watch" which has the exact same problem.

Heh, unless more of you really want me to, I'm not finishing this story. I just wanted to try a short narration, see how I manage. Anyway, thanks :-) Thanks for reading and commenting :-) I don't really want to publish, actually I want something entirely different. Yeah, I wasn't actually sure which time clause to use there. I wanted to point out that this happened BEFORE the entire resting scene, and clearly differentiate it. So ... I was wrong, I'll know the next time :D thanks. And thanks for all the other corrections and critique, Tychoxi, I appreciate it. I actually do creative writing in Czech, and I found that unless I can whip something up that's readable even without me proofreading it, I can't write well enough. So I did this little experiment and I didn't proofread it at all, whipping entire thing within 30 minutes or so. It seems to have fared better than I have expected :D Yeah that, along with 'door,' are pretty stupid mistakes on my part :D Anyway, thou just kind of ... Stuck with me :D

I've done this a lot Fenixp, and I know I can be very direct when I critique others' writing, so please don't take any of it personally, okay?

Warm light coming from a bright lamp above us drove away shadows of these empty, metallic halls, and finally gave us some peace.

I like the sort of circuitous description here, but don't overdo it, or it'll be hell on the reader.

All that remains are silent reminders, like rusty doors and dead flour tubes on the ceiling.

This is a typical translation error. The latinized name of element number 9 is indeed "flour", but in English it's called "flourine", while "flour" is wheat ground to a powder which you use for baking bread, among other things. It's funny though, I'd never associate flourine with flourescent lights, despite the fact that the two words are obviously related. In Danish, I'd call them "neon tubes" or "light element tubes", directly translated.

He used to be one of the Techs, maintaining the ship in more or less life-sustaining order. He found their way of life too sterile and decided to leave. Can't blame him, the fanatics didn't even have names, El used to be called '31.'

This seems like it's trying to be deliberately obscure. Which ship? Whose way of life? What fanatics?

When we have gotten to the encampment of bandits who were supposed to abduct him, he has been already spraying them with bullets from a minigun he got his hands on somehow. Hasn't really looked like he needed much rescuing.

Try not to mix your tenses, it's incredibly annoying to the reader. You're telling the story in the past tense. Then, at this point, you suddenly switch to... I don't even know what it's called in English, but you go from "was" to "has been".

He was incredibly big, his body looked like it was made of pure musculature and fat.

So, no bones, eh? If you're trying to give an impression of The Hulk here, using fat as a description is probably not the image you're trying to evoke.

We were sitting there for hours, when suddenly Jock interrupted the silence: "We should really decide how do we get to Metropolis," he said dozily.

What were they doing, sitting still for hours, just staring into the distance? Why?

The dialog seems stilted and artificial. The characters appear superficial and unrealistic. The style alternates between describing in great detail things that are irrelevant to the story, and hardly mentioning, or even omitting outright, things that should be relevant to the story.

It's hard to say how much of that is caused by this being only a little bit of a longer story. Maybe some of the missing explanations were supposed to show up later, but there it is.

I seriously thought the flour tubes were some kind of food transportation things.. I feel silly now :p

Oh yeah, that's the word I was looking for, flourine :D It is trying to be deliberately obscure. I know it's annoying. I know, I know, darn tenses. Fat was deliberate on my part. You're quite right about the bones. Yeah I am aware of that. To create believable characters, I would first need to put more thought into them than just making them up as I go, it's just not something I was overly concerned about. I am not that bad at writing english dialogue since it's not that different from actually talking to someone, what I have never tried are actual descriptive blocks of text, which was the entire point of this excercise. And no, I am not offended, this is exactly what I was looking for. So, overall, was the text too hard to read? Or was it okay, somewhere on the average level of 'I'd carry on reading if you'd carry on writing'?

I have to say that as this story stands, no, I wouldn't carry on reading.

It is hard to read, in a way. Some of that is due to the grammatical errors, some due to the, to me, awkward descriptive style, but mostly, it seems... immature. If I had to guess, I'd say you haven't written a lot of science fiction in English before. Trust me, I know how hard it can be. My own attempts have been rather laughable, but I seem to have a knack for critique. You know what they say: "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." ;-)

Of course, it's always easier to point out the flaws in others' writing than it is to avoid those same flaws oneself.

If you want to take your writing further, let me give you a few pieces of advice.

1. Get someone else to read your stuff before releasing it to a wider audience. If you write in English, that someone should preferably be a native English speaker.

2. Take their feedback to heart. You don't have to change everything they point out if you don't want to, but think about why they are pointing it out.

3. Have some idea of the story before you start writing. Stories that just "evolve" without a plan tend to wander all over the place. Have some idea of where you're going, that will ensure that you are at least headed in the right general direction.

4. Of course, planning a story carefully in advance can have its own pitfalls. One of the most common is that you think of many more details, background information, side plots, etc. than ever make it into the story itself. Be very careful not to let your superior knowledge of the characters and universe guide you too much. What I mean is, that if some bit of information is necessary in order to understand something that happens in the story, make sure the reader has that bit of information. If Annie refuses to help Ronald because they used to date years ago and had a bad breakup, make sure you've told the reader that, or he won't uderstand her hostility. Remember that the reader does not automatically share your assumptions about the universe you've created.

Just a little bit, really. I wanted to see if I actually manage to pull it off just using my experience from Czech writing - not really it seems, not to mention even my Czech writing skills probably got rusty over the years. Oh well, I've been trough this once, I can do it again, I just hope I get the time. Thank you for your sincerity, you've been a great help :-)

No problem. Remember, everyone can improve with practice. Just keep at it :-)

If I may make a suggestion, check out Aphelion Webzine. It's an online magazine of Sci-Fi and fantasy, by aspiring writers, for aspiring writers. I spent a lot of my time there some years ago. There are some very good people there who can and will help you with your writing. The few things I've written were published there, and I did a lot of critiques there over the years as well.

Being completely honest - who gives a shit? Any child can write a story like this.