Ane's Critique

**Good opening. You drew me in and I could SEE the scene. Your description of the earthquake is excellent. I'm a native Californian and lived through many earthquakes. You captured it perfectly. One weakness I see is sentence structure. You don't vary much from the subject verb beginning. After a while, that can become like a factual report. Try changing some of them up. I'm going to mark them all in blue so you can see tha pattern. But overall, this is good. I liked it a lot. The pace is fast and builds tension well. Good job!**

Captain Montana Sinclair stared at piles of useless seismic data collected over the last few weeks. Multicolored folders and bulging files lay in unruly piles stacked a foot or so high on every conceivable work surface. Her eyes darted across the overflowing workspace as she chewed on the end of her [pencil](ponytail) **something about chewing on her ponytail is off-putting**. "Something's not right..." She grimaced, spitting out (the hairs)[bits of pink eraser] she had gnawed through. The answer is here. I know it's here.

She (had) second-guessed herself at least forty times in two weeks. Have you lost your edge, ol' girl? (It felt like the) [The] finely honed instincts she (had) developed over the last ten years (had)[seemed to have] evaporated like wet cotton candy.

She wiped a sweating palm along the thigh of her jeans and kicked the leg of the seismograph spool rack. A wide metal reel clat­tered to the floor, leaving a trail of stark white, ribbon paper in its wake.

Montana rolled her eyes as she hopped off the stool, picked up the half-empty reel and sat down to rewind it. Her hand flipped it over and she glanced down the length of the tape as she smoothed the wrinkles out of the paper.

The seismic pen had drawn a straight line down the tape for about fifteen sec­onds. Then it jumped in a high spike. This pattern repeated for as far as she could see down the length of unrolled tape.

Her stomach tightened.

The Earth ap­peared to have developed a heartbeat.

Montana connected the interface, linking her laptop to the lab seismograph computer. With rapid keystrokes, she coupled the system data to the diagnostic software she had created.

She stared at the screen.

"Huh? That's my...this is impossible!"

Montana typed several com­mands for verification. **I'm missing her emotions**

"How can this signal be coming from the moon?"

She popped a CD in the lab computer to burn a data copy. She gnawed on her bottom lip, tingling with excitement.

A grin framed her lips. I've got you, McKay!

She reached for her glass of soda water. The surface of the water vibrated in miniscule concentric waves. Her mouth went slack as she pulled back her hand. Montana glanced behind her.

The rumble came from deep within the bowels of the earth, working its way up, jerking and separating the strata layers as it came.

Montana turned, absently thinking she'd be able to see the source of the echoing growl. Temblors were a normal, unpleasant fact in California.

She slipped from her stool and into the adjoining office doorway, figuring that by the time she got to the arch, the shake would subside.

The still evening air exploded. Percussion from the shockwave rolled through the seismology station with a deafening roar. Montana jerked her head. Glass splintered. Metal crashed. Computers jolted off the shelves. **Once I got here, the sentence structure worked better. It adds to the suspense**
…

**The only thing I'm missing is how does Montana feel? What does she think? Below I see she wants the disk. But how is this earthquake maki her feel? You have good IM, but lack emotion. Does it have something to do with McKay?**
…
She re­peat­edly pushed the eject button, then (frantically)**gws** pried at it with her fingers.

The near end of a five-foot fluorescent light fixture crashed to the floor near her.
…
She ran toward the toppled bookcase blocking the path to the door. Among the thunderous growling, an ominous cracking (sound) rolled along the length of the room. Welds on the roofing sections snapped and raf­ters twisted free from the building.

Montana dove under the bookcase, crawling through the debris (of books and equipment), [and emerged](emerging) on the other side. [As the ceiling roared down behind her, she](She) scrambled for the open door (as she heard the ceiling roar down behind her). She didn't stop. …
…
Montana coughed and wheezed, gasping for air. Her lungs filter[ed](ing) only small wisps of oxygen from the enveloping dust cloud. **There's a pattern of a lot of "ing" verbs**

She tripped, lurching forward with her arms spread out to cushion the fall. Her palms skidded across the rubble-strewn floor, and her chest slammed into the hard surface, knocking (her precious, little)[the] wind out of her.

Montana lay there disoriented, her brain fogg[ed](ing) from lack of oxygen. Suddenly a pair of arms wrapped around her waist and jerked her roughly to her feet.
"I've got you ma'am."

(She heard the tense voice above the din.) **this is too much telling and gws. Your words all SHOW the din, there's no need to explain again**:)