**Part 2/2**

**World Building**

You added some interesting world-building elements into your story. Some of these were skillfully weaved in the piece. For example:

>The bartender looked down at my piece, noting the runes carved into it.

This is good because the bartender's reaction indicates to the reader that carved runes in guns signify status and importance in this world. And it's done in a way that lets the reader put the pieces together on their own.

But an instance where you didn't do this so well is here:

>It was attuned to fire and lightning, a popular combination that greatly increased the destructive force when mixed and focused through an adamantine barrel.

This just feels like you're just lazily hitting the reader over the head with information about the world because you couldn't think of a better way to weave it in the story.

Also, maybe you're trying to introduce too much world-building in this short text. Maybe introduce one or two elements and leave some for an

**Part 1/2**

Hello, I'm going to give this a critique. Also, I'm writing this assuming that you're planning on using the piece in a longer work. Though, it would be helpful if you specified your intentions for the piece in your post.

**Dialogue**

I'll start by commenting on your dialogue since that's what you asked for. In terms of formatting, it needs work. This is because you haven't started a new paragraph when a new speaker talks. It made it confusing and unnecessarily difficult to read at some points. You also need to work on starting new paragraphs in general. I'll give some examples for times where you should have started a new one. This is something that really needs sorting out.

>“What’ll it be?” grunted the bartender, face adorned with a mighty handlebar. “Water.” “That’ll cost you. Water is a commodity around these parts.”

The above passage should be formatted like this:

>“What’ll it be?” grunted the bartender, face adorned with a mighty handlebar.  
>  
>“Water.”  
> 

Thanks for posting. Typical caveats: just a rando on the internet who happens to be bored and stuck waiting for work to dribble on in. I read a lot in the fantasy, weird, and sci-fi/speculative genres. Blood Meridian is probably my favorite Western and Red Dawn/Continental Op is where my brain’s template of the hard boiled gunslinger private eye starts.

**Setting** It is funny how high noon, saddle bags, and saloon quickly. That being said, it read fairly generic and the longer I got into the story, the more I felt like my mind was doing the heavy lifting of trying to generate the scene. This is however part and parcel of first-person POV.
**Style/Formatting** This was probably my biggest issue with the text. I am so used to reading dialogue right now as a split with each new speaker starting a new paragraph that I found the style here of embedding multiple speakers in a single paragraph a little bit off. Folks are going to have different tolerances for that sort of thing.
In addition

Right off the bat, I can tell that you’re inexperienced at writing dialogue because you don’t know that new speaker = new paragraph. It’s the law. For the sake of sanity, it is not to be broken. 

Dialogue is a funny thing. It’s a balance between trying to get it to sound like something a person would actually say, and making it something that’s palatable to read. Dialogue that’s too naturalistic can be painful to experience, and dialogue that’s not natural enough sounds stilted. You’re on the latter end. Your run-ons aren’t helping. Think about where you’d breathe when saying it, and put a period there. Say it aloud to yourself if that would help. 

Your dialogue isn’t necessarily the only thing that’s stilted. For example: 

>I threw my saddle on the back of the horse and rode it to the stable outside the saloon I was staying in. I paid the stableboy 2 copper for the lodging and feeding of the horse, then went to the general store across the street from the saloon. I picked up enough

I like westerns. I like fantasy. I decided to try and mix the two of them. I'm a longtime DM and had some spare time so I decided to flesh out one of the stories rattling around my head. I'm really inexperienced at writing dialogue so any help there would be *extremely* appreciated. 

[Google Doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zEy0Suq1gtevtGgjmNdM2gz3y1AcX3lVY3Ro083MDQ8/edit?usp=sharing)

[Critique \[2354\]](https://www.reddit.com/r/DestructiveReaders/comments/kwm4rz/2354_heartbreak_and_a_dog_named_satine/gjbxgnw?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=web2x&amp;context=3)

[1702] Wizard Cowboy Part One