Hey all. I'm sure some of you remember me. I've recentley gotten back into story writing, and I'd like some constructive critism on this short piece that I've written. The story is a small section of what will eventually be a larger text. Names were made up on the spot, though the characters are not. 

The wheels of a small cart squeaked as it hit a rock, sitting in the middle of a desolate dirt road, surrounded by forest.

    “Watch it” A man’s deep voice shouted. “Don’t want to lose this barrel.” He patted a large wooden barrel sitting next to him. “We’d be lost without it.”

 

There were 5 sitting in the cart. They were currently traveling to the capital city of this land, Crowmeadow. It had recently been overtaken by the undead horde that’s been plaguing this land for the past four months. Inside the barrel was a highly explosive substance, made mostly of oil, with a few surprises mixed in. The man who had spoken was a tall, dark-skinned, muscular man who is the party’s demolition expert.

“I’m sure we’d be fine without you and your bombs.” Teased a woman from the front of thecart. She flicked her dark hair back to look at the man, before turning her attention back to the road.

“Yeah, right.” The man spoke back, still latching on to the barrel.

“Pass me a bottle.” Demanded a short man, more than likely a dwarf. His face was covered with a chain helm. He laid down on the side of the cart, waiting for his drink.

“Haven't you had enough, Karn?” Replied the demolition expert.
 

“You can never have too much, Al!” Cried out Karn.
 

Al sighed, and passed the dwarf a bottle. It was empty before anyone could tell him to slow down.

“I’m going to have to agree with Al here.” Said a man’s voice. The man was laid in the middle of the cart, opposite of Karn. He was currently twirling a dagger on his fingers. “You’ve nearly exhausted our supply, and we’ve only been on the road an hour.”

“Oh, shut it, Burg! There’ll be plenty in town when we get there.”

“Can you all please quiet down? I’m trying to get some shut-eye.” Said a deep, scratchy voice. It came from a green-skinned man, an orc. He had two short, twisted tusks protruding from his jaw, and sharp teeth within.

“No way you’ll be able to sleep with Raz’s driving!” Countered Karn.

“Watch it! I’m the only thing keeping you from tumbling into a ditch.” 

“You’re doing a terrible job of it.” 

Raz sighed, and continued down the empty forested road.

Hello, and welcome back.  

One thing that stuck out to me when I read this was how you said "an x man, a y," a few times.  It was only twice, I think, but it did break up the flow of things a bit.  Perhaps it would be better to just replace 'man' with what they are in the first place.  

Also, your dialogue tag should not be capitalized.  

For example:

"''.....Trying to get some shut-eye." Said a deep...." should be, "".....Trying to get some shut-eye," said a deep......"

Thank you for sharing your excerpt with us.  :)

Constructive criticism you say? I'll do my best, but this might fall more into the realm of feedback.

Technical Aspects

Regarding how you write numbers, it seems to be a stylistic decision, but generally, almost always if the number is one digit you want to write out the word (i.e. five instead of 5). Figured I'd mention this, even if I didn't look into it too much.

I won't repeat the dialogue punctuation thing Cricket covered, but I did mention it just now so that there is a reference to it in this post as well.

There might be something in regards to structuring sentences in a certain way, something like what makes a complete sentence, but I'm pretty ignorant in this department (for now), so I won't try to guess about it and assume it is probably just your style/writing voice that I'm noticing (since it is different to mine). I should say that the writing does look good to me, so I'll just throw in a friendly reminder to not forget about proofreading once your larger work is completed.

Plot, Characters, and most importantly, Stakes

Eh, not much to say regarding the plot. Obviously, a capital being overtaken by a four month old undead horde is bad, but as there is a lot of ways for the story to go I can't really comment on how good the meat of the narrative will be. Heck, it might end up being more focused on the characters and their growth, I just can't know at the moment.

As for the characters, you do introduce all five and set up a common goal for the party, and seeing as they appear to be going to deal with the undead, there are stakes here, even if they haven't really been developed yet.

Speaking of stakes, I'd advise to at least somewhat establish what will happen if the party fails. Not necessarily here in the opening, but do keep it in mind for latter scenes. This is because, so far, as I ought to make the least assumptions for a story that is only beginning, I'm assuming that if the party fails, it is bad for the city and themselves. Currently however, this is lacking.

This is because a capital city I know of only by name is not something I'm very invested in, especially because it has already been overrun, so a party fail won't really impact it, it'll just remain overrun.

So what about the characters? I cannot really be invested in them from just this introduction alone, as there isn't enough to make me really care about any of them. Don't get me wrong, I'm not rooting for them to fail or anything, in fact I'm probably leaning towards liking them since there seems to be some sort of party dynamic going on, but (and maybe it is just me) I need more to get invested in characters.

Now, this can somewhat obviously be remedied just by writing more, but I am still mentioning it specifically to draw attention to it, because it is all to easy and possible to neglect putting thought into why and how readers will be engaged, in this case I'm focusing on stakes, because in this case, if I care about the party, I obviously don't want them to fail, and so I am more engaged.

Anyway, I will say that depending on what type of story you're going for, i.e. more character driven vs more event/world driven, you might want to find some way to make me care about this city which has been overrun. Probably just finding a way to let readers learn more about the city would work, but be careful to not end up with a dull exposition dump. For something as large as a capital city, I imagine there is more than one way to make readers care about it, so just consider how important the city itself is for your narrative, and ensure readers understand this so they remain appropriately engaged.

I'll finish this section by mentioning two (err, three) things:

• It is possible to give readers both a reason to care for the characters and the city, but I'm not sure this is necessary, more so something that depends on the story your trying to tell.
• Further, all this really does depend on what you're going for, so while I do try to be specific in spots, some of my advice might not be helpful for your specific story. It depends on so much, so at least keep the general idea of keeping readers engaged as important, since there are many fantasy stories out there, and this can lead to them feeling uninspired or dull, which is something I think is worth actively trying to avoid (for obvious reasons, namely, not wanting readers to be bored reading your work).
• I mostly focused on stakes for engagement because stakes, in general, are something I struggle with, so really, I'm writing this for myself as much as I am for you.

Conclusion + TL;DR

Keep writing, it looks good. Many ways for the story to go, so I'm curious to see how this turns out.

P.S. "Short piece that I've written" + "the story is a small section of what will eventually be a larger text" makes me assume this is not a storygame, but I also want to mention that you'll probably want something to happen regarding some form of a conflict/contrast if you want this to end up as a complete story. Right now it is just an opening, you do establish stuff, but that is all. I will say that there are obviously numerous ways to write/structure a story, but what you have so far feels lacking to me (in regards to being a whole work).

I'm only mentioning this in a post script because of the second excerpt, which I read with more emphasis on the "be a larger text" as opposed to "the story". As such, I could have misunderstood and you are talking more about this being almost a part one of a larger collection, or maybe short stories that are linked together, in which case I would have more feedback to give regarding my thoughts on this as a standalone story (mainly in regards to structure), which is why I have this post script at all (you know, other than the fact that almost all my longer posts have one for some reason).

P.P.S. Oh, almost forgot, if there is something more specific you want feedback on, feel free to ask/clarify. Also correct me if I got anything wrong. Hope you got something useful from all this.

EDIT P.P.P.S. Messing around with formatting so that these longer posts look nicer... I have some ways to go.

I don't plan on turning it into a storygame. I also don't plan on making it incredibly long. Might get to 10 pages, at the most. The story is mostly just to get me back into story writing, and improve the quality of all of my writing, which is mainly D&D stuff. Linked stories set in this world is something that I might do, though. I'll post the second part, and an edited version of this intro, sometime soon. 

Cricket already brought up the dialogue and punctuation, and Zake mentioned the need for writing out the numbers and then went on to write a whole text wall that I'm not able to read just yet, so I'll just toss my two cents in about the two main things that stood out for me:

1.) Every time it's referenced, it really sounds like you think a cart works exactly like a car.

2.) I know this was just a short intro, but there is no hook. That's the most important part of an intro. There are these characters on a road with a barrel of oil, seems to be a pretty typical adventure party, they argue briefly about one of them drinking but nothing comes of it. No questions about them or anything else are raised in the reader's mind, there's nothing it feels urgent to find out more about, so there's nothing to make me want to turn the page.

Anyway it's good you're getting back into writing, but it's difficult to critique anything this short without the context of the rest of it. If the story is just going to be ten pages or so, then write the ten pages or at least to a cliffhanger or natural break in the plot and let us look at it then.

The only thing that's not been pointed out yet are a couple errors in verb tense at the beginning.

"... the undead horde that's been plaguing this land"

"... dark skinned, muscular man who is the party's demolition expert."

As for the rest, it was a fairly traditional opening with character introduction. You were perhaps a bit too rigid in wanting to introduce all the characters immediately and at the same time, making the round of names look a bit forced in the end. It's not completely unnatural since they are all together on a cart, it's just that you tend to notice the hand of the author. This is just nitpicking though, it's not an actual error and it only reflects my opinion. Moreover, if the story is not that long I could understand wanting to introduce the characters as quickly as possible.