A friend of mine who is a member of the "Stopwatch Gang" gave me some great feedback on a story I'm working on. Took forever to get said feedback (he's got 2 newborns to take care of!), but it was definitely worth waiting for.
A lot of the feedback revolves around making the characters more personalized, and less characters. Fleshing them out. I also, apparently, don't give sufficient detail for the setting ("The room had a table and four chairs", instead of talking about what the room looks like, what type of table it is, what kind of chairs, etc... etc...).
Anyway! He also kindly gave me a laundry list of resources that I'm going to spend my writing-days next week reading. I am 100% behind homework (most of my "homework" involves reading good sci-fi, so this is a nice change!).
I'll let you all know how it goes!