My Short Story...

[theRobot]

Looking for opinions, comments and improvements...
Attack away...

http://www.geocities.com/therobot_99/Misdirection-Chapter1-revised.txt
http://www.geocities.com/therobot_99/Misdirection-Chapter2.txt
http://www.geocities.com/therobot_99/Misdirection-Chapter3.txt
http://www.geocities.com/therobot_99/Misdirection-Chapter4.txt

I just got done with Chapter 4, about 15 minutes ago...
EDIT: by the way, I guess I should note, I'm not finished with it quite yet..

[Simon Charles]

I like the tension, I like the background. It shows promise.

However, two common problems in writing are plaguing your text : the use of the present tense, and the repetition of pronouns.

First, good writing in the present tense is really, really tough to do. It must be used in special cases, to give certain effects. You use somewhat traditionnal narration, which must be done in the past. This rids most texts of continuity errors and verb mistakes.

Second (and this is the one thing you should rework before doing anything else) your sentences are always constructed in the same fashion. It's always the same thing over and over again : the endless repetition of the same pronouns and structures.

She walks in, she walks out, she looks around, he laughs, he says, he shifts... ad nauseam. Subject, verb, object. All the time. No variations. This taxes the reader and becomes tiresome. Pretty soon, it feels like a chore to read you.

All you do is tell us what someone is doing, constantly, with the exact same grammatical structure each time. While it's true writers must be observers, you go overboard. And that gives the reader the feeling you are too observant, to the point that it's no longer a short story, but rather a wordy movie script, and that you are very high above your characters, never going in-depth.

I read you, and I get the feeling you're a director moving your camera, painful inch by painful inch, to make sure that we understand. But you don't have to do any of this. It's okay. Trust your readers. We get it. We understand. You could axe half your text and we'd still understand what's going on, without the descriptions of what everyone's doing.

[theRobot]

You're actually right, I aspire to direct this piece myself if not by one of my favorite directors, I'm just not sure what is okay to take out and what isn't.

Is the story good though, so far?


I actually started fixing that problem in the latter half of chapter 4 and the whole of chapter 1(revised). I submitted chapter 1 to another forum for creative writing and was told of many, many mistakes and errors.
So after fixing those Chapter 1 is easier to understand and the latter half of chapter 4 is as well.

If you care, the original blocky peice, chapter 1;
http://www.geocities.com/therobot_99/Misdirection-Chapter1.txt

[Simon Charles]

theRobot said:
You're actually right, I aspire to direct this piece myself if not by one of my favorite directors, I'm just not sure what is okay to take out and what isn't.



I must become captain obvious to answer : it's okay to take out what is useless. This is expecially true with dialogs. People often write stuff like this :

--Hi Stan.
--Hi Boris, are you okay?
--Yeah, I'm fine.

Cue more chit-chat. It's only after a lengthy dialogue that they start talking about Doctor Doomesque and the fact that his uberdeathray is pointed at them. Therefore, the whole "Hi" stuff is useless because even without it, we'd still understand that Doctor Doomesque is there, threatening the lives of our heroes. So if you can safely remove something and the story is still totally understandable, then you gotta trim that down.

For example, your first paragraph is composed 90% of what Samantha is doing in the bathroom, while only the last 10% gets to the meat : there are cops with retina scanners in the hallway. It's a safe bet to assume none of your readers give an airborne coitus about what every little move she's doing.

Here; I wrote a typical, run-of-the-mill cheesy book intro, just to illustrate my point. Please forgive my english and its mistakes, it's not my first language.

=====================

On the corner of 56th and Main, the Holwegs appartment building had begun its final slide down complete and total decay. Paint was crackling off from the walls, showing dusty brick bones underneath. Even the power grid was vetuse and inadequate, unable to maintain a full time tenant scanning for the authorities.

As such, the place had become a heaven for crooks and thieves, low-lives and bums, who sought the shelter of a roof where the everwatching cops’ eyes could not always see. The building’s nickname, Hell’s hell, was growing truer with each passing drug deal and cheap hooker swing.

On the top floor of Hell’s hell, Samantha’s appartment was as grey and beat-up as the salary of a 22 year old woman could afford : one bedroom, half a bathroom, and no heat. Rat population : four and counting.

On that brisk and cold morning, Samantha was brushing her hair, looking at her pale reflection in the small but clean mirror. A simple bathroom and its mirror -- her last corner of heaven in gritty hell -- was her last stop before entering the drudgery of her every day life.

“Why doing it all over again?”, she asked herself as the brush untied the last bundle of stubborn black hair.

No answer came. Nothing but silence.

Then suddently, the high pitched whining of a retina scanner screamed in the hallways. The cops were coming.

=====================

1) The conventionnal intro does its job : it tells the reader where they are, and gives a general feeling of what kind of place it is.

2) Hints of police activity in people’s ordinary lives are dropped, with the power grid being insufficient for a “full time” tenant scan. So the reader goes “What the hell is this place? What kind of city/society has computer systems in appartments that keep track of everyone’s whereabouts? In what futuristic year am I?”

3) One of the characters, Samantha, is revealed as living there. So you’re there, just like her, knee-deep in the gritty.

4) Ah, she’s 22 years old and in that world, people of that age don’t earn much money. Oh? Why can’t the youth be rich in that world?

5) Hints of her being stuck in a rot are dropped as she goes about her morning routine. But this doesn’t last one paragraph. Nope. Four sentences and it’s done.

6) Edgy finale : somebody’s coming! Disturbing noises invade privacy. Aka : the sentence that tells the drones are coming cuts into the sentences that talk about her brushing her hair.

And there you have it. No mess, no fuss, no useless information. Not one word, not one comma wasted. Everything has its place, its function and its importance.

One of the basic flaws of beginners in writing is that they don’t get to the point. They fill their sentences and paragraphs with flourishes and extra stuff, thinking it helps the style. All it does is slowing down the pace and drowns the story into anonymity.

This is one thing every beginner must learn : cut the crap and get to the point. Sorry to be brutal but that's how I was taught. You must weave the meat of the story into a seemingly mundane setting, not the other way around. You must drop hints of what’s going on, all the while making it look as though you’re talking about the mundane. But you’re not. You’re there, always invisible, pulling all the strings. That’s being a writer.







Is the story good though, so far?



Yeah, it's okay. If you could, I'd like to know where you showed that story. What are those creative writing forums you spoke of?

[theRobot]

I submitted to the forum on Megatokyo, it was an area that I noticed was made exclusively for poems and stories, while the best this forum had was the popular media area.. So I submitted the first chapter, unrevised and got alot of feedback about the dialogue being unreal, and I knew it was... but I had just jotted it down, I was attempting to get the story out very quickly.

Anyways, they gave me a couple of pointers and I made the adjustments.. and one person also pointed out that I hadn't thought of any background for any of the characters, including the large meglomaniacal company..

So I've built a background for the company and I'm working on her background.

EDIT: By the way, did you read just the first chapter or did you continue through the others? If so, did I improve at all or worsen?

[Simon Charles]

theRobot said:
EDIT: By the way, did you read just the first chapter or did you continue through the others? If so, did I improve at all or worsen?



In my opinion, it stayed the same throughout the entire story so far.

[pec]

Cuts from your story and my comments/revisions:


One officer knocks on the door across the hall, "Police, can you open the door?"



This line is okay. But you can make it sound better. The problem here is the context. The police officer sounds a bit too polite or too cool in a situation where he belongs to a unit looking for a criminal who hides somewhere in a building.

I mean they don't know exactly in which appartment he hides, so they should sound more tough, more demanding when they knock on people's doors. These are no police officers visiting old ladies to help them find their lost cat or something. These are police officers looking for a criminal. In other words: this is serious! And it's obvious that they're also a bit nervous.

However, this doesn't mean that you should make the police in your story become "rude hardasses" now. The police can appear tough, but stay polite at the same time. It is far better and more believable for your kind of story. Here's how you can do it:

...
One officer knocks on the door across the hall, "Police, house search! Please open the door..."

Notice how this changes the character of your police officers?! They sound more professional now. Mark my words: Only a single line can make your police officers appear professional or amateurish.

And believe me, the police officers in your story sound very amateurish. Work on them. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif


He walks to her next door neighbors door and knocks. "Sir, can you open your door please?"



Avoid repetitions. If this is a movie script then let the camera show the police officer how he's knocking on the neighbor's door, but this time doesn't let him say anything. Or if you really have to then just let him say "Police...". Then let the camera cut to another scene or image.

Don't let them talk so much. This is not professional in that situation and only slows down the action and suspense element in your story. The audience knows that the police officers say their usual lines when they knock on people's doors. You don't have to show this each time.


She can hear the officer yell to the door, "Sir! Step away from the door, we're coming in!"



Sorry, I had to laugh a bit when I read this line. I'm sure it wasn't your intention as a writer to make the reader laugh in that serious moment, but you accidently did. At least I was amused.

So leave out that line completely. The police asked the neighbor two times to open the door. Nothing happend, so now talking is over. Now they should just break that damn f*kin' door open. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Not because they are hardass cops, but because they know that there is a high probability that the crimimal may exactly hide in THAT appartment. The police behave like that in reality, too.

If you do this to any spoken text in your story it gives the current scene more speed, more action. And it's more realistic that way.

And btw. "Sir! Step away from the door, we're coming in!" sounds more like a line for fireworkers than for police officers. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/dopefish.gif

I think it's unusual for the police to say s.th. like this, especially when they do a "house search" (just a police trick) in order to find a criminal. Like I tried to say above, in such situations they tend to act more than to comment on everything they will do in a polite way. That's the usual style of the police unless you want to write a "Police Academy" comedy story where you make the police appear like noobs which everyone laughs about.

So if you want to make this part of your story become more believable and more exciting to the audience then change that.

I hope this helps in spicing up your story a bit.

Please note that I'm no professional writer or someone like that. It is just my personal impression as a reader or watcher in a movie theatre. So don't take my revisions for granted, just as a sort of recommendation and feedback. It is also important which audience this story is aimed for, e.g. action and entertainment freak or serious reader.

And excuse my bad english, too. I'm german.

[theRobot]

Yea, I know.. In the original first chapter, I had the officers pretty pissed off to start off with, to which I was told to settle them down a bit.. because "no police officer yells in a situation like that." (which in all seriousness, If I were a police officer, I would be yelling in that situation.. seeing I would be looking for a fugitive of-sorts, just IMO) So, in listening to what they said, I toned the cops down.. I made them a calmer.. I do believe your middle of the road to be the best approach, I just find it funny how so many people expect different reactions in a future they should be hoping never happens...

And, as for my normal plea, was the story any good?

[pec]

theRobot said:
And, as for my normal plea, was the story any good?



Well, I have only read the first chapter so far. But yeah, it's good! I think you could make it a Blade Runner type of sci-fi story, because you have retinal scanners and your story is set in the future (2043). I like the Blade Runner style. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

Or you could make it a cyberpunk story a la William Gibson's Neuromancer. http://forums.3drealms.com/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/cool.gif

That was my first impression when I read the 1st chapter of your story.