Intel

Hi, My name is Robert. I'm 17 and am from England. I always wanted to be a journalist but I never wanted to write a book. I hate writing stories. But I had to start my enlish coursework 3 weeks ago and I started this story. I love it. Now I'm hoping to turn it into a full fledged book but can some of you give me advice after reading please. Thanks

Running down the stair’s I made a break for the door. Entering the next room with caution, I heard whispers coming from the next room. I hid under a work desk, shielding anyone catching sight of me. “MOVE IN!”. I saw flashes of light move around the ceiling of this dark work office. I could almost swear I just swallowed my heart. I could hear them getting closer. The light circling around my position. The foot steps closer to the end of the room, where a coward lay under a desk cradling twin berretas. There was a slight pause in the space time-continuum. Suddenly the pine wood desk was bursting into pieces, muzzle bolts lit up the room. Blood dripping through the pine desk onto my face. With a slight grin, I licked the blood dripping onto my lips, and arose to dissolve the souls of the remaining Swat team members. It weird because, at this moment, I felt no emotion. Running from one end of the room to another firing 9mm rounds into their body, hearing them cry out to God. Little did they know that God couldn’t hear them. I watched one person’s body slump to the ground in a lifeless motion and I thought that was the last one until, in the corner of the room I caught a whisper. “Men down, this guy’s a maniac. I need backup. I repeat I need backup, over”. I walked over to this man and I saw fear in his eyes. He was at my mercy, and I almost felt sympathy for him. Almost until he reached for his MP5 sub machine gun. Tears welled up in his eyes as he dropped the weapon. A reddish liquid came spewing out of his mouth as I released my grip of the knife plunged into his stomach.

That was 29 years ago. I went down for third degree murder. 2 life sentences. At 21 years old. They say that any man who spends more than 10 years in prison is never right in the head. Stereotypes. I bet none of those suckers have spent a single day in a prison, they just look up a Steve Michaels case and think they know it all. In here I’ve seen some of the most noble men who ever walked the planet. And some of the seediest, cold hearted criminals you could imagine. Over the years staying in the State Pen I’ve seen them all pass through here, lawyers, millionaires, film directors, music stars, drug dealers, druggies, con artists, preachers and atheists. It doesn’t matter who you are. Cos one your locked up, black white, old, young, the rich, the poor. You all suffer, because your all united by one thing. The thirst for freedom. This natural human emotion which is deeply embedded in soul of every being. Oh these tough guys may deny its there, think they’re in control of, or even go to sleep and think it’ll just disappear by the morning. But you can’t repress it forever. Sooner or later you’ll crack. They all do.

‘Liberty and Justice for all’? Try chatting that shit in here and you’d be eating through a straw for the next 10 years. Maybe there was a time when I believed America was the land of opportunity. The land of the free. But gradually over time staring at the same 4 wallschoking on the wretched smell of your rat infested maggot crawling cell room, watching your youth, your dreams slip away, to the point where you no longer care or feel emotion. You begin to wonder, ‘What the hell happened? Where did it all go wrong? Why didn’t anybody warn me that life could turn out like this? Why didn’t anyone help me? What was I thinking’? I don’t know whats more sad, not knowing what day it is, or just not giving a damn.

“Come on Denton, give us a smile. Your getting out in the morning!” That’s wayne, a brick layer from Houston, Texas. Just 19 years old. He was charged with theft although he swears blind he’s innocent. I believe him. Wasn’t even given a fair trial or allocated a lawyer. According to Wayne, the council told him he stood no chance of winning the case, that they’d just give him one year if he confessed. I guess the council needs to make it look like they’re solving cases and getting criminals off the street. Wayne’s got a wife, a 4 year old daughter and another baby on the way. He only did what he though was best for his family. It’s funny, cos kids only appreciate the hardship their parents went through to raise them once they’re grown.

“I’ll be happy once I get through those prison gates” I groaned. Then a long pause. “Wayne” I said in a caring but stern voice, “take care of yourself in ere, yer hear me boy?” “Yes Sir” he replied in country western accent. “Don’t call me Sir, it makes me feel old” I snapped. “But you are-“ “Eh!” I sharply cut him off. “Young enough to whoop yo ass”. He always was a quick one. It was dark and Wayne was on the bottom bunk, so I didn’t see his face turn red, but I knew he felt embarrassed. Just then I remembered something. I started tugging at a seam in the side of my mattress next to the wall. Reached around for my 12 pack of Marlboro then chucked it underneath my bed onto Wayne’s lap.
“What’s this?”
“This should stop any horny bastards from coming into your ass for your last 3 months”.
“Thanks, I err… don’t know what to say” Wayne said quietly. “Hey forget about it, you just do right by your wife and kids. You’ve got a second chance at life. Don’t make the same mistakes I did and live a life of regret. Because those scars on the inside, they don’t heal up”. “Yes si- I mean Denton”. “Hehe, now lets get some shut eye” I said attempting to retain my machoness while feeling all this weird love circling us in the air. I admit this was hard to do, hell- Waynes was like a son to me. I felt obliged to look after him. Ah well. Tomorrow I get out. After 24 years inside. I’m not sure how I’ll cope. But I think I’ll make it.

Wasson

Eah, there are quite a few things that i do not like about this. Could you please seperate diloauge from the rest of it?
"like this"
so it isn't in the middle of everything?

Otherwise, the piece itself seems like a text-book "guy talking about something in prison in a lude fashon".
I thought the first part was corny and unrealistic, never in a million years could a guy manage to murder 2 SWAT team members, 1 of which with a knife...then not spend life in prison without chance of parole.

I mean....Why not just make him a robot ninja with a laser sword and get it over with?

Intel

Oh come on, he's getting out on parole at the age of 47. Why should I seperate dialogue? Other great books don't do it so if I do that it may look like a play script or something. That review was so lame. Get outta here you american sucker

Stewart

Robert, after reading a bit of it I would recommend that you buy Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss. There are many mistakes in the written language that you need to iron out of your writing - for both fiction and journalism - and I'm sure you'll find this book's no-nonsense approach easy to read and learn from.

As regards Wasson's response, it is perfectly reasonable to split out each piece of dialogue into a new paragraph because that's what's readers are used to and, if you are going to buck trends, you need to be aware of what you are bucking. i.e. you need to know the rules before you can break them.

And, responses like "That review was so lame. Get outta here you american sucker" are no help - to the reviewer or to yourself. Wasson has taken time out to read your piece and the least you can do is thank him. If you don't agree then say so and say why - don't insult him. If you want to insult those that take the time to respond to you then don't expect people to help you.

Not every critique is going to be favourable to you but, if you are going to respond like that, it seems obvious you are not actually looking for critique and public opinion but, instead, want people to tell you how great it is when, in reality, it isn't.

If you want a fair critique then, given some time, I will give you one but I would expect a thanks even if you don't agree with me and when I critique I show no mercy for age, experience, etc. and respond only to what I see written down. And I'm brutal, I think. But honest. And, on first opinions, it needs a lot of work because it has spelling errors, punctuation problems, and there is even errata in the narrator's perspective; and that's just the writing, nevermind the rest that your words should evoke: character, setting, etc.

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Intel

Connar Wolf your right. Sorry Wasson. Thanks for reading my piece of work I really appreciate it even if you didn't like it. Thanks for the advice wolf i'll look up that book soon. My work has no spelling errors. Trust me. Things are spelt differently in america. Also wolf I already said my writing style may be different to you cos i'm english but thanks anyway. You seem like a really nice guy

Stewart

Things may be spelt differently in America but I'm in Britain too.

Some of the spelling mistakes I noticed were stair's (stairs), sub machine (sub-machine), millionaires (millionnaires, although I'm aware your spelling is also acceptable), and Cos one your locked up... ('Cause once you're locked up...).

Do you want me to rip through the piece and offer suggestions to improve?

My first suggestion, definitely, would be to not think about a book but to practice writing and find a voice by writing short stories and to work through the exercises in another book I'd recommend called Fiction Writer's Workshop by Josep Novakovich. It explains all manner of important components (voice, setting, character, beginning, plot, ideas, revision, etc.) and then offers about twelve to fifteen different exercises that will, with repeated practice, help to improve both your understanding and implementation of the components in your own fiction.

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Wasson

Geeze, You don't need to apologise. Yeah, the writing "in and of itself" isn't nessessarily bad, I should have said. It's good that you seem to have an idea of what kind of story your going for....I just found the first part "cheesy".

suzakugaiden

Machoness -- not a work. It also took me awhile to realize that it was derived from "macho."
Barettas -- It has two T's and one R.
You use your instead of you're. A lot.

Also I assume this takes place in America? Yeah, your characters still sound like Britons. If they don't, they sound like highly stereotyped Americans.

Spark Avery

Grammatically, the writing is bad. You cut sentences off too soon. It's not only that you use a lot of fragments, which you do, but that you're cutting whole sentences up for no reason. For example:

Also, you tend to fall into the same syntactical patterns, especially right at the beginning of the piece.

Something-ing . . . , I . . . Somethingiing, I . . . I . . . , something-ing. Do you see what I mean? Vary it up a little so the writing doesn't become repetitive and boring.

Also, you don't set up any scenes very well. We can only ever assume where the characters are and, sometimes, what's happening. You need to put us into the story, not just summarize it to us.

Introducing characters that are in the room by having them talk when we were unaware of their presence beforehand can be confusing.

This doesn't make any sense. The character says that it's stereotypical to say that anyone who spends enough time in prison will go insane. Then he says, well, sooner or later you'll go insane. I believe in having inconsistencies in characters to be realistic, but nothing this drastic.

Intel

Spark thanks for directing me. I say cos n stuff to make it seem like someone is actually talking. I'm gonna use a thesauras to vary it up. I cut sentences short simply to add emphasis on what is being said. It's a very good technique (I think so anyway) when i'm talking about stuff a lot of people find boring such as freedom. I had to use a stereotypical american scene because I've never been in prison before! What else would I do?

Thanks for the replys i'll work on my stuff

suzakugaiden

"What else would I do?"

Research.

Also, 'cause is usually preferable to 'cos (IIRC) in American English.

kalibantre

Sorry but I couldn't read it. I got bored by the first paragraph. You rushed through why he was in there, there was very little detail, and you're structure was way off.
Yes you should space dialogue, it's the standard way. You've got to have something great to defy the conventions of structure, style and content you can play around with all you want.
The lists bored me, I don't need to know exactly who the guy met, I understand that it doesn't matter what you're like, no need to recite as many types of people that entered your head.

Edit it, please and you could have somethng good.

Also, you put this up for critique, so don't bite your head off at the people who have taken time to read it (or in my case attamept to) and reply. A publisher probably wouldn't have.

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~kitty