Young Writers Society

It felt good running down his throat, this choking smoke that was the product of the burning cigarette held between his lips. He removed it with two fingers clamped lightly to its sides and blew a puff of smoke into the chilly air above him. Almost on cue, the wind dove past him, giving the sensations of cutting into his skin, and caught up the smoke. Just like he had planned it, he had this machine figured out.

“Hey, Ocelot, you’re gonna give away your position if ya keep that up,” mumbled the earpiece of his helmet. In the view screen that branched off of the ear piece and covered one eye in a square display appeared the face of his team mate, his squad’s sniper. The man’s dark face, terra firma’s African descent, was aglow with an evil grin as he popped off a quieted shot of his sniper. Somewhere nearby, a rouge marksman fell to a pressurized dart blasting through his neck and shattering his spine. This man took too much pleasure in his work to be some skinny black man, “Hoo – ah, another one downed. We don’t need some dead Rookie weighing down our record, kid.”

“Yeah, that’s the point of being a rabbit, Fox,” Ocelot sighed, rolling his eyes and counting down to the next gust of wind, “And are you leaving me anyone to distract and lead back to the door so we can open the damned thing? Strong wind, six seconds and counting.”

“Er…” Fox paused and switched to his thermal scope, giving Ocelot a picture and picture of his scope’s view, “Alright, fine, kill my fun. By the way, those kills still count, want a score?” In the thermal scan, a total of eight people stood. They were all swarming, looking for their comrades in the sandy snow. With two seconds left, Ocelot braced himself against his cement barrier cover and threw out the spare from the parachute he had been dropped with. The wind picked it up easily and he finished the loop for the wire around his suit before the slack was picked up. His boots acted as makeshift skis and he was off into the middle of the group.

“Nah, I’ll pick it up regardless once I’m in. Tell the commander I’m on radio silence. Time to show you why I only need Shotguns and Tools.”

“First one shot gets to buy the drinks.”

“Yeah, get that wallet out.”

Fox backed away from his sniper mounted in the snow, which was drilled into the sand beneath, and pulled up the case file on the display screen of his Portable Device.

“Commander, the Rookie’s on Radio Silence. He’ll squawk when it’s your turn.”
There was a deep guttural grunt as an answer and Fox disregarded the lack of response. The commander was under too much stress for a real answer. Literally.

On his screen, he saw the picture of where they were, sans the snow. There was a desert base, a concrete structure four stories high with small, roughly cut windows, that was home to a good six dozen Trans Dishes; all of which were currently pirated and leaking all of the system’s secrets. They were sent to plug this leak either with secrecy or explosives. To be honest, Fox would’ve loved to do the explosion, but Ocelot had been allowed to see the only encrypted data they had retrieved for Intel. He had cracked it with a full day’s work, revealing that this rebel group’s leader was manning this mission, being the only one good enough for the job. An explosion was out of the question now.

In the linked camera between him and Ocelot, he saw that the Rookie was holding a hostage’s arm to the access panel to the reinforced door and then watched as he expertly knocked the poor man out and used him as a nonlethal weapon on the two guards waiting inside for him. The guy was definitely close-quarters.

He looked back at his PD and read on to the mission specs. The rebels held two things that HQ held as important; one was the leader, the other was a device that messed with the atmosphere and made the weather erratic and unpredictable. All it took was a specialized Magnetic Pulse and three giant spinning structures which also disrupted the air and caused a gust of wind with every passing. There was a squawk on the radio, Ocelot’s signal. The weather began to warm up, very slightly, and the snow slowed to a stop. On the camera, Ocelot had typed ‘Send him in’ on the command screen for the machine, right after what Fox assumed to be a ‘Shut-down’ command.

“It’s your show now,” Fox said to the commander, beginning to pack up his little camp onto the motorcycle hidden in the snow. In the distance there was a loud boom, and the rest of the outer guard was scattered and knocked into unconsciousness by the concussive force of a cannon shell impacting two yards from their position.

Firstly, hallo there!! New members are cool.

This wasn't really good. Everything was unclear and some parts didn't even make sense.

Yes you really out done yourself to write a good action book, but you just didn't describe things very well and you didn't give enough character description for us to live like the character. Your just threw us with these thermo gadgets that we have no idea existed. Yes of course. It is Sci-fi, but you still have to explain to the readers what makes it so different and better and so forth.

All in all, you really need to work on this. This wasn't a good story, but I like the idea and where it can go.

Almost on cue, the wind dove past him, giving the sensations of cutting into his skin, and caught up the smoke.

Okay it should be, “giving the sensation”, the sentence though sounds a bit odd and I would try to reword the whole thing.

“Hey, Ocelot, you’re gonna give away your position if ya keep that up,” mumbled the earpiece of his helmet

Of just sounds kind of weird. You probably don’t even need to mention its connected to the helmet, and why would it be? Its in his ear. So you could probably say, “Hey, Ocelot, you’re gonna give away your position if ya keep that up,” a voice mumbled from his ear piece.” Or something to that sort.

The man’s dark face, terra firma’s African descent, was aglow with an evil grin as he popped off a quieted shot of his sniper.

Okay so terra firma does not make sense in this. First off terra is Latin for earth and Firma is Latin for firm/solid. So you are saying “The man’s dark face, solid earth African descent...” like you can see it makes no sense. Try something like, “The man’s dark face, a characteristic of his African descent, was aglow...” or something along that line. Also it should not be quieted, it should probably be “silent”, and you should reword it cause it sounds funny. For an example the whole sentence up above could be, “The man’s dark face, a characteristic of his African descent, was aglow with an evil grin as he popped of another silent shot with his sniper rifle.”

Somewhere nearby, a rouge marksman fell to a pressurized dart blasting through his neck and shattering his spine

Okay so it should be “fell as a pressurized darted blasted through his neck and shattered his spine.”

And are you leaving me anyone to distract and lead back to the door so we can open the damned thing

Should be “damn”

They were all swarming, looking for their comrades in the sandy snow.

Okay so it is snowing? This is probably a detail you want to bring in earlier when you are painting the whole scene for your reader. Which I would recommended you doing a bit more. We don’t really have much of an idea where this is, what this place looks like or what? Are they in a city, a forest, where? We need a scene, so we know where the characters are. Later on you describe the desert base, and I’m not saying you give away what is going on right away, but a little more information is needed for us to picture and understand what is going on. Also sandy snow is kind of weird, I know it is in a desert but the snow would cover the sand so you wouldn’t be able to see it.

Overview

This is all I am going to say for now. Yes this does need some work, but it is a good start. I would recommend taking some time to read your story out loud, this allows you to hear how it sounds and is a good way to catch phrases, sentences, and words that might sound a little weird.

Also always proof read your story a couple times to try and catch little mistakes so others won’t have to. This is a good start, so start editing it now. You can look at the examples I gave you, you made the same mistakes quite a bit throughout the whole thing so try to find the rest yourself and if you need anymore help just ask!

Hi There,

This was quite an intriguing start to a piece of writing. There are several good images used throughout the passage, and this piece therefore has great potential. There are however several details that undermine the passage on the whole.

The first point that should be addressed is the fact that the reader should feel comfortable in the setting that has been provided. Unless there is a purpose to confusing the reader, the reader should be told about the setting of the story, and should be guided into the world steadily. As a general rule, most readers can't connect to a story unless they are familiar with the people as well as the terrain, and one should therefore try to introduce the world and the characters to the reader.

What further discomforts a reader is a sentence structure like this one:

AaquianNotyou wrote:It felt good running down his throat, this choking smoke that was the product of the burning cigarette held between his lips.

The reason that the above sentence throws a reader so, is that it doesn't flow. It could just have easily have said: "He felt the cigarette between his lips; the choking smoke had never felt so good." This sentence is both shorter, and easier on the eye. It does not disturb the reader to such an extent. There are numerous examples of this same error throughout the passage.

As another general rule, dialogue is generally very difficult to write realistically. Therefore, unless there is a point to the actual contents of the dialogue that is pivotal to the story, it is often a safer route to report the dialogue as a narrator, rather than as a speaker.

A few tips to make this even better:
1) always remember that the text should not strain the reader, and should always flow.
2) If there is a choice between writing something simply or writing something which may not be easy on the reader, always go the simple route.
3) There are exceptions, but unless there is a good reason, try to write with correct grammar.

Heh, doubtful any of ya'll will see this now, but I feel I should put it in anyways:
This is just a scene, thought the length would point to that. Yes, there's no painting of the mental image of where they are, I understand and accepted that when I posted this. I was under the impression that I left a note somewhere on this that this was just a scene I was asked to write, not a short story for peopel to get into... Apparently I was mislead by myself.

I appreciate the advice on my grammar, I fail to proofread so it's nice to see my mistakes pointed out, but as for my sentence structure and diction, that is something new to see. I think a post of something I've really put time into should be put up and torn apart, and see where how far I stand from the elite. This is a nice way to gauge my audience.

Aye, if you're going to just put up a quick scene, you do need to add a quick note about that.

Without knowing what the rest of the story involves, it is hard to review to this; especially because I wasn't quite sure what was going on. I understand they were outside of a rebel base in a area that's usually desert (but turned to snow due to the rebel's weather device), but the individual events didn't seem to flow. At one moment, they were outside the rebel base, then it appeared that the rebel base blew up? I'm not even quite sure if it blew up, or if the main character was knocked unconscious by a shell from the enemy.

However, your opening was good. The last sentence of the opening paragraph didn't seem to fit, but I think the rest of it captures the reader's attention pretty well. The dialogue is also done very well, and I think that's definitely your strong area. You just need to work on descriptions, and fortunately it's harder to get dialogue right than it is to get descriptions right.

So keep working on it (as I'm sure you are) and expand upon this scene.

It felt good running down his throat, this choking smoke that was the product of the burning cigarette held between his lips. He removed it with two fingers clamped lightly to its sides and blew a puff of smoke into the chilly air above him.

They wouldn't be allowed to smoke on mission. At all. You do that on your own time, not in the middle of mission--such an act could compromise the entire skirmish. If they're mercenaries, that's one thing. But if this is an actual military force, there's no way.

The man’s dark face, terra firma’s African descent, was aglow with an evil grin as he popped off a quieted shot of his sniper. Somewhere nearby, a rouge marksman fell to a pressurized dart blasting through his neck and shattering his spine.

Couple things wrong with this. First of all, it's probably better to refer to the Fox's weapon as a rifle, not a sniper--the person is a sniper, the weapon is a sniper rifle. Secondly, weapons that rely on pressure to fire are notoriously short-ranged; even the most state-of-the-art dart guns in this generation have a maximum range (not EFFECTIVE range) of 100 yards. That's only 97m, or 100 feet. Furthermore, darts wouldn't shatter a spine at any range--the dart would or bounce off the bone. Lastly, after this paragraph you state that there is a rather impressive wind going--a sniper probably wouldn't risk a shot in more than 30mph winds, let alone in snow.

The scene with the Rookie running in Rambo style with nothing but a shotgun is rather unrealistic. Unless he has some sort of invisibility cloak, he'd be cut down even if they aren't expert marksmen. I think the whole scene would be reworked so that the entire squad moves in together, with the Rookie running Point since he is the close combat expert. Either that, or a much more stealthy approach.


The rest of the piece works well enough--some of it seems rushed, which you may want to add some more detail to, but it works as is, as well. Just make sure you research your equipment and such to see if there are any real-world application you can use as a basis before you toss gadgets in there.

--D

Hey, I have to say that I agree with everyone, it's good but it needs a little bit more in there. When you post a scene you need to tell everyone. And hopefully the next part that you post will have a little bit more of a scenery in it. Hopefully you wont hate me for this. Keep writing!

I could have sworn I put the note in somewhere. Ah well, next time I'll post it beneath the post. And I have to say, Buscador! thanks. I have no clue or experience with military operations, Ocelot's smoking because he wants the attention and isn't afraid to be shot at, he's just got too much to prove and too much bravado to be stealthy.

As for the dart and sniper advice, I'll keep that in mind. Thanks. And Teddybear22, I told ya I understood that it needed work, why would I hate ya for criticism?