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The Brotherhood, Prologue



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Sat Dec 24, 2011 6:30 pm
OmarEhab says...



Hey guys, this is my first post so I am quite nervous. Of course you know what to do. Thanks!


The assassin set up his new rifle to the test.

It was a Mosin Nagant M1891/30 PU

The rifle a sleek wooden design. It was very light - even for a child it would be. Although it was made back in the 1940’s it was one of the most effective rifles. It was with this rifle that the Russian hero, Vasily Zaitsev, killed around 400 German soldiers in World War Two.

His rifle was specially modified; it was broken down into its basic components and oiled to make a perfect release time. The scope was the most modern scope in the world used by the SAS, and the Navy SEALS.

The best part of the gun?

Just remove three screws and he could break it down and simply put it in a sports bag undetected. As an assassin, that was a main part his job.

World War Three was about to break out.

And he was going to start it.

He set up the rifle across a similar building vaguely shaped like the targeted one. Out of the corner of his eyes he saw a car - the same Rolls Royce model the target would us - appear. Swiftly, he set up the cross hairs at the door. Slowly, he adjusted the elevation of the cross-hairs and waited...

A filthy figure appeared, taking place in this simple model.

Slowly he walked down the red carpet flanked by huge body guards.

He waited...

Then just before his head met the middle of the cross-hairs, he released the trigger. At that moment he felt like the ruler. To take a life with a simple touch. A heart surgeon you might say, but this time he was there to take a life, not to save it.

The bullet sped across the fifty meter distance burying itself above the cervical curve severing the spine. The man was dead before he hit the ground.

The young assassin rose, smiling coldly as if he merely watched a cartoon taking place.

‘Bravo. Bravo, your skills have, indeed, sharpened as they say.’

He turned around to face the French man.

The speaker was strongly built like a wrestler and had cold, black, beetle eyes. On his head was a tattoo shaped like a Cobra underneath the hair. It was they who hired him. Cobra.

That name sent chills down the spines of Presidents. The FBI, SAS, and MI6 had trouble catching those guys. They were the exact meaning of professional. Cobra. Corruption. Oblivion. Rage. That was what they were all about. Destruction.

‘I told you the job would be done at the festival!’ The assassin whispered furiously. ‘Now get out of my hair!’

Suddenly, the French man was grabbing him by the hair brandishing a Commando knife. Slowly like a butcher slitting the throat of an animal, he cut off a lock of hair. ‘Do not anger moi. You know quite well what I - what we are capable of.’ He chastised him.

He let go of his hair and dropped a metal suitcase at his feet. ‘This has your payment - $500,000 in cash as you asked. You do a mistake and I will make sure that you will be wiped off from the face of the planet. That’s after we torture you, of course.’

He laughed coldly and left.

The stunned assassin didn’t touch the suitcase. He promised he would open it right after he killed the target.

Then he’d kill his employers.

Miles away, a woman was watching him snap up the suitcase and leave. ‘He’s perfect, skillful yet disposable. Just the way I like them.’

Christopher Robin.

A name that even the heads of Cobra feared. However the name was insignificant today.

Two miles away from the White House, they were just having their meeting.

The greatest criminals in the whole world, the kind of criminals that plan and never get caught, first launched Cobra. It first started for it’s own purposes. Now it works like a mercenary group. Today all twelve of the founders were there as usual but there was another man; a customer.

At the head of the table sat a man named Zorn the leader of Cobra.

‘Welcome back my family, tonight we have a special guest who offered eighty million dollars for a small task that we yet need to know.’ He informed them.

All of them looked towards a small beady-eyed man. ‘My name is –’
‘We need not to know your name, all must be secret.’ Every eye looked carefully at the leader.

He was a tall, broad man. Once he thought of becoming a wrestler but he was quickly drawn to the world of criminals instead. His white skin was unblemished and his nails were cut and manicured. Underneath the military cut was a tattoo of a striking Cobra. All of the winced when they met his eyes; he simply radiated power and fear.

‘Well, yes, the task is very simple, I need you to start World War Three.’ He muttered.

This small mutter was met by silence.

A woman leaned forward ‘Simple? You are a very modest man.’

Suddenly the man smiled ‘I provide the task, you provide the means, I was told that you were the very best. Don’t let me doubt that.’

She grimaced and forced a smile ‘Of course, we shall do what we can, is there any other simple requests?’

‘Now that you mention it, yes,’ the man leant back ‘The United States of America, Russia, The United Kingdom must fall.’

A man stood up abruptly and began to yell ‘Are you barking mad, lad? You’re talking about very powerful nations here, this is impossible!’

Zorn slowly stood up, ‘Sit down Cuthbert and restrain yourself.’ Cuthbert grabbed his chair furiously and slammed himself down. The leader took a deep breath ‘We already had a plan going that would give us power, it would certainly assist your plan in a way.’

He remembered the sniper and the cheap price he will pay for the kill. Of course the sniper never knew the after-effects. He will never know. Zorn will make sure he won't live that long.

The customer brought up a briefcase and passed it to Zorn ‘Since you will go through so much trouble let’s make it a hundred million. Fifty now, and fifty when the job is done.’

He first swiped the briefcase with a bomb and a metal detector taking no chances. When nothing came up on the detector he opened to see lots of hundred bills neatly placed within it. Immediately he snapped the briefcase close and nodded towards the door and someone showed the man out.

The same man who retorted before began to protest once more. ‘This is impossible! We can’t start a war.’

All around the table, people nodded.

‘Not just any war, he’s talking about a major one, World War Three which must be started by something big.’

Zorn smiled coldly.

‘Of course Cobra can’t start a war…’

‘However a president can…’
  





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Sat Dec 24, 2011 7:08 pm
Blues says...



Jackster, twin!

I'm so glad you're part of YWS :) I'm here to shred your work.

What Went Well
This has come such a long way. I'm so... proud? XD I dunno how to describe it. I'm really pleased for you! I particularly loved the cliff hanger as well. That was a good one.

One thing I also particularly liked is that it feels... like a movie. But I actually think it's a good thing for this because it's really really dramatic! For a prologue, that's what makes it brilliant. I love dramatic prologues!

Zorn. Brilliant name choice <3

Compared to the first draft, I love this a lot because it some significance to the plot and isn't just Chris having a job. It's also really REALLY exciting. Your skills have improved :D

Even Better If
Every time I see your work Jack, this bit gets smaller.

First: In YWS, it doesn't do all the italics for you. So when you post, highlight an italic word and press the 'I' under the subject.

Second: Paragraphing was a bit choppy in places.I know you wanted to add dramatic affect but it sometimes is excessive. When you say a filthy figure stepped out for example, the next line isn't on something different. So just take a look and sort them out :)

Thirdly: When you list the countries, change Russia into the 'Russian Federation' if you want it to be formal.

Finally: When he gets the money, make him check it and show it to the light to check if it's fake or not. Remember, it could be fake.

Overall

This is incredible Jack, how much you've improved. Kinda like me reading The Last Remnant (my first novel) on Chapter one to my current rewriting XDD

Keep Writing!

-Ahmad
  





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Sat Dec 24, 2011 10:43 pm
Rosendorn says...



Hello.

Before I begin, I’d like to suggest you proofread this more closely, preferably after you’ve been away from this for awhile. You used “us” instead of “use”, have a few missing commas and words, after “Rolls Royce” and your first line reads like it’s missing a word. A pretty quick proofreading after you’ve gotten away from the story can fix that.

Regardless of whether or not a word is missing, I’d suggest looking over your first line. One, it gives us no reason to keep reading, which is key for an opening line, and two, it is so vague I can’t even begin to imagine what’s involved. Both of these cripple your whole opening, especially since you take six paragraphs to get to the point. Most readers won’t be that knowledgeable about guns to bother sitting through that much description about it, especially with zero information on “why should I care?” The gun description also felt off to me, which made it hard to sit through.

"Why should I care" is a key question when you're writing, and should be the driving force behind everything you write. You cannot make readers care about any given situation; you can only show them a situation and hope you've given them enough detail to care about it. It also means you cut any extra detail that doesn't make readers interested, or show something else incredibly important about the setting. Right now, it's really hard to care with your vague descriptions on everything but the gun (and even then).

The vagueness is mostly caused by a lack of sensory description in the work. Only the gun is described in any detail, and even then the detail isn’t much more than a handful of visual clues. Add in other senses just to richen this and get us in your MC’s skin. While this is third person, you can still give us an idea of his surroundings and his mental state. The descriptions also have a good possibility of being interesting, which would help carry your story.

I’d also restructure your opening. Right now, you’re relying heavily on one-sentence paragraphs. While these are good for the odd piece of emphasis, they get dull and repetitive quickly. By constantly being told “this is important”, nothing becomes important. You also lose out on the opportunity to actually flesh out the situation through longer paragraphs, which is where a lot of the meat in your story comes from. It’s key not to go too long, however not long enough often results in the repetitive, choppy style you have now.

There’s also a general stiltedness to your dialogue and character interactions. They’re reading as one-dimensional characters who are meant to be pure evil, whose only purpose is to spill details on the plot in a way that reads like notes. Human interactions aren’t perfect, and humans tend not to be one-dimensional beings. Flesh out the characters so they’re more than sinister smiles and evil laughs and have some grey morals, or even white ones. Don’t settle for painting the world black.

There’s also the economic and cultural repercussions of war. When the Iraq war began, I remember how hesitant most world powers were in actually declaring war. Everybody called it a possible WWIII and that seemed to make everybody adverse to it actually happening.

Also, wars are not triggered by one or two events, like you implied in your beginning (in fact, I almost stopped reading right at the beginning because of how much that was impossible to happen). They are triggered by multiple events happening, and countries are not that trigger happy at starting a war. The Cold War dragged on for years because neither side wanted to pull the trigger first. The US wasn’t part of WWII at the beginning, and that’s what prevented it from becoming a World War.

Even when you consider that it takes the President to declare war, you still have to consider how hesitant nations are to join in on a bloodbath.

Overall, please do more research on this. A lot more. Right now, it’s reading like Hollywood Politics where wars are easily started because they’re dramatic and that makes a good plot. There’s also the nagging comments about your use of guns, which I didn’t go into detail about because I’m not that knowledgeable on the topic (but all I had was a lot of Mythbusters episodes under my belt so I had a general idea of how guns behaved to feel it wasn’t right). It also reads, at first, like one event can start a whole war. If you restructure this prologue so we get a bit more causes for events before the actual events, it’ll not only read as more realistic (like, knowing that snipe is one of many to actually get the job done) but it will connect the two halves. Right now, the line “Christopher Robin” seems to split the prologue right down the middle; I don’t see a connection between the events in the beginning and the end.

There’s also the matter of the really flat characters. Even if they are just small parts right now, the guys here are part of Cobra, which contains a lot of your main antagonists. Antagonists, to be well fleshed-out (and, in general, human), need more than “I am evil hear my laugh” as a characterization point. Spend some time in each of their heads to see how they think, and, more importantly, why they think that way. They “why” gives you the motivation, which is a key factor in any story.

Right now, I don’t see that motivation, which leaves me, as a reader, wondering why the story is even taking place. If you managed to make the story interesting at the start, giving me a reason to read, then continue making character who seem to have a hidden agenda for world domination throughout the chapter, you’d have something pretty good here.

Right now, it’s pretty rough. But there is room to polish. Just do some research into wars, politics, guns and psychology to start off.

PM me if you have any questions.

~Rosey
A writer is a world trapped in a person— Victor Hugo

Ink is blood. Paper is bandages. The wounded press books to their heart to know they're not alone.
  





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Sun Dec 25, 2011 3:02 am
Kale says...



I noticed a couple of oddities with regards to your firearm descriptions, so I'll be focusing on those.

It was a Mosin Nagant M1891/30 PU

The first time I saw the model number, I did a double take and wondered where the 18 came from, because I hadn't seen the model number written that way before, and it took a while to realize, "Oh, right. Model year."

It's usually written M91/30.

The second issue with this description is the scope. You specify it here as PU, yet later, you say the rifle was fitted with "the most modern scope in the world used by the SAS, and the Navy SEALS." These two descriptions don't match up at all considering the PU scope was originally mounted to the M91/30, which makes it a fairly old design.

It was very light - even for a child it would be.

Most rifles are light as a general principle. Only in recent years have rifles been able to reach the 5 lb (~2.3 kg) range, which marks them as ultralight. Most rifles of comparable size weigh in anywhere from 7-10 lbs (3.2-4.5 kg), with the M91/30 weighing in at 8.8 lbs (4 kg). The rifle I learned to shoot with (Remington M722) when I was five or six weighed 7.7 lbs (3.5 kg), and the one I hunt with (Ruger 77/44) weighs in at 7.6 lbs (3.4 kg) with a scope attached, so commenting on the M91/30 as being very light is not quite accurate.

Although it was made back in the 1940’s it was one of the most effective rifles.

I'm not so sure about that. Mosin Nagants were mass-produced during Russia's WWII efforts, so the quality of any given Mosin is unpredictable. Some of them shoot beautifully, and some of them couldn't be consistent for diddly squat because the boring of their barrels is of not-great quality.

Mosins are most known for their cheapness (due to the massive numbers of them that were produced), durability, and being covered in an unholy concoction called cosmoline (which did a great job of preserving the rifles, but is an absolute pain to clean off completely). Their effectiveness in combat pretty much was the result of how many of them there were, and how easily they were used. Not that either is a bad thing, but it doesn't make for the best reputation as a sniper rifle.

The bullet sped across the fifty meter distance burying itself above the cervical curve severing the spine.

First off, fifty meters is point-blank for a rifle. If Mr. Assassin here hadn't made the shot, either he was blind, or the bore of his Mosin was not as good as it should have been and threw the shot WAY off. For anyone with experience shooting rifles to miss a shot at that close a range is just not plausible. To give you an idea of ranges, if you can nail a moving target 300 meters away in the woods while out hunting, you're a good shot. If you miss at 100 meters, you suck.

There's also the matter of how close fifty meters is to the target. A sniper is only successful as a sniper if he can get away to snipe another day, and being that close to your target is not at all conducive for making a quick and reliable getaway. Shots tend to be loud, even with silencers attached.

Secondly, bullets do not sever spines or bones. Bullets shatter upon impacting hard things, like bones, and tend to shatter said bones, even as they cause organs to implode due to rapid expansion of the superheated gases around the bullet. Even jacketed bullets fragment upon impact, in addition to shattering/otherwise fracturing/breaking whatever bones they hit along the way. Very messy business, and not at all as clean as a simple severing.

I'd suggest researching things a bit more carefully in the future. A lot of information is easily available on the internet, and there's also a number of books devoted to the most obscure tidbits of information (such as how much a particular model of rifle weighs).
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Sun Dec 25, 2011 8:05 am
OmarEhab says...



Thanks a lot for the review guys I am editing my prologue right now!
"From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring;
Renewed shall be blade that was broken,
The crownless again shall be king.”
  








You are going to love some of your characters because they are you, or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some characters for the same reason.
— Anne Lamott