Young Writers Society

Inspired by the first level in the SOCOM game, hope you enjoy. By the way, please don't hesitate to be brutally honest if it's bad. Thanks.

Monday, November 27th, 2006
09:00 Hours
Trans-Alaska Pipeline, Remote Alaska
There’s this huge pipeline that runs through the remote part of Alaska. The pipeline supplies the only water source for those small station towns in the area. If anything were to happen to the pipe, your chances of surviving in the area is pretty much close to zero, unless your have your own supplies of course.
The pipe in some areas is not visible to the lazy eye if you weren’t paying attention to it. Some may even trip on it and break their leg by just walking past it. You see in some areas the pipe is covered with snow and is barely visible. But in some other areas you can see the entire huge cylinder with its five-foot diameter emerging from the ground.
And that’s were we are now.
Next to the pipeline is a yellow Snowplow machine. To the left of the machine, about five feet, is a white workers cap. About five inches next to that is a body. The body was of a man, lying face down, wearing a yellow worker’s coat, blue jeans and brown boats. Underneath the body was a nice big patch of red blood, being soaked up by the snow and beginning to dry.
Near the body is another man. But this man is alive and walking. He was wearing a white coat, with a pair of black sunglasses and a hat. He was moving away from the pipeline now. Walking pass the dead body, he picked up a black backpack and hopped on the back of a blue painted snowmobile. Sitting in front of him in the driver’s seat was a bearded man wearing a back coat with a hood on it. Then they drove off.
As the two men reached about a kilometer away, the man wearing the sunglasses turned his head and looked back in the distance to where he had been not only two minutes prior.
Back at the pipeline there was a ticking sound. You could hear it make a ‘beep’ noise about once every second. The noise seemed to be coming from the pipeline itself. Looking at the pipe now it did look a little bit different now. It had this new piece of some sort of installment on it. And as a matter of fact the source of the noise was coming from this new addition of the pipeline. On the mysterious object was a digital bar meter. There were numbers displayed on the bar and every second the number was decreasing.
0: 08
0: 07
0: 06
The object was a bomb.
Still traveling and looking from a distance, the man looked intensely when all of a sudden he saw a huge ball of flame erupt. He could still hear its load roar from almost 2 kilometers away. The flames rapidly began to spread the snowplow flip on its side by the huge amount of force being produced by the explosion. The man then turned his head back towards the direction they were traveling, as they continued to move away.
The pipeline had been destroyed.

At the headquarters of the U.S. Navy Seals, four men were sitting in the meeting room, waiting for an announcement for their next mission. After a few moments, the face of a woman was displayed on this huge television monitor in front of them.
‘Good morning men, this is Sarah. We have a new mission for you. This is a recon mission that will require stealth and discretion. We know you can handle it, Seals. Yesterday at approximately nine in the mourning, a bomb detonated at the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in Remote Alaska. The pipeline was destroyed. During that time we have received reports from the Russian Government that former Spetznaz Operatives have come together to form a new terrorist organization. This group of men are buying and transporting weapons from the black market organization, The Zemiy. They have stolen a barge as a vehicle to ship their supplies to wherever their new base is located, most probably in Alaska. They are currently dealing in international waters, off the coast of Alaska. Your mission is easy, you are to intercept their boat and eliminate all the terrorists before destroying the barge. This is the plan: you men will be dropped off about no closer than 10 kilometers from the barge, any closer and we risk the chance of being seen. From there you will swim to barge and begin the procedure. Your objectives are: to secure the barge, disable their communications, gather any Intel to help us learn more about their plans before scuttling the freighter. The Russian Government is supportive of our intent to stop this new terrorist organization. Good luck men.’ Sarah then disappeared from the screen.
And with that, the men stood up from the table and walk out of the room.

The four men were swimming towards the barge underwater at about a hundred feet. The leader, Kahuna, was in front with a sub-map in his hands, following the compass device to the barge. His man: Boomer, Jester and Specter were all behind him. When the device told them that they were at the right spot, the men all ascended up to the surface and began to climb onto the ship.
The Seals were on the far south end of the barge. The whole area was surrounded with huge shipping cargos filled with the weapons the terrorist were planning to use for their plan to take over the world. It was raining heavy. The radio then sprung to life.
‘This is H.Q. there are two men on patrol near the center of the barge, take them out quickly and silently with either your silenced gun or knife. If you make too much noise, you will alarm the others and you will be outnumbered. Then move them to the shadows so no one can see them. After that get Jester and Specter to hold position, while you and Boomer continue on mission.’
‘I can help you with what they are saying sir, I understand Russian.’ Said Boomer.
The two men hide behind one of the cargos near were the two guards were positioned. As they were peaking they could see that they were carrying AK-47’s. These guns could fire thirty shots before a reload. The Seals only had a submachine gun: HSK SD and a silenced pistol: Mark 23SD, which could only fire twenty shots before a reload.
‘Our next mission should finally get the world’s attention.’ Said one of the guards, as Boomer translated to Kahuna.
‘Aleksei seems excited about our next job.’ Said the other guard.
‘I hope we get some decent equipment on this run’
After a few moment on of the guards went off for his routine patrol while the other say stationary. This was the Seals change to divide and concur. As the guard left Kahuna sneaked up behind the stationed guard and stab him with a knife to the throat. An old navy technique used to kill someone silently. He then went on to take his AK-47 and left his HKS SD behind. Boomer than shot the other guard with his Mark 23SD and followed his leaders action by swapping guns.
‘Ok good team.’ Said Sarah. ‘Now get Jester and Specter to drag the body to the shadows so they can’t be seen by other shipmates.’
The two men did their duty.
Kahuna and Boomer then started to leave the barge to enter the main ship dock. They slowly walked up the ramp that connected the two vessels and continued to go on with the mission. As they walked up the ramp they could hear two people talking to each other. It was the captain of the ship and the leader of the new terrorist group. Boomer started to translate.
‘The shipment looks good. The money is already in your account.’ Said the leader of the terrorist group.
‘Yes, I know. I checked.’ replied the captain of the ship.
‘I will need another shipment soon, more weapons and food.’
‘Well, the food is no problem. The weapons are going to be difficult to obtain so quickly. It going to be expensive.’
‘The price is irrelevant, just gather all the supplies and ill contact you soon.’
‘You were able to get all the weapons and ammunition?’ Asked the leader.
‘Yes, they are all there.’
‘If you’re lying, Dmitri, you wont make it off this ship.’ The leader threatened.
‘That’s all the information we need, don’t you reckon Boomer?’
‘Yes sir.’
Then two Seals then sneaked up against the terrorist leader and Kahuna killed him with the knife. Then in less than a second, he riffle-butt the black-market captain unconscious before he could even move an inch to defend himself.
As they were cycling the perimeter they could see that there were two black marketers on the other side of the dock, on the lookout. One of them saw Boomer and had his gun set on focus as he zoomed his view to get a head shot.
‘Got you now you runt.’
Just as he was about to shot, fell to the ground. Kahuna had shot him. Kahuna shot the other one as well.
‘Come Boom, let’s go.’
There were four cabins on the outside dock. Three of them had their doors opened while the other one was closed. As the opened the door they saw four black markers playing cards. Boomer shot them all with his silenced gun. None of then saw that coming.
‘This is H.Q. you need to take their communications out. There are two guards at the control bridge. You know what to do team.’
Kahuna enter the bridge and shot the two guards. He then proceeded to switch off the radio. This meant that the ship had lost communication with the outside world. Nothing could save them now.
The two Seals the descended to the underground level so they could continue the mission. The level had two floors. Upon arrival on the first floor, there was a passageway that leaded to a deck overlook a room of shipments. As they entered, they spotted a Black marketer with an AKS-74. They quickly shot him and collected his gun.
They then continued down to the bottom floor. There they heard a noise. It was two terrorist talking amongst each other. Kahuna shot at the light bulb and they started to yell and ran towards the seals. They rapidly fired shots at the men and they fell to the ground and died instantly.
‘Why did you do that sir? The rest are going to hear us and come this way.’
‘That’s what I want them to do. Quick hide in that cabin.’
‘Oooooooooooooo Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’ yelled a black marketer. Three others were behind him yelling too like monsters.
They got shot down one by one.
‘Ok Boomer, I think that’s …’ One more come out and was ready to fire, but Kahuna shot him right in the head.
‘Ok, now that’s all of them.’
‘Hey sir, I found a logbook with all their deals made. It seems like they are not working alone. It’s in Russian but I’m sure when we get back to H.Q. I can translate it to English.’
‘That’s good Boom. Now lets place scuttle to freighter and place a satchels so we can get off this thing.’
From the distanced Kahuna push the button that set off the two satchels off. A few moments later the boat was up in flames like fireworks. The boat slowly sank in the ocean. The Seals had completed their first mission.

First, let me say that this is a truly ambitious story! And you have taken it on. It is certainly interesting, and with a little tuning up I think it could be fantastic. I have a few things that I did notice and/or which bothered me. Feel free to ignore my suggestions, or you can print them and burn them if you like! =)

At the beginning, and all the way through your story, your syntax is very clipped and rushed. The description is mild and unemotional, and instead of painting a picture, they seem to take us through the scene very quickly. Additionally, very early on you have established a very informal style, which could be appropriate if you had a defined narrator and were using dialogue to humanize him. However, I think that since this is not the case, it might be better to spruce it up a little.

There are a few small grammar errors, but nothing huge that I saw. Mostly just missing subjects and minor problems with sentence structure. You switched tenses a couple of times--I think you will probably want to keep everything in the past tense.

The briefing seems very unrealistic to me. No last name for "Sarah"? No further details? I find that I am having this issue through a lot of this story. It seems very skeletal, and I think it would benefit from some serious fleshing out.

Your settings are a little jumpy and it makes me feel like I am not invested in any of the characters. Maybe initially choose a character to follow and to let the reader relate to. You have such a defined plot, but you also need characters to carry it through, if that makes sense. The introduction of the barge was especially confusing, and I felt like it came out of nowhere. How did they find these terrorists? Who was working on it, etc?

I also thought you had a lot of unnecessary characters, which makes the story feel very jumpy overall. When I read something, I want to find a character to bond with, identify with, instead of jumping all over the place.

Factual/conceptual errors that I saw were minimal, but there were a couple that caught my eye.
-If a dead guy is lying in the snow, his blood isn't going to dry. It's going to mingle with the snow, melt some of it, and freeze.
-The guy who speaks Russian (Boomer?). Navy SEALS are generally very aware of the various talents of their operatives, and I imagine that Boomer wouldn't need to declare that he speaks Russian: he would have been placed on this mission for that express purpose.
-Some of the killing and body-disposal doesn't seem quite right to me. A knife to the throat is efficient, and certainly deadly, but it is also messy and not as silent as you might think. Perhaps not the best way to go on a crowded ship where going undetected is a top priority.
-Body disposal: they should already know how to do this, if they were ordered to dispatch anyone on the boat. The explanation is unnecessary.
-The shooting scene bothered me a little, because I feel as though killing any more than one or two people with a silenced weapon without encountering any resistance is unlikely. Did they not look up after three or four of their buddies dropped dead?
-Lastly, the ending is a little too simplistic I think. Most terrorists don't like to keep a book with their master plans hanging around on deck.

It really wasn't a bad story--this had a strong plotline, and it was interesting!!! Keep working on it!

I started reading this becasue I've played the game and thought it might be interesting. Halfway through I stopped because it turned out to be an exact transcription of the game. Games can get away with a lot more than stories can. Like Shepherd said, Boomer wouldn't need to tell Kahuna he can speak Russian. That's only in the game to let the player know, but is otherwise unrealistic.

Also, the switching guns is more of a game mechanic than something realistic. If AK-47s were going to be a better gun for the mission, I'm sure they would have been equipped with them in the first place. A lot of thought would have gone into the mission and equipment for it. Navy SEALS are pretty much the top of the US military, so they wouldn't have gotten sub-par equipment for any other reason.

There's a lot of talking too. Most of what they get told should have been told to them before the mission, so that they can remain completely silent. In the game it gets told to the player along the way to reduce the learning curve. In reality, everything would have been covered beforehand so they would only need to communicate if things changed from what they'd planned.

I don't have anything against using video games as a basis for a story. It's a good way to practice your writing without having to do any planning. However, it's important to separate the game mechanics from the reality of the situation, or it'll end up reading like a video game transcription, and not a story.

It has been ages since I critiqued anything, so here goes.
RED will be my corrections/suggestions

Monday, November 27th, 2006

09:00 Hours

Trans-Alaska Pipeline, Remote Alaska

There’s this huge pipeline that runs through the remote part of Alaska. The pipeline supplies the only water source for those small station towns in the area. If anything were to happen to the pipe, your chances of surviving in the area would be pretty much close to zero, unless you have your own supplies of course.

The pipe in some areas is not visible to the naked eye if you weren’t paying attention to it. Some may even trip on it and break their leg by just walking past it. In some areas the pipe is covered with snow and is barely visible, (join these sentences I think) but in some other areas you can see the entire huge cylinder with its five-foot diameter emerging from the ground.

And that’s were we are now.

Next to the pipeline is a yellow Snowplow machine. To the left of the machine, about five feet, is a white workers cap. About five inches next to that is a body. The body was of a man, lying face down, wearing a yellow worker’s coat, blue jeans and brown boats. Underneath the body was a nice big patch of red blood, being soaked up by the snow and beginning to dry.
Loved that opening scene. I could totally imagine a camera panning across the snowplow to the body.


Near the body was (you seem to be jumping back and forth between tenses) another man, (again, join) but this man is alive and walking. He was wearing a white coat, with a pair of black sunglasses and a hat. He was moving away from the pipeline now. Walking past the dead body, he picked up a black backpack and hopped on the back of a blue painted snowmobile. Sitting in front of him in the driver’s seat was a bearded man wearing a back coat with a hood on it. Then they drove off.

As the two men reached about a kilometer away, the man wearing the sunglasses turned his head and looked back in the distance to where he had been not only two minutes prior. This little passage needs to be refined just a little, I sort of got confused by it.

Back at the pipeline there was a ticking sound. You could hear it make a ‘beep’ noise about once every second. The noise seemed to be coming from the pipeline itself. Looking at the pipe now it did look a little bit different now. It had this new piece of some sort of installment on it. And as a matter of fact the source of the noise was coming from this new addition of the pipeline. On the mysterious object was a digital bar meter. There were numbers displayed on the bar and every second the number was decreasing.

0: 08

0: 07

0: 06

The object was a bomb.

Still traveling and looking from a distance, the man looked intensely when all of a sudden he saw a huge ball of flame erupt. He could still hear its load roar from almost 2 kilometers away. The flames rapidly began to spread and the snowplow flip on its side by the huge amount of force being produced by the explosion. The man then turned his head back towards the direction they were traveling, as they continued to move away.

The pipeline had been destroyed.

At the headquarters of the U.S. Navy Seals, four men were sitting in the meeting room, waiting for an announcement for their next mission. After a few moments, the face of a woman was displayed on this huge television monitor in front of them.

‘Good morning men, this is Sarah. We have a new mission for you. This is a recon mission that will require stealth and discretion. We know you can handle it, Seals. Yesterday at approximately nine in the mourning, a bomb detonated at the Trans-Alaska Pipeline in Remote Alaska. The pipeline was destroyed. During that time we have received reports from the Russian Government that former Spetznaz Operatives have come together to form a new terrorist organization. This group of men are buying and transporting weapons from the black market organization, The Zemiy. They have stolen a barge as a vehicle to ship their supplies to wherever their new base is located, most probably in Alaska. They are currently dealing in international waters, off the coast of Alaska. Your mission is easy, you are to intercept their boat and eliminate all the terrorists before destroying the barge. This is the plan: you men will be dropped off about no closer than 10 kilometers from the barge, any closer and we risk the chance of being seen. From there you will swim to barge and begin the procedure. Your objectives are: to secure the barge, disable their communications, gather any Intel to help us learn more about their plans before scuttling the freighter. The Russian Government is supportive of our intent to stop this new terrorist organization. Good luck men.’ Sarah then disappeared from the screen.
I liked it, but avoid these huge walls of text. I've written quite a few short military based stories and it is easy to turn briefings into huge monologues. Try throwing in questions from the team, papers being thrown to them etc.
And with that, the men stood up from the table and walk out of the room.

The four men were swimming towards the barge underwater at about a hundred feet. Navy SEALs can teleport now? I think you should make an effort to either fill in this gap, or plant another time stamp on it like at the very beginning. The leader, Kahuna, was in front with a sub-map in his hands, following the compass device to the barge. His man: Boomer, Jester and Specter were all behind him. When the device told them that they were at the right spot, the men all ascended up to the surface and began to climb onto the ship.

The Seals were on the far south end of the barge. The whole area was surrounded with huge shipping cargos filled with the weapons the terrorist were planning to use for their plan to take over the world. It was raining heavy. The radio then sprung to life. Take over the world? This should be changed, give the terrorists a more serious and serious aim. Who takes over the world these days? My favorite is the Russians trying to reestablish the glory of the former USSR.

‘This is H.Q. there are two men on patrol near the center of the barge, take them out quickly and silently with either your silenced gun or knife. If you make too much noise, you will alarm the others and you will be outnumbered. Then move them to the shadows so no one can see them. After that get Jester and Specter to hold position, while you and Boomer continue on mission.’ Text wall. Who said this by the way.

‘I can help you with what they are saying sir, I understand Russian,' saidBoomer.

The two men hide behind one of the cargos near were the two guards were positioned. As they were peeking they could see that they were carrying AK-47’s. These guns could fire thirty shots before a reload. The Seals only had a submachine gun: HSK SD and a silenced pistol: Mark 23SD, which could only fire twenty shots before a reload.

‘Our next mission should finally get the world’s attention.’ Said one of the guards, as Boomer translated to Kahuna.

‘Aleksei seems excited about our next job.’ Said the other guard.
Okay, just some simple grammar things here. When you finish speech with a "said Someone." you should break the text with a comma. eg; "Take the tango now," said Rick.
Get it?

‘I hope we get some decent equipment on this run’
Here is where the fullstop should be, after run.

After a few moment on of the guards went off for his routine patrol while the other say stationary. This was the Seals change to divide and concur. As the guard left Kahuna sneaked up behind the stationed guard and stab him with a knife to the throat. An old navy technique used to kill someone silently. Careful here, Navy Operators generally slice across the jugular vein in the neck, not allowing for any screaming, not stabbing. He then went on to take his AK-47 and left his HKS SD behind. Boomer than shot the other guard with his Mark 23SD and followed his leaders action by swapping guns. Stealth operation? He just ditched a US weapon that was silenced for a Russian AK-47? This means two things; as soon as he shoots, everyone will know they're there and also if the Russians find the HKS, they will know the infiltrators were American.

‘Ok good team.’ Said Sarah. ‘Now get Jester and Specter to drag the body to the shadows so they can’t be seen by other shipmates.’

The two men did their duty.

Kahuna and Boomer then started to leave the barge to enter the main ship dock. They slowly walked up the ramp that connected the two vessels and continued to go on with the mission. As they walked up the ramp they could hear two people talking to each other. It was the captain of the ship and the leader of the new terrorist group. Boomer started to translate.

‘The shipment looks good. The money is already in your account.’ Said the leader of the terrorist group.

‘Yes, I know. I checked.’ replied the captain of the ship.

‘I will need another shipment soon, more weapons and food.’

‘Well, the food is no problem. The weapons are going to be difficult to obtain so quickly. It going to be expensive.’

‘The price is irrelevant, just gather all the supplies and ill contact you soon.’

‘You were able to get all the weapons and ammunition?’ Asked the leader.

‘Yes, they are all there.’

‘If you’re lying, Dmitri, you wont make it off this ship.’ The leader threatened.

‘That’s all the information we need, don’t you reckon Boomer?’

‘Yes sir.’

Then two Seals then sneaked up against the terrorist leader and Kahuna killed him with the knife. Then in less than a second, he riffle-butt the black-market captain unconscious before he could even move an inch to defend himself. I think you should have them take in the LEADER of the terrorist ring alive, don't you?

As they were cycling the perimeter they could see that there were two black marketers on the other side of the dock, on the lookout. One of them saw Boomer and had his gun set on focus as he zoomed his view to get a head shot.

‘Got you now you runt.’

Just as he was about to shot, fell to the ground. Kahuna had shot him. Kahuna shot the other one as well. Huh?

‘Come Boom, let’s go.’

There were four cabins on the outside dock. Three of them had their doors opened while the other one was closed. As the opened the door they saw four black markers playing cards. Boomer shot them all with his silenced gun. None of then saw that coming.

‘This is H.Q. you need to take their communications out. There are two guards at the control bridge. You know what to do team.’

Kahuna enter the bridge and shot the two guards. He then proceeded to switch off the radio. This meant that the ship had lost communication with the outside world. Nothing could save them now.

The two Seals the descended to the underground level so they could continue the mission. The level had two floors. Upon arrival on the first floor, there was a passageway that leaded to a deck overlook a room of shipments. As they entered, they spotted a Black marketer with an AKS-74. They quickly shot him and collected his gun.

They then continued down to the bottom floor. There they heard a noise. It was two terrorist talking amongst each other. Kahuna shot at the light bulb and they started to yell and ran towards the seals. They rapidly fired shots at the men and they fell to the ground and died instantly.

‘Why did you do that sir? The rest are going to hear us and come this way.’

‘That’s what I want them to do. Quick hide in that cabin.’

‘Oooooooooooooo Raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa’ yelled a black marketer. Three others were behind him yelling too like monsters. Please don't do this. Hoo-ah is a US Marines slang word for compliance.

They got shot down one by one.

‘Ok Boomer, I think that’s …’ One more come out and was ready to fire, but Kahuna shot him right in the head.

‘Ok, now that’s all of them.’

‘Hey sir, I found a logbook with all their deals made. It seems like they are not working alone. It’s in Russian but I’m sure when we get back to H.Q. I can translate it to English.’ Nice find, but where was it?

‘That’s good Boom. Now lets place scuttle to freighter and place a satchels so we can get off this thing.’

From the distanced Kahuna push the button that set off the two satchels off. A few moments later the boat was up in flames like fireworks. The boat slowly sank in the ocean. The Seals had completed their first mission.

I enjoyed this to be hones. You certainly have potential, especially in fanfic. I'd recommend just working on some simple spelling and grammar errors within the writing, as well as slipping into different tenses. I don't know how much you've written prior to this but you can only get better with practice! I'm no pro, but I hope my insight has helped at least somewhat. PM me when you write some more, as I love military writing. Cheers,
Roach.

Howdy! I'm Jessica and I'm reviewing Death At Sea today. : )

First of all, I think that it's pretty good and you're a wonderful writer yourself. Though, I did have a few comments.

> First, Try to show not tell.
> Characters are a bit flat. Really try and show us who they are and their personalities.

This is quite short, my review, but I think the reviewers before me covered it all so I would take their advice, give the story a little editing, and it will be magnificent!

- Jessica

I couldn't really finish it, with that said i can't really give good criticism on the story. The whole thing all and all is a little bit flat. It didn't feel personal and you could've done more to make it your own. It's not wise to use pre existing characters unless you can characterize them in a way the game couldn't. You painted a good picture, in fact a pretty damn good picture. For what i did read, i'd have to say writing war stories is most definitely your nich. Feel your story more than you write your story.