Young Writers Society

Berlin, Germany, June 5, 13:42

Its as if the whole world has gone crazy. The Iron Curtain still hangs over Eastern Europe, with the Soviets and the Western allies continuing to resist each other with the build up of military arms. I don't see it as a good thing, but neither is it bad. Why you may ask? Its all good business. Luckily for me and my profession, business is booming. I prefer not to give my real name away, but in the meantime, you can call me Grim. My profession involves only one thing; and that is killing those I am hired to kill.

Looking out the window of a hotel room, I wait for my prey. According to my clients information, the target that I am supposed to eliminate is an Intelligence agent from the West. This will have been my third agent killed since I was contracted by the Soviets two weeks ago. I would hardly say that it was a fair fight, but I could care less, especially when I am the one that has my target in the middle of my crosshairs. Three minutes pass and there he is. But he isn't alone. There is another agent right behind him. He must be using my target as bait in order to find out where I am. Oh well, only one way to know for sure. I load a single bullet into the rifle with ease. I train my eyes on the agent, take two deep breathes, and then finally...BANG! One shot to the head is all it took. I noticed immediately that the other agent was on to me, and hid behind a parked car. He figured that I was going to kill him next. While it was possible for me to do so, I had no need to. My rule is that I only kill those that I am hired to kill. However, if anyone does present a threat to me, or get in my way...lets just say that there are worse things than death.

Berlin, Germany, June 5, 18:30

Later that evening I was enjoying my supper and having some fine wine. Unfortunately it was interrupted when my one of my clients lap dogs came to remind me of what is in store for me on my next job. To no surprise this next target was another Intelligence agent from the West. What was surprising however was that this agent has been very successful at infiltrating almost every secure location imaginable. If that didn't sound far fetched, then try this; this agent has supposedly been able to dodge bullets. To top it all off, this agent was a woman, one of the best. When I was told that she was given orders to eliminate me, I couldn't help but smile. As if anyone could take me out. Me, Grim, the deadliest sniper for hire in the East. I could hardly wait.

Ooh, interesting!

This is really short, so I don't exactly have much to say for you; it's an interesting start with promising characters. The cold war was always an interesting period for me to learn about, and I'm surprised that there isn't more popular fiction about it. I admire that you took the Soviet perspective instead. Your writing is fast-paced and you have a good nod for how to tell a story.

I'm confused, though, about the time-stamps - is this supposed to indicate that this is the main character/narrator's diary that we're reading? If it is, it doesn't read like a diary, and you would want to make some specific mention of that. If it isn't, I would try to incorporate the days of the week into the narrative more so that it doesn't feel so blatant.

I will say, though, that what kept me reading was the premise; what you have to the story itself isn't very interesting. There's hardly any description, and the hook doesn't exactly hook me in. You could go on for pages and pages about this assignment of your MC, but you do it in a much shorter space than that, and it just feels empty because of it. What does the city look like? What does his victim look like? Why does he need to be killed?

The beginning of your story is your time to entrap readers in the story that you're going to tell. Even if it's amazing three pages in, no reader is probably going to make it past if the intro is boring. I think you've picked a good event, but you just have to embellish the details a bit more.

That's all I really have to say; hope this helps, and feel free to drop me a note if you have any questions!

~ Elinor

It sounds sick, I know, but for whatever reason this story made me smile. I wasn't sure if this was the goal, but I liked at the end how two people were hired to kill each other. I liked the simplicity of this story. I hope you decide to go further with this, because I wanna know what happens if they meet!

I like!
Diary entries are interesting, and you've chosen a rich and mysterious period of history to choose from. This is very promising, and interesting to see into the mind of a trained killer. The ending is also good, leaving a cliffhanger, but I would throw in some more descriptions to really get me into the story. I hope you continue this! Even though it is simple, it is rich, as you know "less is more", and you just demonstrated that.