In the Contract

It was already too late. The helicopter was spinning and descending, flames engulfed the side where the rocket hit.

Inside, two soldiers were dead instantly from the impact. Their bodies lay on top of other soldiers still buckled into their chairs, desperately trying to free themselves before we hit the ground.

I figured there was no use.

Men were yelling orders that meant nothing, directed at no one. The captains were trying to level out the aircraft and the red light inside the helicopter proved the vanity of it all.

500 meters from ground.

Among the chaos, a soldier managed to free himself from his death harness and through the fire and flames he jumped, meeting the unforgiving blades of the helicopter.

A soldier to my right was praying with a rosary and to my left, a man whose neck was sliced by the explosion's shrapnel. Directly across from me was our youngest soldier. He was staring back at me. His eyes were calm, ready for death. Not a tear nor fear betrayed his gaze. He just sat, waiting.


// Sorry, I can't continue. It's quite a touchy topic. I'm sure most of you know where I conjured up the idea. I just wanted to test my writing capability to see whether or not I can create scenes, images. Once again, I'm sorry if this is too much. I shouldn't even be pressing submit. Comment none-the-less. Did you feel it?//

bad writing

As one reader; my opinion is that you inappropriately interject yourself into the scene when I don't think you mean to.


I figured there was no use.


A soldier to my right



A soldier to my right was praying with a rosary and to my left, a man whose neck was sliced by the explosion's shrapnel. Directly across from me was our youngest soldier. He was staring back at me.



__________________________________________________________________________________________________

What exactly are you in the writing? The last survivor among the crew to tell the tale?
If you want to inject yourself with a lot of I's and me's

- you probably could have made this is into some sort of dream sequence from the narrarator's perspective if you wanted to make it such. Or into some sort of fictional tale as a witness from the ground if you want to describe seeing the death of soldiers in flight.

The thing is you need a lot of setup before going into this particular scene.

In my opinion what you wrote is pretty bad. I don't like it at all.

You wrote good previously but this is something you need to scrap and re-work entirely.

Thumbs down, all the way down on this one A2.

Yeah, how dare you use "I" and "me" when writing in first person POV? What could you have been thinking? Or is that, what could "I" have been thinking?

It's not bad, but a bit passive. two soldiers were dead - two soldiers had been killed
was praying with a rosary - ran rosary beads through his fingers while his mouth worked wordlessly and tears ran from his eyes.

Your narrator will be focused sharply, taking note of details. How about smells, explosive vapors, blood, feces and urine? All the details should be quick, transitory and probably gruesome. And sounds, the sputtering of a dying engine, the crackle of flames? Your narrator and the young soldier have accepted their inevitable fate, which reflects the title. The best part, in my opinion, is the title.

So, the answer is no, I didn't feel it. It might hurt, but you need to get deeper into the scene and emotions.

Take care,

JohnB

Much appreciated.

I'd rather receive direct honesty than sugar coated coffee crisps.

Thanks guys. Either I don't have story-telling capability or I should have spent more time on it.

I'll try a bit harder next time.

I think you should spend more time on it and expand it a bit, right now it reads like a really short summary of something that could be a good story.

I think this is damn good writing. Who cares about correct grammer.?/)(

Let it flow dude let it flow - don't listen to these others.

WolfLarsen said:

I think this is damn good writing. Who cares about correct [-]grammer[/-] grammar.?[-]/)([/-]

Let it flow, dude, let it flow - don't listen to the[-]se[/-] others.

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ftfy

I enjoyed it, though as spotted by others, some grammar mistakes which can be easily corrected when you vett through again.

So, one question, what are you going to do with this starting action story? Are we expecting a complete novel at the end of the day?

I hope so!:lol:

This little war story grabbed my attention. I felt like I was there.

There's a zillion people who know correct grammatical structure, but they still don't know how to write an interesting story.

This guy wrote an interesting story. Grammar doesn't matter if you grab the reader's attention.

I once wrote a 70,000 word run on sentence called The Exclamation Point where whole pages didn't have any punctuation. Yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Forget about grammar. Concentrate on the story. Make it alive! And A2R succeeded in making the page come alive.

But if you do decide to write a book on used car repair then you should use correct grammar. On the other hand, correct grammar in creative works is meaningless.

The obsession with correct grammar is something that people inherited from "grammar" school where they were brainwashed into believing that a story is bad if it doesn't have correct grammar. Actually, an anal obsession with correct grammar can kill creativity, and creativity is what it's all about!

(My comments are not directed at anyone personally.)

WolfLarsen said:

This little war story grabbed my attention. I felt like I was there.

There's a zillion people who know correct grammatical structure, but they still don't know how to write an interesting story.

This guy wrote an interesting story. Grammar doesn't matter if you grab the reader's attention.

I once wrote a 70,000 word run on sentence called The Exclamation Point where whole pages didn't have any punctuation.

Yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!

Forget about grammar. Concentrate on the story. Make it alive! And A2R succeeded in making the page come alive.

But if you do decide to write a book on used car repair then you should use correct grammar. On the other hand, correct grammar in creative works is meaningless.

The obsession with correct grammar is something that people inherited from "grammar" school where they were brainwashed into believing that a story is bad if it doesn't have correct grammar. Actually, an anal obsession with correct grammar can kill creativity, and creativity is what it's all about!

(My comments are not directed at anyone personally.)

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I respect where you're coming from, totally. Creativity is a beautiful and amazing thing. Thus please don't take offence, as none is intended, but I couldn't disagree more with the post you just wrote.

Without structure, without coherence, a beautifully creative idea is like a wet fart in an elevator on a humid day. It stifles in a close environment, oppresses, and makes people want to run away in disgust as soon as possible.

I didn't inherit a desire to be grammatically correct from grammar school, and it was here that I was taught to appreciate different styles to writing, poetry, prose and such. But I also learnt that if one doesn't understand and appropriately follow the structure a civilisation has created in order to communicate effectively with each other, then all one is doing is kidding one's self that we're better than others, that we don't need to comply with those rules for understanding communications laid down by our ancestors and instigated by our fellows. Should I thus barge past people with elbows and feet on the crowded street, because that's a possibly more effective way of making my own personal journey - to hell with others and their conventions, my own passage is of more importance in reaching my destination?

Bad grammar can decimate beautiful literary creations. It can cause ideas to be conveyed in an improper fashion, be clumsy and confusing for the reader, create problems in understanding and ultimately just flaw an otherwise sound piece.

There are examples where purposefully flawed grammatical structure - often carefully and painstakingly written - sometimes in the case of free-flow narrative or phonetic-style prose, can serve to heighten the narrative. Iain M Banks' Feersum Endjinn is one such book I can think of that features a large amount of phonetic first-person narrative that's executed in a near flawless manner. Trainspotting similarly has coloquial, raw, language. But there is nothing clumsy about this, or lazy about the grammar of their authors. Its carefully crafted stuff, indeed.

You're correct: there are million people who know grammatical structure, but who can't tell a story. Those people shouldn't bother telling a story I think, or possibly not for reasons other than personal fun/goals. No more than those who are too lazy to write properly, coherently, when they need to should do so.

I'm about done with excuses for poorly written copy out there, especially in an age where everyone's an 'author'. You know what, these people want my money for a book, or my time invested in reading it - write a good story, and punctuate/spell/edit properly; unless it's part of the writing style, in which case make sure you have the sufficient levels of skill needed to pull such an implementation off.

Sticking piss-poor quality prose out there under the guise of good story telling does no one any favours; to do such a thing is really just lazy, and I consider an insult to the reader. Good grammar doesn't weaken the creative process. It enhances it.

(@ A2R - this post is not aimed at you at all, nor is it meant as a critical reflection of your story - posting a story on a forum and asking for feedback and suchlike is completely different to publishing it properly/conventionally. Your story is alive, and as said by Wolf does certainly grab you. I think it could benefit from tidying up grammatically in following drafts. My post is more about the 'big picture' as I see it as regards correct editorial procedure in writing.)

WolfLarsen said:

I once wrote a 70,000 word run on sentence called The Exclamation Point where whole pages didn't have any punctuation. Yippeeeeeeeeeeee!!

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The fact that you did it doesn't prove that it was a good idea.

And having read a few samples of your writing, I'm tempted to add that the fact that you did it proves it wasn't a good idea.

...on second thought, I apologise; that was unnecessarily harsh, especially in a thread that's not about your (Wolf Larsen's) writing. However, I would strongly suggest that anyone reading Wolf's advice would take a look at his own writing and ask themselves if that's how they want to write.

canuck said:

I'm about done with excuses for poorly written copy out there, especially in an age where everyone's an 'author'. You know what, these people want my money for a book, or my time invested in reading it - write a good story, and punctuate/spell/edit properly; unless it's part of the writing style, in which case make sure you have the sufficient levels of skill needed to pull such an implementation off.

Click to expand...

I could not agree more.