Assination Chapter 1 (incomplete)

It is a cold Friday morning exactly one week from graduation at Blankton high school. Chemical sciences is my first class of the day, I have been waiting all semester for this one day, it is the day when I could, potentially, learn how to make a metal-burning acid. My teacher said that she would teach me, but only if I obtained an 'A' grade. “Oh no” I said as I walked through the door of my chemical sciences class. We have a substitute oh great, finally when I was going to learn something I had been looking forward to all semester. I took my usual seat next to my best friend Peter, aka Pete. “Hey did you notice Miss Newman isn’t teaching today” said Pete, my response, “no kidding! I thought she had plastic surgery”. “Hey I know sarcasm when I hear it”, Pete said, getting annoyed. “Oh well maybe I can talk to her at graduation”, I said, thinking alloud. After science class I had my least favorite class, Geometry. Now I would not say that I don't dislike Geometry, no I would use the word hate. I espicially hate my teacher Mr. Brown. He try's to get us into Geometry by trying to tell us what jobs use it. Let me tell you, all of the jobs I want to get, don’t have anything to do with geometry. Yet somehow he made today’s lecture sound interesting. He asked us, if you are a SWAT Commander, and you have so many floors to clear out, with so much time, how could you do this? Also how much time for error do you have? okay I won't bore you with all the details. You see the reason todays lecture was interesting is because all of my interest have something to do with war. for instance when I was 13 years old, my dad sent me to my first military camp. I would say it was the hardest and best summer of my life. In fact I was looking at pursuing a military career, by going to west point; and thanks to Miss Newman, I had gotten accepted to go there. Then again sometimes life throws you a curve and all you can do is swing.

Lunch went particularly well. No one was picking on me. Also I think it helped that we had my favorite lunch, hamburgers and French fries. during lunch I studied for my final exam in French, a class which up to this point had been really easy. Well lunch, like all good things came to an end. I was once again off to another class. I was walkign to my next class when I noticed my principal wondering the halls. Strange, I thought to myself he is normally in a meeting this time of day. He walked strait up to me and said, “Mr. Garfield, I need to speak with you in my office on a very important matter”. “Principle Williams I was on my way to history class, can it wait”? “I’m afraid not, it concerns your father”. Now my father had disappeared when I was 14 years old, he went on a business trip to Japan, and just never came back, no calls, no letters, nothing, what’s worse is that they never found him, and according to the united states government, he never had even boarded his plane to Japan. All I could say was okay. Following Mr. Williams to his office, where I found my mother and another man pacing all over the office. “is everything all right mom?" I said, now really nervous about what was going to happen next, “mike you had better sit down” mom said, still pacing around, so I sat down, after a little while my mom finally spoke “Honey, this is Special Agent Watkins with the Federal Bureau of Investigation he would like to talk to you about your father and his real work”, “What” I said, having no idea what she was talking about. That’s all I could think about for about 5 minutes. "Hi Mike I am special agent Watkins with the FBI, and as your mother has already stated, that is if its all right with you?", "I would like to tell you about your father and his life’s work. “Sure I guess, I never really knew much about my father, or his work, he always seemed to be gone” I said, now getting mad because I was missing class, because they probably found out he was into some illegal activity, and he was on some private island somewhere in the bahama's. Agent Watkins started talking again, so I kept my thoughts to myself, “Well he didn’t really have much of a chose, you see your dad had been working for the central intelligence agency since he was your age”, I was stunned, I wasn’t sure what to say or even to believe him, so I responded, “you mean he was a spy”, I still couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “I wouldn’t call him a spy, you see after he married your mother he had just been working as a intelligence courier delivering information to other agents”, “well then why did he disappear”, “You see son some people he had tangled with in the past before he changed jobs had him captured and killed” well why are you telling me this now and how do you know my father?

First Impressions

-Too short, but you did say it is incomplete.
-Not paragraphed, no structure.

Reading the first few lines

-Sentences too long, and there are no commas, why not? Because your sentences are long, they need to be broken up; it helps the flow of the sentence.

"My first class is chemical sciences and I have been waiting all semester for this day because today my teacher said that if I got an A she would teach me how to make acid that could burn through metal."

I would rephrase this sentence: "Chemical sciences is my first class of the day, I have been waiting all semester for this one day- it is the day when I could, potentially, learn how to make metal-burning acid. My teacher said that she would teach me, but only if I obtained an 'A' grade."

-It seems rushed somewhat; words have been missed out etc...

It needs work- more attention to detail. Don't rush it. Punctuate.

Question what do u think of the story besides what i need to edit. Does it attract you? make u want to read more? or does it bore you, so that you would put the book down adn never read another word?

Generally, yes, I think I would want to read more.

Hey Micman! Here's what I've got to say after reading your piece:

First:
I'm sorry to say that, after scrolling down to check the length of this story, I nearly hit the back button on my browser. Despite the promise in this, to me it just looked like one great big chunk of text. Kinda of like a huge body without any limbs. You need to split it up! Paragraphs (in moderation!) are your friends, so bleed them for all their worth. Start a new one with every new thought. Do this for dialogues too and that alone should help this problem.

Second:
Another thing that almost immediantly turned me off of this was your grammar. I'm definately not the best person at it -- just ask my english teacher -- but it is something that can get kind of irritating to a reader after awhile. You have quite a few run on sentences here that need to be dealt with. Remember: just using commas isn't always enough. That's why there's semi-colons and colons and dashes and all those other wonderfully complicated things we're taught in school. Also, don't be afraid to just end a sentence. I noticed you tended to try and strecth your sentences out until you had your entire thought covered. This ended up with them seeming rushed and distracted me from what it was you were saying at that point. Just split them up. Periods can be useful sometimes so why not take advantage of that?

Third:
And here comes the hated, well-known adage nearly every writer wants to stab over and over again: Show, don't tell. You told us nearly everything in here. Show us what is going on! I can't stress that enough. Without that, we can't really build up a accurate image of whats happening in a scene. Take, for example, the part where you told us your father had disappeared. Where was the emotion? Where was the feeling? What had your MC felt when his father never came back? What did the reminder of him make him feel? It could be really simple actually; all you would need is one or two choice words and voila! Problem solved. Here's an example: "I flinched internally at the man's words. My father had disapeared when I was fourteen and, even now, remembering those days still sent a sharp pang flashing through my stomach."

There were some other things, but I think I covered everything that really needed to be adressed. In all, this was an interesting piece and, with some fine tuning, could be really good. Keep up the work and PM if you have any questions :3

--PandaPez

OK there's not much left for me to say pandapez pretty much covered it all. I think your story line is good, but like pandapez said you need more feeling and detail to bring it to life. one thing that really budged me was your dialogue. every time you switch whom is speaking then you need to make a new paragraph also your ending your dialogue wrong and most of the time your just using the word said. idk if you know this already and you just don't choose to do it but I know I used to have a heck of alot of trouble with it too. OK use this sentence for example:

“Hey I know sarcasm when I hear it”, Pete said, getting annoyed.

the comma is supposed to be inside the dialogue

alright fix it up a bit and keep writing this looks interesting

Hi

I won't bother telling you about paragraphing and grammar and all that fug. That's already been covered, and what you really need help with is character realism.

At the moment your characters are names and nothing more. You probably have an idea of their appearance in your head - put it down. It's easy to think they seem real when they're your own characters, but for readers, you need to describe them. It's something I used to do a lot too.

Then there's dialogue. It's already been said about grammar. But there's also the character's "voice" to take into account. I don't mean the sound of their voice - I mean the way they talk.

Let's look at this one.

“Honey, this is Special Agent Watkins with the Federal Bureau of Investigation he would like to talk to you about your father and his real work”

The way she's speaking - apart from calling him honey - sounds as though she's a secretary talking to her boss. It's all matter of fact and formal. Personally I'd allocate this line to the principal instead.

Here's another

“Hey did you notice Miss Newman isn’t teaching today”

Why is his friend pointing out the obvious. If it was so apparent that Mike noticed her absence as soon as he entered the room, why is Pete saying this. Also the way he says it is awkward. A realistic teenage boy would just say: "Miss Newman isn't teaching today."

And another

“Principle Williams I was on my way to history class, can it wait”?

When speaking to someone you don't usually say their name unless you're trying to get their attention. Not in real life, and not in a story. Also the way he speaks makes it sound like the principal is his subordinate - Taking out the "can it wait" would fix this. The ? should go inside the quote also.

My advice is to imagine real people speaking to each other for dialogue. Make your characters speak as real people in their situation would. Also keep in mind power structures. The way someone speaks to their superiors is different to how they speak to equals, which is again different to how they speak to those below them.

And yes, the storyline is interesting, the writing just needs to be improved. It's not the sort of book I usually read, but that's just my taste, and I'm sure it would appeal a lot to someone who's into secret agent and spy type books.

Assination: the process or making something assinine?