Caught

This story is written in almost all dialogue as a Creative Writing assignment. We were supposed to portray our characters without any outside narration, Only thought or direct dialogue with a few lines of direct narration. Anyway, tell me what you think! Did it work? How do you like it? XD Thanks!

“Isn’t that against the rules?” A girl I didn’t recognize walked up to me, backpack in hand.
Stupid, nosy freshmen.
“Yeah, so what?”
“Well, if you had any sense of self-preservation, don’t you think you should lose the cigarette?
“Oh please. Are you seriously talking to me? If you had any sense of ‘self-preservation’, you would leave now and thank your lucky stars I didn’t beat your face in the second you walked up to me.”
“I’m not afraid of you, Jack Fischer.”
How the heck does she know my name?
“Surprised? Yeah, I’ve changed a lot, but get it straight- I’m no freshman. Take a good look at me, Jack. Are you sure you don’t know me?”
“…Yeah, I’m almost ninety-percent positive I’ve never seen you before.”
“What a disappointment. All those drugs must have gotten to your head. But I’ll give you a hint, ok? ‘Sissy-Lissy’. Ring any bells?”
No freaking way. Absolutely not. No no no no no.
“I knew you wouldn’t forget about me Jack. It may have taken a little push, but you got there, didn’t you? I can tell by the dumbstruck expression on your face you didn’t expect to see me ever again.”
“No, Alyssa, I can’t say I did. But you’re here. What the heck do you want with me?”
“Want? Oh, I don’t want anything Jack. You may have beaten me into submission two years ago, but I don’t want anything now. You know I’ve never had much of a temper. You, on the other hand…”
“Will you SHUT UP? God. Of course you’re just as freaking annoying as you were two years ago.”
For a moment, she seemed to get lost in her thoughts.
“’Sissy-Lissy. You can’t believe how relieved I was to get rid of that name and all it‘s little connotations. How does it feel, Jack, to know that because of what you did I was forced to move halfway across the state, just to recover?”
“I didn’t-”
“Of course you didn’t. No one ever does, do they?”
“No,” I said, grinding my teeth together. “You don’t understand what I was going through.”
“What you were going through. Yes, I almost forgot. Troubled little teen-Jack. Weren’t so troubled when you threw me on the curb though, were you?”
“How the heck did you find out it was me, anyways?”
“It took me a long time to figure it out, but eventually, I remembered that the hand of the person who nearly killed me had a distinct scar at the crook of their thumb. Do you remember telling me the story of that scar? No? I didn’t either, until about a month ago. But when realization came, Jack, it came in one fell swoop.”
“I-”
“You nothing. You tried to kill me, Jack. I wouldn’t do drugs with you and your stupid little friends, and you tried to kill me by shoving mass amounts of pills down my throat then throwing me into the street. All to prove how much of a ‘Sissy’ you weren’t.”
“Listen, Alyssa, I’m sorry, ok? Seriously, I am-”
“Look behind you, Jack, and tell me what you see.”
So I looked. A policeman was standing behind me, his hand on the gun that was, thankfully, still in the holster.
“Don’t even think about making a move, Jack,” said the policeman. “If you do, I won’t hesitate to use force. Attempted murder is a serious charge, young man. I hope you understand that.”
“Yeah, do you understand that, Jack?” Alyssa asked. “Are you finally, after two years, going to accept the consequences of your actions?”
I don’t exactly have much of a choice, now, do I?
“You have the right to remain silent. Any thing you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.”
I can’t… I can’t… I can’t…
Leave.
Not now.
No. Please.
It wasn’t me.
I swear to god it wasn’t me!
“You have the right to speak to an attorney, and to have an attorney present during any questioning…”
“Not that that’ll be necessary, will it, Jack? You just confessed. Questioning will, in any case, be a formality,” said Alyssa.
Confessed? Was he recording me? Of course he was. Of course. I’m caught. I can’t leave. I can’t… I can’t…
“If you cannot afford a lawyer, one will be provided for you at government expense.”
“Yeah, like he could afford a lawyer. I’d be surprised if he had a nickel left, with all the money he spends on drugs.”
“Enough, Alyssa.”
“Sure, Mike. Sure. Just payback, you know? This dude almost cost me my life, for god’s sake. I think I have the right to-”
“Nothing. You have the right to nothing. Don’t forget that, ok? I know you’ve got a lot of pent-up frustration, but now is not the time to let it out.”
“Fine. Whatever. He’s as good as gone once he get’s into court. That’s enough of a reassurance, for now.”
It wasn’t me.
“Look at him, though, Mike. The kid’s tongue-tied.”
“It’s his right to remain silent. Now go home. I’ll call your parents if we need you at the station. Just count yourself lucky you were able to come for him at all.”
“Trust me, Mike. I do.”
Not me. Not me. It wasn’t me! Please, oh god, oh god. Please, it wasn’t me.
It was a while before I could speak, but it didn’t matter then. I was taken into the cop car beaten, and it wasn’t long before the court decided I would stay that way for the rest of my life.

You completed the task excellently if I do say so myself! Great job!

Hello, skl02134. I'll be your reviewer/criticizer or whatever today. You can call me the Bad Narrator (even though my screename says otherwise)

I'm ignoring the plot of the story itself and focusing on what I believe is the purpose of the exercise, the dialogue. The dialogue in this piece seemed a bit forced and inauthentic at some points. Especially with the use of the word "heck". I'm just not buying that a person who uses drugs and almost apparently killed someone is gonna worry about using curse words.

Granted this is a story for a class and I realize that the rules of the assignment make it difficult to create authentic sounding dialogue while at the same time painting a clear picture of what's going on.
If I were you, I'd ask your instructor what his/her stance is on using vulgarity in dialogue because let's be honest, we all curse. I've toned down my written speech to make it appropriate for this website, but in real life when I'm not in class or at work I use the f word in just about every other sentence. The point I'm making is that you need to focus less on making the dialogue socially acceptable and more on making it realistic, with all its foul mouthed stereotype riddled glory.

I also got the sense that you were trying to compensate for the lack of narration with the dialogue which to me seems to defeat the purpose of the assignment. Unless that assignment was to tell the entire story with just dialogue which to me makes no sense. This assignment seems more like an exercise to improve the creation of dialogue.

If I were you, I would pretend that the narration is already there and just type the dialogue like you would in a normal short story. Don't worry about the person(s) who will be reading your work until you begin editing and revising. If you do your initial writing with zero regard for the reader, it will appear more natural after you polish it up.

God luck with your assignment,

The Bad Narrator

Thanks for the Critique, Bad Narrator. Yeah, I know that the main characters lack of cursing wasn't characteristic, but when I asked my teacher he did say that we had to refrain from swearing, so I had to refrain ;-].

One thing, though, I really like your suggestion of pretending there is narration. I feel like, if I start out with that, I'll end up with a much clearer story in the end. I tend to rely heavily on my own narration when I'm writing a normal story (in fact, I hate dialogue mainly for the fact that I can never make it sound natural... Guess that's something I really need to work on.)

I guess I forgot to mention, but the assignment was to tell a story in all dialogue, with a maximum of three lines of narration. Our model was Ernest Hemingway's 'A Clean, Well-Lighted Place' (the chunk in the middle). I agree, kind of silly, since dialogue is probably my weakest point. That's why I put it here though, so I really appreciate the critique. In fact, I think I might try out this exercise a few more times, but in the way you suggested. I'll see how that works out, then maybe post it here, see if I can improve. That's the goal, regardless.

Thanks!
--Sam

Glad to help. Another thing I'd suggest if you want to create authentic sounding dialogue (and this is gonna sound kind of creepy) go to a public place and just listen to people talk. Preferably people who resemble the characters you want to write about. Just listen to their speech patterns and pay attention to their facial expressions and body language when they're speaking.

Don't make it obvious that you're listening though. It's the same thing with photographers. You can't listen to authentic conversations if they think you're eavesdropping, just like you can't take a candid photo of a person who knows they're being watched.

One exercise I had to do in one of my classes was to listen in on a conversation, write down some of what they said and write a poem about it. My poetry sucks, but I've managed to incorporate some of what I used in my prose work.

I hope this helps. And for the love of god, keep writing!

Haha, not creepy at all. Actually, I already kind of do that. I'm very keen on listening in and kind of 'dissecting' what people say, how they say it. But I observe more of a person's general interaction rather than their specific dialogue, how they talk. I guess what I do is a bit more generalized. I'll have to start listening with the intent of observing speech patterns and such.

Haha, oddly enough, I've already had experience in taking candid photo's for Photo-Journalism. I kind of feel like a creeper now...