Warning: This work has been rated 16+ for language.
He dragged me towards the police station. I had knocked down his colleague. The police officer looked agitated. In India, if you mess with a policeman, you are screwed. Screwed permanently. My car had slammed into someone, who was busy collecting bribes without looking at the traffic signal.
"Where's your license?" A forty something officer asked me. I had arrived at the police station. 'God what am I going to tell him? That I am a thief. A thief whose stolen car had fractured a constable.'
"Sir, let's have a cup of tea. I will explain you the matter." I tried pacifying him, only to multiply his anger.
"You want to bribe me? Show me your license or I will break your jaw." he yelled.
"I forgot it at my house. Please give me some time."
"Sir, look what we found in his car," a constable shouted. The briefcase with a cash of ten lakh rupees was traced. 'Why the heck did they peep in the car? I hit the wrong person. I should have knocked this guy,' I couldn't help, but swear at him.
"Bastard. You are in serious trouble. First, you bump into our officer. Secondly, you don't have a license. Moreover, you have ten lakh cash in your briefcase and on top of that, you swear at us?"
He was right. I had created a mess. 'God please help me!' I prayed to God.
"Answer me, you Jerk. You are a thief, right?"
He looked at me. A police officer can smell a thief faster than a mice smelling his cheese. I looked at his 'nameplate'. Sub Inspector Waghmare had caught me red-handed.
"Yes sir I am a thief. But a qualified one." I resigned and gave a laughable explanation.
"Qualified? Are you a bureaucrat?"
"An engineer."
"I know. Unemployment is turning into a serious problem." I couldn't believe it for a moment. A police officer was actually chitchatting with a thief.
"Shinde, we will file his F.I.R. later. Just switch on the TV and order some popcorns. I want to watch a good matinee movie." he ordered. This was going to be something new. A thief was going to enjoy a matinee movie with constables.
The police station had a power cut as Waghmare looked annoyed.
"Shit! It's power cut. We are going to miss the cricket match today." Waghmare yelled to his assistants. A power cut at police station meant no television for eight hours. The only entertainment in their life was brutally snatched by electricity department.
"What's your name, by the way," Constable Shinde asked me.
"Sujoy Roy," I replied.
"Why the heck, you feel you are a unique thief?" Waghmare popped up again.
"It's a long story."
"Tell us. Anyway we have missed our movie. If you provide us some entertainment, we will take care of your charge-sheet."
Seriously! I never expected that sort of a deal.
"It all started that day." I adjusted my chair, as I walked past the memory lane.
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125,018 Literary Works • 672,857 Reviews
Hey there Guarav! Deanie here as requested.
So, first I will start with an apology. You have a lot of awesome reviews here already and I don't really have the time to read them all individually. This means I might repeat some things at times, but I really hope I don't and I am sorry if it is a bit repetitive. I don't know how recently it has been revised, so maybe there is something new for me to comment on! Anyways, down to business ^.^
I'm not really a huge fan of prologues because of reasons Blue Africa has already mentioned, but this was good. Seeing as it is an opening to a recital of the story, there could be an interesting epilogue to this too! Sujoy sounds interesting, and I can't wait to see what has brought him to this point in his life. Also, the police men are really chill as well, more than expected. I wonder if there is a reason for this!
One thing that would've been nice was to actually see Sujoy running from the car, battering the policemen down and getting caught. It would give us a bit of action to jump start the interest in the story, and we could well, get to see what happened aside from just being told about it! So yes, I advise you start a little earlier when it comes to the chapter.
This was quite a good opening paragraph, but it felt rather short and choppy. I think it's because of the amount of short sentences in here. This is my rewrite of it: The police man dragged me to the station, looking agitated. In India, if you mess with a policeman, you are screwed. Permanently. (No need to repeat the word there) My car had slammed into someone who was busy collecting bribes, and he hadn't been looking at the traffic signal. (Where you had the comma it wasn't necessary yet, but it was later down the line.)
Hm, a smoother way of wording this would be: I will explain to you what's the matter.
Here in the dialogue tag you said he yelled. But when you mention yelling, I think it is an exclamation. I suggest you use the ! (exclamation mark) instead of a full stop, just to make the tag look better and for it to be more obvious.
Also, you use quotation marks like these ' when you are telling us Sujoy's thoughts. Because this whole story is from his point of view, we don't really need them. The fact that they are being said from his point of view already tells us it's in his mind, as well as everything he sees and hears being what the reader does too. So really, those marks aren't needed when it comes to his thoughts.
The comma here is unnecessary.
I just wanted to mention that mice is the plural of mouse. So you either mean 'a mouse' or just mice without the 'a' in front of it. Similarly, at one point you said 'popcorns'. But popcorn is a word that sums up all the little white flakes in one go, so you can't really pluralise it. So really, that should simply be popcorn.
Don't forget that a question need a question mark! Including this one.
I think you are missing the word 'do' here. Like: do you feel you are a unique thief?
I enjoyed reading this and I hope this review is like one you wanted! I will go on and read the other chapters ^.^
Deanie x
Thanks a lot for your wonderful suggestions.
Budding writer here for a review!
As a prologue it was quite nice but i really felt that you have made it a bit longer just to give a more prominent edge to your main character. It could have been a flash back of some sort. Or maybe you could have even started it as a police chase and that conversation could have followed. It would have become even more interesting and edgy!
Some places i felt that the dialogue did not really flow properly. There were breaks at some pl;aces. But overall it was fine. Very typical policeman type dialogue so that's a good thing.
The character of the thief really intrigued me specially the concept of a unique thief. I like where you are heading with this story.
I really hope you continue this story so that we can see where it all ends up. I'm sure of a suspense somewhere along the road. So keep it up and keep me posted!
-Budding writer
Hey Gaurav! Silver here to review as requested!
Main Points
These sentences seem really disjointed. I suggest you rearranging them to flow better. Maybe something like this:
He dragged me towards the police station. I had knocked down his colleague and now the police officer looked agitated.
Also I feel that agitated isn't the right word here. Maybe, "annoyed" or "angry"?
Can I also say that I find the fact that this is in italics somewhat disorientating? Usually character's thoughts are in italics, thus I find it hard to differentiate the protagonist's thoughts from his speech. If you've done this on purpose, my two cents is that it doesn't add anything to the piece.
There should be a question mark at the end of this because he's asking himself the question.
You switch tenses quite a lot, I would suggest you pick one and go with it. You've had heaps of reviews so I don't really have much left to say except "heed their words"
I really enjoyed reading this, it was very entertaining and held my attention the entire way through. Keep it up and happy writing!!
Silverlock
Okay, so this is interesting, although I find the italics distracting.
I'm sorry because I'm mostly going to reiterate what everyone else has said, but here it goes.
1) I like the idea of starting the prologue with the incident in which the narrator hits the policeman with his car. It could even start directly with the impact, with the screeching of brakes or a description of the street where the bribery is taking place. This would be as much of a hook as the current opening--possibly even more, because then you don't need the "I had done this, this had happened to me," because you're actually showing us what happened instead of telling us that it happened.
2) We're kind of floating around right now in the story--there's not a very clear idea of the setting. I mean, obviously it's India, but we don't have a sense of it, if you get my meaning. I think opening with the car crash could also help us with this, because we would see the street, the pedestrians or other drivers who stop to stare at the car crash, the policemen running in from everywhere, and so on. We also don't have any physical sense of the characters except that the one policeman is in his forties. What does your main character look like? Right now I have no idea.
3) I see from your comments that there's a reason the police decide not to arrest your thief--and to be honest, based on my recent reading I could see police in India (at least at a certain point in history) saying "Screw it, why even bother arresting you" when the power goes out and they can't watch the cricket match. However, I think it would help people see it as more realistic if a) the policemen's behavior was more consistent (i.e., he wouldn't get so mad at the thief for swearing, if later he's going to ignore the whole hitting-someone-with-a-car thing and invite him to watch movies) and b) this was slowed down a bit. If the scene and transitions didn't happen so fast--collision, arrest, sympathizing with the criminal, inviting him to watch movies, asking him to tell the story--if the policeman's thought process was hinted at more strongly, it might help people understand how this could realistically happen.
If you want to read a good book that takes place in India, uses a prologue, and gives us a really good sense of the setting, I suggest A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. It's so good, although it's quite long and I should warn you that it's extremely depressing because it takes place in 1975 India, during the Emergency and the forced sterilization and all that kind of horrible thing. But it's SO GOOD.
Blue
Awesome review! You are spot on! I can save much of 'telling' if I start the story with an accident. The pacing issue was because of the fact that, nobody generally likes prologues, so I tried to end it, as fast as I could.
I am surely gonna rewrite this prologue after your suggestion. The story will look really good! Thanks a lot. (I will post the first chapter very soon.)
Hi! I am back with the first chapter of the novel
The Perfect Thief (Revised) Chapter 1
You know, I generally don't like prologues myself, but I think you use it well here. Because rather than using it to give us a bunch of backstory or anything like that, you use it to segue into the narrator telling us his story, which actually works. So don't be afraid to lengthen it somewhat!
Thanks a lot. You have really encouraged me to write it again.
I will surely start with the accident (I can poke some fun and create excitement with that sort of a start) 
Hello Gaurav009! I'm here to review your work!
So, first thing that stood out to me about this piece was this line:
"In India, if you mess with a policeman, you are screwed.Screwed permanently."
Um, I think in any country, anywhere if you "mess" with a policeman, then you're automatically screwed. Now, one could argue that it depends on the amount of "messing" you're doing to the policeman. I think if you incorporated a quantitative amount of messing with a police officer it takes to make him or her angry, then that'd make more sense.
Now, a lot of what I see is a ton of dialogue in this chapter. Though dialogue itself is never a bad thing, when it isn't being explained enough, then things get pretty confusing. Sometimes, too, I felt like there was no direct switch from dialogue to the actual story-- it just read like one conversation the entire time. Again, this is not a bad thing, but for this kind of writing, it is going to need a little editing. Try to make some really defined switches from dialogue to the person's thoughts. For instance, here you could say:
Grammar: There's a lot of "I had done this..." or "He had done that..." Though I'm not sure of the exact grammar rule for this, I am quite certain that you do not need that extra 'had' in the sentence. It's easier to just get straight to the verb instead of waiting for it to come-- it's more assertive (and exciting) and engaging, which what we want in our stories!
There are some words omitted in a few sentences. Try going over the piece again and looking for them (they are usually contractions).
This sentence needs some work:
What this literally translates to is: the main character tried calming the one dude down, but he only tried calming him down to make him angrier. Now, I am sure that's not what you wanted this sentence to mean, right? Well, unless the main character finds sadism funny, this sentence must be reworded. It can be written like so:
I tried to pacify him, however , my efforts only increased his anger sevenfold (I tried being poetic...) You need that... whatever that word is called.
As for the tone of the story, this character really is... a character! You've got a knack for keeping the character's thoughts within the story, and I really liked that. Especially when he thinks about stuff on the side. I haven't really gotten the jokes yet, only the "I prayed to God" part. If there were some more parts like that, then I can really see this as humor story!
Like many others are saying, this is quite a fast-paced story. The remedy to that is a whole bunch of filler information about the scene, characters, lighting, weather that day, sounds, smells, etc. Basically, a whole lot of Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How question answering is going to have to go on here.
Keep going, I want more ! Happy Writing!
I have posted the first chapter The Perfect Thief (Revised) Chapter 1 It has a lot of humour in it
Hello! Here as requested again! Sorry for the wait again xP
So, the plot here is a ton better than the first thing I reviewed. It pulls me in way faster and has a rhythm that's easier to follow.
I have two problems with it.
1) You're still jumping around like you were in your first chapter. First your main character is being dragged into the police station, then he's bumping into a police officer. Why didn't you just start with him bumping into the officer. Then the officer is asking a question before you tell us that they've arrived at the police station.
After that it gets a bit better but make sure the actions follow a logical pattern.
2) This story is kind of unbelievable. I can't believe that a police officer could get away with what this guy is doing. I mean, is the thief even arrested? I think you need to rethink how your police officers would act. Would they realistically be this nonchalant? Since this is a first draft, I think you should just leave it for now, but keep in mind when you go back to edit you might have some serious rewriting to do.
Then, I want to slip in one structural thing, your sentences are almost all the same. They're very choppy and short with only a few exceptions. I would suggest combining some of your shorter sentences with conjugations like and, but, etc.
I'm glad I got to read your first attempt because it shows how much better this is! I've connected so much more to your character already, and I want to know what comes next.
If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, let me know.
Keep writing!
Megs~
Thanks a lot for your review! The casual approach of police is deliberate and you will get all the answers as the story progresses. The story in itself is a bizarre satire, if you find this unconvincing, wait for the next chapters. You will find things which can't be imagined.
thanks again though.
Hi megsug! If you would like to continue reading my story, I have posted the first chapter The Perfect Thief (Revised) Chapter 1
I've got a lot of requests in my WRFF thread, but I'll get to your chappie eventually.
Hello there!
Dreamy here! You've got a good prologue over there. There was not too many informations. Definitely fast paced.
The big-bellied/a bald constable dragged me to the police station because I knocked down his partner. better? May be not. But something like this would do.
Not only in India, this applies to all the policemen all over the world. So no need of mentioning.
Popcorns? Policemen of India eat popcorns? That's a rare sight to see. o.o How about chai or a biscuit?
Of course on a day. How about how the day was? Rainy? That sounds too cliched. How about "dreadful"?
That's all I could find in this fine piece. Keep writing, bud.
Good luck!
Cheers!
Thanks for your review! The popcorn thing was quite deliberate. The whole story is bizarre much more than a policeman watching movie with a thief. It was done to give readers a glimpse about the plot.
Let's see how it goes. Thanks again for this wonderful review.
For the imagery, I am going to use a lot of it in the upcoming chapters
Hi there! Noelle here to review as requested!
These opening sentences really get me thinking. What exactly is going on here? Who is this guy? Why is he getting dragged to the police station? I'm really drawn in at this point and I want to read on to see what happens. On the other hand, this seems a bit too rushed to me. It's like, boom boom boom. Slow it down a little bit. I'm sure there's a lot that your character is thinking about. Think of some other ways you can tell us what your character got in trouble for.
Whoa, didn't see that coming! Well, maybe a little because of the title, but I definitely didn't expect it to come up so soon. I made a few small grammar corrections to this part. I hope you can see it because sometimes the red doesn't show up well when you're correcting punctuation.
The thought itself is effective enough. The dialogue tag just ends up being redundant.
Overall, I think this is a good prologue. I'm very particular about prologues because I don't really like reading them. Anything said in the prologue can easily be introduced in the first few chapters or later on in the story as an after thought. But in your case, I think this prologue works well. I can see it as either a prologue or a first chapter. You're setting up your reader for what will happen the rest of the story. And you've also introduced us to your main character and gave us some background about him.
You're doing a great job developing your main character. I already know a lot about him just from this short prologue. I know that he's sort of a wise a** because of how he talks to the police officers. And I also know that he's a rather smart, sophisticated (well maybe not completely sophisticated) man because he's an engineer. It's cool how you were able to get that information across without coming out and saying it. You know, without telling us directly how he is. You let us assume and make our own decisions.
The only thing that I really have to say about this is that it's a bit fast paced. Iggy hit it right on the nail. You seem to jump around quite a bit. Give us a little more imagery. Describe the police station and how the chairs feel when he sits down. What does the police officer look like? There is so much more that you can add into here to slow down the pace. And keep that in mind with your later chapters. Remember, slow and steady wins the race!
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
Thanks a lot for your wonderful review. Even I was skeptical about the faced paced narrative. The story however doesn't end here and there is a major event about to happen in the story revolving around police (story will move forward as a chapter where things after his arrest will be mentioned). I am planning to include the details in that chapter itself (as most people skip prologues, any important info will be lost)
Thanks a lot again!
*fast paced*
Hi Noelle, if you would like to know what happens with Sujoy here's the next chapter The Perfect Thief (Revised) Chapter 1 Thanks
Hi Noelle, I have posted the second chapter The Perfect Thief Chapter 2 if you'd like to review
Hello! Here as requested.
A quick nitpick:
Into*
Okay, then. Much better than the first draft, I must say.
My other problem was the pacing. You jumped around a lot. Bam! He gets arrested. Bam! The police are questioning him. Bam! They're gonna watch a movie. BAM. He's gonna tell his tale. Slow down, there! Make this more realistic; as much as I'd like to believe that the police are willing to chill and watch a movie with a convicted thief, I really doubt they would. So that doesn't make this real to me.
But other than that, this is off to a pretty good start. I like that he's settling in to tell us his story. The ending was a nice cliffhanger, as I'm curious to know why he's a thief and how he got all that money. Nice work. Can be improved, but overall, it's off to a good start!
You are spot on! I have serious issue with the pacing of the prologue. I am unable to make the transition smooth and realistic. I guess, I need to rewrite this again.