The Art of Deduction - Chapter 1

Good Morning/Afternoon/Evening/Night(whichever one it is in your part of the world),

Hi! I'm here to leave a quick review!!

Anyway let's get right to it,

The slow breeze of the wind coming through the door ripples my shirt. I’ve mustered up a reason how they did it, when they did it, and who it is. Yeah, i’m a detective, and not one of those 40-year old ones you find in those cheesy romance novels you can get in sets of 5 for 2 dollars at the local Dollar General store chock full of shitty no-name brand headphones, diet orange soda, and overweight people buying out the shelves of food getting ready for some sport tourney they don’t even care about. I’m really just a teenager and… well, it’s complicated. “So, if we match it all up, the only person that could have done it is you, Mr. Dell. Am I correct?” I say this as I turn towards the two police man each standing next to their respective suspects, or would have been suspects. “Damn it!” He kicks the police officer next to him in the balls and runs out the door on the other side of the room towards his motorcycle. I click a button on the side of my pocketwatch and out pops a medium size ball through a small hole in the cover. Just the right size I like for my kicking. WHAM! The ball soars out the door and smacks into his head. He slumps over the seat of his motorcycle unconscious. The unharmed policeman dashes out and slaps handcuffs on his arms with no hassle. “Should have done it in the first place.” I mutter while slumping down in a bench next to my brother drinking some fancy, expensive root beer. “Now why did you go and do that, Cliff? The poor guy didn’t deserve that.” He says looking at something I don’t bother to look at. “He did deserve it, Pike. He kicked that policemans balls all the way to high heaven.” I pause to get a good look at his drink for no apparent reason. “Hey, Where did you get that root beer?” He turns some and points towards a small freezer behind the counter where Mr.Dell works. Or did work, anyway. He’ll be behind bars for a while now. “Oh, man, that’s just what I want right now.” I grab two soda’s and pour them into a glass, then sit back down with my brother. The policeman that was kicked in the ball’s walks in the room. “Hey, good job, man! DO you two want a ride home?” We gladly accept and ride home quietly.

Not a bad write, but it's too short for a chapter and frankly it could use some work. First of all, I would've liked some more information on the main character. Who he is (is he a famous detective? Is he known locally, nationally, or globally? What is his name besides Cliff? Cliff what?), what he's investigating exactly (is the case about a murder, robbery, kidnapping, arson, etc? What is Mr. Dell guilty of?), the time place (when is this happening? In the past? In the present? In the future?) where the story takes place (in the white house? In an ordinary home? In a library? In a bank?) how this is happening (how does the main character get from point a to point b? How can he know that Mr. Dell is responsible for the crime? What proof does he have to have him locked up and wrap up the case?) and why (why is a teenager investigating the case instead of an adult? Why did Mr. Dell do what he did? Why did the crime in the first place, etc?) Since you intended on making this the first chapter, I expected you to fully explain the need-to-know facts for the reader if you didn't want to reveal everything. This chapter tells us nothing about anything or anybody and it'll leaves future readers baffled--and NOT in a good way. Still, I can't help but think that this reminds me of an anime show I use to watch called Case Closed/Detective Conan. The events that take place in this paragraph are almost strikingly similar. Still, I do like that this is a mystery because I LOVE mystery! Despite the length, I like that this chapter gave me a small jolt of excitement when I started reading it. I commend you for your efforts. I'm glad you put this up though and you've picked a good title--something I have difficulty with sometimes lol. Nice work and keep up the good work. -IceWinifredd

Hi, steampowered here for a review!

First of all, I thought this was a promising start. It’s been well written, and there’s plenty of action – always a good way to open a story. The present tense was also effective in creating a sense of immediateness. However, while I enjoyed reading this, the delivery let it down a bit.

I think that the biggest improvement you could give this would be by splitting the text up into paragraphs, to make it easier to read. Every time the speaker changes, put a new paragraph in. If you want to make a sentence stand out, put it as a new paragraph. If you do this it’ll really improve the writing, and the reader will take in the information much faster.

The whole chapter feels a little brief; your sentences are short and quite choppy. For example:

I click a button on the side of my pocketwatch and out pops a medium size ball through a small hole in the cover. Just the right size I like for my kicking. WHAM! The ball soars out the door and smacks into his head. He slumps over the seat of his motorcycle unconscious. The unharmed policeman dashes out and slaps handcuffs on his arms with no hassle.

Hello Void, happy review day! Flite here for a review!

First off, you need to break this piece into paragraphs otherwise it's just this massive chunk of text, and that could out potential reviewers off.

Next, you have to make a new paragraph every time a new character speaks. This isn't a choice, it is mandatory. So, for exmaple, you have Mary and John here.

Mary: Hi

John: Look, there is an apple in the sky!

Every time Mary or John speaks, that is a new paragraph, however if it is the same character speaking then you don't need a new paragraph for that. Are we clear with this? Good, let's move on.

Next, I want to talk about the tone of your writing, it may be just me but it is really wishy washy. Meaning that you didn't seem to care what went on here and just slapped some text on, I'm sorry to be blunt but a lot of the information here are rushed through without clearly explaining. There are a lot of jumps in logic and this entire piece is incredibly disjointed, and just feels really irresponsible.

For one, what exactly is happening here? We have two suspects in the room, and we don't know why they are there so that lack of context was confusing. How did the detective draw the conclusion that it was Dell? You have your reasons, but please write them down here so we know what's going in in his head when he drew that conclusion.

Why didn't Dell defend himself, if I was a criminal, I would at least try and defend myself or find some other less irrational ways then kicking a polie officer in the balls. This isn't set in our world I hope? Otherwise, ball shooting out isn't very realistic. And I don't exactly see out of other weapons, why it had to be a ball. Reminds me of some cheesy action movie, because you see when a ball smashes the glass. It would have slowed down the force of the ball and deterred it from its original path, by that time, Dell may have very well roared off to god knows where. And a teenager as a police officer? Doesn't seem very plausible.

Have you worked this idea through or was it written during the spur of a moment because it needs some serious development on both characters and background. You rushed through all the actions, and the ending dialogue was completely irrelevalent to the chapter. Why not tell us more about Dell and Cliff (whose revelation was also very sudden).

I hope I wasn't too harsh, if you have any questions, let me know.

-Flite

Hi! FireBird99 here for a review =)

Your story was quite interesting. The only thing is, big paragraphs like the one above are hard to read. If you format it and split up your paragraphs when people are talking then it would look better and not so hard to read.

Yeah, i’m a detective, and not one of those 40-year old ones you find in those cheesy romance novels you can get in sets of 5 for 2 dollars at the local Dollar General store chock full of shitty no-name brand headphones, diet orange soda, and overweight people buying out the shelves of food getting ready for some sport tourney they don’t even care about.

I’m really just a teenager and… well, it’s complicated.

“So, if we match it all up, the only person that could have done it is you, Mr. Dell. Am I correct?” I say this as I turn towards the two police man each standing next to their respective suspects, or would have been suspects.

“Damn it!” He kicks the police officer next to him in the balls and runs out the door on the other side of the room towards his motorcycle. I click a button on the side of my pocket watch and out pops a medium size ball through a small hole in the cover. Just the right size I like for my kicking. WHAM! The ball soars out the door and smacks into his head. He slumps over the seat of his motorcycle unconscious. The unharmed policeman dashes out and slaps handcuffs on his arms with no hassle.

“Should have done it in the first place.” I mutter while slumping down in a bench next to my brother drinking some fancy, expensive root beer.

“Now why did you go and do that, Cliff? The poor guy didn’t deserve that.” He says looking at something I don’t bother to look at.

He did deserve it, Pike. He kicked that policemans balls all the way to high heaven.” I pause to get a good look at his drink for no apparent reason.

“Hey, Where did you get that root beer?” He turns some and points towards a small freezer behind the counter where Mr.Dell works. Or did work, anyway. He’ll be behind bars for a while now.

“Oh, man, that’s just what I want right now.” I grab two soda’s and pour them into a glass, then sit back down with my brother. The policeman that was kicked in the ball’s walks in the room.

“Hey, good job, man! DO you two want a ride home?” We gladly accept and ride home quietly.