Chapter 1
Preston Davis
“I know he's your nephew, but you just don't bring a fifteen year old boy to a crime scene.” Chief Detective Mitchell stated flatly “especially not a murder scene!” Detective Lawrence nodded his head in understanding.
“I get that” he said trying to be respectful but also trying get the point across “but this kid has a knack for solving puzzles, and mysteries, I would go so far as to call him a prodigy.” Mitchell tapped his desk impatiently.
“Look, I know he's family, but I can't just take your word for it.” The Chief Detective gathered up a stack of papers and walked out of the office leaving Lawrence behind. Just six hours ago a body had been discovered in the back of an old pickup that had been sitting out in a field. The owner of the land come across the truck while plowing his fields and had planned to get it out of the way when he had found the body. It was an adult male, 5' 9” in height with brown hair, their was a note on found in the victim's hand. On the note was a name, the name of Lawrence's fifteen year old nephew. Preston Davis.
Colton Middle School
Whack! The punch was delivered by the right hand, only medium force thumb notably under the four fingers. Preston's face hit the wall, he watched as his tormentor, the school bully Jase, stepped back and prepared to go in for another blow.
“Look man,” Preston said “If you're gonna hit me, at least hit me like you mean it.” With a snort of annoyance Jase took two steps forward, Preston feigned being too dazed to do anything, then at the last second ducked under the blow feeling a satisfying yelp from the bully as his hand connected with maximum force against the brick wall.
“Yeow!” Jase yelled falling to his knees clutching his right hand.
“Word of advice,” Preston said wiping the blood off his lip and walking off “Don't punch with your fingers covering your thumb, you'll just break something.”
Preston walked back into the school and forced himself to stay still through the last few hours. Finally, the bell rang and he managed to get out of the classroom and into the crowded hallway, weaving in and out of the people bunched up in the hall he made his way outside.
Waiting for him as he stepped into the chilly evening was his uncle who was leaning back on his shiny black marauder. Judging from the envelope that was in Lawrence's hand Preston managed to deduce that his uncle had something to show him, and noting that his uncle was attemting to cover the photos with a folder it made sense to assume that the photos were from the police, or rather a crime scene.
“What is it?” Preston asked approaching his uncle, “This isn't about the one they found this morning is it?” Lawrence nodded, he wondered how his nephew did it, how just a kid in school could tell you who you were with just one look. It was something that Lawrence felt that he would never get used to. Glancing around to make sure that no one was watching him he casually passed Preston the folder, who in turn tossed him his school backpack.
"Ha! I was right!" Preston smiled oh how he loved the opportunity to put his brain to use.
Looking at the picture as whole Preston saw a man in the back of an old rusty pickup truck. Nothing special about it, until he broke down all the pieces. The man, looking at his face, was well shaven his face dirty with scratches around the nose. His shirt was a light tan button down, this shirt to was covered in dirt as if, almost as if had been dragged along on the ground.
The shoes, Preston loved shoes, they were the little pieces that had all the information. This particular victim was wearing loafers, not something one normally wears around all the time, that hinted at where the man might have been or was going.
"There it is!" Preston mumbled to himself, he looked at the man's ring finger, there was no golden ring, but there was a clear tan circle, perhaps at one point where a ring might have been but in any case it was gone.
The front of the man's hair was mess covered in dirt, possibly a result of being dragged on the ground, but the back was fairly combed over with what seemed to be the after effects of hair gel keeping everything in place.
Preston also noticed the lack of blood on the bed of the truck, he thought it quite interesting, no blood...
Their was however a pink flower petal in the sleeve of the button down.
Looking at the back of the rear windshield he saw the reflection of a small police force that had come to check out the body, he also noticed large trees in the background, it seemed this field the truck was in was in the center of a forest, and judging from that it seemed to be a large green field.
Putting all this information together Preston, closed his eyes and thought of a situation.
A man, who is heading towards a date realizes he forgot flowers but doesn't have the time to turn around and go back, instead he see's a pink flower bush as he is driving by. Pulling over he gets out of his car and goes to get flower. Unfortunatley for him he is in tan clothing and it is the middle of December prime time for hunting, as he bends down he looks an awful lot like a deer and is shot.
The shooter sees a tan object with four legs just inside the woods of a greenfield he shootsand then realizing what hes done attempts to hide the body. He can't just call about the body, it would be like turning himself in.
Preston told his uncle what he had come up with, the whole examination had taken all of thirty six seconds.
"There was one other thing that wasn't in the photo" Lawrence said as though something troubled him "The victim was carrying a piece of paper, with your name on it." This new piece of information suddenly threw his whole scenario out of whack.
"How is that?" Preston asked slightly disturbed, he was suddenly ready to get out of the open and get to his home. Lawrence rubbed his eyes as though he had been working on an answer for that question for quite a while.
"As of right now we just don't know." Preston rolled his eyes.
"You're the stinkin FBI what do you do all day?" He asked feeling annoyed. "Have you contacted the person he was meeting? Did you search his truck?"
"No! That's why I brought the photos to you! Because right now, we have nothing substantial." Lawrence checked his watch and grabbed the photos from his nephew. "I have to go,just watch yourself, I don't know why he had your name. Tell me if you if you come up with anything worth checking out." His uncle got in the marauder and drove off leaving Preston with, for the first time in a long while, some questions he had no answer to.
Points:
Time spent:
Canary word: Present
Possible AI signals:
Original Text:
Are you sure you want to delete this comment? This cannot be undone.
Mark this comment as a review? Points will be awarded to the poster.
Your comment was posted, but it wasn’t long enough to count as a review. Reviews need about four complete sentences (at least 250 characters). Try writing another review that explains your thoughts in more detail — the author will appreciate it, and you’ll earn points for it.
125,009 Literary Works • 672,839 Reviews
Back again.
I have to say this is infinitely better than the original. You followed my advice better than I actually gave it, because you cut Preston's legs out from under him by having him be wrong. This is critical for mystery stories because if the detective is too good, there's no mystery or reason to keep reading because you know he'll be right. You leave us with an absolutely awesome hook of him not knowing what to do, and I want to find out more.
I don't really think more description of the character is needed at this point, because it's not exactly plot relevant. I think any sort of looks information would be best put in as Preston tries to figure out why people would want to go after him, or connect him to a crime scene. Go over his life more in depth then.
A word of caution is to try and keep as many possibilities for what happens at the end as you can. Different shades of winning and losing. Preston could win completely, Preston could be framed, Preston could never figure out the case, or what have you. The more possibilities you have for the end, the more interesting the story is. We're not just wondering who will win. We're wondering the much more gripping, "What happens next?!"
One thing you really need to work on is punctuation. Here's how I'd edit the introduction to be grammatically correct:
Take note of the dialogue punctuation in there. I'm not going to knock you for it too hard since you followed the bulk of my advice in the last review, but do keep an eye out for punctuation like that. This article should help a lot.
One thing you'll notice is I moved the person's actions to the same line they were speaking, putting that before they actually spoke. I call these "action tags" and they're perfectly legitimate ways to show when somebody's speaking.
Also, punctuation. You really need to brush up on it. Some nit-picks:
"Preston's face hit the wall" is a complete sentence, as is "he watched as his tormentor...". Therefore, you need to separate them with a period.
Same deal here. These are known as comma splices. Watch out for them. My little trick is, if the passage makes perfect sense if you replace the comma with a period, then you should use a period.
Here you don't have enough commas. I added the necessary one. That one's an introductory comma, where the beginning of the sentence is dependent on the rest of the sentence but is before the subject of the sentence (the pronoun "he").
Another missing introductory comma. This one has the added benefit of more suspense to the sentence.
This article might help you out with punctuation. I've by no means gone through the whole piece; I just picked out a few places as examples.
Also, one little continuity thing I never noticed till now. If Preston tossed the folder into his backpack, when did he get out the pictures?
Honestly, once you get past the punctuation and dialogue wrinkles in this, you'll have a very solid piece. Do let me know when you put up the next part. I want to look at it.
Also, please PM me or post on my wall to leave feedback. I don't get notifications for review replies!
~Rosey
Try use more descriptive words to describe the character. I love the series and want to read more though so don't stop writing. Also, could you describe the side characters a bit more? I think it would help the plot a little. Most of what you're writing is great, but to fix some of your writing, you need to keep writing and practicing to get even better at it. Writing is like a sport, if you put it off for a long time, you'll get rusty. If you practice every chance you get, you'll become a "God with a Pen(cil)"
Hello.
I have mixed feelings about this piece. You have bad dialogue punctuation scattered throughout, which is seriously distracting, and your paragraphing/information distribution is pretty bad. However, you have quite the interesting premise and the beginning actually hooked me. Dialogue can be fixed by reading this article, but paragraphing and information will be the bulk of my review.
How long or short paragraphs are determine if the story is going slow or fast. And if the paragraphs are too long in general, then readers will skip over them completely.
That's what happened, here. I hit your 27 line paragraph, read the first three lines, then the last line. I didn't lose anything plot wise out of the story. At least, I didn't feel like I did. I know I missed a lot of characterization about Preston and how he interacted with his class, but I wasn't actually interested in that part (especially the way it was presented). I was more interested in the murder itself. That much information presented at once is story death, because it stops the story. And with long paragraphs generally reflecting a lack of tension... not good. People see the length, don't want to wade through it, and turn away.
I'd look at that information and remove it. Completely. You have hooked us with the murder, then you hook us with Preston outwitting the bully, giving us his character in a very short interaction, then... you stop everything with a huge infodump about how he sees his classmates. That isn't needed, and makes me not interested in the story at all. I want to find out more about what you hooked us with: the murder.
Which you do provide within the first chapter, I am glad to say. However, your paragraphs are really long (again— seriously, there is no harm in breaking them up. Each idea should be its own paragraph, and in fiction paragraphs get shorter) and they don't really give much of Preston's thought process. It looks like he's more of a Mary Sue, pulling all these deductions out of thin air.
Instead of simply having him barrel through the ideas, slow down and have him think about it. Give us moments to relate to him everywhere, because then we'll actually get to feel a connection with the character. And a connection is one thing that helps us go through and turn the page.
I do find him rather interesting as a character, though. Smart aleck with a cunning, calculating streak. If we got to hear more of his voice, especially in the deductions, he could likely carry the story through any slow parts (so long as you paragraphed them properly).
Then there's also the dialogue himself. It sounds like notes you write for your teacher, instead of a smart aleck teenager that I thought he was. Why does he sound like that? I'd like to see it more natural.
Also, I just realized that you haven't formatted your dialogue properly in your before last paragraph. The dialogue Preston said should be its own paragraph, with his uncle pressing "stop" on the recording a new one. Like I said, each idea (or, in the case of fiction, action), needs to be on a new paragraph. Long paragraphs are really hard to read and extract information from, especially when you're trying to go for entertainment. Break up the ideas so we can actually digest them.
Finally, your viewpoint. You switch between Lawrence, Preston, and back again, without really letting us connect with any one particular character. Don't be afraid to get into their heads, and let us see their thought process. That's what lets readers connect with a character. Thought processes are interesting. Especially when the character is calculating. And don't lump them in long, skimable paragraphs. Scatter little lines here and there throughout.
When you don't give us the thought process in a mystery, it looks like the characters are pulling the answers out of a hat. Provide us the "why" in deductions. In the one Sherlock Holmes mystery I've read, you had Sherlock ID a royal in disguise. Watson asks why, and you get all the clues that led to the (correct) conclusion. We didn't get the clues first, because Watson didn't know to notice what Sherlock did, but Sherlock provided them and you could see where he came with the conclusion. This was important to knowing Sherlock really knew his stuff.
Mystery demands this sort of thing. You either have the characters say the important details, or you give us the same level of detail they're seeing so we can make the conclusion ourselves. Right now, you're giving us neither (what made hims say the guy wasn't shot at the truck? A lack of a blood pool? Then you have to mention the lack of blood pool. And what about him meeting a girl? Wouldn't he be wearing clean clothes for that? Or are the clothes dirty in a way it looks like he fell a certain way and got dragged?) and it's frustrating. I want to either get the character to tell me everything important or to see it all myself so I can figure it out.
As a result, the story feels really rushed. It's known as a Bat Deduction, from the old Batman cartoons where they didn't have enough time to show all the information, so they'd have Batman draw a conclusion that couldn't be drawn from the information provided, but he was always correct.
This is a sign the pacing is too fast. You're not slowing down enough to give us all the information we need, either from the characters thinking about it, or from us seeing the detail. You have room. Use it. Breathe.
Your information balance is out of whack in general. First you give us a huge infodump in that 27 line paragraph of information we really don't need (past the line about the bully breaking his thumb, which shows Preston knows how to fight, and Preston seeing his uncle), then you have a Bat Deduction because you don't have the characters think about every little detail they see that could lead them to that conclusion.
Figure out what information you absolutely need and what information you don't. Absolutely need is stuff the plot can't progress without. Like, details that could have us draw conclusions about how the guy was murdered. Don't need is anything the plot doesn't need to move forward. Like, long winded descriptions of how the characters interact without having them actually interact to show the interactions (which is usually better than telling about how people interact).
And, your paragraphing. Look for each individual concept/action in here, and separate it accordingly. Ten lines is where paragraphs start getting really long, and a single line is a quick punch for important information. But don't overuse the quick punch, else it loses its effectiveness.
I want to like this story. Really, I do. The premise is interesting, I want to find out why Preston's name was on a note in the murdered's hand, and I find Preston a rather interesting character. But the dialogue, paragraphing, and information imbalance really kills the story for me.
Do let me know when this is edited. I'd love to read it then.
PM me if you have any questions/comments.
~Rosey
I have edited the piece and would be honored if you would check it again, thanks!
Hi there!
I don't really have much to say about this except that I think it's great and I can't wait to read more. I'm really into crime shows, specifically Castle if you've ever watched that, so I'm intrigued by the idea of this story. This kid Preston is an interesting character. I like his nonchalant attitude about the murder and how he can pinpoint the killer and the crime just from the picture.
I do have a slight problem with the huge paragraph in the middle of this. I think it should be broken down in order for it to read better. And there are a lot of missing commas and overall punctuation in this story. It would take me a while to point them all out so I suggest going back and reading over this again. I'm sure you can find the places where they're missing.
Please let me know when the next chapter is posted. I can't wait to read more!
Keep writing!
**Noelle**
Alright! Thank you!