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139,595 Literary Works • 672,615 Reviews
I for one agree with KJ. Not very clear what they pesky kid told on about them. I like your word choice and all. And with the cliffhanger? Love it! Nice effect to leave your reader hanging there. Very nice.
D7M
I liked this. Only thing is I would have put some more time between the boy with the cut on the elbow incident and the two kids coming to join the gang.
Also, it isn't clear what the boy tattled on. Or did you mean it to be that way?
All in all, pretty good. I will read on.
it was good. there was a lot of detail, and good at spacing. that's one thing i am not good at. in the beginning, it was a little hard to follow. but it did get easier to understand-good, though.-jeni
Hello, Volant! I'll try not to repeat anything people said, but I can't promise, unfortunately. *is tired* Anyway!
That was a clunky adverb, so I just deleted it. Without it, it's kind of a given that it was on purpose?
Deleting that makes Paco sound more scary.
Replace something with something to rid yourself of repetition. ^_^
Overall, this was very good. I liked it. ^^ You're writing is simple, yet I picture the action very well. The only thing is I don't know what the place looks like? More description possibly?
That's the only thing, and it really didn't hurt me. I had to think hard to tell you that.
Hope this helped. Keep writing!
Jabber, the One and Only!
Hrm. Here the kid says more than he needs to. I realise that "who turned him in" is an important piece of information, but I think it's more than the kid would say, if he's really freaked out he'll clam up at the second "I don't know" perhaps that info could be placed later. Do we even need to know why he's harassing him yet? Could be for any reason. ^^ It exhibits their power nicely though.
The repetition of "Reiko" jars here. Perhaps "up" would be a better term?
I think here you should delete the "yet" it implies we've seen the other blows. We can assume they've hit him, but we haven't seen it.
Here Paco just slashes him, right? Well, wouldn't he jerk? I think you could have a movement where the kid tries to jerk back, making it worse? Also, he grasps his wound before he's let go. That seems more than slightly odd, considering that Reiko is meant to be holding him tight.
The second "Paco" isn't needed, "he" would work better here.
"Him" should be "himself"
This is rather run on, as a paragraph. Separate the incidents at "Paco watched" making it a real new paragraph. The first section goes into past tense all of a sudden, and it all seems very odd. Perhaps describe the girl attacking. The sounds and the sight of her flinging herself at the larger man. ^^
The repetition of "turned" here jars. Perhaps "signaled" - indicating he tells his gang to follow?
I like this, and I’ll be interested to read the rest. Nice work Vol. ^^
*Hearts* Le Penguin.
Very nice. Is school really like this for some people? Wow! Fights at my school ae really just girls screaming at each other so this is... wow!
I noticed that your dialouge was always followed by a capital. Like this:
It should be:
See? Most of your dialouge was like that.
Now, I wasn't relly frightened byt this, and this is really different to my life. The only tie I see stuff like this is on TV. And thi wasn't scary. I think you need more description, and to work on what your characters are saying. Paco is very... not descriptive, but he talks like a normal person would. And as if this is the everyday. Does that explain anything?
Overall, it's very good and I can't wait to read more.
haha. I don't really know what Paco means; I only know it's a hispanic nickname for Francisco. lol.
If it does mean "big fish," I'll probably change that. heh.
Thank you all very, very much!!! I really appreiciate those crits!!!
Very well written, sadly Sam beat me for any indepth critique. It's intersting but Volant avoiding swearing in a peice like this not a good idea. The school is terrible we understand, we never get any idea really of Paco. Why he the leader? I agree with Sam about his eloquence. He speaks too well. Is Paco hispanic I'm not sure he'd say white trash. It seems more like what a black person would say. Everything is good except of Paco appearance. Even an idea better than nothing. I'd recommend swearing seriously, you've everything else. Keep it up and fix these minor things, just work on description and character development, should be okay.
Good luck
VSN
Hey, Volant!
This was a really eye-opening piece--there aren't that many things written about gang members. I read a lot of stuff about high school crushes and dances and drama, but not about high school gangs. ^_~ I also want to applaud you on trying something like this out. Violence is rough! Getting into the head of a so-called "bad guy" is really hard to do, and that's what makes you awesome. Seriously.
A few things I want to touch on, though:
FEAR FACTOR:
In the introduction, you get a lot of this little boy 'cowering' and 'whimpering' and all of that, but you don't really get a sense of why he's doing that.
Why? There's no description of Paco. We don't know why he's intimidating. It's important for us to know why someone is reacting so strongly--heck, I could flip open a switchblade, but I just wouldn't be that intimidating. I'm 5'4" and wimpy-looking, with glasses and braces and all of that. Really scary with a knife? Probably not. You'd think I was kidding. To elicit such a response, Paco's probably pretty tough-looking--and I want to know just how.
Some ideas:
- Is Paco a big guy? Or is he a little guy with a lot of power? [Aside-doesn't Paco mean "big fish"? I'm probably slaughtering my languages here, but...]
- Is Paco infamous?
- Does Paco wear "tough" items of clothing and/or clothing that would cause harm? (jackboots, etc).
BIG MOUTH:
For a gang-fighting streetrat, Paco's pretty eloquent. I would fix this. Why? It's just not believable--he speaks with the fluency and syntax of an Ivy Leaguer, and yet we get the sense that he's, uhm. Not.
"I don't like waiting. I want an answer." would probably be more along the lines of what he might actually say. Keep it short, simple, and not-so-sweet.
__
Thanks for the read, Volant! Drop me a line if you have any questions or have the next part up for critique.
Omg, I didn't realize i didn't do that!
head/desk
*
*changes that little thing
Also, there will be swearing later on. I try to avoid that as much as possible.lol
Hmmm... Interesting beginning.
You don't really learn much about the characters in this, however. You can take your time, make it longer, and flesh them out. It would make the reader care about them a little bit more and want to continue reading.
Not that I advocate swearing, but it seems to me that if the school were really as rough as it seems, there would be stronger language used. Again, not that I say that swearing is a good thing, but if you are going to create the atmosphere of callousness that you appear to be trying to, you might want to consider peppering it with a few obscenities. I mean, you have blood already.
Last thing: you should put some spaces in between your paragraphs and dialogue
(like this:
the first paragaph
"dialogue"
second paragraph)
so that it is easier to read. As is, it is one big chunk of text that is really hard to separate visually. It puts the online reader off.
But anyway, great job on your story. Good luck continuing it!
~GryphonFledgling