Cold Front - Police story by me

[LatinCockharder]

Cold and wet New York Citys streets under me, the rain pouring down on my back as I start to wake up. I couldn’t remember how long I was out. ‘Uuuuuungh.’ I moan, trying to get back to my feet. I start coughing and put my hand to my mouth and I feel a thick liquid hit my hand. Blood. My blood. I turn over to my back and feel the cold wetness penetrate through my leather overcoat and through the battered brown suit pants. The thunder above crackles harder, rain falls faster and the wind picks up even more, pushing me, almost urging me to move, but I can barley stand. I get to one knee and as I try to stand on it, ‘AH!’ the sharp pain hits me by surprise, almost like being stabbed in the back by your best friend.
‘KRACKOOM!’
The sudden explosion from above me and behind hit me like a rude awakening. It all starts coming back slowly. All of it as I stare up and see 4 windows high atop on the 7th floor of a building I couldn’t remember right now… burn eagerly, wanting to meet the storm outside.
I was in an alley.
The water rains down on me, hitting me faster, colder.
I was in trouble.
Taking every last ounce of strength left in me away. I felt death approaching.
I was dieing.
I could see his silloutte approaching me. An upside down figure walking towards me from the end of the filthy New York alley in lower Manhattan…
I was blind.
I didn’t see him coming…
‘Don’t move Styles.’ He said in a cold raspy old mans voice.
I couldn’t.
Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t.
For you to understand, I’ll have to take you back 6 months ago. Back when the storm started…

PLEASE! FEEDBACK! CRITICIZE ME!

 

[KillerMuffin]

1. Spellcheck.
2. Punctuation is your friend.
3. Pick a tense and run with it.
4. Ellipses are evil, especially when you use them incorrectly.
5. It always helps to include gift certificates to Taco Bell. I can't help it, I'm hungry.

Other than that, you've got an opening paragraph. What's to critique? It's not even exposition yet. It's interesting. It's repetitive. It's chock-full of sentence fragments. It's the usual sorts of crime drama/vampire novel sort of opening. Cold city. Cold night. Someone's dying. Let's go back to the beginning to see why. I'm ambivalent about formulaic sorts of things. They can work.

 

[LatinCockharder]

1. Spellcheck.
2. Punctuation is your friend.
3. Pick a tense and run with it.
4. Ellipses are evil, especially when you use them incorrectly.
5. It always helps to include gift certificates to Taco Bell. I can't help it, I'm hungry.

Other than that, you've got an opening paragraph. What's to critique? It's not even exposition yet. It's interesting. It's repetitive. It's chock-full of sentence fragments. It's the usual sorts of crime drama/vampire novel sort of opening. Cold city. Cold night. Someone's dying. Let's go back to the beginning to see why. I'm ambivalent about formulaic sorts of things. They can work.

Um, thanx. I litterally freestyled it a few minutes ago.
Thanx for the input nontheless. I'll definetly wastch my spelling.

 

[Sirens Bane]

I agree with most of what was said earlier, although I'm not an overly large Taco Bell fan (now, Arby's is a different story).

I do agree, it does seem fairly common, following an old and, some may say, overused formula. However, depending on what comes before and after, and how you write it, it could be just fine. A lot of my favorite stories are not the ones that completely violate formula, but the ones that imbrace it, and remake it. Come up with an interesting story, and write it well, and it could be quite excellent.

 

[dr_mabeuse]

I thinnk you've let cliche's run away with you to the point that you’re not really thinking about what you’re saying. Being “stabbed in the back by your best friend” is usually used to mean betrayal. It doesn’t quite go with your leg hurting. An explosion that hits you like “a rude awakening” isn’t much of an explosion if it feels like someone shaking you in bed. You look up and see four windows on the top of a building you can’t remember. Well if you can’t remember it, why even mention it? And the windows “burn eagerly, wanting to meet the storm outside.” I don’t understand. Does that mean the lights in the room are on? The windows are open? There’s a fire in the room?

But the worst is when he’s gotten to his knees, and then he sees this figure coming towards him upside down. Then in the next couple of lines he tells us he’s blind and that he didn’t even see the guy. Huh?

The piece is dripping with mood. In fact, it's all mood. The description of what’s actually happening is extremely vague and gives the impression that you’re not even sure of exactly what’s going on. Granted the guy’s just been roughed up and knocked unconscious, but too much of this makes too little sense. I have the feeling you write this with no clear idea of where it was going at all. That's okay, a lot of us write that way. But it really shows here.

I love mood, and painting a scene like that is something that you see too rarely here on Lit. But the story always has to come first. Your first duty is to tell us what’s happening in such a way that we can see it. Here, we can see some guy lying in a rainy alley, but everything else is very unclear. Moody, but unclear.

---dr.M.