New Author, First time story

[yokaichan]

It's by me: Youkaican
It's called A Cop's Night

It is in the gay male catergory, but could, in this author's opinion fit better in NonCon/Reluctance. It's graphic to some extent. So, I'll consider you've warned about the story. If you read it and don't like it because of those reasons, please don't complain. I warned you.

http://www.literotica.com/stories/showstory.php?id=309708

 

[Nasha]

Hi, yokaichan. Welcome to Lit, and congratulations on posting that first story.

You've achieved a lot with such a short piece--overall, quite well-written. All three characters come through with distinct personalities and their own implied histories, and you definitely know how to work the pathos.

Your opening paragraph is a mixed bag; I like the terse, cryptic first sentence, and the visual is a grabber, but you lose a lot of the impact with extraneous verbiage and some rather distancing language:

::Three shots. My entire life was changed [simple past tense reads more dynamically] all due ["all due to" is a pretty cold, distant way of talking about causality when the preceding image was multiple gunshots] to seeing [again, simple past tense will be less of a mouthful and feel more immediate]three shots fired [passive--distances us from the action]into the back of a black guy's head:: Those where the thoughts of Jakob [it would be much more succinct to say, "Jakob thought"] as he climbed the dingy crappy [reduntant adjectives] stairs to his efficiency apartment.

Your images and the gravity of the situation comes through a bit stronger once that bit of fat is trimmed off:

"Three shots. I watched three rounds rip into the back of a black guy's head. That changed my whole life," Jakob thought as he climbed the dingy stairs to his efficiency apartment.

In paragraph two you switch between past and present tense:

It's not even really that, the young man told himself as he tugged the string to turn on the single light bulb. The sole lighting in the room cast a dim light around the tiny spartan room. A bed is all the furniture he has and it's propped up as best as he could get it by some old encyclopedias. There's a tiny bathroom, just barely big enough for him.

You use "roughly twice in one sentence:

Densen was on him, twisting his arms roughly to his back and cuffing him roughly.

In this context, "resting" seems too gentle an image:

Densen reached down and undid the prostitute's pants, then pushed him so that he was resting against the backseat.

Maybe "...pushed him against the back seat."

For such a short story, does your main character really need three different names (four if we count the two spellings of Jak/Jack)? He's Jakob, he's Ryan, he's Jak. Except for the Jak/Ryan distinction, the other variations don't add substantively to the story.

You do a fine job, pushing emotional buttons; your story made me angry and sad and anxious. But in the end, I felt a bit let down and confused because the intriguing opening that pulled me into the story seemed to have just dropped away into nothingness. In the end, I don't know any more about how the killing he witnessed changed his life than I did after the first paragraph. If you aren't going to connect the dots, the story really seems to start with, "Well, well, well, if it ain't little Ryan Roman."

I know I gave you a lot of criticisms, but that's only because I think you show promise. Hopefully my comments are helpful.

Nasha

 

[yokaichan]

Thanks for the critque, and I'll keep it in mind.