Why do I think this book i'm writing is turning out bad?

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MASTACHIEFPWN

Will fight you and lose
Mar 27, 2010
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HI!
I am writing a book, and making a game slightly based upon it, (Takes place in the same area and time frame with the same groups) AT THE SAME TIME.

The book is writen in a first person perspective of an Enfondo Super Unit protecting whats left of america after a socialist invasion. (They are reffered to as Nazis in the book) and well, just don't think it is turning out to greatly. It is hard to completely discribe the battles, when only a minut part can be said. but anyway, here is a small wrap up of it.

A soldier (John Verkia) is transfered to a group of the marines known as Expis Enfondo (Don't ask me where I got the title from, I don't even know) These guys are looked up to by free america as the last hope of freedom. They are hand picked, and are the best soldiers anyone has ever seen. They are give advanced technology, like combat armor with a fully integrated HUD system, and tons of other stuff. They fight along side Militia forces from the tri state area they are in.

John was in love long before World War III started, and his life was only kept together by his love, his parents died at a young age. He took place in one of the bloodies battles of the invasion, and lived to tell his heroic tale, though he kept it mostly to himself, not wanting to be honored when so many others gave their lives. He sent his girl friend to a civilian shelter, Undergound locations undectectable by most technology, built in hills (For the area is really hilly) And never learned it's location. So the romance side of the story (Which I can write pretty well about) is based around his flashbacks of times before the war and him trying to find her.

1 year after he joined the enfondo forces, He is sent on a sandbox campaign (AKA Suicide Campaigns by the enfondo units) Under the control of the main enfondo commander. The book is centered around this campaign, and the events of it.

Well, I can write most of it pretty well, besides the battles... I would explain, but I just took an excript from it, and I guess you guys can read it and tell me what you think.

"?Prepare yourself. The convoy will be here in 30 seconds.? Lieutenant said on the radio.

I stationed myself behind a sandbag with a few other militia soldiers.

Moments later, Scout ships arrived overhead.

?HERE THEY ARE!? The militia leader yelled.

Several soldiers dropped from the ship. I turned my rifle?s safety off, and prepared to fire.
I pulled back my trigger with full force. My rifle began shooting out bullet after bullet.
The least fortunate ones fell right between my iron sights. Falling soon after.

Several of the Nazis were aiming at me, and retaliating with full force. I turned my rifle turned them, and shot one in the neck. The others took cover. I grabbed a grenade from my side, and chucked it to their position, landing near them. Less than a second later, a small explosion led to several dead enemies behind that wall.
I looked to my side, Many of the other sandbag walls were given no breaks from fire. I saw Marcus and Williams stationed at one, All but one of their militia soldiers had died. Just then, They were hit buy a mortar. The rest of the convoy had arrived, packing full force against us.

A Nazi LAV was headed toward my position, I clicked the C4 detonation switch, And the jeep was reduced to only a vehicle shell. The other enemy units around it were killed as well.

I rushed over to check on Marcus and Williams. On my way to their position, I was shot in the leg, and fell on the concrete. I was flipped over, only to see the grey sky hovering above me, then I was dragged across the ground. ?DON?T WORRY SIR,? I heard someone say ?YOU?RE GOING TO BE ALRIGHT.? A militia soldier was patching up my leg as several Nazi?s jumped over the sand bags. I grabbed my pistol and killed several of them. One butted a militia soldier in the chest. I shot his foot and he fell to the ground. I took out my combat knife and did not hesitate to stab him in the neck. All around us, bullets were flying everywhere. You couldn?t tell what had come from us, and what had come from the Nazis. I crawled over to the soldier who was hit buy the Nazi, and asked if he was alright. ?Yeah, I?ll be fine.? he said. He helped me to get up, and I preceded to my squad mates.

?MARCUS, WILLIAMS, YOU GUYS ALRIGHT? I yelled over the battle.
?Yeah.? Marcus said. ?But Williams doesn?t look to good, Help me patch him up.?
?Sir, yes sir.? I replied."


So, What do you think? I really need some openions on this.
 

Dango

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Feb 11, 2010
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I'm not sure posting it here is really the best idea. If you have an English teacher, then that's a pretty good choice.

Anyway, on to the criticism. The idea of post-invasion America is a bit cliched, but the love story, despite seeming like it might be a bit tacked on, does make it stand out a bit. The real problem though is diction. You word choice just doesn't really make for that interesting of a read, not to mention the sentence structure doesn't much help the flow from one segment to another. Lastly, just check for capitalization and spelling, I found quite a few errors in there, mostly with needlessly capitalized words after commas.

And it's natural for someone to not like what they're writing, by the way.
 

MASTACHIEFPWN

Will fight you and lose
Mar 27, 2010
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Dango said:
I'm not sure posting it here is really the best idea. If you have an English teacher, then that's a pretty good choice.

Anyway, on to the criticism. The idea of post-invasion America is a bit cliched, but the love story, despite seeming like it might be a bit tacked on, does make it stand out a bit. The real problem though is diction. You word choice just doesn't really make for that interesting of a read, not to mention the sentence structure doesn't much help the flow from one segment to another. Lastly, just check for capitalization and spelling, I found quite a few errors in there, mostly with needlessly capitalized words after commas.

And it's natural for someone to not like what they're writing, by the way.
Yeah... Stupid call of duty and Homefront making the idea seem like an everyday thing. This is just a first run of it, A rough draft if you will. I havn't really given diction and sentance structure a care yet, I just need to get my ideas down before I forget about them. My english teacher is also evil. She would probably attempt to get me expeled for it.
 

DocBalance

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Nov 9, 2009
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Okay. One, you need a good editor, mate. Spelling, grammar, and such are a big problem for most early writers, so find the local grammar Nazi in your life and ask him/her to tear your writing apart.

Then there's the whole "caps" thing. Don't do that. You don't need caps to show yelling. It just ends up looking tacky and amateurish. Throw in an exclamation point and simply put the subtext of "yelled" and such. That's sufficient.

TBH, you have taken on a difficult project here. If you do it at least competently, it will sell alright, but you have to compete with every Tom, Clive, and Orson to get recognition. Full scale invasion of the U.S. by flavor of the month dissidents is not new ground for books, movies, or games, so your market is going to be stretched. I'm going to be brutally honest here: I've read ten thousand books just like this. I've seen enough movies and played/read about enough games of similar themes to know that it is just played out and dull to me at this point. My interest in reading yet another entry in this portion of the speculative fiction genre is around the same level of interest I have in playing another shooter set in WW2 or watching another movie about a plucky, unknown underdog triumphing over his stronger, faster, smarter, richer, better-looking, more popular, douchey arch-nemesis. It's just been done so much that you are going to need to make it damn good to catch any interest, and that can be difficult for a first outing. If I were you, I would consider shelving the concept for now. Write a short fantasy epic, pen some short stories, or find some new, exciting tech, and write a sci-fi piece on it. But in this market, this type of story(well-worn tropes with familiar archetypes in familiar roles) is not a good place to start your career. It's the equivalent of breaking into the music business by winning American Idol: It gets you there, but it also puts you in a very restrictive box.

Edit: Wow, real cute 9 o'clock multi-tasking fail. Screw my grammar in a post about grammar. I bet you think you are real funny, don't you?
 

Pimppeter2

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Dec 31, 2008
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Basic grammar rules and structure have been completely ignored in your excerpt.

Also, appropriate ways of showing emphasis are through using bold[/i] and italics. Using Caps locks just makes you sound like a moron.

Out of curiosity, how old are you?
 

Dango

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Feb 11, 2010
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MASTACHIEFPWN said:
My english teacher is also evil. She would probably attempt to get me expeled for it.
If she's "evil" that probably means she'd be a pretty good and honest editor.
 

MASTACHIEFPWN

Will fight you and lose
Mar 27, 2010
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TheMaddestHatter said:
Okay. One, you need a good editor mate. Spelling, grammar, and such are a big problem for most early writers, so find the local grammar Nazi in your life and ask them to tear your writing apart.

Then there's the whole "caps" thing. Don't do that. You don't need caps to show yelling. It just ends up looking tacky and amateurish. Throw in an exclamation point and simply put the subtext of "yelled" and such. That's sufficient.

TBH, you have taken on a difficult project here. If you do it at least competently, it will sell alright, but you have to compete with every Tom, Clive, and Orson to get recognition. Full scale invasion of the U.S. by flavor of the month dissidents is not new ground for books, movies, or games, so your market is going to be stretched. I'm going to be brutally honest here: I've read ten thousand books just like this. I've seen enough movies and played/read about enough games of similar themes to know that it is just played out and dull to me at this point. My interest in reading yet another entry in this portion of the speculative fiction genre is around the same level of interest I have in playing another shooter set in WW2 or watching another movie about a plucky, unknown underdog triumphing over his stronger, faster, smarter, richer, better-looking, more popular, douchey arch-nemesis. It's just been done so much that you are going to need to make it damn good to catch any interest, and that can be difficult for a first outing. If I were you, I would consider shelving the concept for now. Write a short fantasy epic, pen some short stories, or find some new, exciting tech, and write a sci-fi piece on it. But in this market, this type of story(well-worn tropes with familiar archetypes in familiar roles) is not a good place to start your career. It's the equivalent of breaking into the music business by winning American Idol: It gets you tehre, but it also puts you in a very restrictive box.
The thing is, I have other Ideas, but I don't respect them enough to right them down. Another thing, The Nazi's are about at equal force with the U.S. They just have a bit more man power. The US out techs them every time. It could sort of be compaired to WW1, just a lot of bloody battles. But yeah, I will need to locate that grammer nazi.
 

MASTACHIEFPWN

Will fight you and lose
Mar 27, 2010
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Pimppeter2 said:
Basic grammar rules and structure have been completely ignored in your excerpt.

Also, appropriate ways of showing emphasis are through using bold[/i] and italics. Using Caps locks just makes you sound like a moron.

Out of curiosity, how old are you?
Again, this is a first run. I haven't really given sentance structure a shit yet, I need to get my Ideas down. I'm 14 btw.
 

MASTACHIEFPWN

Will fight you and lose
Mar 27, 2010
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thiosk said:
Start with short stories. Do not start with novels.
The thing is, I don't like short stories. I have ideas for them, but I hate making an idea, and not being able to expand around it. It is like making an expendable force, and then sending it out to die as a first wave, and then send in the big guns. (What I do in RTS games.). I disagree with it on most non videogame standpoints.
 

DocBalance

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Nov 9, 2009
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MASTACHIEFPWN said:
The thing is, I have other Ideas, but I don't respect them enough to right them down. Another thing, The Nazi's are about at equal force with the U.S. They just have a bit more man power. The US out techs them every time. It could sort of be compaired to WW1, just a lot of bloody battles. But yeah, I will need to locate that grammer nazi.
Hey, I know what that's like. I look back at my first short story, and I can't believe I wrote it. It's pure tripe, the worst thing I've ever read. But write down those ideas you don't respect. Develop them a bit, play around with them. They might just surprise you. My best story so far started with me messing around with an idea about a guy digging endlessly through a mountain because of a song I heard. It's grown into a topical criticism of both the death penalty and recent "advances" in psychology. When it first started out, it was trash. Just a stupid little shocker piece about a guy stuck in a "haunted" mountain. Almost every single aspect of that aside from the guy and the mountain ended up being swept away by the first draft. It's crazy what a little bit of theory-crafting can get you.
 

MikeTheElf

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Aug 22, 2008
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Some tips:
1- Get someone to check your spelling/grammar. If you really don't want your current English teacher to proofread it, hold onto the story until you have a teacher you like.
2- Even though lots of people are telling you it's an overused/cliché idea, write what you want to write about. It may not become the next big work of literature, but you'll get some practice in.
3- Remember that every single choice of diction, punctuation, etc. is a highly thought out an conscious decision and means something. Ex: Choose names carefully. The first work that comes to mind is A Streetcar Named Desire, in which the main character (named Blanche, the French word for 'white,' and white symbolises purity) is not pure in any way shape or form. If she had had any generic name, it would not have had the same effect.
4- 'Yelled' already implies the volume of the speaker, capital letters are unnecessary.
 

MASTACHIEFPWN

Will fight you and lose
Mar 27, 2010
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believer258 said:
MASTACHIEFPWN said:
The thing is, I have other Ideas, but I don't respect them enough to right them down.
If this is truly the story you want to write, then you want to do it perfectly right the first time. Write down every damn one of these stories you have and flesh them out, even if it's just a little. Every one. You might be amazed at what kind of story you could put together, or what kind of originality or quirkiness you could come up with. May I ask what sort of ideas they were, and, more importantly, why you don't respect them?
The one I have been closest to writing is about 2 mountain climbers captured by russian forces for accadentally stumbiling into their base. It would be simply about them escaping.
 

Gxas

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Sep 4, 2008
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MASTACHIEFPWN said:
The thing is, I don't like short stories. I have ideas for them, but I hate making an idea, and not being able to expand around it.
That is the worst excuse I have ever heard.

What is a novel? It is a ton of interlinked short stories. Keep the idea you have, and write a short story detailing part of a battle, or the entire thing.

Each conflict in your novel can be turned into a short story. Do this enough, then you can find a way to link them all together. Then you have your novel without much wasted effort.

Seriously though, you'll never amount to much as a writer if you don't accept all forms of the medium.
 

thiosk

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Sep 18, 2008
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MASTACHIEFPWN said:
thiosk said:
Start with short stories. Do not start with novels.
The thing is, I don't like short stories. I have ideas for them, but I hate making an idea, and not being able to expand around it.
Well, theres an oft-suggested series that floats around on this forum-- Gaunt's Ghosts by Dan Abnett. The short stories abnett wrote developed small events in a larger conflict, and developed individual charachters in a direct way. They were so well-received that I think the series is up to what, its 12th full length novel? Something like that. Maybe more. And all the short stories were collected as its own novel.

Character development is huge. Diving in headlong will probably leave you with a lot of where and when, but not much who, how, and why.