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

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

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.

1- Got the idea of it... I got it.
2- Thanks, atleast someone understands that.
3- These are just regular people, given regular names, and lived regular lives up until the invasion. So this is one work where character names are not really a big deal to me.
4- Your like the 5th person to tell me that, I get it already! I LIKE CAPS LOCKS! but i will change it.

 

[DocBalance]

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.

You're a very military-centric sort of gent, aren't you?

 

[DefunctTheory]

You may want to actually study military tactics and structure, as well as equipment, vehicles, and weaponry.

Also, read some Dan Abnett. He's very good at battle narration and storytelling.

 

[MikeTheElf]

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.

1- Got the idea of it... I got it.
2- Thanks, atleast someone understands that.
3- These are just regular people, given regular names, and lived regular lives up until the invasion. So this is one work where character names are not really a big deal to me.
4- Your like the 5th person to tell me that, I get it already! I LIKE CAPS LOCKS! but i will change it.

Sorry to have reintroduced some ideas XD If everyone is bringing the same issues up, however, they're usually pretty important.

Names may not seem that important, but every name means something; why not look into name meanings and look for one that might appropriately describe some of your characters. Names are part of characterisation, and are useful tools for other literary devices, such as foreshadowing (Suppose a name means 'saviour,' and perhaps if one soldier martyrs himself to save a brother, consider changing his name; it'll add an extra layer of development.), you might not appreciate the power behind literary devices now (I sure couldn't care less when I was 14), but they are what make literature worth reading.

Edit:
Another thing (fittingly brought up in an edit): don't forget to reread and revise everything you write. That's another thing I usually forget to do, and it comes back to bite me in the ass. No matter how good you think your writing is (I certainly fall victim to believing things I write are flawless), it can always be improved.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

It reads more like direction for a game than a book.

You need to be more emotive in what you're saying. Don't be so matter of fact about things. It really dissociates us from the characters. They seem more like auto scripts than humans in an adrenaline filled battle situation.

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.

Why not try

"The convoy's en-rout. Prepare for contact." The lieutenant bellowed down the coms unit as he stumbled to cover.

The cracking of gunfire above my head tore down what little remained of my resolve as I made a break to the tantalising promise of safety that the sandbags held. Where my fellow militia huddled, preparing for the onslaught that was approaching with unwelcome haste.

I'd barely managed to regain my composure as the unmistakable roar of a scoutships engines ripped the airs countenance from above my head. The malignant form blacked out the sun, as if an omen, looming over all of us.

Somehow, over the sizzling cry of the thrusters, I heard a fear laced voice shout out "They're here!"

I dunno. I'm not a writer, I don't even know enough about the situation to characterise properly. And I don't really know any accurate military jargon.

But you certainly need to give the characters more life. Convey emotions in them, through the narrators voice. And add more detail to the world by giving tid bits of info with everything that's being said. Don't make it so matter of fact.

But any way.

Isn't this story.... kinda like Homefront?

Hmmm... your version is a bit too flashy, I'm affraid readers will have to have a dictionary by them while reading it, but I do get your point. I will try to add some flare outside of the quotes. (They usually try to keep it simple in battle, but I agree his discriptions can be more colorful)

So how about this?
"Prepair yourself, the convoy will be here in 30 seconds" Lieutenant solumly wispered into his radio, sounding as if he feared it would be the last sentance to ever leave his mouth.

I ran to cover against a sandbag, surrounded by a few militia soldiers clad in woodland camoflauge and wearing paintball masks... I never got why we wore those, They couldn't stop bullets, and they made your head uncomftorable. I looked to the bland grey skies, and I saw it. Several Nazi scout ships hovering to our possition, Their black shells made the sky look even darker, and they red LPainting on them perfectly finished the "We are evil pricks" effect. The nazi soldiers began to rappel down Near our possition. I readied my rifle for battle.
That is what it will be like in the second run, but with proper grammer and stuff like that. I plan to expand on more things, and add some imagery to it.

I wouldn't say it is anything like homefront. The Nazi's don't control america, but america is fighting with 40/60 odds against them.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

If you really want to get a better understanding of how to write battle scenes, I suggest reading War and Peace. The book is long and arduous. You will not care about any of the problems that the upper class faces in the book, and you'll be generally annoyed by most of the characters, or have absolutely no idea who they are half the time, however the battle scenes are written brilliantly with such vivid language that you almost feel like you're there.

Good news is that you can download the entire book online for free at Project Guttenburg (http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/search/?default_prefix=titles), so if you don't want to read the entire thing (it's fucking LONG) you can just read through some of the battles.

 

[Technocrat]

Since the literary gripes have already been addressed, I'm going to have to mention the politics thing. I don't know what you think socialists are, but despite what Fox News is telling you, they're not planning to eat your aborted babies and force you to get gay married. The term you're looking for is "fascists". Socialists plan to marginally increase your taxes to fund the government provision of services in an effort to create a "level playing field" of opportunity for people. Hardly the kind of driving force behind an invasion.

Also, "Enfondo Super Unit" sounds like something from a 1980's cartoon.

And when they say "ships", what are they talking about? Is this the near future, so therefore "helicopter gunships", or some kind of resurgence of blimps and airships? Spaceships? Or are they just all really fighting underwater?

 

[Averant]

First of all, you will, of course, think your book is bad. It's natural. I do it too, except in my case I KNOW I'm expositioning the shit out of my first chapter. But eh, I'll fix it later.

Second, like others have said, don't use caps for yelling, it shows you don't know how to write properly and it's kind of tacky.

Third, do NOT disregard your other ideas. They can make equally valid and possibly even better stories than your current one, whatever they may be.

Fourth, DO go to your english teacher. You say she's evil? Well, I have an evil english teacher too. Compare them to Drill Sergeants. They're only being hard on your for your own good. They're english teachers for a reason, and a good one proofing your paper is like a SpecOps team on a mission: Swift, thorough, and efficient.

Fifth, I know you don't like them, but write short stories. This is something I still haven't gotten around to, and I know it can help me. A short story doesn't even have to be short, it's still officially a short story up to 30-40 pages.

Sixth, if you STILL don't like writing short stories, FAN FICTION. It's not all slasher, you know. It allows others to grade your work, and in a genre as worn down as the scifi genre, you can avoid all those messy IP laws, too.

Seventh, A thesaurus and a dictionary WILL be your best friends for descriptive writing, let me tell you. Get them.


That's all, I think. Gotta hand it to you, writing something like this at 14 is not something many can do. I can hardly do it myself, and when I tried I shelved my book because I knew I had neither the time, the resources, nor the patience/motivation to keep it going. So if you manage to succeed, you're already well ahead of most writers. Hell, the Eragon author wrote said book at 16. Something to live up to.

So, keep going. Don't let your personal grammar nazi tear your work apart until AFTER you've written it all. And most importantly, piece of advice, DON'T make this a job. Keep it a hobby until you're ready to make it more. The writing business is not profitable unless you're extremely good at it.

Good luck, mate.

 

[MASTACHIEFPWN]

Since the literary gripes have already been addressed, I'm going to have to mention the politics thing. I don't know what you think socialists are, but despite what Fox News is telling you, they're not planning to eat your aborted babies and force you to get gay married. The term you're looking for is "fascists". Socialists plan to marginally increase your taxes to fund the government provision of services in an effort to create a "level playing field" of opportunity for people. Hardly the kind of driving force behind an invasion.

Also, "Enfondo Super Unit" sounds like something from a 1980's cartoon.

And when they say "ships", what are they talking about? Is this the near future, so therefore "helicopter gunships", or some kind of resurgence of blimps and airships? Spaceships? Or are they just all really fighting underwater?

Well, they are not "Modern" socialist, they are back in the day radical nazi like standpoint. I get the facist thing, though, I just went by what they literally called themselves.
I'm not changing the name, It's stuck like that.

It is somewhat in the fueture, so the term "Ships" is used sort of like a helicopter, but most of them are hybrids between FighterJets and Helicopters. (Note, their are full sized ships, which would be like a fictional space ship like from halo... that can't go into space). The american ones are refered to as "Hybrids"

 

[Accountfailed]

Is English your second language? I've spotted many errors, both punctual and grammatical.

That aside, your main problem is that the story plays out like a b- videogame storyline, there's no freshness to the story; nothing interesting. It feels like you are rewriting the movie "pearl harbor" in a different setting and with different characters. you have some kind of post apocalyptic future setting but you don't expand on it any further than "world war 3" and "oh, and nazi's too" which, while I am perfectly open to the idea that anything is possible in the world of pen and paper, America -one of 2 final military superpowers on earth(debatebly)- being taken over by a regime that ended in the late 1940's ("the nazi's are dead, and europe is RED!"
-pigwiththefaceofaboy) seems not only unrealistic but borderline absurd. What you have to do, and this will hurt a bit; is rewrite the universe where this story is set, swap out anything that seems remotely videogame-ey (that is, anything to do with an elite unit, advanced weapons, etc...) with things that either fortify/mirror/conflict with the personality or projections of the major characters. Your goal here is to cause depth; to evoke emotion in the reader by using scenes, actions and dialog in a specific way.

For instance; take your main character, John Verkia. John is the most common name on the planet, it is a favourite among game-devs when attempting to make a blank slate for the audience to project on to, but it doesn't match with John here because you've added 'Verkia' a russian sounding surname and a backstory of military service to him, which transforms your blank slate into a boring sounding macho 2d character. His quest to 'save the princess' as we'll call it, is a trope in both movies and bad games. such a thing only works when it tells you something about the character, take Liam Neeson's character in the movie "Taken" for example, the quest to find his daughter is the source of his determination, but also of his cruelty, and you begin to lose faith in him watching the atrocities he commits to find his daughter.

you also need to be far more descriptive in your writing, the scenes come off as boring and repetitive, you reuse words pretty often and by focusing on the moment, you fail to set the scene, which should always take priority. Scene THEN Moment, here's an example.

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

The world around me rushed as men gathered their courage, the heat of the sun beat down on the makeshift encampment as if it too, was against us. I drew in a gulp of air calmly, listening to the minutia in my environment, the grass lightly swaying in the drawing wind, making a whispy sound not unlike the searing a bullet freshly landed into cover, or flesh. Birds foolishly settled in the trees nearby, unknowing of the concert to which they would be audience to, moments before the noise drives them to flee. Coldly I cycled through positions, thinking on which would give me the greatest advantage, who I would be with, and who would get in the way of gunfire.

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

The setting of the scene makes the action of taking cover more interesting, see?

I know this may come off as a bit harsh, but you have the capability to do it. I would say the immediate thing you need to do is improve all aspects of your english; buy a book on punctuation and grammer, and then move on to structure. Practice writing short stories using a beginning, middle and end formula. READ MORE, this is one of the most important things, read more books, lots of books, and lookup any words you don't know, if you find yourself relying on a certain set of words, look them up in a thesaurus to find works like them (the internet is your friend here).

Don't despair, if you persist and practice, you will do far better

 

[lacktheknack]

I skimmed it over, but don't have a good handle on who's doing what, or why I should care.

That's a bad sign.

 

[Trivun]

nazis have been done to death. literally.

Not Nazis. That is there name they were tagged with, they are socialist, but not nazis.

Okay, fair enough. What's so bad about socialism? I would love an answer to that from you, please.

Anyway, onto the main topic. Reading through it, given that I also write, mainly short stories (not very well), and film/theatre scripts (which are slightly more well received), I feel fairly qualified to answer. Starting with the plot, it does seem a little bit cliched. However, the romance angle is something that makes it a bit more beefed up and better, though again nothing that hasn't been done before (romance in war stories is pretty common, mainly thanks to Hollywood). Overall, aside from the 'socialism=bad' thing, it seems fairly decent, though could do with quite a bit more expansion (though that's something to think about when you're a bit further in, I guess).

As to the writing style, it's not bad, but it's definitely not good. Thing is, you need to work on your diction a lot more. It's readable, but some sentences and paragraphs seem a little forced, and some seem to me to just be really bad ways of writing something. For example:

"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.

This does not engage me as a reader, one bit. If I was an editor I would immediately put that in the bin. Sounds harsh, and I don't mean to be, but publishers do have a lot of stuff come through each day, they tend to look at maybe a few paragraphs of something to get an idea of style and substance, and if you don't have an engaging writing style then they will pass you over like a lamb. Here's just one way in which that above paragraph can be improved:

"A squad of soldiers landed in front of me. I removed the safety from my rifle and prepared to fire. As I squeezed the trigger, I watched as bullets spat from the barrel and wave after wave of troops fell in the onslaught."

I'll freely admit that even that little paragraph doesn't sound perfect, but it's certainly a lot better than what you started with. Overall, you need to take a look at your writing style and make some serious changes.

All in all, the concept is good. I definitely think it has potential. You just need to work on your style, and have someone you can trust proof-read it. I know you say you don't like writing short stories, but seriously, it would improve your style a lot. I know from experience that trying to write a full novel, or even a mere novella, is extremely difficult to start out with. You need experience, and for that you need to write shorter pieces that will help you with your style. And almost every great novelist today also writes, or wrote, short pieces too. I highly recommend that, whether you like them or not, you write some shorter pieces first. If you want to expand on your ideas, then you could just write several linked short pieces that also work as standalone stories. But you need to build up your experience with short pieces first, and then move onto more ambitious projects. It's the only way you'll benefit from writing if you seriously want to do this.

One final tip. Take a look at this website: http://www.authonomy.com/

It's a site for budding writers, where you can post chapters of an ongoing work, and other writers and publishers, agents and editors, will be able to review them, proofread them, and leave feedback so you can constantly update and improve your work. You get professional help, absolutely free, and it also acts as a place where the publisher Harper Collins, who run the site, get a good look at people who want to write and potentially may even offer you a deal (if you're very, very lucky, and/or talented). Some books have been published and the authors become quite well known in literary circles after being published through the site. It's definitely worth trying, purely for the quality of advice you'll get, which is much better than anything we here at the Escapist could give you.

All in all, hope this helps! And don't forget to reply answering me why you think Socialism is bad, okay?