[1900] Tech Forest

Having quite literally been arrested and suspended for hacking school servers (which apparently were connected to the fucking fire-station?) in a photo-shop class, I found this story amusing. I have to start with mine first to put context to my critique:

For me, I got pulled from class before I even entered. The teacher said I had to go to a study hall and wouldn't tell me why. In the office, a plain clothed officer was there and wanted to talk to me about something. I knew I was screwed.

I wrote a VBS script and with some elevated privs placed it in the registry and school directory. I got caught because "mine played music". It was a program I called "RAVEPARTY2.0" which did nothing but disable the ESC and DEL key and take over hte screen and flash random colors to the tune of sandstorm (the old techno song). Apparently, I neglected to upload the proper .wav file and so I got busted. Also, they "Asked Dave, because it literally was either you or Dave." and Dave said it wasn't him. And that's how I ended up dropping out of high school, among many other reasons...

That brings me to the critique

Character

Drew is a non-character. The narrator's voice and the "telly" sentences cloud her out. She has no personality, no thoughts, no dialogue during the set up. It's not someone I care about.

The events themselves

Are interesting--I like the content, but I found it dry and overly telly as I said. Also, looking back to my story, there is a distinct lack of the emotional stuff. She's hollow. I've been in her shoes quite literally (though with script kitty days long before I learned about metasploit lol) and reading this didn't evoke those emotions or even touch on them. The only reason I can empathize is because I've been there. However, what I'm hoping you can do is add to that emotion of nervousness and suspense.

Tone

It's dry. I wish I could elaborate.

Setting

It's vague. I don't get a clear image of anything in this story.

Grammar

It's not terrible, but the structure in a lot of the sentences should be reworked. I marked a ton of this.

Biggest issue in my opinion

The narrative style choice. It's so telly. Most of the sentences are dry. There is a story here worth telling, I speak from experience there, but in current form I wasn't much engaged with the characters. This is also a tone problem. I can't put my finger on it, but this reads like a Marry Sue. The character is supposed to be a bad ass, but the character is also an idiot...She doesn't care about things, then an instant later takes off running? It doesn't make much sense.

Anyway, your writing has a lot of weasel words. There is also a lot of telly sentences which I believe dilutes the voice.

This is also a content problem. There are some awkward unrealistic things, which I suspect is because this isn't just a generic college class room. Something wonky is going on obviously with hazmat suits etc. However, there is limited context (especially at the start) to infer where they are, why they are where they are, and what anything looks like.

The most descriptive sentence was her hair color. Other than that, I don't know anything about anyone or anything :(

/r/DestructiveReaders Thread