Originally Posted By JoshAston:
Pretty good story. The beginning was good, nice and beefy. The ending was kind of thin. Kind of like going for a three course meal and eating your appetizers after the main course. It needs to be beefed up a lot. I'll probably read Hitman II, but if I was just picking up a book to read, I wouldn't. It didn't leave me wanting more of this story, rather more of something more satisfying. Also the dialogue is annoying. People don't talk like that. They use conjuctions and improper words. Hardly anyone actually makes the effort to fully pronounce "is". Overall though, pretty good. It's a good start, and I can see your writing getting much better the more you write.
Thank you for the feedback.
In fact, I tried to make the dialogue a bit "blocky." It was my attempt to be overly correct. There is a reason. Again, the exact reason is a Spoiler for the 2nd story.
A bit into the story (about 4-5 chapters in) I had an outline that was way out of hand - nearly two full books. I had the group meeting a guy named Kyle who explained his story (which I wrote the equivalent of about 10 of these chapters on!). I am actually at the part in Hitman II where, originally, Matt would have met Kyle. But there I realized I needed two separate stories.
Then it hit me, I would make this into two stories, but to do that, I needed a vice - a tool if you will. I wanted to share two different sides of things - one form a first-person point of view, the second from a "controlled media" point of view. I also reworked the plot a bit. The plot of "Hitman" should wind up looking very weak, on the whole. The dialogue was intended to be choppy. The ending was necessarily truncated.
I also left out a couple of details and one MAJOR plot factor that you will hopefully be reading soon in Hitman II.
My hopes are with the second story, to paint a much broader and more accurate picture of what really happened (you can see my ode to this at the beginning of Hitman II). I also wanted to bring out a larger scale story of betrayal, love, life, Patriotism, media bias, and how different things really can be made to sound.
However, I also realized that at the end of Hitman II, there would be some to try to point out a perceived plot-hole over the scope of two stories. Hence I had to rewrite a lot of the original Hitman as I went with this in mind, so as to make the overall story not only possible, but likely.
My thanks to Reader "Torin" who helped me realize some of these potential errors and literary tools to use when I was writing "Outline." Torin really opened my eyes into literary critique.
Again, I am not a writer by trade. Far from it, But this is my humble attempt to entertain.
ETA: Anybody who wants the full explanation (it is not nearly this long!) is welcome to PM me for a
(SPOILER!) brief explanation. When you see what I have in mind, you realize immediately the reason Hitman appears a bit "off."