Am I any good as a writer?

[Dan_N]

Hello.

I've been dabbling in the art of writing for a bit lately, and this is the best I've produced yet:

ALIEN TURNS 18 AND STUFF HAPPENS
================================
(title under work)Ã,  Ã,  Ã, By Dan N.

I felt my eyes opening...

Just as every day for the last seven- no wait, now it was eighteen years. Yes, I finally was 18, the legal age to consume alcoholic beverages! Yes! Woohoo! Drink fest tonight!

I quickly climbed out of the bed and went into the shower. On the way through, I pause in front of the mirror to check for differences. My face was basically the same, although my antennae were a bit harder and a bit longer. My face was the same blue and my four fingers weren't changed either.

So I took a shower and then went down to feed my too aching somachs. As always, mother and father left a nice caserole on the table with a note stating they had to leave early.

As I ate, the videophone rang so I rushed over like the crazed maniac I am and answered it. There was no video, just audio. Distorted audio. And it said:

"Good day, mister Eonas."

"Hello?" I answered, my voice quiverring.

"We can finally request your services now that you have come of age."

"Who's this?"

"You shall find out soon. Just come to the old Scout Tower ne-"

And then the little distorted voice didn't manage to finish for I hung up. "Weirdo." I thought.

So, evening came so I had to be "crisened" by my older brother and friends at the local pub, I being the last in the class to turn eighteen.

As I walked the cold and dark streets of New London, I heard a scream of great unpleasantness coming from an alleyway so I rushed over. Apparently, two men (or women) in black coats were making another fellow of my kind feel a bit uncomfortable, to say the least. "An antenna shouldn't be put inside that orifice...", I thought, with great disgust. Little did I know that fleeing from the scene would later come to bite me in the arse. When I reached the pub, I didn't see any persuers so I went inside gingerly and convinced myself it was all a too surreal figment of my imagination.

After the party, I remember, albeit foggy, that I was walking down a dark alleyway (I believe I perceived this particular alleyway as a shortcut, although I can't be sure, I being drunk) and then two black figures approached me. They said nothing and then, suddenly, they shimmered and then total blackness followed. Now, let me describe what I saw next... A clown walked passed by me. So I followed him to maybe help me figure out how am I walking on total blackness, why am I hearing a very high pitched sound continuosly and why I don't feel drunk. The clown walked on until he neared a bespectacled old man in a trenchcoat and started poking the poor senior citizen. I then proceeded to yelling: "Oy, leave that poor man alone!". Then, I heard some sounds, very loudly and very muffled. The clown then turned around and threw a bucket of water in my face.

Then I felt like I was just waking up in my bed... My face was tingling and my head hurt like I've just exposed myself to twelve hours of keeping my eyeballs glued to a monitor and not blinking at all. I opened my eyes slowly and as the image became clearer I recognised my dad and a lovely nurse beside my bed. Then the image became normal clear, the clear I was used to my whole life and I recognised my mum and a not so lovely nurse beside my bed...

---

That's all for now. I was just wondering if I'm any good at writing. I know the title sucks, I'm still constantly thinking of new titles, but none seems to suite... Nevermind the title, tell me what you think of the rest, please.

Thanks.

[ManicMatt]

Okay, I was happy to read it up until the whole clown bit, which just lost me. I don't know what that's all about!

I liked it when they looked in the mirror and described non-human things about them.

You should check for spelling before letting anyone read your stories, by either checking yourself, asking someone else, or using a spellchecker. It's very important that spelling is right in a story. If things don't flow, or you spell things wrong, "aswered" then it breaks any belief of the sotry because my mind isn't thinking about what this alien is doing, it's thinking Dan missed the 'n'.

IF I knew what the overall story was about I could give you a brainstorm of titles.

Right, so "ALIEN TURNS 18" now that's kind of simple. You can make something like this interesting by rephrasing it. "Coming of age" for example. Now of the alien gets into danger, you could change it, "Coming of deadly age". Now that sounds like the age means he's gonna be deadly, so don't use that, but I hope you see where I'm coming from.

Also, I'm not sure, but I don't think the reader knows their gender.

Spoiler

Although this could be used to great effect if you fool the reader into thinking they're one gender, when it turns out they're not. Twists like these make for wanting to read the whole thing again in a new perspective. Perhaps if you didn't know he was an alien with blue skin for a while. Just a thought.

[close]

[Tuomas]

yeah, I think it's got potential for a short story. But as matt just said, be very careful of spelling errors, they make everything look lame.

THough unlike him I found the start rather moderate, not boring though, a soft start that wouldn't scare people away. Which is good if they're motivated enough to read it. And I loved the clown part. OK, so it was a bit out there, and it didn't really ever come clear why or how it came to it, or how it ended. My bet is you're telling us about your first try on crack, might be wrong though But it did catch my interest right there. Perhaps if you wanted to make it better, make it more self explamatory and don't leave too much for the reader to find out.

I won't meddle with the title since I generally suck at that, but matts ideas seem fairly good.

[Erenan]

Spoiler

Although this could be used to great effect if you fool the reader into thinking they're one gender, when it turns out they're not. Twists like these make for wanting to read the whole thing again in a new perspective. Perhaps if you didn't know he was an alien with blue skin for a while. Just a thought.

[close]

Spoiler

I disagree. This "clever trick" is very cliche and tends not to work very well. There are stories in which the protagonist's gender is not revealed for a long, long time, even through explicit sex scenes, and it's awfully unwieldy trying to navigate through such things without the use of gender-specific words. The amount of effort it takes to pull something like that off effectively isn't really worth the level of "Hey, that's cool" that you might get from such a story. IMHO.

[close]

The plural of antenna is antennae, not antennas.

[Dan_N]

Right, I fixed some errors, thanks to erenan and matt for pointing them out.

Now, some exposition and some explanations I think are in order.

Basically this takes place in a cyberpunk universe centered around the Solar Wars (which I will say no more about). The action starts in New London, which is a city on Mars around 2075. This alien is actually a rather humanoid species resulted from experiments in the 2050s done on Pluto by another alien race. Now then, the story is basically about this alien <insert first name here> Eonas which turns 18 and is contacted by this organisation which he will work for eventually (and there goes a bit of the plot).

Now, that clown bit is actually what he sees while he's knocked out by "the two black figures"...

Right, what about the amusement value? Should I continue writing on it?

Thanks again!

PS: rest assured, it's a guy (only males get harder and longer antennae when they're 18  )

[ManicMatt]

Erenan, He'd quite easily not had mentioned the gender so far, which is why it occured to me, but I see your point. I was just shall we say, brainstorming. Like I have about twenty different choruses for an album's worth of songs in my head and use 11 of them in the end. And as I haven't read any adult books whatsoever, I had no idea it was cliche! 

In space? Then in that case, I'd suggest using more detail. I imagined your story so far to be the year 2006 on Earth. Descriptions are key. Describe the walls, the buildings, the sky etc.

Here's an idea. It's what I used when I last wrote a story. I made a basic premise first, like you have. Then I write something like this for the whole story:

"Jack goes to car. Jack goes home and find's his wife has been killed."

This way I've already got the whole story quickly jotted down. Now I fill it in:

"Jack walks over to his car, opens the door, and climbs in. This was one of those big ol' family cars that... etc"

This is my own method, not one I've heard of anywhere else, so it's up to you if it would suit you or not.

[jetxl]

I find the whole story too blurry.
The first line "I felt my eyes opening," I think you mean eye lids, still what does that mean? Does it mean that he was awake, waiting until something made his eye open so he could get out of bed? Clarify.
You don't have to tell the complete history and political situation on the first page, but you might want to tell that the main character is on Mars. It helps people understand the situation better, makes them visualse the scene.
When the scene changes, make it clear. Write that he got knocked out and describe the clown.
Just a thought, but I think the story fits a present tense better.


"two men (or women) in black coats" (try "two humans")

[Phemar]

Nice idea for a story.

Not to offend you, but your grammar isn't that good. You constantly switch from past to present tense. There are a few split infinitives, as well as concord being an issue in a lot of your sentences.

You should read a lot of books and I mean A LOT of books. Books are fun, and do wonders for your spelling and grammar!

Good luck for future stories you may write, hope I didn't discourage you.

[ManicMatt]

You should read a lot of books and I mean A LOT of books. Books are fun, and do wonders for your spelling and grammar!

Hehe, yeah too right! Whereas the internet has irrevocably damaged my english skills! (Well maybe not irrevocably, if I started reading books again..)