Re: Burrito's Stories Comments Section
Hmm... lots of room for improvement in the first two chapters (that's as far as I read, kind of tired and would like to get to bed). I like the original idea, a lot. I haven't heard many modern civil war stories, especially in countries like America. So props to you for that. Definitely keep working on it, maybe if you're only going for 10 chapters, you could publish as a short story. Or expand it to a novel.
If the following comments seem too negative, I'd like to say that I'm a very good nitpicker at writing. I'd be a very good editor. But I'm not all that creative; thinking up the base idea is something I could never do. So the positive of that immediately, to me, outweighs the negatives of whatever criticism I might mention.
I won't talk about the cliche'd lines as they've already been mentioned. But there was something else that really really bothered me. Your sense of time seems incredibly skewed.
and noticed a car speeding up beside him. Before he could get a good look at the driver, he sped ahead and aimed a pistol out the window.
This is one example. You're saying that James noticed a guy pointing a gun at him from another car, and before the first man fires a single shot, James has the window down and has shot out the car's tire? Did the first man's gun malfunction, or something? Did he forget to load ammo? Seems like he would at least have squeezed off a couple shots in the few seconds that it takes James to roll down the window, bring his own weapon to bear, aim at the tire, and shoot.
The scene with the priest also shows some glaring discrepancies. First, you have James aiming his weapon at the priest before he shows any sign of hostile intentions. This is fine; he should be suspicious of some crackpot showing up coincidentally where the convoy's destination was. But then you have the priest somehow crossing the distance between himself and James, knocking him down from behind, then moving over to the driver and wrapping the kite string around his neck, all before either man is able to react, even when one of them has a loaded weapon pointed at him. Is this priest magic or something? If not, it definitely seems like you're trying to make him have some sort of arcane or superhuman powers. Or your sense of time was a bit off.
Then, in the same scene, you have James firing and missing the priest at close range. This is fine, except for the fact that you've sandwiched that between two acts where James seems to have incredible, superhuman accuracy. First, using only one shot, he shoots the tire, an incredibly small target, from a moving vehicle while in a moving vehicle *and driving*. Then, you have him killing an unknown number between five and fifty people with an automatic rifle before they can even react. Okay, sure, you can mow down people fast with a rifle, but only if you can aim it, and even then, only if they're standing in a line. And even a small .22 rifle with a scope is hard to be accurate with when you have all the time in the world (at least for me. Maybe I just suck at shooting =p) And these two acts seem to show that James has incredible accuracy with any type of gun. Yet, he misses a target that is relatively still (barring struggles with the strangle-ee), from near-point blank range, while he himself is not moving? That just struck me as extremely unrealistic. Either he has some innate skill that approaches the supernatural with guns, or he doesn't - can't have it both ways.
Another example of the time-sense being a bit skewed - the priest is strangling the driver, James gets up from where he was knocked down, fires a shot, closes the distance, picks up the kite line, then strangles the priest while giving a semi-melodramatic line about religious beliefs, all before the first guy finishes dying from the priest's strangulation. You might just want to rework your action scenes a bit.
All that being said, looking forward to reading your next few chapters =)
