The Untold Secrets of Success Now Revealed!

Hi Kip,

I found the story to be entertaining and I enjoyed how it read like a self-help guide with examples of his adventures thrown in. I gave it a thumbs up because it was an amusing read. 

There were a few things that I noticed, though. One sentence repeats a few words:

"If you don't know what your competition or customer is doing is doing you're going to fail."

Beyond that, I noticed you left out some commas after dialogue, mostly toward the latter half of the story:

"Hit the lights and get your gun ready" I said.

On a side note, I had to chuckle since I have relatives who live in The Landings in Savannah. Having just visited in April, the setting was very vivid and fresh in my mind. :)

The story line was engaging and entertaining. It was also an easy read. I think the story was unusual and creative.

AWESOME!

Like others have said, I found this confusing to get into, but pretty enjoyable. I won't repeat the other comments, but for me two things stopped me really getting into this story:

1 - Structure/formatting:

The self-help tips mixed with a heist/blackmail plot is really interesting, and the two threads play off each other well - but because the two are so intertwined, even switching over mid-paragraph a few times, that I had to work to keep the thread of what was going on, making things feel rather incoherent.

One idea mightbe delineating the two threads a bit more, almost like the self-help bits are the guy's autobiography, interspersed with the "true" story of how he got rich and famous - that way you can draw out the irony of applying some of the banal self-help stuff to a robbery, etc. But right now, it felt a bit overwhelming for me.

2 - Plot:

Some of the plotting felt a bit contrived/glossed over. The way the events at the port play out is very convenient - the sailor on guard duty (why only one?) seems very lax, and accepting - ok, she's talking to her superiors, but it still. The additional MPs - they never seem to question anything at all, even when blatantly illegal stuff happens in front of them (coke on the dock, etc). Even if they don't say anything at the time, would Adam and the main character not need to get rid of them as witnesses? Where did the guys in the SUV come from? Where did the skinheads come from, immediately prepared to do a deal?

The blackmail again felt rather forced and quick - there's not much set-up, and the producer gives in straight away. Then the bit with the bomb - even allowing for the convenience factor of the skinheads immedately planning a bomb attack, who is the Mossad guy, where did he come from? And the final gunfight is a bit unclear, and again goes down very quickly.

It felt like all the bare bones are there, but they need fleshing out with details and reactions to make it plausible.

Other than that, the only significant issues were the typos, and as Max mentioned, some of the gender/race stuff seemed unnecessary - maybe build it up as part of the guy's character more?

Hope this helps!

Okay. I think you have some really good things going here, but I think it needs a lot of work before I can give it a thumbs up in good concious. 

I added an LBL to cover the grammatical and sentence structure details. I'll just mention the big ticket items here.

First off, the formatting needs to be simplified. I like his lists and notes, but the numbers and bolded headers intermixed with the narative get messy. I would reduce some of his rules and lists and come up with a few that he repeats through the passage. I think these are the strongest part of your story and they really make it interesting, but too many just clutter things up.

Second, there's a lot of story that needs some explaination. Why are these MPs so willing to shuffle coke all around Savannah? Where do these thugs come from? Where does the Israeli intelligence officer come from? What does he have to do with anything?

Third, I know we're viewing the action from a very skewed narrator, and that also gives this piece strength. But at some point in time, I'd like to see him come across a character who doesn't buy his bullshit. There's a female sailor who seems way to guilibly and is ripe to call this guy out. A little dose of reality in the middle of this guy's narcissistic head trip. Know what I mean?

I think this has some potential if you can clean this up. There's a lot of murky water to wade through to find the core of this story. Focus on the core and eliminate the rest. That's all I got for now. Good luck in the contest!

I see you've already gotten some great feedback. I agree that the formatting is a bit confusing in regards to the bolding and the rules set up. Italics would be a quick fix, I think.

This was my favorite sentence. It might be a little clunky grammatically, but I love the detail. It kind of gets across what a sociopath our dear narrator is as well. That matter-of-factness mixed with grotesqueness is on key.

The laser sight made it quick and easy for the flaccid paralysis, which sounds like a fancy word for impotence, but it is the area in the face also known as the "T-Zone" which the bullet enters the brain causing immediate paralysis, which ensures they will not fire back.

Something I was wondering: why is the narrator sharing all of this with us? Why detail his criminal past and set it up in list format? I'd like to see him have some sort of explanation, like that he'll never be brought to justice or is too well loved now. Something that shows his unreliable narration (at least in regards to how amazing he is) would be nice. Overall, I was entertained. I got Chuck P./Irvine Welsh vibes.

Thumbs up for this. The narrator was utterly unlikeable but I kept reading to see how it panned out. Nice interspersal between the self-help style and action narration. I also like how this can be read partly as an exploration of the limitations and contradictions of Nietzsche and his ideas on the master: the narrator claims morality is a sham crafted by masters, and yet still operates within these same moral codes IE when talking about 'giving something back' ; he can never fully abstract himself from morality despite deriding it.

Also I like how he dresses up what is to me a series of lucky escapes, varnished with his own skill, as completely down to his own abilities; very good portrayal of a narcissistic hyper macho arsehole. Obviously a lot of this is down to the way I read it, but I liked that I could read it that way and I think the story is well written cuz it acts as a cipher: different people will get different things out of it -- which I think is one of the key things about good art. 

One thing of critique (aside from a few spelling/grammatical errors which I'm sure you'll pick up on re-reads) is that a lot of the action happens so fast that it's sometimes hard to follow what's going on. You have the guys in the SUV, then the skinheads, which I followed okay, though I had to re-read bits -- but the bit at the end with Mossad and the Synagogue; it just happens so fast and without much set up that it seems like the action of skinheads deciding to blow up the synagogue at that time after all the shit had just happened as a little shoehorned in. I also was confused about Marlon's placing -- both spatially and motivationaly -- during all the synagogue stuff. I think you'd benefit from taking your time a little with the action scenes cuz otherwise it can get a bit blurry.

But yeah, still enjoyed this. Thanks for the read.

Tom

It looks like you've already received all the feedback that is necessary to make this great.  As it stands, it was good, so thumbs up.  It did take a little work to synch up with the flow of it, but by the end  the pattern was clear so it was easier to enjoy.I agree that the Mossad bit could come out.  Well done and good luck.

There’s some good stuff here, but I found the rules definitely broke the flow, and made it hard to get into and stick with. As has been mentioned elsewhere, I felt that you could concentrate on the main five and lose the rest. I also agree with Seb in that there is so much crammed in here, that I felt the story struggled to breathe at times. The actions of your characters do sometimes come across as contrived for plot purposes, but this has been covered elsewhere. Which I guess means I have little to add to some already pretty on-the-money comments.

Best of luck.