Grenade Launcher

This was a pretty awesome story. Nice writing. The narrative voice was great, and the part about Detective O'Neill's dad gave the character some depth. The pacing was pretty good. The idea of that many ex-police officers wanting that much revenge was a little far fetched, but it was interesting. Nice work.

Devon,

Good story, I like your cinematic view--I felt like I could clearly follow the action and what was going on.

What I have here are just suggestions (nothing that's right or wrong):

You use a lot of descriptors like "pissed," "little patience," "hated." Consider using dialogue or action to describe O'Neil. An example would be, instead of saying someone's angry, you would show that person punching a wall or clenching their fists or soemthing like that. Your descriptions of weather and inanimate objects are great, I'd just expand on O'Neil and avoid the throwaway words.

On page seven the action came to a long halt, really killing the momentum, when he's thinking about the fifth guy and him being an ex-cop. Consider moving that passage earlier and letting the shootout continue unimpeded by introspection. Another reason to move it earlier is it felt like a cheat to get this info over halfway thru the story. I think it's perfectly plausible to reveal this info after the foot chase when he gets back to the bank and is questioning the fourth robber. Revealing critical info over halfway through the story is a red alert and can tend to make a reader want to stop right there and move on to another story.

With the fourth riobber having the grenade, I was confused a bit. Was he left there intentionally to lob the grenade at the crucial moment? The reason he was nervous was because he knew he was about to be making his "launch?" Just wasn't clear the way it was written.

You've got a lot of room left for the 5K word max to work any of these out that you see fit. I'd recommend zooming in a little more on the descriptions of O'Neil and the "why" of the whole cop trap scenario.

Thanks and good luck.

I liked the story. It set the scene especially well, I thought, and I loved the line, "Two in the chest and that shoulder wound was a paper cut." Nice job, and thanks for sharing!

Cinematic in its approach, fast moving and fun. Liked it.

I see the word cinematic has been used twice in comments so far. That’s fairly apt. There is a lot going on here, but you manage to write clearly and concisely, so that it’s also pretty easy to follow. O’Neill is nicely written too, with some nice touches. Given it’s not the easiest to develop characters during action sequences, I feel like you did a good job right at the start. The nods to his father being a butcher, and O’Neill not being a runner, both add something to the character.

What I also liked is that you start in media res, but then almost immediately slow it down, before building again to the climax. It throws us into the action, sets the scene, but still allows for those development touches to come into play. It also adds to that cinematic feel.

Any weaknesses here are motivational. Your wring a fair amount of tension out of the premise, but I didn’t understand what this cop trap was meant to achieve. Neither did I get the reason for making them all ex-cops. It is a meaningless act at the moment. We get no inkling that this might be personal against this particular precinct, or even a glimpse into why these guys got kicked off the force in the first place. Without that motivation, this is random and senseless.

The other motivational weakness is the Grenade Launcher. What was their plan here? To get him captured, trust that the cops wouldn’t search him effectively enough to find the grenade, wouldn’t cuff him so he could dig it out and throw it eventually, and then have him sit in a cop car in the middle of a shootout where any random bullet might take him out? I don’t really understand why the “mental discrepancy’ either. What was the reason for it? Readers don’t necessarily take everything at face value, and they will query motivation. I’ve had enough stories torn apart because my answer to questions of ‘why do they do that?’ was usually, ‘because… plot’. The why is just as important as the how, if not more important.

I’m not sure why O’Neill didn’t shoot the kid as soon as he was digging around in his pants. He must have known he was going to die anyway, and it’s not a big leap to work out why they call the kid ‘Grenade Launcher’. Also, why did the killers amongst the bystanders wait so long to step into action? O’Neill almost kills one, Weaver does kill one… why would they not press their advantage before any of their side get hurt?

Ultimately what you have here is a story with potential, and motivation issues can be fixed. Fill in the holes here, and this would be a good story. I’m sure you can turn this into pure gold. Best of luck.

Good story. It moved along quickly and was well written. I was sort of confused about the reveal of the set-up. I think at that point there wasn't enough evidence given for me to understand why O'Neill would think that but everything came together soon after that. Overall nice job.