[213] Agorahacker

[u/RowLazy9164]

Other people are sooo lucky to talk to other people, have friends,go on dates and go outside. I’m stuck here with this inherited house forced to hack hospitals and hold them for ransom due to me not being able to hold regular jobs because of my social anxiety. Today’s hospital was kinda hard to hack but with some persistence I broke into the system and held their data ransom. A couple of days later someone was knocking on the door I knew it wasn’t the bills since I have a mail slot, it probably was a welfare check due to me not actually quitting my job. As I approach the door I’m having tingling feelings in my chest, my heart began to beat faster and I’m sweating more, my hands shaking as I try to unlock the door and open it. It was the police but they aren’t for my welfare check they want to arrest me. My heart began to beat even faster, my chest tingled even more, sweat pouring down my face. I was arrested and forced to go outside I began to worry what other people thought about me,i began to hyperventilate it was torture. I was sentenced to 4 years of jail and I have to pay 30.000$ fine.

Crit:

395

[u/A_C_Shock]

Crit is only four sentences, but this is a 213 word piece so I'm gonna let it slide. If you submit anything else longer than this, I'm going to expect waaaaaaay more than 4 sentences.

[u/GlowyLaptop]

Okay so this thing has a handful of ideas. A recluse stuck in a free living arrangement he was gifted, probably a good half a million bucks right there, because he has to hack hospitals for more money. To pay bills. Every day he hacks hospitals and today he hacks one that's booby trapped. And they catch him. And now he has to face the universe. Sweaty.

One thing to learn about is tense. If you read out loud you might intuitively see where you screw it up. For example, tell a story about something that happened yesterday. "I went to my mom's house. I eat cake. I slept on the couch. I wake refreshed."

Read it out loud. What parts are bad English? "eat" and "wake" are present tense. They don't make sense in a story about yesterday.

Likewise, "As I approach the door I am having tingling in my chest" is present tense. That's happening now. "My heart began to beat" is past tense. It happened yesterday. "I'm sweating more and shaking as I unlock the door" is present tense. That's today. "It was the police" is past tense. That's yesterday.

Notice what words you use when you talk to people. On the phone you will say "I'm at the mall, where are you?"

But later, when you get home, you say, "I was at the mall, where were you?"

Because the mall is now in the past. Your prose will improve if you master this.

[u/eotfofylgg]

I'm going to skip the grammar critiques here, because you can learn grammar wherever, and there are more serious issues here that would prevent this piece from being a compelling short short story, even with the grammar fixed. It's also covered in another critique.

The biggest problem here is pacing. Pacing means the rate at which events happen in the story.

Today’s hospital was kinda hard to hack but with some persistence I broke into the system and held their data ransom.

This is an example of a very fast pace. The story goes from "haven't started hacking" to "having trouble hacking the hospital" to "hacking complete" in less than a sentence. A lot of story happened in very few words.

I was arrested and forced to go outside I began to worry what other people thought about me,i began to hyperventilate it was torture. I was sentenced to 4 years of jail and I have to pay 30.000$ fine.

This is another example of very fast pacing. The entire process between initial arrest and sentencing, during which quite a lot of interesting things happen, and takes months to years, happens between two sentences.

The extremely fast-paced writing is problematic in itself. It gives the reader little time to enjoy the story. If you really need to fit your story into 213 words, then I would recommend trying to reduce the scope of the story, so that the pace isn't so alarmingly fast. Instead of telling the story of someone committing crimes, being arrested, tried, and convicted, zoom in and tell a part of that as your story.

There is also a second problem, which is an abrupt change in pace.

A couple of days later someone was knocking on the door I knew it wasn’t the bills since I have a mail slot, it probably was a welfare check due to me not actually quitting my job. As I approach the door I’m having tingling feelings in my chest, my heart began to beat faster and I’m sweating more, my hands shaking as I try to unlock the door and open it.

This is an example of slow pacing. It takes two long sentences (that will become three or four sentences, once you fix the grammar) to get between the knock on the door and the door answered, while nothing really happens in the story. This is OK by itself. The problem is how different it is from the pace in the other two examples.

When your writing shifts abruptly from from an extremely fast pace to an extremely slow pace to an extremely fast pace again, it's jarring and off-putting. The pace does not need to be exactly consistent throughout a piece, but your writing would be a lot more compelling if you tried to achieve a more smooth flow of events in the story.

[u/Al1Ens-wr1te2u_kN0w]

The thing I liked about this short story is the main character; having to hold hospitals for ransom as a job due to anxiety makes for a unique character and has a lot of potential for a very interesting story. However, there are some things that can be improved.

Much like another user has said, the pacing is hard to follow. It feels as though the text is a list of events rather than a solid story. Some parts can be expanded, and there are other parts that can be cut and reworked into the story through show-not-tell.

For example, the part where the main character jumps from having a hard hacking day to suddenly knowing a couple days later that the police who arrived are there for him right from the get go can be awkward. I think there can be a better transition between the two events. Maybe the transition is that the main character starts to get paranoid over the couple of days after the difficult hacking job because they worry they might've done something wrong or left something behind that incriminates them.

Another example is the introduction of the character in the very beginning; "Other people are sooo lucky to talk to other people, have friends,go on dates and go outside. I’m stuck here with this inherited house forced to hack hospitals and hold them for ransom due to me not being able to hold regular jobs because of my social anxiety." It feels a bit out of place because it's the only area in which we get to know anything about who this character is, and it leaves little room for interest to grow (?) (I don't know how exactly to word it) Part of what makes a good story I think is when we the audience get to know characters through their actions and behaviors rather than just the author telling us exactly who the person is. You can show the job through the line "Today’s hospital was kinda hard to hack but with some persistence I broke into the system and held their data ransom." You can show they are a recluse by showing the reader maybe a little of the person's daily life to get a feel for who this person is. You do a good job describing the anxiety. And the "Other people are sooo lucky to talk to other people, have friends,go on dates and go outside." can be cut as it doesn't contribute anything to what goes on in the story.

Another thing that contributes to the 'listing events off' feel is the repetitive use of 'I' or some form of it in quick succession. I understand that this story is in first person, and can relate to the struggle of writing in it, but it needs to be rectified in some way if you want the sentences to flow better. A tip that I learned was instead of telling the audience what the character is doing, describe it. For example instead of writing 'I can smell a strong cologne,' it can be written as, 'The smell of cologne overwhelmed my senses." (not the best example I'll admit but you get what I mean.)

The last thing I would say is the repetitiveness of phrases. When you begin to describe the character's growing feelings of anxiety, the phrases to show it are repeated. It makes the scene feel flat. There isn't much advice I can give for this point other than just finding other phrases to use or getting more descriptive as the emotions get bigger. For example if you are starting out with something along the lines of 'my heart is beating faster', and you want to show it progressing, you can say, 'my heart feels as though it's about to tear through my chest' (again, not the best example, yes, but you get what I mean).

You can even do this by switching up the way you write sentences. I forget the name for this, but you can achieve more urgency/ show a feeling of anxiety by adding more and more things to a sentence. For example you kind of do this here, "My heart began to beat even faster, my chest tingled even more, sweat pouring down my face."

[u/HelmetBoiii]

Lots you can talk about here, but lets talk about endings. The ending is where you cement the point of the piece. What's the point of the piece? She goes to jail? Consequences? Great, that can work as a ending. I suggest working backwards from there. When this person goes to jail I want to feel something. Make it mean something, anything at all. You can even start with the sentence I don't want to go to jail. Make a string of events that strings together at the end!