Assasination of Dr. Fritz

[vector7]

Hi once again.
I've been working on a concept for a few weeks. What I am posting now is a back story to that concept. Unlike my previous post, which got blasted into outer space for not checking it, I have checked it like ten times. But there might be some places I could've overlooked. Also, the concept might not be original to some people but please bear with me as I'm still working on it. I would also like to know about the flow, pacing and usage of words.
Thanks in in advance.
Vignesh


Assasination of Dr. Gordon Fritz - A back story
--------------------------------------------

Some people were mad enough to want him dead. I was the only one mad enough to try it. The old apartment where I stood overlooked the SEE headquarters; the simulated reality company started by Dr. Gordon Fritz. I adjusted the rifle to get a clear view at the podium and stood back. Everything was ready except the time; I had five minutes left.

Dr. Gordon Fritz was the man people loved, the man who was looked upon as a liberator by every government employee. He was the genius behind creating a parallel world where everyone was equal; a world where there was no law; a world which started as an alternate reality and later became the reality. People loved it for the equal opportunity it provided and the government hailed him because of a simple fact: less the population which depended on them, easier would be their job. The whole system was getting ruined by it and I wanted to set it right.

The alarm in my watch went off. I twisted my rifle and scanned the whole foyer they had turned into a temporary press hall using the eyepiece. The reporters were standing which made me move the cross hair on to the doorway through which the silver haired Dr. Fritz walked in with a huge smile. The crosshair came to a stop on his temple as he stood behind the podium and started the conference. I slowly moved the crosshair downwards looking for his heart. My finger slowly pressed down on the deliciously weighted trigger. I was deaf for the moment when the bullet shattered through the glass, piercing the man through his shoulder; right above his heart. I had missed. I frenetically loaded the rifle with another bullet. Blinding pain erupted on my left shoulder without any warning. I staggered back from the rifle at the same time as I heard two more gun shots in the distance. Split second later, I collapsed on the floor. The two bullets pierced through my stomach and chest. A smile came upon my face as I understood why people were mad enough to kill him but not to try it. He was the new government. ​

 

[asher marquering]

welcome

i like it
i just have a couple of problems with your sniper's technique
namely
aiming for his intended victim's chest as opposed to a head shot
shooting from a perch close to a window as opposed to being placed deeper in the room where there is more cover
shooting with a sniper rifle which that when a hit is made regardless of where, it isn't fatal or disabling, a shot against the individuals arm would literally take their arm off
shooting from behind a closed window as opposed to a window which is slightly open

my cousin is a military sniper for the South African military and from conversations i've had with him that's the type of things he'd do unless of course your character isn't military, in which case, sniping with a hunters rifle would be excessively difficult, but the sniper i think would still be looking for a head shot, they'd still try to shoot from inside the room with a window which is slightly open

but like i said its cool makes we wanting more

 

[J-WO]

Nice. Kept me reading. I particularly liked the opening two lines, however, I'd drop the 'it' at the end of the second line as its not really necessary.

You could lose a couple of words from the action moment, too. Like 'frenetically'. 'I loaded the rifle with another bullet' is better, or better yet- 'I reloaded.'
The briefer the sentences the more effective for the reader as far as action goes. 'Pain erupted in my shoulder' would be better too, for the same reason.

But an interesting idea, definitely. And a great opener, if its tightened up.

 

[blacknorth]

I twisted my rifle and scanned the whole foyer they had turned into a temporary press hall using the eyepiece. ​

They used the eye piece to turn the foyer into a press hall! Neat trick.

 

[vector7]

Yes, thanks for bringing that to my notice blacknorth. I'll have to make sure I double check everything again.
V

 

[The Judge]

A lot better, Vignesh. Well done for thinking about the earlier critiques and learning from them.

Your punctuation is better, but still not quite there. For instance: 'The old apartment where I stood overlooked the SEE headquarters; the simulated reality company started by Dr. Gordon Fritz.' The semi-colon is both too much and too little, if that doesn't sound odd. You could have got away with the lesser pause of a comma, or you could have gone for broke with a colon. These aren't two separate clauses, which is where semi-colons would normally be used, since the second is dependent on the first. Elsewhere you seem to have gone overboard with the semi-colons also -- it's like you've found a whole new toy and by jingo, you are going to show it to the world!

Word choice again better to my mind. Be careful about 'mad' though -- since it can mean both angry and crazy, we're left unsure about the state of mind of your would-be assassin. This could be a good thing, but here I think I'd like to know if there is something about Dr Fritz which makes people furious (of course there is, he's a politician...!!) or whether the 'madness' derives from the impossibility of trying to kill him ie it's insane to try.

A couple of nit-picks, just to keep my talons trimmed:

'a world which started as an alternate reality and later became the reality' - the rhythm of the sentence places a lot of emphasis on the final 'the' ie it would have to be pronounced clearly as 'thee' not a swallowed 'thuh'. I wonder if it might help to have another adjective in to balance the sentence instead, so '... an alternate reality... the living reality'.

less the population which depended on them, easier would be their job - this is a bit of a mess. Firstly, this needs 'the' in front of both 'less' and 'easier'. Secondly, there is a confusion about the way you are using 'less' and 'population'. I'm not sure if this is a conflict between using 'population' as an ordinary noun as opposed to a mass noun (I'm a bit vague on this myself ), but definitely there's a problem with 'less' as an adjective meaning 'a smaller amount' and as an adverb meaning 'to a smaller extent'. Anyway, either the clause should be 'the fewer** of the population which depended' or 'the less the population depended', not the current hybrid. Finally, 'the government' from the previous sub-clause is single, 'they' and 'their' are plural -- you need to make them agree.

** not 'less' as the people are countable

Your final paragraph loses some control and I think it needs to be made sharper. I won't bother nit-picking as you might want to re-draft it anyway in view of asher's very helpful comments. Blacknorth has, however, beaten me to the punch concerning the real writing problem -- it should of course be 'using the eyepiece, I scanned the whole foyer' otherwise it seems as if the eyepiece is very powerful indeed! I also think you need to think again about 'A smile came upon my face' - not only is it an awkward, not to say ugly, construction, the chances of him being alive at that point, let alone conscious, are pretty remote. The final sentence also makes no sense -- people try and assassinate 'governments' in the shape of presidents and monarchs all the time. (Well, not all the time, perhaps, but pretty regularly!)

Without knowing anything about your story line, I do have a couple of queries about your world-view. First, I'm going to jump very heavily on one thing -- 'a world where there was no law'. You are clearly no lawyer! People might be perfect in this alternate reality, so as to do away with crime and the need for criminal sanctions, but are you saying there are no rules as to trade, or inheritance, or marriage, or education, or the thousands of other things which the law regulates? Second, why on earth does creating an apparent utopia equate to 'The whole system was getting ruined by it'? Doubtless there are evils within such a utopia, but they would surely revolve around the loss of free will, of the right to be different, or to protest, of what it means to be human -- not the apparent ruining of a political system? Anyway, it might be better to leave this out entirely from here -- he's about to assassinate someone, he doesn't have time to consider the socio-political reasons which have brought him to that point. Just have an enigmatic sentence along the lines of 'And I was going to stop him' -- that flags that something is fishy behind the utopian facade without belabouring the issue.

Anway, although this needs work, particularly that final para, your talent is showing through and again, it's clear you have the instinct of knowing a good hook. So well done.

J

 

[vector7]

Thanks to you Judge. I will work on it more. Especially the punctuation and word usage. I really have trouble with those.

Quote: --a world where there was no law

The law here tells about the lack of punishment for criminal things. People love it. That's what I said. People love it because there was no law.

Quote: --less the population which depended on them, easier would be their job

On this part however, I got confused over the word usage and sentence construction. Maybe someone here could help me. The idea behind it is that more people considered the alternate reality as their reality because it gave them equal importance and forgot the real life government. This obviously makes things easier for the government because more the people hooked on to the alternate world, people depending on the real government would be less. That would make the lives of the government employee easy, won't it?

Quote: The whole system was getting ruined by it--

The system here would mean the real world. I thought of using the word 'Society' but I couldn't make myself use it for some reason. I got confused here again. Since, the people get hooked on to the alternate reality won't the real system built over generations and the society created collapse?

So, I think I myself have critiqued me. I hope it helps me get somewhere over this draft. Also once more, thanks to you J for writing such a long critique. I am thinking of rewriting it and will post it once it is finished. I hope to get grilled by you guys again.

Viki/Vignesh/Vector

PS: Hope this clears things out for you guys and for me.

 

[vector7]

Also.... I don't want to edit my previous post. So, thanks to you guys again for bringing the problems to my notice. I need much more critique here. So, if anyone else find any other glaring hole or problem. Critique away!!

Viki

 

[The Judge]

Quote: --a world where there was no law

The law here tells about the lack of punishment for criminal things. People love it. That's what I said. People love it because there was no law.

Is there no punishment because there is no crime? Because that is a very different proposition from no punishment despite the occurrence of criminal activities -- I can tell you for now, people do not 'love' that kind of place. Even in so-called outlaw societies, eg like a pirate ship, there are still punishments for transgressions because that is what people crave. I think this may come down to semantics -- 'the law' does not simply mean 'the penal code' it also means 'justice'. 'People love it because there is no justice' -- hmmm, not quite so appealing now, is it? You need to be clear what you mean and use the right word(s) to describe it.

Quote: --less the population which depended on them, easier would be their job

On this part however, I got confused over the word usage and sentence construction. Maybe someone here could help me. The idea behind it is that more people considered the alternate reality as their reality because it gave them equal importance and forgot the real life government. This obviously makes things easier for the government because more the people hooked on to the alternate world, people depending on the real government would be less. That would make the lives of the government employee easy, won't it?

It was the sentence construction rather than the concept I was handling. Basically, you need to decide if you are talking of the more (ie greater in number) people in the alternate reality the easier it is for the Govt, so 100 people there is better than 10, in which case it is ''the fewer of the population which depended'; or the more (ie greater in amount of time spent) each individual person is logged in to the alternate reality the easier it is, so 10 people there 90% of their time is best, in which case it is 'the less the population depended'. Of course, to an extent, both are true, and both sentences are valid. You simply need to choose one or the other -- the present sentence doesn't work.

Having said that, I now turn to your premise... if these people are in the alternate world too much, how are they earning a living to buy food, or are they dependent on govt hand-outs -- if so, where does the money come from to give them the hand outs? I'm not an economist, or a sociologist, but something tells me you really need to think this through.

Quote: The whole system was getting ruined by it--

The system here would mean the real world. I thought of using the word 'Society' but I couldn't make myself use it for some reason. I got confused here again. Since, the people get hooked on to the alternate reality won't the real system built over generations and the society created collapse?

I think 'society' would indeed have been a better choice than 'system' since they mean wholly different things. Systems don't fail that easily -- there are too many vested interests in ensuring they don't. And when it comes to it, governments like being in control -- the real people in power don't want things to collapse around their ears; they want to keep the power to themselves, thank you very much. Again, I think you need to think this through but I'll leave it for someone more knowledgeable than I am to critique your premise in detail!

J

 

[ctg]

People love justice, but sometimes - or many times depending on the location and time - it is very difficult to reach pure and honest justice.

Vector7,

Some people were mad enough to want him dead, I in the other were mad enough enough to try it. The old apartment I'd chosen overlooked the the SEE headquarters; the SimulatEd rEality company started by Dr. Gordon Fritz. I adjusted the rifle position to get clearer view at the podium and then checked my watch.

Five minutes...

I cut out the repetitious words and cranked up the tension for your character to get more into the his head. Also since your character is dead at the end, he doesn't know if he's the only one to try the assassination. However, wording it a bit differently still conveys the same idea, does it not?

Also you wouldn't be adjusting the rifle when you've reached a position, you would adjust its position.

My thought went back to think how much the people loved Dr. Gordon Fritz. They saw him as a liberator; a genius behind a parallel world, where everyone was equal. It was a world without many laws; a world which has started as an alternate reality and later became the reality. People loved it for the equal opportunity it provided and the one world (?) government hailed him because of a simple fact: less the population which depended on them, easier would be their job. The whole system was getting ruined by it and I wanted to set it right.

Again repetitious.

When you're talking about the government, please name it to give the readers better understanding of what sort government you're talking about.

The alarm in my watch went off. I scanned through the scope the whole foyer they had turned into a temporary press hall. The reporters were standing at front of the podium chatting to each other, which made me move the cross-hair on to the doorway to see beloved, silver-haired Doctor walked in smiling, waving his hand. I followed his movements with my finger resting on the trigger as he walked behind the podium to start the conference. As he waved his both hands to calm down the audience, I sifted the cross-hair downwards and squeezed the trigger. The bullet shattered the glass and pierced him through his shoulder; right above his heart. I'd missed. Then the next moment as I reloaded a blinding pain erupted on my left shoulder without any warning. I staggered back from the rifle at the same time as I heard two more gun shots in the distance. Split second later, I collapsed on the floor. The two bullets pierced through my stomach and chest. A smile came upon my face as I understood why people were mad enough to kill him but not to try it. He was the new government.

I removed the repetitious words and tried to adjust the last para to more correlate on how it actually could be written. I'm still not happy with the ending. You wouldn't smile with a bullet in your stomach. It's the most painful way to die, believe me.

 

[blacknorth]

Yes, thanks for bringing that to my notice blacknorth. I'll have to make sure I double check everything again.
V

Apologies, V, I couldn't resist - my excuse is that it was very early in the morning and I hadn't had my second cup of coffee yet, nor my third cigarette...

 

[Precise Calibre]

I like the idea here, very well paced, even with its long explanation, since it is a backstory. It has the possibility to act as a wonderful hook if polished enough. The survival of the sniper, as I assume he must survive due to the first-person point of view, makes me wonder where the story might go.

I find it kind of jarring that the headquarters for this supposed giant corporation (as the description of its power and influence led me to believe it is) is dwarfed by the apartment building the sniper has nested in, which is also seemingly right next door, though large scale corporate buildings usually don't share the same neighborhood as run-down residential structures. It apparently overlooks the building at severe enough of an angle that he can look right down into the one of the building's foyers.

I think that maybe it would be more interesting if the sniper, who we already know to be reckless, had infiltrated one of the outbuildings (maybe the roof?) of the SEE headquarters. That would also explain how he was so easily spotted and retaliated against (trying to spot a sniper in the middle of a city after the report of a rifle would be harder than you would think, the acoustics would play havoc on anyone trying). Just a thought.



"I adjusted the rifle to get a clear view at the podium and stood back."

I agree with CTG on the rifle. It needs to be shifted in position, not just adjusted, which could mean anything from testing for drop and windage on the scope, to tightening some part of the mechanism.

Also, should it not be "a view of the podium" or perhaps "a clearer line/shot to the podium".

 

[vector7]

Hi guys.
Thanks for all your input.

I have taken aboard all the pointers you gave me especially the ones that Precise Calibre, ctg and asher masquerading have pointed out. J, I hope the rewritten story will clear out the problems in the concept. As a result, the word count has increased. I still have doubts in some sentence construction and word usage. I hope you guys will straighten things out.

I have removed the whole last paragraph and replaced it with a slightly different one.

I'm currently double checking everything for redundant sentences and expect to post it shortly.

Viki