Hey everyone. Not sure if this is the exact place to put this, but my name's Corey. I'm a student at Purdue University, and I really want to write for the video gaming industry. The types of stories I'm really interested in writing are Silent Hill-esque games. I've got a little bit of experience with writing, but no complete stories as of now. I've got a couple currently in the works, and I'll post the prologue to one of the stories after this. I don't know what else to say besides the fact that I'm going to be working extra hard to pick up any slack that I've got in writing. I'll hopefully be doing a lot of writing over the summer and get to finalize some of my ideas. Anyway, here's the short prologue of one of the stories I'm going to be working on. I'll most likely make it longer once I really get the story going. Any crit that you've got on it would be nice. When the world is in a state of panic and nobody can trust the ones they call friends, people have to do everything they can to get through the day. Lies, misfortune, and corruption have ruled the streets for years now, and there seems to be no stopping it. The public’s attitude towards it all has grown to be so apathetic that people can get away with being criminals with no fear of any repercussions. So many things have been happening lately that would never be considered normal, or even acceptable. People need to find ways to flaunt their money and satisfy their egos. Eventually, people came up with a game that they named “Blood Sport.” In Blood Sport, a group of people would each take an animal of their choosing and place them all in a large maze. Throughout the maze would be food, water, and the other animals. Whichever animal lasted the longest was the winning animal. Whoever was the owner of the winning animal would take home the pot. Blood Sport became a fad over the period of a decade, but was beginning to die down. It was no longer exciting to see dogs fight one another for food, territory, and survival. One could only watch smaller animals get mauled to death so many times before it really became dull. Soon, the public was in need of a new type of sport. Conglomerates had taken a liking to Blood Sport and had invested millions of dollars into making very in-depth mazes and games for their animals to “play” in. It broke their hearts to see all of their money going to such waste. Shortly after the buzz about Blood Sport died down, however, one higher-up seemed to get a bright idea. This man, Robert Kenning, was the owner of a bioengineering facility based out of New Mexico. Upon seeing that Blood Sport had died down, he felt that it was his duty to find a new replacement. This is where our story truly begins. On September twenty-seventh of 2011, Dire Corp launched their newest program. They named this program “Project P.I.L.E.” They never released what the P.I.L.E. stood for to the public. Kenning claimed that it was not ready for exposure yet, and even explaining its name would reveal too much. Upon completion, Dire released a tid bit of information to the public. They said that the project was done, and all that was left was testing. They never told the public what they meant by “testing,” and said that it would cause too much questioning. A couple of decades ago, this may have brought up some questions. But people are just too apathetic these days. If it doesn’t directly involve us, we just don’t care. But once it does involve us, it becomes a whole different story…

Interesting story, I like the basics. Evolve the story some, I mean it needs some rewriting to be the intro of a game. Also be clear on what the player should do, should he run around in a maze trying to survive or close down the project real good with some heavy firepower?

Or maybe the main character should save someone trapped in the game (a loved one?) while closing down the project. Involve some characters in the story and it's pretty good.

Good luck!!

Haha, or have the main character be the PILE experiment. Starting out in the maze surviving, then escaping. If you had human experimentation in mind for the P.I.L.E, then you could put in some mental struggle inside the beast's mind between the animal and human aspect.

Doesn't that sound a little like the "cube" movies?

Are you looking for input into your story, or your writing ability?

As far as your writing style is concerned, some of the sentences are a bit awkward. "With no fear of any repercussions" was an odd way to put it. "Without fear of repercussion" is a bit more elegant.
"Was in need of a new type of sport" would be better as "Needed a new type of sport". Think of how you speak in real life. Do you say that you "are in need of a drink" or that you "need a drink."
"Whoever was the owner of the animal", "Whoever owned the animal". "But once it does involve us", "But once it does".
I think you should try to find more succinct ways to express things, you are putting a lot of unnecessary words into your sentences which can make it a bit of a chore to read. The reader doesn't have to have everything explicitly spelled out, they will pick things up from the context.

Your tense is a bit messed up in some places, and it's also got a few spelling mistakes and punctuation errors.


As far as the story goes, it does sound a lot like Cube, or The Running Man.
If someone told me that they weren't going to give me any information because I would ask too many questions, I would get pretty curious no matter how apethetic I was.

I'm sure actually reading what he wrote as a story would be a different experience to this explaination. His plot is solid but he doesn't give us much to criticize. Give us something that you think needs a little work.

I'm sorry it's so empty. It was really just a basic idea I tossed out for myself so that I can go back to it and really develop it some more. I appreciate the feedback that I've gotten, but I'll make sure to really include something much more in-depth for the next time I post. I'll be developing it a lot in the weeks to come, so I'll post again. Once again, thanks a lot for all of the crit.

It definitely needs some work. There seems to be a lot tense confusion and tense swapping, and your word choice and structuring could use work.

I think you also need to spend some time better developing your world and the idea of blood sport.

A couple of story points to consider:

1) Depending on the size and complexity of the maze would it take days for a single blood sport match to finish? And most of that time would be just waiting for the animals to get hungry enough to attack each other for scraps of food.

2) Is it everyone who tries to flaunt their wealth or only small class of super rich?

3) Why have the corporations developed such in depth mazes? After all isn't the point of the game to have the animals fight? The more complicated the maze would the less action for the audience.

4) Maybe the maze should be a death trap? In which animals compete to either be the first to escape or the last to survive.

5) The whole secret corporate project idea is a little over used. Why not make more progressive? For example:

With the publics continued demanded bloodier, deadlier, and more exciting games it was not long before the biotech corporation began to participate in the sport. In no time at all they where creating creatures able to tantalize even the most jaded of spectators and their lust for violence. And yet the people still wanted more. Blood sport became a race between business empires to not only create the most cunning of mazes, but also the deadliest of combatants. And then Robert Kenning gave birth to the P.I.L.E Project….

You should take a look at the comments left by everyone and use them rework your intro. Come back with a revised version and people will be happy to give you some more feedback. The best way to improve your writing is practice and honest criticism.

I would scrap the idea entirely. Aside from running through a maze to survive or to save X from being killed/eaten/mauled/transformed, there is no unique hook to it.

If you are going to continue with it, make it a single player fps with some sort of tie to the corporate influences.