Need opinions on this

[Brenton]

"There's not enough time to go back and get the rest of the gear from the room, sorry. We'll just have to work with what we have right now and hope that it's good enough for the mission to be completed. Are we all still in agreement that this is the right target?" The voice was commanding but still child-like as it came from the throat of a young teenage boy who had black hair that hung in his face and covered his eyes perfectly. He was obviously used to being followed as his stance showed from his cocky attitude and the way he thrust he chin out when he spoke to the other three teens standing in front of him. All of them had a history but they all were fit for what they were about to do as the three nodded their heads and began to move in anticipation.
Just ahead of the boy was a building that looked like a simple hotel and casino combination but they weren't there to gamble as the four had gathered at the back in an alleyway. Above them was a ledge that was shrouded in shadows but it looked like there was a ventilation shaft above and that was how they were getting in. Shrugging a bag onto his shoulder, the black haired teen smiled, a simple flash of white teeth, before he grabbed the rough bricks and began to climb up toward the ledge. His hands were accustomed to this type of rigorous behavior and his muscles didn't protest as he grabbed the ledge to pull himself up.
The ventilation shaft was easily dealt with by a couple of picks and a screwdriver that popped the grate inward before he went in after it. For such a young age, this boy was obviously not so innocent if he could sneak into a building and not think twice about it while his friends waited below. A few minutes later, the boy dropped into a clean and dark passage where a door was waiting for him at the end but there was an alarm on it that would sound if he opened the door. The boy smiled deviously and crept forward, making sure to not be noticed, as he pulled a small electronic box from his bag that he placed over the alarm system.
Smoke rose in tendrils from the white control panel and then the light turned green as the boy opened the door to let his friends inside where they soon walked in next to him. "Could you have taken any longer, Jesse? We heard guards all over the place earlier but there was nowhere for us to hide if they had checked by the door where we were." The second person to talk was a white haired teen who up to that point had seemed like a shy and timid person, not getting into any arguments and often times staying out of the way. His position in the group was based on that skill because he was often times not thought of as dangerous if he didn't speak.
The black haired boy, Jesse from what the other teen had said, grinned and nodded very definitively. "I most certainly could have taken longer getting here but this alarm system slowed me down just a bit. It's a good thing we packed a tech override system in the bag or you would have had to climb up the wall to get inside. Now do you still have you pistol, does everyone have theirs?" The entire plan required them to have silenced pistols so Jesse had supplied him and his friends with weapons as well as supplies that they were supposed to have at all times.
Three heads nodded and Jesse chuckled as he pulled two black semiautomatic silenced pistols from holsters under his grey jacket that he had worn intentionally to hide such weapons. The weapons were loaded and ready as soft footsteps took the group of four kids walked at a brisk pace toward the final destination, the CEO's office at the bottom level. Currently they were on the second to bottom level and it would take two turns to get to the stairs but that was dangerous so they were going through an elevator shaft to get there.
Jesse saw someone moving ahead, a burly guard who was carrying an assault rifle at the ready and a stun baton on his belt. Just wonderful but not too difficult to deal with, so the teenage boy raised his right pistol and squeezed off a round that pierced the man's temple in a clean kill. Quick and easy with no sound to be heard, perfect for assassinations and missions that required stealth like this one did. Unfortunately the second guard wasn't as easy to kill, getting his assault rifle aimed before a bullet ripped through his skull as well.
Close calls like that never pleased the leader of the four kids but he looked over to the dark haired Mexican girl walking next to him and saw that she was lowering her pistol with determination still in her eyes. Amazing how she had been the nicest before the assassins had been in contact with Jesse but now she could kill with no remorse just like a true mercenary. That's what they were after all, guns for hire, and they were damn proud of what they did because it helped pay for their needs.
"Too close for comfort. Let's go guys, it's time for this mission to be finished but remember we need to conserve ammunition for the way out because that CEO will press the alarm as we shoot him." Jesse ran into a room and there was the grate that opened into the elevator shaft where he climbed in and started down the ladder. Behind him were his friends who he would trust with his life no matter what happened because that's what friends did.
The elevator shaft ended and Jesse climbed out into the hallway, shooting another two guards before they could register where he came from, and then ran to the door where he waited for the others. Three other teens ran to him and soon they were next to him waiting for him to give the orders. "Stack up! Zak, you and I will go in at point while Kylee and Dyami go to the left and right in a flank. Tyler you take the rear and cover our six. Make sure no one gets through, even if you have to take one of their guns and start wasting them at full clip. Do we understand each other?" All of them nodded in understanding and got ready. "Good then LET'S GO RESISTANCE!"
Jesse and the white haired boy, Zak, kicked in the door at the center and they were in, popping off rounds into guards on the way in. Behind them were the two avenging angels who would do the most in this particular room, Kylee and Dyami. They finished off the guards and soon had their pistols aimed at the CEO who was surprised with his hands raised high. In the rear was Tyler, watching the door that was wide open, while he picked up an assault rifle and put it over his shoulder just to grab a second and hold it at the ready.
"CEO of the biggest drug dealing ring of America and you thought the assassins wouldn't notice you until it was too late? We once called people like you Templars but games started ripping us off in our war so we stopped and just hid away while killing scum like you. Now it's your turn so what do you have to say for yourself, Mr. CEO?" Jesse was all business now, his own pistols aimed at the CEO for a direct head shot in case he should try anything funny in the next few moments.
"You are nothing but a bunch of kids who interfered with the wrong people at the wrong time and now you'll die for you hubris. Do you really think that four teenage punks can topple a corporation as large as this and still get away to tell the tale afterward? Please, I have killed men three times your size with ten times your skill in cold blood so what makes you so confident?" The CEO was sly and had his fun buying time until his guards could get to the room to help him but what he didn't know was that most of them were dead along the way.
"Maybe it's the five pistols aimed at you and the fact that we took out several of your guards along the way here without tripping alarms. You are outmatched now just die!" With that, Jesse pulled the triggers but the CEO had dived to the side to grab an assault rifle so he only got a bullet in the left shoulder. More bullets were fired and soon the CEO was dead, riddled full of holes, while all of the teens picked up their own assault rifles and Jesse walked to the safe on the wall.
"You have about three minutes, Jesse. The guards are sure to be near so get the money and jewels as fast as possible." The deeper but still child-like voice came from the black and very muscular teen who was named Tyler as he watched the door. His brother who looked like him but less muscular, Dyami, was watching Jesse crack the safe with ease.
Inside was money and jewels that would tide over the kids until they were easily old enough to retire so they had brought empty bags to fill full of said riches. Quickly Jesse, Zak, and Dyami filled the bags which they flung over their shoulders before they ran out of the room and straight into a group of guards. "Shit! Tyler you were supposed to deal with them when they got to us not let them set up a barricade. Resistance take them out as fast as possible."
Only about three minutes elapsed before the last of the guards fell and the kids were off again, crawling into the elevator shaft. They scaled quickly up the ladder and jumped into the passage that they had started in at the beginning. Ahead was freedom where they could get to the hideout and be safe until reinforcements came to get them. So the group ran full out toward the exit where they got to the door and into the light just to find a full police and military barricade. Now this was beyond even their skills. Yet maybe their was another exit out of here.
Jesse spun around to run back through the door and to the front of the building but he felt a twinge in his thigh and soon he couldn't feel his left leg. Then his right leg was numb as well but Jesse wouldn't give up so he spun and let bullet fly along with his friends, cutting down cops and military alike. It looked like the kids would win but then they were filled with little barbed darts that made them lose vision and the last thing Jesse remembered was the ground feeling so good under his face as boots crunched above.

((So yes these kids are supposed to be baws and mow through everyone. It's actually a part of the plot later on but this is what happens before the apocalypse, or part of what happens. Any advice to help get this going after this would be good and appreciated or just letting me know what you think of it.))

[Quetzal]

I'm going to be completely honest with this and I apologise in advance should I upset you! I will probably also end up being a hypocrite. That's just because writing isn't my main skill, I don't actually do any outside RPing.

This intrigues me and as with anything that isn't the whole picture, could be either good or bad. It still catches my interest. That's good. However, the Templars v assassins thing is ripped straight out of the Assassin's Creed games. Even mentioning the games, since it's the main plot device of the games it makes this feel like either a fanfic or a rip-off. I'm not going to sugar coat anything. In addition, you've used the name Jesse in reference to yourself a few times around the site before - if that's your real name, I'd recommend you don't use it for your main character. Inserting yourself into a book is not a good idea. It tends to result in a Gary Stu through which the author lives out some fantasy as their ideal self. That can make the character seem less badass and more 'oh great him again, yeah of course everyone loves them and they always come out on top, what a dick'. It also kills any suspense and makes them predictable. Not saying your character is predictable, I haven't seen enough to say that. Just makes them lack substance a lot of the time and I tend to get annoyed with them.

Next point is more of a plea than anything. I'm willing to bet that either Zak or Jesse will end up in a relationship with the one girl (Kylee?). Pleeeeease don't turn her into one of those all-too-frequent female characters who are basically just vapid pairs of boobs with legs. Too often I see females in books/films, especially ones with lots of fighting, who are just there for sex appeal as some sort of 'goal' for the manly male fighters to 'win over'. Please give her depth. Give her opinions, make her like a normal human being who won't instantly fall in love with someone for winning a fight or whatever. Make her awesome and badass. So far she seems promising, although we haven't seen much of her. Just... when you're writing her, don't think any differently to how you'd write a male character. Sorry for having a go at you about something I haven't actually seen you do, it's just rubbish female characters are vomited all over the pages to give manly fighting men something to 'achieve' and stare at and it makes me angry. So angry. You ever heard of the Bechdel test?

More minor points now! Yay! Throughout this you mention 'Jesse and the three other teenagers' or 'the four teenagers' and then you name five; Jesse, Zak, Dyami, Kylee and Taylor. This confuses me.

In the fourth paragraph, Jesse says "Now do you still have you pistol". You're missing an 'r' off the word 'your' there.

I think teens who kill people would use different curses to 'poop'.

Quite a few of your sentences run on for too long and should be split up. It just makes it flow less well and and be misleading sometimes. For example, "Just ahead of the boy was a building that looked like a simple hotel and casino combination but they weren't there to gamble as the four had gathered at the back in an alleyway." makes it sound like their gathering in the alleyway made them decide not to gamble. It could be split into "Just ahead of the boy was a building that looked like a simple hotel and casino combination, but they weren't there to gamble. The five had gathered at the back in an alleyway." I corrected four to five because of the five names thing. Another example is "A few minutes later, the boy dropped into a clean and dark passage where a door was waiting for him at the end but there was an alarm on it that would sound if he opened the door.", which is just a bit of a mouthful for my internal monologue. The word 'if' bugged me too, just seemed odd to me but I can't say why. Could be split to "A few minutes later, the boy dropped into a clean and dark passage. A door was waiting for him at the end but there was an alarm on it that would sound should he opened the door." These aren't the only times this happens, there's several more but you should be the judge of which sentences need splitting/shortening.

Maybe brush over it with a thesaurus as well. Some words like 'easy' (or variants like 'with ease' and 'easily') are used a lot. Some more juicy vocabulary would make the whole thing more pleasant to read, although the words you have now still get the message across just as clearly.

Finally, I thought it was a bit weird how you set at least the first half from the point of view of someone who seemed to be watching Jesse and trying to figure him out. The wording sounds like someone reasoning out his name and character (eg "obviously not so innocent if he could sneak into a building" and "The black haired boy, Jesse from what the other teen had said"). This isn't a problem as such, it's just something which I haven't seen and I don't really like it. It feels a bit like you're blatantly telling us what to think about Jesse. I personally prefer it when books just plunge the readers right in and let them figure out the characters for themselves. The reader will know that Jesse isn't innocent when he sneaks into a building - assuming they won't see something can feel like you're insulting the reader's intelligence at times. A brief description or mention of a character's trait or quirk, fine, but letting the reader figure out and interpret a character themselves it nice. That's just me personally, someone else may feel differently.

You asked for opinions, so those are mine. Whenever I do something, I always prefer criticism to people just saying 'yeah that's really great I love it' since it helps improve the thing. That's why this is all trying to be constructive criticism. I do like the writing as a whole, in the likely case I didn't get that across. I just wrote what I think would be more helpful to you. None of it was meant to be insulting, and it's still just an opinion.

[Brenton]

Okay I enjoy the criticism a lot and now lemme explain please.

Jesse is my name, yes, but I used the name because of more of a reason than to just base it off of me. My coauthor is Zak but once again we based the character off more than just him. These characters are us in a sense but not us at the same time like Jesse is who I would've been had I not left my mother's house when I was ten years old and gotten into more trouble. His personality is loosely based off of mine when I was younger but a lot more violent and aggressive while when he grows up (later) he will have more of my personality but has a Brenton side to him and yes that is widely based off of Brenton.

Kylee is the only female of the group as of now but she is our friend and so neither of us actually ends up with her because Zak is a lone wolf and Jesse ends up having a more player side where he constantly falls for other girls but has one girl that he eventually marries. She comes in about the fourth chapter of the book and is very blonde legs and boobs but also very well aware of her looks and willing to use them against people.

Kylee does get with another member of the group because they are dating from before the apocalypse. As for the numbers error I noticed that and fixed it when talking with others as well.

These kids are far from innocent and have very dark pasts, becoming mercenaries assassins thieves and such later on, so they were raised differently. Actually Zak remembers none of his past and often times kids who are raised like this swear like adults. That is the only reason I used swears like that when they were teens because of their histories but those aren't defined real well and only in brief flashbacks.

Sentences appeared longer on here than they did on my word document so I just kept it the way it was when posting it, sorry. Assassins/Templars/Assassins Creed is yes a rip off to a degree but mostly that is to show how deep the hatred goes and how long this fight has gone on. It is actually much more different and I refuse to comment on that anymore than I already have.

As for insulting the reader's intelligence, I will just say that trust me, they are far more than deviant children who insist upon fighting the law. There will be more to come and you will have to see what that is if I ever post more. Maybe I'll put a brief bit from when Jesse is an adult but it would have to be to where it doesn't give away the main plotline.

Yes I have grammar and spelling errors but they will be smoothed over in editing after I get this finished and sent to my coauthor.

[Quetzal]

OK, but be careful how you write the character. I personally would be put off buying a book in which characters have the same names as the authors.

You're kind of making the same point as me with the swearing. Maybe it's a regional thing. To me, 'poop' is a pretty childish curse you might hear from someone between about three and seven years old. Might be different for you. People don't actually say 'poop' where I live, we say 'poo' instead, but means exactly the same thing. I won't swear on this site since this place is PG-13, but I go to a grammar school where kids are taught to be polite and most people in my year were using the f-word and the s-word by about 14, so it seems odd to me that a killer teen would use something pretty tame. Of course, you might not want to swear like a trooper throughout your book, so just 'damn' or 'crap' or something? It's a really minor detail.

Whatever the reason for it, it's still a rip-off. Assassins feature commonly enough, but you should at least change the name of the Templar's. If it's to show how deep the hatred goes, then any writer should be able to show deep-rooted hatred without digging out someone else's (copyrighted, no less!) story. Show the hatred in the way the characters act, how they've been raised on stories of ancient rivalries between their ancestors and those of the other guys. Do what Shakespeare did and start with a random fight between the two sides with deep-rooted blind hatred on both sides. At the very least, just say 'it's like the Templars and assassins' rather than 'yeah it literally is the Templars and assassins and we're ripping off your idea completely sorry Ubisoft but not sorry'. I'm afraid there's simply no way you'd get published leaving the core plotline to another person's game in your book. Plus, some people won't have played Assassin's Creed and won't know what you're on about, so you would have failed to achieve that goal. However different you claim to have made it, the names are still the same so Ubisoft would have every right to sue you should you make any money off this. Just... seriously. Not. Cool. If they're so different, surely they're not the Templars so you can give them a different name? Would that be so bad? Have a group of bad guys by all means but make sure they are NOT recognisably the Templars in any way. At all. I can't stress this enough. People will know. Use your creativity, originality and writing abilities to show the hatred rather than just plagiarising someone else's work.

It was wasn't so much the physical length of the sentences, more the way they seemed like lots of other sentences strung together with connective words like 'and', 'but' and 'as'. They made a statement, maybe added some context, then seemed finished but kept going with the next statement. I wasn't criticising the way they looked on Proboards compared to a Word document, rather the writing itself...

However more the characters are than deviant children fighting the law, it still felt like you were thinking for the reader instead of letting them think for themselves. My point still stands that it was weirdly worded as if the reader themselves were the ones writing everything down as they watched the scene. Regardless of what the children are like when they grow up compared to the observations written in the description, I still prefer writing that described the action or thoughts or appearance of what's around rather than 'Jimmy climbed a ladder. Hm, perhaps he wasn't afraid of heights after all' with no context as to who is doing the thinking there. It's just odd to read.

[Brenton]

all swears on here are edited usually so I think that was edited.

[Brenton]

All of those swears or words that just don't fit are meant to be stronger like "poop" was s**t but it edited it out