Short Story Opium Island. Feedback appreciated!!

[Claver]

Hi guys. This is a concept I'm working on so I would really appreciate feedback. I'm going to tell you a bit about the setting and a quick overview of the entire story.

Opium island

Setting is a small Island in the 1700's Asia where several big opium producing farms are located. Opium is smuggled from this island to mainland and the entire city is nearly controlled by some of the largest houses involved in the drug trade. Criminality is sky high, there is massive poverty and corruption, and the island has terrible living conditions in general.

Things change when the old police director, who had been receiving bribes from the houses in exchange for looking the other way, dies of an illness. A new director, Li, is appointed to manage the police in the island. Li is an honest and very capable man, and he is also reckless and willing to go as far as he has to in order to achieve what he wants. The opium smugglers try to bribe him at first so he won't oppose them, but he refuses and promises to hunt them down and clean the island.

With Li in charge, the police begin aggressively raiding several of the opium farms and killing some of the smugglers. The operations are a success initially but quickly begin to lose steam as it looks like the smugglers are always one step ahead of them. Whenever the police heads to raid some new location, they find that the smugglers were already gone. Li starts suspecting that there may be someone within the police working for the drug traders.

Li's suspicions are confirmed when his boat gets attacked by smugglers on one of his trips to mainland. He manages to miraculously survive due to his amazing fighting skills and realizes that there was no way the smuggler knew he was in the boat unless they had inside info.

Using his wits, he identifies three primary suspects, then devices a plan where he tells each one of them about his next trip, hoping that one of them will give the information to the attackers. Unbeknownst to them, they all get different info (say routes A, B and C). Later he sends decoys to all three routes (he didn't tell the police officers in the boats that they were decoys, they think they have an assignment). The boat on route B gets attacked again and all the people there are murdered. He then realizes that the mole was suspect B, Xeng, and imprisons him in his house without letting anyone in the police know about it.

Li starts questioning Xeng about the opium smugglers, to no avail. He asks him if he wants to work out a deal or spend the rest of his life in prison. Xeng says he will be killed in prison anyway so he adamantly refuses to talk. Li however refuses to accept a no for an answer and ends up torturing the info out of him. He later kills him and throws the body in a river.

Using the info obtained form Xeng, Li conducts a huge raid in one of the biggest opium farms. After a huge confrontation, the opium producers there are forced out and the entire farm is burned to the ground in retaliation for the assassination attempt.

After this incident, the mafia starts taking Li more seriously. The try to find the way to assassinate Li, but the increased the security in the main police headquarters makes it impossible. The heads of the three biggest opium houses make an agreement and decide to collaborate to take down the new police director and regain control of the town.

Putting their resources together and raising a huge pile of money, the opium smugglers begin their plan to take down the entire police department. The decide to offer 50 silver coins to whoever kills a police officer and 100 gold coins to the person who kills Li. The offer is open to anyone, including civilians.

Due to the extreme poverty and the people desperate situation, many civilians start setting traps for the police and killing officers in order to get the reward. The police force suffers heavy causalities and is forced to get on the defensive. Tensions between the people of the island and law enforcement increase as police officers start viewing each civilian as a potential threat and treating them accordingly.

The situation escalates further when smuggler dressed as police officers kill a loved and well respected town priest. The people of the island start rioting outside the police station and things appear to get quickly out of control. Li and a few trustworthy cops barricade themselves in the main building.

Using the riots as distraction and taking advantage of the chaotic situation, an elite group of killer assassins infiltrate the station. Li and the rest of the officers fight bravely but they are all overpowered and finally killed.

With Li gone and the entire police force destroyed, the opium houses take complete control of the entire island.

The end.

 

[nanaDmari]

I did a quick read, and for me it would be more about how you tell the actual story, if it's going to be dark and thrilling or an action packed story.

In your explanation we don't have the characterization of the police force, for example, yes, we have an inside man and the past director that was corrupt and that's it. Having this characterization of the people and the place can make even simple plots a great reading.

I like how you have a bad ending, I like bad endings XD
you actually have the police force being destroyed, so it's a dystopia being built in a way, but maybe for that you'd have to pay more attention to the government and other entities related to keeping the order. And also be careful not to give the impression that your main character struggles were all in vain, because Li rises to take control and manage the police but it's ultimately defeated.

 

[Claver]

Thank you so much for the feedback

I want to make it like really dark and moody. Like a dark thriller but also with cool action as eye candy.

Yeah, so far the fact that the main characters struggles were all in vain seems like the biggest problem. Maybe it ends with the government getting ready to make a stronger counter effort against the smugglers after what happened.

 

[Lumaria]

So I read your summary. So far, I'm jot really gathering anything interesting about this main character Li. He seems really generic and a bit of a Mary Sue.

What makes him the way he is and what are the weaknesses he must overcome? Additionally what made him where he is now as chief?

 

[Claver]

So I read your summary. So far, I'm jot really gathering anything interesting about this main character Li. He seems really generic and a bit of a Mary Sue.

What makes him the way he is and what are the weaknesses he must overcome? Additionally what made him where he is now as chief?

Thank you! The interesting thing about the main character is supposed to be the fact that he is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants, with no moral or even legal concerns. Mary Sue characters tend to be morally perfect but this guy is far from it.

I didn't wanted to get into the character background in detail because I don't consider it that important really

 

[Lumaria]

Thank you! The interesting thing about the main character is supposed to be the fact that he is willing to do whatever it takes to get what he wants, with no moral or even legal concerns. Mary Sue characters tend to be morally perfect but this guy is far from it.

But why isbhe willing to do anything? And with no moral or legal concerns? The problem is he is one-dimensional. He as virtually no personality or not even a distinct thought process.

I didn't wanted to get into the character background in detail because I don't consider it that important really

You didn't give us any background at all. What are you doing to grab readers attention? We have a protagonist that we can't identify with and a big organization that we don't have any reason to want to get destroyed.

 

[YumaKuga]

Hey man, Its Yuuma from MR, nice to see you on here too xD

 

[Claver]

Nice to see you here dude!!

But why isbhe willing to do anything? And with no moral or legal concerns? The problem is he is one-dimensional. He as virtually no personality or not even a distinct thought process.

Well is hard to show the characters personality from a short story synopsis.

Have you seen the movie nightcrawler? watch Jake Gyllenhaal. He plays the part of a goal oriented sociopath. A guy willing to do literally whatever it takes to get what he wants. There is no explanation of why he is like he is, that is just his personality. That is kind of the feel I want to give my character.

 

[Lumaria]

Well it's pretty generic.


And in nightcrawler we do get an idea of who Lou is. But for a sociopath, it's crazy hard to show how one becomes ones. But the problem is that your story is leading with generic character leading a very important case.

Just wanting to stop them no matter what is pretty boring. Why should I follow this character or this story?

You're not putting enough attention to the right things.

Does the main character want to stop them for personal reasons that happened in his past? Did his wife died from opium overdose, did his brother die because he was in the gang? Or did he witnessed something in his time in the police force?

All of this tells usbhow his approach will go. Will he try to do cheap tricks all son he can hurt them where itbhurts most OR is he going to make the police proud and sick by the rules. Especially since the police force was dirty to begin with.

You're not giving it enough importance.