First short story ever - Feedback/improvements please!

[Samflyz]

Hey, i've written this as for coursework piece for my English Language A-Level. Short stories aren't really my strong point and i'd like to bump it up a grade or two so i'm just looking for some feedback. I'll write what my teacher thought underneath. Thanks alot. I'm English by the way and the dialect should be American as it's based on a US Firefighter, so please let me know if there are any obvious hiccups in that sense.

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“Please, take a seat”
“Yes… t-thank you Chief” he stutters in response, still shaken by the moment.
Drawing the chair back, it’s four legs scraping against the shiny generic station floor the two men stare at each other for a moment over the shiny-grey metallic table.
“Lieutenant Rice, please state your name for the record”
“Jonathon Rice” he replies
“The time is now 10:54am, the date 23rd October 1998. Interview conducted by myself, Dennis Ladurnbury, Head Chief of Firefighters department, New York.”
A pause ensues for a moment.
“Jon, I’m sorry for this and I know you’re most likely not in the best mental state at the moment but this has to be done just to clear yourself of any wrongdoing,”
“Oh. Okay. I see”
“Please repeat, to the best of your knowledge, what occurred last night”
“Well, we got the call and we went there. It’s all a normal day, ya know? Me and the guys-
“-the guys? Please be more specific for the tape”
“Joey, Tom, Alistair, and myself... anyway yeah, as I were saying we were planning to go to the joint opposite the Lady for some drinks and stuff after work and I remember it clearly - Unit-4 respond, Unit-4 respond! The radio shouted at us. Top floor apartments ablaze it said, top floor apartments. Hey, it was just another call out for us, all assumed it was some old lady who left her fries on like they usually are. Anyway there we are, kitted up and driving, engines roaring, and I’m put on point to enter when we arrive. We get there and it’s just hell. Cars stopped sideways in the road with doors open, police cordoning off the area, sirens and commotion everywhere, screams coming from this old apartment complex that is just… just lighting up. Fire’s gushing out of the windows, half the front entrance is missing because it’s been ripped open, hoses attached to the hydrants hopelessly splashing away at the corners of the flames. It was like a movie, ya know? I’ve never seen anything like it. In a way it was… it was… t-too perfect?”
“So what happened once you arrived? Why’d you enter the scene?”
“There was still people inside and we signed up for this kind of ****, you know? It’s all just a game until something happens I guess… anyway me and Joey gear up and head in. We slip the oxygen-supplies on as the place is just spewing smog and run in there, kicking down doors and cutting down barricades to help people get out. We must of did 20 rounds making our way up each floor bringing people back. Almost got the all clear until some guy said his wife and kid were still trapped up in there somewhere on the 4th. So yeah of course Joey sprints back in with me following him until we hit some sort of fire-exit door in the stairwell. It’s pretty obvious some kind of flashover is gonna happen by it being jammed shut but we gotta go through it anyway. He axes it off and then boots it down before ducking to the side. Obviously the flames came straight through for a few seconds until we could enter. Visibilities bad at this point but we’re – as far as we could tell – at the right floor and our masks and O2 seemed to be holding up alright. We’re in the hallway of the floor and we go from door to door searching if these little kids are still alive. We get about halfway through the rooms and there we see just some… body. Laying there… it felt bad ya know? As if we missed them. We paused for a moment before we heard the faint ‘Helppp!’ in that unmistakeable kids voice. We sprint full on towards the door, Joey on point until, I don’t even know what happened but Joey turns the corner to step in, me just behind him and the room just spits back at him in some kind-of explosion throwing him back against the hallway straight into me knocking me down. I instantly know he’s a goner. And that’s when I realize if I don’t get up and out of there right now I’m gonna be joining ‘im presently as I see his can of O2 glowing red hot and shaking. I hustle into the room that he just went into and head straight for the balcony fire escape when I see them. A woman holding something in her arms trapped in the corner. I jump through the fire and throw her and the kid she’s holding onto my back and get out onto the escape when it just goes. Joey’s tank explodes and it takes the fire escape with it. And there I was, on the ground, head spinning, kid shouting at me crying. Drag him up and leg it out of there before the place falls. The kid saw his mom down on the ground… face in the dirt with the paramedics swarming her, just buried the kid in my shoulder. Went straight home… saw the film footage taken by some TV crew later that night…”
He stars at the contours of his hands as a tear runs down his face. The man opposite him clicks a button to stop the recording and simply says “Son, I’m sorry you had to go through this”. He gets up, and begins to make his way towards the door. He stops midstride as he sighs, staring towards the ground.

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Teachers notes (i'm typing this at speed just to save time so it may not be 100% correct grammatically):
This is skillfully written in a very believable 'voice'. You set the scenario uip well and engage the reader throughout. I like it as it is - but - there is the potentional for a twist here - otherwise, the suspense of 'did he/didnt he' is slightly deflated at the end. If he did screw up in some way - make a bad call - revenge on his duty - what could it have been?

I'm completely out of ideas of how to build suspense into it. Can anybody give me any pointers also?

Thanks for reading, criticism is appreciated
Sam

[Delta40]

I won't bother with the grammar and punctuation since you've made a point already about it.

The last para is quite long but it is good dialogue. What it is doing is telling the reader what happened. We never actually get shown the story itself. It sounds to me like the character is pretty traumatised by the events and you could cash in on this by breaking the dialogue up with his flashbacks. That would be the showing part for the reader, where you put them right in the burning building. For example, how many times do you think Jon closes his eyes during the interview and sees the event in full colour? So write that and use it to guide the reader through the tragedy. He'll never forget the cries for help, the loss of his mate, the dead body etc. These can all be a show factor that keep him awake.

Good luck

[hillwalker]

I agree with Delta about 'showing' more and 'telling' less.

Personally I'd begin right at the start. Speech is a great way to reveal a character but I think having your MC stutter his line of dialogue doesn't work so well. Is he shaken by the offer of a seat? We need something more to place ourselves inside the character's head - something more convincing than a stutter. Perhaps have him slump in the chair without saying a word for now - have him feeling the room is in danger of swallowing him up or the metallic grey table is starting to suck all the energy out of him rather than just telling us what the floor looks like, etc.
Similarly, we don't need the speech tag 'he replies' after he gives his name. It's a small thing but it slows things down. You're after suspense - so keep the wheels rolling.

To keep the reader inside your MC's head I'd expect something after “Oh. Okay. I see”
Does he see what the interviewer is implying? Wrong-doing? What the hell's going on? Wouldn't he be the slightest bit on edge or on guard, especially if he's just attended a call?

The large block of dialogue that then follows is certainly too coherent for a guy suffering some kind of stress. No one talks in long chunks of speech anyway, so to make this more authentic you need to break it up. And use the breaks to feed in detail about what the guy's really thinking about as he's telling his tale. The smells he can remember. The sounds in more detail. The feeling of detachment - that it wasn't real...

This bit seems contrived “There was still people inside and we signed up for this kind of ****, you know? It’s all just a game until something happens I guess…
He might well be thinking these thoughts but he'd not be saying them to his chief. It's more like the kind of conversation he'd be having at a bar later, or when confiding to his wife perhaps.

And again - break this up if you're looking to build up the tension. It's too big a chunk of dialogue to absorb as it stands.
As for inserting a twist... maybe he should have been 'on point' rather than Joey but somehow or other the rosters got mixed up. Your MC knew this but said nothing as soon as they arrived at the scene because he could see it was a bad one. The fire chief also knows there's something fishy about what went down but chooses to let it pass.

Good luck with it.

H

[Steven Hunley]

"The large block of dialogue that then follows is certainly too coherent for a guy suffering some kind of stress. No one talks in long chunks of speech anyway, so to make this more authentic you need to break it up. And use the breaks to feed in detail about what the guy's really thinking about as he's telling his tale. The smells he can remember. The sounds in more detail. The feeling of detachment - that it wasn't real..."

I agree with many of the points above. And Hill has a point too. You might alternate between sensory details relating to the setting, (like watching a stick of dynamite in a movie) and build suspense. Each sensory reference would be more dramatic and more dangerous, like watching, smelling, feeling, the heat of the approaching flames. In between those you could put what was on his mind. It would take some work.

As a text, it should be broken up more anyway, and make those long paragraphs easier to read. Heck of a good story, but try to preserve the suspense until the end, so your story goes out, not with a whimper, but with a bang. It's not the Wasteland.