Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25884665-20141217144009/@comment-10950063-20141218054122

This is my third time trying to write this critique. There is something really awkward and off-putting about your writing, but I can't explain it or even identify the source. I can't figure out the best things to focus on to help you or how to arrange the critique. There's also a ton of small, kind of nitpicks that contribute to the problem.

Let's start with simple stuff. You need to vary the starts of your sentences. Too many of them start with "I." Another small thing, cool it on the exclamation points. Use one per sentence, that's it. And never do all caps and an exclamation point. The construction of the sentences in the first paragraph are almost identical. It's very awkward.

You need to show, not tell.

I was scared… So goddamn scared. That's telling.

'''I was fucking scared. So. Fucking. Scared.''' This is telling AND redundant.

'''I looked up into the tree branches and saw something horrifying. I think that was the moment I knew there was no god, nothing could have had saved me then…''' This is ridiculous telling.

Don't tell us a character is scared. Describe what it's like to be scared. You start to do it when the character starts crying. What else happens when you're scared? How does your stomach feel, how does your chest feel, what's going on in your mind? If you describe the visceral feelings of fear you are more likely to get your readers to connect to it than just saying, "I'm scared."

Don't tell us the character is cold or that it's cold out. Show us. Show us the cold by building up the imagery of the landscape. Show us how the character feels, how their body is reacting, what they're wearing. This is a huge problem in the first paragraph. All your descriptions basically amount to "it's cold,' without building any imagery. It's awkward and it's clunky and it feels like reading a list of things you want to describe.

The last quoted section ties in with another problem in the story. Don't preface things. Here, it's terrible. "Oh, there's no God, it's so terrible, it's the most horrifying thing in the world." Is seeing your mother mutilated terrible and would it evoke that kind of reaction. Sure, but it sounds silly when you put it like that. It's more effective to have the character look up and describe what they see. Then, the reader will react to that however they choose too. When you try to force them to feel something or think a certain way, you will fail. Then, you can show us that the character is giving up instead of telling us.

Something similar to that issue happens here: '''I glanced up at the deck about 5 feet above the lawn, I could climb it with mild success. So I decided to do it.'''

Let's start with a nitpick: the first sentence makes no sense. Climbing is not on a spectrum of success. You can either do it or you can't. What is mildly successful in terms of climbing? The first problem is that this section is absolutely useless. Have the character look at it and then start to climb. It ruins your flow the way you do it now.

There's a lot of stuff you could and should trim off of this. Remove anything that doesn't add anything to the story. This doesn't include good imagery or description because they add to the story. The dream sequence falls into the unnecessary category. It's short, contentless and adds absolutely nothing. Same with things like, "a chance of snow" in the the first sentence. Just have it be snowing.

There is almost no description of the shadow. That's a huge problem.

Then, there's things that make no sense. Like, if this monster is trying to kill this kid, why not do it when he's unconscious?

Or this:

''' I could feel a cry bubbling up my throat. I put my hand over my mouth. I felt something warm hit my cheek, not salty like tears… It was coppery, like blood.'''

Is the character tasting with their cheek? The blood isn't on their hand, is it? And it couldn't have dripped into their mouth, because they have their mouth covered.

The best advice I can give you is to read more. Not creepypasta or fanfiction, but actual books and stories by professional writers. See how professionals handle imagery and flow and things like that. Then, keep writing and develop your style.