Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-40022501-20190927044821/@comment-28266772-20190927111853

I pulled into the little mountain town at about 10:30 A.M. I looked at the thermostat on the dash of the new Dodge. It read a bone-chilling -24 [24 what?] below. I pulled [you used “pulled” twice, one sentence after the other] into the nearly-abandoned [don’t hyphenate] campground and found the 5 arctic-grade tents that I recommended for this hunt. Me, Shelby, Jake, and Sarah [Shelby, Jake, Sarah, and I...] would all get one of the 4 [four – if it’s less than ten, type it out] smaller, private tents to ourselves while agent Jones would stay in the larger tent that would double as a headquarters and cafeteria for this hunt.

I unloaded the 40 huskies out of the custom-built dog box on the back of the Dodge and set up a lean-to structure that would serve as their house for the next couple of weeks. I then made my way to the H.Q tent and check the fire burning [delete ‘burning’] in the wood-burning stove; [full stop] It was nearly out. I mentally questioned my team's basic winter survival abilities while I patiently built a roaring fire to warm the tent. I was enjoying the warmth of the fire when I heard the black [an] S.U.V pull into the campsite [how would he know it’s black just from sound?].

"Whoa, nice ride," Jake commented on the new truck.

"I thought you drove an old Ford?" Sarah questioned.

"I did" I replied while looking sharply at Jones

Jake, putting two-and-two together, jokingly questioned "You bought him a truck? where's my bonus?"

Jones, always serious answered, "I... we... we needed dogs and... do you know another musher with a security clearance?" Shelby then broke into our conversation

"C'mon the pizza is getting cold".

'[I didn’t understand a word of that exchange. Who pulled up? What ride is nice? Who bought who what? Did someone pull up in the narrator’s car that… that they had just driven in? It’s very confusing.]'

We went inside and ate, then Jones broke the small talk. We all knew why we were here but Jones finally explained in detail what happened. Turns out that a group of 5 snowmobilers went into the backcountry for a weekend trip. They were found dead the following Tuesday, or I should say, What [what – capitalisation] was left of them was found dead, the bodies were severely mutilated, eaten by some strange beast [how do you know it’s a strange beast?]. The bodies were found in their campsite, which had been completely trashed by whatever had done this. All 5 snowmobiles were found at the campsite unharmed, in operating condition. Meaning that whatever happened, It [capitalisation] happened so fast that they couldn't run to there [their] machines to escape. There where [were] no tracks found do [due] too [to] high wind having blown away the tracks. The locals had removed the bodies but had not disturbed anything else, So [so – capitalisation] we decided to head to the crime scene early the next morning to asses [assess] the situation properly.

At daybreak I Hitched [hitched] teams of dogs to the 4 dogsleds I had brought with me, two racing-style sleds to be used to move quickly if needed, (nicknamed the "corvette sleds" by Jake) a large freighting-style sled, for moving bulk gear, (the "trucker sled") and a multi-passenger touring style sled (the "station wagon"). I gave everyone a crash-course in dog mushing and assigned everyone a sled, I was to lead the way on a corvette sled, followed by Jake on the trucker sled, then Jones and Shelby on the station wagon, then Sarah in the rear on a corvette sled. The trip was pure hell for me, Jake complained constantly about not getting a corvette sled, and Jones couldn't keep from falling off, Shelby grumbled nonstop about the cold. In fact, the only person who seemingly enjoyed the trip was Sarah, who learned the difficult task of steering the sled with ease, Never [never] once complaining, [full stop] she was pretty impressive for a rookie musher, and I'm not easily impressed.

-

I’m not gonna do a full review because I’m a bit stuck for time, but already I think we can dive into the main issues since they’re not going anywhere.

Mechanical issues – loads. Just so many. Way too many. So many that any random reader is going to find your work an absolute chore to read. You’re sabotaging yourself. You’re shooting your racehorse before it even gets out the gate. People are gonna scan the first few lines, see the mechanical errors all over the place, and skip. Give yourself a chance and make sure you post a polished version of your story. Grammarly and MS Word can help with these things, but only to a limited extent. Mixing commas is one thing, but I’m glancing down at the next paragraph and I’m seeing words capitalised in the middle of the sentence. At the end of the day you just need to read and re-read your story and if possible find a friend or two to read over it as well.

Style issues – So I can see what you wanna do. You want to write a B movie. But, short stories have some serious limitations. Let’s say you wanna have a geek. B-movies will often have The Geek as a character. In a movie you can just show that guy rock up with a neck-beard, acne, and a MLP t-shirt and everyone instantly knows the character archetype. In a short story you need to describe the guy’s appearance and slow the plot down. Information about the character can’t be absorbed visually while the plot keeps going on like it can in a film. That means you need to be dedicating huge amounts of word real-estate to each character you introduce. Realistically, anything less than 5000 words shouldn’t have more than two meaningful characters. After two, all the other characters need to be very, very, very distinct. I’m talking things like “the fat scientist” or “the chirpy barista”, not “James Sitterton, one of six mid-level managers we’ll be talking about today”.

Also, in a story you don’t have the benefit of a character being represented with a distinct visual style. We can’t just “look” at the character and remember them. That means you can’t just list off character names like you do here. Julie, Emily, Anne, Bob, Phillip, Robert, Greg, Matthew, James, Richard, Catherine… on and on and on. That’s what it feels like you’re doing to us. You’re just reeling off names and expecting us to… what? Keep a cheat sheet? Note them down? We aren’t playing Simon Says here so don’t expect a person to go out of their way to remember anything. It’s your job to drive any relevant information into the reader’s head like an epipen through the rib-cage. That means characters need to be snappy, stereotypical, and easily remembered. It means that you should absolutely not be relying on a roll call with the hope that your reader remembers who “Shelby” or “Jake” are.

A rule of thumb I use is this: for every new named character you add, throw a thousand words onto the expected word count.

And that’s not even counting main characters, or anyone who is supposed to actually matter. For a story like this, I honestly think you should be looking at 5-7000 words. A talented writer could get it down to 5000 maybe, but it depends on the person.

Here’s the thing. Every single word you write (every. Single. Word.) needs to do one of the following five things:

It needs to move the plot forward.

Develop character (naming someone isn’t developing character)

Develop the setting (you already nail this)

Build mood or atmosphere (you do this)

And if it isn’t doing at least one of those things, delete it.

What you’re trying to do is ambitious. Having a large complex cast of characters is very, very difficult. And at this stage my advice would be to just focus on nailing the simpler challenges of writing. That means one or two characters facing off against a threat. Think clearly about how words limit you, and what they let you do that films don’t (like seeing a person’s inner thoughts directly).

Here’s what you do well by the way: you nail the details. The story feels authentic, you make mundane acts like setting out the huskies sound interesting, and honestly I think you could write a great survival story. But before you do that you’re gonna need to pull back a little and focus on something a little simpler than this kind of multi-character story. Try writing some stories less than 2000 words with simpler set ups and let us spend more time with people who light fires, tie up huskies, set up sleds, and fight bone-chilling temperatures. This isn't an insult by the way. You will rarely find short stories that use the same story structure as a full-blown movie. I've seen it pulled off maybe once in my entire life with the story Carbon River by Mike MacDee.

I look forward to seeing more of your work.

Oh, and for the love of God, proof read.