Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-25178131-20140717021619/@comment-25178131-20140717023133

WatcherAzazel wrote: Glad to see you join us! Naturally, having advised you to come here, I feel obligated to help you out.

Firstly, "doberman" looked wrong to me, but I was reluctant to say you should capitalize it. I just googled it, and my instincts were right. Dog breeds are capitalized.

Next, I'm not clear how articulate you mean your protagonist to be. For example, he chose the word "obese," instead of "fat," which sounds a bit snobby, but the rest of the story doesn't really bear that out.

Do not use all caps for expressing anger. When I tried to revise some of your story before it was deleted, I changed that. It looks immature. You can use italics or bold if you must.

Your last paragraph should be at least two. It reads as a mini-wall-of-text.

I can see you're making an effort with the ending, but it still doesn't work. If the creature is on the staircase, he isn't going to be writing, he's going to be preparing. My simple solution to this is to let the creature be outside still, and not showing more than a passing interest in him. That gives us some indication that the creature WILL someday come for him, bu the matter isn't so pressing that he can't spare the time to write about it.

The biggest issue is that the story needs expansion. It needs build-up and tension. The biggest mistake you can make in writing about a monster or a serial killer is to have the fear come solely from the fact that they ARE a monster or a serial killer. Then there's nothing to separate them from every other story every written about a monster or a serial killer. What makes your Chimera scarier than, for a great example of a truly horrible pasta we can't get rid of solely due to its popularity, Jeff the Killer? Both of them are just things that come to kill you. I need more than that to be afraid. Ok thanks for the advice, I'll keep that in mind