Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-28529957-20160523045934/@comment-28266772-20160523150255

So, while empyrealinvective finds quite a few areas to improve I thought I'd still contribute my own thoughts, simpy for the diversity.

My main suggestion would be to focus on tense issues. You write in a (semi) consistent tense, but that tense is present tense and there's a reason most writers avoid it. Unless the narrator is literally transcribing the words we are reading the very second that the described events occur, you will usually end up with all sorts of weird problems where it becomes quite easy to muddle up sentence structure. For a very relevant example read Dagon by HP Lovecraft (it's short and free), to show why a past tense story can still have a shocking ending where the narrator is put in mortal danger.

Otherwise this story is too focused on being affecting, to be effective. Furthermore ambiguity is not the same as an absence of information. Sometimes you can create ambiguity by giving the reader more information. So I would recommend you set your story in the past tense, and focus less on trying to invoke a feeling, and instead present the reader with a believable story, because it's only then that the reader will find themselves able to get invested in the characters and become able to feel anything.

It doesn't have to be a massive story either. People will fill the gaps in themselves, but they do need that fundamental framework  of at least one character, one setting, and a basic series of events.

Oh yeah - megalodon was big, but there were loads of freaky prehistoric monsters. Maybe read a bit more on them for some inspiration. Oh....and read about the bloop noise.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloop

Real life example of how the ocean can be pretty damned weird.