Board Thread:Writer's Workshop/@comment-9041013-20180420220610/@comment-9041013-20180427084942

JohnathanNash wrote: Okay, so I tried to write this yesterday, but it was deleted and because it pissed me off so badly, I didn't type anything again. But here's a good amount of what I would suggest to change.

There are some typos and grammar issues in this, but that shouldn't be hard to find with a reread or two, so I'm not going to waste anyone's time on that. There is also a lot of repetition in this story that could be cut down. You said "you see" about five times in the first five paragraphs, and also a few times of saying "what not" which should also be cut down to a minimum.

I'd suggest getting rid of the entire first part of this story, it's a huge exposition dump that bogs the story down far too much. It takes about halfway through this story to really start picking up steam, and by that time a good deal of readers may have lost interest with all the talk about your uncle and the village. It may be a better way to give the needed exposition in a conversation while the two are traveling by train or on the flight. It would move the story faster, and could also get the dead uncle as a motive for them to want to go back. You could have a letter come to them, make them reminisce about their childhood home, and wonder why they ever left. All that exposition could be cut down into one paragraph.

Once in the town the story is great, it moves quickly and there's enough there to keep the reader invested. But, the chanting of all the gods and their purpose should be cut down to only being said once. It's too repetitive and we don't need to reread the entire thing again. If you want to have the first line again, that would work, but the entire thing is too much.

A couple of typos that I will point out are that lake should be capitalized, it's part of the name of the lake, as in Lake Eerie. Also, pretty sure that Uncle should be capitalized as well. It's a title so it should be, much like Doctor.

Let's see, what other things can I rip apart for this story? Ditch a lot of the breaking from the story to address things that will happen, only to say that you'll get into that. It does nothing more than slow the pace. Also, all the little asides that are littered through this story can go too. Show it via the story, not give it a one sentence paragraph to tell the audience.

Can't really think of any other problems with this story. I really liked the parts in the village. That was pretty damn cool. I would suggest to add more gore to the beating part though. I'm not a gore hound at all, hardly ever write a lot of gore in my stories, but I'd say it would make that scene a lot stronger. Have a compound fracture or a flattened nose or something to really show the extent of the beating. Maybe break out his teeth, people are really unnerved by that, and it would help the problem of saying that his teeth bulged, because teeth don't bulge, they grind, and sharp fragments of broken teeth digging into his already raw gums would be a lot more disturbing.

Anyway, this has potential to be an amazing story. Don't really see any problems with this finding a home here. Ahh, you made me revise the story.

All jokes, aside, guess you're right, or maybe not (I mean, this story is one in like a million that got decent attention on Reddit. Probably from a million fangirls who get treated like crap from the comments I've seen). I did revise and cut some of the stuff you've suggested.

Added some, I guess you could call it gore.

In order to have your teeth sink into your gums, you'd have to apply (probably direct) a lot of force on the teeth, I've seen this happen, not in person, and it's bloody horrible, the guy couldn't talk properly until his teeth were yanked out I'm pretty sure he got prostetics, so that's not the case here.

I'm glad you managed to enjoy it though :)